Pitchfork Pass

by William W. Johnstone

  “You would do me a favor?”

  “Anything you ask.”

  “Very well, I will ask it. On the eastern shore of the Huangpu River there is a dyer’s shop owned by a man named Zhang Tao. His wife and son, whose names are unimportant, work with him. I loaned this man the money to start his cloth-dyeing business and it now returns a fine profit, but Zhang Tao refuses to repay me and has beaten and cursed my agents, telling them that the interest is too high. It is very vexing. So, American, what would you do with such a man?”

  Hammer smiled. “Seize his business, Lord Yu.”

  The Chinese spread his expressive hands. “Yes, I can do that but it would be too light a punishment. Many people owe me money and they must be taught a lesson before Zhang Tao’s open defiance can bring out a horde of devils.”

  Sun Yu fell silent and Wegberg said to Hammer, “Ask the lord Yu what service you can provide that will settle this matter.”

  Hammer figured that the Chinese man heard this as well as he did, but Sun Yu remained silent. “What service can I provide that will settle this matter?” he said.

  “It can be resolved simply,” Sun Yu said. “You will eliminate Zhang Tao and his wife and son without mercy. Let there be no surrender. One cannot pull a white cloth from a dyeing vat.”

  “And when I do, what then?”

  “Then we will talk again.” Sun Yu rubbed his temples. “Now I grow weary and must let my women tend to me. You are dismissed.”

  Once out again in the sunny courtyard Wegberg said, “I will tell you how to reach the shop of Zhang Tao. Do this task well and you will be richly rewarded.”

  “Rewarded with the potion of eternal life?”

  “This, I do not know,” the German said. “But a word of warning, American. Fail, and before you breathe your last you’ll die a hundred deaths each more painful than the one that went before.”

  “I won’t fail,” Hammer said. “Now, give me back my pistol.”

  * * *

  Jacob Hammer did not fail. But his quest for eternal life was doomed to failure.

  “You have done well, American. Zhang Tao and his wife and son are dead, and even my women rejoice. But there is no potion of eternal life,” Sun Yu said. “Even the emperor, though fabulously rich, cannot buy one extra year. But the remedy for dying is living well. If you will be my retainer for two years I can teach you how to cram a thousand lifetimes into one life. The secret is wealth and power and with me you will learn how to acquire them both.”

  It was then that Hammer made a decision that would change his life forever. In exchange for his expertise as a conscienceless paid assassin, he learned from Sun Yu how to finance, organize and run a criminal empire and how to use money, drugs and women to control men. In two years Hammer killed nineteen people for the Chinese crime lord, one of them Herman Wegberg, whose freelance protection racket had not been sanctioned by Sun Yu. The German was eating dinner when Hammer shot him, and it amused him to stuff a bratwurst sausage into the big man’s mouth for the police to find.

  After his criminal apprenticeship was over, in the summer of 1857, Jacob Hammer set sail for the United States, eager to put into practice what he had learned.

  “Remember,” Sun Yu told him before he left for the dock, “make yourself impregnable. Remain in your stronghold, be it in the city or the country, but let your influence spread far and wide. And always bear this in mind, no matter how upright and honorable he may be, the man does not live who cannot be bought.”

  * * *

  In the years that followed as Jacob Hammer grew in riches and power, he still smarted at being denied eternal life, but he turned his disappointment into a joke and called himself the Old Man of the Mountain. His dark, malevolent shadow spread over the entire nation, from San Francisco’s Barbary Coast in the west to New York in the east. His criminal tentacles spread far and wide; opium, prostitution, gambling, protection, extortion, robbery and murder for hire all came under his sway and with two hundred traveling gunmen on his payroll no one dared stand in his way . . .

  That was until the Old Man crossed paths with a saddle tramp in a buckskin shirt with no name of his own and a half-breed former army scout who knew not whether he was an Indian or an Irishman. Sam Flintlock and O’Hara were an unlikely pair to take on a mighty empire that reveled in its evilness, and later the reason President Theodore Roosevelt would give for their audacity was, “Those boys didn’t have a lick of sense between them and they just didn’t know any better. But, by God, sir, they had sand.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Damn it all, Sammy, I’m getting scared,” O’Hara said. “I know we won’t starve to death, because dying of thirst comes a lot sooner.”

