Riverboat Blaze

by J. R. Roberts

  “I think he does, yeah.”

  When they reached the saloon DuBois said, “This is the one.”

  It was small, kind of run-down, and had a faded and pitted sign over the door that barely said “THE RUSTY SPUR.”

  “Let’s go,” Clint said.

  “Together?” DuBois said. “You’re gonna get me killed.”

  “You’re not afraid of your . . . employer, are you?”

  “He’s usually got a couple of men with him.”

  “Okay,” Clint said, “you go in and leave a message with the bartender. Tell your man to meet you in an hour.”

  “What if the bartender can’t get the message to him that quick?”

  “I’m betting he can.”

  “What makes you think you can trust me to leave the right message?”

  “Because I’m going to write it,” Clint said, “and watch you through the window while you hand it to him.”

  Clint watched as DuBois handed the bartender the note, making sure he didn’t have a chance to replace it. When DuBois came out, he asked, “Now what?”

  “Now we wait.”

  “Where?”

  Clint pointed across the street.

  “Right over there,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  FORTY-TWO

  They stood across the street for forty-five minutes before DuBois jerked straight and said, “There he is, and he’s got two gunhands with him.”

  Clint saw them, three men entering the saloon.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said.

  “You know him?”

  “Yeah,” Clint said, “and it’s not who I thought it would be.”

  “Who is he?”

  “You’ll see,” Clint said. “Let’s go.”

  They started across, but Clint said, “Wait.”

  “What for?”

  Clint removed DuBois’s gun from his holster, ejected all six shells, and then replaced it.

  “You can’t do that,” DuBois said. “I could get killed.”

  “I just don’t want you to get any ideas—like taking sides if there’s shooting. Move.”

  They walked across the street and entered the saloon. The three men had split up. One was seated at a table, the other two were at the bar.

  The man at the table looked up and froze when he saw Clint with DuBois.

  “What’s Adams doing here?” Hal Miller asked. “What’s goin’ on?”

  “He wants in,” DuBois said.

  “What?”

  “He wants a cut of the gold.”

  “You fool,” Miller said, “The Gunsmith’s no thief.”

  “But—”

  “Never mind, Kevin,” Clint said. “Just stand aside.”

  DuBois did as he was told.

  “Hello, Miller,” Clint said. “Can’t say I think much of you as an investor, hiring somebody to put a hole in your own boat.”

  “What makes you think—”

  “Too bad you didn’t hire somebody who knew what he was doing,” Clint went on. “That dynamite went off too soon. At least you did okay when you hired the captain.”

  Miller sat back in his chair.

  “You think I bribed everybody on that boat?” he asked.

  “Let’s see . . . probably just the captain, and the Warrant brothers. DuBois here, he wasn’t on the boat. For a while I thought Dillon, Kingdom, or Galvin might be in it with you, but I’m starting to think they’re dead.”

  “Look, Adams,” Miller said, “that gold is up for grabs. One of my partners, Danny Rawlins, stole that gold. I’m just stealin’ it from him.”

  “And destroying Dean Dillon’s unsinkable boat.”

  “It would have sunk sooner or later,” he said. “It’s just too damn heavy.”

  “That may be, but Dean Dillon deserved the chance to make it work.”

  “You can’t imagine how much gold is there, Adams.”

  “I have to imagine it, Miller, because it’s at the bottom of the Mississippi. How were you planning to get it out?”

  “That is a problem,” Miller said. “The boat was only supposed to go down in three feet of water. I’ll tell you what, though. You figure it out, and I’ll split it with you, fifty-fifty.”

  “That’s real generous.”

  “Hey!” DuBois said. “Some of that gold is mine.”

  Miller produced a gun and shot DuBois in the chest.

  “Not anymore,” Miller said, as DuBois fell to the floor.

  He made a show of holstering the gun in a shoulder rig and then showing Clint his hands.

  “What do you say, Adams?” he asked. “Partners?”

