Kill or Die (2 page)

Sam Flintlock rode in the direction of the cypress swamps that bordered the Sabine River, his horse plodding without sound across yielding, sandy soil. Piney woods lay to the north but around Flintlock was a land of gulf prairies and saltwater marshes that attracted birds of all kinds. He saw gulls, terns, sandpiper and snipe and woodcock, but none of the alligators that he'd been warned about. The day was hot and humid and draped over Flintlock like a blanket soaked in warm water.

Old Barnabas sat on a lightning-blasted tree trunk. A great iron gearwheel as wide across as he was tall stood between his feet. The old mountain man, dead these twenty years, glared at Flintlock and said, “I never reckoned on raising up an idiot, but I surely did.”

“What are you doing here, Barnabas?” Flintlock said, drawing rein. “I don't need you around.”

“You got to start thinking with your brain, boy, instead of that thing that hangs below your navel,” Barnabas said. “Why did you follow the girl into the cantina and almost get yourself shot?”

“Like you said, I didn't let my brain do the thinking.”

“That's because you're an idiot. I raised up an idiot.”

“What you doing with the big wheel?” Flintlock said.

“Cleaning it up for you-know-who. He says it's time Hell joined the industrial age and now we got iron foundries all over the place, great roaring, sooty, scarlet places they are too. There's always molten iron and steel splashing and sparking out of cauldrons as big around as train tunnels and tens of thousands of the sweating damned shoveling coal, tending to the furnaces and the steam engines. Clanking, clanking and hissing goes on all the time, deafening everybody.” Barnabas slapped the huge wheel. “This is for a steam crane.”

“What do you do with all that iron and steel?” Flintlock said, interested despite himself.

“You're an idiot, boy. What did I tell you afore? You remember nothing.”

“I recollect you told me that the walls around Hell are a thousand feet tall and glow white,” Flintlock said.

“That's right and they're white because they're white hot. You any idea how many times walls like that need repair? Plenty of times, I can tell you that. In the olden days Ol' Scratch tossed melted iron against a damaged wall and hoped it stuck. Now we use boilerplate that's riveted in place. It's a great advance in engineering.”

“And what do you do, Barnabas?” Flintlock said.

“I'm a trusty, so I drive a steam crane. Good job if you can keep the gears and cogwheels free of soot. And the tears of the damned can cause rust. That's always a problem.”

“What's with the getup you're wearing?” Flintlock said.

Barnabas wore a black top hat with a pair of goggles parked at the bottom of the crown and a black leather coat done up with a dozen straps and brass buckles. A huge pocket watch on an iron chain hung from his neck.

“This is a crane driver's outfit,” he said. For a moment Barnabas's eyes glowed red, then he said, “Now you get into the swamp, boy, and find your ma. Tell her you want her to give you your real name. Flintlock ain't any kind of name for a white man. Where's the Injun?”

“O'Hara? He's around. He comes and goes as he pleases.”

“A breed, ain't he?” Barnabas said.

“Yeah, half Irish and half something else.”

“He's only half the idiot you are. Now find your ma. Whoever he was, you should have your pa's name.”

“I'm headed that way now,” Flintlock said. His mustang jerked up its head in alarm as a siren wailed in the distance.

“Break time is over,” Barnabas said. He lifted the gearwheel above his head. Flintlock guessed it weighed half a ton. “I remember the olden days when we were summoned back by a blast on a hunting horn. Times change, I guess.”

Then he was gone. A marsh wren landed on the trunk where Barnabas had sat, ruffled its feathers and fluttered away in alarm.

That night Flintlock camped on a patch of cropland that had been used before, maybe by the old Atakapan Indians, called the Man-eaters since they were rumored to be cannibals, who'd once ruled the swamps. Whoever it was, they'd left a supply of firewood and Flintlock soon had a fire going. Coffee was on the boil and bacon sputtered in the pan when the darkness parted and O'Hara stepped into the circle of firelight.

“I wondered when you'd show up,” Flintlock said. “I could have used you today.”

