Jack Iron (3 page)

Kit peered over the log and saw that the Chiltern Rifles had fixed bayonets and were on the move. Sergeant Major Smollet led his men in an uncharacteristic advance. They came at a run, crouched low and howling for blood. Kit turned to Tregoning and said, “Help me.” He jammed the butt of his rifle beneath the log and indicated Tregoning should do the same with the musket he had dropped during his struggles with Kit.

“Why?” the Cornishman asked, and then considered the possibilities. He’d been dodging the wrath of Tiberius Smollet ever since leaving London. Enough was enough. “Very well, then,” Tregoning said, and threw his weight against the fallen tree. Using the muskets as twin levers, the two men dislodged the tree trunk, rocked it forward, and sent it tumbling over the edge of the creekbank. Like some juggernaut it crashed into the midst of the marines as they splashed through the shallows of the creek. The jagged stumps of branches wreaked havoc with British flesh and bone. A ragged fusillade from the Chiltern Rifles filled the air with lead. Kit and Tregoning broke for the trees without waiting to see the results of their handiwork. The crash of timber and the screams from the men below spoke volumes. Nate and Strikes With Club fired as they ran. Kit glanced aside and spied a patch of red uniform and squeezed off a shot from his rifled musket as he dashed for the forest.

To his amazement and relief, Kit and the others gained the protection of the thicket without incident and vanished in the gray-green gloom of the forest.

Nate took the point followed by Strikes With Club, Tregoning, and Kit McQueen, who reloaded on the move and kept a watchful eye for any telltale sign of their pursuers. The four men had the advantage now. They could move quickly and silently while the Chiltern Rifles would have to carefully pick their way along the trail and guard against ambush. Kit was satisfied to take note that Tregoning was keeping up the pace. The Cornishmen did not relish the notion of being captured by Smollet now.

“There’ll be a hangman’s rope waiting for poor Harry Tregoning should he ever go home again,” Kit’s prisoner bemoaned.

“You’re alive now. No man can ask for more,” Kit replied. But his own words sounded hollow to him. He did indeed want more. He wanted retribution. Cesar Obregon was going to pay a dear price for abandoning McQueen and the Choctaws.

The north wind began its banshee howl as the trees thinned and the four men started across the clearing where hours earlier, at midmorning, Kit had ordered Captain Cesar Obregon, the Hawk of the Antilles, and a dozen of his privateers to remain in place. Kit knew the freebooters weren’t the kind to follow the commands of one who had not flown the black flag. Kit didn’t trust any of them. A man like Cesar Obregon was only as loyal as the depth of the purse paying him. The empty meadow offered testament to Obregon’s treachery. Kit called a halt, and knelt by a campfire and stirred the cold ashes with his fingertip. The Hawk of the Antilles had “flown the coop” hours ago. But why? He was certainly no coward.

“Looking for your mates, eh?” Tregoning asked. He scrutinized the winter-barren trees, the twisted branches dotted with nests and clumps of mistletoe, branches clacking together like old bones or drooping earthward, bowed beneath a load of moss like widow’s weeds. “I don’t blame them for leaving,” Tregoning shivered.

“The tracks head north to New Orleans,” Nate said, kneeling at the perimeter of the clearing. “He’s gone on back. But why?”

“Maybe he left something there,” Strikes With Club interjected, standing midway between Nate and the remains of the campfire.

“Not ‘something’—‘someone,’” Kit said, realization slowly dawning. There by the ashes a name had been scrawled in the dirt, left for McQueen to discover as if to taunt him with its implications.

The same soft green eyes, the same coppery features, and flirting smile that haunted Kit’s heart had caused Cesar Obregon to abandon his inhospitable post for the drawing-room passions and scented boudoirs of New Orleans.

Kit McQueen stood and muttered, “The son of a bitch!” He bolted across the clearing and swept past Nate Russell at a dead run.

“C’mon!” McQueen shouted to the others as he plunged through the underbrush obscuring a deer trail that wound through the timbers. In the wake of his passing, remained Kit’s friends, his prisoner, and a name written in the dust.

Raven.

