Flintlock

by William W. Johnstone

  “You ain’t gonna believe me, Marshal.”

  “Try me, boy. You want that last slice o’ salt pork?”

  “No. I’ve had enough.”

  “Then I’ll eat it.” Talking through a chewing mouth, Tyrell said, “So, try me.”

  Charlie Fong told the marshal about Silas Garrard and the two Chinese girls and how he suspected they were being abused. He didn’t mention the golden bell.

  After listening intently and nodding now and then, Tyrell doffed his top hat, displaying a shockingly bald scalp, then resettled it on his head again, as though it had been threatening to tip over.

  “Seems to me that this man Garrard hasn’t broken any laws,” he said. “If he bought and paid for them China girls, then they’re his to do with as he pleases.”

  “Marshal, slavery ended with the War Between the States,” Fong said. “You can’t buy people anymore and do with them as you please.”

  “Well, maybe you got a point there, sonny. But Celestials ain’t real people like white folks, beggin’ your pardon. So as I said, I don’t see that any laws have been broken. But I’ll study on it some.”

  Prejudice is the bastard child of ignorance, and Marshal Tyrell wasn’t about to change his mind about races, so Charlie Fong didn’t try to educate him.

  “Are you here after Abe Roper?” he said.

  “Nope. I got bigger fish to fry, an outlaw and killer by the name of Asa Pagg.”

  “He’s around,” Fong said.

  “You seen him?”

  “Yeah, at Fort Defiance.”

  “He got Logan Dean and Joe Harte with him? Two real bad ’uns.”

  Fong nodded. “Sure thing. I’d say you got your work cut out for you, Marshal.”

  The news obviously didn’t sit well with Tyrell. He frowned as though his thoughts were troubling him. Then he sighed deeply and said, “Well, I wear the badge and draw the wages, so I got it to do.”

  “You can get the soldiers at the fort to help,” Fong said.

  “It ain’t really their concern and men going up against Pagg and them can die real easy.”

  “Including you, Marshal.”

  “I ain’t been kilt yet, sonny, so we’ll see, huh?” Tyrell rose to his feet, worked a kink out of his back, then rummaged in his pack. He came up with a pint of whiskey and a Jew’s harp that he held up for Charlie Fong to see.

  When the lawman sat again, he said, “Gimme your cup.”

  Tyrell poured a generous shot into Fong’s coffee and did the same for himself.

  He wriggled to get comfortable, then grinned at Fong, and with considerable skill, began to twang out “Skip to My Lou,” then a great frontier favorite.

  Charlie Fong, who knew and liked the song, grinned as he chimed in with the words....

  “Fly’s in the buttermilk, shoo, fly, shoo,

  Fly’s in the buttermilk, shoo, fly, shoo,

  Fly’s in the buttermilk, shoo, fly, shoo,

  Skip to my Lou, my darlin’.”

  Tyrell took the harp from his mouth and sang in a gruff baritone, his right boot thumping out the beat....

  “Lost my partner, what’ll I do?

  Lost my partner, what’ll I do?

  Lost my partner, what’ll I do?

  Skip to my Lou, my darlin’.”

  As the verses went back and forth between the two men, an owl, attracted by the sound, flew silently over the camp. For an instant the flames of the campfire glowed red under its wings and then the bird vanished like a ghost into the darkness.

  When Charlie Fong stirred in his blankets at daybreak, Marshal Pleasant Tyrell had already loaded his packhorse and coffee bubbled on the fire.

  “You snored all night,” the lawman said. “I thought Chinamen didn’t snore, thinking it ain’t polite, like.”

  “Sorry,” Fong said. He threw his blanket aside and got to his feet. “First time anybody ever told me I snore.”

  “Don’t make no never mind,” Tyrell said. “I don’t sleep anyway. Feather mattresses have done spoiled me for beddin’ down on limestone rock.”

  His brain still cobwebbed with sleep, Fong squatted by the fire and poured himself coffee.

  “How is it?” the marshal said. “Bile long enough?”

  “It’s just fine. You going after Asa Pagg?”

  “Not yet. I have a mind to go with you and see this Garrard feller.”

  “You don’t have to deal yourself a hand in my game, Marshal,” Charlie Fong said.

