A Time for Vultures Read online

  “You know him?” Flintlock said.

  “Who, the wolf?”

  “No, dammit, Jasper.”

  “Ran into him a few times along my back trail. He’s fast with the iron.”

  “Set right there for a spell,” Flintlock said. “I’ll be right back.”

  Horntoe was giggling behind his hand when Flintlock grabbed him. A strong man and mad as hell, he lifted the dwarf bodily in one hand and carried him, kicking and cursing, to Fisher. “Rein in your dwarf, King,” he said, dropping the little man at Fisher’s feet.

  “Grofrec, call back your wolf,” Fisher said. “Now.”

  The dwarf, looking sullen, put two fingers into his mouth and let out a high, piercing whistle. Flintlock watched the wolf skid to a halt, turn, and trot back.

  Still angry, Flintlock said, “King, if O’Hara had come up with a broken neck, you’d be looking for a gopher hole to bury your pygmy in.”

  “He amuses me, Sam. Court jester, you might say. That’s why I gave him the name Grofrec Horntoe. Dr. le Strange says it’s very droll. Can you vouch for the savage?”

  “He’s a friend of mine and he’s only half savage. Isn’t that enough?”

  “Bring him over here. I’ll question him,” Fisher said.

  Flintlock helped O’Hara to his feet and said, “King Fisher wants to talk to you.”

  O’Hara’s eyes opened wide. “That’s King Fisher?”

  “What’s left of him. Pretend you don’t notice.”

  “Only a damned white man would say that.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The huge lens of King Fisher’s right eye glowed green as he studied O’Hara. “Do I know you?”

  The breed shook his head. “No. But I’ve heard of you. They say you’re a cowboy killer.”

  “People talk,” Fisher said. “Does my appearance disturb you? My eye? My hand?”

  O’Hara nodded. “You’re part man, part machine, like him.” He used the muzzle of his Winchester to point to Clem Jardine. “God did not make you two like that.”

  “The Bible says he made man in His image. Maybe God is a machine,” Fisher said.

  “A machine does not have a soul,” O’Hara said.

  “And you think I have none?”

  “Perhaps. It could be that your soul fled when you became more automaton than human.”

  “Automaton? You use a big word for a part savage,” Fisher said.

  “When I was a boy at the mission school, a monk called Brother Benedict was a watchmaker, but he also made little animals out of brass. They moved. Singing birds mostly, but once he made a bear that walked and danced. He called his creatures automatons.”

  King Fisher’s immobile face could not register anger, but his voice rose to a shout. “You fool! You dare compare me to clockwork toys? I am the pinnacle of creation and as the sum of man’s knowledge increases, I will be made even better. Little man, I’ll still be alive when your grandchildren are dead and modern engineering may yet bring me immortality. What need for a soul then?”

  Fisher’s left hand, not mechanical and somewhat shrunken, reached over, opened a small valve on his wrist, and instantly released a hissing jet of steam. He closed the valve quickly and said, “There, now you’ve seen and heard my immortal soul.”

  O’Hara, openmouthed like an Inquisitor listening to heresy, could not bring himself to say anything.

  Fisher did the talking for him. “Now, my Indian friend, the question is do I kill you or not?”

  Flintlock said quickly, “King, I’d take a killing mighty hard.”

  “I’m sure you would, Sam. But if you did, I’d also have to kill you, and I don’t want to do that right now. Take your friend’s rifle and pistol.”

  O’Hara stepped back, his Winchester coming up fast. “You’re not taking my guns.”

  King Fisher made two motions with his mechanical arm. The first was to shove his Colt into the holster on his hip. This was done at normal speed, but the second movement was so fast the human eye could not follow it. When the movement was complete, Fisher’s articulated hand had grabbed O’Hara’s Winchester by the barrel and tossed it aside.

  Stunned, the breed shook the burning sting out of his hands and Flintlock, fearing another fancy move on King’s part, removed O’Hara’s Colt from his holster.

  He handed the revolver to Fisher and said, “Mighty fast.”

  “And me only half-trying.” Fisher looked at the people around him. “All right, we’re moving out. Take your friend into Helrun, Sam. He looks like he needs a drink.”

  Flintlock nodded. “And I reckon so do I. I think we both just saw a ghost.”

