“There should be no sorrow in this house, Mr. O’Rourke,” Sir Arthur said. “Your wife will not die.”
“What have you done with Audrey?” the old rancher said.
He brushed past Ward and rushed into the bedroom. The Englishman followed, his silk robe rustling. Audrey was asleep, but a little color had returned to her cheeks and she breathed easier.
“We are fortunate indeed, Mr. O’Rourke, that both bullets were fired at close range and passed through her body,” Sir Arthur said. “Otherwise she would be in a serious state.”
“What did you do to her, Chinaman?”
“I treated her as any doctor would do, with herbs and potions to lower her fever and restore her health.”
“You’re a doctor? I sent a rider into town for Dr. Thorne, but where the hell is he?”
“As to your first question, no, I am not a doctor. But I made a small study of the medical arts in China.” Anticipating the rancher’s next question, Ward said, “When one was in an outpost of empire five thousand miles from London, army doctors were few and far between. We officers were expected to treat sick and wounded soldiers as best we could. ‘Make do or do without,’ we were told. No wonder then that we considered local Chinese physicians a godsend.”
Sir Arthur took the woman’s pulse and after a while he said, “Much stronger and regular.”
Grudgingly, O’Rourke said, “She looks better.”
“It will take time,” Ward said. “Look, I think she’s opening her eyes.”
Audrey’s eyelids did indeed flutter open. The first sight she saw was Sir Arthur in his celestial robe. “Am . . . am I in heaven?” she said.
O’Rourke took his wife’s hand and smiled. “No, dear. It’s only a visiting Chinaman.”
“I’m British through and through, actually, Mrs. O’Rourke,” Ward said.
But the woman had fallen into a deep sleep again.
“We’ll let her rest now,” he said.
O’Rourke nodded. “Mister, you may be only a heathen Chinaman, but if my wife pulls through I owe you.”
“She’ll be just fine,” Sir Arthur said. “Time heals all, as some wise man once said.”
He’d decided to give up on establishing his national identity. If O’Rourke thought he was Chinese, then so be it.
“I’m glad to hear your wife is doing better, O’Rourke,” Sam Flintlock said.
“Thanks to the Chinaman,” the rancher said.
“Sir Arthur is a man of many talents,” Jamie McPhee said.
As was his recent habit, he sought Ruth’s approval and this time she smiled at him.
O’Rourke said, “Roy, tell the hands to get a couple of hours’ sleep. We’ll ride at first light.”
“We’ll find him, boss,” the man called Roy said.
“Yes, we will. And as God is my witness he’ll hang,” O’Rourke said. “Flintlock, will you ride with us?”
“Yeah, I’ll ride with you. But don’t be in such a hurry to hang McCord. We need him to implicate Lucian Tweddle and in the presence of Marshal Lithgow.”
O’Rourke considered that. Then, “Roy, we’ll take him alive and hang him after he talks to Lithgow.”
“Suppose McCord makes a fight of it, boss?” Roy said.
“We’ll still take him alive,” Flintlock said. “Let me handle him.”
“Roy, you heard the manhunter,” O’Rourke said. “Now go get some shut-eye.”
“You’ve gotten cooperative all of a sudden, O’Rourke,” Flintlock said.
“Maybe. But if Tweddle is behind all this, he’ll hang with Steve McCord.”
The rancher’s mouth tightened. “And so will Beau Hunt.”
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Beau Hunt rode through thin dawn light in the forested hill country south of the budding settlement of Red Oak, a post office, stage stop and sawmill with little else in its favor.
“You look tense, Beau,” Steve McCord said. “Does leaving town and heading into the high lonesome bother you?”
The kid didn’t smile like a man. He affected an impertinent smirk that scraped Hunt raw.
“I sense something,” Hunt said. “Riders in the hills.”
“Probably what’s left of the McCord and O’Rourke punchers,” Steve said. “If we run across any, I’ll gun them for you.”
“I do my own gunning,” Hunt said. His gambler’s finery set aside, he wore canvas pants held up by suspenders over a faded blue army shirt and scuffed, down-at-heel boots. The gun in his holster was a Colt Cavalry model with a worn, walnut handle, a working revolver that matched the utility of his duds.
