Smugglers' Gold (16 page)

Pickering grabbed a hold of Walker's sodden shirt, hoisting the smaller man up onto tiptoes. “Burnt and sunk! Just where in hell were you, while this was goin' on?”

Walker went pale beneath his sailor's baked-in tan. “I mighta fell asleep for just a second, sir. No longer, I can tell you that, when somebody pitched me over the rail.”

“Asleep? And then tossed overboard? By who?” Pickering raged.

“I din't exactly see his face, sir.”

Pickering pulled Walker close and sniffed him. Mixed in with the smell of sea water, he recognized the pungent scent of rum. “And you were drunk on watch, goddamn you!” he exploded.

“No, sir! I—”

Pickering slammed his fist into the sailor's face and let him drop, unconscious, to the sawdust-littered floor. Turning to face the cribs upstairs, he bellowed out, “All crewmen from the
Banshee
, to the waterfront! No lagging! Last man on the pier's dead meat!”

Trusting the fear his sailors felt for him to roust them out of bed, Pickering turned and bolted from the bawdy house, dead sober by the time he reached the sidewalk and began to run with loping strides down toward the docks. The distant pall of smoke was visible already, growing larger, darker, as he closed the gap, gaining momentum on the downhill sprint.

And it was true, by God.

He'd hoped that Walker was exaggerating, his impressions blurred by alcohol, but that was not the case. Where Pickering had left the
Banshee
—safe and sound, as he'd supposed—a blackened ruin lay partly submerged, the stump of one burnt mast protruding six or seven feet above the water's surface. Pickering stood gaping at the wreckage while his sailors started to arrive, some barely dressed, after their run from Awful Annie's to the docks.

“What happened, Captain?” someone asked.

“The hell should I know? Was I here?” Pickering fought to calm himself and added, “Jonas says somebody tossed him overboard. Next thing he knew, the ship was burning.”

“Tossed him over?”

“Who'n hell?”

“Bastard was drunk, all right,” said Pickering. “If I find out he set this fire by accident or otherwise, I'll see he takes a week to die.”

A sailor that he didn't recognize was standing close at hand and overheard Pickering's comment. Gambling with his own skin, he spoke up to say, “At least both of your men got off all right.”

“
Both
of my men?”

The stranger nodded. “One over the starboard rail, the other down the gangplank.”

Pickering's assembled men immediately started babbling amongst themselves, their questions batting back and forth until he scowled and shushed them. Turning to the stranger who had spoken, he asked, “Do I take it that you saw this second man come down the plank?”

“As plain as day, friend.”

“And could you describe him for me?”

Now the stranger paused for thought, eyes closing for a moment, opening before he spoke again. “I'd reckon he was six foot tall, dark-haired, no whiskers. Young, in my opinion, middle twenties. White, o' course. I do recall he wore a pistol, here.” Reaching across his body toward the left hip, for a simulated cross-hand draw.

“Was he familiar to you? Might you know his name?”

“Never laid eyes on him before,” the stranger said.

“Thanks, anyway.”

That vague description could apply to half the men working along the waterfront, but there was something . . . Wait! The pistol. Pickering had seen a rig like that, just yesterday.

But no. It
couldn't
be.

Raging, he turned his back on what remained of the poor
Banshee
, formerly the
Revenant
, and started back toward Awful Annie's, boot heels clopping on the cobblestones.

*   *   *

J
onas Walker thought that he was drowning for a second, then he tasted beer and realized someone was trying to revive him from his captain's stunning punch. He came up sputtering, his right eye stinging from the dose of alcohol, his left one swollen almost shut from the impact of Pickering's knuckles.

“Ups-a-daisy,” someone told him, as they hauled Walker to his feet. He was disoriented for a moment, then remembered where he was and what had happened just before the lights went out.

Hands steered him toward the bar, where someone handed him a shot glass full of whiskey and he gulped it, gratefully. Walker wasn't used to helping hands and wished that everyone would just leave him alone, but that was not to be.

The leader of the outfit, Bryan Marley, was beside him now, refilling Walker's glass while he plied him with questions. Where had Pickering and all his crewmen gone in such a hurry? Were they coming back, or not?

It seemed that none of Marley's men had heard Walker when he'd told his captain that the
Banshee
was on fire, so he went through it all again, stopping at intervals to wheeze a bit and make a show of wobbling on his feet until the empty shot glass was refilled and he felt fortified enough to forge ahead.

