Hell's Gate

by William W. Johnstone

“We’ll only be gone a day, two at most,” Flintlock said. “Maybe I could talk Spunner into staying in the house for a couple of days. He’s got a Colt.”

  “We know nothing about him, Sam. Leaving Lucy with Spunner could put her in even more danger. Him and this Orlov ranny could be in cahoots for all we know. You don’t hire a fox to guard the chicken coop.”

  “Then what do you suggest?” Flintlock said. “And don’t give me no more flannelmouth talk about foxes and chicken coops.”

  “I say we wait until the week is over and then, if you’re still in a mind to, we’ll got after Jasper Orlov, if he even exists.”

  “I reckon he exists, all right, and a week from now I’ll still have a mind to,” Flintlock said. “I got a story to tell you, O’Hara. It’s about Barnabas and me. So one time up on the old Santa Fe Trail when I was still a boy, me, old Barnabas and another mountain man by the name of Lute Hasty came across a whole family that had been murdered, pa, ma, a half-grown boy and a teenage girl. The girl had been ravished—do you know what that means?”

  “I know what it means,” O’Hara said.

  “And after that happened, she was stabbed with a Green River knife like the rest of them. Are you catching my drift?”

  The wind whispered around the barn and guttered the flame of the single oil lamp that lit the place so that the shadows danced. The restless ravens still cried out, apparently for no reason.

  “Go ahead, I’m listening,” O’Hara said.

  “Well, the girl lived long enough to tell Barnabas that the murders had been done by their hired hand, a young man named Seth Reid that they’d saved from an orphanage ten years before. With her dying breath she said Reid had escaped on the Arkansas River by canoe. Barnabas listened and then he said we were going after him. Right after that he said something I’ve never forgotten. ‘Sam,’ he said, ‘the feller who carried out this slaughter is an abomination and an abomination can’t be allowed to exist in a civilized society, or any other society, come to that. It cannot be tolerated and must be destroyed. And by God, that’s what we’re going to do.’” Flintlock patted the buckskin’s back. “We have the same thing here, O’Hara. If Jasper Orlov is indeed a cannibal then he’s an abomination and we must destroy him. I won’t ride away from here and let such a monster live to slaughter more people like meat hogs.”

  O’Hara nodded. “I’m with you on that, Sam.” Then, “You didn’t finish the story. What happened to Seth Reid?”

  “Oh, him? Well, we tracked him for the best part of a month and then caught up with him a couple of miles south of old Fort Smith,” Flintlock said.

  “And you killed him?”

  “Eventually,” Flintlock said. “When it came down to how to treat a hated enemy, mountain men like Barnabas and Lute Hasty had learned a lot from the Indians. They knew how to torture a man and how to keep him alive for a long time, days, before he begged for death.” Flintlock’s smile was slight. “I was eleven years old when I watched that, way too young. To this day I wish I’d never seen it. Or heard it.”

  “Maybe that’s why Barnabas is where he is,” O’Hara said.

  “No, killing Reid like that could be justified, I guess. They did far worse, him and Lute. That is, until a brown bear did for Lute up in the Snake River county of the Oregon Territory. Barnabas and me tracked ol’ Ephraim for three days and I killed him with the Hawken. Then Barnabas cut him open and buried what little of Lute he found in his belly. That was a sad funeral for everybody and Barnabas never did get over it, made him even meaner than before and from that day forth he was death on brown bears.”

  “And were you still a younker?” O’Hara said, half amused.

  “Nah, by then I’d just turned fourteen and was man grown. The day I killed the bear, on account of how Barnabas’s sight was going, he tied a rope around my waist, pinned the end to the ground with an iron tethering stake and gave me three feet of slack. Then he laid a deer at my feet that had been dead for a while and told me to wait for Ephraim, that he’d come around shortly.”

  “Was he a big bear?” O’Hara said, prodding to get the rest of Flintlock’s tale.

  “Damn right, he was big. When he stood on his hind legs he was over ten foot tall and as wide as a barn door. I threw the Hawken to my shoulder and fired and that was one lucky shot. The ball took him right in the heart and burst it asunder. When Ephraim fell that day the ground shook.”

  O’Hara stepped to the barn door and said, “We’d better get back inside.” Then, giving Flintlock a long look, “Real nice of Barnabas to stake you out like he did, Sam. He could have got you killed.”

