Three men lay sprawled on the ground, two dead, the other clinging to life.
But not for long.
Pagg shot the man between the eyes, then reloaded his guns.
His cold eyes lifted from the Russian to the fleeing trooper who was flapping his chaps like the devil himself was after him.
Pagg smiled, reckoning that the three dead men would testify in hell that they’d indeed met a demon . . . the evil patron saint of six-guns.
Asa Pagg swung east past White Cone Mountain and at dusk made camp in the Chuska foothills. He managed to light a fire in a grove of juniper and piñon that sheltered him from the worst of the rain and dined on strips of jerky and a stick of peppermint candy he’d plundered from Pleasant Tyrell’s pack.
He considered his options and they were limited.
Heading south was out of the question. Grove was still hunting him.
West lay some mighty rough country and heading east across the mountains didn’t appeal to him either.
Then he remembered Sam Flintlock and Abe Roper.
Pagg sucked on the candy stick, thinking things through.
Flintlock and Roper were idiots, but it might just be possible that there was a golden bell up in the Red Valley. Call it a hundred-to-one chance.
It was thin, mighty thin. But worth a ride up there to see what was what.
A cold drop of rain dripped from a tree branch, got under the collar of his slicker and hit Pagg in the back of his neck. He hardly noticed.
If there was a bell, a big if, he could take it for himself and live like an English lord for the rest of his life.
It was a pleasant thought, a thought a man could build dreams around.
Pagg nodded. Right, it was a plan, not a great one, but a plan nonetheless. He’d move out at first light and head for the Red Valley.
After all, he’d nothing else to do.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Deer hunting in rain washes away human scent and a man with good eyesight can often make a kill in a downpour and put meat on the table.
But rain accompanied by lightning, and all bets are off.
“I never did know mule deer to come out in a thunderstorm,” Sam Flintlock said.
Ayasha looked at him blankly, tendrils of wet hair falling over her forehead. Flintlock was struck by how pretty she looked.
He smiled. “Well, anyway, that’s a natural fact. We won’t see any deer until this passes.”
After a glance at the lowering sky, Flintlock said, “Let’s make our way back. I could use some coffee.”
They stood in the lee of a rock face no higher than a man on a horse, but it was slightly overhung and protected them from the rain and rising wind.
Flintlock took Ayasha’s hand and said, “Let’s go.” But the girl held back and he said, “What’s wrong with you, girl? You don’t want to get wet?”
Ayasha turned up her face and stared into Flintlock’s eyes. Her fingertips traced the thunderbird on his throat and she smiled. Then her lips parted and her mouth hungrily sought his.
Flintlock shook his head and pushed the girl away.
“No, this ain’t right,” he said. “You’re tetched in the head, Ayasha. You don’t rightly know what you’re doing.”
The girl didn’t look hurt. She didn’t look anything.
Flintlock, trying to reach her, said, “Why?”
Ayasha mined her brain for words, the habit of speech no longer coming easily to her.
“I . . . wanted . . . to . . . know,” she said.
It was the first time Flintlock had heard the girl utter a complete sentence and he was both pleased and concerned. Above their heads thunder rolled and when it was quiet again, he said, “What did you want to know?”
“If . . . I could . . .” Ayasha, unable to find words, gave up on that and started again. “Can I . . . love a man? Can I . . . love you?”
Flintlock had little understanding of women, and finding answers to Ayasha’s questions pushed him to the limit. The girl had gone through hell and her thinking was no longer as it should be.
In the end, he smiled and said, “Sure you can love a man. You’ll meet a fine, upstanding young feller and get hitched and have kids. Hell, Ayasha, you’ll have a house with a picket fence and window boxes and you’ll forget that you were ever . . . well, you’ll forget all the bad things that happened to you.”
The girl smiled. “You can do this . . . Sam?”
Flintlock raised Ayasha’s hand and kissed it gently. “No, I can’t give you those things. I’m a rough-living man and I lead a desperate, violent life. I’m not the husband for you, but don’t worry, the right young feller will come along. I guarantee it. He’ll play the geetar an’ sing ‘Sweet Violets’ to you on the garden swing. You bet he will.”