It was embarrassing, explaining how he'd been assigned to guard the ship but had a bit of rum and fell asleep, then woke to someone tossing him over the
Banshee
's rail. The dunking cleared his head—well, more or less—but by the time he'd dragged himself onto the dock, all sopping wet, the clipper was in flames. Walker had seen ships burn before, and didn't feel like dying in a vain attempt to fight the fire, so he had done the next best thing and raced off to the whorehouse, where he had alerted Captain Pickering and then got knocked out cold.

“You say somebody set the ship on fire deliberately?” Marley asked him.

“Must have,” Walker said. “If he was passin' by and seen the smoke, why heave me overboard? I weren't but twenty paces from the gangplank.”

“Sabotage,” somebody muttered, and that got some of the others grumbling.

Marley shushed them, pressing in on Walker. “Did you see the guy who tossed you over?”

“Nope,” Walker replied. “I may'a mentioned I was sleepin' off a wee bit of a bender. He was strong, though, I can tell you that.”

Somebody in the group mentioned a name—sounded like “Menefee”—but Marley snapped right back at them, “He's dead, goddamn it!”

“Doesn't mean his friends are,” someone else complained.

“Whoever done it,” Walker said, “looks like we're stranded here in Galveston until the captain finds hisself another ship. Looks bad for business.”

Marley seemed to have a sudden thought, his face taking on an anxious look. “The warehouse! Gabe, take Jack and Willy. Hustle over there and make sure it's all right.”

The men he'd spoken to rushed out into the early dusk and disappeared, the barroom's bat-wing doors flapping behind them. Walker stood waiting for another shot of whiskey on the house, but it appeared that Marley had lost interest in him. He was giving orders to the men who still remained, directing some to gather weapons, others to go off in search of gang members who weren't already at the brothel. Walker understood that they were making ready to defend the place—or maybe go to war.

He leaned against the bar and thought about that for another moment, weighing his alternatives. There was no point in volunteering to help Marley and his men, after he'd just confessed his own ineptitude. Likewise, he couldn't count on any mercy from his captain or the crewmates he'd let down. There must be
something
he could do in Galveston, while waiting for a berth aboard some other vessel, but the thought of being killed or badly injured in a shooting war held no appeal for Walker.

On the other hand, if he got out of there while Marley and his people were distracted . . .

Walker saw them huddled at the far end of the bar, all deep in earnest conversation. There would never be a better time, he thought, and ambled casually toward the door.

R
yder approached the warehouse cautiously, convinced that Marley would have guards stationed around it to protect the loot deposited in recent days. He was correct but found the two lookouts detailed to watch it posed no problem, since their throats were slashed from ear to ear, their bodies dragged inside the warehouse and concealed there.

Ryder saw that much because the broad front door was standing open to receive him. Pistol drawn, he ducked inside to stand above the corpses, listening to sounds that emanated from the shadowy interior. It sounded like one man, or two at most, opening crates and pawing through their contents, likely seeking treasure he or they could haul away on foot, without a team and wagon.

Ryder had not counted on a robbery in progress, much less double murder. He had come to search the warehouse with no plan fixed firmly in his mind, aware that he could not abscond with much of Marley's loot himself, uncertain whether anything he carried off without a warrant qualified as evidence. He'd planned to have another look around, at least, maybe consider treating Marley's cache as he had done the late
Banshee
, but now he faced a different proposition altogether.

He cocked the Colt Army, half wincing at the hammer's sharp metallic sound, but if it carried to the looter farther back inside the warehouse, it did not disturb him. Or them. Ryder moved as quietly as possible, placing each foot with caution on the concrete floor, avoiding any scuffs to give himself away. It seemed to take forever, moving down one aisle between two rows of wooden crates, the person he was stalking still unseen and one row over to his right. The stacks of merchandise concealed Ryder from his intended prey, as it hid him—or them—from Ryder, but it made him wonder how he would, in fact, confront the prowler after all, without forewarning him.

When he had reached a point directly opposite the sounds of avid searching, he decided it was only one intruder after all. A pair would certainly be talking now, even in whispers, as they rifled through Marley's loot for some specific prize. One man would make things easier, but there was still the problem of approaching him. Unless . . .

The crates nearest to Ryder, standing like a wall between the burglar and himself, were stacked in an arrangement mimicking stair steps: one crate on top, with two beneath it, three beneath the two, and so on, down to six across the bottom row. Holding his pistol and his breath, Ryder began to climb the barricade, expecting each move that he made to cause some creaking sound that would alert his target on the other side. The crates were sturdy, though, and made no sound before he reached the top, leaned over, and looked down into the next aisle—

Where he had an unobstructed view of Otto Seitz, kneeling, a Bowie knife beside him on the floor that he had used to pry the lid off of a crate that he was rifling through. Gold coins jingled though his plunging hands, Seitz dumping them around his knees as if they had no value. Digging deeper. Seeking . . . what?

