Gut-Shot (2 page)

“You can't shade Ruskin in a straight-up gunfight,” Flintlock said.

“I reckon not. Kin you?”

“I sure don't want to make a trial of it.”

The old man rose to his feet, tall, grim and sinewy in the fire glow.

“Good, then we're agreed that we're both afeared of Jake Ruskin. So let's go get 'er done, Sammy.”

“If it is Ruskin, you could get us both killed,” Flintlock said. “He ain't much of a one for taking prisoners.”

“I ain't reckoning on that,” Glover said. He thumped his chest with the palm of his hand. “Hell, I got a house to build and a fat young filly to bed.”

Moonlight lay among the pines like winter frost as Sam Flintlock and Dave Glover followed the wagon tracks west across rolling hill country. For an hour the only sound was the creak of saddle leather and the steady thud of their mounts' hooves on grama grass.

Then Glover said, “Tracks swinging south.”

“I see them,” Flintlock said.

“A couple of settlements that way. They plan to sell my lumber, the damned rogues.”

“How much is it worth?” Flintlock said, already missing his soft bed of pine needles.

Chasing after three small-time thieves was a diversion he didn't need, not when he was on his way to a good-paying job.

“To me, a whole lot,” Glover said. “On the open market, fifty or sixty dollars. Call it sixty because they stole a keg of tenpenny nails besides.”

“Split three ways, that's twenty dollars each,” Flintlock said. “Them boys are sure going to a lot of trouble for twenty dollars.”

“The hoss and wagon was mine as well,” Glover said.

All at once Flintlock's mood got a lot grumpier.

“They stole your hoss and wagon? What the hell were you doing when all this was going on?”

“Sleepin' off a drunk.”

“Damn it, you know you can't drink whiskey.”

“It was gin. I made myself up a batch of gin punch with hot water and lemons. Celebrating my upcoming nuptials by wetting the bride's head, like.”

“She was with you?”

“Yeah. And that little gal snores when she's been drinkin'.”

Glover abruptly drew rein and his mule tossed its head in annoyance.

“Smell the smoke?” he said.

Flintlock turned, lifted his head and his great beak of a nose tested the wind.

“I sure do,” he said. “And it's close. We'll go the rest of the way on foot.”

The old man's store-bought teeth gleamed in the darkness.

“Bringing your Hawken?”

“Hell no. I only shoot her on Sundays.”

“This is Sunday.”

“Then it's every other Sunday.”

Flintlock swung out of the saddle and slid his Winchester from the boot.

“This is your kind of business, Sammy,” Glover said. “How do we play it?”

“Take them alive if we can, kill them if we can't.”

“You ain't a man who gives out too many options, Sam.”

“No, I ain't.” Then, suddenly irritable, “Let's get the damned thing over with. Shooting scrapes in the middle of the night don't set well with me.”

Flintlock and Glover made their way through the pines, following the orange glimmer of the robbers' campfire.

The moon had drawn a veil of gray cloud across its face like a mournful ghost and in the distance a hunting pair of coyotes called to each other. The air was cool and thin and smelled of dust. Lime green frogs plopped into a nearby rain pond and old Glover jumped and swung his rifle on them. Then he muttered to himself and walked on.

When Flintlock was close enough to the camp to make out three men lying close to the fire under blankets, he motioned Glover to separate from him. When the old man got ten yards away he held up a hand and stopped him.

Flintlock had no worries about the old-timer holding up his end of the bargain. He'd stand firm and get his work in and he'd killed more than his share back in the olden days when Billy was still above ground.

Gun-savvy geezers like Dave Glover were always dangerous men in a fight. They knew they were too old for a knock-down-drag-out, so they just killed you.

Straightening from his crouch, Flintlock waved Glover forward and walked into the camp, a fire-splashed clearing in the trees where a nearby stream babbled as it bubbled over a pebbled bottom. Somewhere a startled owl questioned the night and rustled a tree branch with restless wings.

“On yer feet, you thieving scum!” Glover yelled, his rifle at the ready.

Flintlock swore. It was a way, but it wasn't his way. He'd planned on getting closer to give the robbers no chance of drawing iron. But Glover had gifted them a margin and the three men took advantage of it.

All at once all hell broke loose.

As men who live their lives on the scout do, the thieves woke instantly. They tangled out of their blankets and jumped to their feet, cursing, guns in hand. But there was a split second delay as the outlaws sought targets in the amber gloom.

It was enough time when killing was to be done. Flintlock's and Glover's rifles roared at the same time, shots aimed from the shoulder.

But they'd both picked the same man, a big fellow with a black, spade-shaped beard who cried out as he went down, sudden red roses blossoming on the front of his shirt.

