Hell's Gate Read online

  “Indeed, but I see no earthly reason why you should be otherwise,” Fynes said.

  “It’s the unearthly reasons for being dead that worry me,” Flintlock said.

  Fynes was insistent. “Will you take the job? Speak up now, be blunt and don’t shilly-shally. I can’t abide a man who dawdles.”

  “Since it’s the only offer we’ve had today, yeah, we’ll take the job,” Flintlock said.

  Lucy Cully smiled. “Oh, thank you, Sam. I feel safer already.”

  That last obviously didn’t set well with Fynes. He scowled and said, “You two might as well ride out to the Cully mansion now. Just follow the wagon road west for a couple of miles and you’ll find it. The road cuts through a stand of ponderosa pine and beyond that is a mesa of no great height. The house sits atop the rock crag to the north.”

  “My grandfather called the crag the Ravens’ Nest and it is reached by a switchback trail that climbs that neighboring mesa,” Lucy said. She smiled. “Getting to the house is not quite as difficult as it sounds. The plateau is not very high, much lower than the crag, and the switchback trail is wide and sits on a solid foundation.”

  “I’m sure the boys will find their way,” Fynes said. “My dear, to men like these it’s just another robbers’ roost in the wilderness.” Then to Flintlock, “You may bed down in the house tonight, but your week will not start until tomorrow when a wagon will arrive bringing your supplies.” He waved a hand like shooing a fly. “Our business is concluded for the moment and you may go.”

  Flintlock, finding no reason to linger, stood and O’Hara followed him out of the door into the street.

  Tobias Fynes watched them leave, then said, “Lucy, those are a couple of desperadoes and low-down, but they will help you make up your mind.”

  “I’m sure they will, Mr. Fynes,” the girl said. “And now we must talk. I have something to say that will surprise you.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Bitch took me by surprise. She’s decided to spend the week in the house with Flintlock and the breed,” Tobias Fynes said. “Now, why in the hell would she do that?”

  “Maybe she doesn’t trust you, Tobias,” Hogan Lord said.

  Fynes’s great weight made his office chair creak in protest as he sat back and considered what the gunman had just said. Finally, he said, “No, that’s out of the question. Of course she trusts me, I’ve no doubt about that. But Lucy very much wants to marry her puny, puking poet and play happy honeymooners in grandpappy’s house.” Fynes’s fleshy lips widened in a grin that was not pleasant. “I have other honeymoon plans for that little lady.”

  “What about the house?” Lord said.

  “How do you mean?” Fynes said.

  “Do you think it’s really haunted?”

  “Hell, no, it’s not haunted. The story I told her about the couple who fled the place was a big windy to help make her feel uneasy. No one has lived in the house since old Mechan Cully died so tragically. But when the two latest custodians are found dead, and I mean Flintlock and the breed, Lucy will be convinced the place is cursed and she’ll be glad to sell it to me for any price. Naturally, I’ll be very sympathetic and more than willing to take it off her hands for say, ten cents on the dollar, since the mansion is evil and must be torn down.”

  “And that’s when we’ll find the treasure map. If such even exists. Old Jamie MacDonald swore to Nathan Poteet and me that there is no map.”

  “I never liked that damned Scotsman, too independent-minded by half,” Fynes said. “I thought either old Mechan had given MacDonald the map or told him exactly where it was. You didn’t find it in his cabin so that means it must be in the Cully house, as I first suspected. He was lying to you, Hogan. MacDonald knew where the map was hidden. It’s in the house somewhere, has to be. Before he died, old Mechan told me he’d hidden the map where I wouldn’t find it and dying men don’t lie.”

  “Maybe he’d have told you exactly where it was but you went too far with the torture, Mr. Fynes, all that burning and cutting. You killed the old man too soon.”

  The banker said, “How the hell did I know he was going to turn up his toes so easily? But, looking back, I do admit it was a miscalculation on my part.”

  Lord shrugged. “He was a frail old man with a bad ticker.” The gunman locked eyes with Fynes. “The one and only time I was at the big house I saw something.”

  Fynes showed surprise. “Saw something?”

  “At an upstairs window. It was looking down at me and Nathan Poteet.”

  “What was it?”