Hunt drew rein, a frown gathering between his eyes. “There are riders behind us,” he said.
“I can’t hear anything,” McCord said. he smirked. “You afraid of boogermen, Hunt?”
Hunt ignored that and said, “I can’t hear them. But I feel them.”
“So you are getting spooked, huh?”
“Yeah. I sure am.”
“Maybe you should head back to town where it’s safe, Beau,” McCord said, his smirk in place.
Hunt studied the terrain then swung his horse around and said, “We’ve got a hundred yards of open ground. We’ll wait for them here.”
“Here?”
“Yes. Right here.”
“Hell, you’re scared of your damned shadow,” McCord said.
Now a niggling little thought burrowed like a vile worm into the young man’s brain. Once out of a town where he could cut a dash, Hunt wasn’t so much. In fact he was damned yellow. Then it dawned on him. A reputation as the West’s most feared gun was within his reach. He could become famous as the man who killed Beau Hunt. Hell, the name Steve McCord would be in all the newspapers and they’d write stories about him in the dime novels as the new Wes Hardin.
“Hunt, you got a couple of minutes more to stare into trees and the pretty squirrels, then we’re riding for the O’Rourke place,” he said.
Yet again, the man ignored him, as though he were a faceless nobody who didn’t deserve an answer.
But McCord didn’t mind in the least. All he had to do now was bide his time. He was on the edge of greatness.
Two men rode into the clearing where the ground among the stately red oaks was dappled by the morning sun. Steve recognized them immediately as McCord punchers.
One was a short, stocky man called Stump Wilson, the other a tall drink of water who went by the name Slim Stockton. Both were steady hands, had a used a gun before and were game.
Steve McCord smiled and raised a hand in greeting. “Stump, Slim, what brings you here?”
The punchers exchanged glances, then the man called Wilson said, “We got to take you in, Steve. This is none of our doing, but we got orders from your pa.”
“So my dear father sent you?”
“Yeah, he did, us and others,” Wilson said. “He says he’s gonna hang you, Steve, on account of how you kilt old lady O’Rourke.”
“He’s real serious, Steve,” Stockton said, his long face tailor-made for a funeral. “The boss don’t make threats without he backs them up. You know that.” His uncertain eyes flicked to Beau Hunt. “You the Beau?” he said.
Hunt nodded. “That would be me. Real nice to meet you gentlemen.”
“You better stand aside, then. We’re taking young Steve to his pa.”
“No, you’re not,” Hunt said. “It’s not convenient at this time.”
Steve McCord’s mind worked overtime. If his pa planned to hang him for gunning the old O’Rourke lady, it meant there was no war. And no war meant a serious blow to his and Lucian Tweddle’s plans. He decided to bring this current unpleasantness to a close.
He went for his gun. Then played his hand. As Steve knew he must, Hunt drew and fired.
But McCord immediately rammed the muzzle of his gun into the draw fighter’s side and pulled the trigger. Stunned, Beau Hunt turned in the saddle, a disbelieving look on his handsome face.
Steve McCord yelped his tr
iumph and pumped two fast shots into the man’s chest. At a range of just a couple of feet, he couldn’t miss.
Hunt’s horse, stung by a bullet fired by one of the punchers, reared and threw his rider from the saddle.
McCord didn’t wait to see the man fall. He turned to the drovers, his gun up and ready. Slim Stockton was on the ground on his hands and knees, coughing blood.
Stump Wilson, his gun drawn but unfired, seemed stunned by what had transpired in the time it takes a man to blink. He looked like a man frozen in place, unable to move.
“Drop the iron, Stump, or I’ll kill ya,” Steve yelled.
The young puncher hesitated.
“Drop it!” McCord ordered.
Unnerved, Wilson let his gun drop to the ground, a shocked, demoralized look to him. On the ground next to him, Slim Stockton gave a shuddering groan and lay still.
McCord swung out of the saddle and stepped around his horse to Hunt. The famous pistol fighter lay on his back, his last breaths coming in pained, heaving gasps. Frothy blood bubbled scarlet in his mouth, the terrible reaction of a lung-shot man.
