Hell's Gate Read online

  A riot of shouts and a woman’s scream erupted from the front of the bank and a split second later a young, wild-eyed man carrying a Greener scattergun burst through the office door. He ignored Lord and yelled at Fynes, “My name is John Cooke and you lay with my wife, you damned animal!”

  Cooke’s finger tightened on the trigger and Lord reacted with lightning speed. As he drew, his left hand fanned across the hammer and raked it to full cock. He leveled his Colt, his finger found the trigger and he fired. Later a gape-mouthed, bug-eyed teller who’d watched from the doorway said that Lord’s hand blurred as he drew and fired in a fraction of a second, less time than it took Cooke to trigger the Greener. Lord’s bullet slammed into the young man’s left temple and Cooke staggered, already dead. His shotgun blast went high and blasted a hole the size of a dinner plate in the timber wall six inches above Fynes’s head.

  “By any measure, Hogan Lord’s speed on the draw and shoot was magnificent,” Fynes would later say to a crowd outside the bank. And there wasn’t a soul present who thought otherwise.

  But the one thing Lord would remember most about the scrape was the fat man’s primal shriek of terror when he first saw Cooke charge through the doorway. Lord hated Fynes because of his treatment of women, but he tolerated him because he paid his wages and men in Lord’s profession rode for the brand. But after that day he despised Fynes for his cowardice with an intensity that would soon threaten to consume him.

  To this day it has never been determined if Edith Cooke was so numb with shock that afternoon that she fell into some kind of dazed trance. What is known is that her blank eyes were dry, her face expressionless as she watched her husband’s lifeless body carried to her farm wagon after insisting that she would bury him herself.

  Better documented, because so many townspeople saw him, is that Tobias Fynes stood on the boardwalk and loudly cursed the woman as she drove away. He yelled after Edith Cooke that her mortgage was foreclosed and be damned to her.

  A week later, in its widely read County Jottings column, the Herald mentioned that the widow Mrs. Edith Cooke had left the territory to live with relatives in Missouri and that the long trip had been financed by an anonymous benefactor. Privately, Roland Ives suspected that Hogan Lord had funded Mrs. Cooke’s journey but he did not investigate further.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  That morning when Sam Flintlock rode away from the Cully mansion, Lucy was singing as she did her kitchen chores, all thoughts of ghosts and mysterious midnight visitors seemingly banished from her mind. The reassuring presence of O’Hara with his quietly steady ways and Colt revolver probably helped.

  Flintlock was worried about the night visitor and his pantomime with the butcher’s knife and sharpening steel and he harbored the nagging feeling that the caped man and the dance music they’d heard were somehow connected. He intended to find out.

  As he rode off the crag the morning air was as fine as crystal and in the distance a few white clouds drifted across the blue sky like waterlilies on a pond. It was good to be alive, Flintlock decided, strong as a horse and still young enough to make future plans. Not that he had any of those, at least not yet. After he found his mother and she gave him his name, he’d plan his future then, though he’d always held more than a passing fancy that he might prosper in the dry goods business. Of course he could choose to continue in his chosen profession as a hunter of other men. Time and inclination would tell.

  At a distance, Flintlock was an imposing figure. He sat his buckskin well, straight-backed, like one of those statues of whiskery reb generals astride a bronze horse. Under his right knee he carried a Winchester, in the buckled brown leather case under his left, the old Hawken, and in his waistband he wore a Colt with its barrel cut back to the length of the ejection rod. He was competent with all three weapons and a fair hand with the bowie sheathed on his rawhide belt. Flintlock had known some of the best shootists, Wes Hardin, Wild Bill Longley, Dallas Stoudenmire, King Fisher, that wild Billy Bonney kid and a dozen more, but he did not consider himself a member of that distinguished fraternity. In actual fact he was faster on the draw and shoot than most of them.

