Flintlock

by William W. Johnstone

  “Then do the best you can, Abe. And get his guns. He was wearing them under false pretenses.”

  Roper took a couple of steps in the dead man’s direction, then turned and said, “You killed a man and now you’re beating yourself up, ain’t you?”

  “Yes,” Flintlock said. “I’m beating myself up.”

  “Sammy, you got to get over that,” Roper said. “It’s a fault with you I seen before.”

  “I know, Abe, but I never will,” Flintlock said. “Now get him the hell out of here.”

  After Roper dragged the body into the trees, Jack Coffin stepped beside Flintlock. “I saw it and he didn’t come close, Samuel.”

  “I reckon not,” Flintlock said.

  “Only one man is faster than you. The one who calls himself Asa Pagg.”

  “Pagg is good with a gun,” Flintlock said. “Real fast on the draw and shoot.”

  “Better than good,” Coffin said. “If you meet him, walk softly around him.”

  “I don’t think I can do that, Jack.”

  “Then he’ll kill you, as surely as he will kill me,” Coffin said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  “Mr. Pagg, I would consider it a most singular favor if you would walk me around the perimeter of the fort,” Winnifred Grove said.

  Asa Pagg, who’d been smoking a cigar at the far corner of the porch outside the headquarters building, smiled and said, “Surely a task, and a pleasant one, for your husband, ma’am.”

  “Alas, the colonel is busy inside with army affairs,” Winnifred said. “And I fear he can’t be disturbed.” She flounced off the wicker chair and pouted. “Oh dear, what a pity to waste such an exquisite moon.”

  Pagg glanced at the night sky where the waxing moon haloed a few clouds with pink and white light. “It is indeed,” he said. He flicked his cigar away and watched it land on the parade ground, showering sparks.

  “I’d be delighted to take a promenade with you, dear lady,” Pagg said. He stepped beside the woman and crooked his arm for her to take. “Shall we be on our way?”

  Winnifred frowned. “You must forgive me, Mr. Pagg, but I find the touch of animal fur most distressing,” she said. “Perhaps you could leave your coat on the porch and reclaim it when we return.”

  “Certainly,” Pagg said. “If it distresses you so.”

  He shed his coat, revealing the big revolvers on each side of his chest.

  Winnifred smiled. “I know I’ll be safe in your strong hands, Mr. Pagg.”

  Again Pagg offered the woman his arm. “Then shall we?”

  The night air was soft and cool and a gentle breeze from the south carried the scent of sage and pine. The moon bathed the fort and the outlying brush and piñon country with fragile light and gleamed on Winnifred’s severely scraped-back hair.

  The woman lifted her face to Pagg and said, with an obviously mirror-practiced, coquettish smile, “I would not have wished to ask any other gentlemen to walk with me, Mr. Pagg, because I know that you’re the very soul of propriety.”

  “Indeed I am, ma’am,” Pagg said. “You’re safe with me.”

  “But not too safe, I trust,” Winnifred said, smiling again.

  She’d laid it on the line and Pagg wondered if he should do her. She was scrawny and didn’t get her full helping of looks, but what was it the sailors said? Yeah, any port in a storm.

  “Have you enjoyed many women in your life, Mr. Pagg?”

  “Hundreds . . . white, black, yellow and red and I liked ’em all.”

  “And who were the ones that pleased you most, may I enquire?”

  “They all pleased me, dear lady.”

  “Then I must be careful ere that sweet treasure that women guard most diligently might be in danger of a determined assault.”

  Winnifred smiled again and Pagg thought that a plain-faced woman with horsey teeth doesn’t do the hussy well. “Are my fears unfounded?”

  “Quite unfounded, ma’am,” Pagg said. “I am a gentleman to the core and I will ne’er scale the ramparts of your virtue.”

  Winnifred looked disappointed.

  Their walk had taken them past the parade ground and into a wooded area that was mostly scrub juniper and wild oak.

  Pagg grabbed the woman and pushed her against a tree.

  “Yes, you know what I want,” Winnifred said. “You’re an animal, Asa Pagg, and I want you so badly.”

  Pagg grinned. “My, my, Mrs. Grove, what will the colonel say?”

  “Nothing, because he won’t find out.” Winnifred’s hands became busy. “Quickly,” she said.

