Battles, who had slipped into the pair of Ute moccasins he always carried in his saddlebags, set a punishing pace.
The devil in him, he walked briskly past saloons and dance halls that were still being swamped and had few customers. He wheeled suddenly into crowded alleys where small Chinese men scurried past, each carrying heavy burdens on the ends of a supple, bamboo pole slung across a shoulder. Others balanced huge bundles of soiled clothing and sheets on their heads. None spared a glance for Battles as they trotted past, chattering to one another in a language he could not understand.
After an hour of this, Battles saw to his joy that both O’Day and Durango were hobbling, grimacing in pain as their custom-made boots pinched and scoured the skin of their heels raw.
Finally, when he saw that Battles had no intention of stopping, Durango yelled to him: “Damn you, Matt, take another step and I swear, I’ll put a bullet into your back.”
Battles stopped and looked back, grinning. “You’re not a walking man, huh, Durango?”
“Get the hell back to Kelly’s place,” the gunman said. “Your walking is done.”
O’Day sat on the cobbles and fetched his back against a wall. He pulled off his boots and said: “I’m walking back in my sock feet.”
“Your tootsies hurt, Dee?” Battles said, his face empty.
O’Day’s hand dropped to his holstered Colt. “Don’t tempt me, Battles,” he said. “Just ... don’t... tempt . .. me.”
The marshal grinned. “I’d better get you boys home, I guess.”
As Battles preceded his hobbling, cursing companions into Kelly’s inn, he noticed that a small steam crane had been maneuvered into position on the docks, close to the Lila.
Poke Yates was on the deck, talking to a couple of workmen, and Battles surmised he was instructing them on how to lower the gold into his ship’s hold.
The marshal knew he was running out of time, and, closely watched as he was, his chances of getting to the police were growing slimmer with every passing hour.
The day was shaded into night and the Barbary Coast roused itself and painted its face like a tired old dove ready for another night of debauchery.
Warful stopped Battles, who was on his way to the dining room.
“Enjoy your walk, Marshal?” he said.
The word “marshal” was carefully chosen. Battles was under suspicion and Warful let him know it.
“Yeah,” he said, “I enjoyed it. I don’t know about my guards, though.”
Warful feigned surprise. “Guards? Oh, dear no. Let’s say companions.” His mouth stretched in a yellow grin. “I’m afraid Mr. O’Day and Durango are in considerable distress. Mr. O’Day can’t get his boots on, and Durango can’t get his off.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Battles said.
His eyes moved to the plates Warful was holding. One was piled high with roast beef, potatoes, and creamed onions. The other supported a huge wedge of apple pie.
“For my lady wife, you understand,” Warful said. “She is a delicate creature and quite unable to grace the dining room with her presence.”
He leaned closer, as though about to impart a great secret.
“She’s begun to harbor the most singular fancies,” Warful said. “She says that when I conquer Eugene de Montijo I must cut the finger off a Jewess and bring her the wedding ring.” The man smiled. “Such fancies! I hope she’s not in... what shall I say ... a certain condition.”
Battles smiled and nodded. Oh God, so do I.
“Ah well,” Warful said, “time will tell.”
That night a hired thug from the waterfront was placed outside Battles’s room and several more were posted in the street.
Warful said it was for his own protection, since there were rogues along the Coast that might remember him when he was a marshal and could seek revenge for past grievances.
But Battles was now a prisoner and he couldn’t understand why Warful kept him around. But the man was devious and probably had other plans for him.
As to what those might be, he had no idea.
Chapter 22
The Death of a Captain
The gold, packed in kegs as Warful said it would be, was loaded the next day and the work continued until early evening.
Warful gathered his men around him and waited until the last keg was on board.
“Now we make our move,” he said. “And you men leave Poke Yates to me.”
Warful led his men across Pacific Street to the dock, drawing no attention from the pleasure-seekers who were already crowding into the saloons and dance halls.
