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  Flintlock moved again, no let-up in him.

  His right boot kicked upward, slammed between Collins’s legs and smashed into the man’s groin. The big gunman’s face contorted in pain and he went down like a felled redwood, frantically clutching at his mashed manhood.

  A groan went up from the male members of the crowd and even a few of the ladies winced.

  Collins writhing and cussing at his feet, Flintlock addressed the onlookers. “McPhee is in my custody and I will protect him with my life. Those are the facts so state your intentions.”

  A respectable-looking man in the crowd stepped forward and said, “That murderer should be hung.”

  Others roared their approval.

  “The judge thought otherwise,” Flintlock said. “You all heard him.”

  “Judges can be wrong,” the respectable man said. “And this time the judge admitted he had to deliver a wrong verdict.”

  “Right or wrong, this man is under my protection,” Flintlock said.

  “We’ll come for him, tonight,” another man said. “You can lay to that.”

  “Then you’ll step over the bodies of your own dead to take him,” Flintlock said. “Lay to that.”

  Collins, bloody and in pain, got up on all fours and began to slowly crawl away.

  Flintlock, who laid no claim to being a merciful or forgiving man, kicked the gunman in the butt and said, “You stay right there, boy.”

  Collins collapsed onto his belly and lay still.

  “McPhee, walk to the hotel and step inside,” Flintlock said.

  His Colt was up and ready and his eyes roamed over the crowd, a little cowed since their Goliath was felled, but still angry.

  “Shame on you,” a plump woman in a poke bonnet said. “You know that man is guilty.”

  Flintlock made no answer but backed toward the hotel.

  Then he pointed at Collins with his Colt and said, “You folks take care of this man. He’s gonna walk funny for a spell.”

  He turned, crossed the street and stepped into the hotel.

  Behind him a rock thudded onto the porch.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Hamp Collins, steeping his hurting parts in a bowl of warm water and brandy, was in a killing rage.

  “I’ll gun him, Nancy,” he said. “I’ll shoot him down on sight.”

  “They say his name is Sam Flintlock,” Nancy said, a long-serving whore with a heart of iron. “Funny name.”

  “It ain’t funny to me,” Collins growled. “I had to ride in here sidesaddle and it’s a long way from town.”

  The Gentleman’s Retreat cathouse was situated a mile north of Buzzard Gap and its back porch gave a fine view of Blue Mountain. Once a stage station, the original building had been burned by Apaches, rebuilt and then extended, an extra floor added. The madam was a four-hundred-pound Frenchwoman named Josette and she boasted a bigger mustache than most of the cavalry officers who visited the place.

  Since it was still early in the afternoon the brothel was not busy—the sporting crowd from Open Sky and the surrounding ranches would not arrive until evening.

  Boredom, not a concern for Collins’s hurting private parts, kept Nancy Pocket in the room with the injured man.

  “Feeling better?” she said. “They say brandy works wonder for men in your delicate condition.”

  “I won’t feel better until I kill Flintlock, if that’s really his name,” Collins said.

  “You would’ve hung that McPhee feller if it wasn’t for him,” Nancy said. She was a bottle blonde with brown eyes and a wide, expressive mouth.

  “If McPhee don’t hang, another will in his place. Depend on it.”

  “What does that mean?” the woman said.

  “It means that around here you should keep your trap shut about Jamie McPhee,” Collins said. “It might play wrong with a certain person.”

  “Then I won’t mention his name.”

  “Good. Just remember that.”

  Collins winced as he shifted position in his straight-backed chair and water slopped over the side of the bowl. “There are them who are a mite uneasy about this man Flintlock,” he said. “When I kill him, I’ll be in good with some powerful folks.”

  “Money?”

  “When I bring in Flintlock’s scalp I’ll have enough to keep me in whiskey and whores for a long time.”

  “Then throw some business my way, Hamp, huh? A working girl’s got to make a living you know and a man with busted balls ain’t the ideal customer.”

  “I will, if you treat me right and shut your trap about my balls.”