“Sam Flintlock!”

Peering through a veil of smoke, Flintlock saw Jake Ruskin standing at a distance, his hand away from his gun.

“I'm out,” Ruskin said. He was a medium-sized man who affected the elegant dress and manners of the frontier gambler.

A bullet tugged at the sleeve of Flintlock's buckskin shirt and beside him he heard the thud of lead hitting bone and Glover gasped and went down on one knee.

“This man's getting married to a fat young gal!” Flintlock yelled, outraged. “You can't shoot him like that.”

The third robber, a lanky towheaded kid with the eyes of a carrion eater, advanced on Flintlock, triggering two Colts held high at eye level.

He'd heard of such before, but Flintlock had never met a two-gun man face-to-face.

Henry Brown, the famed Missouri gunfighter, once told him that shooting two hard-bucking revolvers at the same time was a grandstand play calculated to get a man killed.

“Only Hickok ever pulled it off with any success,” he'd said. “And then only when he was drunk and seeing double anyway.”

Now the towhead proved Brown's words.

He walked steadily toward Flintlock, the muzzles of both Colts starring scarlet flame.

To his credit, the kid's bullets came close. Lead split the air around Flintlock's head and kicked up startled exclamation points of dirt at his feet.

But the young gun scored no hits.

However Sam Flintlock was not a man to miss with a rifle at spitting range.

Rapidly levering the Winchester from the hip, his .44-40 bullets tore great holes in the towhead's chest and belly.

Hit hard, blood already making a scarlet gash of his mouth, the man staggered, tried to raise his guns but found that he no longer had the strength.

Finally the youngster raised up on his toes, arched his body like a man does after rising from sleep, then fell, his features drained of all expression. His face crashed into the flames and glowing coals of the campfire and a shimmering shower of crimson sparks cascaded into the air.

Flintlock pulled the dead kid from the flames, then rounded on Jake Ruskin, a named man said to be faster and deadlier on the draw and shoot than John Wesley Hardin.

“You decided to make a play yet, Jake?” Flintlock said.

“You got a rifle on me, Sam, and there's distance between us,” he said. “Seems like I'm facing a stacked deck.”

“Seems like,” Flintlock said.

Ruskin shrugged. “This isn't my fight. The towhead was my cousin, so he was kin, but he wasn't too bright and it was he who brought me to this unfortunate pass.”

“Jake, did you put him up to stealing the wagon and lumber?”

“Sure didn't. But I told him to kill the old man or he'd come after him. He said he wouldn't shoot a sleeping man. More fool him. Fellers in our profession don't make such fine distinctions. Do we, Sam?”

“Most times, I guess not,” Flintlock said. “Now if you shuck that gun belt and let it fall at your feet I'll be greatly obliged.”

He centered his rifle on the gunman's chest.

“Just keep in mind that I'm a nervous man and when I get nervous bad things tend to happen.”

Ruskin smiled and did as he was told.

“Step forward now, Jake,” Flintlock said. “Easy as you go. Just stride off ten yards of git between you and the iron.”

Again the gunfighter complied.

Then Ruskin said, “Mind if take a look at the old buzzard?”

Glover was still on one knee and blood stained the front of his shirt.

The old-timer grinned and said, “That's white of you, Jake. I'm sorry I didn't have the honor of swapping lead with you, but the young feller over there put me out of the fight right quick.”

Ruskin smiled. “Maybe some other time, if you ever visit the Brazos country. I'd be pleased to meet you on the field of honor.”

“Thankee. The name's Dave Glover an' I'll look forward to it.”

After telling Glover to sit, Ruskin stripped off the old man's shirt and undervest.

“Here, Jake, have you done this afore?” Glover said. “Not that I'm doubting a man of your reputation, mind.”

“During the war I was a doctor's assistant,” Ruskin said. “Hell, I was only a younker then but I saw wounds that still waken me from sleep at night.”

He smiled at the old man. “Seen a lot of broken collarbones too, which is what you got.”

“Damn, so that's where the bullet hit. I couldn't lift my gun hand. Damn that kid fer a scoundrel who couldn't shoot straight.”

“Well, Willie's bullet busted up the bone pretty good then went on through,” Ruskin said.

“Will I be able to take ahold of my gal?” Glover said, his face worried.

“Yeah, with your left arm.”

The old man's worried expression spread to Flintlock's face like a contagion.

“Hell, Jake, you can't splint a man's shoulder,” he said.

“No need for that,” Ruskin said. “Strip the holsters off Willie's gun rig and bring me the cartridge belt.”

Flintlock did as the bounty hunter asked.

