Pitchfork Pass

by William W. Johnstone

  Bridie cocked her head and twisted a ringlet of hair between her fingers as she silently stared at O’Hara. Finally, she said, “President Chester Arthur is the government. In the past, he was a man who’d been tossed out of political office for corruption and he made enemies along the way. But so far, he surprised everybody by a lack of scandals or controversies and he wants to keep it that way. He’s not about to mount a major military operation against a common outlaw in the Arizona Territory that might fail and bring him disgrace.”

  The woman waited for a comment, and when none was forthcoming, she said, “Before I left Chicago, Allan Pinkerton told me that Jacob Hammer currently runs at least two hundred criminal enterprises across the country. In just about every major city he controls the opium trade, prostitution, gambling, protection rackets, murder for hire and God knows what else. Allan says that two hundred cities translates into at least a thousand crooked politicians and police chiefs currently on Hammer’s payroll.”

  “Hell, there must be some honest lawmen in them big cities,” Flintlock said.

  Bridie nodded. “There are some honest coppers, but they’re fighting a losing battle. If they close down an opium den or a brothel it reopens the following day in another block and no one is ever prosecuted. The crooked town hall politicians see to that.”

  Flintlock said, “What did this Allan Pinkerton feller tell you to do?”

  “He said to dig up Hammer’s criminal empire by the roots—he’s Scottish, you know, and says rrroots—and his various illegal enterprises will wither on the vine.”

  “In other words, gun the son of a bitch,” Flintlock said.

  “Mr. Pinkerton would not use those words, but yes, that’s the general idea,” Bridie said. “He also told me that none of his female operatives have ever failed him, and I don’t intend to be the one who does. I’ll kill Jacob Hammer, who styles himself the Old Man of the Mountain, if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

  “It might well be,” Flintlock said.

  “The last thing any of us ever do,” O’Hara said.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The dungeon was a natural cave in the side of the mesa wall with a door of latticed iron that clanged shut on Louise Smith after she was thrown inside. Her prison was dark and smelly, and was furnished with a couple of iron cots with filthy mattresses and a bucket. The cave seemed to tunnel into the rock for quite a distance, but after a few yards the daylight faded into pitch blackness and it was impossible to tell just how deep it was. It could be ten feet or a hundred. Still dressed in her Oriental finery, Louise sat on the edge of one of the cots, which squeaked under her weight, and looked through a diamond-shaped space between heavy iron straps into the courtyard.

  After the earlier execution, the courtyard had been deserted, but now as the sun sank lower at least fifty men and several women took a promenade around the space, walking in a clockwise direction in complete silence. There was no banter, no laughter, none of the hum of conversation that Louise expected from such a gathering . . . just the shuffle of boots on bedrock and the occasional cough.

  Then, in an instant, all that changed.

  A cheer went up from the crowd as Jacob Hammer, dressed in the resplendent robes of a mandarin, stepped out of his house and walked into the courtyard, nodding and smiling as he greeted people and bowed over the hands of the curtsying females. Tables were set up that soon groaned under the weight of food and drink and the mood of the throng turned to noisy talk, laughter and merrymaking.

  Watching from her cell, Louise marveled at the hold the Old Man of the Mountain had over his people. It seemed they ordered their lives around him and only his presence made them feel complete. He was their warlord, rich and mighty, and they were his obedient servants.

  Louise lost all hope. She knew she could expect no mercy from these people. No one would speak up on her behalf and stay the headman’s sword. The people in the mesa were Jacob Hammer’s creatures and his will was theirs.

  So engrossed was the girl at the gathering in the courtyard that she jumped when a heavy hand landed on her shoulder. She turned . . . and saw . . . and bit back the scream that came unbidden to her lips.

  The man, no, more animal than man, that loomed over her stood almost seven foot tall, his chest, arms and shoulders massive, his only garment a kind of breechcloth that covered his loins. His legs were hairy, as big as tree trunks, and his great bare feet with long, hairy toes, seemed to occupy a square yard of ground. His brow was low, almost to his eyebrows, and his bullet head was cropped close. He stared at Louise with quizzical gray eyes as small and round as dimes, as though he was trying to figure out who she was and why she was there. He smelled feral, like a caged circus beast.