  “How well did you know Polly Mallory?” Nancy said. “I thought she was nice.”

  “Hell, everybody knew her. She was the town schoolteacher.”

  “She was pretty.”

  “Yeah, I’d say that. I tried to spark her once or twice but she turned me down flat.”

  “Ah, that’s because she never saw you with your balls in a bowl,” Nancy said.

  “I’ll smack you across the mouth, you sass me like that,” Collins said.

  Nancy laughed.

  “Hamp, you’d never catch me.”

  “I’m hurtin’ here,” Collins said, in a surge of self-pity.

  “I know you are, Hampy,” Nancy said, cooing. “When you’re all better again I’ll take good care of you.”

  “Pour me another whiskey, will ya?” Collins said. “To ease the pain, like.”

  Nancy passed a filled glass to Collins, then said, “Who really killed Polly Mallory, Hamp?”

  “What is it to you?” Collins said.

  “Just interested in what goes on in Open Sky.”

  “Jamie McPhee killed her. And don’t you say otherwise or that pretty head of yours could end up on a damned spike.”

  The door opened and Madame Josette fluttered inside, a concerned look on her face. Her hands were flapping like plump white doves.

  “La, la, la,” she said. “Comment sont les testicules du monsieur?”

  “How are your balls?” Nancy translated.

  “I caught her drift,” Collins said, irritated. He glared at the madam. “They hurt like hell.”

  Josette clapped and said, “Plus brandy dans le bol, Nancy.”

  Then she turned and swept through the door again, the smell of her French perfume lingering after she’d gone.

  “By God, I’ll make Sam Flintlock pay for this,” Collins said, his face screwed into a mask of pain as he watched Nancy pour more brandy into the bowl. “I’ll shoot him in the belly and listen to him scream.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Balls,” Sam Flintlock said. “All dogs love to play fetch with balls.”

  “You have a dog?” Jamie McPhee said.

  “Used to, a hound who could charm a coon out of a tree with her voice. She’s long gone now, chasing rabbits on the other side.”

  “I’m not catching your drift about the balls, Sam.”

  “Well, McPhee, you’re the ball and then fellers out there in the street want to play catch with you so badly they’ll never give up.”

  “I didn’t kill Polly,” McPhee said. “I loved her. You do believe that, don’t you?”

  “I don’t give a damn one way or the other,” Flintlock said. “I’m paid to stop you getting hung, that’s all.”

  “That’s cold,” McPhee said.

  Flintlock shrugged. “You want a shoulder to cry on, find somebody else’s. Damn it’s hot in here.”

  He stepped to the window and lifted it open.

  A dozen armed men stood on the opposite boardwalk and one of them pointed.

  “It’s him!” the man yelled.

  A moment later Flintlock realized that the town of Open Sky was as angry as hell and playing for keeps. A fusillade of shots hammered through the window and he dived for the floor as showering shards of shattered glass cascaded around and over him.

  “Get down!” he yelled at McPhee.

  Showing commendable alacrity, the young man joined him o
n the floor.

  “They’re trying to kill us,” McPhee said.

  “No kidding? That would be my guess too. But they’re mad at you, not me.”

  “What do we do?”

  “Stay right where we’re at until them fellers tire of taking pots at the window.”

  McPhee pushed up on his arms.

  “I’ll talk to them,” he said.

  Flintlock grabbed the young man by the front of his shirt. “Are you crazy? By the time they’re finished shooting holes in you, you’ll look like a colander.”

  “I must convince them of my innocence.”

  “Them fellers are already convinced . . . that’s why they want to hang you.”

  Still on all fours, McPhee shook his head and teardrops splashed on the floor between his hands. “Oh, Polly,” he whispered. “What happened to us? We were so happy.”

  “You quit that, McPhee, and quit it right now” Flintlock said, his face stern. “Grown men don’t cry. I’m downright embarrassed for you. I’ve never in all my born days seen such a thing, a man crying.”

