A Time for Vultures Read online

  Before Flintlock could say anything Jardine turned and slowly walked away. He seemed weary and his strange brass leg dragged, clinking with every faltering step.

  Alone by the fading fire, Flintlock ate his third biscuit and then refilled his coffee cup for the second time. He had begun to build a cigarette when he heard a man shriek in torment.

  Flintlock rose to his feet and his hand instinctively dropped to his waistband for his Colt.

  “There’s no need for violence,” a female voice said. The woman who dressed like a locomotive engineer walked toward Flintlock.

  In the light of dawn he saw that she had green eyes that glowed like a cat’s and thick auburn hair that cascaded over her shoulders in glossy waves. She had undone the row of straps and buckles that closed her red leather corset and her goggles hung around her slender neck. She was exceptionally beautiful.

  Flintlock smiled. “You startled me.”

  “I fear you’re easily startled,” the woman said. Her mouth was wide, full-lipped, and eminently kissable. “Is the coffee still hot?

  “Sure is, and there’s biscuits and bacon,” Flintlock said.

  “Bread and grease. I can think of no finer breakfast. My name is Doctor Sarah Ann Castle.”

  “Right pleased to make your acquaintance, ma’am,” Flintlock said, touching his hat. “Mine is—”

  “I know what your name is.” She poured herself coffee.

  “Are you a sawbones?” Flintlock said, prepared to be sociable.

  “I’m a physician, yes.”

  “I bet you’re a good one.”

  “How would you know?”

  “Just by looking at you.”

  “What does a competent doctor look like? What does an incompetent doctor look like?”

  Flintlock floundered, trying to grab words that were as elusive as butterflies. The fact that he didn’t know what the hell competent meant didn’t help. Finally he managed, “Seems that everybody I’ve met here is made of brass or pottery.” He smiled. “Except you.”

  “Really?” She pulled her corset wide, revealing firm, coral-tipped breasts. But between them from the top of her chest to the bottom of her rib cage ran a wide, scarlet scar, raw and angry, as though a ferocious animal had recently clawed her.

  Dr. Castle’s smile was remarkable for its beauty. “The metal is inside me.” She read Flintlock’s bewildered expression and said, “I have a heart valve made of brass.”

  “A what?” Flintlock said, amazed that the woman’s voice was so matter of fact.

  “A valve, basically just a little tube. Two years ago when I was one of Dr. Obadiah le Strange’s medical assistants my heart began to give out, and other doctors told me it was only a matter of time until it stopped altogether. We were in London at the time when Dr. le Strange was called in by Scotland Yard to consult on the Jack the Ripper case.”

  Flintlock nodded. “One time I read about that Ripper feller in the Refined Ladies’ Home Companion magazine.”

  “You read women’s periodicals, Mr. Flintlock? How very modern of you.”

  “I picked up the paper in a dentist’s office while I was waiting to get a chipped tooth fixed,” Flintlock said on the defensive. “I have no truck with women’s fixins.”

  “Then you disappoint me,” Dr. Castle said.

  “Well maybe not, because I’ve got a notion on who that Ripper gent could be,” Flintlock said. “You can tell old Queen Vic next time you see her.”

  “I’d be interested to hear what you have to say since Scotland Yard’s brightest and best never identified him.”

  “Here’s the way of it, Doc. Down Galveston way I met a seafaring man by the name of Jake Roper, a petticoat chaser and whoremonger. Chances are he dropped anchor in London town for a spell and then did all that cuttin’. Name Jack the Ripper is only a holler and a half away from the name Jake Roper, and that’s a natural fact.”

  The woman pulled her corset closed and refilled her coffee cup. When she looked at Flintlock again, she said, “His name was . . . is . . . Professor Christian Prescott Tynan, a world-renowned research scientist.”

  “Who?” Flintlock said.

  “Your man Jack the Ripper.”

  “If you know his name—”

  “The British government knew his name. And I assure you so did Queen Victoria.”

  “Then how come he didn’t get hung?” Flintlock said.

