A Time for Vultures Read online

  The man nodded.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Better. Stronger.”

  “Lie quietly for a while and then I’ll give you some wine,” the doctor said.

  “We must return to Happyville,” Fisher said. “My people may already be there.”

  “We’ll be there before nightfall,” le Strange said. “King, you’ll be welcomed by an adoring crowd as their savior.”

  “And that is my right,” Fisher said. “Using Charlie Brewster and his ruffians as my blunt instrument, soon Happyville will be a major city and manufacturing town. The railroads and industrialists will beat a path to my door, urging me to join the Gilded Age.” He grabbed le Strange’s hand. “Imagine it, Obadiah. We’ll do business with the likes of Cornelius Vanderbilt and J. P. Morgan and be richer than either of them.”

  Sarah Castle smiled. “King, I can tell you’re starting to feel better.”

  “Dreams of an empire always make me feel better,” Fisher said.

  “Here, drink this.” She passed Fisher a glass of wine. “Later, I’ll get some nutrient fluid into you.”

  “Vile swill,” Fisher said.

  The doctor nodded. “But necessary.”

  * * *

  Stronger, at least temporarily, King Fisher gazed through the polished windshield of the Helrun. Alarmed, he turned to le Strange, who sat behind him with Clem Jardine. “Obadiah, give me the field glasses.”

  Sarah Castle knew what was troubling him. “Brewster is not back yet, King. He’s probably slowed by the townspeople.”

  “Deserted,” Fisher said. “Happyville is deserted. Wait. I see Sam Flintlock. Maybe he can tell us what the hell is happening.”

  “King, Flintlock is no friend of yours,” Jardine said.

  “I know that. He badly wants to kill me since I gunned the rube with the knocked-up wife. Well, I plan to kill Mr. Flintlock at the first opportunity, but not today.”

  Rain spattered Helrun’s windshield and as the day faded, the sky looked like a gray wash on watercolor paper. Sarah Castle steered the vehicle into the livery. She’d pulled back her hair and tied it at the base of her neck with a scarlet cravat, a gift from an admirer, a British cavalry officer she’d met during her time in London. The woman was very pale, and her full lips had a bluish tinge. Helrun’s steering was heavy and her left arm pained her.

  “I’m going to talk with Flintlock,” King said. “Clem, come with me and stay close. I don’t trust him.”

  “Sure thing, boss. I’ll keep a close eye on him. Bounty hunters like Sam Flintlock are full of fancy moves.”

  To everyone’s surprise a sudden crash of thunder exploded in the dark sky and lightning shimmered.

  A moment later, Dr. Sarah Castle fell against the side of Helrun and said, “Obadiah, I’m having a heart attack.”

  “Damn you. Not now!” King Fisher rounded on the woman. His voice was venomous. “I’ve no time for this.”

  Obadiah Le Strange helped the unconscious woman to the stable floor. “King, you can’t choose your time to have a heart attack.”

  “Well, get it repaired or whatever the hell you do, Obadiah. I have much more important business that needs attention.”

  Le Strange cradled Sarah’s beautiful head in his arm and for the first time he realized that in King Fisher he’d created a monster.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Sam Flintlock handed O’Hara the Hawken and took the Winchester in return. The Hawken’s .50 ball could drop any man, but King Fisher was not just any man. He was a thing of metal and flesh and would be hard to kill.

  The persistent thunderstorm hung around and lightning lit up the sky as Flintlock stepped onto the boardwalk. He held the rifle across his body at belt buckle level and watched Fisher. Beside him, the thick mud of the street was giving Clem Jardine’s artificial leg problems and he walked hesitantly with a dragging gait.

  “That’s far enough, King,” Flintlock said. “We got something between us that needs settled. Might as well get it over with.”

  “Sam, will you leave me out in the rain?” Fisher said.

  “I sure will. You’re lowlife trash, King, and you always were. Nothing has changed.”

  Fisher’s face could not show any expression, but his body stiffened. “I’ve killed men for less than that.”

  “Much less. Yeah, I know.”

  “We’ve become enemies because of a damned rube,” Fisher said. “Man, let bygones be bygones.”