  * * *

  “They’ve caught up with your horse, O’Hara,” Flintlock said, looking out the cabin window. “How is the sherry?”

  “Is that what it is? Sherry wine?”

  “Like it?”

  “It’s swill.”

  “And that’s why old Barnabas told me to never to give firewater to an Injun. They don’t appreciate good liquor. How were the ladies when you left?”

  “I came to find you, Sam.”

  “I know that and I appreciate it. How are the ladies?”

  “Still in the saloon. The town stinks worse now the bodies are rotting.”

  “I think King wants to settle there for a spell,” Flintlock said.

  “Then he’ll die of smallpox.”

  Flintlock frowned. “Maybe he can’t die. I don’t know how much of his insides are made of brass.”

  “His human part can die, like any other mortal man,” O’Hara said.

  Sarah Castle turned from the controls. “Please don’t discuss Mr. Fisher in my presence. If you have anything to say, then say it to him.”

  “There’s smallpox in Happyville, for God’s sake,” Flintlock said. “A doctor should know she’s headed for trouble.”

  “We can contain and then eradicate the epidemic,” Dr. Castle said. “It is essential that the good townspeople return and the farming begin.”

  “What kind of farming? You can’t plow around there,” Flintlock said. “All you’ll grow is rock and cactus.”

  “Then we’ll just have to wait and see, Mr. Flintlock, won’t we?” Sarah Castle paused, then said, “Hello, what is this?” and spoke into a speaking tube above the control panel. “Obadiah, do you see them? There’s a large body of armed, mounted men approaching us.”

  Le Strange’s tinny answer came back. “I see them. They look like Comancheros to me. I doubt that their intentions are friendly.”

  “Do you think King sees them?”

  “I’m sure he does. Just keep driving, Sarah.”

  Flintlock leaned forward and peered through the front window. “They’re not Comancheros. They disbanded and headed for the hills after ol’ Quanah Parker surrendered in the winter of seventy-five and his starving Comanches went into a reservation. It looks to me like a bunch of other fellers in the same line of business.”

  “Those boys want something,” O’Hara said.

  “I figured that.” Flintlock’s hand strayed to his waistband, but his gun was gone, taken by Fisher. “Sure is a passel of them, twenty-five, maybe thirty riders, half of them Americanos judging by their duds.”

  Le Strange’s voice came on the speaking tube. “Sarah, King is signaling you to stop. He’s bringing the wagon closer and I might be needed elsewhere so he’s sending Max Eades to man the Gatling. Just keep Helrun locked up tight and stay right where you are.”

  Sarah Castle said, “Obadiah, wait.”

  But the man had already scrambled out of the gun turret and slid down the vehicle’s side. He hit the ground running and headed for the wagon.

  There was as yet no sign of King Fisher.

  Flintlock glanced at the bandits. They had deployed in line and cut loose with a ragged volley. Bullets pinged! off the sloped side of the steam carriage, and Sarah Castle cried out as a round shattered the window to her right and burned across her forehead just under
the brim of her leather helmet.

  “Get your head down!” Flintlock yelled. He pushed the woman into her seat. He looked at the hatch that led to the gun turret. “Where the hell is Eades?”

  The shooting became general as the horsemen advanced on the carriage and wagon.

  Confined like a yolk in a boilerplate egg as he was in the close confines of the Helrun’s passenger cabin, Flintlock could see little of what was happening outside. “O’Hara, get up there behind the big gun. I’ll follow you.”

  As O’Hara scrambled into the hatch, Flintlock said, “Doc, are you all right?”

  “It’s just a bad bruise.” With panic in her voice, Dr. Castle said, “I can’t see King out there.”

  “I reckon Fisher can take care of himself.” Flintlock climbed into the hatch.

  O’Hara moved aside to allow him to sit in the leather seat. “Can you work this thing?” He jumped as a bullet spaaanged! close to his elbow, leaving a shallow gray scratch on the metal.

