Hell's Gate Read online

  “Describe Fairman,” Gilman said.

  “Tall man, on the heavy side, with a mustache and full beard. His hair was black as I recall and . . . yeah, I remember, he walked with a limp, favored his left leg.”

  “What did he do after he got in town?”

  “Not much. He loaded up with enough grub to last a couple of weeks then rode away.”

  “Away where?”

  “East. In the direction of the mesa.”

  “Why east?”

  “Because that’s where the people go missing.”

  “What about Orlov? Has anybody seen him and left a description?”

  “No. The talk around town is that if you see Orlov you’re already as good as dead.”

  “Not much to go on,” Gilman said.

  Ives said, “Mister, ride east of the mesa and if Orlov really exists, he’ll find you.” Then, “Why all this interest?”

  “All this interest is because of the five thousand dollars the Rangers are paying for Orlov’s scalp.”

  “Then good luck,” Ives said, anxious to rid himself of the little man.

  “All the luck I need I carry right here on my hip,” Gilman said. “Nobody is immortal and Orlov can die like any other man.” He reached into the pocket of his duster and rang a silver dollar onto the counter. “Buy yourself a drink,” he said.

  * * *

  When Clem Gilman was halfway up the switchback the sky unrolled like sheets of lead, and thunder rumbled to the north. Rain ticked around him as he reached the top of the mesa, pulled up his mustang and looked around, taking stock of the unpromising landscape. Somewhere in this wilderness of rock and pine was Jasper Orlov, the man he’d come to kill. The man was no myth, no tall tale told by idlers huddled around the potbellied stove in winter, he was real, as real as the lightning that now flashed in the sky. Gilman, the consummate manhunter, sensed his presence as though he could read it written on the wind. The north slope of the mesa dropped to a rise, a wall of rock notched by a narrow valley that rose again to a lofty crag. In heavy rain, the bounty hunter studied the crag through his field glasses and then lowered them again, his eyes alight.

  Could the house on the crag be the home of Jasper Orlov?

  He raised the glasses again. The house was like no other he’d seen, high and spindly, floor after floor of arched windows with small, diamond-shaped panes held together with lead casings, balconies, spires and a steeply pitched slate roof topped by tall brick chimneys. Lashed by rain, surrounded by sizzling forks of lightning and pounded by blasts of thunder, the house seemed to thumb its nose at nature, defying it to do its worst. Dim orbs of light glowed behind the windows on the ground floor and despite the tempest that splintered apart the day ravens fluttered around the eaves and roosted on the sharp peak of the roof.

  Gilman was a cautious man. He could ride up to the house on the crag and ask for shelter for the night. If Jasper Orlov was in residence it would be a simple matter to kill him. Or would it? How many others were in the house? Judging by the number of rooms that were lit, there could be a few, and if they were guns . . . Gilman, a sure-thing killer, couldn’t take that chance.

  He found the talus slope and rode off the mesa onto the flat and took refuge in a stand of juniper that offered little shelter. His mouse-colored mustang didn’t need much, didn’t expect much and there was graze enough among the trees for its needs. Oblivious of the rain and shimmering lightning, Gilman squatted under a tree, his back to the trunk. He trained the field glasses on the house again . . . and settled down to watch and wait.

  A few minutes passed and then during a lull in the thunder Gilman heard a giggle behind him . . .

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  As the thunderstorm raged around Lucy Cully’s house, the talk was of poetry, art and the delicious bed-hopping scandals of Philadelphia’s high society, of which Walt Whitman seemed to have an inexhaustible knowledge. Lucy was in her element, her face radiant with laughter as Whitman recounted his tales and her beloved Roderick added the odd saucy embellishment, especially to the case of the married captain of industry caught in flagrante delicto with a scullery maid.

  “The outraged wife, who walked in on this unhappy scene, then chased the husband and the maid all over the house, taking the occasional pot at them with a pepperbox revolver,” Roderick Chanley said.

  “And then what happened?” Lucy said, sitting forward in her chair, her eyes shining.

