Pitchfork Pass

by William W. Johnstone

  “No, I never did.”

  “Arbuckle, biled up with honey when he could get it. He was much addicted to it.”

  “Didn’t sweeten him none,” Flintlock said.

  O’Hara led his horse from the moonlit ponderosas where there were patches of graze. “I aim to ride west for a spell, take a look-see.”

  “The undertaker feller got you spooked, huh? All that talk about the Old Man of the Mountain and them soldier boys.”

  “No, I’m not spooked, I just don’t want any unpleasant surprises come morning,” O’Hara said.

  Flintlock took the bubbling coffeepot off the coals. “I’ll let it stand for a spell, settle the grounds.” He looked up at O’Hara, who’d swung into the saddle. “Know what I think? My guess is that them soldiers weren’t bushwhacked by the Old Man of the Mountain. I reckon they bumped into bronco Apaches and got themselves massacreed.”

  “Why would the Apaches return his head?”

  “Indians take on some mighty strange notions. Maybe they did it just to be sociable. Who knows?”

  “Enjoy your coffee, Sam,” O’Hara said. “If I’m not back by first light get the hell out of here.”

  “Can’t do that. I’ll come looking for you.”

  “As the undertaker lawman said to us . . . it’s your funeral.”

  O’Hara swung his horse away and rode into the blue twilight of the fading day. Flintlock sat among the pines and watched him go, worry nagging at him.

  There was just no telling what trouble O’Hara might get himself into when he wasn’t supervised.

  * * *

  Sam Flintlock rubbed his hands together in delight. His coffee was starting to smell almost good. But then the rubbing slowed to a halt . . . it wasn’t his coffee he smelled, it was wicked old Barnabas, Sam’s dead grandfather. The old mountain man stood at the edge of the pines watching him, a smoking tin cup in his hand.

  “Hot as hell, bitter enough to curdle a pig and as black as mortal sin, the way I like it, boy,” Barnabas said. “I’d give you some, Sam’l, if I wasn’t such a selfish son of a bitch.”

  “I thought I’d gotten rid of you,” Flintlock said. “You haven’t showed up in months.”

  Barnabas sipped from his cup, steam rising, obscuring his bearded face. Only his green eyes were visible “Well, let me tell you . . . there was a big tidal wave in the South Seas, an’ all kinds of people drowned and there was a lot of cannibals to be welcomed. You-know-who had a hell of a time getting them settled down, had to teach them that they can’t take bites out of the other guests. I mean, we got full-time demons to do that sort of thing.”

  Flintlock sighed. “What do you want, Barnabas?”

  “Well, first off to remind you that you’re an idiot. And secondly to warn you that your redskin friend is riding into a heap of trouble. No, don’t get up. It will be full dark soon and you’ll never find him.”

  “Is it the Old Man of the Mountain?”

  “Who?”

  “The Old Man of the Mountain. We were warned to stay clear of him.”

  “Why? Speak up, boy. Cat got your tongue?”

  “Because he’s a rapist and a murderer and a vicious outlaw.”

  Barnabas shrugged, an irritating habit he’d picked up from the emperor Napoleon. “The Old Man sounds like a fine fellow to me. No, it’s not him.”

  “Glad to hear that,” Flintlock said.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t be. But I guess you’ll find out soon enough.”

  “What’s going to happen with O’Hara? Barnabas, tell me.”

  The old mountain man made a childish face. “No, I won’t. And you can’t make me.” Then, “I see you still got the Hawken.”

  “It’s the only thing you ever gave me.” Flintlock touched the thunderbird tattoo on his throat. “Well, apart from this.”

  “Still holding a grudge because I didn’t give you my name, huh, Sam’l? Find your ma and get your own handle.”

  “That’s why I’m here in the Arizona Territory. You know that. And you could make it easier for me. Tell me where Ma is.”

  “I don’t know where she is.”

  “I thought you knew everything, past, present and future.”

  “This is good coffee,” Barnabas said, drinking from his cup.

  “Answer me, old man. Where is Ma? And when you’re done, tell me why you sent me into the bear cave that time. I never got the straight of that from you.”

  “On your tenth birthday, wasn’t it, Sammy? I can’t quite recollect.”