  Thunder rolled, imperious and uncaring, and lightning gouged the sky like a roweled spur along the flank of a black horse. Somewhere, a stray dog barked, catching the scent of hungry coyotes prowling the flat.

  King Fisher was rattled, and Flintlock decided to rattle him some more. “Got news for you, King.”

  Fisher was close to a draw and Flintlock knew it. His finger was inside the Winchester’s trigger guard and he’d taken up an eighth of an inch of slack. There was no going back from this. King Fisher must not be allowed to live, so either he or Flintlock must die right there in the street, in the rain, and in the falling darkness. If he’d been a gambling man, he’d give odds of ten to one against himself. But probably his chances of killing Fisher were one in a hundred.

  “What news do you have for me, Sam?” Fisher said.

  “All the people who lived in this town are dead of the smallpox.”

  “You’re a damned liar. Where is Charlie Brewster?”

  “Headed for Old Mexico. He doesn’t like you much, King.”

  Sweat broke out on Fisher’s forehead. He swayed on his feet and his breathing came in short, sharp bursts. “I’m . . . I’m going to . . . going to kill you . . .”

  He dropped heavily to the ground and sat in the mud.

  Footsteps squelched behind him and he turned his head. “Le Strange, help me. Bad . . . bad blood . . .”

  His face like stone, Le Strange said, “Sarah is dead. She died in pain.”

  “Help me,” Fisher said. “Oh my God, she didn’t . . . didn’t . . .”

  “Give you the transfusion, King. No, she didn’t,” le Strange said. “The wine was what helped you feel better.”

  “Bitch!” Fisher screamed. He glared at le Strange. “Get one of the whores. Use her blood. Save me, le Strange.”

  “Rose Flood died because of you, King,” le Strange said. “Sarah wanted to save the woman and her baby, but you killed them both. She could not forgive that.”

  “Damn you!” Fisher said. “You knew! You knew the woman didn’t transfer her blood to me.”

  “I didn’t know for certain, but I suspected it,” le Strange said.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because I’d come to realize that I’d created a monster, and it was up to me to destroy it.”

  “No, that’s not how it works, Obadiah. In King Fisher’s world the creation destroys the creator.”

  Two things happened very quickly.

  Fisher’s mechanical arm blurred as he drew and fired. Flintlock saw the movement and he immediately triggered the Winchester.

  Fisher’s bullet hit le Strange high in the chest. A split second later, the .44-40 rifle round slammed into Fisher’s right shoulder. The man screamed in pain and rage and tried to bring up his Colt. but he was done for. Flintlock’s bullet had shattered the wires and copper tendons of Fisher’s arm and he could not lift his gun. The revolver fell from his convulsing fingers and splashed into the mud.

  “Damn you, Flintlock!” Fisher yelled. “Don’t shoot any more. My life is in danger and you must save me.” He tried to struggle to his feet, but Sam Flintlock, never the most merciful of men in a gunfight, ignored his plea and pumped two bullets into him.

  The first round staggered Fisher, but he rode the second into hell.

  There has been much speculation as to what King Fisher saw in the moment of his death. It is said his shriek of fear was the loudest that ever came from a man’s throat. Did he scream when he caught his first sight of the gat
es of hell? Like all of the West’s greatest mysteries, speculation is useless because we will never know the answer.

  What is certain is that Fisher’s primitive howl of terror saved Sam Flintlock’s life.

  Stunned by the death of le Strange, Clem Jardine had been slow to react, but Fisher’s scream galvanized him into action. He drew and fired at Flintlock.

  It would have been an accurate, perhaps killing shot, had not Lizzie Doulan cried out, “No!” and thrown her body in front of Flintlock. Jardine’s bullet crashed into her chest just under her right armpit. She was a thin girl, and the .45 exited just above her left breast, after destroying a massive amount of tissue and bone.

  Flintlock held her as she sank to the boardwalk. To his right, he heard the bark of O’Hara’s Colt—three shots, cadenced but very fast. Jardine was hit twice, both shots to the torso, and he fell facedown in the mud. His metal leg jerked for a few moments and then was still.