Ruskin buckled the cartridge belt around Glover's neck then, as gently as a woman, eased the old man's arm into the sling it created.

“When you get home, get that gal of yours to make a better sling out of one of her unmentionables or something,” he said.

The gunman smiled. “You're a tough old coot, Dave, but don't try to move that arm for three, maybe four weeks. Understand?”

“I'll mind every word that was spoke, Jake,” Glover said. “But I got to tell you, boy, it's punishing me like hell.”

“Then drink plenty of whiskey.”

“How about hot gin punch?”

“It'll do the same thing,” Ruskin said. “Make you numb.”

“Damn it all, Jake, but you're true-blue,” Glover said. “I'm glad Sammy didn't plug you out of sheer spite. He does that kind of thing, you know, and he ain't to be trusted.”

“Nor am I,” Ruskin said.

Flintlock smiled. “I ain't over this yet, so see you don't push it, Jake,” he said. “As Dave says, by times I can be a spiteful man.”

 

 

Dave Glover said that Jake Ruskin had acted the white man and as they were both Masons the gunman was allowed to bury his dead and ride out of camp.

Flintlock drove the wagon to the old man's partially built house, a frail skeleton of angled timbers and one boarded-up gable wall. Behind the rickety structure was a large outhouse. Flintlock couldn't make up his mind whether or not it was a two-holer, a rare luxury on the frontier at that time, or if Dave had built it oversized to accommodate the derriere of his intended.

Behind the wall stood a large brass bed with billowy white pillows and a patchwork quilt.

Glover had rigged a canvas tarp over the bed and Flintlock reckoned the old coot would be snug enough beside his fat gal if it didn't rain too hard.

Maybelline Bell made a fluttering fuss over her wounded husband-to-be, and then gave Flintlock a bear hug that was perhaps more enthusiastic than was strictly necessary.

He enjoyed it though.

Sam Flintlock was thirty-nine years old the day he rode into the town of Open Sky, a thriving settlement in the Blue Mountain country of the Oklahoma Territory.

He was short, stocky and as rough as a cob. A shock of unruly black hair showed under his wide-brimmed, much abused hat and his eyes, gray as a sea mist, were set deep under shaggy eyebrows. His mustache was full, in the dragoon style then fashionable on the frontier. He walked with the horseman's stiff-kneed gait, and, if he'd felt inclined, he could have sold his clothes, including his scuffed, down-at-heel boots, for at least a dollar. Flintlock was tough, enduring, raised hard by hard men for a wild, unforgiving land. But there was no cruelty in him. He had much honesty of tongue, a quick, wry sense of humor, and his word was his bond.

He liked whores, children and dogs and was kind to all of them.

He'd killed a dozen men, three as a lawman, the rest since he entered the bounty-hunting profession, and none of them disturbed his sleep o' nights. The only ghost he ever saw was that of the grandfather who'd raised him, wicked, profane old Barnabas the mountain man who'd been following the devil's buffalo herds this past ten years and more.

Barnabas was enough of a haunting for any man.

Open Sky was prospering from the cattle and lumber trades and could afford its own law, a man Flintlock knew only by reputation.

Marshal Tom Lithgow had been a guard for the Butterfield stage line, a railroad bull for the Southern Pacific and for a spell a Texas Ranger. Back in '79 he'd killed Clyde Westbrook, a gunfighter out of El Paso that nobody thought was a bargain, and there were rumors that he'd put lead into Wild Bill Longley, the fast-drawing Texas badman. But that was never proved.

Stores, offices, warehouses and lumberyards lined both sides of Open Sky's wide main street and there were cattle pens outside of town, but no railroad. The town boasted a fine hotel, two dance halls, six saloons and a four-chair barbershop. A big local attraction, Miss Maisie May, the New Orleans Nightingale, sang and danced nightly at the Rocking Horse Bar and Pool Room and some admirers said she was a better turn than the divine Lillie Langtry.

Open Sky had snap. The stores were filled with luxury goods, the boardwalks crowded and freight and brewery drays trundled along the dusty main street day and night. Though the sporting crowd was still asleep, even the respectable matrons had bold, knowing eyes and their hats were as tiny, their bustles as large, as any Flintlock had seen in Denver or San Francisco.

But Sam Flintlock was there on business, not pleasure, and his business was with the law.

He swung out of the saddle under a pale blue sky, a few white clouds drifting aimlessly like water lilies on a pond. The air smelled of dust and horse dung.

The marshal's office was a robust log building, out of place in the midst of so many painted false fronts. But the grim edifice had been built as a jail and a place of refuge during the turbulent Kiowa and Apache raids of just a few years before. The logs still showed the pockmarks of bullets and a rusty Comanche strap iron arrowhead had defied all attempts to remove it from the pine.