  “He was too valuable to the Royal Navy and the defense of the realm. The professor was working on a turbine steam engine that would power the new breed of dreadnaught battleships. The engine was so efficient the Admiralty believed it could reduce a warship’s coal consumption by half while increasing its speed by at least five knots.” Doctor Castle’s coffee steamed in the morning cool. “The politicians and the admirals were prepared to tolerate Christian’s little hobby for as long as it took to get the steam turbine into production.”

  “And you knew all this while you and Dr. le Strange were working for Scotland Yard?” Flintlock said, intrigued.

  “Of course. Christian and I were lovers for a year. I could hardly betray him.” She smiled. “Contrary to what you might expect, he was a gentle lover, very tender and considerate. The trashy magazine you read, what is it? The Refined Ladies’ Home Companion—”

  “I don’t—”

  “Would describe Christian Tynan as being all hearts and flowers.”

  “Except when he was gutting whores,” Flintlock said, intentionally trying to be brutal.

  Dr. Castle nodded, a coiled tendril of hair falling over her forehead. “Yes, I must say that was the least attractive of all his little peccadillos.”

  “Where is he now?” Flintlock said.

  The camp was stirring and a woman wearing a beautiful pearl gray top hat, an almost-there skirt and knee-high red leather boots, stepped to the fire. She picked up the fry pan and said to Flintlock, “Hey, cowboy, you finished breakfast?”

  “No. Leave the grub there by the fire.”

  “I’d rather feed you for a week than a month,” the woman said. She clumsily tossed the pan beside the coals. It was only then Flintlock noticed that both her hands were made of brass, the articulated fingers of some white metal, probably silver.

  When the woman left, Dr. Castle said, “As soon as the turbine engine passed its sea trials, Christian was taken to a hospital for the criminally insane. His six-foot-by-six-foot cell is guarded night and day by marines and he’ll die there. Soon, if he’s lucky. Twice a week the queen sends him a bottle of wine from her own cellar, and the admirals supply fresh fish for his dinner. I’m told Christian’s mind is gone and he raves constantly about fallen women and how he is the instrument of divine justice sent to destroy them and cut them open to release their souls to hell. But I don’t know if all that is true or not. The British authorities are terrible liars.” She tossed out the dregs of her coffee. “I have to be going. King Fisher will call for you soon.”

  “Wait,” Flintlock said. “This Dr. le Strange, what did he think of Jack the Ripper?”

  Dr. Castle shrugged, her wide, shapely shoulders moving under her blouse. “He considered Christian a valued colleague in the field of steam engineering research. Nothing more. Of course, he knew Christian and I were lovers, but he was fine with that.”

  “Lucky for you or he wouldn’t have fixed you up with a steam heart,” Flintlock said.

  “No, he was eager to do it. To Obadiah I was just another engineering experiment. The heart, after all, is merely a pump. It’s not powered by steam, though, but electricity, the elemental power of the universe. Before God, there was electricity, and He employed it for His own creation.”

  “How long will it last? Your heart, I mean.”

  Dr. Castle smiled. “If the valve doesn’t get clogged and the micro generator—”

  “What’s a micro?” Flintlock said.

  Dr. Castle smiled. “Micro means small, very teensy. If the generator . . . if the battery doesn’t wear out, my he
art will still be beating at the end of time.”

  Flintlock grinned. “I’m glad to hear that. You’re way too pretty to die young.”

  “Good-bye, Mr. Flintlock,” Dr. Castle said.

  He watched the woman go, her hips moving under her canvas skirt. It was only then, in the brightening light of the morning, that he saw the name painted on the egg-shaped machine that the doctor had just entered through a top hatch.

  HELRUN

  The Black Howler

  “What the hell?” Flintlock whispered.

  “Turn around, you damned blockhead,” a man’s voice said behind him. “It’s me again.”

  As he turned, Flintlock said, “Go away, Barnabas.”

  “Lookee here.” The old mountain sat on the grass beside a birdcage made from copper wire. Inside, perched on a stick, was a tiny yellow bird. “Watch this.’ Barnabas pushed something at the back of the cage and the bird immediately flapped its wings and began to sing a tinny cheep, cheep, cheep. “It ain’t real.”

  “I could tell that,” Flintlock said. “Where did you get it?”

  Barnabas blinked. “Found it.” He held up a small brass key. “It’s clockwork. A clockwork bird is what it is. But it ain’t a kingfisher. No sir, this here is one of them canary birds.”