  “If the horses don’t get water soon they won’t last much longer,” Sam Flintlock said through cracked lips. He drew rein. “One thing is for sure, my ma didn’t come this way.”

  “Just figured that out, huh?” O’Hara said.

  “We’re on what they call a wild-goose chase,” Flintlock said.

  “Who told you she came this way?”

  “Well, Barnabas, for one. He said she was headed west.”

  “And you believe Barnabas?”

  “Some of the time.”

  “He works for the Prince of Liars.”

  “I know. I wish he would stay dead and keep away from me.”

  “Maybe once you find your mother he’ll leave.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” As was his habit, Flintlock raised his nose and tested the wind. “What do I smell?” he said.

  “Probably me,” O’Hara said.

  “No. It’s bacon. O’Hara, somebody is frying bacon.”

  O’Hara sniffed. “Hell, Sammy, you could be right.”

  “Can you follow it?”

  “Follow what?”

  “The smell.”

  “Hell, I don’t know.”

  “I thought you were a half Indian.”

  “Look at my nose. It’s an Irishman’s nose.”

  Flintlock shook his head. “You’re a sore disappointment to me, O’Hara.” Then, pointing to the northeast. “The smell is faint, but it’s coming from that direction. I’m sure of it.”

  “Well, we’ll follow your nose, Sam.” He regarded Flintlock’s great beak. “I guess that means we got a long ways to travel.”

  * * *

  Flintlock and O’Hara crossed rugged, broken county five miles north of Balakai Mesa and then looped south around the 7,500-foot bulk of Black Mountain. The frying bacon smell faded quickly, but as they crossed a dry wash they were rewarded by a thin column of smoke that rose straight as a string from a small rock cabin nestled at the base of a sandstone bluff.

  Flintlock drew rein. “This looks promising,” he said. “Maybe they’ll feed us and let us water our horses.”

  “I don’t see a well,” O’Hara said. He pointed. “But I do see that.”

  Flintlock looked and saw what O’Hara saw, a crudely lettered wooden sign that read:

  I GOT A BIG 50 POINTED

  RITE AT YORE HED

  SHOOTIN GOIN ON

  AROUND HERE

  And under that:

  ~ABE MOORE, ESQ.

  “That notice doesn’t apply to us,” Flintlock said. “We’re honest travelers . . . well, fairly honest, depending on circumstances.”

  “Go right ahead, Sam,” O’Hara said. “I’ll follow you.”

  “How does this look?” Flintlock said.

  “How does what look?”

  “My friendly, going-to-meet-kinfolk grin.”

  “You look like the fox that just ate the chicken.”

  “O’Hara, you’re a discouraging man. Watch how it’s done.”

  Flintlock kneed his horse forward a few yards and then drew rein. He pasted his grin back in place and raised his right hand. “Howdy!” he called out.

  The answering .50 caliber bullet came close to clipping the nail of Flintlock’s middle finger, a miss near enough that he dropped his hand as thoug
h it had just been stung by a hornet.

  “Here!” he yelled. “That ain’t true-blue.”

  Then a harsh male voice from the partially opened cabin door. “State your intentions or suffer the consequences. By nature, I’m a shootin’ man.”

  Flintlock was about to raise his hand again but decided against it. His nails were trimmed close enough. Instead, he motioned to O’Hara and said, “Me and him, we’re honest travelers seeking to water our horses and we could use a bit of grub if you have any sich to spare.”

  “You two don’t look like honest men to me, a pair of desperadoes more like.”

  The cabin door opened and a graying man with a thin, sensitive face, wearing knee-high boots, baggy pants and a collarless shirt stepped outside, a scattergun in his hands.

  “Come closer so I can take a look at ye,” he said.

  Flintlock beckoned to O’Hara and the two rode forward. When they were twenty yards from the gray-haired man he motioned with the shotgun that they were close enough.

  “You boys come up through Pitchfork Pass?” he said.

  “Never heard of it,” Flintlock said, smiling, determined to be sociable.