  Looking back, Pagg decided that he’d no way of knowing that Mrs. Grove was a screamer. But indeed she was. Her ecstatic shrieks and squeals carried far in the darkness . . . and alerted the pickets her husband had posted around the perimeter.

  Over Pagg’s heaving shoulder, Winnifred saw two troopers run toward them, rifles across their chests.

  She sidestepped away from Pagg and screamed, “Help! Help! Rape!”

  Stunned, it took some time for Pagg to react. He pulled up his pants and turned and then froze when a bayonet pushed against his belly, a hard-eyed cavalryman on the other end of it.

  Winnifred pointed at Pagg, her face a mask of terror. “He . . . he dragged me from the porch and tried . . . he tried . . .”

  “Calm yourself, Mrs. Grove,” a soldier said. “The rogue can’t harm you now.”

  Pagg thought about drawing and shooting it out. But other soldiers were running toward him and he caught a glimpse of an officer’s shoulder straps. He was a long way from his horse and the gray-haired trooper with the bayonet would surely stick him before he could clear his guns.

  Then things happened fast.

  Captain Owen Shaw’s baffled face swam into his line of vision. Then the half-drunk First Lieutenant Frank Hedley pushed the trooper’s bayonet aside and stuck the muzzle of his revolver under Pagg’s chin.

  “Damn you, I’ll blow your filthy head right off your shoulders.”

  “No, Lieutenant,” Shaw said. “Let the colonel decide this man’s fate.”

  Colonel Grove arrived with a dozen men, and his wife screamed even louder and more urgently than she had as Pagg pleasured her.

  “Andrew,” she called out, her arms reaching to him, “hold me, for I am undone.”

  Shaw reckoned only Mrs. Grove’s buttons were undone, but he glared at Pagg and said nothing.

  “Andrew, he tried to . . . to . . . ravish me,” Winnifred shrieked as she fell into her husband’s arms.

  The colonel’s face was black with rage. “Take that foul beast to the guardhouse,” he said. “I’ll deal with him later.”

  Pagg knew resistance was futile. He moved to surrender his guns to Shaw, but the gray-haired trooper saw the movement and he slammed his rifle butt into the side of Pagg’s head. The outlaw dropped like a sack of rocks.

  Captain Shaw stared down at the unconscious Pagg and he badly wanted to kill him, kick his face in for being so stupid—and with Winnifred Grove of all people.

  Damn Pagg’s eyes. Now the plan to steal the payroll was well and truly scuppered.

  Asa Pagg woke to a pounding headache and the taste of blood in his mouth. He tried to move but his entire body hurt and he sank back onto the prickly discomfort of the filthy straw mattress and groaned.

  The damned blue bellies had pounded on him with fists, boots and rifle butts all the way to the guardhouse. To the soldiers, a rapist, even an unsuccessful one, as Mrs. Grove claimed, was the lowest form of life on the frontier.

  The thought of what had transpired last night and the treachery of Mrs. Grove made Pagg’s anger flare and he forced himself to rise from the bunk and stretch the kinks out of his aching body.

  The guardhouse was a low, narrow log cabin, the rusty iron cot its only furnishing. A single barred window, about the size of an unopened book, looked out onto a stretch of sandy ground dominated by an X-shaped wooden frame where soldiers guilty of desertion or insubor
dination were strung up by their thumbs.

  Pagg was staring out at this melancholy scene when Captain Shaw’s face filled the window and blocked his view.

  “Damnit, Pagg, why did you do it?” Shaw said. “And the colonel’s wife of all people?”

  “I didn’t rape her,” Pagg said. “She was willing. She asked me to do her.”

  “That’s not what Mrs. Grove says. She’s taken to her bed in a faint and the colonel vows he’ll punish you like he’s never punished a man before.”

  “I told you, Shaw, she was more than willing. But now I’m trapped like a rat in a trap for trying to rape an ugly woman an’ all I wanted was to do her a favor. I gave her what she wants but never gets.”

  “Hell, Pagg, she’s a horse. She’s even got the whinny.”

  “I know. A loud whinny. That’s the reason I’m here.”

  “Geronimo attacks in three days, Pagg,” Shaw said. “Our time is running out.”

  “Don’t you think I’m well aware o’ that?”

