Hell's Gate

by William W. Johnstone

  “Sam, I’m not ten feet from you. Now come back. You’ve been raving for the last . . . I don’t know how long.”

  “Why . . . why have I been crazy?” Flintlock said.

  “Because you were struggling and they forced you to drink something, a potion of some kind. It made you nuts.”

  Only then did Flintlock realize that his brain was fuzzy and he couldn’t concentrate. “O’Hara,” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m going to be sick.”

  “Good, get that stuff out of your belly. Only be sick to your right, not in my direction.”

  In the silence the crackle of the fire was a small sound. But when Flintlock began violently retching the quiet was ripped apart. After a while he stopped, gasped and then groaned.

  “Sam, have you stopped puking?” O’Hara said.

  “Yeah . . . I . . . I think so.”

  “Good. It was disgusting.”

  “What the hell did I drink?”

  “I don’t know, but I’d guess something to knock you out for a spell. I didn’t struggle so I didn’t have to drink the stuff.”

  “My head hurts.”

  “Mine too.”

  “What happened?”

  “A whole bunch of people jumped on you,” O’Hara said. “That’s all I remember.”

  “Orlov?” Flintlock said.

  “That would be my guess.”

  Flintlock groaned, a long, drawn-out paroxysm of agony. “Damn, my belly’s on fire. What the hell did they make me drink?”

  A tall figure emerged from the yellow dome of the firelight. As the person stepped closer, Flintlock saw a slender woman, with high, arrogant breasts and shapely legs that showed under her short tunic. The woman wrinkled her nose as she caught a whiff of the soiled ground around Flintlock and he said, irritated, “I puked up that stuff you made me drink.”

  The woman said nothing, but she pinched her nose and she tested Flintlock’s bonds. It was only then that he realized that he was roped to a stake driven into the ground. The woman left him, moved into the gloom to do the same to O’Hara, and then she stepped back to the fire, her hips swaying under the thin stuff of her tunic.

  Long minutes passed and the coyotes yipped in the shadowed night. “Sam,” O’Hara said.

  “What?” Flintlock said.

  “Are we done for at last, you and me?”

  Flintlock fought back against the spasm of pain in his belly and said, “Don’t sing your death song just yet, O’Hara. We’ve gotten ourselves out of worse scrapes than this.”

  “When?” O’Hara said.

  After a while Flintlock said, “I don’t remember.” Then, “Do you have a skull between your legs like I have?”

  “Yeah. It’s split wide open and looks like the feller was killed by a tomahawk.”

  “Why did they do that?” Flintlock said. “I mean, put skulls between our legs?”

  “Too make us feel right at home,” O’Hara said. “Why else would they do it?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  “Lucy, my darling, you can come out now,” Roderick Chanley said. “Mr. Fynes and the others have gone.”

  “Go away, Roderick. I don’t want to talk to you right now,” Lucy said. “I may not want to talk to you ever again.”

  Chanley pounded on the door with his fist. “Lucy, you’re making a terrible fool of yourself,” he said. “Walt is very upset.”

  “Walt is upset! Roderick, I’m the one that’s upset. You and that beast Fynes tried to force me into marriage. I’ll never forgive either of you.”

  “It was for your own good, Lucy. I must get you out of this terrible house and we’ll return together to Philadelphia. Walt says houses have souls and he says the soul of this one is evil . . . evil, Lucy, and it’s destroying you.”

  “This is my home, Roderick,” Lucy said. She stood behind the door, her derringer in her hand. “Here I am and here I’ll stay.”

  Roderick had lied to her about the derringer. He said he’d thrown it away, but she found it on the dresser in his room. If he lied about the little gun what else might he lie about? Was his pledge of undying love for her a falsehood? After what had happened, his excusing, no, encouraging Tobias Fynes’s brutal treatment of her, an assault that was almost akin to rape, she guessed that it was. And then there was Roderick’s terrified paralysis during the attack on the house. She didn’t want to think about that.

  “Lucy, dear one, Philadelphia is your home,” Chanley said. “I wasn’t going to tell you this until after the wedding, but Mr. Fynes has made us a most handsome offer on the house. Lucy, he’ll pay five thousand dollars, think of that. What a tidy sum it is to start our married life.”

  “My home is not for sale, Roderick. Not for sale at any price,” Lucy said.