“I heard,” O'Hara said. He squatted by the fire, grabbed the tin cup that Flintlock had set out for his own use, and poured coffee. He stared over the steaming rim at Flintlock and said, “Alphonse Plume. A tad out of your class, huh? Did you shoot him in the back?”

Flintlock refused to show his anger. “No. I shot him in the front. And the other one.”

“Dave Storm. He was no bargain either.”

“I got lucky,” Flintlock said.

“No, you didn't. The word in the swamp is that Brewster Ritter plans to hang you first chance he gets. Or throw you to his monster.”

“Monster?”

“I spoke to Maggie Heron, a Cajun swamp witch and—”

“How the hell do you know her?” Flintlock said, moving around the bacon with his knife.

“I know a lot of people, Sammy. You'd be surprised. I'm half Injun, remember.”

“What's that got to do with it?” Flintlock said, irritated.

“Indians know stuff that white folks don't. May I finish?”

“Yeah, go ahead. You spoke to a swamp witch, whatever the hell that is, and . . .”

“And she told me that Ritter plans to drain bayous and swamps this side of the Sabine and start a logging operation. There's big money at stake and Maggie says Ritter has a monster with huge staring eyes under his control and it has already killed seven people and driven others out.”

“Seems like a big windy to me,” Flintlock said.

“Seven people burned to cinders is real enough,” O'Hara said.

“What about the law?” Flintlock said.

“In Louisiana they call Ritter the Baron of the Bayous. He
is
the law in the swamps and his hired guns enforce it.” Suddenly O'Hara threw down his cup, rose to his feet and vanished into the darkness.

Flintlock shook his head. O'Hara was as good as Barnabas at disappearing. But a few minutes later, as Flintlock chewed on the last of his bacon, the reason for the breed's flight became clear.

Two men wearing dusters and carrying Greeners stepped out of the night. The muzzles of one of the shotguns shoved against the middle of Flintlock's forehead and its owner said, “Even blink, mister, and I'll scatter your brains.”

The other man said, “He ain't too bright, is he, Harry?”

“I'd say a man who commits murder, leaves a clear trail and builds a fire in the middle of a swamp has a lot to learn,” Harry said.

“I didn't murder anybody,” Flintlock said. “And get that damned scattergun out of my face before I shove it up your ass.”

“Sure, buddy,” Harry said. He reversed the shotgun and slammed the butt into the side of Flintlock's head. For a moment Flintlock felt pain and then the ground rushed up to meet him and he felt nothing at all.

“Cypress, Mr. Luke,” banker Mathias Cobb said. “Dare I say that that very soon it will be the root of wealth, both yours and mine?”

“Indeed you may, sir,” Simon Luke said. “I intend to inform Mr. Ritter that I will buy all the cypress lumber he can sell me. It's in great demand for our great nation's burgeoning shipbuilding and construction industries and prices have never been higher.”

Cobb touched a forefinger to the side of his nose. “A word to the wise, Mr. Luke. I have considerable capital invested in this venture and I've begun to doubt Mr. Ritter's methods.”

A freight wagon, piled high with beer barrels, rumbled noisily past Cobb's office window and he was silent until it moved on and then said, “He's talking about draining the swamp to force out the inhabitants. An impossibility, I say. And he's putting a lot of faith in his damned flying balloon. There's only one method of dealing with the lower classes, talk to them in a language they understand. Use the whip, the sap and the billy club and, yes, the gun if necessary and send them on their merry way to whatever hell they choose.” He looked at the tall, angular man who had his back against the wall by the door. “What's your opinion on that, Mr. Lilly?”

Sebastian Lilly, a skilled pistol fighter out of the Arizona Territory, said, “Ritter would need to drain all of east Texas and the entire state of Louisiana. You're right, banker Cobb, use the gun and kill all them swamp rats, man, woman and child.”

Luke, almost a mirror image of Cobb, a heavyset man with a thick gold watch chain across his huge round belly and a diamond ring on the little finger of his left hand, was alarmed.