  “I was nine and it wasn’t my birthday. You planned to winter in the cave and sent me inside to make sure it wasn’t occupied. It was.”

  “Why worry over old times and old wounds, Sam’l?”

  “I’m the one with the old wounds, Barnabas. The scars are all over my back. O’Hara saw them a few weeks ago when I was taking a bath in a rock spring up on the rim. ‘I never knew somebody went at you with a bullwhip, Sam,’ he said. I said, ‘It wasn’t a whipping. One time when I was a boy I tangled with an old she-grizz who was sore at being wakened from her winter sleep. She tore me up good before Barnabas shot her.’”

  “Yeah, now I recollect,” the old man said. “Sure, now I remember, Sammy. As things turned out that was a right cozy cave and we had bear meat enough to last for weeks.”

  “Damn it, you almost got me killed.”

  Barnabas gave his irritating shrug. “As that old undertaker lawman said, mistakes were made.”

  “You heard him?”

  “Of course I heard him. I was there, or thereabouts.”

  Flintlock raised his coffeepot, thumbed the lid and sniffed. Now he couldn’t smell much of anything. He put the pot back on the fire and said, “All right, you didn’t give me a direct answer to the cave question, so I’ll ask the first one again: Where is Ma?”

  “And my answer to that one is the same—I don’t know. I can see some things, but not others. Your ma, I can only catch a glimpse of her now and again, like she’s walking in a mist. You-know-who knows she’s my daughter and it amuses him to torment me.” Barnabas smiled. “He’s real good at his job, knows where to stick the pitchfork, if you catch my drift.”

  “But Ma’s still in the Arizona Territory?”

  “Yeah, somewhere west of here, I think.” Barnabas sighed. “I’ve already had too much coffee and I got a full cup. Well, I’ll just get rid of it.”

  The old man tipped his cup and Flintlock yelled, “No!”

  Too late.

  A brown cascade of Arbuckle splashed on the grass.

  Barnabas grinned. “I got to go. So long, Sammy.”

  He vanished from sight and Flintlock yelled, “Who is the Old Man of the Mountain?”

  His only answer was a derisive laugh that immediately became one with the harsh cawing of the ill-tempered crows quarreling among the pines.

  Flintlock stepped to where Barnabas had poured out the coffee. The grass still steamed. He shook his head and decided that the unrepentant old sinner richly deserved to be in the place where he was.

  The coffee Flintlock poured into his cup was the color of swamp water and tasted just as bad. He drank it anyway, rolled a thin cigarette and stared into the gathering darkness . . .

  Where the hell was O’Hara?

  CHAPTER THREE

  O’Hara rode west from Pleasant Valley into a vast, empty land of long, piñon-covered mesas, red sandstone cliffs, huge open valleys and deep, mysterious canyons. For centuries, the Hopi, Navajo and Apache had hunted and warred across this land but had left no mark, and over the course of tens of thousands of years the only thing that ever changed was the sky.

  When night fell, O’Hara spread his blankets within a stand of pine and juniper that had enough sparse grass to graze a horse that was used to roughing it, and his paint made no complaint. During the remaining daylight hours after he left Flintlock, O’Hara had not seen another human being. Once he startled a small herd of mule deer and then a jackrabbit bounced in front of hi
s horse for a few yards before vanishing into the brush.

  Of the Old Man of the Mountain there was no sign, and O’Hara closed his eyes safe in the knowledge that he had been on the scout for a Mescalero legend . . . just another scary boogeyman the squaws used to keep their children quiet at night . . .

  That and nothing more.

  O’Hara fell asleep to the sounds of darkness. An owl asked its question of the night, coyotes yipped as they hunted squeaking things among the rocks and a south wind whispered secrets to the piñon.

  He woke to the dawn . . . and to the hard steel of a Winchester rifle muzzle jammed firmly between his eyes.

  “On your feet, Injun,” a man’s voice said. Then, spiked with impatience, “Now! Or I’ll blow your eyeballs through the back of your skull.”

  O’Hara blinked, stared into a tough, bearded face, and said, “Go to hell.”

  That statement brought its own reward, a swift kick in the ribs from a square-toed boot. Two other men cursed, brushed the rifleman aside and hauled O’Hara to his feet. One of the three wore a patch over his right eye that partially covered a vicious, livid scar that ran from his cheekbone to the corner of his mouth. This man, O’Hara later heard him called Mort, said, “What’s a thieving Indian like you doing in this part of the Territory?”

