Pitchfork Pass

by William W. Johnstone

  “I’m just fine, thanks,” O’Hara said. “Real good of you to ask.”

  Flintlock helped O’Hara to his feet. “Are you bad hurt?”

  “Beaten up some, but I’ll survive.”

  “Your face is bruised.”

  “I reckon.”

  “What happened?”

  “They jumped me when I was asleep.”

  “Asleep? Why were you asleep?”

  “Because I was tired.”

  “And you let them three jump you?”

  “Sure did.”

  Flintlock shook his head. “Damned careless of you.”

  “They sneaked up on me. Some white men can sneak up as good as any Indian.”

  “Any idea who they were?”

  “Their names were Mort, Clem and Deke. That’s all I know.”

  “Mighty unsociable, them three.”

  “Unsociable enough that they were going to burn my eyes out.”

  “Yeah, that’s mighty unsociable. All right, let’s have a look at them boys.”

  A search of the bodies revealed one thing for certain—they weren’t punchers. Their duds, boots and gun leather were of good quality, more expensive than any puncher could afford, and each man had five double eagles in his pocket, indicating they’d just been paid.

  “Paid for what?” O’Hara said.

  “A hundred dollars is top gun wages,” Flintlock said.

  “Didn’t do much to earn their wages today, did they?” O’Hara’s bruised mouth and split lips made his words sound thick. “Hey, look here.”

  O’Hara kneeled beside the body of Mort and held the man’s arm for Flintlock to see. “Look at his wrist.”

  On the inside of the dead man’s wrist was a tattoo of three blue triangles rising from a red baseline. Flintlock inspected the other two and said, “They all got the same thing.”

  “It’s the Indian sign for a mountain,” O’Hara said. He looked troubled.

  Flintlock immediately grasped the significance. “The Old Man of the Mountain?”

  “Seems like. And you just killed three of his boys.”

  “Three of his gunhands,” Flintlock said. “O’Hara, I had them two over there dead to rights. Why the hell did they draw down on me?”

  “Hell if I know,” O’Hara said. “I saw it, but I couldn’t believe it. I still don’t.”

  “It’s like they were willing to die.”

  “Yeah, even with death staring them in the face, they wouldn’t accept defeat.”

  “Did the Old Man make them that way?”

  “Sam, how the hell should I know?”

  “I thought you knew everything.”

  “When it comes to a reason for men to throw their lives away, I don’t know a damned thing.”

  “Maybe the Old Man has a hold over a man that doesn’t allow him to think straight,” Flintlock said. “I mean, that could be.”

  “Maybe,” O’Hara said. He looked around at the breathtakingly beautiful but pitiless land. “If those three rode for the Old Man then he’s close. We better get the hell out of here.”

  Flintlock said, “The undertaker lawman said he was from a town—”

  “Dexter.”

  “Yeah, Dexter. I say we take the dead men’s horses and traps and sell them there.”

  “Sam, if we do what you say, we’ll never come back into this country,” O’Hara said. “You know it, and I know it. You want to find your ma before her trail grows cold again, so the decision is up to you. Do we carry on or go back to Dexter and then take another route around Balakai Mesa and the Old Man of the Mountain?”

  “We’d waste days, weeks, maybe,” Flintlock said.

  “That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard,” O’Hara said. “But as I said, it’s up to you.”

  Flintlock made his decision. “Unsaddle the horses and turn them loose. They’ll find their way back to the Old Man.” He glanced at the three sprawled bodies. “Then he can come bury his dead.”

  “That’s how you want to play it?” O’Hara said.

  “It’s the only way to play it,” Flintlock said. “My ma is close. We keep on going until we find her.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Shanghai, China. July 1855. Twenty years before the Old Man of the Mountain established his outlaw stronghold among the peaks and arroyos of Balakai Mesa.

  Jacob Hammer, as he was known then, left the teeming, clamoring streets of the International Settlement and climbed the winding, mile-long path that led upward through groves of plane trees to a siheyuan, a Chinese courtyard mansion built in the traditional style, a large quadrangle surrounded by buildings on all four sides. From there, the Whangpoo River, a tributary of the Yangtze, was seven miles distant, but still, Hammer smelled its familiar stench, a mix of fish, seaweed and if some reports were to be credited, decomposing human bodies.