  “I said I’d study on it, and I did,” Tyrell said. “If Garrard is abusing them little gals like you say he is, then it’s a matter for the law.”

  Fong smiled. “Changed your tune since last night.”

  “Yeah, well, what I said last night about Celestials not being real people don’t go. I was feelin’ mean and I guess it showed on me.” Tyrell grinned. “Besides, Charlie, you got a real nice singing voice and I wouldn’t want anything to happen to it.”

  Fong spoke over the rim of his tin cup. “And if you ride with me, you can delay going after Asa Pagg and his boys for a spell.”

  The marshal seemed to think that over, then he slapped his holstered Colts and said, “Charlie, I’ve been in a score of gunfights and I’ve killed seven men in the line of duty. You know why I’m still here to talk about it?”

  “You were lucky, I guess.”

  “Nope, that ain’t it. Well, it ain’t all of it. No, I’m still here because I never went toe to toe with the fast ones, like your pal Sam Flintlock fer instance.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “Got me a sworn posse to back my play, and if I didn’t have one o’ them, then, why, I’d set up on a ridge somewhere with my ol’ Henry and plug the gunslick as he rode past. Either that or I’d shoot him when he was kneeling beside his bed sayin’ his prayers or bouncing a young ’un on his knee. I killed Matt Rowe, the Santa Rita gunfighter, as he was a-sittin’ in his outhouse reading a store catalog. Two barrels o’ buckshot tore a hole right through the ladies’ corsets page an’ done fer him.”

  Pleasant Tyrell poured himself coffee. “Know what that’s called, Charlie?”

  “Murder might be a name for it.”

  “Hell, it ain’t murder. It’s called gettin’ the drop on a man.” The marshal smiled. “So you see, I ain’t as scared of Asa Pagg as you think. I’ll bide my time until I get the drop and then cut him in half with my Greener.”

  “You might be a handy man to have around at that, Marshal,” Fong said.

  “Well, one more thing, Charlie. I don’t know how this thing with Garrard will pan out, but if there’s killin’ to be done, I’ll do it. We got to stay within the law. Catch my drift?”

  “I’ll let you call it,” Charlie Fong said.

  “Then drink your coffee and we’ll hit the trail and find what we find,” Tyrell said.

  Only then did Charlie Fong remember that in his saddlebags he had the map to the cave of the golden bell.

  Ol’ Abe must be having conniptions by now.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  “Three days. Three lousy, stinking days and we ain’t seen hide nor hair of the damned cave,” Abe Roper said. “Coffin, you ain’t much of an Injun.”

  “I’ll find it,” Coffin said. “I don’t have the map.”

  “I know you don’t have the map. Charlie Fong took it and damn him fer a Chinaman. So when will we find the cave?”

  “When the time is right.”

  “Hell, that ain’t an answer,” Roper said. “That’s an excuse. Now give a real answer and tell me when.”

  Sam Flintlock tuned out the argument between the two men and carried his morning coffee into a stand of juniper and piñon and fetched his back against a gnarled trunk.

  As he built a cigarette he wondered at the dream that had wakened him from sleep in the darkest hour of the night.

  He saw Charlie Fong sitting by a campfire, singing, and opposite him an old man in a top hat played “Skip to My Lou” on a twanging mouth h
arp.

  But what made it stranger was that old Barnabas hovered in the shadows, doing some kind of mountain man jig to the music.

  Then an owl swooped out of the sky and a great wind rose and swept everyone away.

  Flintlock lit his cigarette. What did the dream mean? Or did it mean anything?

  When old Barnabas invaded his dreams it usually meant there was mischief afoot. Something to do with Charlie, maybe?

  Flintlock watched the blue smoke curl from his cigarette and decided he was asking himself questions that had no answers.

  But for some reason, the dream still troubled him.

  Roper’s angry voice cut Flintlock’s reverie short. “We’d better find the cave and damned soon, Coffin,” he said. “And, hell, look at the sky. It’s gonna rain soon and we’ll be searching in a damned storm.” Roper shook his head. “I declare, around here things are goin’ from bad to worse.”

  But things were about to get even worse than Roper feared....

  Eight riders came on at a canter through a misting rain.