  “I don’t care,” McPhee said. His cheeks were wet, eyes rimmed red. “Polly is gone and I should just surrender myself and get it over with. Just . . . have them shoot me and end my miserable life”

  “Damn you, boy, quit that or I’ll put a bullet in you myself. I never in all my born days—”

  “Hey, you in the hotel!”

  The roar came from the street, harsh, loud, commanding.

  “What the hell do you want?” Flintlock yelled.

  “I want to talk to you! Come to the window!”

  “I ain’t that stupid,” Flintlock hollered.

  “I give you my word you won’t be harmed.”

  “And who is you?”

  “Trace McCord. I own a ranch hereabouts.”

  “You can trust him, Sam.”

  This from Marshal Tom Lithgow, shouting from the street.

  “Yeah, but can I trust you?”

  “You know you can.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  Nonetheless Flintlock got to his feet and stood to the side of the window. “State your business, McCord,” he said. “And your intentions.”

  “Come now, let’s not yell back and forth like savages,” McCord said. “Make your way down to the porch and we’ll talk like civilized human beings.”

  Flintlock made no answer.

  “Well?” McCord said.

  “I’m studying on it,” Flintlock said.

  “I will be unarmed,” the rancher said.

  “I’ll vouch for that,” Lithgow said.

  “You’re a snake, Marshal. But I’ll come down anyway.”

  “They’ll kill you,” McPhee said. “It’s a trap, Sam.”

  “Nah. Right now they plan to offer terms. The killing will come later.”

  Flintlock took a powder horn and ball from his saddlebags and quickly charged the Hawken.

  “You’re taking that?” McPhee said.

  “Yeah. It impresses the hell out of folks, makes them think of Boone and Bridger an’ my old grandpappy Barnabas. A true American won’t shoot a man who’s carrying his grandpappy’s Hawken. It just wouldn’t set right with him.”

  Flintlock settled his battered hat on his head. “McPhee, no more crying like a girl, understand?” he said. “I’m dealing with men here and I don’t want you to make me look bad.”

  “I don’t care. My life is over anyway.”

  “I don’t want to hear that either,” Flintlock said.

  Sam Flintlock stood on the narrow porch in front of the hotel, the beautiful Hawken cradled in his left arm. He was wary, but relaxed, waiting for whatever was to come. He’d deal with it then.

  He stared at the man astride a big American stud and saw trouble.

  Trace McCord was a tall, wide-shouldered man, big-boned and as handsome as the day is long. But his face revealed a touch of cruelty, even sadism, his arrogant expression born of raw, unbridled power and an ability to ride roughshod over lesser men. A foot taller than Flintlock and fifty pounds heavier, McCord was a man who cut a wide swath . . . a man to be reckoned with, in his own time or in any other.

  “So you’re Sam Flintlock,” McCord said, his eyes wandering to the Hawken. “I said no guns.”

  “You said it, not me,” Flintlock said.

  The rancher sat a black, silver-mounted saddle, shined up, a rig no puncher could own even after a lifetime of saving. The stud McCord rode would cost a top hand a year’s wages.

  The man had wealth and he didn’t mind flaunting it.

  “You know what I want to talk about,” McCord said.

  “I can guess,” Flintlock said.

  “You’re harboring a murderer.”

  “That’s what a feller hired me to do.”

  “Whatever he’s paying you, I’ll double it.”

  “You mean to hand over Jamie McPhee.”

  “To hand over a cold-blooded murderer.”

  “When I take a man’s money I ride for the brand, McCord. So no deal.”

  Two things angered the rancher about that statement. The first was the refusal itself.

  McCord was a man who’d grown used to getting his own way, with tough men or beautiful women, and now Flintlock, an illiterate frontier thug by the look of him, had turned him down. Defied him, by God.

  The second was the use of his name without the respectful honorific.

  Everyone in this part of the Oklahoma Territory, rich and poor alike called him Mister McCord. He didn’t demand it and never had, but he expected it . . . especially from his social inferiors.

  This was an affront that could not stand.

  McCord turned his head.

  “Lithgow!”

  The marshal hurried across the street and stood beside the rancher’s horse.