  Jacob Hammer was thirty-nine years old that summer, the American first mate of the fast English tea clipper Rochester out of London town. In three days, she would set sail again and arrive at the Thames one hundred days later with a full hold after exchanging her cargo of Indian opium for tea, porcelain and spices.

  But as he neared the mansion, Hammer gave little thought to the tea trade. He had come to the home of the rich merchant Sun Yu on a much more important mission . . . in search of the Tibetan potion that gives the imbiber eternal life.

  “Aye, Mr. Hammer, it’s a legend right enough and maybe that should be an end to it,” Captain Miles Davies said as he and Hammer stood on the Rochester’s quarterdeck and looked out on the city’s waterfront and business and financial district. Close by, a massive British ironclad, HMS Devonshire, lay at anchor, its great turret guns pointed landward. Sampans and junks scuttled everywhere, men, women and children in cone-shaped coolie hats manning their decks, thin dogs standing in the bows, barking at everything.

  Captain Davies, a big-bellied man with side whiskers and a huge walrus mustache, offered Hammer his silver flask. Hammer declined and Davies took a swig, recorked the flask and said, “Mind you, I heard that there are lively young lads running around Shanghai who drank of the potion and claim to be a hundred years old and more.” Davies smiled, revealing the bad teeth of the longtime mariner. “But I put no stock in that story. Chinese people believe what they dearly want to believe, magic potions being one of those things.”

  Hammer, who’d learned the seaman’s trade in the hell ships sailing out of New York, was a hard-faced man with ice-blue eyes, a wide, cruel mouth and a volcanic temper. As a third mate, he’d once beaten a sailor to death with his bare hands for spitting on the deck and it was rumored, but never proved by the San Francisco police, that he’d strangled a whore in a Barbary Coast brothel. At six foot four and two hundred pounds of bone and muscle, a boot and skull fighter who was good with the gun, knife and billy club, Jacob Hammer was an elemental force to be reckoned with and even tough men with scarred faces stepped carefully around him.

  “Cap’n, I’m told a merchant by the name of Sun Yu has the potion,” Hammer said.

  “Who told you that?”

  “A whore by the name of Chenguang. She said Sun Yu uses her from time to time when he needs a diversion.”

  “She’s a whore at the Seven Seas on Nanjing Road?”

  “Yeah, she is. Maybe you know her.”

  “I know her. In English, Chenguang means ‘Morning Glory.’ As you probably know, there is nothing glorious about her first thing in the morning. Damned unwashed hussy.”

  Hammer said, “She told me that Sun Yu showed her a golden bottle that held the potion. He told her that if she was real nice to him, one day he would give her a slug.”

  “Nobody can lie like a Shanghai whore, Mr. Hammer. They’re famous for it.”

  A fat seaman wearing a white apron had been standing at the deck rail of the British ironclad, a slop bucket in his hands. He waited, his gaze constantly searching the coffee-colored water that lapped against the hull. At last he saw what he’d been looking for,
a sampan that had steered too close to the ship, the man at the sculling oar distracted as he argued with a woman at the bow. The seaman grinned, tipped the sloshing contents of the bucket over the boat and was rewarded by a string of Chinese curses from both the male and female. The sailor gave the pair a derisive salute, then stepped away from the rail, whistling.

  Jacob Hammer had watched the little drama play out with no display of emotion. Now he said, “I want to talk with Sun Yu. How do I find him?”

  Captain Davies seemed alarmed. “After a visit to Sun Yu, do you know the first thing the Chinese do?” Hammer made no answer. “They touch their heads to make sure it’s still on their shoulders. He’s the most dangerous criminal rogue in Shanghai, maybe in all of China. He controls prostitution, gambling, the opium dens, the police, operates a murder-for-hire enterprise and gets a cut from every porcelain bowl or ounce of spice that’s loaded into the hold of a clipper ship, including this one. Take a piece of advice from an old China hand, Mr. Hammer, stay well away from him.”