  O’Hara met the man’s reptilian eyes and said, “I’m only half thieving Indian. My other half is thieving Irishman.”

  “Then you’re a damned dirty breed,” Mort said.

  “I’m a damned clean breed,” O’Hara said.

  “You’re a funny man, huh?”

  “No one ever said I was funny.”

  O’Hara’s revolver was in the rifleman’s waistband and that caused him a deal of disappointment.

  “Know what I do to funny men?” Mort said.

  O’Hara shook his head.

  “This!”

  Mort backhanded O’Hara across the face. The blow sounded like a pistol crack and was powerful enough to send O’Hara staggering on rubber legs before he thudded onto his back, dazed, the taste of blood in his mouth.

  “I can’t abide a lippy breed,” Mort said. “I can’t abide any kind of breed.”

  “Looks like a full-blood Apache to me, Mort,” the rifleman said, shoving his rifle muzzle into O’Hara’s belly. “I thought all them scum was in the Florida swamps someplace.”

  Mort was a big man, well over six feet, heavy in the chest and shoulders and strong. He effortlessly yanked O’Hara upright. “Look at my face, breed,” he said. “What do you see?”

  A trickle of blood ran from the corner of O’Hara’s mouth and his right eye had started to close. “I see a son of a bitch,” he said.

  A series of back-and-forth, open-handed blows bobbed O’Hara’s head on his shoulders, and saliva flew from his mouth in scarlet strings. Mort shoved his face close to O’Hara’s and paced his words. “Do . . . you . . . see . . . the . . . scar?”

  “Yeah, I see it.” O’Hara was barely clinging on to consciousness.

  “An Apache buck did that, cut me up afore I could put a bullet into him and I’ve been searching for him ever since,” Mort said. “Look at me. I’m death on Apaches.”

  “I’m looking at you and I still see a son of a bitch,” O’Hara said.

  “Still the funny man, huh?” Mort said. He threw O’Hara to the ground then turned to the rifleman and said, “Deke, build us a fire.”

  “What’s your thinking, Mort?” Deke said.

  “If all this damned Apache sees when he looks at me is a son of a bitch, better he doesn’t see anything ever again.”

  “What you gonna do, Mort?” Deke said, grinning his amusement.

  “Burn his damned eyes out. That’s what I’m gonna do.”

  It took Deke only a few minutes to start a small fire, just big enough to burn the end of a twig that Mort had sharpened into a point.

  The third man, a tall, lanky drink of water with sad, hound-dog eyes and a Colt holstered high on his left side, said, “Mort, maybe we should take the Injun to the Old Man for questioning, like. I mean, what’s he doing out here? Is he scouting for the army? Could be, you know.”

  “Well, Clem, if he is, his scouting days are over, and anyhow, since when was the Old Man afeard of the army?”

  “Since never, I reckon,” Clem said.

  “Then there’s your answer. We’ll take the Old Man the breed’s scalp.”

  “Yee-haw!” Deke yelled. “Another scalp fer Custer.”

  Mort placed the end of the twig in the flames and grinned. “Yes, it is. I do declare.”

  The way Mort said that last made it a good joke and his two companions laughed. But they didn’t laugh for long, since no sooner did Mort’s words leave his mouth than a .50 caliber ball drilled through the crown of his hat and took off the top of his skull.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Sam Flintlock saddled his buckskin at first light. O’Hara had not returned and that was worrisome. Wishful for coffee, sourdough bread and bacon, but having none, he put the thought out of his mind and mounted. Hunger was not new to him. Flintlock called it by name since it returned at regular intervals like an unwelcome guest.

  Apart from the finer points of drinking and whoring, old Barnabas and his fellow mountain men had taught Flintlock how to track a man and when the tracking was done how to kill him. He put those skills to good use now.

  Despite his vaunted half-Apache ancestry, O’Hara left an obvious, meandering trail like the heading-home of a drunk Irishman. His shod pony had left scars on the land that were easy to follow, even in that rocky country. There were a couple of spots where O’Hara had dismounted, turned and checked his back trail. On both occasions, he’d smoked a meager cigarette, a habit he’d recently acquired since reading in an eastern newspaper he’d picked up in Fort Defiance that smoking was an excellent strengthener of the heart and lungs. O’Hara had gathered up the telltale butts, however he’d left other sign, the gray ash that still lay on the ground.