  Flintlock’s quick glance around him revealed that the bandits—in later years, winter yarning around a potbellied stove, he’d refer to them as the Sons of the Comancheros—had circled Helrun and the wagon. Several of their number had fallen and lay lifeless on the ground and it looked like Max Eades was down. The gunman’s boot heels gouged holes in the dirt, a sure sign that he was gut shot and hurting. King Fisher, Clem Jardine, and Jasper Aston had backed against the wagon and were getting in some steady work. But the bandit numbers were starting to tell and their noose was tightening.

  Back a ways and out of the line of fire, Flintlock thought he caught a glimpse of Barnabas. The old sinner grinned as he sat on the grass and peeled a ruby-red apple, a tight coil of skin dangling to the ground.

  “Sam, damn it!” O’Hara yelled. “Shoot that fancy gun.”

  As bullets split the air around his head, Flintlock grabbed the Gatling gun and readied himself, gritting his teeth. The big gun was fed from a circular magazine named a Broadwell Drum after its inventor. Flintlock had seen a Gatling exactly like this one at Fort Bayard, up in the New Mexico Territory’s Santa Rita Mountains country. Usually seen on gunboats, the Gatling’s two-hundred-and-forty-round magazine made it a fearsome weapon at sea or on land.

  Luck was with Sam Flintlock that day.

  About a dozen riders broke off from the fight and huddled around a man wearing a wide sombrero and an embroidered red shirt. They seemed to be getting orders, and now and then, they’d glance toward the wagon.

  Flintlock sighted, turned the crank handle, and cut loose, the unique rattle of the big gun sounding like an iron bedstead being dragged across a knotted wood floor. The Gatling gun was an indiscriminate and inhumane killer, a destroyer of animals as well as men. When the six-hundred-round-a-minute hailstorm of .45-70 lead hammered into the assembled riders, shrieking and screaming men and horses went down like wheat before a reaper.

  Appalled, Flintlock looked beyond the gun barrels at a gory tangle of dying, shrieking men and their kicking mounts . . . raw, bloody meat from a ghastly grinder. Dust and thick gray gun smoke writhed among the fallen as though their tormented souls desperately sought escape from the slaughter.

  The man in the sombrero and red shirt, redder now, staggered to his feet, tried to say something, then fell on his back. Flintlock held his fire. He’d killed men before, but the dreadful execution he’d done among the bandits unnerved him.

  The shooting came to a ragged halt. The surviving bandits, half their number dead or dying, including their leader, pulled back. The ferocity of the Gatling gun had taken the fight out of them.

  “Sam!” Fisher yelled. “Finish them.”

  The bandits who could understand English threw down their guns and raised their hands. The others, bewildered by the suddenness and ferocity of Flintlock’s attack, followed suit.

  “They’re done, King,” Flintlock said.

  Fisher’s impassive face was incapable of showing emotion. He said, “They’re done when I say they’re done.”

  Already dismayed by the mayhem he’d wrought, Flintlock was not prepared for what happened next. No human being with a shred of decency could have been.

  Fisher’s mechanical arm hung by his side and its polished brass and network of thin bronze pipes gleamed like gold in the sunlight. A split second later, he was shooting, his self-cocking revolver vise-steady in his engineered hand. Six shots. Six empty saddles. Six dead men. All in the space of a single heartbeat. Flintlock was stunned that a Colt’s gun could be made to shoot at that speed—like a burst from the Gatling.

  Then horror piled on horror as the surviving bandits broke and ran.

  “Clem,” Fisher said.

  Jardine drew and fired. His arm and gun hand were not mechanically enhanced, but he was a skilled gunman and shot two of the fleeing bandits out of the saddle.

  When the racketing echoes of the shots died away, King Fisher stiffly looked up at Flintlock in the gun turret. “Now they’re done.”

  Flintlock studied what was left of the fleeing bandits. Their horses kicked up plumes of dust as they galloped across the flat. He saw no sign of Barnabas.

  Fisher called out to the dwarf. “Grofrec, finish off the wounded. I don’t want live enemies on my back trail.”

  The little man pulled a huge bowie from his belt, tested the edge with his thumb, and grinned. “Sure thing, Mr. Fisher.” The dwarf, his wolf trotting beside him, hurried away to complete his task.