  “I still want to talk with him.”

  “Do you really think he can give you immortality? For centuries, Chinese emperors tried to find the secret of eternal life, and they’re all dead. The only immortality is through our Blessed Savior and I advise you to visit a church instead of a brothel and trade the pox for piety.”

  Many years after the events recorded here, the retired Arizona lawman Chester Monroe said that the Old Man of the Mountain had outlived his eyes, that they’d died decades before his demise, and the gaze Hammer turned on Captain Davies gave truth to that statement.

  “Sun Yu. Where can I find him?” Hammer said again.

  And Davies, a religious man after his own fashion, met that stare and caught a glimpse of hell. “Take the main road out of the International Settlement and after a mile you’ll come on the gravel track that leads to the siheyuan of Sun Yu.” And unsaid: And may God have mercy on your soul.

  Captain Davies watched Jacob Hammer as he walked along the dock toward the business district, his first mate’s stride fast and purposeful. He nodded to himself, reaching a decision. There was no doubt that Mr. Hammer would eventually leave Shanghai . . . but it would not be on the good ship Rochester.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Jacob Hammer left the path and the plane trees behind and stepped through the open gate to the entrance to the building ahead of him. Since the Ming dynasty, most Chinese mansions faced south and Sun Yu’s was no exception, a structure with a red-tiled roof, its façade decorated with ornate carvings of dragons and other mythical beasts.

  Hammer walked into the entrance and was stopped by a screen wall of rust-colored brick. Passage beyond was limited to a corner opening that led into a single small courtyard. Larger, wealthier houses had three or four, lined up one behind the other, each entered by a gate, but since Sun Yu’s mansion had only one, it suggested that for all his wealth the crime lord lived modestly.

  The main house in front of Hammer was almost identical to the entrance structure but more ornate. It had a carved wooden door, painted red, and he walked in that direction, only to halt in his tracks when a harsh yell came from a columned porch on his right. Four Chinese men rushed toward him, their faces tight and hostile. Each carried a British .702 Lee-Enfield rifled musket and had a dao, the deadly Chinese saber, belted at his waist.

  The Chinese angrily jabbered to Hammer in a language he did not understand, but they didn’t seem too threatening until they searched him and found the .36 Navy Colt tucked into his waistband at the small of his back, hidden by his peacoat. Immediately the situation turned dangerous when one of the Chinese slammed his musket butt into Hammer’s chest and, caught off guard, the big white man stumbled and fell on his back.

  Hammer saw a glint of steel as a sword slicked from its scabbard and he scrambled to his feet, ready to fight for his life.

  Then the bull bellow of a man’s voice froze everyone in place.

  A massive white man wearing a cream-colored suit and pants, a wide-brimmed straw hat on his great nail keg of a head, bullied his way between Hammer and his assailants. The big man yelled something in Chinese and one of the guards answered him, jabbing his finger at the Colt, and then backed away. His blue eyes blazing, the man turned on Hammer and in a heavy German accent said, “Why did you bring a pistol into the home of Sun Yu, mein Herr? Bist du verrückt? Are you insane?”

  Hammer’s anger flared. “I always carry a gun. Who the hell are you?”

  “My name is Herman Wegberg. I am the Honorable Sun Yu’s personal secretary.”

  Hammer gave the German a once-over. The man was as tall as Hammer, but at least fifty pounds heavier, little of it fat. Fists, sunburned and covered in blond hair, hung as big as hams at his side and above his clipped military mustache was a flattened nose that had been broken many times and never reset. A dueling scar stood out as a livid white gash against his brick-red left cheek and his eyes were small and slightly protuberant, like those of an intelligent pig. Hammer had been around powerful, dangerous men all his life and he now marked down Wegberg as one of them. It was obvious the man had been hired for his muscle, not his secretarial skills.

  What Jacob Hammer didn’t know then, but would learn later, was that Herman Wegberg was an emotionless killer who had beaten eight men to death with his fists, all on the orders of Sun Yu, and he stood ready to murder another eight if his master so desired.