  He said, “I am Viktor.”

  The expression on the girl’s face was one of sheer terror and this seemed to anger the giant. Viktor waved a hand, as though swatting a fly, and growled. He turned his whip-scarred back, hobbled to the other side of the cell, looked at Louise over his shoulder and said, “No!” Then he squatted on the ground, groaned, and his chin dropped onto his chest.

  Nothing in her life had prepared her for a monster like Viktor, yet Louise’s fear began to subside a little as she slowly saw him as a terribly wounded human being and not a living nightmare. But lingering fear made her keep her distance. She didn’t trust a man who could pick her up in his huge hands and tear her apart like a rag doll. Or worse . . . much worse . . .

  The noise of the crowd grew in volume as whiskey took partners for its merry dance, and the light changed as the bright sunlight slowly faded into the lilac of evening. Viktor did not move except once when he shoved his battered face into his hands. Louise, her back pressed against the wall, hardly dared to breathe, fearfully wondering what was to come.

  She got part of her answer as torches were lit around the compound.

  A key clanked in the lock and the iron door swung open. Two armed men stepped inside and Viktor looked up and seemed to shrink within himself.

  “All right, my Russkie bear,” one of the gunmen said. “Time to dance for the crowd.”

  Louise expected the giant to fight, but to her surprise he got to his feet and, helped along by blows from a riding crop, walked docilely out of the cave.

  “Where are you taking him?” the girl said, wondering why she cared.

  “Don’t worry, little missy, your boyfriend will be back,” one of the gunmen said. “Missing him already, huh?”

  The door slammed shut behind him and the key turned in the lock again.

  The girl caught only fleeting glimpses of what happened next since the laughing, jeering crowd closed in around Viktor as soon as a concertina struck up with a lively hornpipe. Louise saw enough to determine that the giant danced like a monkey for a demented organ grinder, cuts from the whip landing on his back and head every time he faltered or missed a step.

  “Stop it! Stop it!” the girl yelled, but no one heard her or cared to listen.

  Viktor danced hornpipes and reels for thirty minutes before the crowd grew bored with him and he was returned to his cell. The giant was covered in sweat, and blood ran from a cut across his left ear. He threw himself onto a cot that shrieked under his weight and stared at the ceiling, holding a bloodstained hand to his split ear.

  Outside as darkness fell and though the torches still burned, the crowd dispersed, the tables were taken down and a silence fell on the mesa.

  Louise had spent her childhood nursing little wounded animals back to health and the pity and concern she felt for them, she felt for Viktor. Drawing on a deep well of courage she didn’t know she possessed, she crossed the cell and placed her cool hand on the man’s forehead. The giant opened his eyes, stared at her in the gloom and then, to Louise’s surprise, he gently removed her hand and kissed her palm. It took all of the girl’s will not to jerk away from him, but she did not and she only stepped back when Viktor rolled out of the cot and walked back into the cave. He returned with a round loaf of bread, a p
iece of white cheese and a canteen. The man broke the loaf in half and did the same with the cheese and handed them to Louise. “We eat now,” he said. He nodded in the direction of the courtyard. “Bad mens . . . all of them. Hurt Viktor. Make me dance and hurt me.”

  Despite everything, the girl found she was hungry. She ate the bread and cheese and washed the frugal meal down with water. Only then did she say, “Why are you here? What did you do?”

  The giant shook his head and said, “Viktor once live”—he waved a hand—“out there, far, far away from people. Then bad mens come and steal Viktor’s silver and gold.” He spread his hands as though he were strangling someone. “Viktor kill one of them but the others beat me and bring me here.” He grinned, revealing yellow teeth, bent his head and made a blade of his hand. He chopped at the back of his neck. “They cut off Viktor’s head very soon now when they tire of his dances.”

  “And mine,” Louise said. “I am to die, but I don’t know when.”

  “No,” the giant said. “Viktor will not let that happen. Pretty girl is kind to Viktor and he will protect you.”

  “I’m trying to be kind. But I’m still a little afraid of you.”