Beau Hunt looked into McCord’s face and said, “You’re a sorry piece of trash.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Steve said, grinning. “I’ve heard all that before. But you’re the one that’s dead.”
He aimed carefully and shot Hunt between the eyes.
The young man was amazed. The most famed, feared and respected draw fighter in the annals of the West now lay at his feet . . . a lifeless lump of nothing.
“Yee-hah!” he shrieked. “I’m the man who killed the great Beau Hunt.” Steve McCord advanced on Stump Wilson, whose face bore an expression close to terror. “Did you hear me, Stump? I killed Beau Hunt.”
The puncher’s eyes flicked to Hunt’s lifeless body then nodded. “You surely did, kid,” he said. Then, as though he couldn’t believe what he was saying, “You killed Beau Hunt.”
“Tell them! Tell them all! Tell my pa! Tell him his son Steve done for Beau Hunt!”
McCord’s face was wild, alight with elation and a dazzling vision of his future.
Alarmed, Wilson said, “I’ll tell them, Steve. By God, I’ll tell everybody.”
“Call me Mr. McCord. You know what I am, Stump?”
“What are you . . . Mr. McCord?”
“I’m a gunfighter. You ever heard that word before?”
The puncher shook his head. “No, I never did.” “Well, you’ve heard it now. Tell everybody that Steve McCord is a gunfighter.”
Wilson nodded, swung his horse and headed into the trees.
“You hear me, Stump?” Steve McCord called after him. “I’m a gunfighter! The best that ever was.”
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
The sound of distant shots made Brendan O’Rourke draw rein. He turned a questioning face to Sam Flintlock.
“I’d say a couple of miles to the east of us,” Flintlock said. “It’s hard to tell among these hills.”
“Steve McCord?” O’Rourke said.
“Maybe somebody took pots at him,” Flintlock said. “But since you and your punchers are right here it’s more likely to be a deer hunter.”
“Unless Trace McCord’s boys caught up with him,” O’Rourke said.
Flintlock said nothing. He and the rancher could speculate away the whole morning and get nowhere.
O’Rourke thought about it and stared at the blue sky fringed by the tree canopy. Finally he said, “We’re not doing much good here. We’ll cut out of these hills, join up with the wagon road and head east in the direction of the shots. It could be Steve McCord or as you said a deer hunter. But it’s worth a scout.”
“Seems like,” Flintlock said. He nodded to the old coonhound that stood beside O’Rourke’s horse. “She got a good nose?”
“Not what it was, but Sally can still pick up a scent,” the rancher said.
“Then it’s up to you to find McCord, Sally,” Flintlock said.
The hound sat on her haunches and scratched behind an ear. She seemed unimpressed by Flintlock’s confidence in her.
“Roy, give Flintlock his gun back,” O’Rourke said. “He might need it.”
The puncher took the Colt from his waistband. “Careful,” he said. “Don’t drop it.”
“Roy, your sense of humor might get you dropped one day,” Flintlock said.
The Circle-O punchers laughed and in the end Flintlock laughed with them.
Sam Flintlock and the Circle-O riders rode south, crossed a shallow creek where Sally flushed a cougar, and joined the wagon road near the steep rampart of First Mountain.
An hour later the hound lifted her head and read the wind.
“She’s onto something,” O’Rourke said. “Good girl, Sally.”
“Maybe a coon,” Flintlock said.
They were south of the natural amphitheater of Second Mountain when the dog left the road and trotted to the southeast, leading the riders again into treed hill country. The climbing sun had faded the sky to the color of much-washed dungarees and the light that filtered through the trees had the heat and radiance of molten steel. Flintlock sweated and black stains appeared on his buckskin shirt. The heat hammered O’Rourke and his four riders and the men had grown silent, all their talk dried up by the sun. Only the dog seemed cool, and Flintlock, slightly envious, wondered how that could be.
A few minutes later Sally took off running, and Flintlock and the others followed her coonhound bark, loud enough some say to waken the sleeping dead.