  Chanley kicked the door in anger and said, “You can’t stay in there forever, Lucy. When you get hungry enough you’ll come to your senses. Then we’ll talk some more.”

  Lucy pressed her ear to the door and only when she heard the sound of Chanley’s footsteps on the stairs did she sit on the corner of her bed and allow the tears to come.

  * * *

  “I could’ve twisted her arm clean off and she still wouldn’t have said ‘I do,’” Tobias Fynes said. “She no longer wants to wed the damned pansy poet and there’s the long and the short of it.”

  “Five thousand dollars is a big inducement,” Hogan Lord said. “Maybe Chanley can change her mind.”

  “She won’t change her mind, and damn it, Hogan, I might have been killed up there yesterday,” Fynes said. “Was that Jasper Orlov and his clan?”

  “That’s what Sam Flintlock believes,” Lord said. “He’s pretty certain it was Orlov who was behind the attack on the house.”

  “I used to think it was all a big story, that there’s no such person,” Fynes said. “But now I’m not so sure.”

  “I don’t know.” Lord shrugged. “Maybe there is such a person. It’s a big country, plenty of room for all kinds, sane and insane.”

  Fynes stared out his office window frowning, deep in thought. Finally, he turned to Lord and said, “Hogan, if all else fails, and it will, we may need to go to the gun.”

  “Tobias, we have a new sheriff in town and I don’t want to brace him. The last thing we want is to make an enemy of Hawk Collins,” Lord said.

  “Collins already hates my guts,” Fynes said. “He threatened to hang me, damn his eyes.” He locked on Lord’s face. “Earn your money, Hogan, tell me, what should I do?”

  “I think our best hope lies with Roderick Chanley. Maybe he can convince the girl to sell.”

  “No! I don’t want to hear maybes. What I want is for you to tell me that going to the gun is the best plan. The damn house, and my treasure map, is situated in a wilderness. We hire some men who’ll kill for fifty dollars and wipe out everybody, the girl, the pansy poets, Flintlock, O’Hara and the prizefighter. Toss their bodies over the side of the crag and who’s to know? Their bodies will never be found.”

  Lord said, “The men you hired for fifty dollars will know.”

  “And they’ll keep their mouths shut. They know they’d swing themselves if they uttered a word about what happened,” Fynes said.

  “Tobias, I told you before, you can’t murder Walt Whitman,” Lord said.

  “Yes, I can. So the old coot went west and disappeared. It’s happened to hundreds, maybe thousands of people.” Fynes leaned back in his chair and smiled. “Hire the men, as many as you can find, and we’ll visit the Cully mansion again. But this time we won’t be a wedding party.”

  “Suppose the treasure map isn’t in the house,” Lord said. “It could be a myth, like Jasper Orlov.”

  “After the attack on the mansion I think Jasper Orlov is real and so is the treasure map,” Fynes said. “Old Mechan Cully struck it rich and buried a fortune because he didn’t put stock in banks. Depend on it, Hogan, the map is there and now I’m beginning to suspect the reason Lucy Cully is suddenl
y so uppity is because she’s already found it and doesn’t want to share it with anybody.”

  “I guess it could explain her change of heart toward Roderick,” Lord said.

  “Damn right it does, and soon we’ll know for sure,” Fynes said. Then, as though he’d just remembered something, “Before you go, Hogan, I’ve a question to ask.”

  “Ask away,” Lord said.

  “Do you want Estelle?”

  Lord was surprised. “I’m not catching your drift.”

  “You can have Estelle if you want her. Secondhand goods, I know, but then she was secondhand when I got her.”

  “I’d have to think about it,” Lord said.

  “Don’t think too long. Good heavens but she bores me. I mean, the first time you taste a lamb chop you say to yourself, Well, that was real good. But if you eat a lamb chop for dinner every goddamned night pretty soon you get bored and want something else. Well, I want something else so she’s yours if you want her.”

  “And what if I don’t?” Lord said.

  Fynes raised his head and scratched his fat throat. “Then I’ll throw her into the street. That’s where the hussy belongs.”

  “I’ll talk to Estelle,” Lord said. “See what she thinks.”