  But even when shrieks of fear and pain rang out as Grofrec Horntoe began his throat cutting, Flintlock’s attention was on Clem Jardine’s wife kneeling beside the dead Max Eades. Only later did Flintlock find out that the gunman was her brother. She rocked back and forth and made low, moaning sounds behind her painted porcelain mask. After a while, she reached into the pocket of her skirt and took out a small, blue glass vial decorated with tiny silver skulls. She removed the stopper, a skull attached to the bottle with a thin chain, tilted her head and held the vial under her left eye, allowing drops of water to fall onto her mask and run down her cheek. She did this with the other eye until it seemed that tears streamed down her porcelain cheeks, rolling among the dice and the red and black hearts, clubs, diamonds and spades of playing cards. Blanche Jardine’s wails grew in volume and she reapplied the vial and shed her unnatural tears several more times until her husband raised her to her feet and led her, stumbling, back to the wagon.

  Grofrec Horntoe, his bared arms gory to the elbows, returned. “They’re all dead, Mr. Fisher.”

  “What is the butcher’s bill?” King Fisher said.

  “Nineteen dead men and eleven horses,” the dwarf said.

  Fisher nodded. “Dr. le Strange, can Max Eades be saved?”

  The engineer shook his head. “Even modern science can’t raise a dead man. At least, not yet.”

  Fisher listened to that without comment and then said, “Grofrec, bury Eades. As for the rest, let them rot.” Bending backward from the waist, Fisher looked up at Flintlock. “Sam, get the hell down from there. I want you and the Indian back inside Helrun.”

  The scrape with the bandits, more massacre than battle, weighed heavily on Flintlock, as did the killing of the wounded. He was angry, and that made him dangerous. He was by nature a man who could tolerate only so much sass before he snapped.

  He let loose with a burst of Gatling fire, erupting a row of dirt Vs inches in front of Fisher. Noisily and dramatically, it emphasized his feelings. “King, I’m pretty damned tired of being ordered around. It ends right here.”

  “Sam, I thought we were friends,” Fisher said. “I’m very disappointed.”

  “We’re not friends, King, and we never were. Now order somebody to give our guns back to O’Hara and saddle our horses. Meantime, you stay right where you’re at, King. If I need to cut loose with this thing again, you’ll end up looking like a pile of scrap metal.”

  “Hurtful, Sam, very hurtful,” Fisher said.

  “Do as I say.”


  Fisher turned to Jasper Aston. “Bring their guns, then saddle the horses.” He looked up at Flintlock. “Your horse is still lame, Sam.”

  “Then saddle another one.” Loudly, looking down into the interior of the steam carriage, Flintlock said, “And lady doctor, get away from the bottom of the hatch with the derringer belly gun. If you shoot me, I’ll still have time to chop up your boss.”

  Fisher said, “Sarah, can you hear me?”

  “I can hear you,” the doctor said.

  “Put your gun away. Flintlock has never been known for his sanity, and he means what he says.”

  “Damn right,” Flintlock said. “Right now I’m a crazy man.”

  “King, a shot to the femoral artery and he’ll bleed out quick,” Sarah Castle said.

  “Not quick enough, my dear. Put the gun away.”

  The woman stood at the bottom of the gun hatch and looked up at Flintlock. She smiled and waved the derringer. “You’re lucky, Mr. Flintlock.”

  He stared at her. “And so is your boss, lady.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “Why did King Fisher let us go so easily?” O’Hara said. “I mean, he let us just ride out of there.”

  “We’re not that important to him.” Flintlock drew rein, grateful to rest his right shoulder. His bay hated to be led and tugged at the rope halter constantly. “King lost his best gun and he wasn’t anxious to lose another in a gunfight.” He built and then lit a cigarette.

  Ahead of him, the grassland stretched away flat and featureless except for a stunted mesa in the far distance that brooded over its lack of height. It was a landscape that offered nothing, promised nothing.

  To Flintlock, it was nevertheless welcoming. He inhaled smoke deeply into his lungs and said, “That thing we met wasn’t King Fisher. It’s a freak. It’s a freak in a freak show, one of them Barnum and Bailey creatures the picture magazines write about.”

  O’Hara managed one of his rare smiles. “Like Tom Thumb.”

  “Yeah. King Fisher’s show has got itself one of those, only his name is Grofrec Horntoe and he’s an evil little son of a bitch,” Flintlock said.