Flintlock (14 page)
Authors: William W. Johnstone
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“So, it's all set,” Asa Pagg said. “The full moon is in five, no four days now, and that's when Geronimo will attack.”
“And us?” Captain Owen Shaw said.
Strain showed on him and made him look older than he was.
“Us? Hell, you know the answer to that. We'll hit the defenders from the rear. It will be all over in a few minutes.”
“I'll take no part in the killing, Asa. I won't shoot my own soldiers.”
Pagg's face stiffened. “So what will you do? Sit back and then take your share of the payroll?”
“Maybe I've decided I want no part of it,” Shaw said. “It was a bad idea to begin with and now the Apaches are involved, it's gone from bad to worse. I don't like it.”
“Like I told you before, Shaw, you're in too deep to back out now.” Pagg watched uncertainty waver in Shaw's eyes. “You'll deploy your men badly, set them up for Geronimo. That way you don't have to dirty your hands with direct killing. Savvy?”
“It's wrong, Asa,” Shaw said. “Something about the whole plan is wrong. For starters, Major Grove will deploy the men, not me.”
“Then I'll gun the major first. It don't make any difference to me.”
“Nor me,” Logan Dean said. “I never shot me a major before.”
“Hell, I ain't never even shot a private,” Joe Harte said.
“You'll get to shoot all the privates you want in a few days,” Pagg said. Then, his eyes like flint, “Maybe even a captain.”
“If I go down, so do you, Asa,” Shaw said. “Don't ever forget that. We could swing from the same gallows.”
“I know you're threatening me, Shaw, but I'm not catching your drift.”
“A few days ago I sent a letter to my sister in Boston, to be opened only on the notification of my death,” Shaw said. “It's all there, Asa, enough to hang you.”
Pagg looked out the window of the captain's quarters to the parade ground. The flag hung listless in the humidity that followed the rain and a cavalry trooper walked a bay horse back and forth.
“Got it all laid out, huh, Captain Shaw?” Pagg said without turning his head.
“I like guarantees,” Shaw said.
Now Pagg turned. “Here's my guarantee, Shaw . . . if you try to cross me on this payroll deal I'll kill you, letter or no.” He rose to his feet, the butts of his guns showing under his armpits. “Now, do you catch my drift?”
Joe Harte normally stayed out of Pagg's discussions. He reckoned he was paid for his gun, not his opinions. But now he said, “Hell, Cap'n, you sound like an old maid trying to hold on to her virginity at the devil's hootenanny. You tied in with us and now you got thirty thousand dollars at stake, enough to keep you on easy street for the rest of your life.”
Harte stabbed his finger at Shaw. “It's too late to play coy.”
“That much money will ease your guilty conscience pretty damn quick,” Dean said.
Pagg grinned. “Hell, my boys say it better than me, Captain.”
After a few moments, Shaw said, “I guess I'm already in too deep to back out now.”
“Damn right,” Pagg said.
“But once we split up the money, I never want to see any of your ugly faces for the rest of my life. Is that clear?”
“Clear as ever was, Captain,” Pagg said. “You stated how you feel straight up an' honest and true. There's no doubt about that, says I.”
“And if anything happens to me, say, when it comes to the sharing, don't forget the letter I sent,” Shaw said.
“I ain't likely to forget,” Pagg said. “But you got no worries on that score. Share and share alike is the deal, and I'll stick to it like stink to a skunk's tail.”
“I still won't do the killing,” Shaw said.
“Hell, me and my boys and Geronimo will do the killing. Just put those soldier boys in harm's way and in a few days your pockets will be stuffed with double eagles.”
“Blood money,” Shaw said, his eyes bleak.
“Yeah, the best kind,” Pagg said.
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Asa Pagg smelled his salt pork sandwich, made a face and let it drop to his plate. He looked around the mess hall and said to the dozen soldiers who'd lingered after lunch, “How the hell do you boys eat this crap?”
A cavalry corporal with a beard as long as Pagg's said, “After a while you get used to it, mister. The first ten years are the worst.”
Pagg picked bread crumbs out of his beard. “Hell, I'd never get used to it.”
“If you don't like the food, don't eat it,” hovered on the tip of a young trooper's tongue. But when he looked into Pagg's eyes and saw black iron staring back at him, he changed his mind and lapsed into silence.
“As to your question, Logan,” Pagg whispered, “we need him until the fort is taken and we roll out of here with the payroll.”
“All right, Asa, why?” Harte said. “We can kill him tonight and stash his body where it will never be found.”
“That will come later,” Pagg said. “Now listen to this . . . you know who's in Boston town, don't you?”
Harte shook his head and Dean said, “I dunno.”
“Bill Blood, that's who. Good ol' Scarface Billy Blood as ever was.”