  Fynes waved a dismissive hand and said without interest, “Yeah, you do that.” Then, pointing a chubby forefinger, “Hire those men we need, Hogan. Things are coming to a head and there’s no time to waste.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  When the long night shaded into dawn, Sam Flintlock looked around him at what at first glance looked like a Chiricahua Apache rancheria with a dozen dome-shaped wickiups made from poles of oak and willow covered with brush. But unlike an Apache encampment there were no horses and no evidence of pottery and baskets. In their stead store-bought iron and brass pots and pans littered the ground around the fire that burned at the center of the village. In front of each dwelling a human skull spiked on a stake looked out on the camp and grinned. The place smelled rank, a vile mix of stenches that Flintlock couldn’t identify, nor did he want to. Beside him O’Hara said, “This isn’t a village. It’s a pigsty.” And Flintlock heartily agreed with him.

  The settlement was well hidden, established in the middle of a natural rock amphitheater that protected the inhabitants on three sides, the open end hidden by a stand of mixed wild oak and juniper. Scattered outside the dwellings Flintlock saw evidence of bones that had been cracked open to get at the marrow. He had no doubt that some of them were human. But the real horror of the place didn’t hit him until later when the gates of hell opened.

  A slatternly woman holding ribbons of different colors appeared and a big man with a meat cleaver accompanied her. A crowd soon gathered, close to a hundred men, women and children, all dressed alike in homespun short tunics and knee-high moccasins. With them a thin fiddler in a tattered frock coat danced and played, and like the rest of them he was dirty with matted, stringy hair and his clothing was stained, apparently never washed. With him was a boy wearing rags; for some reason, he was not allowed the same tunic as the others.

  Flintlock’s eyes searched the crowd for an attractive female or handsome man. There was none in evidence, just pale faces and dead eyes. Even the appearance of last night’s slender woman was an illusion. She’d been made beautiful by darkness.

  As the fiddler played “The Devil’s Reel” an old, wrinkled crone stepped out of the crowd, a yard of thin blue ribbon in her hand.

  She stopped in front of O’Hara, studied him for a few moments and then bent over and with both hands felt him all over, chest, arms, legs and back. Apparently unsatisfied she frowned, kicked O’Hara in the leg and then moved to Flintlock. Behind her, the crowd watched with close interest and the women with other colored ribbons seemed impatient.

  The crone, one of her eyes milky white, reached out with skeletal hands and felt Flintlock’s heavy shoulders and arms. “Get the hell away from me,” he said. The woman ignored him, did the same to his legs and smiled. She bent lower and tied her blue ribbon around Flintlock’s left leg.

  The man with the meat cleaver, a dull-eyed brute with a massive hairy chest and shoulders, grinned at the crone and said, “A good cut, Sister Hortence.”

  “He’s a big one,” the old woman said. “A lot of good chewing meat on his bones.”

  “Next!” Cleaver Man yelled.

  A younger woman went through the same procedure and then tied her red ribbon around O’Hara’s left arm. “Just enough for you and Brother Cornelius, eh, Sister Sophronia?” Cleaver Man said.

  “We’re not big eaters,” the woman said, smiling shyly.

  “Next!” Cleaver Man said.

  Sister Eleanora tied her yellow ribbon around Flintlock’s right arm and was complimented by Cleaver Man for her good taste. Sister Clara, whose pink ribbon circled Flintlock’s head, said, “It’s the best there is for soup.” And so it went on, woman after woman making her choice until Flintlock and O’Hara were covered with colored ribbons, including the pink band tied around Flintlock’s head and another in a delicate shade of green around O’Hara’s.

  By this time Flintlock was turning the air blue with curses, but he and O’Hara were totally ignored, as though they were animals waiting for slaughter . . . which they were.

  More humiliation and fear was to follow.

  The big man laid his cleaver aside, untied Flintlock and O’Hara’s ankles, ignored Flintlock’s attempts to kick him, and pulled off both Flintlock and O’Hara’s boots. Working deftly, he stripped Flintlock of his belt and O’Hara of his suspenders and pulled off their pants and long johns. He then replaced the colored ribbons, tying them loosely. Satisfied, Cleaver Man roped their ankles again and picked up his heavy chopper.

  “Sister Hortence, this way if you please!” he yelled.

  The old crone stepped forward, a blood-crusted cloth the size of a bathhouse towel held between her arms. She held it up. “Just put it in here, Brother Cyrus,” she said.

