Ride the Panther (36 page)

“So I noticed,” Kit dryly observed.

“He caught me playing at “bushy park” with his dear Megan and has been trying to center me in his sights ever since. Reckon he figures to kill me and blame it on the likes of you.” Tregoning wagged his bald head and scratched at his grizzled jawline. “Megan was his wife and a trollop and he’s well off to know the old gal for what she is, mark my words.” He glanced across at Kit, who finished reloading a matched pair of short-barreled, heavy-bore pistols he called “the Quakers.” One shot from these “hand cannons” made enemies into friends or left them dead. Either result was acceptable to Kit McQueen.

“See here—what the devil?” Tregoning noted as Kit trained the pistols at him.

“You’re my prisoner,” Kit said. “And I’ll take that coin in your hand.” Kit tucked one pistol in its buckskin holster and held out a mud-grimed palm.

Tregoning frowned, then shrugged and handed over the coin that had become a McQueen legacy. Surrender to the redheaded American squatting at his side seemed preferable to facing the outraged husband, Tiberius Smollet.

“Tregoning! Harry Tregoning!” the sergeant on the opposite creekbank called out. “Stand up so I can see that ugly face of yours.”

Kit peered over the edge of the tree trunk and saw that the Chiltern Rifles were reloading and fixing bayonets. He looked back at the two remaining Choctaws. Nate Russell was a year older than McQueen, a warrior of thirty-one winters. He had long black hair and a solid muscular build and wore a blue infantryman’s jacket over his buckskin shirt. Nate, like many of the Choctaw Nation, had converted to Christianity. The other warrior, Strikes With Club, was a decade younger and had no use for white men’s religion. His long hair hung unbound to his shoulders. He was shivering, for he’d cast aside his blanket to free his arms for fighting. He was a handsome brave and much sought after by the maidens of his village.

“Where’s Obregon?” Strikes With Club growled. “You said the others would come when they heard our guns.”

Kit had no answer for his red-skinned friend. Cesar Obregon, known throughout the Caribbean as the Hawk of the Antilles and whose black flag depicted a skeleton kneeling in prayer, had taken up a position along McQueen’s back trail about a hundred yards from Drake’s Creek. The freebooter and his men should have come running at the sound of gunfire. It had been a cold gray afternoon and an interminable-seeming wait, yet Kit and his Choctaws had remained at their post, hoping to intercept the British soldiers who had been studying the American entrenchments below New Orleans. Kit had the disturbing feeling that Cesar and his men had tired of the wintry discomfort and returned to New Orleans without alerting their companions by the creek.

A ripple of musket fire sounded below, and another round of slugs thudded into the hickory log forcing the men behind the makeshift rampart to crouch down.

“Hey, Yankee, be a good lad and haul up that no-good soldier of the king who’s with you. Prepare to meet your maker, Harry.”

“Now see here, Tiberius,” the Cornishman shouted back. “I didn’t do nothin’ to your Meg that she didn’t want me to do.”

“You son of a bitch!” came the reply punctuated by a pistol crack.

Harry Tregoning chuckled as shattered bark showered his chest and head.

Kit scowled. He was caught in the middle of two wars, one major and one private.
And if I live to meet up with Cesar Obregon, I’ll start a third,
Kit promised himself. Maybe he ought to force Tregoning over the top and allow the marine to buy them some time as Kit and the Choctaws made good their escape. Tregoning seemed to read McQueen’s thoughts.

“Now see here, I surrendered right and proper,” the marine protested. He didn’t like the look in Kit’s hard eyes.

“Surrendered hell, you damn near put a knife in my gullet,” Kit said, his bronze eyes flashed with fire.

“Well… we weren’t friends then.” Tregoning tried his most winning smile. It came out a crooked leer.

“This Meg Smollet must be blind,” Kit said.

“There’s something about us men of Cornwall, the women can’t keep their bloody hands off us. ’Tis a cruel lot to bear. Too many women can leech a man of his strength. Suck him dry and wither him before his prime. Mistress Smollet did her part.”

“Maybe I’ll do Tiberius a favor and shoot you myself,” Kit said, rolling his eyes and shaking his head in exasperation. What sort of character was this? Kit thought. A minute ago these two were trying to kill each other, and now Harry Tregoning was spinning tall tales of his life history as if he were sharing a campfire with the American. It was an amusing notion, an irony to stop and enjoy sometime when it wouldn’t get him killed.

Kit swore that the next time he picked a human shield he’d have to be more careful. Tregoning might be more trouble than he was worth.

“You staying?” Nate asked. His pistols were loaded and his rifle cocked and primed. Strikes With Club, standing at the blue-jacketed warrior’s side, looked as determined as the older brave. Kit had fought the Creeks at Horse Shoe Bend almost a year ago in the good company of these same warriors and the rest of their tribe. He counted many friends among the Choctaw and found them to be brave and crafty fighters, men not given to suicidal tactics.

“Let them come to us. Then we’ll make our break for the woods over yonder,” Kit said, indicating a grove of oak and hickory blocking their back trail.

“We won’t have long to wait,” Nate said, dusting his flashpan with a trace of black powder from his brass flask.

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.”