“I haven't seen Billy in years,” Harte said. “I thought he was in New York City.”
“Nah, a while back he cut up a feller that turned out to be some politician's grandson and had to skip town with the law breathing down his neck,” Pagg said. “He ended up in Boston town and he's prospering. There ain't a ship leaves the harbor that the owner hasn't paid Billy to keep the longshoremen in line.”
“Billy's a heller, as good a man with the blade as ever I knew,” Dean said. “It was him that cut Sand Baker from nose to navel, remember that, Asa? Ol' Sand died with his guts spilling out all over the floor of the Alamo saloon in El Paso.”
“Aye, and Sand was fast with the iron,” Pagg said. “He put a few lively lads in the grave.”
“Yeah, but Billy was faster with the steel,” Dean said.
Harte smiled. “He was a rum one, was ol' Billy Blood.”
Pagg leaned across the table and dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Now listen up, both of you. Here's what I want you boys to do . . . scout around and get a name and address for Shaw's sister. Drop some money on the clerks if you have to, but I want that address by tonight.”
Dean grinned. “I get it. Captain Shaw ain't the only one who can write letters.”
“Damn right, Logan,” Pagg said. “I'll write to ol' Billy this very night and drop it in the soldiers' mail. Billy will do the rest. He owes me some favors, like.”
“Will your letter get to him in time, Asa?” Harte said.
“Sure it will. Because the way we'll deal with Shaw, it will be a while afore his stinking carcass is found. By then Billy Blood will have cut up the sister and whoever else was with her and grabbed that damned letter.”
“Suppose he can't find it, Asa?” Harte said. “The letter, I mean.”
“Billy will find it. He's got a nose like a bloodhound for stuff like that.”
Pagg sat back in his chair and sighed. “Ah, good ol' Scarface Billy Blood. He's gold dust, boys, gold dust, and he never forgets them as done him a favor. No, not Billy.”
“Good with the blade is Billy,” Dean said again. “He can gut a grown man from crotch to chin quicker'n scat. Or a woman, come to that.”
“A real talent,” Pagg allowed. “Billy's knife hand's got talons as thick as my wrist.” He nodded toward the door. “Now you boys go get me that name and address. Time's a-wastin' when there's cuttin' to be done.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Jack Coffin led the way north, his eyes constantly scanning the foothills of the rugged Carrizo peaks for any suggestion of a hidden cave.
After three hours of riding, he'd found nothing.
The rain had stopped thirty minutes before and now the clouds parted and heat shimmered in the distance.
Around the riders lay the Red Rock Valley, a lost, lonely land of mesas and tall, tormented spires of sandstone that rose from the brush desert floor and echoed with a strange, unearthly silence.
The valley awed a man and made him lower his voice to a whisper, as though he was talking in a cathedral.
“Where did the map say the cave was, Abe?” Flintlock said.
The girl, as silent as the valley, rode behind him, and the Hawken rifle, as had become his custom, lay across the saddle horn.
A black sweat stain banded Roper's hat and dark arcs showed under his armpits.
“Damnit, we should've seen it by now,” Roper said.
“We'll find it,” Coffin said. “If not today, tomorrow. If not then, the next day, but we'll find it.”
Roper removed his hat and rubbed his sweat-beaded forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. “Hell, a man could die of thirst out here first,” he said.
“There is water,” Coffin said.
“Well, thank God fer that,” Roper said. “Lead us to it.”
“Later,” Coffin said. “Once the danger passes.”
Suddenly both Roper and Flintlock were alert.
“What danger, Jack?” Flintlock said. “Speak up, man.”
“I don't know,” Coffin said. “But I sense it. It is all around us.”
Roper's reaction was to slide his Winchester out of the boot under his knee and lever a round into the chamber. He warily looked about him at the rough-hewn rock pillars and smooth-topped mesas and said, “I don't see nothing.”
“Me neither,” Flintlock said. “And I don't feel any danger.”
“It comes, soon,” Coffin said. “Best you be prepared.”
Behind Flintlock the girl stirred. She turned her face to the blue-denim sky and frowned, fine lines rippling between her eyes.
“Something worrying her?” Roper said. “She's all atremble.”
“Maybe,” Flintlock said. “I can't figure it.”
“Women feel things that men don't,” Coffin said. “She senses the danger.”
“Then what the hell is the danger?” Roper said. “I hired you to scout for trouble, Coffin. Now, if you've found some, tell us what it is and be done. And be damned to ye fer a conundrum-talking breed.”
“I can't stop what's to come.” Coffin stared at the sky that had now turned the color of sulfur. A new urgency in his voice, he yelled, “Over there into the arroyo. Now!”
Roper followed the breed's eyes. “Hell, I don't see no arroyo.”