I
RON HAND O’KEEFE HAD
a cold. He sneezed, and the bedroom walls seemed to expand under the force of the air pressure, then settle back to their original construction. He cursed, and the effort caused his sore throat to sting even worse, which in turn caused him to curse anew, the cycle repeating itself until he slammed his fist down on the bed linen and collapsed against the pillows propping him upright in bed. The hook that replaced his left hand darted out and spitted a wedge of pale white cheese and lifted the morsel to his mouth. The bed slats groaned beneath O’Keefe’s shifting weight. Iron Hand O’Keefe was no wilting flower or mere slip of a man. He stood well over six feet tall; the heels of his large callused feet dangled over the bedboard. Silver hair hung past his shoulders, and the gray-black beard concealing his lantern-jawed features were bushy enough for a sparrow to nest in. His normally swarthy appearance gleamed a pasty white in the sallow light. The flesh around his eyes was creased and wrinkled and heavy with lack of sleep.

He sneezed again, this time like a cannon shot, and grabbing a kerchief he dabbed at his raw red nose. Then he blinked his watery eyes and tried to focus on his daughter. Raven O’Keefe was as pretty as an autumn sunset. Her skin was a dusky copper brown and her long black hair was shiny and soft as a fine pelt; she was lithe and willowy. She glided with supple grace across the floor, soundlessly, as she moved to her father’s beside. At first glance she resembled many of the fine and lovely women of her tribe. Only on closer examination could one discover the vibrant green-eyed gaze and hear the lilting Irish brogue that colored her speech when she chose to make a point. Raven was a half-breed, receiving her wise and quiet beauty from her Choctaw mother, learning, too, the magic and mystery of the world. Raven’s stubborn Irish pride and fiery Irish temper were her father’s gifts.

Music drifted up from below: the jangle of a tambourine, trills of a concertina, a merry duel between three fiddlers and a pair of fifes. Madame LeBeouf was hosting a party downstairs and had opened up the entire west wing of her house for the enjoyment of her guests. LeBeouf’s house opened onto a neatly arranged flower garden and walled courtyard fronting Bourbon Street a stone’s throw from Dumaine. The music from LeBeouf’s house filled the block, and several passersby paused at the wrought-iron gate to peer longingly in at the gaily lit house. The townspeople within were obviously having a good time. The amber flow escaping through the cracks in the shutters lent a cheery counterpoint to the cold and dreary winter’s eve. No matter the British were threatening to overwhelm Jackson’s militia and take the port. Olivia LeBeouf was determined to offset the gloom pervading the town. So decorations were hung and special friends invited, many of them unattached gentlemen whom the widow LeBeouf considered candidates for her affections, and fires filled the hearths in every room. Musicians had been hired for the entire evening, and already, the guests had begun to arrive. Madame LeBeouf had not played favorites; there were soldiers as well as townspeople among the arrivals. And if she found no one to excite her fancies, there was always her old friend O’Keefe upstairs.

“Listen to them. How can people be so happy when others are suffering?” O’Keefe said, overcome with self-pity.

“Poor Papa, so miserable you are. And no one to soothe you with a song or the gentle stroke of a hand. But don’t you be worryin’. Olivia LeBeouf would not have offered you a bed beneath her roof if she didn’t have a special caring for the likes of you.” Raven laughed, and tugged at his chin whiskers. “Best you regain your strength before she steals it.”

“The only thing I’m worrying about is the way you been playing with Kit McQueen and Cesar Obregon. Both game lads they be, and it’s wrong of ye to set them one upon the other.” O’Keefe frowned, and wiped his hook clean on the quilt covering his lower extremities. His fever had broken but left a wracking cough and swollen sinuses in its wake.

“I’ve done no such thing, Father.”

“And I say otherwise. Ever since we come to New Orleans you been sashaying about and making those shamrock-colored eyes o’ yours go all moist and such every time Cesar Obregon comes to call.”

“At least he takes the time, which is more than I can say for some.”

“You know Kit McQueen ain’t got a spare moment for himself since Jackson’s had him and the Choctaws scouting Lord Packenham’s lines. Would you have him endanger us all just so’s you can lure him to the hayloft for a quick tumble?”

“Father!”

“Don’t act so surprised. I’ve known since before Horse Shoe Bend. And lucky for Kit McQueen I think the world of him, else he’d be singing high notes in a castrati choir!” O’Keefe sneezed three times in rapid succession. The force of the spasm doubled him forward and left him gasping for air. At last he settled back against the pillow and straightened his nightcap. Besides the four-poster, the room was appointed with a small table and ladder-backed rocking chair. The hearth blazed as flames greedily devoured the dry wedges of oak Raven had recently added to the fire.

She stared in speechless silence at her father. Raven and Kit had tried to remain discreet. Their moments alone had been few and far between. “Kit didn’t tell me.”