  “Well, the fracas spilled outside onto the street and as far as I know the maid is still running,” Chanley said. “As for the husband, the terrified butler, who’d been grazed by an errant ball, called in the constabulary and the whole affair was written off as a marital spat and no charges were filed.” The young man smiled. “But later I did see the wife at a reserved table in Partridge’s showing off a new diamond ring and necklace.”

  Lucy smiled. “So all was well that ended well.”

  “Except for the poor scullery maid, I guess,” Chanley said.

  Sam Flintlock had listened with interest to the city talk but when the conversation again turned to poetry and literature he made an excuse and retired to bed. O’Hara had escaped earlier, having no interest in either poetry or the sexual peccadillos of Philadelphia’s upper crust.

  Several leaks from the roof ticked into Flintlock’s tiny room but none fell on his cot, for which he was grateful. He lay on his back staring at the slanted ceiling only a few feet above him. Lightning flashes illuminated every corner of the room and the walls around him stood out in stark, silvery white, and for a moment afterward when he closed his eyes he saw streaks of red and electric blue.

  Flintlock was worried. Now that Lucy’s intended and Walt Whitman were living in the house and the girl seemed quite settled, his and O’Hara’s reason for being there was gone. If they pulled out early, would Tobias Fynes honor his pledge to pay five hundred dollars? If he was in the fat man’s shoes, would he? Probably not. The answer then was to stick it out for the whole seven days and then demand their money. If Fynes refused, there was always O’Hara’s option of robbing the bank. But that was a last-ditch choice. Flintlock had gone straight for a long spell since he split with Bill Bonney and that hard crowd up Lincoln County way and he didn’t want to step over the line again.

  He decided to sleep on it and then worry the problem with a clear mind come morning.

  But O’Hara had a very different plan.

  Flintlock had been sleep for only a couple of hours when he was roughly shaken awake. “Get up,” O’Hara said.

  Like any man who often puts himself in harm’s way and spreads his blankets in the open, Flintlock woke instantly, his hand reaching for the Colt beside his bed. “What the hell, O’Hara?” he said.

  “Get dressed. I sense danger.”

  Flintlock blinked, focusing on O’Hara. The man was a changeling, often appearing more Irishman than Indian. But that night he was all Apache. He’d combed out his hair so that it hung loosely over his shoulders and, a thing he seldom did, he wore the red headband of his mother’s tribe. As a concession to the rain, he wore a slicker, but it was unbuttoned so as not to impede his draw. O’Hara’s expression was grim and Flintlock realized that he took the present danger seriously, and he did not for one moment doubt him. Apache warriors had the senses of a bronco wolf, the reason a frontiersman hiding from a war party never looked directly at them, not if he wanted to live. An Apache could sense eyes on him like a white man feels the heat of the summer sun on his neck.

  Flintlock dressed hurriedly, shoved his Colt into his waistband and like O’Hara shrugged into his slicker. O’Hara handed him his Winchester and said, “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  Only after Flintlock had safely navigated the stairs and walked out of the sleeping house into the raging storm did he speak, or rather yell into O’Hara’s ear. “What’s out here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Flin
tlock looked back at the house, peering through the raking rain. Lightning glimmered on the windows and for brief moments turned them white, as though the building looked down on him and O’Hara with a dozen shining eyes.

  “O’Hara!” Flintlock said. “Is this a wild-goose chase?”

  “I don’t think so,” O’Hara called back. “This way.”

  He had almost disappeared into darkness and rain before Flintlock, limping, went after him. Worried now, he stared at the sky and saw only blackness. The lighting had lessened and the thunder grew quiet but the wind was rising, blowing in sudden gusts that threw the downpour straight into his face and threatened to suck the air from his lungs.

  O’Hara in the lead, they made their way off the crag and followed the shingled slope, smoothed out by the passage of wagons, onto the flat and then into a deep gully that gave a little protection from the wind. After a hundred yards the gully opened up onto treed ground that was already muddy from the rain. Flintlock could see only a few yards in front of him and although he heard O’Hara’s breathing he was invisible in the murk.

  Then, suddenly, a revolver shot shattered into the night. Then a second, followed by a shriek of terror.