  Flintlock put down the horse brush and joined O’Hara at the door. “Oh, Barnabas knew I could get killed, all right. I mean, he was well aware of that risk,” he said. “But he said later that he didn’t want me to take one look at Ephraim and take to my heels, so he staked me down real good to make sure.” He smiled. “Barnabas was never what you would call true-blue, and he wasn’t much into pampering kids, even his own grandson.”

  O’Hara slowly shook his head. “Hell, Sam, did he ever do something nice for you?” he said. “Something a grandfather might do for his daughter’s kid?”

  “Sure, he did. One time he gave me a piece of honeycomb after I got stung all over when he made me climb a tree and raid a bees’ nest.” Flintlock pointed to the thunderbird tattoo on his throat. “And he gave me this and a glass of whiskey for my twelfth birthday.”

  “That was mighty generous of him,” O’Hara said.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Lucy Cully, looking pretty in a pink silk dress, and Jeptha Spunner sat on either side of the library fire when Sam Flintlock and O’Hara stepped inside.

  “Please help yourselves to a drink,” Lucy said. “Mr. Spunner has just been regaling me with tales of his time as a first mate on the steamships out of New York.”

  “Hell ships, they were called in those days, dear lady,” Spunner said. “And I guess they still are. Shanghaied crews, sadistic, drunken captains and the billy club and the lash do not make for pleasant voyages.”

  Flintlock poured himself a glass of Tobias Fynes’s excellent bourbon, found a chair and said, “I never took you for a seafaring man,” he said.

  “I had eight years of it and that was enough,” Spunner said.

  “I can’t imagine you laying a lash on any man’s back, Spunner,” Flintlock said.

  “I never did, but a time or two when there were whispers of mutiny I was forced to enforce discipline with my revolvers. God forgive me, I sent many a lively lad to Davy Jones’s locker.”

  Flintlock grinned, feeling the whiskey. “Somehow I can’t imagine that either.”

  “Really? How interesting.” Spunner lowered his dark glasses and Flintlock looked across the room into scarlet eyes . . . and caught a glimpse of hellfire that was there for an instant and then was gone. But that one hellish glance made Flintlock totally reverse his opinion of the man. Whatever the albino had been, whatever he was now, one fact stood out loud and clear—he was a killer.

  Lucy, slightly flushed from the whiskey and the heat of the fire, said, “Mr. Spunner, you perform magic. Will you do a trick for us?”

  The albino tore his fire-and-ice gaze from Flintlock and said, “Alas, dear lady, I don’t do mere conjuring tricks. My magic is of a much more important kind. I am part of the wonder of the age of steam.”

  Lucy leaned forward in her chair, as eager as a child, “Oh, please, what is it you do? I am so impatient to hear.”

  Spunner’s voice pitched higher, revealing his excitement. “I’m building a great flying machine,” he said. “I will soon experience the magic of flight, and so can you if you ever decide to share in that adventure. Think of it, dear lady, you can soar high above the smoky rooftops and grab a handful of stars.”

  A stunned silence fell on the room like a shadow. The wind rattled the library’s lattice windows and with a soft, grating sound a log dropped in the fireplace and sent up a shower of
scarlet sparks. Finally, Lucy smiled and said, “A flying machine, Mr. Spunner? How deliciously droll, yet so exciting.”

  Flintlock refused to be impressed. “You mean a balloon? I saw one of those once, took a couple of men up higher than the trees and then collapsed and hit the ground. A newspaper reporter feller got a broken leg.”

  “The reporter was in the balloon?” Spunner said.

  “No, it fell on him,” Flintlock said, and O’Hara, not a laughing man, grinned.

  “How unfortunate,” Spunner said. His voice was frosty again. He blinked his strange eyes and glared at Flintlock. “You misunderstood me,” he said. “I’m building a flying machine, not a hot-air balloon.”

  “We still have a little time before supper is ready,” Lucy said. “Tell us more, Mr. Spunner.”

  “There’s so much more to tell it would take us well beyond suppertime,” the albino said. “But I will tell you this . . . steam is the immortal soul of our modern industrial age, and it’s that almost supernatural force that will power my airship.”

  Flintlock, still angry with himself for being intimidated by Spunner’s glare, said, “Airship? Hell, for long-distance travel nothing will replace the stagecoach and the steam train. Everybody knows that.”