“Follow me!” Coffin said.
He swung his horse around and galloped toward the foothills, dust spurting from the hooves of his running horse.
Then Flintlock scanned the distance with farseeing eyes and saw it.
Less an arroyo and more a slot canyon, it was a narrow V between two rocky hills that looked wide enough to barely allow the passage of a man and his mount.
A breeze fanned Flintlock's cheeks . . . then slapped him hard.
Abe Roper, who'd been sitting his horse watching Coffin's dash for the arroyo, now got the word as the rising wind read to him from the book.
“Sandstorm!” he yelled. “Get the hell out of here, Sammy!”
He followed after Coffin at a gallop.
“Hold on, Ayasha!” Flintlock yelled.
The girl seemed to understand because she threw her arms around his waist and clung tight, her face buried in his back.
The roar of the storm sounded like surf crashing onto a shingle beach and the hornet sting of the sand mercilessly tormented the terrified horses.
The humans, huddled at the bottom of the arroyo amid brush, agave and cat claw cactus, were no better off. Normal speech was impossible because of the deafening din of the wind and the venomous snake hiss of hurtling sand.
Flintlock held his slicker above his head and Ayasha huddled close to him. Her eyes were tight shut and sand powdered her face.
Roper put his mouth against Flintlock's ear and yelled, “Damned wind is as vicious as mortal sin!”
Flintlock nodded; the effort of shouting above the bellow of the storm not worth the effort.
But now and then between gusts he heard a small sound . . . Jack Coffin chanting what he took to be some kind of Apache prayer.
Flintlock fervently hoped the breed was in real good with the Great Spirit.
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After fifteen minutes of howling, screeching, hissing violence the storm stopped as suddenly as it had begun and once again the sun shone brightly in a cloudless sky.
Like people rising from bed and throwing off the sheets, sand cascaded from their pummeled bodies as Flintlock and the others rose slowly to their feet.
“What the hell?” Abe Roper said. He looked as though he was wearing a yellow mask. “I never want to go through something like that again.”
“Me neither,” Flintlock said. “Somebody trying to tell us something?”
He meant it as a joke, but Jack Coffin took him seriously.
“The guardian of the bell sent the storm as a warning,” he said.
Roper, who didn't scare worth a damn even in the worst of times, grinned and said, “Did he now? Well, me and him are gonna have a discussion, but my gun will do the talking for me.”
Coffin shook his head. “He cannot be killed. He is the guardian. He dwells in death.”
“I ain't seen a man yet who can take a bullet in the belly and not be killed,” Roper said. “Did you, Sam'l?”
“Can't say as I have,” Flintlock said. He brushed off sand with both hands then palmed Ayasha's gritty hair. Over his shoulder, he said, “Unless you count Lonesome Lon Sanford.”
“That story is crap,” Roper said. “I was there when Lon got his. In fact I kilt the man who kilt him. But Lon didn't get it in the belly. He got it lower down, blew a chunk out of his thigh an' he bled to death a day later.”
Flintlock nodded. “Well, folks tell the stories they want to tell.”
“Lonesome Lon wasn't much,” Roper said. “He was a miserable sumbitch an' I always figured I'd kill him myself one day.” He nodded to the Hawken rifle that had fallen to the ground during the storm. “See to your guns, Sammy. Sand will foul 'em worse than anything else you can name.”
“I was planning on that very thing, Abe,” Flintlock said. “But thanks for your concern.”
“You will fight the wind with guns?” Coffin said. “You will fight Death itself with Colts and Winchesters?”
“Yup, that's the plan,” Roper said. “For two thousand pounds of gold I'd follow Death into hell and gun him at the devil's feet.”
Ayasha gave a sudden and sharp little intake of breath.
And Flintlock wondered at that.
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“Did you send the storm, Grandfather?” the boy asked.
“To do what, little one?” the old man said.
“Why, to kill the men who come for the bell, of course.”
“I don't wish to kill them. I only want them to go away.”
“Will they go away now, Grandfather?”
“No. I don't think they will.”
“Why?”
“Because their hearts are hard, made of gold.”
“Why do you seem so tired, Grandfather?”
“Because you weary me with your questions, little one.”
The boy poured some rough red wine into a clay cup and handed it to his grandfather. The Mexican peasants brought the wine as a gift, as their ancestors had once brought gold, and the old man enjoyed it immensely.
“What will you do if the robbers come into the cave?” the boy asked.
The old man took the cup from his lips. “I don't know.”
“Will you smite them dead and drag away their souls?”
“No.”
“Then what will you do?”
“I don't know.”
The old man took another sip from the cup and said, “Men who hunt gold are greedy, and oftentimes they kill each other. Perhaps I will have to do nothing at all.”
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