  “I don’t know. I saw a pale face and then it was gone.”

  “Man or a woman?”

  “I don’t know. I only saw it for a split second.”

  Fynes grinned. He rose from his chair and stepped to the drinks trolley and poured bourbon into a couple of glasses. He handed one to Lord and said, “The wind blows hard up there on the crag. You saw a curtain move.”

  Hogan Lord drained his glass and shuddered. Then he said, “The place has all those windows and turrets and spires and even in sunlight it looks dark. The house was old when Mechan bought it, so who knows what took place within its walls back in the day?”

  “Bloody murders, you mean?”

  “As I said, who knows?”

  Tobias Fynes leaned over the gunman and poured more whiskey into his glass. It was a small movement but he wheezed from the effort. The banker grinned, his pouched eyes alight, and said, “This is perfect, Hogan, just perfect. If the place makes you afraid, imagine what it will do to Lucy Cully and her custodians.”

  “It didn’t scare me and it won’t scare Sam Flintlock or the breed,” Lord said. “Those two have been up the trail and back again and they don’t scare worth a damn.”

  Fynes said, “If we can send Lucy fleeing out of the house screaming, it will be enough. And there opens up another tantalizing possibility.”

  “What’s that?” said Lord, a handsome man wearing expensive broadcloth and clean linen. He looked more like a prosperous big-city businessman than a hired gun.

  “Although I very much want her for my own enjoyment, Lucy Cully could die suddenly,” Fynes said. “Then I’ll spread the word that she was raped and murdered by the known gunman, outlaw and bounty hunter Sam Flintlock and his savage accomplice. Afterward, I’ll be most happy to report that both culprits were later killed by my gallant associate Hogan Lord.”

  “I don’t kill women,” Lord said. “That’s a line I don’t step over, Tobias.”

  “And you won’t have to, my dear Hogan. You and Nathan Poteet take care of Flintlock and the O’Hara breed and I’ll do what needs to be done to the girl. If things don’t work out the way I hope, this will be a foolproof option.”

  Lord couldn’t hide his disgust. “You’d murder the girl?”

  Fynes spread his hands and shrugged. “Why not? She’s of little account after all and can only render me some passing pleasure. Now when I think about it, I wouldn’t want to keep her. There’s nothing she can give me that I can’t buy from a two-dollar whore.”

  Hogan Lord decided he didn’t want any more of Fynes’s whiskey and he needed to get away from the fat man’s fetid odor and breathe fresh air again. He rose from his chair and said, “I’ll be around when you need me, Tobias.”

  The gunman stepped to the door but Fynes’s voice, smooth as oil on water, stopped him.

  “Hogan, there can be no bleeding hearts in this great venture. There is too much at stake, a fortune in gold, no less. You’re either with me all the way or not at all. Do I make myself clear?”

  “While you’re paying my wages you can count on me,” Lord said, his face stiff. “I ride for the brand.”

  Fynes nodded, sat back in his chair and talked over his steepled fingers. “And you can count on me, Hogan . . . to make you a very rich man.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Oh, Mr. Flintlock! Can I speak with you for a minute?”

  Sam Flintlock tightened his saddle cinch
and turned to look out the livery door. Lucy Cully stood in the sunlight with a carpetbag at her feet. She wore a plain blue dress with white collar and cuffs that made her look like a fourteen-year-old runaway from an orphanage.

  “What can I do for you, Miss Cully?” Flintlock said. He smiled. “And I told you to call me Sam.”

  “Sam . . . you still intend to stay at the house tonight?” Lucy said.

  “That’s where me and O’Hara are headed,” Flintlock said. “Right at the moment we have nowhere else to bed down.”

  “I want to come with you,” the girl said.

  “Do you have a horse?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Then you can’t come with us,” Flintlock said.

  “Sam, she can ride behind me,” O’Hara said.

  “Miss Lucy, I don’t trust your lawyer,” Flintlock said. “He’s got sneaky eyes and away of talking that worries me. I reckon where we’re going could turn dangerous almighty sudden. You stay right here in town and do some knitting and we’ll chase away the boogermen for you. After that, why, you and your new husband can move right in, cozy as can be, and he can write all the poetry he wants.”