  Flintlock crossed the mesa, scouted around and found an ancient talus slope on the north face of the rise that provided a way off the plateau. Once on the flat, away from the sunbaked cap rock, the air was cooler and he was surrounded by trees, juniper, crab apple, and Arizona cypress and here and there stands of honeysuckle. He drew rein in a patch of dappled shade and built a cigarette, making little sound as he stood in the stirrups and studied the landscape around him. There was no breeze and nothing moved, not even the lizards. Flintlock’s eyes restlessly scanned the ground, seeing as far in the clear air as trees and brush would allow. He looked for a circle of blackened grass that would mark the campfire of the fiddle player who was possibly Mr. Butcher Knife or one of his kinfolk. Or better still, he might come upon the man himself. Whoever he was he had some explaining to do. But he saw nothing, only the sky, trees with tall greenery between them, and in the branches of a juniper some roosting blackbirds spread out at different levels like notes on a sheet of piano music.

  Flintlock finished his smoke, stubbed out the butt on his boot heel and let it drop to the ground. He kneed his horse forward and for the next hour scouted north until he was stopped by a wall of rock with no clear way around it and he turned his horse and backtracked his way south again.

  Nothing. He found nothing. No trace of the fiddle player or the butcher knife man. Finally, as the sky rose to its highest point in the sky, Flintlock swung out of the saddle, grabbed the paper-wrapped sandwich Lucy had prepared for him and sat in the shade under a tree, his back against the trunk. The sandwich consisted of a thick slab of ham between a couple of slices of sourdough bread and he ate it to the last crumb. He then built another cigarette and smoked, thinking things through.

  The fiddle playing seemed to come from this direction, but sound is a funny thing and the music could have come from many miles away. Flintlock smiled at the thought. Maybe they’d heard a fiddle being played in El Paso, Texas, or in a saloon in the New Mexico Territory. But the questions still remained: Where did the man in the cloak go? What were his intentions? Did he just vanish off the face of the earth?

  Flintlock shook his head. He had questions without answers and for now that’s where the matter must remain.

  But then he saw the old man and in a few moments everything changed.

  Warily Flintlock rose to his feet, his hand on his Colt, and watched the oldster come. The man rode a gambler’s ghost mule with a short-coupled, choppy gait, and from a distance the silk top hat on the rider’s head was his most prominent feature. When the man rode closer at the trot, bouncing in the saddle, Flintlock saw a Winchester held upright on his right thigh and a Colt belted high on his waist over a brocade vest and wide-collared white shirt open at the neck. Tan canvas pants tucked into knee-high boots completed his apparel.

  And then Flintlock realized the rider wasn’t an old coot at all, but a younger man with lank, shoulder-length hair, dirty white in color. The pallor of his skin matched his hair and he wore round, dark glasses, and Flintlock reckoned the eyes behind them would be pink. The man was an albino and on his white mule he looked like a bloodless centaur.

  Meeting an albino out there in the wilderness, only the second one he’d ever seen, unnerved Flintlock and he kept his hand close to his gun as the pale man drew rein and said in a pleasant, well-modulated voice, “Why have you come to this place?”

  “Looking for a man,” Flintlock said. “And I could ask you the same question.” Suspicion clouded his face. “Were you anywhere near the Cully mansion last night? It’s a big house, sits on a crag on the t’other side of the mesa.”

  “I’ve heard of it,” the albino said. “But I’ve never been there. I do not wander far.”

  “A man visited the place last night, wears a cape and a wide, floppy hat and is partial to butcher knives,” Flintlock said. “Ever hea
r of somebody like that around this neck of the woods?”

  “Perhaps,” the albino said. He stepped out of the saddle and cradled his rifle in his arm, showing no threat. He extended a thin, white, almost fragile hand. “Well met. My name is Jeptha Spunner. I’m a maker of magic.”

  Flintlock’s big mitt enveloped the albino’s slim hand like a grizzly shaking hands with a sparrow. “Sam Flintlock.” Then he winced as he felt the steel in Spunner’s fingers as they closed around his palm and ground bones together. Flintlock withdrew his hand quickly and shook out the numbness.

  “I’m sorry,” Spunner said. “Sometimes I forget my own strength.”

  Irritated, Flintlock said, “Don’t forget it again. For a minute there I thought my hand was caught in a bear trap.”

  Spunner smiled, his teeth as white as the rest of him. “Let me at least try to make amends.” He stepped to the mule, reached into a saddlebag and produced a squat black bottle. “Jamaica rum,” he said. “A pleasant libation on a lazy fall afternoon such as this.”