  “Viktor will not hurt you. Viktor is good man.”

  Louise said, “They said you would attack me, that you’d . . .”

  “No! You wait here. I have something to show you that they did not find to take from me.”

  The giant went back into the cave again and this time when he returned he dropped something small into the girl’s hand. “She would not like Viktor to do such an evil thing. Viktor say his prayers every night to the lady.”

  Louise looked at the object in her hand. It was a small, copper, Russian icon bearing a likeness of the Virgin Mary.

  * * *

  That night Louise slept soundly with her head on Viktor’s chest, his huge, muscular arm wrapped protectively around her . . . beauty and the beast bonded by their common misery.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The three-person war on the Old Man of the Mountain began with the realization that a fourth had taken a hand in the game.

  “It’s your ma’s work, Sam,” O’Hara said. “It has to be.”

  Flintlock looked down at the dead man sprawled at his feet. “Three shots to the chest killed him,” he said. “I could cover the bullet holes with the palm of my hand.”

  “Good shooting, for sure,” O’Hara said. “Seems like your ma is handy with a rifle.”

  Flintlock shook his head. “No, not my mother. It can’t be. Ma isn’t a Pinkerton. My ma sits in a rocking chair and embroiders stuff or knits and she drinks gin from a teacup. She doesn’t put three bullets into the brisket of an outlaw in the middle of a godforsaken wilderness.”

  “Maybe your ma did all that knitting before she became a Pinkerton,” O’Hara said. He opened his hand and revealed three .44 cartridge cases. “She met this man face-to-face and outshot him. That took sand.” O’Hara pointed to his left. “Mule tracks over there, probably a pack animal. Your ma took the dead man’s horse, guns and his mule.”

  “If she really is my ma,” Flintlock said. He looked around him, his face troubled. “What the hell went on here, O’Hara?”

  “Near as I can piece it together, the dead man was riding toward the mesa, not away from it. Judging by the tracks the mule was carrying a fairly heavy load. My guess would be money, a good part of it coin, the small change spent by poor city folks playing the numbers.” O’Hara saw a skeptical look on Flintlock’s face and said, “Sam, multiply those nickels and dimes tens of thousands of times and you come up with some real dinero.”

  “If the Old Man of the Mountain is so rich, why would he bother to bring in a muleload of pissant coins?” Flintlock said.

  “He’s probably got a vault where he keeps the small change and then he sends it out again by the sackload to help finance his various businesses around the country,” O’Hara said.

  “Got it all figured, huh?” Flintlock said. “Well, I reckon it’s more likely the mules carried gold. I bet the Old Man owns a few banks that convert all those nickels and dimes into double eagles.”

  O’Hara shrugged. “Money is money. Small coins or twenty-dollar gold pieces, it spends the same.”

  Flintlock kneeled beside the dead man. “Look at the boots on this ranny, Texas made on a narrow last with all them butterfly inserts. It would cost a puncher three months’ wages to buy a pair like this.”

  “Sam, it would cost a puncher three months’ wages just to walk into the store that sold those boots,” O’Hara said.

  “He was one of Jacob Hammer’s high-priced gunmen, all right,” Flintlock said.

  “Yup, bringing home the loot until your ma plugged him.”

  “As I said already, if it was my ma.”

  “It probably was . . . unless she’s somewhere with knitting on her knees drinking gin out of a teacup,” O’Hara said.

  * * *

  “Your mother or not, Sam, she’s a Pinkerton carrying out her assignment, to disrupt Jacob Hammer’s illegal commerce in and out of Balakai Mesa,” Bridie O’Toole said, laying her cup back in the saucer. She was much addicted to tea and the late Tom Smith had laid in an adequate supply. Neither Flintlock nor O’Hara would touch the stuff. “But I don’t understand why she hasn’t contacted us.”

  “Some people prefer to work alone,” O’Hara said. “Among the Apache there were always warriors who were lone wolves.”

  “Well, you would know, wouldn’t you?” Bridie said.

  “I’ve met a few,” O’Hara said.

  “This is the second time in the past few days that Hammer’s had one of his men killed and money stolen,” Bridie said. “He won’t let that stand. Time to take to the hills.”