  “Sam has a point, Mr. Spunner,” Lucy said.

  “Yes, perhaps that is true,” the albino said. “But I plan to use the flying ship only on a voyage of exploration, not public transportation.” Spunner warmed to his subject. “Think of it, Miss Lucy. I will fly westward across the great Pacific Ocean all the way to ancient Cathay. From thence I will visit darkest Africa and fly north again to Europe. Rome, Paris, London, I will visit them all and then cross the North Atlantic and back to the Americas.”

  “Huzzah!” Lucy said. “What a wonderful voyage of discovery, and what a honeymoon it would be for my dear Roderick and me. Oh, the poems he could write.”

  “Then I’ll take you both with me, Miss Lucy,” Spunner said.

  “And you and your poet will break your fool necks somewhere around the first mountain range you hit,” Flintlock said.

  “Sam, what a wet blanket you are,” Lucy said, frowning. “Now I’m feeling quite melancholy.”

  Flintlock said, “Lucy, Spunner told me that the Jasper Orlov ranny fears his magic. Well, a flying machine ain’t magic and never will be and that’s how the pickle squirts.”

  “You’re right, Flintlock, it isn’t magic, but Orlov fears me nonetheless. The Orlov clan’s village is hidden deep in the woods, but a flying machine like mine fitted with Gatling guns fore and aft could find it and attack from the air. Orlov’s people believe that the world will end when fierce dragons destroy the nations by fire. Orlov heard the roars when I tested my steam engine and I believe he thinks I keep a fiery dragon in the arroyo close to my cabin.”

  “I don’t want to talk about Orlov, whoever he is, I—” Lucy lifted her head and sniffed. “Oh Lordy, my roast is burning!” She rose from her chair and rushed toward the kitchen.

  As soon as the girl was gone, Spunner looked hard at Flintlock and said, “Take a word of advice, bounty hunter—don’t push too hard.”

  Before a surprised Flintlock could answer, Spunner followed Lucy, calling out advice on how to save scorched meat.

  * * *

  During dinner Flintlock was in a black mood and Lucy Cully kept the conversation light, the only cross words uttered when Jeptha Spunner said that the old house was definitely not haunted, unlike his cabin, which was, and by more than one entity. Flintlock, anxious to stretch out Tobias Fynes’s task to its full seven days, told the albino that he was full of bull crap and to quit trying to reassure Miss Lucy that there were no ghosts when they’d only just moved into the house and it was too soon to come to that conclusion. “When I say there are no ghosts, only then can Lucy be assured that there are no ghosts,” Flintlock said. “And I need a week to investigate the matter.”

  The wind had shifted direction and now it blustered from the north and the mansion spoke for itself . . . doors banged open and shut, windows shook, hanging iron and brass pots clanged in the kitchen, and to make matters worse a gray wolf pack hunted close and filled the unquiet night with howls. Lucy quickly changed the subject and Spunner did not press the matter about a lack of specters. For his part, Flintlock was very glad to let it go. He’d spent an anxious few moments having visions of his five hundred dollars flying out the front door and now he needed to relax and digest his dinner.

  Despite the wild night, Spunner declined Lucy’s offer of a bed, saying that he had urgent business the next day and needed to make an early start and that his own cabin was closer to his appointment.

  Flintlock wondered what business Spunner could possibly have in this wilderness, unless it was with Jasper Orlov. But he was glad to see the man go and didn’t detain him with a bunch of questions.

  * * *

  “Damn, but that feller puts me on edge, like coming face-to-face with a scrub bull in a canebrake,” Flintlock whispered as he and O’Hara stood in the dark hallway outside his bedroom.

  “How does he know you’re a bounty hunter, Sam?” O’Hara said. “He’s never met you before.”

  “With the thunderbird on my throat and my noble demeanor I’m an easy man to describe,” Flintlock said. “Spunner has heard of me, that’s all.”

  The candelabra in O’Hara’s hand cast a yellow circle of light in the gloom. The echoing grandfather clock struck two and the wind had finally fallen silent, as though holding its breath, waiting for something to happen.

  “I think he spooked Lucy with his talk of Orlov,” O’Hara said. “She’s sleeping with a derringer under her pillow.”