  “Maybe you have, maybe you haven’t. That remains to be seen,” the man said. “Did he send you?”

  “He, who?” This from O’Hara, who tended to like or dislike people on sight. He didn’t like the man with the scattergun.

  “The Old Man of the Mountain, that’s who. Don’t tell me you haven’t heard of him, either.”

  “We’ve heard of him,” Flintlock said. “Lawman we met told us to steer clear of him.”

  “Then he gave you fair warning.”

  “Are you him?” O’Hara said.

  “Hell, no.” The man jerked a thumb over his shoulder at his cabin. “If I was, would I be living in a hovel?”

  “I don’t know. Would you?” O’Hara said.

  “No, I wouldn’t. They say the Old Man is the richest ranny in the country, richer than John Jacob Astor or William Henry Vanderbilt or all the other robber barons ever was. He lives like a king, no, like an emperor, south of here in Balakai Mesa.”

  “Why did you think we work for the Old Man?” Flintlock said.

  “Because he wants my cabin . . . or what’s in it.”

  “What’s in it?” Flintlock said.

  “Something more precious than all the gold in the world. Well, to me, at least.” The man stared at Flintlock and then wiggled his forefinger at his own throat. “What the hell you got there?”

  “It’s a thunderbird.”

  “Tattoo?”

  “Yeah, it’s a tattoo. An Assiniboine woman did it when I was a younker.”

  “Mister, she didn’t do you any favors.”

  “Seems like a lot of folks say that,” Flintlock said.

  The gray-haired man was silent for a while, then said, “I guess you pair are all right. Now I study on it, you’re too raggedy assed to be the Old Man’s gunmen anyhow. Name’s Tom Smith. You might not think it, but I’m a poet. Now light and set. There’s a rock spring behind the cabin where I keep my dogcart and mule. You can water your horses and there’s a patch of graze nearby. It isn’t much, and your animals will have to share with the mule, but in this country any water and grass is better than none at all. When you’re done, come back around to the front of the cabin.”

  * * *

  The rock spring was a thin trickle of water that fell from a narrow fissure in the bluff and splashed into a sandstone basin. The supply was meager, but the horses drank their fill and there was enough left for Flintlock and O’Hara to slake their thirst and fill their canteens. Range grass, what little there was, covered about two acres of flat ground and competed for growing space with a few scrub oaks. If the horses thought the vegetation sparse and the mule unfriendly, they didn’t let it show and began to graze as Flintlock and O’Hara left them and stepped to the front of the cabin.

  What was that?

  Flintlock stopped in his tracks as he reached the door. He thought he’d seen a flash of light among the rocks to the south. It was there for a moment and then gone.

  O’Hara’s gaze swept the burning distances of the shimmering landscape, no rock formation, ridge or stand of brush escaping his scrutiny. He saw no movement and said, “Sam, what did you see?”

  Flintlock shrugged. “Nothing. Just a trick of the light.”

  O’Hara might have questioned more, but the cabin door swung open and Tom Smith stepped outside. “Come on in, boys,” he said.

  Flintlock turned . . . and his eyes almost jumped out of his head.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  A girl stood beside Tom Smith, and Sam Flintlock took her to be about seventeen, more beautiful than any woman he had ever seen or remembered. The girl shaded her eyes against the sun and studied Flintlock, her gaze openly curious but not bold. The long hair that cascaded over her shoulders gleamed in the light like molten gold and her hazel eyes were the kind that would change from amber to emerald green, depending on her mood and desires. She wore a yellow blouse with a high collar and wide sleeves buttoned at the wrists and her green skirt was flounced, fuller at the bottom to accommodate a hoop if she wanted. The hem of the skirt was ankle high, revealing bare, dainty and dusty feet, and a wide-brimmed straw hat, hurriedly dropped on top of her head, completed her outfit.

  Flintlock was stunned that beauty like hers could exist in such a wilderness, like finding a perfect pink rose in a desert.

  “This is my daughter, Louise,” Smith said. “Louise, say howdy to the gentlemen.”

  “Welcome to our home,” the girl said. She smiled.