Ask him?
thought Ryder.

Suiting thought to action, he immediately rolled across the topmost crate and dropped into the aisle behind Seitz, landing in a half crouch, with his six-gun leveled. Seitz spun toward him, reaching for the knife instinctively, then froze at sight of Ryder and his Colt Army.

“It can't be!” Otto blurted.

“Guess again.”

“Awright.” Seitz rocked back on his heels, hands on his knees, the Bowie still within his reach. “You're back with Marley, eh? He sent you here? And now you've got me.”

“Some of that's correct,” Ryder replied.

“I guess you're tickled that he threw me out. I tried to tell him you were rotten, but he still blames me.”

“You feel like getting even with him?” Ryder asked.

“The hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I need corroborating evidence to prosecute him. Play your cards right, we can probably convince a local judge those boys you killed back there went down in self-defense.”

“I
knew
it! You're a goddamned copper!”

“Secret Service,” Ryder said, correcting him. “I guess it's all the same to you.”

“I shoulda stayed behind and killed you when I had the chance.”

“Should have but didn't. Now it's on the other foot. One chance to save yourself from stretching rope.”

“See you in Hell first.” Otto sneered.

Instead of reaching for the knife, he whipped a hand behind his back and came out with a small revolver, cocking it before he had a chance to aim. He got no further with it, then, as Ryder shot him in the chest and slammed him over to the concrete floor, twitching his last before the echo of the shot had died away.

*   *   *

F
irst thing, Ryder doubled back to check the street outside for passersby who might have heard the gunshot. He found no one, which was reassuring to a point but obviously did not mean that he was in the clear. He felt time slipping through his fingers now, as he considered how to stage the scene.

His first impulse, immediately banished, was to summon the police, identify himself, and tell them what had happened. Understanding how things seemed to work in Galveston, however, he projected what might happen if he got hold of the
wrong
police, maybe wound up in jail on murder charges, while the coppers ran to Bryan Marley with a warning. Even if the lawmen took his story and credentials at face value, there was no reason for Ryder to believe that they would help him round up Marley's gang.

No. He would stake his hopes on the Revenue Cutter from Corpus Christi, make sending that telegram his next priority. But in the meantime, Ryder needed to arrange the shooting scene, to place the full responsibility on Otto Seitz.

Otto had made it easy for him, to a point. The knife he'd used to slit the throats of Marley's guards lay on the concrete floor beside his corpse. He'd wiped the blade after the killings, but that was a problem easily resolved. If either of the murdered lookouts had a pistol on him, Ryder thought his plan should work.

Unless somebody caught him in the midst of fixing it.

Ryder strode to the warehouse door and closed it, then had a look at Otto's body, making sure the bullet from his Colt Army had not come out the smuggler's back. With that confirmed, he left no blood trail dragging Seitz along the aisle where he had died, back toward the bodies of the former comrades he had slaughtered. One more trip to fetch the Bowie knife, and he was ready for the final bit of playacting.

It was a grisly job, but Ryder got it done. After discovering that both of Marley's warehouse guards were armed with Colts—a Walker .44 and an older .36-caliber Paterson—he chose the corpse whose weapon matched his own revolver's caliber and left the other one alone. He hauled the body he'd selected six or seven feet off from the other one, and didn't mind the bloody drag marks this time, thinking they could be interpreted as evidence of struggling. From what he'd seen of the police in Galveston so far, he thought them likely to accept the easiest, most obvious solution they could find to any incident.

Next, Ryder had to fire the dead man's Colt Walker, a risky business, since a second shot might bring police before he'd slipped away. Taking the pistol from the dead man's belt, Ryder went back to check the street again, saw no one passing by, and ran back to the far end of the warehouse, where he fired the gun point-blank into a bale of ganja. He would be surprised—make that amazed—if any Galveston patrolman found that slug, or even spied the small hole in the burlap sacking.

Jogging back to dead man's land, he finished setting up the scene. The Colt Walker, one chamber fired, he pressed into the murdered watchman's limp right hand. Next, Ryder wiped the Bowie's heavy blade across the lookout's gaping throat, before he placed it into Otto's hand and pressed his still-warm fingers to create a fist of sorts. The worst bit was arranging Seitz and his dead victim in a grappling pose, the Colt Walker wedged in between them where it might have slipped after a fatal shot was fired in self-defense.

Ryder stepped back and studied the tableau he had created. It would not deceive an expert, diligent detective, but he counted on the local coppers being lazy and slipshod. They'd want to close the case as simply as they could—and if they doubted his arrangement of the corpses, what was their alternative solution? Ryder checked to verify that nothing of himself remained for the police to find. Once Otto and the others were identified, any suspicions that still lingered would be aimed at Bryan Marley and his crew.