  “Yes, Mr. McCord?”

  From his great height, the rancher stared down at the lawman then said, “I am not in the habit of addressing riffraff and low persons. Talk some sense into this fellow.”

  “Flintlock, listen to Mr. McCord. Give us Jamie McPhee,” the marshal said, his face pleading. “We don’t need all this unpleasantness.”

  “Lynching a man is pleasant?” Flintlock said. “The law says he’s innocent and that’s where you should stand, Lithgow.”

  “Tell him five hundred dollars for McPhee,” McCord said. “That’s more money than a saddle tramp like him will ever see in one place in a lifetime.”

  “You know he’s as guilty as all hell, Flintlock. Mr. McCord is making you a generous offer,” Lithgow said. “Tell me you heard him.”

  “I heard him,” Flintlock said.

  McCord’s thick lips drew back in a vicious, disdainful grin.

  “Lithgow, tell him a hemp rope can choke both him and the chicken he’s got around his neck,” he said.

  Flintlock was on a slow burn. He swung the muzzle of the Hawken and centered it on the rancher’s chest. “Come use your rope, McCord,” he said. “I await your convenience.”

  Staring into the cold black eye of a .50 caliber muzzle is not an experience a man relishes or soon forgets.

  McCord tensed. The big rancher was not afraid, but all at once he was caught flat-footed and that made him wary.

  A silence stretched taut between him and Flintlock.

  Lithgow, the peacemaker, broke it. “Sam Flintlock, trigger that long rifle and right afterward I’ll drop you where you stand,” he said.

  “I told you no once, McCord,” Flintlock said, ignoring the marshal. “No deal. And I won’t repeat myself.”

  The rancher’s anger flared. “Why, you sorry piece of white trash, I’ll—”

  “You’ll what?” Flintlock said. His voice had the honed edge of a steel blade.

  For the first time since they met, McCord recognized Sam Flintlock for what he was, not the ignorant frontier thug as he’d first pegged him but a fighting man who would not admit to being second best to any.

  He was a man to be
reckoned with.

  But then, so was Trace McCord.

  “Lithgow, I’ll waste no more breath here,” he said.

  “I’m all talked out myself,” Flintlock said.

  “From this day forward, consider yourself a dead man, Flintlock,” the rancher said. “Prepare your winding sheet.”

  McCord swung his horse away, and after a last, despairing look at Flintlock, Lithgow followed.

  “You make some mighty powerful enemies, Sammy.”

  Old Barnabas sat on the porch rocker, needle and yellow thread in hand as he repaired a tear in the sleeve of a Cheyenne war shirt.

  “Seems like I do,” Flintlock said.

  “Of course, that’s because you’re an idiot.”

  “I guess so,” Flintlock said.

  “Didn’t I teach you that you don’t jaw with an enemy? You kill him. End the argument right there and then and save all them fancy words.”

  “Trace McCord is not my enemy,” Flintlock said.

  “He is now. The worst one you ever had.”

  Barnabas tied off his thread then held up the war shirt and studied it with a critical eye.

  “Well, that’s the best I can do,” he said. “Even dead, them Cheyenne dog soldiers get up to all kinds of mischief an’ tear up their duds.” Then, “Go to the Louisiana swamps, Sam. Swim with the alligators and find your mother.”

  “When my job here is done.”

  “I raised an idiot,” Barnabas said.

  The empty chair rocked back and forth in the wind.

  That’s all it had been, Flintlock told himself. Just a restless chair stirred by a warm south wind . . .

  CHAPTER TEN

  “You’ll be a man, Steve, even if I have to beat it into you,” Trace McCord said.

  “I try, Pa,” the young man said.

  “‘I try, Pa,’” McCord said, mimicking his son’s high-pitched voice. “That’s the trouble. You don’t try. You’ve never tried and that’s why you’ve failed at everything, you useless whelp.”

  The big rancher sprawled in a heavy leather chair studded with brass tacks. He refilled the glass in his hand from the whiskey decanter, then said, “Frisco?”