“Can that still happen to me, Sam, after . . .”
“Yes, it can. Just have faith, Ayasha. Know that it will happen.”
“My name is Prudence, Prudence Walsh.”
“Good to know you, Prudence.”
“I think I prefer Ayasha.”
“There you go. Then that’s what I’ll keep on calling you.”
The hiss of the rain grew louder and Flintlock said, “This isn’t going to pass over any time soon. Best we make tracks back to camp.”
Ayasha put her tiny hand on his arm. “Sam, you could’ve taken me.”
“Yeah, I know. It would’ve been a big mistake on both our parts.”
“Sam . . . thank you for not being . . . an Apache.”
Flintlock smiled. “I reckon that young feller you’ll meet will count himself among the luckiest men in the world, Ayasha.” He swallowed hard. “Damn right.”
“Damn right they was here,” Chastity Gauley said. He fussed with the neckline of his peasant blouse. “Picked up a young gal that was undone by Apaches and took her with them.” He pulled out the top of the blouse. “Damn loose threads.”
“When was that?” Asa Pagg said.
“Oh, ’bout a week ago, maybe more.”
“They say where they were goin’?” Pagg said.
“North into the valley. At least that’s the way they was headed.”
Pagg nodded. “Got any grub? And I need a shirt.” “Stew in the pot. Men’s shirts, at cost, in the store at the back.”
“Whiskey?”
“You could call it that.”
“Seen anything of two men, call themselves Logan Dean an’ Joe Harte? Real desperate-looking characters.”
“That’s the only kind I get around here, but I can’t say I’ve met them two.” Gauley settled the hang of his red skirt, then, without looking up, said, “You’re Asa Pagg, ain’t you?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Well, like, I seen your face in the newspaper, a drawing, mind, but a good likeness. So if you are, or if you ain’t, you know the grub an’ the shirt you want?”
“What about them?”
“I’d wait until Bear Blodwell clears the premises,” Gauley said. “He ain’t in a sociable mood today an’ that’s why I’m out here, even though it’s raining on my nice new outfit. The skirt and blouse are Mexican, you know.”
“You see a foundling swatch on me, like I’m some poor orphan afraid of his shadow?” Pagg said.
“Bear ain’t a nice man, Mr. Pagg if you are, Mr. Nobody if you ain’t. He’s drinking an’ threatening to drop the hammer on somebody.”
“Then wait ’til he gets a load of me,” Pagg said.
Gauley shrugged. “Your funeral.”
“Come inside and dish me up some o’ that stew and a bottle of Bass if you got it,” Pagg said.
“I got a bottle somewhere. I also got a shovel and I think I’m gonna need it afore too long.”
Asa Pagg was a killer and he recognized Bear Blodwell as a blood brother.
The man was big, as big as Pagg, dressed in the plaid shirt and mule-eared boots of a prospector. He wore a brown canvas coat and a battered railroad hat with a high crown a
nd stingy brim. His Colt was holstered in a cross-draw gun rig. Like Pagg, he had a full, spade-shaped beard, as black as his eyes.
When Pagg bellied up to the bar, Blodwell, bent over a whiskey bottle, glanced at him and said, “What the hell do you want?”
“The proprietor has my order,” Pagg said. He smiled. “Rainy out today, but I reckon it might clear up by suppertime.”
Blodwell ignored that and said, “Hey, Gauley, don’t serve this pilgrim nothin’ until you see his money. Hell, he can’t even afford to put a shirt on his back.”
Gauley laid a bowl of stew and a dusty bottle of Bass ale in front of Pagg. “Man’s hungry, Bear,” he said.
“Take that grub away, like I told you,” Blodwell, said, straightening up.
“Leave it,” Pagg said.
Gauley hesitated. “I’ll get shot if I do an’ shot if I don’t.”
“Try to lift my meal and you’ll very definitely get shot,” Pagg said.
Blodwell pushed himself away from the bar. He moved easily for a big man, wide of shoulder, slim of hip, he was well-balanced on his feet.