Mad Dog Donovan stood in shadow by the steam crane and called out to Warful by name.
Warful greeted him and said: “Is all ready?”
Mad Dog nodded. “The gold is stowed safe and sound and the captain is in his cabin.” The man leaned closer to Warful and whispered: “There’s a breeze blowing fair for the Golden Gate and he plans to sail with the night tide.”
“Did he intend to inform me?” Warful said.
Donovan shook his head. “You didn’t enter into his talk, or his thinking. Says you, ‘Ol’ Poke planned to weigh anchor and wave good-bye to me from his quarterdeck.’”
“Damn Yates for a black-hearted rogue,” Warful said. “I knew I smelled treachery in the wind.”
“How about the sailors?” Durango said. “Will they fight to save their captain?”
“I spoke to all hands, and every man jack of them agreed that Poke is a hard master who has scarred the backs of too many lively sailor lads,” Donovan said. “They say they’ll accept Mad Dog as master, as long as I’m free with the rum and beer and sparing of the lash.”
“Then let’s get it done,” Warful said.
“Wait, Cap’n Warful,” Donovan said. “What about my coat?”
“When we reach Africa, Captain Donovan, I’ll get you a blue coat with the finest brass buttons, never fear.”
Mad Dog nodded and looked sly. “I know a sailor from a sundial, don’t I?”
“Yes, you do,” Warful said. “You’re as sharp as a tack. I saw that when I first set eyes on you.”
“Then take this.” Donovan opened his coat and slid a cutlass from its scabbard. “The coppers know we’ve gold on board, and gunshots could draw their attention.” He grinned, revealing few teeth and those black. “Ram this blade through ol’ Poke’s guts, quietlike. Says you, ‘That’ll take the life out of him, sure enough.’”
Warful took the cutlass.
“Mr. Battles, you will stay with me,” he said. “The rest of you will remain on deck and keep the sailors honest. Durango, secure the swivel guns, but no shooting. Captain Donovan is right. We don’t want gunshots to draw the attention of any passing police.”
Suddenly the cutlass flickered upward and Warful laid the keen edge against Battles’s throat.
Without taking his eyes from the marshal, Warful said: “Durango, relieve Mr. Battles of his firearm.”
Battles’s hand moved to his Colt, but the edge of the cutlass dug deeper.
“I wouldn’t,” Warful said. “Not unless you want your throat cut.”
“Damn it,” Lon Stuart said. “Is he with us or against us?”
“I don’t know,” Warful said, “but I’m not taking any chances. He could fire shots to signal the plods.”
Durango reached down and lifted the revolver from Battles’s waistband.
“Your weapon will be returned to you when we’re at sea,” Warful said. He smiled and flicked the cutlass blade away. “No hard feelings, Mr. Battles. I hope we are still perfect friends.”
“No hard feelings,” the marshal said. The taste of defeat was like bitter bile in his mouth.
Mad Dog Donovan led the way on deck. The Lila’s crew had gathered near the forward shrouds, their faces set and grim, and Warful ordered his gunmen to deploy in a line facing them.
Donovan had assured Warful that the sailors were ready for a change of captain, but it seemed to Battles that the
bark was a powder keg with a dangerously short fuse.
The twenty-five crewmen carried no firearms, but a few had cutlasses at their sides and others had foot-long marlin spikes or belaying pins shoved into the waistbands of their canvas pants.
Warful said something to Durango, and the breed, O’Day, and a few others mounted the stairs to the quarterdeck and trained the swivel guns on the crew.
A surge of angry talk ran through the seamen, and the gunmen skinned their revolvers. Lon Stuart, careful-eyed and dangerous, stepped to one side, the palm of his left hand over the hammer of his Colt, ready to fan death into the massed sailors.
Warful saw the menace building and threw up his hands, his voice rising. “No one need die today,” he said. “Put away your weapons.”
Donovan stepped between the edgy crew and the edgier gunmen.
