A Time for Vultures

by William W. Johnstone

  “And eyes,” Biddy said.

  “Both of them were shot to pieces. Le Strange saved their lives.”

  “He’s not God. He’s not even a doctor,” Biddy said. “He’s an engineer.”

  Flintlock took time off chewing to smile. “Tell him that.”

  “What is the metal egg? Is it a locomotive of some kind?”

  “Yeah, but it doesn’t need rails. King Fisher calls it Helrun, the Black Howler, and it’s a machine to be reckoned with.” Flintlock flashed back to the massacre of the Comancheros. “It’s got a Gatling gun.”

  Lizzie Doulan spoke for the first time that morning. “A terrible evil has come to this town and it has trapped us here.”

  “We’re not trapped,” Flintlock said. “I’ll shoot our way out of here if—”

  A gunshot shattered the fabric of the morning and his words died on his lips.

  Flintlock shoved his Colt into his waistband and hurried out of the saloon and into the street. A crowd—Charlie Brewster, his men, and a couple other guns that Fisher had brought with him—had gathered outside the livery.

  As Flintlock crossed the street, he heard Sarah Castle say, “Stand back. Give me room.”

  Brewster heard hurried footsteps behind him and turned. He stepped in front of Flintlock. “No, Sam.” He jerked the gun out of Flintlock’s pants and then with his mouth close to his ear, whispered, “You can’t draw down on him. He’ll kill you.” Brewster stepped back.

  Flintlock was facing him and a couple other gunmen. “Give me my gun, Charlie.”

  “You’ll get yourself killed,” Brewster said.

  “Then I’ll take it from you.” Flintlock, his fists ready, moved in on Brewster.

  The incident ended when King Fisher pushed his way through the crowd and stepped between the two men. His strange artificial eye glowing green, he said to Flintlock, “I will not tolerate defiance in a man. I made him aware of my feelings, but he chose to ignore me.”

  “Damn you. Who did you kill?” Flintlock said.

  That question was answered by a woman’s hysterical cry from the livery and in that moment Flintlock knew with terrible certainty who was dead.

  “Listen to me, Sam,” Fisher said. “I want to—”

  “I’m all through listening to you, King.” Flintlock brushed past the man.

  Fisher threw at him, “Damn you. You’ll regret this slight.”

  Flintlock ignored that and pushed his way through the circle of Brewster gunmen. Their hard faces revealed little, but the solemn silence they maintained as they stared at the lanky body of Adam Flood was suggestive of men who figured an injustice had been done. Rose Flood had thrown herself on top of her husband’s body and she sobbed uncontrollably. An ominous pool of blood surrounded the pair, but Flintlock couldn’t tell from whom it came. Perhaps from both . . . wounded husband and grieving wife.

  He turned and said to a man standing next to him, “Get Biddy Sales. Tell her to hurry.”

  The man hesitated for just a moment and then flung himself through the crowd.

  Flintlock kneeled beside the dead man and placed his hand on Mrs. Flood’s back and whispered to Sarah Castle, “How is Adam?”

  Before the doctor could answer, Rose lifted her tearstained face and said, “My husband is dead. Adam was murdered by that . . . that abomination.”

  An older man with eyes quieter than the others squatted beside Flintlock. “He had a Smith & Wesson belly gun in his pocket. He tried to run a bluff with the piece and King Fisher shot him.”

  “He draw down on Fisher?” Flintlock said.

  “No, just showed it as a warning, like.” The gunman shook his head. “Sure way for a man to get hisself killed.”

  Flintlock reached down and took a Smith & Wesson. 38 from the dead man’s pocket. He broke it open and said, “It isn’t loaded.”

  The gunman sighed and rose to his feet. “Rube ran a bluff with an empty gun and left his pregnant wife a widow.” He shook his head. “Hell, I’m getting too old for this business.”

  Rose Flood screamed and screamed and as one, the surrounding ring of men shrank away from her, unable to face a thing so harrowing and so far beyond their experience.

  “Make way there. Give her room to breathe.” Dr. Castle pushed some of the onlookers out of her way. “You men be about your business and that includes you, Flintlock.” She took a knee beside the screaming woman and the legs of her coveralls were instantly stained with blood. “Is Biddy Sales here yet? I’m sure she’s seen a woman miscarry before.”