“I’ll lift the damned thing,” he said.
Blodwell reached across for Pagg’s bowl and gave the outlaw the only chance he needed.
Pagg’s massive right fist swung and crashed into Blodwell’s face, just under his left eye, splitting skin, drawing blood. Blodwell staggered back, cursing. He went for his gun but Pagg wanted none of that, not when his blood was up and he was fighting mad.
He grabbed Blodwell’s wrist before he could bring up the Colt, twisted hard and spun the big man around. Pagg pushed Blodwell’s right arm hard and high up his back until the shoulder locked.
Blodwell screamed and dropped his gun. Pagg kept his grip on the man’s arm, grabbed him by the back of his coat and charged him into the cabin wall. Blodwell hit headfirst and dropped, his eyes rolling.
He shook his head to clear his fogging vision and drops of scarlet blood flew from the cut under his eye.
But the big miner was game.
Blodwell staggered to his feet, stepped forward and swung a looping right that hit Pagg on his bearded chin and staggered him. Pagg crashed against the bar, but bounced back swinging. He was grinning for the sheer love of knuckle and skull fighting.
Both were big men and they stood toe to toe exchanging blows with big-knuckled iron-hard fists that battered their faces to bloody pulp.
Gauley yelled at them to “Stop or I’ll scream,” but they ignored him.
Finally after a minute of moving back and forth over the timber floor, Blodwell broke loose. He feinted a left, then as Pagg slipped the blow, met him with a ripping uppercut that plowed into Pagg’s belly. Retching bile, Pagg held on for grim life, hugging Blodwell to him. Then he drove his boot heel onto the miner’s instep and Blodwell roared in and pushed Pagg away, breaking the clinch.
Warily now, their faces scarlet masks, the two big men circled each other, fists flicking like snake tongues as they probed for an opening.
Pagg missed with a straight right that unbalanced him and the two men clinched again. Pagg saw his opportunity and took it. He smashed the top of his forehead into the bridge of Blodwell’s nose and was overjoyed to hear bone shatter.
Blodwell staggered back, badly hurt, and Pagg went after him.
He jabbed another straight right into the other man’s splintered nose and when Blodwell flinched, followed up with a powerful left hook into the miner’s ribs. Blodwell gasped like a stranded fish and tried to break. But Pagg wasn’t about to let him off the hook.
He stepped forward, swinging, every punch finding its target.
Blodwell was weakening fast. His stamina had never been tested in a long fight and now he knew he needed to end this . . . and quickly.
He swung a right into Pagg’s battered face, but the outlaw shrugged it off and counterpunched, another right to Blodwell’s ruined nose.
Desperate now, his legs weakening, Blodwell wrapped his powerful arms around Pagg’s waist in a bear hug and forced Pagg back, trying to break his spine.
Pagg’s thumbs jabbed into Blodwell’s eyes and gouged deep. To protect himself, the miner broke his hold and took a step back. He didn’t cover up and it was a bad mistake.
Pagg, his fist coming up from his knees, smashed a roundhouse right into Blodwell’s chin. The man dropped like a felled ox. He got up on one elbow, raised a surrendering hand to Pagg and gasped, “Enough. I’m done. It’s over.”
It was a testament to the quality of Pleasant Tyrell’s holsters that both Pagg’s guns had stayed in place during the rough-and-tumble.
Now he drew and shot Blodwell between his horrified eyes.
“Wrong,” Pagg said. “Now it’s over.”
Gauley stepped to Pagg’s side and lifted his skirt to avoid Blodwell’s blood. “Mister, you sure hold a grudge,” he said.
“My stew still warm and the beer cold?” Pagg said.
“I don’t know.”
“Then go find out,” Pagg said.
“What about him?” Gauley said.
“What about him? He got kin around here?”
“No.”
“Then bury him.”
“Look at the size of him,” Gauley said. “He’s going to take a heap o’ burying.”
“I don’t know about that,” Pagg said. “There ain’t much of him left.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
“Where’s Charlie?” Sam Flintlock said when he and Ayasha returned to camp.