  “When he finds out you can’t help him like you promised he’ll skin you alive like he did Lieutenant Howard.”

  “Geronimo didn’t do the skinnin’.”

  “His Apaches did.”

  Pagg thought about that, then said, “Tell Joe and Logan I want to talk to them. They’ll bust me out of here.”

  “The guardhouse is surrounded by a dozen sentries with orders to shoot to kill. That’s how mad at you Colonel Grove is. Your boys won’t get near the place.”

  “Then you’ll have to do it, Shaw. You’re an officer. You must be able to get the key to the door.”

  “Maybe, once Geronimo starts his attack. But it won’t be easy. Now I’m not even sure I want to go through with this thing. I mean with you locked up and facing a possible firing squad.”

  “Nothing is easy, Shaw. Stealing the money won’t be easy. Getting out of this fort with our hair intact after Geronimo attacks won’t be easy. Getting the wagon to Mexico won’t be easy. The only thing that’s gonna be easy is spending it.”

  Shaw said, “All right, Pagg, you sit tight and I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Captain, don’t count on the letter you sent to your kinfolk in Boston,” Pagg said.

  “What do you mean by that?” Shaw said.

  “Just what I say. Don’t count on it.”

  “You mean if I back out, you’ll kill me anyway?”

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  “I told you I’ll see what I can do. You can trust me, Asa.”

  Pagg ignored that and said, “What does the colonel have in mind for me? You said something about a firing squad.”

  “I don’t know,” Shaw said. “The firing squad is a real possibility, but I can assure you, whatever your punishment is, it won’t be pleasant.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  “Unless I’m much mistaken, that there’s the Hogback,” Marshal Pleasant Tyrell said. “Ain’t it a wonder to behold, Charlie?”

  Charlie Fong nodded. “Rises out of nothing, like God set it down there for a spell and then forgot about it.”

  “He works in mysterious ways, kind o’ like your kinfolk,” Tyrell said. “You see the cabin? My far seeing ain’t so good anymore.”

  “Damn rain is like a mist,” Fong said. “I guess we’ll have to ride closer.”

  A cloud of doubt passed across Tyrell’s eyes.

  “You reckon this feller Garrard could be a-settin’ at a window with a Sharps big fifty sighted in at a hundred yards?” the marshal said. “I mean with the Apaches out an’ all.”

  “Maybe so. But I take consolation in the fact that you’re a bigger target than me,” Fong said.

  “Boy, you jes’ went down a couple o’ pegs in my estimation,” Tyrell said. “An’ me havin’ just took to liking Chinee fellers.”

  They rode off a shallow rise onto the sandy flat that gave way to a wide depression thick with brush, cactus and bulging sandstone boulders. The rain didn’t quit, still falling steadily from a bruised sky.

  When they rode out of the hollow, about half a mile of flat brush country stretched ahead of them.

  For a moment the rain parted like a ragged gray curtain and Charlie Fong caught a glimpse of a log cabin huddled close to the foot of the Hogback. Smoke from its chimney rose into the air straight as a string, but there was no sign of the occupants.

  “See something?” Tyrell said.

  “Yeah, there’s a cabin right ahead of us,” Fong said. “Now we’ll find out if that big fifty notion of yours has any merit.”

  “Hell of a way to find out, Charlie. Ride into a damned bullet.”

  Marshal Tyrell glanced at the black and mustard sky and scowled. “Be good to set in a cabin out of this rain and drink coffee.” He turned his head and a question framed in his eyes. “How do you want to play it, Charlie?”

  “We just ride up, friendly as you please, and let Garrard invite us inside. If the Chinese women are being abused, we’ll know it.”

  “Stick this in your head, Charlie,” Tyrell said. “Like I already told you, if there’s killin’ to be done, I’ll do it. I’m the law.”

  “Sets fine by me, Marshal. But if Garrard draws down on me, all bets are off. You comprende?”

  “All right, you can’t say fairer than that. But there’s one more thing, Charlie, I’m the white man here, so I’ll make the call on whether or not the women are being abused.”

  “Call it as you see it, Marshal.”

  “Then let’s go get it done.”

  Silas Garrard’s welcome was a few degrees less than warm.

  As Charlie Fong and Pleasant Tyrell rode up to the cabin, Garrard opened the door, a Sharps fifty in his hands and a scowl on his bearded face.

