William Johnstone - Triumph of the Mountain Man

Slowly, warily, he rose to his feet. The left side of his head hurt and when he explored his scalp with his fingertips, they came away bloody. He looked around him at the ashen landscape. The vastness of the high plains stretched to the horizon in all directions, an enchanted vista, but one of aching loneliness.

“What am I doing here?” he said aloud. He knew that he was not in the spirit world, but in the all too real realm of the living.

The dead man at his feet, his mouth wide open, had been shot through the head at close range, the wound on his temple blackened by gunpowder.

O’Hara stared at the leaden sky, his face tense in thought. Piece it together . . . piece it together. . . .

It took a while, but his memories slid back in place, one by one, like the pieces of those jigsaw puzzles children loved so well. Sam Flintlock . . . four women . . . the wagon . . . men riding out of the trees . . . a sledgehammer blow to the side of his head . . . and then waking up next to a corpse.

But there was more . . . . a vague image of Sam Flintlock tied to a wagon wheel . . . and later, in the lightning-scorched night, his own mad dance of death with a screaming dead man.

The pain in his head and drizzling rain sharpened O’Hara’s thinking.

Gradually his mind cleared of its fog and he recalled what had happened to him. He’d been shot, but the injury looked worse than it was, a grazing wound to the side of his head about two inches above his left ear. The looped rope at his feet told its own story. The outlaws had thought him dead, and he and the other man had been dragged from the wagon and left to rot on the plains.

But he wasn’t dead and Flintlock needed him . . . if he was still alive.

A search of the dead man provided nothing of value. His guns and the knife he’d worn in the sheath on his belt were gone, as were his boots. In a drizzling rain, O’Hara scouted the ground and despite the downpour of the night, the drag tracks were still visible. The flattened long grass pointed due north and he followed the tracks.

Weak and dizzy from loss of blood, he stumbled and fell half a dozen times before the wagon came in sight. Next to it, a makeshift shelter with a canvas roof revealed a pair of blanket-wrapped forms too long and bulky to be women. He hoped they were men sleeping off last night’s whiskey and slumbering soundly.

Sam Flintlock was still tied to the wagon wheel, his head lowered. He was hatless and his wet hair fell over his face.

To regain his strength, O’Hara lay flat on his belly deep in the long grass for a couple minutes and then got to his feet.

A woman in the wagon cried out in her sleep and he froze, hardly daring to breathe. The moment passed, the only sound the soft patter of the rain. He moved again and cast no shadow.

Chapter Four

The last thing O’Hara wanted was for Flintlock to wake up and cry out in either alarm or joy. He never could tell how a white man might react.

O’Hara kneeled beside Flintlock, grabbed him by the chin, and lifted his head. Flintlock’s eyes flickered open and O’Hara held his forefinger to his lips.

“It’s you,” Flintlock whispered. “I must have died and gone to hell.”

“Close. You’re still in Texas.”

Uncertain that he had the strength to untie the tight knots that bound Flintlock to the wheel, O’Hara said, “Barlow?”

“Right pocket.”

“Hold still.” O’Hara found the folding knife and in a matter of moments cut Flintlock free.

It was Flintlock’s turn to indicate silence with a finger to the lips. He rubbed his raw wrists and on cat feet stepped to the far corner of the wagon, studying the two men asleep under the lean-to. He nodded to himself, smiled, and returned to O’Hara.

Under an ominous sky that darkened the morning, he moved a few yards back and made a close survey of the wagon. After a while, he broke into a wide grin and rubbed his swollen hands together. “O’Hara, I’ve pulled off some good jokes in my time, but this is gonna be great.”

The conveyance was a converted farm wagon with a narrow wheelbase. The upper structure was made of slatted timber boards and had been built high to accommodate the tiered bunks inside. The roof was V-shaped, covered in wood shingles, and as a result the wagon was top heavy, suited more to dirt roads than open country.

Flintlock, a man of medium height but stocky and big in the arms and shoulders, put his hands on the side of the wagon. His boots digging into the rain-softened ground for traction, he pushed with all his considerable strength.

The wagon moved, tilted, and teetered on two wheels for tense moments and then slowly . . . slowly . . . overbalanced and crashed to the ground. From inside, shrill female shrieks shattered the silence of the morning. Pinned under the wreck, men cursed in anger.

Flintlock stepped to the flattened lean-to. Just in time, he dragged out a black cartridge belt wrapped around a holstered Colt as a short, stocky man scrambled from under the tarp, rage on his face and a gun in his hand. He threw a vile curse at Flintlock and fired . . . but he hurried the shot and missed.

Flintlock didn’t. Drawing fast from the black holster, he fired. His bullet hit the man in the chest at the V of his open undershirt, a killing wound that felled the shooter like a puppet that just had its strings cut.

The tarp bulged as the man under it crawled around like a blind mole in a tunnel.

Flintlock drew a bead but lowered the hammer as the trapped man yelled, “Don’t shoot! For God’s sake, can’t you see I’m done here?”

“Git out from under there or I’ll perforate you,” Flintlock said.

The tarp moved again and Morgan Davis wormed out from under the canvas on his hands and knees.

“On your feet,” Flintlock said over the barrage of outraged yells and cusses from the women trapped in the wagon.

Davis, looking mean, stood up. “Damn you, Flintlock. I should have plugged you.” He glanced at the dead man. “You done fer good ol’ Poke Murray.”

“Yeah,” Flintlock said. “He’ll be sadly missed by all who knew and loved him. Now give me an excuse to kill you, Davis.”

Ignoring that, the pimp looked at the overturned wagon and said, “You did that?”

“I surely did,” Flintlock said, grinning. “At the time it seemed the right thing to do. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me?”

“The damned wagon fell on its door. Them women are trapped inside.” Pushing that dire fact to the back of his mind, Davis looked at Flintlock and said, “Well, you got the drop on me. State your intentions but keep in mind that I saved your neck.”

Flintlock nodded. “Literally.”

“Huh?” Davis said.

“I made another good joke, but you didn’t get it.”

Davis nodded in the direction of the wagon. “That was a joke?”

“Yep. One of my better ones.”

“All right, Flintlock, you’ve had your laughs. Now what?”

“I haven’t made up my mind yet, Morg. Probably I’ll just shoot you for the lowdown, dirty dog you are.” He smiled. “We’ll see.”

O’Hara said, “Sam, we have to get those women out of there.”

From inside the wagon a woman yelled, “Damn right you do, you rotten sons of bitches. We can’t move in here and Biddy’s got her foot in my face.”

“We’ll get you out,” Flintlock said. “Once I figure how.”

“This is Biddy. Are you Flintlock?”

“Sure am, lady.”

“Then let Morg figure it out. He’s a lot smarter than you are. Morg, make it fast. We’re dying in here.”

Nettled, Flintlock said, “You heard the lady, Davis. Figure it out.”

The man, thin and ashen as a corpse, looked at Flintlock, shifted his gaze to the wagon and said, “It’s too heavy for a straight lift.”