Flintlock (5 page)

The boy led the old man to the cave entrance where the woman waited.

When the man appeared, the woman bowed low and extended the round loaf of bread she held.

“For you, great lord,” she said. “It is but a small offering.”

The boy took the bread and placed it in the old man's hands because he was nearly blind and his eyes were the color of milk.

After a while the man smelled the bread and he smiled. “It is a fine gift,” he said.

“The loaf is made from the finest wheat flour and I baked it myself, great lord,” the Mexican woman said. She bowed again. “I hope you will enjoy the bread, lord, and I ask that you do not enter my home where my husband lies very sick.”

“Why do you ask me this thing, child?” the old man said.

“Because you are the Angel of Death sent by the holy Santa Muerte to collect the souls of those who have passed away. This is well-known in my village and it has been so for many years.”

The woman was very afraid, but she said, “Aiii, you are truly a great and powerful lord and I beg you not to take my poor husband from me.”

The old man wore the rough, brown robes of a monk. He was very thin and the skin of his face was tight to the bones so that he bore the same features as the holy Santa Muerte . . . a yellow skull.

“Woman, don't you know why the great lord is here?” the boy said. He was ten, with a shock of black hair and eyes of the same color.

“Yes,
chico
, he guards the golden bell that the devil cast down from heaven in a rage,” the woman said. “But he is also the
Angel de la Muerte
and is to be feared by such as me and mine.”

“Woman, you have nothing to fear from me,” the old man said. “Go back down the mountain to your village. No harm will come to your husband. He will rise from his bed and be well again.”

The woman bowed. “Thank you, great lord.”

“I will say a prayer for him,” the old man said. “I will ask our God that your husband will soon be in good health.”

The old man watched the woman walk through spring wildflowers down the hill that led to the cave, her bright red skirt eddying around her legs in the high country wind.

That same wind tossed the old man's white, shoulder-length hair as he placed his hand on the boy's head and said, “We will go into the cave. I have a story to tell.”

“You must eat first, Grandfather,” the boy said.

He led the old man inside the cave and settled him into a finely carved chair that once belonged to a noble Spanish conquistador. He tore a piece from the bread and then found some goat cheese. These he placed in the old man's hands. His hands were the color of ivory, seamed with blue veins.

“Eat,” the boy said. “You must keep up your strength, Grandfather.”

And so the old man ate, and when he was finished he said, “I had a dream last night that troubled me so much, I woke from sleep with a start and felt afraid.”

“What kind of terrible dream could trouble you so?” the boy said.

“I saw a man, a fearsome man who bore an ancient rifle.”

“And what did this man say to you?”

“Nothing. He said nothing.”

“Then what did he do, this man?”

“He sat in a chair, as I sit in this one, and the rifle leaned against the chair and the rifle stock was bright with polished brass.”

“Aiii, it was a fine rifle.”

“Indeed, little one, a very fine rifle and of great age. But the man did not touch the rifle because he held a green apple in his hands and he peeled the skin with a sharp steel knife.”

“But this is not a bad dream, Grandfather,” the boy said.

“Until then, it was not. But I walked into the room where the man sat and he wore a shirt of animal skin and his eyes were the color of smoke.”

“Ah, then he was a fearsome man,” the boy said.

“Yes, and he turned to me and he smiled and said, ‘Soon I will come and steal your bell.'”

“And what else did he say?”

“Nothing more, for then I woke in the dark and was afraid because the man had a great thunderbird tattooed on his throat and it was a terrible sight to see.”

The boy reached out and took the old man's frail hand in his. “We will fight him,” he said.

“I am too old to fight, and you are too young. But I will pray that I find a way to defeat this man.”

The boy was silent for a while, and then he said, “The holy bell of Santa Elena is very precious, is it not?”

“Yes, it is. We will guard it until the day the Spanish monks return and take it away.”

“Then God surely will help us,” the boy said.

 

 

“A green apple,” Abe Roper said. “Is that your breakfast?”

