William Johnstone - Triumph of the Mountain Man

“What’s that?”

“I want to cut this man afore he’s hung. Don’t set right with me to go slicing a big bird offen a dead man’s throat. It ain’t proper.”

Davis nodded. “I’m sure that can be arranged, Buck. Easy thing to cut a man before he gets hung.”

“What about the sheriff? What’s his name?”

“I’ll take care of Barney. Kick back a share of the reward money and he’ll cooperate.”

Buck Yarr grinned, slapped off Flintlock’s hat, grabbed him by the hair, and shook him. “Hear that, musket man? You’ll get your throat cut afore a noose is tightened around it. I wonder how that will feel? Bad painful, I think. Real bad painful.”

Flintlock’s wrists were knotted to the wagon wheel at either side of his head. But to his joy his legs were untied. He measured the distance between the toe of his right boot and Buck Yarr’s chin. Perfect! Gritting his teeth, he powered his leg upward, arching his back to increase the force of the kick.

The result was all he hoped it would be.

With a sickening thud, like a rifle butt hitting a log, the toe of his boot hit Yarr just under his chin. The man’s head snapped back, his mouth spurting strings of blood and saliva. Kneeling on one knee and off balance, he fell heavily onto his right side.

“Never trust a wolf until it’s been skun, idiot,” Flintlock said, staring at the groaning man with merciless eyes.

Yarr was hurting but he wasn’t done.

Big and strong and snarling like a wounded animal, he got to his feet and charged Flintlock, his knife raised for a downward, killing thrust.

“Buck, no!” Davis yelled.

The enraged man ignored him, but the knife blow never came. Somewhere in Yarr’s primitive, reptilian brain he decided that a stabbing was a much too merciful death. His eyes glittering, he switched his attention to the thunderbird on Flintlock’s throat. Giggling, he concentrated on his task. The point of his knife pierced skin and drew a thin rivulet of blood and then slowly, carefully, like an eager bride cutting her wedding cake, he began to . . . saw.

“Buck, get the hell away from him!” Davis yelled.

Yarr ignored the man, intent on cutting out the skin of Flintlock’s throat.

Blam!

Yarr’s head exploded as Davis’s bullet entered the man’s right temple and exited an inch above his left ear, blowing out a gory fountain of brain and bone. For long moments Yarr remained where he was, perfectly still, knife in hand, face expressionless. Then slowly . . . slowly . . . he opened his mouth wide, fell back, and lay still.

Davis kicked Flintlock hard in the ribs. “Now see what you done? You made me kill one of my boys and you already shot another.” Davis shoved the hot muzzle of his Colt between Flintlock’s eyes. “Mister, count yourself a lucky man. At the moment you’re worth more to me than Buck. Well, maybe. If Barney Morrell tells me he’s got no paper on you, I’ll cut the bird off your throat myself.”

Pain spiking at his ribs, Flintlock said, “Hell, you got our horses and traps. That’s enough for any damned two-bit thief like you.”

Davis shook his head. “No it ain’t, not for me.” He stared at Flintlock. “You got a big reputation, feller, but right now you sure as hell don’t stack up to much.”

“A lot of men have thought that,” Flintlock said. “I killed most of them.”

The man thumbed his chest. “Well, I ain’t so easy to kill, feller. Name’s Morgan Davis. That mean anything to you?”

“Seems to me I heard tell of a pimp by that name,” Flintlock said. “They say he has a reputation for beating up on whores.”

Davis smiled. “You’re a funny man, Flintlock, a real knee-slapper, but there’s something you should know.” The man leaned closer and his voice dropped to a whisper. His breath smelled like rotten meat. “I was spawned in the lowest regions of hell and I’ve lived in a bottomless pit of depravity and violence since. Don’t ever say something is funny again or I’ll cut your tongue out.”

Flintlock saw only hate, malevolence, and loathing in Davis’s eyes, as though they were stricken with a foul disease. The pimp was a man to be reckoned with and Flintlock wisely kept his mouth shut.

After a final kick at Flintlock’s unprotected ribs, Davis stepped away. He stopped at O’Hara, got down on one knee, and buried his fingers in the breed’s bloody hair. He jerked up O’Hara’s head and stared into his face. “Hey Flintlock, your breed friend is dead.”

Davis let O’Hara’s head go and it lolled lifelessly onto O’Hara’s chest. Sam Flintlock felt a devastating sense of loss . . . and then a spike of white-hot anger.

No matter what it took, how long it took, even with his last breath and final ounce of strength, he would kill Morgan Davis.

Chapter Two

The man named O’Hara opened his eyes to darkness.

For a moment he thought his soul had traveled southwest to that cold, misty limbo where in the time after time he would become part of the spirit world. But as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he saw the sky and the stars—the same sky, the same stars he had known in the physical realm. Was he alive or dead?

Then came pain . . . a pounding drumbeat in his head. There is no suffering after death, and in that moment of realization, O’Hara knew he remained in the land of the living.

Reluctant to rise, he stayed on his back, his eyes tight shut against the tom-tom beat of the pain in his head. He would lie where he was and sleep for a day, a week, whatever it took to restore him to health and strength . . . unless his ancestors came to take him away.

What was that?

He heard it again, a soft patter on the ground like the sound of falling leaves. The noise grew louder, more insistent, but O’Hara already knew what it was, the timid start of what would soon become an aggressive downpour. He stayed where he was, determined to sleep his pain away. But the rain fell harder and to the northwest thunder echoed among the canyons of the Guadalupe Mountains.

He was indignant.

What right had rain to interrupt a man’s sleep? His head hurt even worse, an incessant thumping. Well, he’d soon put an end to this. Someone somewhere had to be responsible for such an outrage.

O’Hara rose to his feet and promptly fell down again. The rain-lashed darkness cartwheeled around him and the pounding in his head made him feel sick. It was only then that he noticed the rain running from his head onto his white shirt was the color of red rust. And he discovered why he’d fallen. He shared the noose looped around his ankles with a man lying beside him. Rivulets of rain streamed across the man’s gray face, a dead white man with open, staring eyes, his mouth wide in a silent scream.

O’Hara stared at the man and then punched his beefy arm. “Are you to blame for this rain? Speak up now and state your intentions.”

The dead man made no answer.

O’Hara kicked off the loop, stood, and dragged the body to its feet. “Answer me!” he yelled. “Why did you make the rain? Make it go away so I can sleep.”

With unseeing staring eyes and a screaming mouth, the dead man made no answer. Lightning seared across the sky, shimmering on the cadaver’s face, and thunder crashed.

In that hell-firing moment, as the blazing heavens conspired to destroy him, O’Hara realized what he had become . . . a raving madman.

O’Hara let go of the dead man and dropped to his hands and knees as the storm raged around him. He sank to the ground and plunged headlong into a bottomless pit.

Chapter Three

O’Hara woke to a dreary dawn. The thunderstorm had passed, but the sky was a sullen iron gray as far as the eye could see. The sounds of the nighttime, the crash of thunder, and the rattle of the rain were gone, replaced by a solemn silence.