  After Spunner laid his Winchester aside, he and Flintlock passed the bottle back and forth a few times and then the albino said, “I think the man you seek is a disciple of Jasper Orlov, the cannibal.”

  “I’ve heard of him,” Flintlock said. “You reckon it could be Orlov who visited us last night?”

  “No, not Orlov but I’d say one of his butchers. It would not surprise me if that’s true,” Spunner said.

  “But why?”

  “A hungry man studies the menu, does he not?”

  Flintlock didn’t like that. He didn’t like it one bit. “Spunner, if that’s your idea of a joke, I don’t appreciate it,” he said.

  “It is no joke. In God’s name, who can make a joke about men who eat other men?”

  Flintlock, stunned into silence, watched a hawk drift against the blue sky, a predator of incredible beauty, wings, body and tail all sharply angled, as though it had been cut from black paper with a razor. Suddenly the bird folded its wings and dived into the bunchgrass . . . and something small gave up its life to feed a nobler and therefore more worthy creature than itself.

  “Why hasn’t Orlov eaten you, Spunner?” Flintlock said.

  “I am a maker of magic and he and his clan fear me,” the albino said.

  Anger flared in Flintlock, sharpening his tongue. “Where is this Orlov son of a bitch? I’ll put a bullet in him, what I call six-gun magic.”

  “He’s behind you,” Spunner said.

  Flintlock drew from the waistband as he turned, the smooth, graceful motion of the shootist that cannot be learned. His heart pounding in his chest, his gun pointed into empty greenery.

  “No, Flintlock, to your right!” Spunner said.

  Again Sam Flintlock moved and again he saw nothing.

  Furious, he said, “Spunner, are you funnin’ me? If you are, go for your iron and get your work in. Damn you, we’ll have it out right here and now.”

  The albino raised a placating hand and smiled as he said, “I’m not making fun of you, Flintlock.”

  “Seemed like it to me,” Flintlock said, still mad clean through and right then unpredictably dangerous.

  “In my clumsy way I was trying to tell you that Jasper Orlov’s people can be anywhere,” Spunner said. “They move through the trees like phantoms and if you do see them, well, you’re already a dead man.”

  Suddenly, as his anger cleared, a thought occurred to Flintlock. “Did Orlov or his people kill old man Cully?”

  “Probably,” Spunner said. Then, “No, wait. An old man, you say?”

  “Yeah. He owned the Cully mansion I was talking about.”

  “A few months ago I did see the body of an old man hidden in brush at the northern edge of the mesa. He had been tortured with fire and cut with knives—”

  “Orlov!” Flintlock said through gritted teeth.

  “No. It was not Orlov. The body was badly decomposed but the knife cuts on the man’s face and chest were still visible. Orlov would have taken his flesh.”

  “Then my guess is that he was tortured by someone who wanted to know where his treasure map was hidden,” Flintlock said. He frowned in thought and then said, “There’s one man I know who could have done that.”

  “Who?” Spunner said.

  “A man called Tobias Fynes. He owns the bank in Mansion Creek and I don’t trust him. Of course, this is a wild guess. It seems that a lot of people knew about the map and wanted it.”

  “I stay clear of towns,” Spunner said. “I have never met the man, Fynes.”

  “You’re not losing anything by that,” Flintlock said. He corked the rum bottle, handed it back to Spunner and said, “I was thinking about gunning you earlier and I feel real bad about it. If you got nothing better to do why not come back to the house for supper? Miss Lucy Cully, the new owner, is a mighty fine cook.”

  “Well, thank you for not gunning me, but I fear I would be imposing,” the albino said.

  “No, you wouldn’t and Miss Lucy would make you very welcome. Maybe you could show us some magic tricks, huh?”

  “It would be my pleasure,” Spunner said.

  Flintlock hesitated a few moments, then said, “Here, you ain’t afraid of ghosts, are you? The house is supposed to have a few.”

  The albino gave his shy smile. “Look at me, Flintlock. Look at my mule. Perhaps we are the ghosts.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  As soon as he entered the Cully mansion Jeptha Spunner unbuckled his gunbelt and hung it on the hatstand to the left of the door, a gesture that won Sam Flintlock’s unspoken approval.