“My dear, sir,” he said to Cobb, “that is harsh treatment indeed. Suppose you're found out?”

“We won't be, Mr. Luke,” the banker said. “No one cares about the trash living in the swamps, and if they did, we have ways of silencing them. Is that not right, Mr. Lilly?”

The gunman's smile was both rare and cold. “You mean I have ways of silencing them.”

“Indeed, Mr. Lilly. As always, you are the voice of reason,” Cobb said. “I will have a word with Mr. Ritter and tell him what we have decided. Ah, here is the pie at last. You may leave us now, Mr. Lilly.”

The tall gunman grinned, shrugged himself off the wall and, his spurs ringing, stepped around one of Cobb's tellers and walked out the door. The teller carried a huge domed pie in both hands and laid it down on the space Cobb had cleared on his desk.

“Ahhh . . . smell the aroma, Mr. Luke,” Cobb said, sniffing, his huge jowls aglow. “There's nothing like steak and kidney pie when the first nip of fall is in the air, I always say.”

His eyes big, Luke gleefully tucked his napkin into his celluloid collar and said, salivating, “You are a most gracious host, Mr. Cobb, and a credit to the Cattleman's Bank and Trust, may I say.”

“There's a spoon beside you there, Mr. Luke,” Cobb said. “Great trenchermen like us need no other eating tool. Now, shall we storm the battlements of this splendid culinary creation and assay its contents?”

“Indeed we must,” Luke said, spoon poised, his concerns about the swamp and the massacre of its people for the moment forgotten.

 

 

Sebastian Lilly lifted his whiskey and paused, the glass between the bar and his mouth. “He doesn't like the swamp-draining plan and I don't like it either.”

Bonifaunt Toohy indicated that the bartender should fill his glass again and when that was accomplished he said, “He has a better plan?”

“Yeah, go into the swamp and kill them all,” Lilly said.

“It may come to that,” Toohy said. “I don't think the drainage plan will work either. Did he say anything about money?”

“No, not directly. He'll keep on bankrolling Ritter and you can tell him that.” He motioned with his glass to the bartender. “Hit me again.”

“You'll keep us informed, huh?” Toohy said. “Any hint that the financing will stop and Mathias Cobb is a dead man.”

“He's a dead man anyway,” Lilly said. “Ritter won't pay him back the money he owes. It will cut into his profits.”

“Cobb is a respected businessman in this town,” Toohy said. “When the time comes I'll handle that killing myself.”

“I'll do it,” Lilly said. “I hate his fat guts. He's ordered me around for long enough.” He grinned. “Heard you killed a man over to Beaumont way a couple of weeks ago.”

“Yeah, a railroad section hand. He didn't like me sparking his woman and went for his gun. He'd been notified.” Toohy reached into his pants pocket and laid five double eagles on the bar. “Ritter wants to be kept informed about Cobb. The man worries him.”

Lilly scooped up the money and said, “Tell Mr. Ritter that I'll report everything the fat man does and says.”

Toohy nodded. “I got to go. Maybe Ritter has somebody who needs killing.”

Sam Flintlock woke to a throbbing headache and morning light.

He tried to sit up and found that he couldn't move his arms or legs. Then he discovered the reason why . . . he was spread-eagled on the ground, his wrists and ankles bound with ropes to wooden stakes.

Flintlock raised his head. “Hey!” he yelled.

A tall man with a carrion-eater's eyes suddenly loomed above him. He held Flintlock's Hawken in his hands. “What the hell is this?” he said.

“What does it look like?” Flintlock said, a question that earned him a hard kick in the ribs.

“Keep a civil tongue in your head,” the man said.

Flintlock recognized him as Harry, the man with the Greener from the night before. He wanted to kill him real bad.

Harry turned the Hawken over in his hands. “Lovely old piece,” he said. “I reckon I'll hold on to it.”

“It's mine,” Flintlock said. “You can't have it.”

“But I do have it,” Harry said. “See, right here in my hands.”