Flintlock shook his head. “There's a barrel of them in the sutler's. I figured I'd give one a try.”

He finished peeling the apple, held a slice between the Barlow blade and his thumb and popped it into his mouth.

“Ahh . . . hell . . . the damned thing's sour enough to pucker a hog's butt,” Flintlock said, making a face.

“Them green apples are for pies, Sam,” Charlie Fong said. “They need sugar. You should know that.”

Flintlock grinned and threw the apple at Fong's head. “Then make a pie with that one, Charlie.”

Fong ducked, the apple hit the wall, and Roper said, “I hope your aim with the Hawken's better than that.”

“I didn't much reckon on shooting it,” Flintlock said.

“Hell, after you got all that powder and ball, you're gonna shoot it,” Roper said. “After breakfast we'll head out and see how you do with the old smoke pole.” He smiled. “Make your old grandpappy proud, Sam'l.”

“Barnabas had a good eye,” Flintlock said as he pulled on a boot.

“So do you, Sam,” Fong said.

“Yeah, at spittin' distance. All the men I've killed, I killed real close.”

“Like me, you're a draw fighter, Sammy,” Roper said. “Real close goes with the profession. I never met a one that was any good with a long gun, an' that includes ol' Wild Bill hisself.”

“Close up, you look into a man's eyes when your bullet hits him, right at the moment he knows it's all up with him,” Flintlock said. He shook his head. “That's not a sight for a white man to see.” He looked at Charlie Fong. “Or for a yellow man to see either.”

“Like I said, it goes with the profession,” Roper said. “Bang-bang, close enough to hug each other.”

“Don't it bother you none, Abe?” Flintlock said.

“Nope. And if it did, I'd get into a different line of work.” He stared hard at Flintlock. “Bother you?”

“I don't know. Maybe there's something to be said for killing a man at a distance. You can't see his damned eyes.”

“Then let's shoot the old Hawken. McCarty says it's sighted in at a hundred and twenty-five yards. Hell, Sammy, you can't look into a man's eyes at that distance.”

 

 

After sharing the enlisted men's breakfast of salt pork, beans and hardtack, Flintlock and the others picked up some empty bottles from the sutler and walked into the foothills about half a mile from the fort.

“You ever walk behind a plow, Sam'l?” Roper said as they stepped through the clear light of the new aborning day.

“Can't say as I have,” Flintlock said. “Old Barnabas knew nothing about farming.”

“I did. My pa was a farmer, or he tried to be. Here's a word of advice, Sammy, never feel inclined to plow the land. All you see the livelong day is a mule's ass. Now, when a man works from the back of a horse he can see across the country as far as his eye is good.”

“You done some cowboyin', Abe?” Flintlock said. “I never knowed that.”

“Sure I did. Went up the trail for the first time when I was fourteen.”

“Hell, you think you know a man and it turns out that you don't,” Flintlock said. “Doesn't that beat all?”

“There's a lot to know. Me, I've been a lawman, stagecoach guard, bank robber, back to lawman again, bounty hunter, and wunst I was a dishwasher at one o' them fancy restaurants in Denver. But that didn't last. I must have broke a hundred o' cups an' plates afore they cut me adrift.”

“A man who washes dishes must know how to take care,” Charlie Fong said. “Or he'll break many.”

“Is that one o' your wise Chinaman sayings, Charlie?” Roper said.

“Well, I just made it up, but I guess it is.”

“Then pace off a hundred and twenty-five steps from here and set them bottles up,” Roper said. “That's a wise white man sayin'.”

They'd stopped in a grassy cut between two tall hills crested with aspen and a few scattered juniper. There was no wind and the morning was already hot, the sun climbing in a blue sky that looked like an upturned ceramic bowl. Insects made their small music in the grass and jays quarreled in the tree branches.

Charlie Fong, taking giant steps, paced off the required distance then dragged a dead tree trunk from the brush. He set up six bottles on the trunk then yelled, “How's that?”