  Lucy tilted her little chin at a stubborn angle. “May I remind you, sir, that Cully mansion is mine and I can go there anytime I want, and that as of tomorrow you and Mr. O’Hara are my employees.” Her cheeks flushed, the girl said, “And I want to make it abundantly clear that I don’t knit and never will.”

  The livery stable owner, a bearded man named Lawson, had been listening to this exchange. Now he stepped out of the stable and said to Lucy, “Can you ride, young lady?”

  “I ride very well,” the girl said.

  Lawson nodded. “Good. Then I got a nice grulla mare you can rent. She’s only half broke but a good rider can handle her.”

  Flintlock said, “She ain’t riding a half-broke pony, not where we’re going.” He glared at O’Hara as though he were the cause of the problem. “All right, since you seem so keen to drag her along, take her up behind you.”

  Now it was Lawson’s turn to glare at Flintlock. “You ain’t very good for the hoss-selling business, mister,” he said.

  “Better you lose business than the lady breaks her neck riding a green horse,” Flintlock said.

  Lawson looked angry and opened his mouth to speak, and it was an accurate measure of Flintlock’s irritation that he now said, “Not another word, liveryman, or I’ll shoot you in the belly. I was gonna shoot you anyhow for charging two bits for a stingy scoop of oats.”

  Lawson, refusing to be intimidated, said, “Go to hell,” and stomped back into the stable.

  His face sour, Flintlock sat his saddle and watched Lucy Cully climb up behind O’Hara, her unwieldy carpetbag bumping into both horse and rider. “I’m so sorry,” Lucy said. “That was clumsy of me.” O’Hara told her to think nothing of it, and Flintlock said, “Now can we dispense with all the niceties and ride?”

  Lucy sitting astride O’Hara’s paint showed a considerable amount of slim, shapely leg, and Flintlock mentally berated himself for taking time to notice.

  * * *

  Delayed by rapidly deteriorating weather conditions, it took Flintlock and the others an hour to reach the switchback that led to the top of the butte and by then the high country was blanketed in mist. Pine, cedar and juniper grew on the slope in addition to greasewood and a host of flowering plants. When they reached the top of the mesa Flintlock let the horses take a breather while Lucy Cully pointed out the rock crag that jutted from the top of the rise like the prow of an ironclad. “The house is there, at the end of the promontory, invisible in the mist,” she said. “Oh, what a poem Roderick could write about this most melancholy scene.”

  Flintlock let that last go without comment and slid his Winchester from the boot. “All right, you spotted the tracks, O’Hara. Maybe you should go take a look-see,” he said.

  The breed nodded, helped Lucy off his horse and dismounted himself. Like Flintlock, he retrieved his rifle and then said, “If you hear shooting come a-running.”

  Flintlock grinned. “What about screams?”

  “Them too,” O’Hara said.

  He walked away, silent on moccasin feet, and disappeared into the gray, hanging mist.

  “I’m sure there is no danger,” Lucy said, lifting her eyes to Flintlock. “The house has lain empty for weeks but lawyer Fynes’s people have visited the place a time or two and they could have left the tracks.”

  Flintlock pointed with the Winchester. “Look ahead of us there, and there. Them horse tracks are not old. Looks like four riders on shod horses, so they were made by white men, not some wandering blanket Apaches.”

  “What would four men be doing all the way up here?” Lucy said.

  “When O’Hara gets back I’m hoping he can tell us,” Flintlock said. Then, his face serious, “Lucy, if anything happens to me and O’Hara in the next few minutes, you take O’Hara’s paint and skedaddle off this mesa right quick. Understand?”

  “But . . . but what could happen to you?” the girl said. She looked alarmed.

  “We don’t know who made those tracks,” Flintlock said. “They might be honest travelers who lost their way and took refuge in the house. But in this wild country there’s always a chance that the tracks were left by outlaws on the scout.”

  “I thought I might be scared by ghosts, not outlaws,” Lucy said, shivering.

  “You’ve a right to be afraid, young lady. Most outlaws are a sight scarier than ghosts,” Flintlock said.

  Fearing that he might have to charge into the mist to help O’Hara, he remained mounted. Lucy found a rock to sit on, her carpetbag on the ground beside her. She looked very young and vulnerable and Flintlock found himself hoping that when the time came her betrothed would take good care of her.