  Lucy Cully stepped out of the room she now called the library, a small book in her hand. If she was surprised at the albino’s appearance her good breeding did not allow her to let it show. “You brought us a guest, Sam?” she said.

  Flintlock nodded. “Met him at the other side of the mesa. His name is Jeptha Spunner and I told him he could join us for supper.”

  The man smiled and gave a little bow. “I am a maker of magic, ma’am, and I’m at your service.”

  “A maker of magic?” Lucy said. “How très intéressant. I have never met one of those before.” She stared hard at Flintlock. “What were you doing so far from home, Sam?”

  “It’s not far, Lucy,” Flintlock said. “The walls were closing in on me and I felt like riding.”

  “Well, you can tell me all about your adventure later,” Lucy said, smiling. Her tone was light but her smile was forced. Then to the albino, “Do come into the library, Mr. Spunner, and let me get you a drink.”

  The man bowed again. “You are very gracious, dear lady.”

  Flintlock stepped back outside to put up his buckskin and the mule in the small barn behind the house, and O’Hara joined him there.

  “Why did the old man build a stable so close to the edge?” Flintlock said. “I’m glad the horses don’t know there’s a sheer drop only a few yards away.”

  “They know, it just doesn’t trouble them,” O’Hara said. “Tell me about the white, white man.”

  “There’s not much to tell. I was scouting for the ranny with the butcher’s knife and Spunner showed up. I studied on the idea of gunning him just on general principle but invited him to supper instead.” Flintlock said, “The strange thing is I think I’ve seen Spunner before, but I can’t remember where or when.”

  “Not an easy man to forget, Sam,” O’Hara said. “Like the white buffalo, a man like Spunner is close to the spirit world. It is well that you didn’t shoot him. It would bring you bad luck.” He handed Flintlock a brush. “Barnabas was here.”

  Flintlock began to brush his buckskin’s back. “I figured he’d show up again sooner or later. He’s a bad penny.”

  “He said to tell you that you’re an idiot.”

  “Yup, just like he always does.”

  “He says to either kill the girl or take her with you and sell her someplace and then go find your ma.”

  “I wonder who gave him t
hat advice?” Flintlock said.

  O’Hara smiled. “I can guess, but I won’t say his name.”

  As Flintlock and O’Hara talked, the west wind that always seemed to rise in the evening lashed the crag, and the ravens cawed and flapped and fussed in their usual state of alarm. The white mule tossed its head and seemed uneasy.

  Flintlock ran the brush down the buckskin’s glossy flank and he said, “Spunner told me about Jasper Orlov. He eats people.”

  “He’s a cannibal?”

  “Generally speaking that’s what rannies who eat people are called. That’s why he cut the flesh off Shade’s boys and carried it away.”

  “Where the hell is his home range?” O’Hara said.

  “Around here, Spunner says.”

  “Where?”

  “Everywhere, Spunner says. He says if you do see him, you’re a dead man.”

  O’Hara said, “There is a tribe of Indians called the Mohawks who two hundred years ago were eaters of human flesh. They were the most feared of all the red men, so terrifying that whole villages would flee at the approach of just a few Mohawk warriors.”

  O’Hara stopped speaking and Flintlock waited for more. After awhile, irritated, he said, “And?”

  “And what?” O’Hara said.

  “What’s the moral of the story, for God’s sake?” Flintlock said. He moved to the other side of his horse.

  “No moral. I say only that cannibals make terrible enemies.”

  Flintlock paused in his grooming, laid his forearms on the buckskin’s back and stared into O’Hara’s eyes. “Then listen up,” he said. “There’s only one way to handle a man-eater and that’s to put a bullet in his belly. Starting tomorrow, you and me are going to track down Jasper Orlov and if he’s what folks say he is, we’ll cut his suspenders for good.”

  “Sam, we can’t leave Lucy in the house by herself,” O’Hara said. “We’re being paid to stay with her, day and night.”

  “Well, I don’t want anything to happen to her,” Flintlock said.

  “Neither do I,” O’Hara said.