  “Why are you here, Barnabas?” Flintlock said. “To show me a bird?”

  “To tell you that you’re an idiot.”

  “You tell me that every time I see you.”

  “And every time I see you I know it’s true.” Barnabas lifted the cage and stared at the bird. He made a clicking sound with his tongue and then said, “You need wound up again, little chicken.” He set the cage down, put his key in and cranked the mechanism. The bird cheeped again and flapped its wings. “You ever hear tell of Huggy Brampton up Kansas way?”

  Flintlock frowned. “Can’t say as I have.”

  “He wasn’t too smart, kinda like you, Sammy. One time a feller sold him a bird dog an’ Huggy killed it when he threw it up in the air to see how high it could fly.” Barnabas stared at Flintlock. “He was an idiot.”

  Irritated, Flintlock opened his mouth to speak, but the old mountain man held up a silencing hand. “Listen and learn, boy. Everybody in this camp should be dead. Most of them, including the pretty lady who showed you her tits, were dead, at least for a spell. They got no right to be casting a shadow on the ground. Both men and women, they all belong in the graveyard. They shouldn’t be here among the living.”

  Flintlock frowned again. “The dead should stay dead, including you, Barnabas. I don’t even know how those folks are still breathing. Maybe this is all a nightmare and pretty soon I’ll wake up”—he smiled—“or could be they got a good doctor.”

  “You mean le Strange? He ain’t any kind of doctor, sonny, he’s an engineer. He created monsters.” Barnabas shook his head, rose to his feet, and picked up the birdcage. “You’re in a heap of trouble, Sam, and there’s not a damned thing I can do to help you.”

  “Barnabas, I don’t need—”

  “Talking to yourself again, Flintlock?”

  Flintlock turned and saw Clem Jardine standing behind him, a smile on his patched-up face.

  “King wants to see you now.” He inclined his head. “I thought I heard a bird around here.”

  “Like you said, I was talking to myself.”

  “And singing like a bird?”

  “A man who’s been on as many high lonesome as I have does some mighty peculiar things by times.” Quickly changing the subject, Flintlock said, “A few minutes ago I thought I heard a man cry out in pain.”

  “Is that so?” Jardine said. “Maybe you did.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  As the crow flies, twenty-five miles southeast of the King Fisher encampment Captain Gregory Holden Usher and his five-man patrol breakfasted on salt pork, hard biscuits, and gritty coffee. His troopers were in a foul mood, dirty, tired, sullen, and angry at tracking a will-o-the-wisp over endless grassland with no end to the chase in sight. Most of all, they resented this detail and the man who commanded it, a fifty-three-year-old, alcoholic officer who would never recover from the disgrace of fleeing the field of battle and leaving thirteen men to die in his stead. The charge of cowardice in the face of the enemy had been dismissed at Usher’s court-martial, but the stigma remained.

  Sergeant Rollo Martin, whose younger brother had been killed in the massacre, studied Usher, despising him with a passion. With hate in his black eyes, Martin again silently vowed that he’d execute the captain for cowardice when he had the opportunity to make it look good . . . probably when he was surrounded by men who detested Captain Usher as much as he did.

  “Scout coming in,” a trooper said, looking to the north. “Seems like he’s carrying something in a sack.”

  Usher’s scout was an unwashed, buckskinned creature named Luke Gamble, a former Barbary Coast enforcer who smelled like a gut wagon and was said to have killed seven white men and twice that many Indians and Mexicans. Gamble had recently strangled a brothel madam for the fifty dollars in her purse. That murder had forced him to flee San Francisco and sign on as an army scout.

  He squatted by the fire, laid the bulging sack beside him, and used his knife to spear a chunk of pork. He had the manners of a pig.

  Captain Usher looked at the man with bleary-eyed distaste. “What do you have in your poke, Mr. Gamble?”

  The scout stared at Usher, chewing, grease running into his wispy, yellow beard. Finally he said, “Came on a dead Mex about five miles north of here. I couldn’t find a wound on him, but I brung this.” Gamble dipped into the sack and withdrew a human head. Expressionless, the features were placid as though the man had fallen asleep and died. Gamble tossed the head onto the grass, where it rolled against Sergeant Martin’s boot.