  “Or I did, talking about ghosts,” Flintlock said. “A belly gun isn’t much good against a ghost.”

  O’Hara shrugged. “Is that a fact? I wouldn’t know since I’ve never tried to gun a ghost.” Flintlock opened his door a crack. “We’ll keep an eye on Spunner,” he said. “I don’t trust him. The more I talk with him the more I’m sure he’s in cahoots with Jasper Orlov.”

  “Why?” O’Hara said. “You heard the man. He’s only interested in visiting Cathay in his flying machine.”

  “Maybe. But it could be that him and Orlov may want this house because of the treasure map,” Flintlock said.

  “Remember Shade Pike told us he’d searched the place and there was no trace of a map,” O’Hara said. “So maybe there’s no Jasper Orlov either. Spunner never came straight out and said that he’d met him.”

  “Pike was an outlaw,” Flintlock said. “Who sets store by anything an outlaw says? But I reckon there is an Orlov, a damned cannibal, and soon I’ll rid the earth of his shadow.”

  “Well, that’s a thought to sleep on,” O’Hara said. “I’ll talk to you in the morning, Sam.”

  After O’Hara left, Flintlock stepped into the darkness of his room and stumbled around trying to find the candle. But suddenly light flared, banishing darkness and shadow, and old Barnabas squatted in the middle of the floor, a flaming torch raised in his right hand.

  Flintlock was not glad to see him. “I don’t need you around here, Barnabas. I’ve got enough ghosts to contend with.”

  The old mountain man shook his silvery head. “You’re an idiot, boy. Didn’t I tell you when you were a younker that there’s no such things as ghosts?”

  “What the hell do you think you are?” Flintlock said.

  “I’m not a ghost, boy. I was a live person, then a dead person and now I’m a half-dead person, an ambassador from beyond. Catch my drift?”

  “No, I don’t,” Flintlock said. “How come you staked me out as bait for a man-killing grizzly bear, you old reprobate?”

  “Hell, I gave you the Hawken, best damned shooting rifle ever made.”

  “Suppose it had misfired? It was raining that day and the powder could have been damp.”

  Barnabas sighed. “Then you’d be a dead person like me. Or are you too stupid to figger that out for you owns
elf?”

  The old man’s torch sputtered and showered bright red sparks on the floor.

  “Why are you here, Barnabas?” Flintlock said.

  “You-know-who has some advice for you, Sammy.”

  “I don’t want his advice. I don’t want his advice now or ever. Understand?”

  Barnabas blinked and said, “He says you’re to have your wicked way with the girl, then you’ve to pitch her over the side of the crag and listen to her scream all the way down. Then you and O’Hara are to mount up and continue the search for your ma. He says it ain’t Christian for a man to be called for a damned musket.”

  “What would Beelzebub know what’s Christian and what’s not?”

  “Because he’s an expert on every religion in the world, past, present and future. That’s his line of work and he takes it real serious, does a heap of studying.”

  “Go away, Barnabas, and take the torch with you. It smells like a dead skunk.”

  The old man rose effortlessly, up, up, until his moccasins hovered three feet above the floor.

  “Listen to me, boy,” he said. His eyes glowed with scarlet fire. “Hell is full of cannibals and any one of them could tear you apart and crunch your bones like soda crackers. Messing with man-eaters is not a job for idiots.” Barnabas cupped a hand to his ear. “Hark! The hunting horn sounds and I have to go.” He tossed the flaming torch onto Flintlock’s bed and vanished in a yellow cloud of sulfurous smoke.

  “Damn you, Barnabas!” Flintlock yelled. He threw the torch onto the floor, did the same with the smoldering blankets and stomped out the fire, his boot heels rapidly rapping on the wood floor like a kettledrum.

  “Sam, are you all right?”

  Lucy Cully’s voice at the door.

  “Yeah, I’m just fine. I was smoking in bed, fell asleep and dropped the cigarette on my blanket.”

  Then this from O’Hara, “Do you need help? I can smell smoke.”

  “No, no, everything is under control,” Flintlock said. “You can go back to bed now.”

  A few red sparks rose as Flintlock stomped out the last smoldering remnants of the fire from a corner of a blanket. He picked up the still-burning torch, opened the window and tossed it as far from him as he could. He watched the torch cartwheel into the night and then drop over the side of the crag.