“Good, Charlie,” Roper said. “Now get back here. We don't want Sammy shootin' an ounce of lead into you.” He turned to Flintlock and in a normal tone of voice said, “You know how to load that thing?”

“Of course I know,” Flintlock said. “Old Barnabas taught me.”

“Then let's see if you can shoot it. I guess Barnabas taught you that as well.”

Flintlock loaded the Hawken, drew a bead on the bottle on the extreme left and fired.

The glass bottle shattered into a shower of shards.

His ears ringing, Flintlock lowered the rifle and said, his voice sounding hollow in his head, “Dead center.”

Roper said something, but the roar of a Winchester drowned out his words.

The remaining five bottles exploded, one after the other, in the space of a couple of seconds.

Asa Pagg took his rifle from his shoulder and grinned.

“Hell, Asa, what did you do that fer?” Flintlock said. “I wasn't done shootin' yet.”

“It would take you all day to get five more shots off with that old blunderbush, Sam, and I've got news that can't wait.”

“That was good shootin', Asa,” Charlie Fong said. “An' we was just saying that gunfighting men don't shoot a long gun worth a damn.”

“Well you was wrong, an' me not even half tryin',” Pagg said. “Of course, a pistol fighter needs to get up close with a rifle.”

He wore a faded red bib-front shirt, black bandana, and his brown wool pants were tucked into mule-eared boots. His hat was also black, with a wide, tooled-leather band edged with woven silver. Perhaps to appear less threatening, he'd set aside his revolvers. The little finger of his left hand bore a large gold signet, engraved with the words “
Mi amor
,” and overall, Pagg looked prosperous.

“When you get done with your braggin', Asa, maybe you'll tell us your news,” Flintlock said. The wanton destruction of his bottles still stung.

“Well, it's for Abe,” Pagg said. “Guess who just rode into Fort Defiance as bold as brass?”

“I'd guess Jack Coffin,” Roper said.

Pagg looked disappointed. “How did you know?”

“I'm hiring him. He's scouting for us.”

It didn't take Pagg long to work it out.

“Hell, you want him to find the golden bell for you, huh?”

Roper said nothing and Pagg grinned. “I swear, if brains were dynamite you boys couldn't blow the wax out of your ears. You know the breed is liable to cut your throats in your sleep?”

“We'll take our chances,” Roper said.

“Abe, Coffin is half Jicarilla Apache an' they don't come any meaner. His other half was ol' Hack Coffin, him that ate his Kiowa squaw one winter up on the Flathead River country to keep hisself from starving.”

“That ain't quite true, Asa,” Charlie Fong said. “Hack and the Kiowa squaw ate the lady's grandmother, is what happened. Ol' Hack always said the old woman was as tough on the teeth as wet rawhide. He got hung in Tombstone you know, ol' Hack, for always gettin' drunk an' being a damned nuisance.”

“How you know so much about it, Charlie?” Flintlock said.

“I cooked for the Clantons an' them when they had a ranch at Lewis Springs, west of Tombstone. Hack used to stop by for a visit and a feed, and he'd come into the cookhouse for coffee and we'd get to talking.”

“Then I stand corrected,” Pagg said, his black eyes as hard as obsidian. “Just don't correct me too often, huh, Charlie?”

“Only setting the record straight, Asa,” Fong said. “No offense.”

Not for the first time, Flintlock wondered at Charlie Fong.

He was a small, thin man with expressive brown eyes and a ready, genuine smile. Charlie claimed to be about forty, but he could've been any age. He never openly carried a gun, but always had a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson about him somewhere. Apologetic and inoffensive, he spoke softly and never started or encouraged a quarrel.

Yet Charlie had consorted with hard, violent men and had been a member of the notorious Tong gang along San Francisco's Barbary Coast where shootings and cuttings were an everyday occurrence and life was cheap.

Flintlock teased Charlie mercilessly and when they met it was an ongoing thing between them. But he'd never pushed the little man to anger and never would.

Once a Tong, always a Tong, and behind Charlie Fong's mild Oriental façade was a man to be reckoned with.