“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.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “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.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  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.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The swamp water was warm from the sun, brown with mud, and from a distance away Sam Flintlock heard a grunting feral hog root among the hyacinths that grew close to the bank. The cypress trees cast no shadows because the sun, white as molten steel, stood at its highest point in the sky. Carrion birds glided overhead, patient as monks illuminating manuscripts with feather pens, and watched and waited.

  Flintlock ran a dry tongue over his parched lips, his thirst a raging thing. Mosquitoes as big as sparrows bit his exposed wrists and neck, and flew heavily away, groggy from their blood feast.

  His wrists rubbed raw from straining at the ropes, Flintlock dreamed about water, of throwing himself into the swamp and drinking and drinking until the roots of the cypress were revealed. Visions of beer, the color of Baltic amber, ice cold and foaming in tall glass steins, tormented him and gave him no peace.

  The sun dropped lower and a gator bellowed once among the cypress and in the following quiet Flintlock thought he heard it slide into the swamp, water hissing along its armored sides.

  Flintlock jerked up his aching head, his frightened eyes searching. Was it the big one? The one they called Basilisk? The one with the ravenous appetite for human flesh? His head sank slowly back to the dirt. Suddenly he was very tired, used up by fear and thirst, and he wanted it to end.

  By late afternoon Sam Flintlock drifted in and out of consciousness. He saw his mother again, bright red hair, but her features blurred because he could no longer remember her face. She was lost in the swamp. Then her hair was no longer red but gray, and she beckoned to him, her face pleading, begging him to save her, her arms moving like willow branches in a wind. Flintlock moved toward her, but slowly, as though he walked through thick molasses. He called out to her, “Ma, what’s my name?” But then a mist came down like a gray cloud and she vanished from sight.

  Flintlock woke with a start. He lifted his head and craned his neck, staring toward the swamp. A mist curled between the cypress trunks and over the willow islands and speckled trout jumped at flies and splashed back into the water.

  Ripples washed ashore and hissed onto the sandy bank. Flintlock’s eyes widened. The ripples were not made by a fish but from something bigger. A lot bigger. His neck aching, Flintlock kept his eyes glued to the surface of the water, now and then catching glimpses through the drifting mist.

  Flintlock saw it! A scaly back. Unblinking reptilian eyes level with the water. The slow, lazy undulation of a massive tail. A massive alligator, a cold, emotionless killer, slid through the murky water toward him.

  His dry throat croaking his fear, Flintlock frantically tugged at the ropes that bound him. But the stakes were driven in deep and didn’t budge. The alligator was closer now. Its huge head lifted and rows of teeth glinted in the fading light like sabers. Flintlock dropped his head and prayed that his horrible death would be quick and painless.

  BLAAMM!

  The roar of a pistol shot racketed through the swamp and set roosting birds scattering in panic into the sky. Flintlock lifted his head and watched the muddy water boil as an alligator thrashed, showing its white belly. The reptile made a quick turn and slunk away into the swamp, trailing a stream of blood.

  A figure stood over Flintlock and blocked the rays of the dying sun.

  “Ma?” he said.

  And then unconsciousness took him.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “He’s coming to,” a man said.

  O’Hara’s voice.

  Sam Flintlock opened his eyes. “O’Hara, you rat,” he said, his voice a feeble croak. “First chance I get I’m going to put a bullet in you.”

  “How do you feel, Flintlock?” O’Hara said.

  “Alive or barely. Did you shoot the gator?”

  “No, the swamp witch did,” O’Hara said. He leaned closer and whispered into Flintlock’s ear, “Don’t look into her eyes. If you do she’ll steal your soul.”

  “You damned traitor, she saved my life, more than I can say for you,” Flintlock said. “Why did you quit on me last night?”

  “Later,” O’Hara said. “You need to rest.”

  The man moved aside and Flintlock saw the alligator. It was right above him, its fangs bared! He cried out and tried to rise but strong hands pushed him back onto the cot.

  “He’s long dead,” a woman said. “He can’t hurt you now.”

  “I thought . . . I thought . . .”

  “Yes. I know what you thought,” the woman said. “I killed that one three years ago and now he hangs from my ceiling as a warning to his kin.”

  The woman was young and spectacularly beautiful. Her black hair was piled on top of her head in glossy ringlets and waves and coiled tendrils hung over her forehead and cheeks. She had dark eyes, lashes as long as lace fans and a wide, lush mouth, her lips painted a vivid scarlet. She wore a pale pink shirt under a tight black bodice laced at the front with grommets and boned at the front and sides. Her wine-red, bustled taffeta skirt was tied up at the front to better reveal shapely legs in thigh-high red leather boots. A large golden key, decorated with tiny cogwheels taken from pocket watches, hung by a velvet ribbon from her neck.

  “You’re a swamp witch?” Flintlock said. He didn’t look into her eyes.

  “Yes. What did you expect? An old crone with no teeth and warts?”

  “Something like that,” Flintlock said.

  “Here, drink this. It will help you sleep for a while,” the woman said. “And I’ll put some salve on your lips.” Then with a devastating smile she said, “My name is Evangeline and you can look at me. I won’t steal your soul. I have one of my own already.”

  She raised Flintlock’s head and helped him drink from a wooden cup. He thought the liquid tasted like sour green apples . . . and then for the third time that day, oblivion swept over him.