Hell's Gate Read online

“I’ll take Lucy to Texas where no one knows her,” O’Hara said. “I can get her help there. And Chanley was not Lucy’s lover. He never was her lover.”

  “You could have fooled me. What was he, then?”

  “Lucy had always kept Chanley at arm’s length, as though there was something about him she didn’t trust, something false and devious.”

  Flintlock let that go. He had lost control of the situation and it troubled him.

  “O’Hara,” he said, “I have to ask you a question—are you in love with Lucy Cully?”

  It took a few moments of thought before O’Hara answered, and finally he said, “Yes, I think maybe I am.”

  “You’re either in love or you’re not. There are no maybes about it.”

  “Have you ever been in love, Sam Flintlock?”

  “No. I haven’t. I never saw my way clear to make that kind of commitment. Of course, I’ve loved a whore a time or two but only for an hour or an evening.”

  “Then you’re in no position to tell me what love is,” O’Hara said.

  “No, I guess I’m not,” Flintlock said. “But I’m still qualified to offer you advice as a friend.”

  The tall, loose-geared form of Marshal Slim Hart walking into the stable ended any further conversation. “I’ve been looking all over for you, Flintlock,” he said. “I thought maybe you’d skedaddled and I would have taken that hard.”

  “No, I’ve been right here, Marshal,” Flintlock said. Then, a little spike of meanness in him, “I wanted to see your big happy smile just one more time.”

  “Well, that’s mighty strange because I never smile and I ain’t never happy.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” Flintlock said. “Was it a woman?”

  “No, it’s the croup,” Hart said. “Now stand up and hear this.” Flintlock got to his feet and the marshal said, “I’ve been studying on things, Flintlock, and I decided you acted in self-defense this morning.”

  “Glad to hear that, Marshal,” Flintlock said.

  “If I’d thought otherwise I’d have hung you. Tobias Fynes told me he wanted you hung, said you stole money from him at gunpoint. Is that true?”

  “No, it’s a lie. Fynes owed me five hundred dollars in wages and refused to pay. I stated my case and convinced him otherwise.”

  “I figured it was something like that,” Hart said. “I don’t like that Fynes ranny and when I don’t like a man bad things tend to happen to him. But only when I’m wearing a badge, you understand.”

  Flintlock smiled. “I’m glad you like me.”

  “No, I don’t like you either. I want you out of my town, Flintlock, like now, this very minute. Instanter. Compre?”

  “I catch your drift, Marshal. I’ll be riding.”

  “And take the Apache with you. Hell, he’s gonna murder us all in our beds.”

  “His name is O’Hara and he’s only half Apache,” Flintlock said.

  “What’s the other half?”

  “Irish.”

  “One’s as bad as the other,” Hart said.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  “Sam, I don’t need you to come with me,” O’Hara said. “You’ve got to head for the Painted Desert country and find you ma.”

  “Seems like the natural thing to do is ride with you a spell longer,” Flintlock said. “We’ll get this love thing out of the way and then point our horses west again.”

  “Sam, I may not be riding with you ever,” O’Hara said. “I meant what I said about taking Lucy to Texas. Don’t try to stop me.”

  “Stop you? Hell, I’m only along for the ride.” Flintlock glanced at the sky. “Rain’s gone but it will be dark in a couple of hours. We’d best cross the mesa while it’s still light enough to see.”

  “Sam, I won’t change my mind about Lucy,” O’Hara said.

  “And I wouldn’t dream of changing it for you,” Flintlock said. “Trust me.”

  O’Hara’s scowl signaled that the last man on earth he’d trust that day was Sam Flintlock.

  A mile before they reached the mesa a wagon drove toward them and O’Hara with his excellent eyesight said, “Tanner’s coming, Sam. Looks like he’s got Walt Whitman and Rory O’Neill with him.”

  “Do you see Lucy?” Flintlock said.

  O’Hara shook his head. “No, I don’t. She isn’t with them.”

  “I thought there was a chance she might come into town and fess up to the murder of Roderick Chanley,” Flintlock said.

  O’Hara turned in the saddle and said, “Did you really think that, Sam?”