Feeling a strange sense of loss, Flintlock gazed down on Beau Hunt’s body. “Yeah, it’s him all right,” he said, answering O’Rourke’s question. “It’s Beau Hunt.”
“T’other one is Slim Stockton, boss,” a puncher said. “He was a top hand for Trace McCord.”
O’Rourke shook his gray head. “Hard to believe, ain’t it, Flintlock? I mean, Beau Hunt killed in a gunfight with a puncher.”
Flintlock kneeled by the body. “Two bullets to the chest, one between the eyes. But the one that puzzles me is in his right side. Look at his shirt.”
O’Rourke reached into his vest pocket, took out a pair of spectacles and joined Flintlock on the ground.
“See the charring there? Beau’s shirt was set on fire,” Flintlock said. “Somebody shoved the muzzle of a gun into his side and pulled the trigger.”
“How come he let a man get that close to him?” O’Rourke said.
“The killer was somebody he trusted or at least knew.”
Flintlock rose to his feet and stepped to Slim Stockton’s body. He picked up the dead man’s Colt and inspected the loads. “Slim got off one shot,” he said. “Beau was hit four times. “O’Rourke, take a look at this,” he said.
When the old rancher drew close, Flintlock pointed to the dead man’s chest. “Two shots that you could cover with a playing card,” he said.
“Hunt got his work in?” O’Rourke said.
“That how I read it. And while Beau was busy with Slim, somebody shot him in the side, then pumped two more bullets into him as he fell. Then he finished him off while he lay on the ground. ”
Flintlock looked into O’Rourke’s eyes. “Beau Hunt didn’t die in a fair fight. I can say with certainty he was murdered.”
“Well, he was a known sodomite and my sworn enemy,” the rancher said. “But I’d wish that end on no man.”
“Yeah. He deserved better,” Flintlock said. “Hell, any man deserves better.”
O’Rourke’s knees creaked as he got to his feet. “Flintlock, who was the murderer?” he said.
“My guess is Steve McCord or someone else in the employ of Lucian Tweddle. But I know this: The man who killed Beau Hunt will wish to boast of it. And when he does, I’ll kill him.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
Brendan O’Rourke lived by the reckoning, the precept of an eye for an eye, but he was not a vindictive man. He insisted that they take Slim Stockton’s body back to the McCord ranch.
“I’ll bury Bea
u Hunt on my own property, unless you know of any kin, Flintlock,” he said.
Sam Flintlock shook his head. “No, I never heard of any kinfolk. It’s almost like the Beau sprung out of the earth full-grown. And for all I know, maybe he did.”
“Then let’s get it done,” O’Rourke said. “I should be getting back to my wife.”
“Lead the way,” Flintlock said. He felt hollowed out, strangely grieving for a man he barely knew. Or maybe he grieved over how he died. He didn’t know which.
When O’Rourke led the living and the dead into the McCord ranch the place seemed deserted, the corral empty, its gate open. But within moments a puncher stepped from behind the house, a Winchester slanted across his chest. The man, young and stocky, had a holstered Colt at his waist.
He said nothing, waiting for O’Rourke to speak, but his eyes were careful and missed nothing.
“I brought Slim Stockton home,” the old rancher said.
The hand nodded. “Yup, I can see that. It’s ol’ Slim as ever was.”
“Where do you want him?”
The cowboy thought for a moment. Then he said, “We’ll put him in the bunkhouse for now. That’s where he lived and that’s where he should rest.”
O’Rourke turned in the saddle. “Boys, do as the man says.”
The puncher watched as the dead man was untied from the saddle and lowered gently to the ground. “This way, boys,” he said. “Carry him easy now.”
He led the way to the bunkhouse and when he and the Circle-O hands returned, he said to O’Rourke, “He’s in his bunk. Looks like ol’ Slim is asleep, but he ain’t.”
“This was no doing of mine,” O’Rourke said. “We found your man and Beau Hunt dead on the trail.”
“I know,” the puncher said. “Name’s Stump Wilson, Mr. O’Rourke, and I was there when they were killed.”
Sam Flintlock tensed. “Explain yourself, mister,” he said. “Today I got a short fuse so get the words out in a hurry.”
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