  “What does that mean?” Flintlock said.

  “We move out of this cabin and find another place to hole up, somewhere where we can see him coming,” Bridie said.

  “Somewhere we can defend,” Flintlock said. “We need a good, open line of fire.”

  “No, somewhere we can hide, Sam. Between the three of us we don’t have enough ammunition to withstand a siege. Or didn’t you think about that?”

  “Any suggestions?” Flintlock said, irritated. God, Bridie O’Toole was a bossy woman.

  “No. But we leave now, take what food we can and go looking for new lodgings.”

  “Now?” Flintlock said.

  “Would you rather wait until Hammer and his gunmen are on our doorstep?”

  “We can always wait until we see him coming and then make a run for it,” Flintlock said.

  “It’s too late for that. By now Hammer is good and mad and out in the open he’d track us down real quick. Sam, we have to be gone from here and the more we talk about it the less time we have left to find a hiding place.”

  “Then let’s quit arguing and light a shuck the hell out of this death-trap cabin,” O’Hara said.

  * * *

  The great northern plateau of the Arizona Territory was once an inland sea, and Sam Flintlock and the others rode into a land torn and riven by immense gorges, deep canyons and soaring mesas, a mysterious wilderness of strange, unworldly beauty and spectacular grandeur.

  After an hour, O’Hara, scouting ahead, rode into a narrow arroyo that narrowed further for several hundred yards before opening up into a natural amphitheater of about ten acres in extent. Its flat floor was covered with patches of shaggy grass, here and there Gambel oak and juniper, and growing among them stands of sage, manzanita and serviceberry. The high, surrounding walls of the enclosure were of rust-red sandstone, much eroded, but, like cupped hands, they held the secret basin in their grasp away from prying eyes. The last thing O’Hara expected to see was a source of groundwater, but to his surprise and joy a small rock pool, not extensive but a couple of feet deep, lay in the shadow of the eastern wall. Whether it was caused by infrequent rains or fed by an underground source he had no way of telling, but there was enough of it to last three people and
three horses a month at least.

  O’Hara dismounted and let his horse plunge its muzzle into the pool before he too drank. The water was cool and clear and tasted good. Remounting, he headed back the way he’d come.

  * * *

  O’Hara rode out of the arroyo and swung east where he planned to meet up with Flintlock and the Pinkerton woman and tell them of his find.

  But a flurry of gunshots in the distance upset his plan.

  O’Hara drew rein and listened into the day. He fixed the fight at a mile ahead and a little to the north, five or six rifles firing, and he arrived at the obvious conclusion that Flintlock and Bridie O’Toole were under siege. He slid his Winchester from the boot and kneed his paint into a wary canter.

  A high bluff that angled to the southeast blocked his passage and O’Hara slowed to a walk as he rode along its base, seeking a way around. After a couple of hundred yards the ridge abruptly broke off, ending in a jumble of fallen boulders where a few stunted spruce trees struggled to make a living.

  Now the firing was very close, more intermittent but steady as riflemen took time to mark their targets.

  O’Hara stepped out of the saddle and left his horse under the thin shade of the trees and, crouching low, he advanced toward the gunfight. The sun was scorching, the air thick and hot and hard to breathe, and sweat stained the back of his shirt. He made his way through the rocks and then stopped in his tracks.

  Fifty yards ahead of him five men fired rifles from cover, shooting upward at a low, rock-covered rise where a cloud of gray gunsmoke hung in the still air. O’Hara caught a quick glimpse of Flintlock rising up to shoot only to duck down again when a bullet spaaanged! off the rock inches from his head. Flintlock, or more likely Bridie, had chosen their defensive position well, but they were pinned in place by accurate fire and their supply of ammunition was limited. It was only a matter of time before Flintlock, as was his way, said, “The hell with it!” and gave up on an empty rifle and came out of the hiding place with his blazing Colt bucking in his hand. When O’Hara saw Flintlock rise to fire again and heard the BOOM! of the Hawken he knew that time was close at hand. The old rifle was a gun a man fought with when he’d nothing better.