  “I’ll be ready to serve in just a moment,” Cleaver Man, now Brother Cyrus, said. He removed the red ribbon and then stomped hard on Flintlock’s knee with his booted foot, pinning the limb to the ground. He could chop down with the cleaver and sever the leg at the top of the thigh without having to make too many cuts.

  Flintlock, his eyes huge, watched the rise of the gleaming, sharp-edged cleaver and braced himself for the inhuman agony that would follow. In the background the fiddler played “Polly Put the Kettle On” at a frantic pace.

  As befitted the surroundings, the result of the shot that came from somewhere behind Flintlock and O’Hara was both horrific and spectacular. Cleaver Man’s mouth was open in a snarl as he lifted the chopper. The bullet hit him between the teeth, traveled through the base of his skull and exited an inch above the top vertebra of his neck. The big man dropped like a sack of rocks. The crone called Hortence watched Cleaver Man fall and screamed, but a bullet to the chest abruptly cut off her terrified screech and she fell on top of the dead man.

  As the racketing echo of the shots died away two events happened very quickly: Like a wave receding from a dangerous shore, Jasper Orlov’s people drew back in horror as they saw two of their number die . . . and Jeptha Spunner came from Flintlock’s left and stepped into his line of sight.

  The albino wore an ankle-length duster and a battered Stetson replaced his usual top hat. Low on his hips he wore two Colts in crossed cartridge belts, a thing Flintlock had never seen before. But the unusual gun rig jogged his memory and he suddenly recalled what he’d once heard about an almost legendary albino draw fighter. Spunner wasn’t the handle he’d once gone by. His real name was Whitey Carson and he was out of Galveston, where he’d began his career as a hired gun in the savage Sutton-Taylor feud. From there he’d quickly climbed to the top tier of the shootist hierarchy and for a couple of years had been considered one of the Lone Star State’s elite guns. Then Whitey just vanished. It was rumored that he’d been killed by Apaches in the New Me
xico Territory, but the truth was he’d outrun an Arkansas hanging posse and somehow ended up in New York where he’d served as a taskmaster, some called it slave master, on the hell ships.

  And now Carson had saved Flintlock’s and O’Hara’s lives and they were beholden to him. Flintlock decided he would continue to call the man Spunner, unless he said otherwise.

  “Untie me,” Flintlock said. “And give me a gun.”

  Spunner briefly glanced at Flintlock but then he was shooting again. A tall man with yellow hair had run into a wickiup and then emerged levering a Winchester. Spunner thumbed off a shot, dropped the man and then killed another rifleman who was coming to his aid.

  Then Flintlock again saw that strange phenomenon, the panicked flight of Orlov’s clan when some of their number was killed. They’d lost three men and a woman to Spunner’s guns and they’d no belly for a fight. Wailing, moaning, men, woman and children, melted into the trees and soon the sounds of their mourning were lost in distance.

  “Spunner, cut me free,” Flintlock said. “Hell, man, I’m suffering here.”

  “Stay where you are for now,” the gunman said. “I have work to do.”

  Without another word he searched through the rickety dwellings one by one and when he returned he had Flintlock’s revolver in his hand and O’Hara’s gunbelt over his shoulder.

  “There are a few rifles and pistols in the shacks,” he said. “We’ll save those before we set everything on fire.”

  As Spunner used a Barlow knife to cut him free, Flintlock said, “No sign of Orlov? I want to kill that son of a bitch.”

  “You can’t kill him because there is no Jasper Orlov,” Spunner said. “At least not any longer.”

  When Flintlock stood he staggered a little as blood rushed into his numbed legs. He rubbed his raw wrists and said, “I’m not catching your drift.”

  “I’ll explain it to you later, at least as far as I can figure it,” Spunner said. He helped O’Hara to his feet. “Now we burn this hellhole.”

  Spunner led the way.

  He dragged the bodies of the man and woman he’d killed into the largest wickiup and then grabbed a burning brand from the fire and shoved it into the bottom of the dwelling. The dry brush ignited immediately and in a moment the place turned into a roaring pyramid of fire. Flintlock and O’Hara joined in the torching of the shelters and soon all of them were blazing and a thick column of acrid black smoke rose into the blue morning sky.