Flintlock tried to get up but the stakes held him fast. He stared at Harry. “I'll kill you for this.”

The man turned and said. “Hey, Lem, the man with the big bird on his throat says he's gonna kill me.”

Lem, a brutish man with a bull neck and massive shoulders, stepped into Flintlock's view. “Hell, Harry, why don't we just shoot him and be done?” he said.

“Because Brewster Ritter will want details. And one of the details he'll want is that this tramp didn't die quick or easy.”

Now it was Lem's turn to deliver a kick into Flintlock's ribs that made him gasp in pain. “Al Plume was a friend of mine,” Lem said.

“I'm sure he'll be sadly missed,” Flintlock said. He gritted his teeth against the pain he knew was coming and he wasn't disappointed as the square toe of Lem's boot thudded into him.

When he could talk again, Flintlock said, “What are you going to do with me?”

“Us? Nothing,” Harry said. “But I'll give you a clue to what's gonna happen to you. Show him, Lem.”

The man called Lem stepped away and returned a moment later. He held a dead raccoon by one leg and raised it so Flintlock could see it.

“Can you guess?” Lem said.

“Go to hell,” Flintlock said.

“Can't guess, huh?” Lem said. He dropped the bloody raccoon onto Flintlock's chest then kneeled behind him and roughly grabbed him by the hair. He jerked up Flintlock's head and forced him to look to his left. “What do you see, huh? Tell me what you see?” Lem said.

Flintlock made no answer and the man grabbed his hair tighter as though trying to wrench it out by the roots. With his free hand he slapped Flintlock back and forth across the face, stinging blows that cracked like pistol shots. Blood trickled from the corner of Flintlock's mouth and his right eye began to swell.

“Damn you, I'll beat it out of you,” Lem said through gritted teeth. “What do you see?”

“Lem, don't kill him,” Harry said. “He's got to be alive for a while.”

“What do you see?” Lem said again.

“A swamp, damn you, a swamp,” Flintlock said through split lips.

“Clever boy,” Lem said. “And what dwells in the swamp, huh?”

“How the hell should I know?” Flintlock said.

“Well, I'll tell you. He's an elderly ranny who goes by the name Basilisk because the swamp dwellers say just one look from his eyes can turn a man into stone with fear.”

The man called Harry took up the story. “The swamp folks say Basilisk is a hundred years old and that he's eaten so many people he has a taste for human flesh.” Harry grinned, made claws of his hands and said, “Grrrr . . .”

By nature Sam Flintlock was not an excitable man, but he didn't like the direction this conversation was taking. “What the hell are you boys talking about?” he said.

“Bless your soul, an alligator of course,” Lem said. “Basilisk is twenty feet long and can swallow a horse whole.” He smiled. “You'll very soon meet him.”

“Let's talk about this,” Flintlock said.

Lem shook his head. “No need for talk. Like I told you before, Al Plume was a friend of mine.”

Lem picked up the dead raccoon and walked to the edge of the swamp. The water was still, without a ripple, and the air smelled of rotten vegetation and of fish shoaling in the Gulf. Moss clung to the snags around the cypress trees and just off the bank a row of turtles sunned on a fallen trunk. Lem cut the raccoon's throat and let blood drip into the water. He then carried the animal, stepping slowly, letting blood drip, back to Flintlock. He threw the bloody raccoon onto his chest. “I've never seen how an alligator eats a man,” Lem said. “Maybe you'll get lucky and it will be quick.”

“Damn you, why don't you just shoot me and get it over?” Flintlock said.

Lem shook his head. “That would be too easy.” He looked at Harry and said, “Let's go and leave our guest to his . . . his . . . what?”

“Fate?” Harry said. “Or maybe his doom would be better.”

“Yeah, that's it. We'll leave him to his doom,” Lem said.

“I'm surprised lowlifes like you don't stay to watch,” Flintlock said.

“Don't have the time,” Lem said. “We got better things to do.”

Harry grinned. “Well, you take care, tattooed man. We'll see you in Hell.”