The door stood open to catch the morning coolness and Flintlock stepped inside.

A big, bearded man reading a newspaper sat behind a desk. Without looking up, he said, “What can I do for you?”

Flintlock pulled a sweat-stained dodger from inside his buckskin shirt and slid it between the lawman and the paper.

“Is he here?” he said.

His irritation showing, the marshal slammed the newspaper onto his desk and the dodger fluttered to the floor.

Without a word Flintlock picked it up, tossed it onto the desk and said again, “Is he here?”

“Is who here?” Tom Lithgow said.

“Read it,” Flintlock said.

The marshal raised cold eyes to Flintlock, taking in at a glance his worn blue pants and the buckskin shirt, shiny black at the armpits and chest from ancient sweat and the black and red thunderbird tattooed across his throat. Then his stare lingered on the Colt in his waistband, its walnut handle worn from much use.

Lithgow didn't like what he saw. To the marshal, the younger man was what he seemed, a frontier tough and ruffian, probably with a gun rep.

“What's your name, mister?” Lithgow said. He made no move to pick up the dodger.

“Sam'l Flintlock, as ever was. I know yours.”

“Then you know I'm hell on bounty hunters. I don't like them, seed, breed and generation. If it was up to me, I'd hang the whole bunch.”

“Ah, then your obvious distaste tells me that you've heard of me, huh?” Flintlock said.

“Some. None of it good, I assure you.”

Flintlock said nothing.

“Last I heard you was running wild with Abe Roper and that outlaw crowd. Some kind of hunt for buried Spanish treasure an' the like.”

Flintlock shook his head. “Sorry. It doesn't ring a bell.”

Lithgow sighed and picked up the paper.

“Wanted, dead or alive for rape, robbery and murder,” he read aloud. “Hack Weight. Three-thousand-dollar reward. Warning: This man is armed and should be considered dangerous.”

“Dodger says it all, don't it?” Flintlock said. “Whoever wrote that was a crackerjack writer like that Charlie Dickens an' them.”

“Hack Weight alias Frank Wilson alias Denny Smart.” Lithgow held up the dodger. “But it doesn't say that here.”

“He was using the name Hack Weight when I tracked him to Open Sky,” Flintlock said.

“State your intentions, Sam'l.”

“I figure to take Weight to Fort Smith to be tried and then hung at Judge Parker's convenience.”

“He's in town,” the marshal said.

“The hotel?”

“I'll take you to him.”

“This is between me and Weight,” Flintlock said. Lithgow rose to his feet.

“I said I'll take you to him.”

The lawman lifted a shotgun from the gun rack, checked the loads then snapped it shut again.

“Lithgow, I want him alive,” Flintlock said. “You know what a damned nuisance a dead man is on the trail?”

The marshal nodded but said nothing.

When he reached the door, he said, “After you, Sam Flintlock. I don't cotton to a man like you at my back.”

Flintlock was about to make his usual protestations that he'd never shot a man in the back and never would, but he knew his words would fall on deaf ears so he held his tongue. Tom Lithgow had made up his mind about the kind of man Flintlock was and nothing in the world would change his opinion.

“You must think I'm a real desperate character,” Flintlock said.

“And aren't you?”

“Only to people I don't like.”

“I'd say that takes in a heap of territory,” the marshal said.

 

 

Flintlock and Lithgow stepped along the boardwalk, their spurs ringing, a couple of hardened fighting men with little liking for each other.

The marshal smiled and touched his hat to the respectable housewives and fashionable belles he passed, and they simpered shyly in return.

But their smiles melted like snow off a brick wall when they caught sight of the menacing, stocky Flintlock. The ladies pegged him for a dangerous frontier ruffian, and later in the privacy of their silken boudoirs they'd shiver in delightful remembrance, like Roman matrons after a chance encounter with a scarred and famous gladiator.

Flintlock was aware of the impression he made on the fairer sex, both good and bad, but he seldom studied on it. He expected women to take him as he was, just as dogs did, and he was a tender hand with both.

The boardwalk came to an end at an undertaker's emporium on the very edge of town. Away from the saloons and dance halls this was a gloomy part of town where the sun shone a little less bright and the birds sang more melancholy songs. Or so Flintlock imagined.

Lithgow stepped down into open ground and turned to his left. Flintlock followed. The lawman led the way across a grassy area, the view of what lay beyond obscured by piñon, juniper, thick stands of prickly pear cactus and a colorful riot of wildflowers.