  “You were right the first time, Miller,” Clint said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m no thief.”

  FORTY-THREE

  Clint kept his eyes on Miller. He didn’t think the man would be foolish enough to try and draw on him, but he did have those two men at the bar backing his play.

  “Okay, Adams,” Miller said, “before this gets out of hand, there’s something you should know.”

  “What?”

  “It’s about Dillon.”

  “What about Dean?”

  “He’s alive.”

  “You’ve seen him?”

  Miller nodded. “Just a little while ago.”

  “Where?”

  “In town.”

  “What about Johnny Kingdom and Troy Galvin?” Clint asked.

  “I don’t know about them, but then I’m not in business with them.”

  “If Dean is alive, you won’t be in business with him much longer, not when he finds out what you did.”

  “But that’s just it,” Miller said. “You’re not getting it, Adams.”

  “Then why don’t you explain it to me so I do get it, Miller?”

  “It’s Dillon,” Miller said. “He’s my partner.”

  “In the boat?”

  “Don’t be dense,” Miller said. “He was in on the theft of the gold.”

  “And blowing up his own boat?”

  “Well,” Miller said, “I admit that part came as a surprise to him, but after I explained it to him he understood. And if he understands, why can’t you?”

  “I don’t believe you, Miller.”

  “Then ask him yourself.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I’ll take you to him,” Miller said. “I want to see the two of you together. I want to see your face when you realize your friend conned you.”

  “Dean and I are not exactly friends,” Clint said. “And pulling cons is his life.”

  “Then why did you agree to go on the boat?”

  “I thought maybe, just maybe this time he was on the up-and-up. And when I saw the size of the boat, and figured how much he must have invested in it—”

  “Him?” Miller said. “I thought he hadn’t invested any of his own money.”

  “He did, and he also raised the money to build it,” Clint said.

  “Well, you’ll have to take all of that up with him,” Miller said. He pushed his chair back and stood up. “Shall we go?”

  “Lead the way,” Clint said. “Only leave your gunhands here.”

  “Sure, sure,” Miller said. “We’re just going to go and have a friendly chat with Dean.”

  Miller led the way out the batwing doors, with Clint close behind him. They stepped down into the street, and suddenly Miller shouted, “Get him!” and hit the dirt.

  Clint turned quickly as the two gunmen came out the batwing doors with their guns out. He fired immediately, hitting both men before they could pull the triggers of their guns.

  He turned again, and spotted a man on the roof across the street. The man fired, and Clint felt the breeze as the bullet whizzed by his head. He fired also, and his bullet drilled a hole in the man’s forehead. He dropped his rifle, then slipped over the edge himself. The rifle hit the ground just before he did.

  Miller was scrambling away, his gun in his hand, but he wasn’t in a hurry
to use it. He got to his feet and started to run, but Clint shouted, “Hold it!”

  Miller froze.

  “Your ambush didn’t work, Miller.”

  “What do you mean? I didn’t know they were going to pull that.”

  “Yeah,” Clint said, “that’s why you yelled ‘Get him!’”

  “I—I didn’t,” Miller said. “I yelled . . .” But he was apparently at a loss for a good lie.

  “Drop the gun.”

  He dropped it into the dirt.

  “Don’t kill me, Adams,” he pleaded, turning around. Clint could see the fear on his face—the same fear all those people on the boat must have felt as they were jumping overboard.

  “Is Dean alive?” Clint asked.

  “I—I don’t know,” Miller said. “I haven’t seen him.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Clint said. “A liar and a thief.”

  “What about Danny Rawlins?” Miller demanded. “He stole the gold first.”

  “I don’t care who stole it first, or who from,” Clint said. “None of that means anything to me. You’re the one responsible for burning the boat and sinking it. A lot of people got hurt, some died. You’re going to pay for that.”

  “Adams, don’t—”

  “Turn around and start walking.”

  “W-where?”

  “The police station,” Clint said. “You’re going to tell the chief of police all about it.”