“Charlie’s dead,” Abe Roper said. His lips were unnaturally pale. “Leastways, I think he’s dead.”
“What happened, Abe?” Flintlock said. “Choose your words carefully. I was fond of Charlie.”
“I’m half dead my ownself, Sammy. I can scarcely breathe. I’m on fire.” Roper put a hand to his chest. “In here. I coughed up blood just afore you arrived.”
“What happened?” Flintlock said. “Tell me what happened in the cave.”
Roper looked at him and didn’t like what he saw in Flintlock’s eyes.
“You were right about the gas,” he said.
“I know I was,” Flintlock said. “Where is Charlie?”
“He’s still in the cave,” Roper said. His face jumped, like a man about to take a bullet. “I left him in there.”
“You left him to die?”
“Sammy, I was too weak to carry him. I barely got out of the cave alive myself.”
“Abe,” Flintlock said, “I should gun you. Right here and now I should put a bullet in you.”
“Please, Sammy, be reasonable,” Roper said. His eyes, no longer holding on Flintlock’s, cut to the black sky. Then he said, his voice low, “I never want to go back into the cave. It’s the doorway to hell, Sam.”
“Changed your tune real fast, Abe,” Flintlock said.
“Had it changed for me, you mean.”
“I’m going after Charlie,” Flintlock said. “Look after the women until I get back.” He turned. “Ayasha, you stay here.”
“I want to go with you,” the girl said.
“No. It’s too dangerous.”
Despite his misery, Roper said, “Damnit all, she talks.”
“Yeah, maybe too much,” Flintlock said.
He turned on his heel and strode away in the direction of the hill.
Behind him, Ayasha called out, “Take me with you, Sam.”
But Flintlock pretended he didn’t hear. Right then he was scared, and angry at himself for feeling that way.
The murmur of a man in prayer reached Sam Flintlock from the cave and he stood still in a swirl of wind and rain and listened.
There was no mistaking it. Somebody in the cave was chanting prayers.
It sure as hell wasn’t Charlie Fong, who wasn’t exactly on speaking terms with God. Then who?
Flintlock pulled his revolver and made his way up the rain-slick path. Around him the land shimmered white as lightning slashed across the sky, this way and that, as though the wind wa
s blowing in all four directions at once.
He reached the cave entrance and a deep breath caught in his throat.
Charlie lay sprawled just inside, an ancient, white-haired man in a monk’s robe on his knees beside him. The man’s hands were steepled together and his bloodless lips moved. His hollow cheeks and eye sockets were in shadow, like a death mask.
“Back away from Charlie, mister, or I’ll gun you,” Flintlock said.
The old man lapsed into silence and slowly turned his head to look at the intruder.
“He came for the bell, like you did,” he said.
“What did you do to him?” Flintlock said.
“Nothing. I found him in the cave and carried him here.” Then, as though that needed explanation, “He is a small man.”
“Is he—”
“Dead? No. But he is very sick. He will recover, I think.”
Suddenly angry, Flintlock said, “Why the hell didn’t you tell us that there’s gas in the cave?”
“Would you have believed me?” the old man said. His eyes, as white as buttermilk, lifted to Flintlock. “Would you?”
Flintlock shoved his gun back in his waistband. “No. I wouldn’t.”
He kneeled beside Charlie and lifted the little man by the shoulders until he was in a sitting position. “Charlie, can you hear me?” Flintlock said. “Come back from China or wherever the hell you are.”
Fong made no answer, but the old man said, “I think he is breathing easier. I don’t think he was in the cave long enough to damage his lungs permanently. But let him sleep awhile.”
Flintlock eased Charlie Fong onto his back again, and then stood. Beside him the old man struggled to rise. Flintlock put his hand on his elbow and helped him to his feet.
“Who are you?” he said.
“I am the guardian of the bell,” the old man said.
“They say you are Death itself. Any truth in that?”
“The cave is death. Not me.”
Charlie Fong muttered something, his head moving back and forth, and Flintlock took a knee beside him. “Can you hear me, Charlie?” he said.
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