  Flintlock stumbled away with the other men then sought out Charlie Brewster and grabbed him by the shirtfront. “Give me my Colt, Charlie.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” Brewster said. “King Fisher will kill you. Nobody alive can shade him and I just saw that for a fact.”

  “Charlie, I won’t ask you again.” Flintlock turned away from the outlaw for a moment to yell, “One of you men give me a gun.”

  Brewster drew—practiced, fast, and smooth. The gun slammed into the side of Flintlock’s head and dropped him like a poleaxed ox.

  Flintlock didn’t know what hit him.

  The outlaw stepped back and saw O’Hara eying him. “You taking a hand in this, Injun?”

  “Not this time,” O’Hara said. “A couple of you men help me carry Sam into the saloon.”

  Suddenly, Rose Flood stopped screaming . . . but the resulting silence shrieked even louder.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Sam Flintlock woke to a splitting headache and the concerned, worn face of Lizzie Doulan.

  She removed a wet cloth from his forehead and said, “Are you all right, Mr. Flintlock?”

  Flintlock groaned. “What the hell did Charlie Brewster hit me with?”

  O’Hara’s voice sounded mildly amused. “His hogleg.”

  “Damn near killed me,” Flintlock said.

  “I guess he buffaloed you pretty good at that, Sam. You were so plumb loco out there in the street you didn’t give him much choice.”

  “Hell, O’Hara, why didn’t you plug him?”

  “That would have been impolite, Sam. Charlie was only trying to help, being a good Samaritan, an’ all.”

  Flintlock struggled into a sitting position. “I’m sure there’s some Injun logic there. When I find it, I’ll let you know.” He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Damn. The whole room is spinning.”

  “It’s dark out,” Lizzie said.

  O’Hara glanced at the railroad clock on the wall that Margie Tott had compulsively kept wound. “It’s near midnight, Sam. You’ve been out for hours.” After a few moments, his voice was strangely expressionless. “You missed all the excitement. Mighty big doings in Happyville.”

  Outside, the wind, flecked with rain, blew hard and lifted shrouds of dust from the street. Flintlock cocked his aching head, listening.

  “Mrs. Flood is dead and her baby with her,” O’Hara said. “Bled to death while trying to birth that baby, or so Dr. Castle says. Happened a couple hours ago. Biddy told me the doctor did all she could.”

  Flintlock was silent for a while, absorbing that. Then he said, “King Fisher took three lives with one bullet.”

  “You could say that,” O’Hara said.

  “I hate this town,” Lizzie Doulan said.

  The skin tightened against the hard bones of Flintlock’s face. “King just made himself a moving target.”

  “Just don’t brace Fisher, Sam,” O’Hara said. “I swear, I hear you talk about a drawdown and I’ll give you another headache.”

  “There’s more than one way to skin a cat,” Flintlock said.

  “Or a louse,” Lizzie said. “Hear that sound out there?”

  Flintlock listened into the night. “What is it? A woman sobbing?”

  “Yes, her name is Blanche Jardine. She’s—”

  “I know who she is,” Flintlock said.

  “She’s grieving for Mrs. Rose and her child,” Lizzie said. “Her face is mad
e of porcelain and she drops water on it for tears. The night before she died, Mrs. Rose told Biddy she planned to call the baby Louisa if it was a girl or Jonas if it was a boy. It was a girl and Biddy says she’ll put the names of all three Floods on the grave marker.”

  O’Hara said, “I didn’t even know this town had a graveyard.”

  “It’s small, to the north of town among some wild oak,” Lizzie said. “There’s only a couple graves and they’re hard to find because of the brush.”

  “Now there will be five.” Flintlock was not a man to be handled or helped, but he made an exception. “Help me to my feet, Injun.” O’Hara, a man who’d shared the hardships of some of his most dangerous trails, was a man he respected. “I need to see if I can still stand.”

  O’Hara grabbed Flintlock by the arm and effortlessly raised him to his feet.

  Doing what had become second nature to him, Flintlock’s gun hand strayed to his waistband. “Damn him.”