  “O’Hara?” Flintlock said, making a question of the name.

  “I don’t know. It’s somewhere ahead of us. I can’t see a damned thing.”

  Flintlock’s Colt was in his hand but in pitch-darkness, pounded by rain and bullied by the gusting wind, there would be little chance of using it. O’Hara felt the same way. He backtracked a couple of steps and said, “Sam, there’s shelter just ahead. We can’t do anything in this storm but wait until it passes.”

  Flintlock wanted to say, If it ever passes, but he kept quiet, deciding to save his breath. He followed O’Hara, his boots squelching in mud, and then bumped into the breed when he suddenly stopped. “Over here,” O’Hara said. He grabbed Flintlock by the front of his slicker and dragged him into a deep V-shaped depression just wide enough for two men to sit side by side. The break was roofed over by several fallen juniper and on top of those a layer of uprooted brush and other debris. The shelter, damp and muddy as it was, gave good protection from the wind and cut back the downpour to a few fat drops that ticked on the shoulders of their slickers.

  Flintlock gave O’Hara a sidelong glance. “Tell me again why we’re here, Injun.”

  “I sensed something. I felt danger.”

  “I’m crazy to be sitting here in a downpour with a wild half Apache when I should be asleep in bed,” Flintlock said. “That’s what I feel.”

  “Sam, I can’t shake the feeling that there is evil abroad tonight. Those shots . . . that terrible scream . . .”

  “A bobcat screams like that, especially when somebody takes a couple of shots at it.”

  “Who would be out hunting in this wilderness on a night like this?”

  “Only lunatics like us. Barnabas once told me that inside every man there are two wolves, one good, the other evil. O’Hara, your fear is feeding the evil wolf.”

  “I’m not afraid, Sam.”

  “Well, good for you, O’Hara, because I am,” Flintlock said. “Maybe a boogerman fired those shots, huh. Or maybe it was Jasper Orlov sending us a warning.”

  “Jasper Orlov couldn’t see us in the dark and in this weather,” O’Hara said.

  “Unless he can see better than we can, like an animal,” Flintlock said. “There’s just no telling what a boogerman can do.” Rainwater ran off the brim of his hat. “Well, I’m about to nod off, so keep watch, O’Hara. If Orlov comes for us with a meat cleaver in his hand, wake me up.”

  O’Hara made no answer. Strain showed on his face as he listened into the thunderstorm and a night that hissed and roared like an angry dragon.

  * * *

  For the second time that morning O’Hara shook Flintlock awake. “It’s light,” he said.

  Never at his best in the morning, Flintlock blinked, looked around him and said, “What the hell? It’s still raining.”

  “I know,” O’Hara said. “And the thunder is back.”

  “I need coffee. You got any coffee?”

  “No, I got none of that. Let’s go.”

  “Damn it, man. Give me a minute.” Flintlock fumbled into the pocket of his slicker and O’Hara passed him the makings and a rolled cigarette. “Made this while you were asleep,” he said. “I found the tobacco sack in your pocket.”

  O’Hara thumbed a match into flame and Flintlock said, “You find the lucifer in my pocket as well? I don’t recollect putting anything in there.”

  O’Hara, looking exhausted, managed a smile. “Sam, as long as I’ve known you, you’ve kept the makings in every pocket you got.”

  “Never have to do without that way,” Flintlock said, inhaling deeply on his cigarette. “Running out of tobacco is a bad thing for a smoking man who carries a gun. Makes him mean. Pat Garrett, the lawman who done for poor Billy, was like that. He was a dangerous man to be around before he had his first cigar and cup of coffee. ‘I like my coffee black as mortal sin and as bitter as wormwood,’ he once told me.” Flintlock shook his head. “Just as well he knew I could outdraw him so he left me alone.”

  “You’ve known all kinds, haven’t you, Sam?” O’Hara said, intently watching the cigarette burn away.

  “Most kinds,” Flintlock said. “You know what? I’ve never swapped lead with a Frenchman. When I was a boy me and Barnabas met French trappers all the time and we got along with them just fine.”