  For a long while Happyville lay in hollow silence, the only sound the soft hiss of the rain and Lizzie Doulan’s even softer breathing.

  Biddy kneeled beside her and said, “Why did you do such a stupid thing?”

  Lizzie smiled. “Flintlock’s life is more worthy than mine.”

  “Some people would argue on that point.” He brushed a tumbled wisp of hair off her forehead.

  She turned her head and looked at O’Hara loading fresh shells into his Colt. “Come talk to me, Indian.”

  O’Hara holstered his gun and kneeled beside her. “What do you want from me?”

  Lizzie’s frail hand reached out and bunched in O’Hara’s shirt front. “Am I dying?”

  “No. You’re not dying,” Biddy said. “I’m going to take good care of you.”

  “Woman, don’t close your eyes,” O’Hara said. “Hold my hand and keep holding even when you’ve gone away from me. Look around you. What do you see?”

  “The sky. I see the sky.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “It’s beautiful. The sky is beautiful. More beautiful than I’ve ever seen it . . . shining like gold.”

  The sky was black, the clouds in constant movement as though they boiled in a cooking pot, but O’Hara seemed satisfied with Lizzie’s answer.

  “You sacrificed your life for another, and this is good,” he said. “I think your time has come.”

  “After all these years—decades and centuries—God will let me die? Oh say it is so, O’Hara.”

  “It is so. Your eyes now see only beauty. The long darkness and all the ugly memories are gone.”

  “Tell me how to die, O’Hara,” Lizzie said. “Show me the way.”

  O’Hara smiled. “Woman, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives in a different way. The Great Spirit has answered your prayers and rewarded your suffering.” He gently squeezed Lizzie’s hand. “You have sung your death song and now you must die like a hero going home.”

  A trickle of blood ran from the corner of her mouth, but her smile was sweet. “Yes, I’m going home.”

  Lizzie closed her eyes and died and O’Hara held her hand for a long time.

  * * *

  Blanche Jardine kneeled in the mud beside the body of her dead husband. She turned her face mask to the rain and had no need for the bottled tears she kept in the pocket of her dress. She refused to leave Happyville with Flintlock and the others and was still there when the town burned.

  No one ever knew what became of her.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Happyville was a town of the dead.

  Flintlock and the others buried Lizzie Doulan in the cemetery, removed the army payroll from Helrun, and carried the remaining bodies, including King Fisher’s withered corpse, into the livery stable that was then set on fire.

  As they rode away from the town, one of the dead guards’ mounts pressed into service as a packhorse, Flintlock looked back at the burning stable and said, “The fire is spreading.”

  “The best thing that could happen,” Biddy said, drawing rein. “I hope the whole sorry place goes up.”

  Despite occasional rains, Western towns were tinder dry and fires quickly spread. Happyville was destined to burn down to its foundations, its ashes blown away by the prairie winds until no sign of the town or the people who lived and died there remained.

  * * *

  After three days of westward travel across the Great Plains, Flintlock and the others crossed the Pecos. It was only when they camped the following night that the subject of the army payroll was broached.

  “What are we going to do with it, Flintlock?” Biddy said. “Thirty thousand dollars is a pile of money.”

  Smoothing her stocking over a shapely thigh, Margie said, “Split five ways that’s . . . that’s . . . well, it’s a whole lot of money.”

  “Six thousand dollars, Margie,” Jane Feehan said.

  “Right. I told you it was a lot of money,” Margie said.

  “We give it back, I guess,” Flintlock said.

  Biddy said, “The army has plenty of money and we’re poor people. We need six thousand dollars more than the soldier boys do.” She touched her breast. “What does the Indian say, Flintlock?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t asked him.”

  “Where is he? Skulking around somewhere as usual?”

  Flintlock nodded. “O’Hara is out there in the dark. He says money attracts outlaws like the smell of rotten meat attracts rats.” He tossed a stick onto the fire. “I think maybe we should ride deeper into the timber country, maybe even cross the border into the New Mexico Territory. I mean, get the money and ourselves the hell out of Texas.”

