Flint (1960) (9 page)

"Your voice is familiar. We had a talk once, I believe."

"Yes."

"Only then you didn't have a horse."

"Didn't I?"

Gaddis indicated the men gathered below. "They look like Baldwin riders. Did they shoot Ed?"

"He was shot by someone with a high-powered rifle who was slightly above him, and he was on a horse at the time. He was ambushed."

"How do you figure he was on a horse?"

"Line up the holes in his clothes with the wounds, and you'll see he had to be, and the only way a man can shoot down on a mounted man is to be up higher -- in rocks, maybe. Or on a ridge."

Gaddis indicated the group below. "Did they jump you?"

Flint glanced at them. "They were working up to it, but I never could see any sense in talking when it's a shooting matter." He gathered the reins. "This isn't my affair, and I wanted no part of it."

"No matter how it was before," Gaddis said dryly, "you'd better take another look. It's your fight now. They'll make it your fight."

Flint turned his mare. "Adios," he said, and rode away.

Pete Gaddis took out the makings and started to build a smoke. He knew it was impossible, and yet it had to be that way.

And after all this time, too.

Chapter
6

He awakened in a cold sweat, awakened suddenly and sharply, chilled through and through, and when he fought himself to a sitting position and crawled from the bunk to the fireplace, his teeth were rattling with cold.

Desperately, his hands shaking, he threw together the materials for a fire. The match flickered briefly and then went out.

Almost crying with cold, he struck another, shielded it in his hands until the flame caught. The yellow tongue reached out, lapped curiously at the pine bark, then, catching hold, it crackled with excitement.

The fire brought weird shadows to the cold walls, shadows that made grotesque thumbs at him, but the cold retreated and warmth came as he crouched before the fire, wrapped in blankets. And then the retching started.

He went outside into the white moonlight and clung to the door post and vomited terribly, and there was blood mingled with the vomit. He clung to the door for a long time, too weak to get back inside, and the sweat dried on his body and the white moon looked down upon the jagged black lava that walled his home.

After a while he staggered back to the fire, replenished it, and dozed before it until day came.

At dawn Flint made the beef broth that seemed better for him than anything else. The pain in his stomach grew less but it did not leave and he rested the day through, reading from a book of poetry.

The horses were accustomed to his presence now. Even Big Red failed to blow his warning. Sometimes they would feed up to within a few feet of him, and the mare was always around, begging for sugar. Today he even teased the stallion into taking sugar. The red horse refused it from his hands but, after he left it on a flat rock, came to get it.

He had no regrets for the shooting. He had wanted to avoid trouble, but they had brought it to him, and they had intended to kill Flynn as well as himself.

The warm sun felt good. He read, dozed, then awakened to read again. There was so much he had always wanted to read...

Later he spaded up a small garden patch, and planted several rows of vegetables, beans, carrots, onions, and potatoes. He might not live to enjoy them, but he might become so weak before he died he could not leave the hideout for more food.

Soon he must go to Alamitos.

Nancy Kerrigan sat at her desk. Flynn was still unconscious and she had no idea whether he had filed the claims or not. But she had started work on the cabins, and one of her hands who had been a farmer would break the ground for crops.

Gaddis was seated nearby. In reply to a question he replied, "No, ma'am, I ain't seen him since that day and, whoever he is, I figure he wants to be left alone."

"I have a feeling I have seen him before."

"Yes, ma'am, he has that look about him. He looks familiar to me, too. My advice is to leave him alone."

"Why hasn't he been seen? Where is he?"

"I been puzzling about that. Johnny and me, we tried to trail him." He took out the makings. "Mind if I smoke, ma'am?" He built a cigarette. At the blacksmith shop somebody was working and the afternoon was made more pleasant by the distant ringing of the hammer. "Lost his trail, and he meant that we should. He drops clean out of sight when he takes a notion."

"He talks like an educated man."

"He's educated, all right. He educated them riders of Port Baldwin's, too. I hear talk around town, and they say he got that gun out so fast he caught them flat-footed. And once he got it out he didn't waste no time talking." Gaddis drew on his cigarette. "Interesting thing. He picked up a package and some mail down to Horse Springs that day."

"Have you heard his name?"

The crunch of a boot on gravel was Johnny Otero in the office door. "I can tell you that. Sulphur Tom told me. His name is Jim Flint."

Flint!

Pete Gaddis came half off his chair. So there it was, then. Red Dolan ... he must get Dolan a chance to see Flint. It was impossible, though. Flint must have had ten or twelve bullets in him.

"Two of Nugent's hands quit him," Johnny volunteered. "Said they weren't drawing fighting pay and to hell with it."

"Tom Nugent's in for trouble, bucking Baldwin. This Baldwin isn't wasting no time."

"And Baldwin started. He pushed five thousand head on to Nugent range today."

Nancy listened, thinking of what she could do if five thousand head were pushed on her range. She was sure that Baldwin had paid the men who squatted on Nugent range, and for the purpose of alienating the squatters and land-seekers coming West. When that got around there would be small sympathy for Tom Nugent.

Yet her thoughts would not remain on the ranch problems or ranch work. She kept remembering the tall young man on the old mare. He had seemed so alone. Long after Johnny and Pete returned to the bunkhouse she sat watching the sunset. He had said so few words, and then had ridden away. She detected some strangeness in Pete's reaction to him that puzzled her.

It had been a long time since she had thought about a man, but she told herself that she was merely curious. Yet he was good-looking. Even more -- strikingly handsome, and without any softness in him. He looked cold, hard... yet was he?

Miles away Jim Flint was watching that same sunset from the hidden pasture. Big Red was feeding close by and seemed glad of the company. He was determined to ride the stallion, but knew his stomach would not stand the pounding of a hard ride, even if he was rider enough to handle such a horse. But there was another and better way. That was with proximity, with gentleness, and casual handling.

