Flintlock (24 page)
Authors: William W. Johnstone
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.
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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 was 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 heâ”
“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.
But Fong had again retreated to a dark place and was still.
“Who appointed you guardian,” Flintlock said, his anger flaring again. “Or did you just take it on yourself?”
The old man took the earthenware jug from the shelf and the two cups. He poured wine into both, as red as blood.
“Drink, it will do you good,” he said, extending the cup.
Flintlock took it and sniffed the wine suspiciously.
The old man smiled. “It is not poisoned. See”âhe took a sipâ“it did me no harm.”
The wine was rough, but Flintlock drank, for politeness's sake. Or so he told himself. In fact he wished to calm his clamoring nerves.
The old man had an unearthliness about him that set Flintlock on edge.
“Before me there were fifty guardians,” he said. “I am the fifty-first and I will be the last.”
“Why all the guardians?” Flintlock said.
“To warn greedy men away from the cave and the gas that kills.”
“You're a monk, huh?”
“No, not a monk.”
“Then what?”
“A guardian.”
“Well, that's a lot of help,” Flintlock said.
Then, out of the blue, the old man said, “Do you smoke tobacco?”
Surprised, Flintlock said, “Yeah, I do. I was taught to roll cigarettes by Texans who are much addicted to them.”
“Ah,” the old man said. “I don't know these cigarettes, but perhaps you will roll one for me?”
“Sure,” Flintlock said. He got out his tobacco sack and papers and said, “When did you last have a smoke, pops?”
The old man counted on his fingers. “Sixty years. Before I was made guardian. I had a pipe once, a beautiful pipe. It was a Spanish clay pipe and I enjoyed it immensely.”
Flintlock stuck the cigarette between the old man's pale lips and lit it.
“Well, enjoy it,” he said.
The old man drew deep, smiled and behind a cloud of blue smoke, said, “Ahh . . . it's even better than I remembered.”
Then he surprised Flintlock again.
The old man again struggled onto his creaking knees beside Charlie Fong. He drew deep on the cigarette, and then gently blew the smoke into the unconscious man's nose.
He did it a second time.
And then a third.
Long moments passed. Rain slanted across the mouth of the cave and lightning flashed, searing the hillside. Thunder roared and Flintlock felt the cave floor tremble under his feet. Dust drifted from cracks in the roof and he thought he heard the growl of grinding rock from . . .
Outside!
It had to be!
Flintlock's hair stood on end. My God, the hanging rock shelf above the cave entrance was shifting....
But then the ground under his feet stilled and the only threatening sounds were made by the storm.
Flintlock blinked. Had he imagined the whole thing?
Maybe. Or maybe not.
Charlie Fong made a small noise in his throat and his eyes fluttered open.
“He has come back,” the old man said. “He will live.”
Flintlock kneeled beside Fong and said, “Charlie, are you all right?”
“Where am I?” Fong said.
“In the cave of the golden bell,” Flintlock said. “The poison gas got to you.”
“It didn't kill me?”
“No. You're alive, Charlie, I promise.”
Charlie Fong looked into Flintlock's face and grinned. “Sam, old Barnabas says you're an idiot.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Asa Pagg was fifteen miles north of Buffalo Pass in the rugged red butte country when he experienced the familiar, uneasy feeling that he was being watched.
Horse Mesa was two miles ahead of him when he drew rein.
The instincts of a dangerous, hunted animal warned Pagg that there was someone on his back trail, close enough to have sight of him.
He swung his horse around, and as he expected, two riders were heading toward him through rain and wind.
Pagg grinned. There was no mistaking Logan Dean's flashy paint and beside him, hunched in the saddle reading a poetry book the way he always rode, Joe Harte on his big American stud. He'd made a tent of the front of his slicker to protect the book and had no eyes for the trail.
But Logan Dean was aware. And when he spotted Pagg he punched Harte on the shoulder to get his attention.
Harte looked up, blinked, and said, “It's Asa, as ever was.”
“Yeah, and we got some explaining to do,” Dean said.
“You boys got some explaining to do,” Pagg said. “I'm trying to decide if I should listen, or shoot you off'n them ponies.”