  A long ten minutes passed . . .

  The mist grew thicker and swollen rain clouds dropped lower in the sky as though they’d grown too heavy and planned to rest on the mesa cap rock. The sunless, gray, grim, dreary and somber morning gave way to afternoon but the transition went unnoticed and the cheerless gloom remained. Lucy sat on her rock and the skin of her face was so pale it seemed that she wore a paper mask. Flintlock’s horse tossed its head and the bit chimed. Then, from somewhere in the murk, an owl hooted.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Sam Flintlock slapped the forestock of his Winchester into the palm of his left hand. He returned the call of the great horned owl and like the bird itself his mouth barely moved.

  A few moments later O’Hara stepped out of the mist like a gray ghost.

  As Lucy Cully rose to her feet, her face framing a question, Flintlock beat her to it. “Well?” he said.

  “Four of them,” O’Hara said. “There’s a barn out back and their horses all wear a U.S. brand and have McClellan saddles.

  “Soldiers all the way out here? Or could they be deserters,” Flintlock said.

  “Deserters, would be my guess,” O’Hara said. “Now the Apache are gone there’s nothing out this way to interest the army.” He looked at Lucy. “That is a wondrous house. I have never seen a dwelling with so many levels and windows.”

  “The house was built in 1830 in the Gothic Revival style, or so Roderick told me when I described it to him,” Lucy said. “Walt Whitman told us that Gothic houses were designed to blend into the terrain, that’s why most were built in remote areas.”

  “Right now I think the intentions of four army deserters occupying the house is more important than how and why it was built,” Flintlock said, irritated again.

  O’Hara said, “There’s a sheer drop on three sides and not much room for a person to walk around the place. It’s a long way to fall, Sam. A man could read his newspaper before he hit the ground.”

  “We don’t have to go anywhere near the edge,” Lucy said. “I’ll just walk up to the front door and tell those four deserters, if that’s what they are, that I’m the owner and order them to vacate the premises,
instanter!”

  “I’m betting they’re deserters and not regular cavalrymen,” Flintlock said.

  O’Hara said. “I’m with you on that, Sam. I’d swear the ranny I saw through a window was wearing civilian duds.”

  “Well, we ain’t getting anywhere standing here cussin’ and discussin’,” Flintlock said. “We’ll go talk with those gents and as the young lady said, order them to vacate the premises.”

  “Instanter,” O’Hara said. He shook his head. “Sam, I’m sure this is going to end up in a gunfight.”

  “You having them Indian visions again?” Flintlock said.

  “No, but I have an Irish foreboding telling me that all is not well.”

  “Then we’ll go and make talk and ask them boys to state their intentions,” Flintlock said. “If they’re running from the army they’ll listen to reason. I’m sure they’re not looking to get into a shooting scrape.”

  “And we’ll ask them if they’ve seen any ghosts,” Lucy said. “We might as well get this adventure started.”

  “Young lady, by the time this day is over we might all be ghosts,” Flintlock said.

  * * *

  Sam Flintlock shuddered as he led his horse through the dank, dreary day toward the mist-shrouded mansion. When the building appeared through the gloom, Flintlock stopped and his eyes lifted to a soaring edifice built much higher than it was wide. The rambling structure used the pointed arch everywhere, for windows, exterior doors, porches, dormers and roof gables. The house had a steeply pitched tile roof and front-facing gables with carved, gingerbread trim. An extensive porch with decorative turned posts connected by flattened arches ran the full width of the building. Withal, Flintlock thought the towering, spiky house looked like a fantastic mountain fortress more suited to robber knight or wicked sorcerer than a crazy old coot like Mechan Cully. There was nothing cheerful about the mansion, nothing bright and friendly, rather it was a dark, forbidding, brooding presence with no welcome mat outside the front door. It was a dwelling out of time and place, torn from a long-settled land of white fences, green lawns, clipped hedges and planted shade trees, and plunked down in the middle of a mountainous county of fanged rock, soaring crags and deep canyons where nothing was decided, nothing settled, the only constant the breathtaking beauty of the untamed landscape itself.