  Flintlock smiled. “No, I guess I didn’t.”

  “Lucy is fessing up to nothing, not now, not later,” O’Hara said. “At the moment she is not in her right mind and there’s an end to it.”

  Flintlock said, “Whatever you say, O’Hara.” He frowned, his thoughts dark. “Whatever you say.”

  John Tanner reined in his team and waited until Flintlock and O’Hara rode alongside the wagon. “Howdy, boys,” he said. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  O’Neill, smiled, raised his bowler hat but said nothing. Whitman sat in the back of the wagon and he too was silent, as though what had happened had robbed him and O’Neill of speech.

  “Tanner, I saw you leave the house,” O’Hara said. “You should be in Mansion Creek by now.”

  “I didn’t see you,” Tanner said.

  “No, you didn’t,” O’Hara said.

  Tanner smiled. “I bet you can move through this country like an Apache when you need to, you being a breed an’ all.”

  “Yes, I can,” O’Hara said.

  Tanner waited to see if there was more talk forthcoming from O’Hara and when no words came he said, “We’re making poor time because as we reached the mesa Mr. Whitman took real poorly. We had to stop for a spell until he felt he could go on.” Tanner managed to look sympathetic. “A man gets thrown around pretty bad in the back of a wagon, especially in this country. Where are you boys headed?”

  O’Hara held back, but Flintlock said, “We want to talk with Lucy Cully.”

  Suddenly Whitman became animated. Turning his head he said, “What will you say to her, Flintlock?”

  Flintlock kneed the buckskin closer to Whitman. “I don’t rightly know,” he said. “Have you any suggestions?”

  “No, I have none. The ravens have all gone,” Whitman said. “Did you know that?”

  “No, I didn’t,” Flintlock said.

  “The ravens were afraid and they flew away,” Whitman said. “I think they know something terrible is coming . . . fire, death, the end of everything. I think Lucy knows it’s the end. I looked into her eyes and they expressed more than all the print I have read in my life.”

  O’Hara heard this and said, louder than he usually talked, “I’m taking Lucy away from here, old man. I’m taking her to Texas where she will get well again.”

  Whitman slowly shook his head and said, “Texas won’t cure what ails her. Destroy the house, burn it to the ground, and perhaps she’ll get well again.” He turned and said, “Please drive on, Mr. Tanner. The hour is getting late and we must reach the town before dark.”

  As the wagon lurched into motion, O’Neill said, “Good luck, O’Hara. Do what you have to do.” The big prizefighter looked straight ahead and said no more.

  * * *

  Flintlock and O’Hara’s route across the mesa was uneventful except for a bobcat that snarled as they passed and then watched them for a few moments before it turned tail and bounded into the brush.

  In the fading daylight the house at the narrow point of the crag still looked the same, but the ravens were gone and in their place was a blazing sky, ribboned with bands of scarlet and jade. Up there on the crag the wind drove hard from the north and this late in the fall it had a knife edge.

  Flintlock drew rein and said, “O’Hara, it looks like there’s nobody to home.”

  “It’s still early,” O’Hara said. “Lucy hasn’t lit the lamps yet.”

  Flintlock swung out of
the saddle and stepped to the front door. He tried the handle. “Locked,” he said. “Do we know she’s in there?”

  “Of course she’s in there,” O’Hara said. “Where else would she be?”

  Flintlock wanted to say, Hopefully smashed on the rocks at the foot of the crag, but held his tongue.

  “We’ll go round the back and try the door there,” O’Hara said. “She usually leaves it open to cool the kitchen.”

  But it too was locked, probably bolted, and its thick oak presented a formidable barrier.

  After taking a step back, Flintlock looked up at the house—in the waning light it looked like a black mountain set to fall on him. Suddenly dizzy, he looked down at his feet and rubbed the crick out of the back of his neck.

  “We’ll go round the front and pound on the door,” O’Hara said. “Maybe Lucy is taking a nap.”

  “Poor thing,” Flintlock said. O’Hara looked at him sharply but his face was expressionless.