  Angrily, the big man kicked the head away and cursed at the scout.

  Gamble smiled, then looked at Usher. “Notice something strange about the face, Cap’n?”

  Disgusted, Usher said no. He was already half-drunk.

  “Look how pale it is,” Gamble said. “A Mex should never look that white. His whole damned body was the same way, white as a fish’s belly. Kinda like Sergeant Martin when he takes his blue shirt off.”

  Martin growled, his teeth showing under his mustache. “Gamble, I’ll put a bullet in you one day.”

  “Sergeant Martin, that is enough,” Usher said. “We don’t bandy words with civilians. Mr. Gamble, throw the head away. I don’t know why he’s so pale under his skin color. Sheer fright perhaps.”

  “When I used this”—Gamble took a steel trade tomahawk from his belt—“to top the Mex, there was hardly any blood. Strange that.”

  Usher said, “Get rid of the head, Mr. Gamble. Sergeant Martin, load up the pack mule. We will renew the pursuit of King Fisher. How far ahead of us, Mr. Gamble?”

  “The paymaster wagon is slowing them down, and they’re hauling another wagon, something with big wheels . . . maybe like a brewer’s dray.”

  “How far, Mr. Gamble?”

  “I reckon we’ll catch up with them tonight or at first light tomorrow morning.”

  “I’ll plan on a dawn attack,” Usher said. “I have no stomach for a night action.”

  Gamble stared at the officer, his eyes hard. Mister, you got no stomach for any action. You proved that much at Dead Tree Pass. “They say King Fisher is a gun. I heard he was dead, but I guess that was just a big story.”

  Usher slapped the holstered Colt on his right side. “We’re all guns, Mr. Gamble.”

  * * *

  Eighteen-year-old Private Seth Proud, a Louisiana swamp boy, paused in roping the pack to the mule’s back. “Sarge, how much money did them fellers get in the payroll robbery?”

  Rollo Martin turned his black eyes on the boy. “More than you’ll see in your lifetime, Private Proud. Enough to keep a careful man in whiskey and whores for a hundred years. As for the rest of us, we’d be worn out and used up long before the m
oney was spent.”

  Proud whistled between his prominent front teeth. “Man, I could sure use some of that.”

  “Dream on, boy,” Martin said. Then, smiling, he added, “Though who knows? Sometimes dreams come true.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  As Private Proud dreamed of a hundred years of whiskey and whores, Clem Jardine led Sam Flintlock to a large tent at the edge of the encampment. The flap lifted and two men carried out an unconscious elderly white man, his face ashen.

  A voice from inside the tent said, “Max, see he gets plenty of red wine.”

  “I reckon he’ll be a goner soon, King,” said the man called Max.

  Disinterested, the voice from inside said, “Hell, try it anyway.”

  “Whatever you say, boss,” Max said.

  As the old man was carried past him, Flintlock said to Jardine, “What’s ailing him?”

  “He’s old and I guess he doesn’t have enough blood in him,” Jardine said. “It happens to old-timers, or so I’ve been told.”

  Flintlock hesitated and watched the two men carrying the comatose oldster. “Here, ain’t that Max Eades and Jasper Aston, guns for hire from down Laredo way? I recollect Max killed Dan Polk in Beaumont that time, and for a spell Jasper was top gun in the Colfax County War up New Mexico way. Come to think of it, I believe there are dead-or-alive dodgers on both them boys.”

  “Flintlock, forget it,” Jardine said. “Max and Jasper work for Mr. Fisher, and he sets store by them. He’d take it hard if a bounty hunter tried to collect on them.”

  “I have other things on my mind,” Flintlock said. “I have no interest in those boys. For the time being, anyway.”

  From inside the tent came the call. “Git the hell in here, Sam Flintlock. You’re not so damned tough.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Clem Jardine grinned as he opened the flap and Flintlock stooped and stepped inside. After the brightness of the morning, the tent was gloomy and shadowed, but it was the smell, not the dim light that caught his attention. It was not a bad odor, but strange, like how the air smells before a thunderstorm. That and a vague tang of gun oil.