“Funny that. But no matter. I understand more than you think. Don’t let these gray hairs fools you, lass. Your pa had the same itch below his belt for your ma, God rest her soul. You and McQueen belong together same as your ma and me. And I think you know it.”

Raven shrugged, and lowered her gaze to her folded hands. She was the very picture of contrite submission. But O’Keefe knew his daughter too well to fall for such a ruse. She had as much surrender in her as a cornered cougar. But, my, oh my, she did look a pretty sight in that cream-colored dress of Spanish lace. Removed from the forest and the influence of her Choctaw friends, her Irish heritage rose to the fore and he couldn’t blame any young man for being smitten with her. O’Keefe shifted in bed and coughed. Damn, he thought, if I ain’t talking myself right out of my anger. She’s winning after all. He glowered at his daughter.

“I suppose that be the dress Obregon give you?”

“It is.”

“And I reckon you think it suits you more’n your buckskins. Or have you forgotten who you are?”

It was Raven’s turn to frown. “
This is
who I am,” she replied, indicating the dress with a sweep of her hand. Then she lifted the hem of the lace dress to reveal the brushed deerskin moccasins she wore in place of the slippers that had cramped her toes and made walking an agony. She had decorated her footwear with shells and tiny glass beads and laboriously double-stitched them with sinew. “And this also,” she added.

“So I guess you’ll be wearing the dress.”

“And dancing with the man who gave it to me. And if it makes Kit McQueen sit up and take notice, then so much the better.”

“Women! You spin a cunning web and wrap us men in your silken chains and hold us fast and there’s nary an escape.” O’Keefe leaned over and poured a measure of hot buttered rum from a clay pitcher into a pewter tankard. A look of pleasant anticipation settled his features. Was there a drink finer than hot buttered rum on a wintry night? Not by a hornpipe.

“You worry too much, Father. I’m playing a little game. Nothing more. It’s one the likes of Cesar Obregon has no doubt played in a dozen ports with a dozen moonstruck lasses carried off on the tide of his charms. He knows the game, mark you.”

“Aye, but is he playing by your rules?” O’Keefe countered, and having made his point, he drained the contents of the tankard without pause for breath. The bedroom door swung open and Madame Olivia LeBeouf entered, dressed in a pink cotton dress trimmed with French lace across her daring décolletage. Raven welcomed the woman’s arrival, for it spared her from having to come up with a rebuttal.

Madame LeBeouf was a brash and cheerful widow whose slender figure seemed woefully off balance beneath the weight of her abundant bosom. Her cheeks were caked with rouge. A mole on her left cheekbone had been accentuated with a touch of black ink. Her head was crowned with ringlets of light brown hair piled high and dangling in thick lustrous coils along the back of her neck. The room’s interior seemed to brighten as she entered bearing a tray laden with a freshly baked sweet potato pie and a tureen containing short ribs of beef floating in a broth of drippings seasoned with pepper, onions, and topped with cornbread dumplings.

Madame LeBeouf had not come alone. An eight-year-old boy stood at her side. He was tall for his age and long-limbed. His sandy brown hair was uncombed and curled to a natural cowlick at the back of his head. His eyes were pale green and pouchy from lack of sleep, for he had taken the same cold as Iron Hand O’Keefe. Despite his illness he watched O’Keefe with keen interest, for even at his young age he had heard tales of Iron Hand, the white chief of the Choctaws.

“This is Johnny Fuller,” said Madame LeBeouf, indicating the young lad with a wave of her hand.

“Indeed. And when did you drop a pup?” O’Keefe asked, peering at the woman and boy over the lip of his pewter mug. He hadn’t seen the widow LeBeouf for nigh onto a year, and anything was possible where Olivia was concerned.

“I’ll thank you to keep a civil thought in your skull. He ain’t mine.” She glanced at Raven and continued. “Well,
now
he is—since his mama caught the grippe and passed away. Consumptive she was, the poor dear. Coughing all the time.” The woman tousled the boy’s hair and patted his shoulder. “Johnny’s a good lad, ain’t you?”

The boy shrugged and continued to study O’Keefe with interest from behind the protection of Madame LeBeouf’s dress. He carried two stoneware bowls and a pair of spoons and two-pronged forks. He wore a sleeping gown and was barefoot. He scratched his left ankle with the toes of his right and then fell into step alongside LeBeouf as she crossed the room to O’Keefe’s bedside.