It was the best that he could do for now, in any case, and
now
was all that mattered. Getting out, away from there, before another pair of watchmen showed up to relieve the ones Otto had slain, or someone else showed up to ruin everything.

One final check along the street, in both directions, and he fled, leaving the warehouse door as he had found it on arrival, open to the world.

Whoever turned up next was in for a surprise.

*   *   *

S
tede Pickering was halfway back to Awful Annie's when it hit him. He stopped dead in the middle of the street, his crewmen piling up behind him, jostling one another. “Damn and blast!” the captain swore.

“Whatsa matter?” someone asked him.

“That lubber on the dock,” said Pickering. “When he described the fella comin' off the
Banshee
. Who'd that sound like? Anybody?”

“Anybody, sure,” one of his dimwit crewmen answered, shrugging.

“Damn it! Think of someone who we've seen just recently.” When that failed to produce a glimmer anywhere among them, Pickering added, “Someone who might bear us a grudge.”

“Old Seitz was steamin' after Marley kicked him out,” one of them said.

“Not him. He doesn't look a damn thing like the man who was described,” said Pickering.

Blank faces all around him.

“Christ all Friday!” he exclaimed. “Are all your brains so soused you can't remember yesterday?” Still nothing, so he spelled it out for them. “It sounds like George Revere.”

“Him from the island?” one of them inquired.

“That don't make sense,” another said. “We left him, din't we?”

“Left him, sure,” said Pickering. “We didn't
kill
him, though.”

“That can't be right,” a balding pirate groused. “It's more'n two hunnerd miles of open water, comin' back.”

“Longer than that, if he went overland somehow,” a scar-faced sailor added.

“Lotsa guys look purty much the same,” a one-eyed buccaneer allowed.

“That's true enough,” said Pickering. “But who among 'em has a grudge against the
Banshee
and her crew?”

That stumped them for a moment, then a skinny redhead said, “Awright, but
how
would he get back here?”

“Doesn't matter how he done it,” Pickering replied. “The question's whether Marley knew about it and they's in this deal together.”

“What deal?” asked the cyclops.

“Burnin' up our ship, you idjit!”

“Why'n hell would Marley go along with that?” the redhead challenged. “He's been our best customer, these past two years.”

“But he was het up when he heard we left Revere on Timbalier, weren't he?” Pickering reminded them. “Kept sayin' how the boy had saved his neck, not once, but twice.”

“So, this Revere comes back somehow,” said One-eye, “
and
he talks to Marley somehow, while we's all together at the whorehouse?”

“Why not?” Pickering replied. “The hard part's gettin' back, but once he's here, what's stoppin' him? Was any of you watchin' who came in and out?”

The redhead sniggered. “Only once I got upstairs.”

“Shut up! If I'm right,” Pickering continued, “Marley either knows Revere is back in town and burnt the
Banshee,
or he oughta know. We need to find out which it is, and quick.”

“We goin' back there, then?” asked Scarface.

“Goddamn right, we are,” said Pickering. “But first, we have to make another little stop.”

“For what?” one of his crewmen asked.

“If you could think straight for a second, you'd remember that our guns, most of 'em, went up with the clipper. I ain't bustin' in on Marley and his bunch,” said Pickering, “unless we're all well armed.”

“You know someplace in town to get more shootin' irons?” asked One-eye.

“This is Texas,” Pickering replied. “Guns ain't the problem. What we need is cash to buy 'em with, so ever'body turn your pockets out and show me what you got.”

It didn't come to much, after the hours spent in revelry at Awful Annie's. Truth be told, they were well short of what he thought they'd need to supplement the knives and few pistols his men had brought ashore from the
Banshee
. Pickering knew a man who dealt in guns and had a shop nearby, but if he quibbled over price . . . well, that would be
his
problem this time, wouldn't it.

Nothing would stand between Stede Pickering and his revenge. Not money, not the local coppers, and for damn sure not a lousy bunch of cowards whose idea of fighting was to sneak around behind a captain's back and burn his ship.

Someone would pay for that insult. In blood.

*   *   *

F
rom the warehouse, Ryder made his cautious way back to the Western Union office and dispatched a telegram to Corpus Christi. Requesting help forced Ryder to identify himself, and since he'd gone that far, he played his other hole card at the same time, mentioning Director Wood by name. As a precaution, he stood waiting while the telegram was sent and the acknowledgment came back. Whatever happened after that—say, if the clerk ran off to warn somebody from the Marley gang—at least he'd done his best.