  Flintlock rose to his feet as soon as he saw them, especially the man in front, tall, big gutted, dressed in the embroidered finery of a prosperous hacienda owner.

  But the only time Carlos Hernandez had set foot in a hacienda was as a raider, rapist and murderer.

  The Mexican bandit rode up to the smoking campfire that was fighting a losing battle against the fine but persistent rain.

  Hernandez’s quick, black eyes swept the camp and registered what he saw.

  Abe Roper was on his feet, his thumb hooked onto his gun belt near his Colt. Jack Coffin, slender and dangerous, was five paces to Roper’s left and Flintlock stood near the trees, the big revolver in his waistband in sight and significant.

  After Hernandez’s men fanned out behind him, the big man tipped back his white sombrero and grinned, revealing a mouthful of dazzling white teeth, a diamond set into each of the two front ones.

  “Abe Roper, my friend, it’s been a long time. Too long, I think,” the Mexican said. “How many years?”

  Roper nodded. “Howdy, Carlos. Too many years, I reckon. How are things?”

  “Oh, very bad, my friend,” Hernandez said. “Very, very bad. As a great patron, I exact tribute from my peons, but they grow poorer every year and as they grow poor, so do I.” He raised a meaty left hand and pinched the skin on the back with the forefinger and thumb of his right. “Look, my good friend, look at the slack. Carlos is wasting away from hunger.”

  “If bacon and beans are to your taste, you can share what we have,” Roper said.

  Hernandez shook his great anvil of a head. “No, my friend, such a peon’s meal is not to my taste. But you know what is?”

  “Tell me,” Roper said.

  “Gold. Much gold is to my taste.”

  “You came to the wrong camp, Carlos,” Roper said. “If I found a ten dollar bill in my pocket, I’d be wearing somebody else’s pants.”

  “Hah! You made a good joke, Abe, my friend,” Hernandez said. He turned to his silent, hard-faced riders. “He made a good joke, compadres. Say ha-has.”

  The men did as they were told, then Hernandez cut off the laughter with a chop of his hand.

  “So, I was riding past, deep in devout prayer, when I saw my friend Abe Roper and my friend Sam Flintlock and I said to the Good Lord above, ‘Now why would those two fine gentlemen be here where there are no banks to rob or trains to plunder?’ And the Good Lord said, ‘I dunno, Carlos. Why don’t you ask them?’”

  Hernandez made a show of moving his pearl-handed Colt into a more accessible position and said, “Now I am asking. Why are you here and with a woman?”

  “Hunting,” Roper said. “As for the woman, we found her, but she’s tetched in the head.”

  “Ah . . . then that’s the explanation,” Hernandez said. His face was suddenly shrewd. “What are you hunting?”

  “Deer,” Roper said. “Bear, maybe, if we can find one.”

  “There’s good hunting around here, my friend. Yet you eat only bacon and beans. No deer steak?”

  “We haven’t seen a deer yet,” Roper said.

  “You could hunt deer where you came from, Abe.” Hernandez waggled a forefinger. “I think you are here for something else.”

  “Like what, for instance?”

  “Like a golden bell, my friend. If you have come all this way north, with the Apaches out, you must have a pretty good notion where the bell is. No?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Roper said. “This is only a hunting trip, Carlos.”

  The Mexican sighed. “Ah, dear me, to show you how serious I am, perhaps I must make an example. The Indian maybe? Or my good friend Sam Flintlock.”

  “Don’t even think about it, Carlos,” Flintlock said. He moved away from the trees, stopped, then said, “You couldn’t shade me on your best day.”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not. But now I must have you meet a very, very good friend.” Hernandez called out, “Johnny, come and introduce yourself.”

  A man rode forward and Hernandez said, “This is my good friend Johnny Joslin. Look how eager he is to meet you, Sam.”

  The man called Joslin swung out of the saddle and Flintlock pegged him for a gun with some killings along his back trail. He wore a Stetson with a curled-up brim, a bolero jacket and the pants stretched across his narrow hips were embroidered at the top of the thighs. He was young, in his early twenties, and wore his twin Colts as confidently as the sneer on his razor-gash of a mouth.

  Johnny Joslin seemed slightly bemused, as though this whole thing was beneath his dignity.

