Hell's Gate Read online

  Tanner and Lord exchanged glances, and then the youngster said, “Are you gentlemen sure you want to do this? Maybe you’d be better staying at the hotel and conducting your business from there.”

  “Why do you say this?” Roderick Chanley asked.

  Tanner said, “The switchback trail up the mesa to the crag where the house sits is difficult.” He looked at Whitman, who seemed very weak and slumped in the wheelchair. Then Jasper Orlov shouldered his way into the young man’s mind. “And there’s always the possibility of... outlaws,” he said.

  Walt Whitman smiled. “My dear young man, the future is no more uncertain than the present. We will proceed as planned.”

  Hogan Lord said, “How long do you aim on staying, Mr. Whitman?”

  That question was information gathering for Tobias Fynes.

  “Not long,” the poet said. “I’ve been very ill and Roderick suggested the clean Western air will help me recover.”

  “Help both of us recover,” Chanley said. He spoke directly to Lord. “I too have been sick.”

  “Sorry to hear it,” the gunman said with as much sincerity as a robust man could muster. Then to Whitman, “So you’ll be in the territory for at least a couple of months.”

  “Oh dear, no,” Whitman said. “I plan to return to New Jersey by the end of September. When is that? Yes, two weeks from now. I must leave before the weather turns cold and I’m too ill to travel.” Whitman read the concern in Chanley’s face and said, “I do not expect a cure in two weeks or two years, Roderick. I accept reality and dare not question it.” He smiled, his good, open smile. “Besides, nothing can happen to me that is more beautiful than death.”

  Hogan Lord had most of the information he needed. He touched his hat and said, “Have a safe journey, gentlemen.” Then he turned on his heel and walked back to the bank.

  * * *

  “Two weeks for Whitman,” Tobias Fynes said. “What about the other one?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m sure the prizefighter will leave with Whitman,” Hogan Lord said. “That’s one less complication.”

  Fynes grunted his agreement as he rose from his chair and poured a couple of drinks. One whiskey he kept for himself and the other he passed to Lord. “We’re just a few weeks away from being rich men, Hogan,” he said. He raised his glass. “Here’s to a speedy conclusion to our glorious enterprise.”

  “Even if we have to step over a few dead bodies to get there,” Lord said.

  “Then so be it. What’s the saying? You can’t make a cake without breaking a few eggs.”

  “Something like that,” Lord said.

  “You don’t seem yourself today, Hogan. Flintlock preying on your mind? Or is it the Cully girl?”

  Lord shook his head. “No, I can take care of Flintlock and the girl if need be. But, damn it, there’s something about all this that doesn’t feel right.”

  “Your conscience troubling you?”

  “I learned to live with my conscience years ago. It’s just a feeling in my gut that we’re up against something . . . somebody . . . more cunning and powerful than either of us.”

  “In this part of the territory there’s no one more powerful than me,” Fynes said. “And I’m pretty cunning myself, come to that.” He gave Lord a sympathetic look. “When did you last have a woman?”

  “It’s been a while.”

  “Then that’s what you need, man. A woman will make you relax and help you put your fears to rest. Go see Kate Coldwell. She knows a trick or two that will cure what ails you. I guarantee it.” The fat banker had been talking in an amiable, joshing tone, but suddenly he became deadly serious. “Hogan, I need your smarts and I need your gun. Don’t turn traitor on me now. The stakes are too high.” Then a threat. “I don’t want to put my trust in an illiterate brute like Nathan Poteet, but by God, Hogan, if I have to, I will.”

  Lord didn’t allow himself to get angry. His voice even, he said, “I never in my life turned quitter. I’ll see this thing through to the end, whatever that end might be.”

  “Hogan, don’t think of our enterprise as an ending, consider it a beginning,” Fynes said. “Once we find the treasure map we’ll be only a few shovelfuls of dirt away from a fortune.”

  “Are you even sure there is a treasure map?”

  “Of course there is and I would have it already had not the Cully woman decided to occupy the house.”

  “We could have demolished the place and then set whatever was left of it on fire,” Lord said. “That was a missed opportunity.”