His thoughts turned to Nancy Kerrigan. She was the girl he had seen on the tram, but sitting her saddle out there on North Plain, she had seemed even more poised and beautiful.

Yet she was right in the middle of a first class range war where no girl of her years had any right to be. It was lucky she had Gaddis. He was a fighter. He was also a steady man and no fool. Yet how much of a tactician was he?

Port Baldwin was an old he-coon from the high-up hills when it came to fighting. He had been one of Tom Poole's shoulder-strikers in the old gang-war days of politics -- a brutal, confident man who fought to win and would stop at nothing.

That he had brains was obvious by the fact that he had risen from the crowd. There were few shady practices in which Baldwin had not taken a hand. Now he looked and acted the gentleman when it served his purpose, but he had won many a bloody brawl in the streets when he was getting started. At forty, Baldwin was as dangerous and cold-blooded an opponent as a man could find.

On the morning of the third day after the shooting on North Plain, Flint awakened with an itch to get out, to see the newspapers. By now it would be known that he had vanished and questions would be asked.

This time he would go to Alamitos and get the boxes he had there. Besides, he must bring in more supplies. Any day he might become too weak to get out, and he did not want to starve to death.

He saddled the mare and led her through the tunnel. He checked the loads in his rifle and his pistols, for there was every chance that he was riding into trouble.

For a moment he remembered the talk of Buckdun. The man was somewhere around, and it had probably been he who shot at Ed Flynn, and wounded him. There might be others.

Fortunately, he and Baldwin had never met, and Baldwin would not recognize him if they came together on the street.

There were a dozen horses tied to the hitch rail in Alamitos, and two big freight wagons stood near the supply store. Leaving his mare at the rail in front of the stage station which also did duty as a post office, he went inside.

He knew the minute he stepped through the door that the big man in the black suit was Port Baldwin. He was huge, towering inches over six feet, and massively built. His face was wide and there was an old scar on his cheekbone. He looked exactly what he was, a New York tough who had come into money.

Twice in recent years he had taken beatings in stock manipulations, once from Jay Gould, and again from Kettleman. Yet he had forged ahead, using blackmail, threats, and even beatings to frighten his enemies or business rivals.

Walking to the corner, Flint said, "Mail for Jim Flint?" He was aware that Baldwin turned sharply around.

Several letters were awaiting him and he recalled that in the excitement over the shooting on North Plain he had forgotten the mail received on that occasion. The agent said, "There's two big boxes, too."

The door closed behind him and Flint was aware that the man with Baldwin had gone out. Baldwin stepped up to the counter and turned to face him. "Flint? My name is Port Baldwin, and I want to talk to you."

"Go ahead. You're talking."

"Outside, not here."

Flint turned and looked into Baldwin's cold blue eyes. "Why, sure!" he said. At the door he paused, "You first."

Baldwin hesitated, then stepped through the door. Outside Flint glanced swiftly up and down the street. Three belted men were moving down from the right, two more from the left. A man leaned against a store front across the street.

"You killed one of my men."

"He asked for it."

Baldwin took a diamond-studded cigar case from his pocket and selected one, then handed the case to Flint, who took one. "I want you to work for me," Baldwin said.

"Sorry."

"I'll pay better than anyone else." Baldwin clipped the end from his cigar and put it between his teeth. "I need a man who doesn't waste time. A man who can use a gun."

"No."

Baldwin was patient. "Flint, you simply don't understand. All the rest" -- he waved a hand -- "they're finished. There's room here for one big outfit, and I'm it."

"Cattle?" Flint asked mildly. "Or is it land?"

Baldwin's pupils shrank, and the muscles around his eyes tightened. "That's no affair of yours. If you work for me you do as you're told."

"I am not working for you," Flint said quietly. "Nor do I intend to."

"All right." Flint, half-turned to meet the men coming up on him, and too late he saw Baldwin swing. He had not expected Baldwin to take a hand himself, but the big fist caught him behind the ear and Flint fell against the hitch rail, stunned.

Before he could recover his balance or even turn they moved in on him. One man swung viciously at his kidney and a boot toe caught him on the kneecap. He felt the wicked stab of pain and his knee buckled and when Flint threw out an arm to protect himself a man grabbed it and bore down with all his weight. Another grabbed his other arm, and two swung on his unprotected stomach.

Viciously, they pounded him to his knees, and when he fought to his feet, they battered him down again. There was a roaring in his skull and a taste of blood in his mouth. He was falling in the dirt and they were beating, pounding, and kicking him. Yet he could not quit.

Once his fist caught a jaw and knocked a man sprawling. Once he got his toe behind a man's ankle, kicked him on the kneecap with his other heel, and felt the leg bone snap. He grabbed a man behind the neck and butted him in the face. He stabbed a man's nostril with a stiff thumb and felt the flesh tear. But at last they beat him into the dirt and left him there, bloody and broken.

One man remained loafing nearby and, when a cowhand would have come to Flint's assistance, warned him off.

For more than an hour, Flint lay in the street. Slowly consciousness returned, and with it, pain -- a heavy thudding in his skull, and a stabbing in his side. He lay still, aware only of pain, then of the smell of dust, the warmth of the sun on his back and the chill of the ground beneath him, and the taste of blood.

Somehow he knew enough to lie still. He could hear the passing of boots on the boardwalk, the jingle of spurs, a rattling of harness.

Could he move? One hand lay on the ground beneath him, and he tried moving the fingers. They stirred, but stiffly. The back of the hand felt raw, and he seemed to remember it being stamped on. His hand must have been lying on the soft earth near the water trough or the bones would have been broken.