  After an hour on the trail and as the morning brightened, Flintlock crossed a wide, dry wash, spared a glance for the lank, white bones and skull of a long-dead burro, and then skirted around the outer wall of a horseshoe-shaped bluff, the red sandstone rim rising a hundred feet above the flat. This was lost, lonely country and the still air smelled of sagebrush and warming rock and the ever-present odor of dust . . . and of something else . . . the tang of woodsmoke. And close.

  Flintlock drew rein. By nature, he was not an overly considering man, but he was sure that O’Hara, with nothing to boil on it, would not start a fire this early in the morning. That left two possibilities: he’d fallen in with coffee-drinking men or the fire belonged to strangers. Strangers being the most likely, Flintlock was suddenly wary. The Territory’s mesa country was not the haunt of honest men, but a haven for outlaws and all kinds of frontier riffraff on the make, a wild, lawless place where a man could easily get dry-gulched and just as easily die.

  There was no wind, so the fire was close, the smoke barely drifting. Flintlock swung out of the saddle and led his horse forward. He made his way through some knee-high brush and descended into another wash, this one narrow with a sand and pebble bottom. Schooled by mountain men who were more lobo wolf than human, Flintlock had the instincts of a predatory animal and he stepped carefully, making no sound, his great beak of a nose raised, testing the air. He left the wash and crossed twenty yards of open ground, ahead of him an escarpment the height of a tall man separating the bluff as though it had been cut in two by a knife. Now that he was close enough to the source of the smoke he heard voices, the harsh talk of some rough and mighty unfriendly characters.

  Suddenly Flintlock knew with certainty that O’Hara was near . . . and in trouble.

  He let the buckskin’s reins trail and slid his .50 caliber Hawken from the boot. On the opposite side of the saddle hung a .44-40 Winchester, a far superior weapon, but that unrepentant old sinner Barnabas, with many a curse, cuff and kick, had taught Fli
ntlock the ways of the plains rifle and his much-abused student was deadly with it at under a hundred yards. A fair hand with a revolver but no great shakes with the Winchester, without a second thought he left the cartridge rifle with his horse and stepped on cat feet to the point where the bluff abruptly dropped to a slope that ended in a jumble of talus rock.

  Keeping to cover, Flintlock made his way through some fair-sized boulders and then looked out into an area of open ground surrounded by trees. O’Hara lay on the ground, his face bloody, and a man stood over him. The man was big, bearded and huge in the chest and shoulders, and he said something that made his two companions laugh.

  Still unseen by the three men, Flintlock’s gaze flicked to the big, grinning man, then to O’Hara and back to the man again.

  It was never said of Sam Flintlock that he was a contemplative sort of gent. Rather, without much ado, he made up his mind and acted. He threw the Hawken to his shoulder and triggered a shot. High and to the left. He’d aimed for the big man’s temple but the errant ball blew off the top of the ranny’s head. The big man went down without a sound, his holed, bloody hat rolling away from him when he hit the ground.

  Flintlock dropped the Hawken and pulled his Colt from the waistband.

  “You two stay right where you’re at,” he said to the dead man’s companions, walking forward, closing the distance between him and them. “I ain’t in the mood for talking polite, so I won’t tell you again.”

  But then the two men surprised the hell out of Sam Flintlock.

  He had the drop. His gun up and ready, and he’d caught the pair flat-footed . . . but they tried to draw down on him. Stranger still, in the instant before he shot them both, he wondered at their expressions, tranquil, almost serene, like the faces of a couple of nuns in church on Sunday.

  Hit hard in the chest, one man fell immediately. The other, a tall man who wore his gun high and unhandy on his waist, was gut-shot. He staggered back, his face twisted, triggered a shot that missed by a yard, and then collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut when Flintlock plugged him again.

  “What the hell?” Flintlock said, the actions of the two men puzzling him. They must have known they didn’t stand a chance on the draw and shoot, yet they went ahead and did it anyway. Why would they do such an idiotic thing? It didn’t seem . . .