  “I thought the bitch would sell,” Fynes said. “But you’re right, I could have acted earlier and told her the place burned down. But then, the whole town knew Lucy Cully was left the mansion by her uncle and when I sent demolition crews up to the crag questions would have been asked.”

  Fynes leaned forward in his chair, trying to make his sincerity obvious. “There is a map, Hogan. I was the one who toasted Mechan Cully’s feet and I was there when he died. The old man was stubborn and kept his mouth shut but it was pretty clear that he was hiding something.”

  Lord rose to his feet. “Thanks for the drink,” he said.

  “Thanks for the drink, Tobias, you mean,” the fat man said.

  “Of course, Tobias,” Lord said.

  Fynes stared at the gunman’s back as he left. His eyes calculating, he decided that Lord could be trouble and was worth watching for signs of weakness or lack of resolve. Thank God for Nathan Poteet. The outlaw was just as fast on the draw and shoot as Lord and as pitiless a man as he’d ever known. It was a time to watch and wait.

  * * *

  Hogan Lord left the bank and made his way to a frame and tar paper shack about twenty-five yards behind the saloon. Lord rapped his knuckle on the rough timber door and when it opened he said, “Howdy, Kate, I need to spend some time with you.”

  A slender arm reached out, grabbed Lord by the lapel of his coat and pulled him inside.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Lucy Cully sat naked in an old tapestry wing chair she’d discovered in the topmost room of the mansion, the sharply angled slope of the roof just a few feet above her head. She closed her eyes and listened to the house breathe. The walls creaked with its every intake of breath and she fancied that the house whispered to her, assuring her that all was well. Never, in all of her twenty-two years had she known such tranquillity, serenity, the peace of mind that came with the house’s assurance that it would take care of her. Outside, ravens flapped around tall chimneys that were a dizzying height above the crag that bore the mansion’s great weight, and the birds, as black as midnight, called out to her constantly, telling her that all was well.

  Born and raised in genteel poverty that denied access to the upper levels of Philadelphia society, owning her own home had once been an impossible dream for Lucy Cully. The aunt who raised her after the death of her parents “took rooms” on the less-desirable upper floor of a large terraced building in an unfashionable part of the city. Aunt Phoebe, half German and unapologetically Teutonic, living on a small inheritance from a deceased relative in Berlin, did her best to keep up appearances but her visits to the pawnshops became more and more frequent as Lucy grew to womanhood. Gentlemen callers were discouraged, partly due to the prohibitive cost of tea and cake but mostly because Aunt Phoebe, a lifelong spinster and by her own account still a virgin, distrusted men and their devious ways.

  “My child,” Aunt Phoebe said on Lucy’s thirteenth birthday, “a man will do his utmost to lure you into his bed with his empty, honeyed words. You must resist this temptation with all your heart and soul. Once he has his iniquitous way with you, he’ll cast you out into the street and slam the door on your bustle. Men are wicked, wicked creatures that set traps for the unsullied maiden and are to be avoided at all costs.”

  However, Aunt Phoebe made an exception for Roderick Chanley. A sickly, impoverished poet who had lost his left eye in a childhood accident, he was not a threat and had never revealed the slight
est indication of laying siege to Lucy’s maidenhood. Nevertheless, Aunt Phoebe made sure the young couple were never left alone for very long and touching was strictly verboten.

  Now Lucy had her own home and there was a tantalizing possibility that old Mechan Cully had hidden a treasure map somewhere within its walls. She smiled to herself and settled deeper into the chair. She felt that she and the towering mansion were becoming one . . . but slowly . . . a pair of shy, hesitant lovers taking their first steps along the path to romance.

  For the first time in her life Lucy had a home that was hers and hers alone and she made a vow that she would never leave it.

  “Hey, Lucy, you got visitors!”

  It was Sam Flintlock’s stentorian voice calling from the bottom of the stairs.

  “I’ll be right there, Sam,” she said.

  Lucy stood and when she reached the foyer she squealed in delight and ran into Roderick Chanley’s arms. After a while she freed herself from the young man’s embrace and said, somewhat breathlessly, “Roderick, why are you here? And you brought dear Mr. Whitman with you.” The girl smiled. “I declare, Roderick, you’re such a man of mystery.”