  Banging on the door brought no response, nor did O’Hara’s shouts of, “Lucy, let us in!” But Flintlock thought he caught a fleeting glimpse of a pale face at one of the higher windows. He told this to O’Hara, who said, “Yes, she’s in there, all right. We may have to break down the front door.”

  “With what?” Flintlock said. “That’s a Yankee door, three inches of solid oak with a cast-iron lock and behind it a steel bolt that’s near as big as a cannon barrel. And I’d guess the back door is the same only stronger. The place is a fortress.”

  O’Hara looked up at the house, his mind working. “We’ll wait, Sam. She’ll come down soon.”

  “Suppose she comes down never,” Flintlock said. “What then?”

  “Sooner or later she’ll run out of grub,” O’Hara said.

  “How sooner or later?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We can’t camp here until then.”

  “It won’t be too long, Sam.”

  “I’m going to try the windows,” Flintlock said. “There’s got to be a way to get in there.”

  But all the ground-floor windows were securely locked from the inside and Flintlock, irritated, looked around for a rock.

  Horrified, O’Hara saw him heft a baseball-sized rock in his hand and ready himself for a throw. “Wait, stop!” he said. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m gonna chuck this rock through a window,” Flintlock said. “It’s the only way I can get one open enough for us to climb through.”

  “No, not yet,” O’Hara said. “Lucy knows we’re here. Wait a spell.”

  Flintlock looked around at the crowding darkness. “Until first light, O’Hara,” he said. “If she ain’t down by then I’m riding.”

  O’Hara laid his hand on Flintlock’s shoulder, a thing he’d never done before. “Then so be it, my old friend,” he said.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Jeptha Spunner had not slept all night, excitement about his maiden flight in the steam balloon keeping him wide awake, counting the minutes and hours until daybreak. The yellow envelope was fully inflated and tugged on its anchoring ropes like a spirited steed fighting the bit. The burner was performing well, as was the nitrogen cylinder, and the experimental small steam engine, a wonder of modern engineering, had proved itself stable and reliable and when the time came would be ready to turn a propeller shaft. Adding to Spunner’s elation was that the wind still blew strong from the north. His intention, hatched in the small hours of the morning, was to fly as low as he could over Mansion Creek and let the folks see for themselves the miracle in the sky. Although the engine did not drive anything at present, it would prove to the doubters that steam could be used to power flying machines.

  Just before dawn, Spunner cast off the anchors and added more fuel to the burner. The yellow balloon lifted slowly, just a few feet at a time, still well below the strong upper air currents. When the long night began to gray into morning the balloon soared above the trees, and higher still until it met the concentrated force of the north wind and became its willing slave.

  But then a crisis, and one that Spunner had not expected.

  The gondola was proving to be unstable and rocked like a rowboat in a choppy sea. Maybe because it was a rowboat! Jeptha Spunner felt a spike of panic as he realized that he’d made a mistake. Without a propeller to drive it forward and add stability, the lightened ten-foot boat hanging underneath the envelope was completely at the mercy of a capricious wind. Spunner held on for grim life as the bucking gondola scudded across the sky at what seemed breakneck speed . . . and then disaster. Fire!

  The steam engine’s bolts had ripped free of their timber platform and tumbled across the bottom of the boat, spilling the glowing coals of the furnace everywhere. At first it looked to Spunner that the contents of the furnace would harmlessly burn away to cinders, but that proved not to be the case. The dry wood at the bottom of the boat smoldered and then, fanned by the wind, burst into flame in a dozen different places. Within minutes the yellow balloon went into a shallow death dive and dragged a plume of purple smoke across the fair face of the morning sky . . .

  * * *

  Flintlock and O’Hara spent an uncomfortable night in the stable behind the house. As the dawn began to banish the shadows of the night there was still no sign of Lucy Cully.

  Irritated as all hell, Flintlock saddled both horses, led them to a patch of grass and then followed O’Hara to the front of the house.

  O’Hara stepped back far enough so he could take in the building from its ground floor to the peak of the roof and then, cupped hands to his mouth, he yelled, “Luuucy!”

