“Call me sentimental, Cobb. It was left to me as a legacy, like.”
“See, my problem is, Sam, you could use that old long gun as a club. Bash my brains out when I wasn’t lookin’.”
“Not that rifle, I won’t. Your head is too thick, Sheriff. I might damage the stock.”
Cobb thought for a while, his shaggy black eyebrows beetling. Finally he smiled and said, “All right, I’ll bring it to you. But I see you making any fancy moves with that old Hawken, I’ll shoot your legs off so you can still live long enough to be hung. You catch my drift?”
“You have my word, Sheriff, I won’t give you any trouble.”
Cobb nodded. “Well, you’re a personable enough feller, even though you ain’t so well set up an’ all, so I’ll take you at your word.”
“I appreciate it,” Flintlock said. “See, I’m named for that Hawken.”
“Your real name Hawken, like?”
“No. My grandpappy named me for a flintlock rifle, seeing as how I never knew my pa’s name.”
“Hell, why didn’t he give you his own name, that grandpa of yourn?”
“He said every man should have his father’s name. He told me he’d call me Flintlock after the Hawken until I found my ma and she told me who my pa was and what he was called.”
“You ever find her?”
“No. I never did, but I’m still on the hunt for her. Or at least I was.”
“Your grandpa was a mountain man?”
“Yeah, he was with Bridger an’ Hugh Glass an’ them, at least for a spell. Then he helped survey the Platte and the Sweetwater with Kit Carson and Fremont.”
“Strange, restless breed they were, mountain men.”
“You could say that.”
“I’ll bring you the Hawken, but mind what I told you, about shootin’ off a part of yourself.”
“I ain’t likely to forget,” Flintlock said.
CHAPTER TWO
“Pssst . . .”
Sam Flintlock sat up on his cot, his mind cobwebbed by sleep.
“Pssst . . .”
What was that? Rats in the corners again?
“Hell, look up here, stupid.”
Flintlock rose to his feet. There was a small barred window high on the wall of his cell where a bearded face looked down at him.
“I see you’re prospering, Sammy,” the man said, grinning. “Settin’ all nice and cozy in the town hoosegow.”
Flintlock scowled. “Come to watch me hang, Abe?”
“Nah, I was just passin’ through when I saw the gallows,” Abe Roper said. “I asked who was gettin’ hung and they said a feller with a big bird tattooed on his throat that goes by the name of Sam Flintlock. I knew it had to be you. There ain’t another ranny in the West with a big bird an’ that handle.”
“Here to gloat, Abe?” Flintlock said. “Gettin’ even for old times?”
“Hell, no, I got nothing agin you, Sam. You got me two years in Yuma but you treated me fair and square. An’ you gave my old lady money the whole time I was inside. Now why did you do a dumb thing like that?”
“You had growing young ’uns. Them kids had to be fed and clothed.”
“Yeah, but why the hell did you do it?”
“I just told you.”
“I got no liking for bounty hunters, Sammy, but you was a true-blue white man, taking care of my family like that.” Roper was silent for a moment, then said, “Sally and the kids passed about three years ago from the cholera.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Flintlock said. “I can close my eyes and still see their faces.”
“It was a hurtful thing, Sam, and me being away on the scout at the time.”
“You gonna stick around for the hanging, Abe?” Flintlock said.
“Hell, no, and neither are you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean there’s a barrel of gunpowder against this wall and it’s due to go up in”—Roper looked down briefly—“oh, I’d say less than half a minute.”
The man waved a quick hand. “Hell, I got to light a shuck.”
Flintlock stood rooted to the spot for a moment. Then he yelled a startled curse at Roper, grabbed the rifle off his cot and pulled the mattress on top of him.
A couple of seconds later the Mason City jail blew up with such force its shingle roof soared into the air and landed intact twenty yards away on top of the brand-new gallows. The jail roof and the gallows collapsed in a cloud of dust and killed Sheriff Cobb’s pregnant sow that had been wallowing in the mud under the platform.
A shattering shower of adobe and splintered wood rained down on Flintlock and acrid dust filled his lungs. He threw the mattress aside and staggered to his feet, just as Abe Roper kicked aside debris and stepped through the hole in the jailhouse wall.
“Sam, get the hell out of there,” Roper said. “I got your hoss outside.”
Flintlock grabbed the Hawken, none the worse for wear, and stumbled outside.
As Roper swung into the saddle, Chinese Charlie Fong, grinning as always, tossed Flintlock the reins of a paint.
“Good to see you again, Sammy,” Fong said.
“Feeling’s mutual, Charlie,” Flintlock said.
He mounted quickly and ate Roper’s dust as he followed the outlaw out of town at a canter.
Roper turned in the saddle. “Crackerjack bang, Sammy, huh? Have you ever seen the like?”
“Son of a gun, you could’ve killed me,” Flintlock said.
“So what? Who the hell would miss ya?” Roper said.
“Somebody’s gonna miss this paint pony I’m riding,” Flintlock said.
“Hell, yeah, it’s the sheriff’s hoss,” Roper grinned. “Better than the ten-dollar mustang you rode in on, Sam.”
“Damn you, Abe, Cobb’s gonna hang me, then hang me all over again for hoss theft,” Flintlock said.
“Well, he’ll have to catch you first,” Roper said, kicking his mount into a gallop.
After an hour of riding through the southern foothills of the Chuska Mountains, the massive rampart of red sandstone buttes and peaks that runs north all the way to the Utah border, Roper drew rein and he and Flintlock waited until Charlie Fong caught up.
“Where are we headed, Abe?” Flintlock said. “I hope you’ve got a good hideout all picked out.”
He and Roper were holed up in a stand of mixed juniper and piñon. A nearby high meadow was thick with yellow bells and wild strawberry, and the waning afternoon air smelled sweet of pine and wildflowers.
“We’re headed for Fort Defiance, up in the old Navajo country. It’s been abandoned for years but the army’s moved back, temporary-like, until ol’ Geronimo is either penned up or dead.”
Flintlock scratched at a bug bite under his buckskin shirt and said, “Is that wise, me riding into an army fort when I’m on the scout?”
“There ain’t no fightin’ sodjers there, Sammy, just cooks an’ quartermasters an’ the like,” Roper said. “All the cavalry is out, lookin’ fer Geronimo an’ them.”
“We gonna stay in an army barracks?” Flintlock said. “Say it ain’t so.”
“Nah, me an’ Charlie got us a cabin near the officers’ quarters, a cozy enough berth if you’re not a complainin’ man.”
Roper peered hard at Flintlock’s rugged, unshaven face and then his throat. “Damnit, Sam, I never did get used to looking at that big bird, even when we rode together.”
“I was raised rough,” Flintlock said. “You know that.”
“Old Barnabas do that to you?” Roper said, passing the makings.
“He wanted it done, but when I was twelve he got an Assiniboine woman to do the tattooing. As I recollect, it hurt considerable.”
“What the hell is it? Some kind of eagle?”
Flintlock built his cigarette and Roper gave him a match. “It’s a thunderbird.” He thumbed the match into flame and lit his cigarette. “Barnabas wanted a black and red thunderbird, on account of how the Indians reckon it’s a sacred bird.”