“You men heard Mr. Warful,” he said. “Be about your duties and ready the Lila for sea, you lubbers. We sail with the tide.”
None of the men on either side made a move.
But then Poke Yates stepped onto the deck and in an instant everything changed.
Warful knew the time for talking was done. Only fast, conclusive action would decide the issue.
The last words uttered by Captain Yates to end the final chapter of his life were “What the hell is—”
The cutlass that rammed through his belly, driven by the full force of Hatfield Warful’s considerable strength, robbed him of further speech.
Yates couldn’t even find the breath to scream, but he had time enough to die hard.
“You’re relieved of duty, Captain,” Warful said, looking down at the man lying on his back on the deck, the cutlass sticking upward, out of him, like a skewer in a bloody piece of meat.
Yates’s eyes were wide, accusing, outraged at the time and manner of his dying. He opened his mouth to speak, but blood filled his mouth, darkness filled his eyes, and death took the old pirate by the ear and dragged him away.
Warful pulled the cutlass from Yates’s body, held the bloody blade high, and yelled: “Huzzah for Captain Donovan, the new master of the Lila.”
There were no answering cheers. A few hands stepped over and looked at Yates, then turned away, shaking their heads.
They had no love for their former captain and had witnessed assassinations change masters before, but Mad Dog Donovan would not have been their choice, and the presence of the gunmen rankled.
Matt Battles watched the faces of the crew as they dispersed and began to ready the Lila for sea. To a man, they were sullen and angry. Sailors whose orderly world had suddenly been turned upside down by force had mutinied for less.
Battles stared into the crystal ball of his consciousness and foresaw disaster. More blood would run red on the decks ere this voyage was over.
Chapter 23
A Terrible Warning
The delicate matter of getting Hattie Warful aboard the Lila was solved when Donovan organized a makeshift winch to hoist her on board.
She was immediately assisted to the captain’s cabin by her husband, amid mutterings of how unlucky it was to have a woman on ship, especially one that smelled worse than the bilges of an Arab slaver dhow.
Aided by a fair wind and a following sea, Lila slipped away from the dock and made excellent speed to the Golden Gate.
The green sea shaded to cobalt blue as the ship sailed through the Gate and breasted the first of the Pacific’s rolling breakers.
It was then that Warful dragged Yates’s body to the rail and unceremoniously pitched it overboard.
The sailors watched but said nothing.
Donovan ordered a course to the south, and then sent hands aloft to spread every inch of canvas. The Lila’s topgallants filled with wind as she bent to her task.
The bark was a fine ship and Mad Dog, for all his insanity, knew his business and handled her well.
A square-rigged bark is a beautiful ship and, under a full moon, the Lila glided across the Pacific like an evening swan.
The man at the helm, humming to himself as he intently watched the luff of the sails, was an army deserter by the name of Judah Rawlings. A former cavalry trooper, Rawlings was small, thin, with the intelligent, inquisitive face of a rodent.
“How are they?” he said, when Battles joined him on the quarterdeck.
“Sick, every last one of them. I couldn’t stand the stink of puke, so I came up on deck.” He breathed deeply. “Ah, the sea air smells good.”
“Aye,” Rawlings said, “the smell of the sea lingers in a man’s memory long after his footprints in the sand are gone.”
Battles looked off the port side of the ship and saw lights in the distance. “Where is that?” he said, nodding.
“Old Mexico, I reckon,” the seaman said. “The trade wind blows from the north, and that’s why we’re making good speed. Once we’re off the coast of South America, we’ll tack into a south wind.”
He smiled. “Your shipmates down below are going to feel a lot worse before they feel better. You’re lucky.”
“The good Lord didn’t make me handsome or especially smart, but he did give me a cast-iron stomach,” Battles said.
“You’ll need it on this voyage,” Rawlings said. “A steady diet of salt pork, salt beef, an’ duff ain’t for the delicate.”
