Dreams of Eagles (26 page)

In the foyer, she jerked her husband to one side. “You come with me. Things don't turn out right, you got to get a baby over to Georgia Washington on the quiet.”

He shook his head. “Woman, you completely lost your goddamn mind? Master Cort learns about this he'd have us both stripped nekked and whupped to death.”

She glared at her husband. “Now, you listen to me, Tyrone. And you listen good. We do this right, and you and me is treated-good house servants 'til the day we die. No more workin' in the fields for you and no more slavin' over a hot stove for me. Now you go fetch me hot water and clean white cloths. And wash your damn hands 'fore you do that. Move!”

Tyrone walked off, muttering to himself. Thunder rumbled in the distance and a slow rain began to fall. Cort sat in the parlor and got drunk.

The babies came within the hour, in the midst of a violent storm. The day turned dark as night; winds battered the huge plantation home and rain and tiny balls of hail lashed out in fury. Tyrone was busy bringing in clean cloths and toting out pitchers of water. No one saw Cort stagger up the curving stairs and slip into the sitting room. He peeped into the bedroom, a bottle of bourbon in one hand.

“First one is fine, missy,” Selma said. “Lily white and pretty. It's a girl.” She wiped Anne's sweaty face.

Cort grinned drunkenly. But the grin was wiped from his face at Selma's next words.

“The boy ain't colored like me, Missy. But he ain't white neither. He do have good hair, but he never gonna pass. Ain't no way in Hell for him to do that. Your mammy's side done showed up in him.”

“Damn it!” Anne cursed.

“Not to fret, Missy. My man will be back in a few minutes and he'll take the baby over to the quarters. Georgia's got milk in her tits and the baby will be fine.”

“I want to hold him.”

“No! Not now, not ever. You had one baby and that's all. Master Cort don't never need to know.”

Cort stumbled blindly down the steps and out into the storm. He looked up at the lightning-blazed and thunder-stunned sky and screamed, “Heaven help us all. I married a goddamn nigger!”

Jamie always took a walk just after supper, then would return to the hotel and sit on the porch and smoke a cigar. This Monday evening was no different. At Kate's insistence, he had packed away his buckskins and was dressed in a dark suit; Kate had ordered several of them made for her husband. With his sparkling white shirt, string tie, and hand-made boots he was quite a striking figure walking the boardwalks of the city. His long shoulder-length blond hair still showed no sign of gray.

Laurin had hired his thugs, and this evening they were to strike at Jamie while others were to grab Kate from her room and spirit her off to a warehouse, where Laurin would pleasure himself and then kill Kate.

But Laurin and his hired thugs had vastly underestimated Jamie Ian MacCallister and Kate.

Andrew and Rosanna and company were already at the hall, and arsonists and other hired thugs were waiting for the signal to start the fires blazing. Kate was in their room, in a robe, getting ready to take her bath. She stood up and started to remove her robe when she heard footsteps in the hall. Very furtive-sounding footsteps. She picked up one of Jamie's .44 Colts and waited. She did not have to check to see if it was loaded. She knew it was.

She watched the doorknob turn quietly. But she had locked the door after Jamie had left, at his instructions. She cocked the .44. The door was kicked open and Kate drilled the first man through the shattered doorway right between the eyes. The recoil was hard, but she held on and shot the second man in the chest, knocking him back and over the landing. He fell with a crash to the lobby below and people started shouting. The third man tried to wrest the pistol from her, but Kate put a quick knee into his parts and doubled him over, gagging and coughing. The fourth man turned to flee and Kate split his spine with a .44 ball, and he fell bonelessly to the hall floor. Boots were pounding on the steps as people ran up to investigate.

Kate cocked the .44 and put the muzzle against the downed man's head. His face paled and his eyes widened. “You have ten seconds to tell me who sent you, or by God I'll kill you,” Kate said menacingly.

“I don't know, Missy!” the man cried. “I was hired by Tommy yonder. The man you shot 'tween the eyes. I swear to you, that's the truth.”

Two men rushed into the room and snatched the brigand up to his boots. “We'll take care of—”

“You'll take this lowlife to the storeroom and tie him up and wait for my husband,” Kate interrupted him, steel behind her words and a very large pistol in her hand. “He'll want to talk to him.”

“Yes, ma'am,” one of the security men said. “As you say, ma'am.”

* * *

Jamie sensed the attack as he was mid-way across a dark alley and turned to meet it. Dressed to the nines he was, but he still carried one Colt tucked behind a belt and his Bowie knife. He cut the first thug from adam's apple to belly and then whipped the razor-sharp blade across the face of the second man, bringing a scream of fright and pain.