  “Got a big hole in your education there, Sam,” O’Hara said.

  “Or an Englishman either,” Flintlock said. He dropped his cigarette butt into the mud and it sizzled as he ground it out under his boot. “All right, O’Hara, let’s go find out what spooked you last night.” He looked out at the pounding rain. “Glad I didn’t bring the Hawken,” he said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Tobias Fynes looked out at the pounding rain. “A rotten day for business,” he said. “A man can’t make money on a morning like this.”

  Hogan Lord nodded, “Seems like that’s the case. The street is empty.” He poured coffee into his cup and replaced the pot on the silver tray on the banker’s desk. “Why did you send for me so early, Tobias?”

  “Because I have an idea, a way to end this Cully mansion affair without unnecessary bloodshed,” Fynes said. The morning air was still cool, but the fat man was already sweating. He’d nicked his throat shaving and there was a red bloodstain on his white celluloid collar. He took time to light his morning cigar and then said, “The poet is the key to my plan. He’s the man who can make it work.”

  “You mean Walt Whitman?” Lord said.

  “No. The other one. What’s his name?”

  “Roderick Chanley.”

  “Yes, him. I have to talk with Chanley. I think me and him can work together, sort things out between us.”

  “In what way?” Lord said. He looked puzzled.

  Fynes didn’t answer that question. Instead he said, “Did you see him?”

  “You know I did. I spoke to him and Whitman at the stage.”

  “But did you take a good look at him, Hogan?” Fynes said.

  “As much as I look at any other man, I guess.” The gunman sipped his coffee, then, “Tobias, I’m not catching your drift.”

  Fynes smiled in the superior way that infuriated Lord. “He’s threadbare, Hogan, just a hop, step and jump away from ragged. I studied the man closely. His ankle boots are so scuffed that no gentleman of means would wear them. His linen is yellow with age and the carpetbag he took from the stage is frayed, moth-eaten, so shabby it should have been thrown out years ago. He has neither watch chain nor signet ring, a sure sign of poverty. But in the unlikely event that he ever owned such, the pawn tickets for them will surely be in his pocket.”

  “You saw all that at a distance?” Lord said, surprised. “You have excellent eyesight, Tobias.”

  “No, I don’t, but I’m a banker and I see enough. It’s m
y job to sum up a man when he steps into this office hat in hand to beg a loan. I wouldn’t loan Roderick Chanley a nickel.” Fynes’s smug smile again stretched his moist, fleshy lips. “But I will give him five thousand dollars.”

  “I’ve never known you to talk in riddles, Tobias,” Lord said. “Makes it difficult for a man to figure out what you’re saying.”

  “No riddle, Hogan. It’s all very simple, really.” Fynes exhaled a cloud of blue cigar smoke. Then said, “When I lived back East and worked as a lowly junior banking clerk earning twenty dollars a week I met Chanley’s kind and I witnessed their desperation for income enough to live in a big city like Philadelphia or Boston and be thought of as upper middle class, just a step below the Brahmins, don’t you know.” As he said that last, Fynes’s face twisted into a mask of hatred. “I could never become one of them since my poverty was too obvious and because of the Chanleys of this world I was kept down, ignored, never allowed to rise above my station. God damn them, I hate them so, seed, breed and generation of them.”

  “But you’ll give one of them five thousand dollars,” Lord said.

  “For the house! For the house, Hogan. For the stinking house on the crag.”

  “It belongs to Lucy Cully, not Chanley.”

  “Until he marries her and she becomes his chattel. Then as her husband, Chanley can sell the place right out from under her.”

  Lord smiled. “So Tobias Fynes plans to turn marriage broker?”

  “Exactly.”

  “How will you play it?”

  “Play it . . . yes, an excellent choice of words, Hogan. I will visit the mansion and play the concerned friend, like a kindly Dutch uncle if you will, and persuade the so-much-in-love young couple to say their vows right away, on the spot. I will bring food and drink for the wedding feast and the parson . . . what the hell is the pulpit pounder’s name?”

  “The Reverend Uriah Reedy.”