  Long moments passed, grew into several minutes. The house was silhouetted against a lemon sky and stood alone, a lost, doomed structure out of place and time. Its tall, thin Gothic lines harkened back hundreds of years, drawing its inspiration from the age of cathedrals that ended with the Black Death, after which the surviving peoples of Europe just didn’t give a damn for the churches that had failed them. Perhaps, as some said, the Cully house was cursed from its very beginnings.

  “O’Hara,” Flintlock said. He pointed. “Look up there.”

  Lucy Cully was at the topmost level of the house where a few attic rooms opened up onto narrow galleries that were constructed of black iron and served no useful purpose. Lucy, precariously perched between earth and sky, stood on one of those frail galleries and gazed down at Flintlock and O’Hara. Her face was very pale and she wore a nightdress of some gauzy material that the rude north wind shaped to her slim body.

  “Lucy, let us in,” O’Hara yelled, his head bent back about as far as it could go. “We need to talk, Lucy. Open the door.”

  The girl’s voice came back very faint, “Go away. I don’t want to talk with anybody. You can talk with my fiancé. His name is Roderick and he’s downstairs somewhere writing a poem.”

  “Lucy, open the door,” O’Hara yelled. “I have something to tell you.”

  “Leave me and leave my house,” the girl said. “Go away. I don’t know you.”

  “Lucy . . . please . . .” O’Hara said in a normal tone of voice but one that was filled with despair.

  “O’Hara, let’s go,” Flintlock said. “There’s nothing we can do here.”

  Then, looking beyond O’Hara, his eyes grew wide. “Oh my God,” he said.

  * * *

  The envelope was burning, the gondola in flames, and the balloon, like a runaway horse, was out of control. The north wind hurtled Spunner’s creation toward the crag where the tall house stood and with no way to steer he knew his death was close. But as flames licked around him, already blackening his face and hands, he had a choice in the matter . . . he could choose the way he died. In pain and already suffering terribly he chose the rocks below to the fire above. Spunner jumped, and his tormented body cartwheeled through the thin morning air and after long seconds smashed into boulders of stone that broke him into pieces and mercifully killed him instantly.

  * * *

  Trailing a plume o
f smoke, what was left of the balloon smashed into the front of the Cully house like a fiery meteorite. The wooden fabric of the house, tinder dry after years of exposure to the merciless sun, immediately burst into flame that eagerly engulfed the upper stories.

  Flintlock had time to call out, “Lucy!” before the disaster struck. Then, as smoke and fire rose from the house, he yelled, “O’Hara, no!”

  Lucy had vanished from the balcony as the relentless fire began to take hold and O’Hara ran to one of the front windows, flaming debris already raining down on him. O’Hara used the butt of his Colt to smash out the diamond-shaped panes until he had room enough to insert his arm to unfasten the window catch. Acrid smoke billowed out of the now-open window but O’Hara ignored the danger and began to scramble inside.

  Flintlock sprinted to the window. “O’Hara, don’t go in there,” he said. He grabbed the back of the man’s vest. “The whole damned building is on fire.”

  O’Hara ignored that and wrenched away from Flintlock’s grasp. He vanished into the smoke, and Flintlock retreated from the intense heat and stood helplessly watching the place burn as ash fell around him like black rain. The panicked horses galloped from the crag and didn’t stop running until they put safe distance between themselves and the house.

  The acrid smell of smoke dominated the morning and the feral roar of the fire was louder than Flintlock had ever imagined. The house burned like an Independence Day bonfire set with kerosene. Bright yellow and red flames had assumed the shape of a pillar of fire and a column of smoke rose into the air only to be tied up in bows by the north wind. All over the house windows blew out and showered shards of hot glass onto the stone top of the crag.

  Flintlock watched the Cully house burn and feared for O’Hara’s life. Nothing could live in such an inferno. But then a miracle of sorts. The front door slammed open and through a tunnel of fire and smoke O’Hara staggered outside and collapsed. Flintlock ran to him, picked up O’Hara’s slim body in his arms and through a whirlwind of soot, smoke and sparks put a distance between him and the inferno. He laid O’Hara on a small, grassy area and looked him over. He was hurt bad. The skin of his face and hands was pink in color, very swollen and covered in weeping blisters. When Flintlock touched O’Hara’s face or hands the man groaned in pain.