“A couple of months after Open Sky was founded, they found the bones of a big animal in this meadow,” Lithgow said, displaying unexpected civility.

“What kind of animal?” Flintlock said, his pale eyes probing the distance ahead of him.

“Nobody knows. But one of its leg bones was as tall and big around as me. Later they dug up a jaw with a row of teeth that were six inches long. Teeth like that could bite a man in half, and maybe they did back in the olden days.”

“Where did the bones and stuff go?” Flintlock said.

“Some fellers with spectacles and long beards came in from a museum in New York City and took all the bones and teeth away.”

“Maybe folks had some mighty big coyotes, back in the day,” Flintlock said.

“Maybe so,” the marshal said. “And maybe the folks themselves were giants.”

Flintlock stopped in his tracks.

“What the hell?” he said.

“You wanted to meet Hack Weight. Well, he's in there. You could offer to shake his hand but I doubt if he'll hear you.”

Ahead of Flintlock stood open cemetery gates and arching above them a wrought iron sign that read: R
EST
Y
E
A
ND
B
E
T
HANKFUL
.

“I really cotton to a peace officer with a sense of humor,” he said.

“Follow me,” Lithgow said, grinning.

 

 

Hack Weight lay in a fresh, unmarked grave. Someone, no doubt one of the town's more charitable matrons, had placed a small bunch of pink wildflowers on the mound of sandy dirt.

Flintlock's face was bitter.

“You sure it was him?” he said.

Lithgow nodded.

“It was him all right.”

“How do you know fer sure?”

“Before ol' Hack passed, he confessed to his many crimes and said he'd die sure in the knowledge that the Good Lord had forgiven him his sins.”

“Yeah, well I haven't,” Flintlock said. “He was worth three thousand dollars to me. Who the hell plugged him, Lithgow? You?”

“Nobody plugged him. He died of consumption and I buried him myself ten days ago. Weight didn't have much weight to him by then.”

“Funny, Lithgow. Real funny.”

The big marshal grinned.

“You could always dig him up, put a couple of bullet holes in him and take him to Fort Smith and claim the reward.”

“And send you half, huh?”

“If you felt so inclined.”

“I'm not inclined to dig up a man who died of consumption and has been in the ground for ten days.”

“If you'd told me you were coming, Flintlock, I'd have kept him longer. But this is summer and the town doesn't have much ice, so I don't know about that.”

“I never took you fer such a humorous man, Lithgow,” Flintlock said.

“I'm not. I just wanted to see your face when you realized that three thousand dollars was gone . . . phhht . . . just like that.”

Flintlock opened his mouth to speak but Lithgow turned on his heel abruptly and walked away, still grinning.

“You're an idiot, Sam'l. I always thunk that and now I know it.”

Flintlock knew the voice and followed it to the top of a piñon tree where old Barnabas sat peeling an apple, a coil of bright green skin hanging down like an overstretched spring.

“I don't need you to tell me that, Barnabas,” Flintlock said.

The old mountain man sliced a piece of apple and stuck it in his mouth. He wore buckskin with fringes on the arms and legs fully two feet long. There was no wind, but Barnabas's long hair tossed around his face.

“You found your mama yet?” he said.

“Not yet.”

“She needs to tell you the name of the gambling man that spawned you on her. How many times do I have to tell you that?”

“I'm still looking. I'll find her.”

“You'd better. A man should have a name.”

“You gave me a name.”

“Damn you, boy, Flintlock ain't a name, it's a rifle.”

“Then why did you give it to me?”

“Because it was all I could think of at the time.”

“Ma is your daughter, Barnabas. You could have given me your name.”

“I ain't your pa, Sam'l, thank God. You need to take the gambling man's name. That's how it's done.”

“Always before you came to me in a dream, Barnabas. What the hell are you doing in the top of a tree where the squirrels live?”

“Sam'l, only an idiot like you would take advice from a dead man who comes to you in a dream. That's why I'm here.”

“Where's Ma, Barnabas? Tell me.”

“I figure down Louisiana way in the swamps. But I could be wrong.”

The old man chewed on another piece of apple, then said, “I'm not here because of you, Sam'l. I was bored was all.”

“How the hell can hell be boring?”

“I can't tell you that, but it is. Hear that sound?”

“I don't hear a thing.”

“It's Old Scratch sounding his horn, calling us back. I got to go.”

“Barnabas, is Ma really in the Louisiana swamps?”

“I think so . . . maybe . . .”

Barnabas faded like morning mist until only his voice, now thin, distant and echoing, remained.

“Sam'l, bad times are coming down,” he said, a whisper in the sunlit morning. “Now don't you walk into no shooting scrapes and get yourself gut-shot . . .”