  “Abe, do you want to say something?” Hernandez said.

  The morning was dull, rainy and gray, but nevertheless the diamonds in the bandit’s teeth gathered enough light to glitter.

  “I never heard of a damned golden bell, and if it’s around here, we sure as hell haven’t found it,” Roper said. “Do we look like we’re prospering?”

  “But you know where the bell is, my friend,” Hernandez said. “That is why the Indian is here, to lead you to it. I have just figured that out.”

  “Go to hell,” Roper said. “I done told you what we’re doing here.”

  Roper looked slightly worried. He knew the odds he and the others faced and they were not in his favor, to say the least.

  “Then if you won’t tell me, Mr. Joslin will kill Sam. Do you really want your friend’s death on your conscience?”

  “Flintlock ain’t my friend.”

  “Thanks, Abe,” Flintlock said.

  “Well, I always tell the truth,” Roper said.

  “Not this time, I think,” Hernandez said. “Ah well, so it has come to this. My heart is so sad I fear it may break. Johnny, kill Mr. Flintlock.”

  Johnny Joslin couldn’t believe he was the one doing the dying.

  Even when Flintlock’s second bullet crashed into his chest and his own, unfired guns fell from his hands, he still couldn’t believe it.

  He rode those two bullets into hell with a look of horror and disbelief on his face, unwilling to believe that for the first time since he’d buckled on his guns and became a somebody, he’d met a real gunfighter.

  Sam Flintlock had no time for such thoughts.

  Hernandez was drawing.

  Flintlock fired. Too fast. The bullet, intended for the Mexican’s chest, tracked left and smashed into the man’s right wrist as he brought up his Colt.

  But in that instant of bone-shattered pain, Hernandez knew he was done.

  “My God, don’t shoot anymore!” he yelled.

  His men, looking to their leader for guidance, sat their saddles, uncertain about what to do next. But they did know that if they ignored Hernandez and pulled guns, half of them would die right there.

  They’d heard about Abe Roper, a fast man with the Colt, but Flintlock’s speed with the iron was beyond anything they’d ever seen or imagined and they’d no desire to push their luck.

  Hernan
dez settled it.

  “No shooting! He’ll kill me!” the bandit yelled, his voice ragged with pain.

  “Don’t call it different or you’re a dead man, Carlos,” Flintlock said, a haze of gray gunsmoke drifting around him.

  Hernandez grabbed his gun arm with his left and stared at the stark red mouth that pulsed blood in the center of his wrist.

  “Damn you, Sam Flintlock, you’ve done for me,” Hernandez said. “I’ll never be able to use this hand again.”

  “Too bad, Carlos,” Abe Roper said. “Now you and your boys get the hell out of here afore Sam’l gets real mad and reads to you from the book.”

  “This was ill done,” Hernandez said. “I will not forget it.”

  “I could kill you right now, Carlos,” Flintlock said. He was standing very still and tense. Then the moment went out of his eyes and he said, “Go away, and take your dead man with you. Whatever you were paying him, it was too much.”

  The Mexican spat into the dirt. “You killed him, Sam Flintlock. You bury him.”

  Hernandez swung his horse away and his men followed.

  Flintlock waited until they disappeared into rain and distance and then stepped to Roper.

  He took three cartridges from the man’s gun belt and as he punched out the empties from his Colt and fed the fresh rounds into the cylinder, he said, “So I’m not your friend, huh?”

  “Sam, Sam, I was joshing,” Roper said. “I mean, I figured if I said you weren’t my friend, the gunfighter wouldn’t kill you.” He smiled. “You see how it was with me, huh? I had your own good at heart.”

  Flintlock nodded. “And I sure believe you, Abe.”

  He shoved the muzzle of his revolver into Roper’s belly and at the same time jerked the man’s Colt from the holster.

  Roper’s eyes got big. Scared big. “Sam . . . what the hell?”

  “Bury him, Abe,” Flintlock said.

  “I ain’t—”

  Flintlock pushed the gun harder. “Bury him.”

  Roper looked into Flintlock’s eyes and what he saw unnerved him.

  “All right, all right, Sam. I’ll bury him, but I don’t have a shovel.”