“Over there, Asa,” Dean said. He nodded toward a natural sandstone arch that promised shelter. “Let's get the hell out of the rain.”
“You two ride ahead of me,” Pagg said. “I got a bounty on my head and maybe you got a mind to collect it.”
“You can trust us, Asa,” Dean said. “Me an' Joe are true-blue.”
“Maybe. But all the same, ride in front of me,” Pagg said.
The span of the arch was only about twenty feet and about ten wide, but it was enough to keep off the worst of the rain and the cutting wind.
When the lightning played on Pagg's face it looked like glistening stone. “All right, why did you run out on me?” he said.
Harte looked at Dean and his eyes pleaded with him to do the talking.
“It was like this, Asa,” Dean said. “After you done the colonel's wifeâ”
“She wanted it,” Pagg said.
“âand was tossed in the brig, some hard talk was thrown in our direction, on account of you an' us bein' almost like kin, Asa,” Dean said.
“So you skedaddled and left me to face the music, huh?” Pagg said.
“When I heard what had happened to you, Asa,” Harte said, “I thought my heart was going to break. Poor âtrampled man with smarting wounds.'” The gunman smiled. “The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote them words.”
Pagg ignored that and stared at Dean. “You didn't try to spring me, Logan.”
“Asa, there were too many soldiers and you were padlocked in tight,” Dean said. “We'd no chance to help you make a break.”
“You heard about the Apache attack?” Pagg said.
He looked as though he was weighing something in his mind, and that set Dean on edge.
“Heard about that and we was right sorry, ain't that the truth, Joe,” he said.
“True as ever was, Logan,” Harte said. “But by the time we heard, it was all over and you were a hounded fugitive, Asa.”
Dean, fearing Pagg's volcanic temper, tried to steer the conversation into safer waters.
“Heard something else, Asa. There's a heap of talk goin' on around these parts.”
“About what?” Pagg said.
“Do you recollect Abe Roper talking about a golden bell somewhere up in the Red Valley? Well, it turns out it could be true.”
“How come that?” Pagg said.
“It seems a prospector started jawing about the bell and showed a map to the place where he said it's hid,” Dean said. “We heard a bunch of tinpans already headed up that way to take a look, but were wiped out by Apaches before they even got close to the valley.”
“Who told you all this?” Pagg said. He felt a little twinge of worry.
“We got it from miners at a trading post over to the Tohatchi Flats country,” Joe Harte said. “There's talk of a gold rush. It's like all of a sudden folks are saying that the bell is real and it's there for the taking by anyone lucky enough to find it.”
“Two thousand pounds of gold is hidden in a cave, Asa,” Dean said. “That's what they're sayin'.”
“So why are you telling me this, Logan?” Pagg said. “Because it makes a good story, maybe?”
“You know what it took for me and Joe to find you, Asa?”
“Tell me.”
“Three dead cavalry troopers. The one that got away said they'd been bushwhacked up near White Cone Mountain by bandits led by a man that matched your description. We figured it was you, Asa, then a man-woman at the trading post north of Buffalo Pass said he'd seen you, that you'd killed a man and then headed north toward the valley.”
“And here we are,” Harte said.
“The man I killed gave me this,” Pagg said as he touched his battered face. “It was his mistake. Now you've told me how you found me, now tell me why.”
“The why is easy, Asa. So we can go get the golden bell afore an army of tinpans is crawlin' all over them mountains up there,” Dean said.
Pagg decided to be affable. He'd kill Harte and Dean after they helped him get the bell, not before.
“You've bested me, boys,” he said, smiling. “That's the very thing I was plannin' on doing my ownself.”
Harte echoed Pagg's smile. “Then we're well met,” he said.
“If the bell exists, and that's a big
if
, there's always the chance that Abe Roper and Sam Flintlock already have it,” Pagg said.
if
, there's always the chance that Abe Roper and Sam Flintlock already have it,” Pagg said.
“So we put the crawl on them two and take it,” Dean said. He shrugged. “Or gun them if we have to.”
“Joe, that set all right with you?” Pagg said.
“Suits me just fine, Asa. We split the gold three ways, right?”
“Of course. We're partners, ain't we?” Pagg said.
“Then let's go get that damned bell and make ourselves rich,” Logan Dean said.
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