Guns of the Vigilantes

Without deviation, the tracks Dan Caine followed headed due east like an arrow, pointing the way to . . . he didn’t know what or where they might lead. A house, certainly, not a hog farm as Cooley suggested. An old house with a steam clock that could be seen for miles. With his young eyes, Dan scanned the prairie rolling ahead of him, but all he saw was a green sea of grass under an increasingly ominous sky. To the north, thunder rumbled and the air became as sharp as iron and smelled of ozone.

Where was the damn house with the big clock?

The strange thought came to him . . . it was on the dark side of the moon, where Professor Lazarus Latchford and Miss Prunella’s balloon had landed to check the time.

Dan shook his head and smiled. The boredom of the endless, wind-rippled prairie was getting to him.

Then two things happened to end his doldrums . . . a blinding flash followed by thunder crashing above his head with a sound like massive rocks tumbling into a sheet iron hopper . . . and in the distance through the chain-mail curtain of the rain, he caught a glimpse of the tiled roof of a house. “Well, I’ll be damned,” Dan said aloud to nobody but himself. “There really is a whorehouse on the prairie.”

Battling a rising wind and a spatter of rain, Dan struggled into his flapping slicker and rode toward the building . . . a mansion from a madman’s nightmare.

The house named High Time stood tall, grim, and skeletal, partially hidden by a gloomy stand of bony wild oak. Cold torrents of rain falling from the brim of his hat, Dan Caine drew rein and studied the place. The house. A relic of an era long past, it stood three stories tall and looked like a long-abandoned prison or asylum for the criminally insane. The main body of the structure formed a rectangle but added here and there were projecting castle-like towers with arched windows, a couple of them boarded up, and cone-shaped roofs. The main rooftop was steeply pitched and crowned with a forest of gray stone chimneys, several of them belching black smoke that was immediately pounded to mist by the rain. The house was covered in dark tile, torn away in places to expose the wooden framework underneath.

Withal, High Time was slowly disintegrating but still retained an air of gentility, of mystery, of hidden fears and dire omens. Such a place could contain a damsel in distress . . . or whores in red dresses.

Dan kneed his mount forward again and stopped outside the main door, a massive oak portal studded with iron nails in defiant rows, heavy hinges, and a large brass knocker shaped like a human skull with moonstone eyes. In contrast to the grim door, each lower window had a window box with yellow and orange marigolds, and at a distance away a clothesline strung between two oaks was hung with female frillies that hung soaked and limp in the rain.

Dan was about to dismount when a man’s voice, followed by the unsociable, metallic chak-chak of a levering Winchester, stopped him. Half in, half out of the saddle, Dan thought it prudent to give the man a listen.

“What the hell are you doing here, mister?” the man said.

He stood somewhere behind Dan, not a good place for a rifle-toting, hostile man to be.

Dan Caine swallowed hard and then said, “I’m looking for a place to get out of the rain and maybe a bite to eat.”

“What else are you looking for?” the man said. “Speak up now.”

“Just a cup of coffee and grub,” Dan said, keeping it nonaggressive.

“Are ye looking for sin or redemption?” the man said.

“Neither of those,” Dan said, surprised.

As if he hadn’t heard, the man said, “Just as well. Ye won’t find redemption in there, sonny. But sin, plenty o’ that. There’s a grand staircase in the house and every step you take of it is a mortal sin that leads to hell. Study on that and your young blood will run cold, cold as ice, cold as the grave . . . and then will come the fire.”

Dan figured the ranny behind him was a few bricks shy of a load and decided to level with him. “Did a man ride in here earlier? Look of the outlaw about him?”

He said it, but no one heard him . . . because at that moment lightning flared and thunder roared, obliterating all other sound.

After the thunder grumbled into silence, Dan turned and saw the man for the first time. He was a skinny, bearded old timer wearing a bright yellow oilskin that glistened in the half-light, a plug hat on his head with dark goggles on the brim. A Sharps .50 was rock steady in his gnarled hands and wasn’t there for show.

“What did you say, sonny?” the old man said.

“I’m looking for a man that rode in here earlier today,” Dan said. “He probably has the look of an outlaw about him. I reckon he rode a good horse, sat a saddle no cowboy could afford, and wore his bad attitude like a badge of honor. Maybe he has a plain gold wedding band on one of his fingers.”

“Nope, I never seen a feller like that,” the old timer said. He raised the Sharps until the muzzle was level with Dan’s belly. “Now best you was riding on.”

The old man’s finger was on the trigger of the rifle and Dan knew an attempt at a draw and shoot was a forlorn hope. The Sharps would blow his lowest shirt button through his backbone before he even started to clear leather. It would be a messy wound, painful as hell, and it would kill him within a few moments . . . if he was lucky.

“Mister, I won’t ask you a second time,” the old man said. “I never do.”

Lightning flashed across the dark sky like the signature of a demented god and shimmered on the wet tiles of the building. Thunder crashed . . . and Dan Caine was aware that his life hung in the balance.

“Artemus! What are you doing with that gent?”

It was a woman’s voice, loud and commanding, and it came from somewhere above Dan’s head. He turned and saw a heavily made-up woman hanging out an upstairs window, her painted face barely visible in the gloom.

The old man raised his head and shouted over the dragon hiss of the rain, “So far, I ain’t shot him, Miss Maguire. I don’t trust this ranny. You want I should plug him?”

“Hell, no,” the woman said. “You’ve plugged too many of my clientele as it is. Do what I told you, stoke the furnace, but first take care of the gent’s hoss.” Then to Dan. “Come to the door, and I’ll let you enter. You look harmless and respectable enough to have money in your pocket.” She peered closer. “Well, a couple of dollars anyway.”

The window slammed shut before Dan could utter a word.

Artemus said, “Stoke the furnace, she says. The damned furnace is on its last legs, like everything else around this dunghill.” The man took the dark goggles from his hat brim and settled them over his eyes. “When you look into a furnace you catch a glimpse of hell and your own eternity,” he said. “Look long enough and the horror of the sight will burn your damn eyeballs out.”

The old timer caught up the reins of Dan’s horse. “See you rub him down good,” Dan said.

“I know how to take care of a horse, sonny,” Artemus said. “I like horses a sight better than people.” His face grimaced in a smile. “As you might find out soon enough.” He walked the horse a few steps and then stopped and said over his shoulder, “The Apaches are out. Mescalero and Chiricahua bucks holding hands.”

The old man’s goggles were as black as night, and Dan couldn’t see his eyes.