  “We’ve got no pressing business anywhere,” Margie said. “I guess New Mexico is as good a place as any . . . just so long as the payroll goes with us.”

  Jane Feehan said, “You’re such a whore, Margie.”

  “Takes one to know one, Jane.”

  Flintlock said, “I’ll study on this payroll thing for a spell.” He rose to his feet and took up the Hawken. “It’s time to take a look around anyway.”

  “In the dark?” Biddy said. “You’re as bad as the Indian.”

  “O’Hara has a nose for danger. He can smell it.”

  “Like outlaws smell money,” Biddy said.

  “Something like that.” Flintlock stepped out of the firelight, halted among a stand of wild oaks, and let his eyes become accustomed to the darkness. Behind him, he heard Margie Tott say something and it must have been funny because the other two women laughed.

  He stepped deeper into the trees, angry that money could be such a temptation to a man. Like all bounty hunters, he had a fair amount of dealings with lawmen and for the most part he admired them, especially the forty-dollar-a-month cow town marshals who had to deal with young men wilder, a lot more dangerous, and harder to handle than the steers they drove. In his earlier years, Flintlock had stepped lightly onto the lawless side when times were hard, but for the most part he strived to stay on the straight and narrow.

  But thirty thousand dollars in Yankee money was a temptation to be reckoned with, an enticement for any man.

  Old Barnabas stood in a clearing gazing at the stars with a brass telescope as big around as a cannon barrel. Flintlock ignored him and was about to turn and walk back to the fire when the old mountain man’s voice stopped him. “You ever seen the moon through a telescope, Sammy?”

  “Can’t say as I have.”

  “Well, you ain’t seeing it now. Stargazing is for smart folks and not fer the likes of you. On your way to find your ma, are ye?”

  “That’s the general idea,” Flintlock said.

  “You-know-who says you done well in Happyville, added considerable to the slaughter, you did. He’s so pleased he’s got advice fer you about the army payroll.”

  “I don’t want his advice,” Flintlock said. Then, racked with doubt as he was, he said, “What is it anyway
?”

  “Mars, now that’s an interesting planet,” Barnabas said. “It’s got canals, or so some Italian feller says, but I can’t see them. And neither can you because I’m not letting you look because you’re an idiot.”

  “Then I’ll be on my way, Barnabas. As always it’s been a pleasure to talk with you.”

  “Wait, don’t you want the advice from Himself, Sammy?”

  Flintlock hesitated, then said, “All right, Go ahead.”

  “Well, he said, ‘Tell the idiot—’”

  “That’s it. I’m out of here,” Flintlock said.

  “All right, all right. I’ll just give you the gist of it. Does that set nice with you, Sam?”

  “Let me hear it,” Flintlock said.

  “He says you should gun the three women and the half-breed and keep the army money for yourself. Spend it all on whores and whiskey, mind you, and when the money is all gone and you’re sick and broke, blow your brains out with the Hawken.”

  “Old Scratch never gives good, friendly advice, does he?” Flintlock said, smiling.

  “That’s because he ain’t good and he ain’t your friend.”

  “And what do you think, Barnabas?”

  “Keep the money for yourself and go find your ma,” the old man said. “Later you could maybe buy a ranch and settle down with a good woman, if any will have you. That’s my advice, but you won’t take it because you’re an idiot. Now I got to go. I’m headed for Italy. I need to talk to that Italian feller about the canals on Mars.” Barnabas lifted his telescope and walked into the darkness.

  Flintlock called after him, “You’ll scare the wits out of the Italian. I mean, you being dead an’ all.”

  “Serve him right. I don’t like Italians. Hell, I don’t like anybody.” Barnabas vanished in the gloom.

  Flintlock looked up at the night sky, but he couldn’t find Mars or its canals . . . and he saw no answer to his problem.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  O’Hara shook Sam Flintlock awake and immediately made a hushing motion, his forefinger to his lips. Leaning close, he whispered in Flintlock’s ear, “Five. On foot.”

  The fire had burned down to a few cinders and spread little light. Flintlock nodded and rose to his feet. He took up his Winchester and they stepped on cat feet into the cover of the wild oaks.