  To Sam Flintlock those four words sounded as though they had been set to a melody . . . accompanied by a smile so dazzling it set the sun to shame. His heart sinking, he was all too aware of what the girl saw when she looked at him. He was forty-four that summer, not forty as he claimed, a stocky man of medium height, who was as rough as a cob. A shock of unruly black hair showed under his battered straw hat and his eyes, gray as a sea mist, were deep set under shaggy, untrimmed eyebrows. Under his great, Roman nose his mustache was full, in the dragoon style made fashionable by the Texas Rangers. What Louise Smith didn’t see was that Flintlock was tough, enduring, raised to be hard by hard-edged men. But there was no cruelty in him and he had much honesty of tongue and a quick, wry sense of humor. He’d killed fifteen men, three as a cow town lawman, a career that had lasted only a single violent year, the remainder since he’d turned bounty hunter. None of those dead men disturbed his sleep o’ nights, and the only ghost he ever saw was that of villainous old Barnabas.

  Flintlock, sounding hoarse, said, “Thankee, young lady. It’s a real pleasure to be here.” Then, remembering his manners. “And I’m sure my friend O’Hara agrees.”

  The trouble was that Flintlock had grown used to O’Hara. He’d forgotten that to others the breed looked like an Apache buck, a mirror image of the warriors who’d played hob in the Arizona Territory just a couple of years before.

  A wisp of an uncertain smile touched Louise’s lips, but O’Hara saved the awkward situation when he gave a little bow and said, “Pleased to meet you, Miss Smith.”

  The girl found her tongue. “You are most welcome, Mr. O’Hara.”

  “Well, let’s get inside out of the sun,” Tom Smith said. He smiled. “You, too, Mr. O’Hara.”

  * * *

  Sam Flintlock used a piece of bread to sop up the last of the gravy on his plate, chewed, sighed his appreciation for his full belly and then said, “So that’s why we’re here, me and O’Hara. I was led to believe my ma was headed this way. Now I find it hard to figure why she would.”

  Tom Smith and his daughter exchanged glances, and then Louise said, “A woman did pass this way and not too long ago.”

  Suddenly interested, Flintlock sat forward in his chair. “Did she say why she was here?”

  “Yes, but she swore us to secrecy,” Tom Smith said.

  “Did she tell you her na
me?”

  “Miss Brown.”

  Flintlock’s disappointment showed. “That was all, just Miss Brown?”

  “It wasn’t her real name,” Louise said.

  “Did she say her real name?”

  “No. She didn’t.”

  “How old was this woman?” O’Hara said.

  Tom Smith answered. “Late fifties, I’d say. But she looked wonderful, very slim and, I say this as a poet, still quite beautiful.”

  O’Hara looked at Flintlock. “It could be her, Sam. How old was your ma when she had you?”

  “About Louise’s age,” Flintlock said.

  “Then she’d be in her fifties by now,” O’Hara said. “It adds up.”

  “Tom, I know she swore you to secrecy, but I think she could be Ma. Why was she here?”

  Smith and his daughter looked uncomfortable, and the girl said, “Can I tell him, Pa?”

  “I’ll tell him, Louise,” Smith said. “Miss Brown was a Pinkerton agent.”

  Flintlock’s jaw dropped. “My ma . . . a Pink?”

  Smith smiled. “The woman who rested here for a couple of days worked for the Pinkertons, but we don’t know that she was your mother.”

  “What was a Pinkerton, and a woman at that, doing here?”

  “Risking her life,” Louise said. “She’d been hurt by a bullet, just a flesh wound on her right shoulder, but it caused her some pain and we took care of her for a while.”

  Tom Smith read the shocked expression on Flintlock’s face and said, “A couple of outlaws tried to waylay her in a dry wash a few miles east of here. Miss Brown said she killed one and wounded the other and he took flight.”

  Flintlock’s brow creased in thought and then he said, “Did the woman say where she’d learned to shoot like that?”

  “Yes, she did,” Louise said. “Miss Brown wasn’t keen to talk about herself.”

  “Secretive, you might say,” Tom Smith said.

  Louise said, “But she did say her father was a mountain man and he taught her to shoot as soon as she could hold a rifle.”

  Flintlock’s voice broke in his throat as he said, “Was her father’s name Barnabas?”