Laurin had sent six men after Jamie. It wasn't enough. Jamie nearly took the head off of the third man with his Bowie while he was drawing his .44 with his left hand. The Colt boomed and the fourth man went down, a hole in his chest. The remaining two men ran for their lives. Jamie took careful aim and fired, the ball breaking the knee of one of the men and sending him hollering and tumbling to the muddy street while the last man managed to run away into the night.

What passed for law in the nearly lawless city by the bay came riding up. “Here now!” the man shouted. “Cease and desist in the name of the law, man!”

“Go to hell,” Jamie told him, and tucked his .44 back behind his belt and started walking swiftly back to the hotel. He took the stairs two at a time and rushed into their door-shattered room. He held Kate for a moment while she told him what had happened and he told her his story, and then she pushed away.

“See to the kids,” Kate said. “I fear for them.”

Jamie buckled his guns around him and went running down the steps, meeting Sparks on the way up. “Stay with Kate!” he shouted, and then was gone into the cool night.

Preacher fell in with him and it was a foot race to the music hall, with Jamie telling the mountain man what had taken place as they ran.

The back door man knew Jamie and asked no questions, just threw open the door to allow them entrance. “It's a rough crowd this night, Mr. MacCallister,” he called. “They're mighty raucous and crude, they are.”

Lobo and Audie had ridden up, and Preacher told them what had happened.

“Someone is out to get the entire MacCallister clan,” Audie said, just as a scream cut the oil-smoke air of backstage. The scream was abruptly cut off.

Jamie ran to the dressing rooms in time to see two men dragging what appeared to be an unconscious Rosanna out of the room. Jamie did not want to risk a shot in the hall for fear of missing and hitting an innocent, so he waded in, big fists swinging.

He downed one man with a blow that broke the thug's jaw and then smashed both fists into the face of the second man. He could suddenly smell smoke.

“Fire!” he shouted and picked up Rosanna just as his son appeared in the hall, dressed for the evening's performance. “Andrew, get the troupe clear of the hall, boy!” He handed Rosanna to Lobo and the big mountain man raced outside with her.

One end of the backstage burst into flames, quickly engulfing the new sap-rich lumber.

“Everything's gone wrong!” a man shouted. “Jamie's here. Run for it, boys!”

The man appeared, still shouting for his cohorts to flee, and he was a huge bull of a man, running up the narrow hall, knocking men and women alike out of the way. When he reached Jamie he tried to knock Jamie out of the way. Bad mistake. Jamie grabbed him by one muscular arm and propelled him out onto the stage. He ran the cursing man up to and then through the closed curtains. The man landed on his belly in the orchestra pit and did not move.

One entire end of the music hall was now a wall of flames, quickly consuming everything it touched.

“Everybody's out back here, Jamie!” Preacher called. “Let's get clear of this!”

Fires were not uncommon in San Francisco, and they were often set by paid arsonists. In one sixteen-month period, between late 1848 and early 1851, the city was nearly destroyed a half dozen times. But it was always rebuilt, bigger and grander and sometimes gaudier than before.

Jamie checked on Rosanna, and she was his daughter all right. She was sitting up cussing like a sailor.

“All our costumes!” Liza wailed.

“Can be replaced,” Jamie said. “Get on back to the hotel, your lives are in great danger.”

Jamie and Kate were moved to another room while the door to their original room was being replaced. “Who?” Kate asked when they were once more alone.

“Somebody with money enough to hire twelve or fifteen thugs to do their dirty work,” Jamie said.

“Evans?”

Jamie shrugged his shoulders. “That would be my guess. But since we received word that Evans had left New York City and Laurin was run out of St. Louis, I inquired here in the city about them. If they're here, they've changed their names. And that's not unusual. Lots of men do that.” He smiled at his wife. “How did that. 44 handle, Kate?”

“Kicked like a mule. And the butt is too big for my hand. But I got the job done.”

“I would certainly say so,” Jamie said drily.

* * *

Cort never slept with his wife again nor would he allow himself to grow close to his daughter, whom Anne named Page. He never once held the baby. Cort rented an apartment in the city and was spending more and more time there.

“He knows, Selma,” Anne said to the colored woman.

“I don't know how he found out, Miss Anne. But I think you right. He shore actin' mighty strange since the baby been birthed. And he takin' a strong interest in the opera house in the city, too.”

Anne perked up at that. “Oh?”

“Talk is he got to be big friends with your brother.” Selma rolled her eyes and grinned.

“You have got to be joking!”

“No'um, I ain't. Sometimes they be with ladies, sometimes by themselves.”

“How do you know all this, Selma?”