A companionable silence stretched between the two men, the only sound the creak of rigging and the soft spatter of sea spray when the Lila dipped her bowsprit.
After a while Rawlings said: “You same as them down below, one o’ them Texas draw fighters everybody talks about?”
“I’m nothing like them,” Battles said.
“Maybe so. You’re a watching man, though,” Rawlings said. “You’re a rough and ready hand, but square right enough, I reckon, Mr....”
“Name’s Matt Battles.”
“Then it’s Matt and Judah, between us, like?”
“That will work just fine.”
The haloed moon rode high in the sky and laid a silver road across the sea for shoaling fish to follow. The air was cool, tangy with salt, and it gently fanned Battles’s cheeks, softly, like the eyelashes of a pretty woman.
His eyes reaching into the darkness ahead, his hands steady on the wheel, Rawlings said without turning: “He didn’t look it, but the roughest hand to ever sail into the port of San Francisco was Poke Yates.”
“He looked like a preacher,” Battles said.
“Aye, and maybe that will serve him well in hell, though he cut many a spry sailorman to pork collops with the cutlass or lash and he’ll be held to account for that, and worse.”
Battles smiled. “Will you miss him, Judah?”
“Not a bit. But you take Mad Dog, now. He’s a jolly enough rogue an’ no mistake, free with the rum and second go’s o’ duff, but he’s never a ship’s captain.”
Remembering Rawlings’s term, Battles said: “Is he square?”
The seaman didn’t answer for a while, and when he did he came at his reply from an angle.
“I’ve taken to ye, Matt, so I’ll tell you a secret,” he said. “Did ye hear the ships bell that just rang?”
Battles allowed that he had.
“Six bells. That means we’re three hours into the first watch. A man with a clock would see the time as eleven at night.”
“Sounds about right, I guess,” Battles said, wondering where the hell this was leading.
“Tomorrow night, listen for them six bells.”
“So I’ll know the time?”
“No, mate, so you’ll know there’s mischief afoot, the kind that leaves tall Texas men like you a-dying on the deck with their throats cut.”
“You mean Mad Dog will try something?”
“I mean only what I says. And you should say, ‘Judah Rawlings doesn’t want a madman as a captain, so I should heed his warning.’”
The helmsman looked around him warily, then added: “‘Judah will tell me no more, says you, so for now I’ll let sleeping dogs lie, especi
ally mad ones.’”
It was clear to Battles that Mad Dog Donovan wasn’t as crazy as he made out. Certainly he was sane enough to plan a massacre and then take the gold stowed in the cargo hold for himself.
The Lila could tie up at a Mexican or South American port, sell the gold to the highest bidder, and Donovan would live high on the hog for the rest of his life.
Battles hadn’t seen Warful since they’d boarded, and by now the man was probably as seasick as the rest.
He stepped down to the deck, Rawlings studiously ignoring him, and prepared himself to go below again, into the stinking charnel house where a score of gunmen lay puking their guts out.
He needed them on their feet and prepared to fight.
It was already tomorrow, and the night’s six bells would come soon enough.
Battles had little time to head off a massacre.
Chapter 24
Council of War
Matt Battles’s efforts to rouse the sick gunmen were met with groans and curses. Dee O’Day, green to the gills, told the marshal to let him die in peace and Lon Stuart, who always seemed indestructible, was bent over, his body racked by dry heaves.
Only one man looked fairly well, John Tidy, a bank and train robber of some reputation who had learned his profession under the tutelage of Jesse and Frank James.
Tidy sat at a mess table and was trying to keep down a cup of water. Around him, snoring sailors swung in eighteen-inch-wide hammocks, oblivious to the stench of vomit, sweat, and stale tobacco.
The ship rolled constantly in the sweeping Pacific waves, and Battles staggered over prone bodies and half fell onto the bench opposite Tidy.
The outlaw looked at him with a bloodshot stare that showed no interest and little friendliness.
“How do you feel, John?” Battles said.
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