  “If you’re talking about Charlie Brewster, he gave me your gun. Told me to give it to you when you’d cooled down and were less liable to go off half-cocked looking for Fisher.” O’Hara stepped to the bar, retrieved the revolver, and handed it to Flintlock. “Careful. Don’t drop it.”

  Flintlock made a face, shoved the Colt into his pants, and half walked, half staggered to the door, which he pushed open a few inches. He leaned his shoulder against the frame and looked outside into the night. Wind gusted and a few raindrops pattered along the boardwalk and, across the street, the screen door of Muldoon’s Hardware Store rattled on its hinges.

  O’Hara stood behind Flintlock and said, “Four army deserters rode into town just after dusk. Well, one of them was a civilian scout.”

  “Did they have a story to tell?” Flintlock said.

  “Not much of one. They said they’d come all the way from Fort Concho and have decided to head for Old Mexico. The scout said they plan to join Porfirio Díaz’s army and live high on the hog for a spell.”

  Flintlock smiled. “And they’ll desert from the Mexican army as well.”

  “Depend on it. They look like a shiftless bunch to me.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “Camped out with Charlie Brewster an’ them. When they heard about the smallpox they decided to stay well clear of the buildings.”

  “Can’t say as I blame them,” Flintlock said.

  “Maybe them soldier boys will join Charlie’s bunch,” O’Hara said.

  Flintlock shook his head and instantly regretted it. After the pain subsided he said, “From what I’ve seen of his boys, Charlie only recruits a better class of riffraff. I don’t think he’ll go for deserters.”

  Biddy, wrapped in a blanket, walked across the shadowed saloon floor on bare feet. “How are you feeling, Flintlock?”

  “I’ve got a headache.”

  “We have a burying in the morning. You and your Indian better get some sleep.”

  “Why us?” Flintlock said.

  “Because there’s no one else.”

  Flintlock hesitated and Biddy said, “It takes a man to dig a hole big enough for two people and a baby.”

  “I’m not saying the words. I don’t know the words,” Flintlock said.

  “We’ll say the words, me and Lizzie,” Biddy said. “We’ve heard them more often than was our fair share.”

  “Right after sunup,” Flintlock said.

  “That’s early,” Biddy said.

  “Not too early,” O’Hara said. “There’s a reckoning coming soon.”

  Biddy was taken aback. “That’s what Lizzie Doulan says, a reckoning is near. She told me there will be many dead in Happyville.” She shivered and pulled her blanket closer. “Maybe we’ll all get lucky and the dawn will never come.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  The coming of the dawn found the battered whore wagon pressed into service as a makeshift hearse. But when the wheels got tangled in thick brush the bodies had to be unloaded and carried into the graveyard.

  It took three hours of labor before Flintlock and O’Hara had dug a grave deep enough to accommodate the three bodies. After the earth had been shoveled over the mortal remains of Adam, Rose, and Louisa Flood, Biddy Sales and Lizzie Doulan said prayers for the dead, and then the women sang “Railway to Heaven,” a new hymn recently penned by two devout Southern matrons.

  Life is like a mountain railway.

  With an engineer that’s brave.

  We must make the run successful,

  From the cradle to the grave.

  Watch the turns, the fills, the tunnels,

  Never falter, never fail.

  Keep your hands upon the throttle,

  And your eyes upon the rail.

  Revealing a whore’s sentimentality, tears ran down Biddy’s cheeks as she sang the chorus alone. Lizzie was too overcome with grief to continue and was comforted by Margie Tott and Jane Feehan, themselves in a considerable state of anguish.

  Blessed Savior, thou wilt guide us,

  Till we reach that blissful shore,

  Where the angels wait to join us

  In thy praise forevermore.

  At the conclusion of the hymn all present—except O’Hara, who’d chanted and danced at a distance from the gravesite—agreed that the little Flood family had received a crackerjack send-off.

  The sound of approaching horsemen attracted Flintlock’s attention and his hand dropped to his Colt as Charlie Brewster and his men rode close.

  When he saw the burial party at the grave, Brewster raised his arm and halted his cavalcade. He swung out of the saddle and walked toward the grave. Unusual for him, he wore two guns in crossed belts, a war sign Flintlock noted.