She shrugged. “You done been passin' so long you forgot how it is to be a slave. Maybe you never knowed. We cain't afford to miss nothin', Miss Anne. We got to stay keen of ever'thing all the time. Mister Cort, he ain't the only fine gentleman to, umm, turn to his own kind, if you know what I mean.”

“Only too well,” Anne said acidly.

“We got 'em amongst us, too, Miss Anne.” She straightened up from arranging the flowers in the sitting room. “What puzzles me is, what 'xactly do they
do?”

* * *

Workmen were clearing away the hot rubble of the music hall before the timbers even stopped smoking, but the fire had dampened the spirits of the troupe and they decided to leave San Francisco and return to New York City—by ship. Jamie and Kate elected to stay in the city until they found out who was behind the attempts on their lives. They saw their kids and the rest of the troupe off and then returned to the hotel, checked out, and moved to a rented home in the hills above the city by the bay. Sparks, Audie, Lobo, and Preacher stayed close by. The mountain men had a hunch that when Jamie did find out who was responsible, all hell was going to break loose, and they wanted a piece of it. Several dozen people had died in the fire at the music hall, but that was not uncommon and not much was made of the deaths. People were just too busy making enormous sums of money and spending it as fast as they could dig or pan the nuggets or dust, get it into town and assayed and weighed, and get paid.

Jamie had been approached to become an officer of the law in the city, a position he quickly turned down. The job would later be handed to a man named Isaiah Lee, who would be instrumental in bringing some sort of order to the raucous city. But before law and order was more or less brought into play, public lynchings by citizens groups were a common sight, and they weren't too particular where they strung up the victims.

Jamie knew something about gold, and after carefully checking out the location, he ended up grubstaking more than a dozen men in return for a portion of their mines. Jamie would leave the city a moderately wealthy man. Kate, meanwhile, at Jamie's suggestion, was making friends with a few of the ladies in the city, who were married to gentry, going shopping with them and attending teas and so forth, always under the watchful eyes of her mountain men bodyguards.

Audie would occasionally give Shakespearean recitals at various halls, usually to a bunch of drunks who didn't have the foggiest idea what in the hell the little man was talking about but were willing to pay to hear him anyway because everybody said they ought to.

Audie was amused by it all.

Maurice Evans and lawyer Laurin kept a very low profile after the abortive attempts on the lives of the MacCallister family. But Evans's hate was so great and so blindly unreasonable, all that was about to change.

Before gold was discovered, the population of San Francisco was estimated at slightly less than five hundred souls. Within a year that had mushroomed to more than twenty thousand; a year later, it was twice that, and three times that number had stepped off ships before heading into the hills and engaging in their frantic search for gold.

Jamie got into real estate and bought up a number of lots, then turned right around and sold them for as much as ten times what he had initially paid for them. It was a game for Jamie, since he didn't really need the money and had no intention of spending too many more months in the city by the bay.

He and Kate decided to stay the winter and return by the northern route come the spring.

But Kate wasn't fooled. She knew Jamie was staying solely because he wanted to find out who hated them enough to want them dead.

Meanwhile, the mountain men had been doing a bit of snooping around on their own, frequenting the rougher bars and standing shoulder to shoulder with thugs and foot-padders and brigands, talking and listening. Finally, their vigilance paid off and hit the mother lode.

“Evans is in the city,” Sparks told Jamie one afternoon. “He's goin' by the name of Charles Russent. And Laurin is here, too, goin' by the name of Robert Brown. Their offices is in the same buildin'.” Sparks took a big swig of fresh coffee Kate had poured him and sighed. “Good. Best coffee in the city.”

Jamie waited, figuring that Sparks had more.

“They pretty much stay out of sight 'ceptin' for business, but I heard a thug name of Phil Packer is in their employ. And from what I hear, there ain't no sorrier no-good rascal west of the Mississippi than Phil Packer. He's got him a gang of thugs that'll do anything for money. And Preacher heard it was his boys that busted in on Kate and set the music hall on fire. But no proof that'll stand up in court, even if there was a decent court of law in this city.”

Jamie started to say something, and Sparks held up his hand. “They's more. Ain't nobody seen hide nor hair of Phil Packer since the night of the fire, nor none of his boys.”

Jamie drummed his blunt fingers on the table for a moment. “Add that all up, and you might get the idea that Packer and his men were responsible for the attacks and for the fire, and are hiding out until everything cools down, so to speak.”

“Well now, that very thought did cross my mind,” Sparks replied with a smile.

Jamie pulled out a small sack of gold dust and clunked it on the table. “You reckon that much dust would loosen someone's tongue, Sparks?”