A Time for Vultures Read Online Free Page B

alive and that I was an idiot.”
    â€œSounds like Barnabas. His spirit is every bit as villainous as he was.”
    â€œSeems like.” Flintlock looped his rope together and tied it to the saddle. “You ever heard of a bird called a kingfisher?”
    â€œThat’s a strange question.”
    â€œHave you?”
    O’Hara nodded. “The Sioux and Cheyenne respect the kingfisher because it is a mighty hunter.”
    â€œWhat does it hunt? Fish?” Flintlock said.
    â€œWith a name like kingfisher, it doesn’t hunt rabbits.”
    â€œBarnabas said the bird is going to figure in my future.”
    â€œThe old man is a prophet,” O’Hara said, “but you can’t trust him. His spirit wanders between heaven and hell.”
    Flintlock fingered the thunderbird tattoo across his throat. “You think it has something to do with this?”
    â€œI don’t know. You should’ve asked Barnabas.”
    * * *
    After several hours of waiting, someone banged on the inside of the wagon door and Biddy yelled, “Hey, you, Flintlock. Has that crazy Indian calmed down yet?”
    â€œYeah, you can come out now, but don’t make him mad. He’s a mean cuss when he goes on the warpath.”
    The wagon door opened a crack and then wider. Biddy stuck her head outside, her eyes, round as coins, going to O’Hara.
    â€œYip-yip!” O’Hara said.
    The door slammed shut again.
    Flintlock stepped to the wagon. “Come on out. O’Hara was making a joke.”
    â€œHe’s loco,” Biddy said.
    â€œYeah, he is, but right now he’s harmless,” Flintlock said. “Come out. I’ll make sure he doesn’t do you any harm.”
    Long moments passed and the door again opened and four timid women stepped outside, all eyes on O’Hara.
    The breed smiled and said softly, “Yip.”
    Flintlock stopped the stampede for the door, assuring Biddy and the others that O’Hara was no longer interested in scalps. “But he’s hungry and a hungry Injun is an angry Injun.”
    Margie Tott, the little brunette, tightened the laces of her red leather corset, and said, “Ain’t we heading for Happyville, bird man? We got business there.”
    â€œYou locked yourselves in the wagon for most of the damned day and now it’s too late,” Flintlock said. “We’ll head out tomorrow at first light.”
    O’Hara, playing his role of wild man to the hilt, thumbed his chest and said, “Me hungry. Me getting angry.”
    â€œYou women get a fire started,” Biddy said. “We’d best feed the crazy man before he scalps us all in our sleep.”
    * * *
    Sam Flintlock slept soundly in his blankets as the moon rose and silvered the grass and trees. As fragile as a bride’s veil, a mist hung close to the ground and from somewhere close an inquisitive owl questioned the night. Deer, stepping high on graceful hooves, came down to the creek to drink, their eyes pools of darkness.
    Flintlock slept on . . . dreaming of birds that hunted tiny silver fish . . . but O’Hara, a restless man, patrolled the night. Rifle in hand, he glided like a ghost through the gloom, his eyes searching for . . . he knew not what. His sleep had been troubled and the luminous night seemed to hold a thousand dangers lurking in the shadows.
    The kingfisher had wakened him, pecking at his eyes.
    O’Hara had sat upright in fear, remembering what the Ojibwa said of the kingfisher, that it was a bird of ill omen . . . a bearer of bad news.
    On soundless feet, O’Hara stepped close to Flintlock and stared at the slumbering man. Flintlock slept as white men sleep, deeply and unaware, hearing nothing. Yet it was he Barnabas had warned about the coming of the kingfisher. O’Hara squatted, his rifle across his thighs, and stared hard into Flintlock’s face with its sharp, hard planes, shaggy eyebrows, and great dragoon