  FORTY-FOUR

  The next morning Angela was waiting for Clint when he came down to the hotel lobby.

  “You killed him,” she said.

  “No,” he said, “Miller killed him.”

  “And you’ve been avoiding me.”

  “I don’t think we have anything left to say to each other.”

  “What about the gold?”

  “The chief of police is going to take care of having the gold recovered,” Clint said.

  “So that’s it, then?”

  “That’s it, Angela,” he said. “It’ll go back where it belongs.”

  Clint had found two telegrams waiting for him when he got back to his hotel the night before. Neither Rick Hartman nor Talbot Roper had any information about a gold theft. Apparently, whoever it had been stolen from was keeping it quiet.

  “What if nobody claims it?” Clint had asked the chief.

  “I’m not sure,” the chief said. “Could be if no one claims it in a certain amount of time it would be yours for the claiming.”

  “Not me,” Clint said.

  “Well, the way my report is gonna read,” the chief said, “you recovered it.”

  Clint didn’t know what to do with that situation, but he certainly wasn’t going to tell Angela about it.

  “You tried to use me, Angela,” he said. “I don’t appreciate that.”

  “I’m sorry, Clint.”

  “Good-bye,” he said, and walked out.

  Clint looked out over what seemed to be a sea of covered bodies. The chief had arranged for him to view the bodies in an attempt to find Dean Dillon.

  “Be my guest,” he was told when he got there. It was a tent that had been erected just for this purpose. “They all gotta be buried today or they’re gonna start to smell,” an attendant told him.

  Clint began to move among them, pulling back the coverings so he could see their faces. Before long he found Johnny Kingdom, the gambler. The body had some burns on it, but Kingdom had apparently drowned. Next, he found Troy Galvin. The Dolly Madison sinking had not been kind to gamblers.

  He moved through the rest of the bodies. Oddly enough, he did not find Galvin’s girlfriend Kathy, and he did not find Dean Dillon.

  When he came out of the tent, he found Chief Radcliffe waiting for him.

  “Find your friend?” the man asked.

  “No.”

  “That’s good, right?”

  “Dillon was a con man most of his life, Sheriff,” Clint said. “I can’t help feeling conned.”

  “But what did he get out of it?” the chief asked. “He doesn’t have the boat, and he doesn’t have the gold.”

  “I don’t know,” Clint said. “I can’t figure it.”

  The girl was missing, too. Could it be that Dillon wanted the girl?

  “We sent a telegram to New Orleans to that name you gave us,” the chief said. “William Kennedy?”

  “The other investor.”

  The chief nodded.

  “He replied. He’ll be down here as soon as he can. Also, we informed the law there about Danny Rawlins. They’re lookin’ for him.”

  “That’s good.”

  “What about you?” the chief asked.

  “I’ll be heading back to Texas,” Clint said.

  “Not back to New Orleans?”

  “No. I’ve had enough.”

  He and the chief began walking back toward the police station.

  “It’s a shame,” the chief said. “By all accounts that was a very impressive boat.”

  “Not impressive enough,” Clint said. “People found something else to fight about, to die over.”

  “Everybody finds something different that’s valuable to them.”

  Clint shook his head. “I really thought for Dean Dillon it was this boat.”

  “Well,” the chief said, “he’s not dead. Maybe he’ll still show up to claim it.”

  “He’s on the run, I think,” Clint said.

  “From who?”

  “His investors.”

  “Only one of those left,” the chief said.

  “He doesn’t know that,” Clint said.

  “Well, maybe you’ll run into him again.”

  When they reached the police station, the chief asked, “So what now? Leaving?”

  Clint thought about Ava, back at the hotel. She still didn’t know about everything that had happened. And he liked her too much to just leave.

  “I do have somebody in town to say good-bye to,” he said, “so maybe I’ll be leaving tomorrow.”

  Watch for

  WITH DEADLY INTENT

  350th novel in the exciting GUNSMITH series

  from Jove

  Coming in February!