  The big German spoke again. “What is your name and what is your business with the lord Sun Yu?”

  “My name is Jacob Hammer and my business with Sun Yu is my own.”

  “You have an impudent tongue, mein Herr.”

  “You asked and I told you.”

  “See you keep a tight rein on your tongue if and when you speak with Sun Yu, or he will have it cut from your head. By your accent, you are an American?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Good. Sun Yu has no love for the British.”

  “Then I can see him?”

  “Perhaps. I will ask if he wishes to speak with you. If he does not, then you will leave this house and never come back. Do you understand?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “Then wait here. The Chinese will do you no harm.”

  Before Hammer could comment, Wegberg turned on his heel and walked into the house. He was gone for several minutes and then stood at the door and beckoned Hammer to come.

  “Before we go inside, I remind you again to watch your manners,” the German said. “Sun Yu is a great lord and is not to be insulted. Be a dummkopf, mein Herr, and you could lose your head.”

  Hammer smiled. “I’ll be most respectful.”

  “See you are,” Wegberg said. “Your life depends on it, American.”

  * * *

  The German led Hammer through a dark hallway dedicated to Sun Yu’s ancestors, dominated by an ornate shrine where small pots of incense burned. An open doorway led from the hall to the crime lord’s audience chamber. After the strong sunlight of the courtyard, Hammer’s eyes had not adjusted to the room’s darkness and he stopped, uncertain of what to do next.

  Beside him, Wegberg’s voice fell to an urgent whisper. “Kowtow, damn you. Do as I do.”

  The big man dropped to his knees and touched the ground with his forehead. It was a craven, submissive gesture that didn’t sit well with Hammer, but he needed the Chinese and had no choice but to follow suit.

  “Rise now,” the German said. “Stay where you are and under no circumstance approach Sun Yu.”

  Hammer’s eyes adjusted to the darkness. He was in a large room, unfurnished but for a raised dais where the Chinese man sat in a high-backed, thronelike chair. Sun Yu wore Chinese garb, but his changshan, the traditional long tunic, was plain brown in color and bore no embroidered decoration. Hammer had half expected to meet an older man, but to his surprise Sun Yu looked to be in his early forties, a slender man with wide shoulders, the thin, straight hair that fell over his shoulders still black as ink. His eyes w
ere dark, widely spaced and, unusual for a rich Chinese, he wore no beard or mustache. The man’s slim, long-fingered hand waved Wegberg forward.

  The German stepped to the dais, spoke to Sun Yu in Chinese and then showed him Hammer’s Colt. After Wegberg stopped talking, he beckoned to Hammer that he should come to the dais. “Bow,” he said.

  Hammer bowed from the waist and then waited while Sun Yu’s black eyes studied him. After what seemed an age, the Chinese finally said in good English, “Why do you wish to kill me?”

  Hammer said, “I have no wish to kill you.”

  “Lord Yu,” Wegberg said.

  “Then why did you bring a revolver?”

  “I forgot I had it, Lord Yu.”

  “You are an American?”

  “Yes, Lord Yu.”

  “Then if you did not come into my home to kill me, what was your purpose? Do you wish to rob me?”

  “No, I came to seek the potion that gives eternal life.”

  The Chinese was silent for a while and then said, “A man’s life is a candle in the wind or hoarfrost on the tiles. It is short. That was ordained by the gods many, many years ago.”

  “I was told that the potion can make a man’s life last forever, Lord Yu.”

  “American, this potion of which you speak, if I were to give it to you, what will you give me in return?”

  “A hundred English pounds.”

  Sun Yu smiled, as though he thought this an impudence. “I have so many English pounds and German marks and American dollars that on cold nights my servants light the braziers with them. Nor do I lack for gold and silver.”

  “Then what can I offer you in return?” Hammer said.

  “A favor,” Sun Yu said. “That is how much of the business is conducted in Shanghai. I do you a favor, you do one for me in return.”

  “Name it, Lord Yu.”

  “Suppose I asked you to put your revolver to good use, what would you say?”

  “I would say . . . put me to the test.”