  Chanley smiled. “No mystery, dear one. I couldn’t bear to be parted from you one minute longer. When you left Philadelphia my muse fled with you, but even now I feel it returning to me, filling my head with wondrous words that need only be marshalled together and be born again as an ode to happiness. As for Walt, I convinced him that a spell in the West would restore him to good health and here he is.”

  Whitman nodded and then smiled. “It was an arduous journey to say the least, but an interesting one and one I’m glad I made. I have learned that to be with those I like is enough and standing here with you, Lucy, and Roderick pleases my soul.”

  “Then we must retire to the parlor and celebrate with a glass of wine,” Lucy said. Her eyes moved to the big man with a broken face who carried in a valise. “And you are?”

  “Allow me to introduce Mr. Rory O’Neill, a pugilist and bodyguard courtesy of my friend, the overly protective Mark Twain,” Whitman said. “I told him that this old body is hardly worth guarding, but he would not listen and Rory is the result.”

  Roderick Chanley said, taking Lucy’s hand, “Come now, Walt, Mr. Clemens considers you America’s greatest living poet and as such you are a national treasure well worth guarding.” He lifted the girl’s hand in his and gently, one by one, kissed her fingertips. “And now, my dearest, shall we restore ourselves with a glass of wine and recount our adventures?”

  “Of course,” Lucy said. “Mr. Whitman, please come this way.”

  A product of the Victorian class system and her aunt’s upper-crust pretensions, Lucy did not invite O’Neill into the parlor. As a member of the servant order he would be ignored until needed, as were Flintlock and O’Hara. The arrival of her intended and Walt Whitman, by the nature of their calling both comfortably upper middle class, had awakened a latent snobbishness in Lucy Cully.

  Sam Flintlock watched this without understanding any of its implications. All he knew was that he’d not been invited to the party and the big man who looked like a fistfighter probably needed a drink. He asked that very question of O’Neill and the big feller smiled and in a pleasing Irish brogue, said, “Indeed, your honor, that would be most welcome.”

  “Call me Sam and this here Injun studying on your scalp is O’Hara.”

  O’Neill shook hands with both men and then followed them to the kitchen.

  Once settled at the table with a bottle of whiskey, Flintlock said, “How was your trip, Rory?”

  “Tiring but uneventful, until we arrived in Mansion Creek, that is, and then things took a turn for the worse.”

  “What happened?” Flintlock said.

  O’Neill told of his run-in with the Macklin brothers and O’Hara said, “Not exactly a warm welcome to the Arizona Territory, huh?”

  “I would say it wasn’t,” O’Neill said, “and not one I’d expected.”

  “So how is this Bruno Macklin? He sounds like a bully used to picking on weaker folks,” Flintlock said.

  “Yes, he was a bully and probably a braggart to boot. As to how he is, I suppose that right now he’s not feeling very well.”

  Flintlock smiled. “Broken jaw. Serves him right.”

  “A man who can’t fight should never put up his dukes, in or out of the ring,” O’Neill said. “Besides, Macklin should have known better than to pick on an unhandsome fellow like me.” He smiled. “I’ve got nothing to lose.”

  That last was greeted with laughter from Flintlock, and even O’Hara grinned.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Former army scout Clem C. Gilman, a Texan some called the most merciless man-killer on the frontier, was a bounty hunter out of Amarillo with twenty-six kills, a figure he didn’t keep track of himself since the awed newspapers were all too happy to do it for him . . .

  We tip our collective hats to a man who has rid our great state of more lawless vermin than all of the Texas Rangers combined.

  —The Fort Worth Herald

  A shootist of renown who brings ’em back dead. Go get ’em, Clem.

  —The Houston Gazette

  We stand in the heroic shadow of the renowned Clem C. Gilmore, the conquering hero of the Plains.