  But the outlaw surprised him.

  As his men sat their saddles and watched, Brewster walked to the graveside and without a glance in anyone’s direction he removed his hat, bowed his head, and stayed like that for at least a couple minutes. Finally he replaced his hat, stepped away from the grave, and stopped beside Flintlock. “How’s your head?”

  “It hurts, Charlie. I owe you one.”

  Brewster smiled. “I saved your life. You’d have gone after King Fisher and he’d have killed you for sure.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Flintlock said. “Where are you headed?”

  “We’re off to bring in the good folks of Happyville. King says the smallpox is gone.”

  “How does he know?”

  “I guess the nice lady doctor told him.” Brewster waved a black-gloved hand toward the grave. “This was none of my doing.”

  “You work for the man who did it, Charlie.”

  “Flintlock, I’ll kill any man who comes at me with a gun in his hand, but I don’t make war on women, especially a woman with child.”

  “How many men and women are you prepared to kill today, Charlie? Those townsfolk won’t return to a plague town without a fight and you know it.”

  “As many as I need to. That’s what King Fisher is paying me for. If they’re willing to disarm and stay disarmed, maybe I won’t have to kill any.”

  Flintlock was appalled. “You’re really going to try taking away their guns?”

  Brewster smiled. “King wants to be a dictator, boss people around. He can’t get his way unless he disarms his people first.”

  “That is the way of dictators,” O’Hara said.

  “Injun, I know nothing about that,” Brewster said. “I’ve never met one of them before.” He turned his attention back to Flintlock. “Sam, if you’re so concerned about the Happyville folks, get your horse and follow us. Maybe you’ll learn something.”

  “Charlie, you’ve got nothing to teach me,” Flintlock said. “But I reckon me and O’Hara will join you and keep you honest.”

  Brewster glanced at the sky where scudding white clouds broke on the horizon like breakers on a beach. “Big wind and it’s blowing from the east. I’ve heard that an east wind can drive men mad.” His eyes hardened. “Don’t let that happen to you, Sam.” />
  * * *

  The long grass tossed in the wind as Flintlock and O’Hara followed at a canter the tracks that cut across the flat. Brewster and his men were visible in the distance, like black ants crawling across a billiard table.

  “Sammy, has it entered your thinking that there’s two of us and a dozen of Brewster’s boys and maybe half of them are faster on the draw-and-shoot than either of us?” O’Hara said.

  Flintlock nodded. “I’m aware of that. It has entered my thinking.”

  “Ah, then that sets my mind at rest.”

  “We’re not getting into a gunfight, O’Hara. Us just being there may stop a bunch of killings.”

  “Charlie Brewster will listen to reason. Is that it?”

  “No, it isn’t. But he knows if he guns people, I’d have the evidence to hang him.”

  “Hell, Sam, just about every lawman on the frontier wants to hang him and he’s still kicking. You won’t scare him.”

  Flintlock shook his head. “O’Hara, I don’t know if it’s the Irish in you or the Indian, but you sure don’t take a sunny outlook on life.”

  “Let’s just say that right now, when it comes to Charlie Brewster and his boys, all I see ahead of us is doom and gloom.”

  “Just let me do the talking if such needs to be done,” Flintlock said.

  “And the shooting, if such needs to be done?”

  “Leave that to me as well.”

  O’Hara nodded. “Well, there you go. Now I feel a sight better.”

  Flintlock turned his head. “You just made a good joke, right?”

  “Wrong,” O’Hara said. “It was you that made the joke, Sammy.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Captain Gregory Holden Usher stared into his coffee cup, his mind on King Fisher. He was filled with an odd kind of dread, like a man who has pursued heaven but then found himself in hell.

  Fisher was like nothing he’d ever seen, neither automaton nor human but somewhere in between, a creature of flesh and bone and intricately wrought metal. The man’s entire right side—arm, chest, and leg—had been forged from steel, brass, and bronze. It was a tangled network of tubes, valves, wires, and here and there, tiny dials no bigger than a man’s pinkie nail. Usher had seen him in the company of a man named Clem Jardine, another metal man. Unlike Jardine, there was no metal on Fisher’s face, but his right eye was peculiar, made of brass and what looked like colored glass.