  “Big fifty. I told ya, Charlie,” Tyrell whispered.

  “What the hell do you want?” Garrard said.

  He was a short, stocky man with quick, mean eyes and muttonchop sideburns that, untrimmed, grew down to his shoulders and were braided with red ribbon. He wore a sailor’s peaked cap with an anchor on the front, a seaman’s short jacket and baggy gray pants.

  Tyrell answered before Fong could get a word out. “We were passin’ by, seen your smoke and figured we’d stop for a cup of coffee an’ a friendly chinwag.”

  “You figgered wrong,” Garrard said. “Now be off with you. I don’t want you here.”

  “I’m an officer of the law,” Tyrell said. “I got a right to be here, or any place else in this here territory.”

  “I don’t give a damn who you are, mister. And this here cannon I’m holding feels the same way.”

  “That’s a mite unfriendly, Garrard,” Charlie Fong said. “You maybe got something to hide?”

  “How the hell do you know my name?”

  Fong caught a brief glimpse of a small, pale face at the window and then it was gone. “The army told me who you was and where you was,” he said. “They don’t think very highly of you.”

  “Well, there’s nothing here for you, Chinaman, so light a shuck,” Garrard said. “I got faith in this here rifle.”

  Then Tyrell exerted himself. “We have reason to believe a couple of Chinese gals are being abused at this residence. Before we ride on, we want to check on their welfare.”

  “Lawman or no, you won’t enter this cabin, and be damned to ye,” Garrard said. “By God, make a trial of it and I’ll kill you both. You can lay to that.”

  There was no step-back in Pleasant Tyrell that day. He’d been through it before and he didn’t like to be pushed. He swept back his slicker and cleared his guns.

  “Mister, make a move to swing that Sharps in my direction and I’ll drop you right where you stand,” he said. His voice was low, flat, like an undertaker at a wake.

  Garrard’s face worked as he considered those tough, matter-of-fact words from a strange old man wearing a top hat, rain falling around him, a hundred different kinds of hell in his eyes.

  The sailor had been around hardcases before, b
ut now he decided that he wanted no part of the lawman astride the seedy, eight-hundred-pound mustang.

  Garrard let the muzzle of the Sharps lower until it was pointed at the ground. “Come in and make your inspection of my women, damn ye,” he said. “And don’t ask for a taste, for they’ll be none forthcoming, lay to that.”

  “That’s very civil of you, Garrard,” Charlie Fong said. “Ain’t that civil of him, Marshal Tyrell?”

  “Civil as ever was,” Tyrell said. “And, Garrard, you have coffee in the pot, I hope.”

  The man’s only answer was a sullen silence as he opened the door and held it for Tyrell and Fong to step inside.

  The interior of the cabin was as neat and clean as two women could make it. As the soldier had described to Charlie Fong, the walls were covered in prints and artifacts, most of them related to the African slave trade.

  But what troubled Fong and then Tyrell when he drew his attention to it, was a cat-o’-nine-tails hanging from a hook on the wall.

  Garrard followed Fong’s stare and said, “Women are like dogs and horses, they need discipline from time to time.” He clapped his hands and the door to the adjoining bedroom opened and the two Chinese girls stepped inside.

  They were dressed in calico dresses and both were small, slender and quite pretty. They kept their eyes downcast.

  Tyrell couldn’t tell one from the other, but Charlie Fong pegged the slightly taller of the two as the older. He guessed she was about seventeen, the other maybe three years younger.

  “There, nothing wrong with them gals,” Garrard said. “That’s where discipline comes in.” He grinned, showing bad teeth. “Listen to this.” He roughly grabbed the older girl by the arm—too roughly Fong thought—and said, “Who lives here?”

  The girl’s brown, almond-shaped eyes lifted for a moment. “Only you, master,” she said.

  “See what I mean?” Garrard said. “Hell, they consider themselves worthless, not even human beings.”

  “You did that to them with the whip?” Fong said.

  “Sure I did. That’s the way I enforced discipline at sea, and, by God, it’s the way I enforce it in my own home, lay to that.” He pushed the girl away from him and held her out at arm’s length. “Not a mark on her, and not a mark on t’other one either. These gals ain’t bein’ abused. They like the discipline o’ the cat, keeps them on an even keel, like.”