  —The Dallas Express (which didn’t even get his name right)

  Over the years the list of fawning news stories went on and on, and then this, from the Amarillo Record published on the same day Sam Flintlock and O’Hara rode into Mansion Creek:

  HAIL THE CONQUERING HERO COMES

  We hear with beating hearts that our renowned native son Clem C. Gilman is once again on the trail of a miscreant. You will remember a year ago that intrepid Texas Ranger Charlie Fairman headed into the Arizona Territory in search of the notorious bandit chief Jasper Orlov and to this date has not

  Returned to His Native Soil

  The Record is proud to report that, armed with an arrest warrant and the promise of a $5,000 reward, Clem has now taken up the task and he tells us he’s resolved to uncover the mystery surrounding Ranger Fairman’s disappearance and that he’ll bring back Orlov

  Dead or Alive

  We believe that when the murderous Orlov learns that Clem is on his trail he’ll be shaking in his boots, and who can blame him? It is well known that Clem never fails to find his quarry due to his skill with

  His Deadly Six-Gun

  All the Record can do now is to lift our hearts and wish Clem all the luck in the world and we say in all sincerity

  Haste Ye Back!

  URGENT: As the Record went to press we learned that before he rode out of town the Rangers presented Clem with a brand-new Winchester rifle and a handsome Smith & Wesson revolver. Huzzah!

  Clem Gilman did not fit the hero mold. He was a small, thin man with so much bitterness in him he lived with the taste of bile in his mouth. He was a man filled with hate, not for individuals but for all of humanity. The spawn of rape, the unholy union of an illiterate servant girl and a bullwhacker with a Slavic name, he never knew his parents. The day he was born his mother left him on the steps of a mission in Laredo where he was taken in by monks, who gave him a name and then sent him to a foster home as soon as he was able to walk. Beaten, abused and half starved the boy was passed from home to home until his thirteenth birthday, when he stole a revolver and thirty-five dollars from a farmer and ran away. He soon discovered he had a skill with firearms and very soon after that he killed his first man, a Negro drover named Henderson who happened to have a two-hundred-dollar reward on his head. As the local sheriff counted the bills into his hand, young Clem knew he’d found his calling.

  It was a measure of Gilman’s unprepossessing appearance that he rode into Mansion Creek unnoticed. Who looks at a forty-year-old man with a narrow, sun-wrinkled face, dressed in a threadbare duster and battered hat astride a small brown mustang that couldn’t have weighed more than eight hundred pounds? When he dismounted out
side the Apache County Herald Gilman’s five-foot-six height in his boots did nothing to attract attention either. He was an easy man to underestimate.

  Gilman stepped into the newspaper office, then stood just inside the doorway for a few moments to let his eyes adjust to the gloom.

  “Can I help you?” Roland Ives said. He’d smiled when he said that but now as he looked into his visitor’s eyes the smile withered on his lips. Blue eyes, cold as ice, with no spark of any kind of emotion.

  “Are you Roland Ives?” the stranger said.

  “Yes, I am. And you are?”

  Gilman ignored that and said, “Charlie Fairman. Tell me about him.”

  Ives shook his head. “I don’t understand. Tell you what?”

  “You brought him here, didn’t you?”

  “No, he wrote a letter to me and he came of his own accord.”

  “The letter, was it about Jasper Orlov?”

  “Yes, it was. The Texas Rangers had heard reports of people suddenly disappearing around these parts and Charlie Fairman wrote and asked if they were true and if Jasper Orlov was real.”

  “And what did you tell him?”

  “I told him that the reports of missing people were true, but I doubted if Jasper Orlov really existed.”

  “Then what happened? Speak up now.”

  Ives felt a twinge of anger. He was being bullied by this insignificant little man who looked like a puff of wind could blow him over. Gilman read the newspaperman’s eyes. Whether by accident or design his slicker opened wider and Ives saw a Colt on the man’s hip. Ivory handled, nickel plated, worn in an exquisitely carved brown leather holster and gunbelt, it was a Texas rig no working man could afford and the only one Ives had seen that equaled it in quality was worn by Hogan Lord.

  “What happened was that Charlie Fairman showed up in town a month later with a leave of absence from the Rangers and orders to bring in Jasper Orlov,” Ives said. “For questioning, the Ranger said.”