When the gunboat docked, Toucey was surrounded by soldiers and hustled away. The dead and wounded were carried off the blood-slick boat and they too were taken into the town.
Battles walked the dock, but saw no sign of Hatfield Warful or his gunmen.
He stopped and took time to build and light a cigarette before trying to figure Warful’s next move.
Now that he and his men were stranded far from home, all that was left to them was the lure of King Brukwe’s treasure, a mythical fortune that had never existed.
Would Warful try to take the palace and put himself on the throne with just sixteen or seventeen men, skilled and ruthless gunfighters though they were?
Would the French merely shrug and let it happen?
And what of himself? Somehow he had to get back home and make his report to President Arthur—for what it was worth.
Would the president be delighted that twenty of the West’s most dangerous outlaws and gunmen now lay dead and buried in African soil?
Would he even remember or still care?
Battles had plenty of questions and no answers. He took a final drag of his cigarette and ground out the butt under his heel.
Right now he needed a drink.
“You need a drink, Matt,” Molly Poteet said.
The woman poured bourbon into a glass. “You’ve got blood on your face.”
“It’s not mine,” Battles said.
Molly stepped to the dresser and poured water from a pitcher into the bowl. She wet a washcloth and wiped the blood from Battles’s face.
“I wasn’t real sure I’d see you alive again,” she said, looking at the cloth that was now stained pink.
Battles drained his glass and the woman refilled it.
“If it wasn’t for the contrariness of cannonballs, I would be,” Battles said. “Dead, I mean.”
“What happened out there?” Molly said.
“Madness,” Battles said.
And he told Molly Poteet the story.
When he was finished, she said: “What happens now?”
“I wish I knew. I reckon—”
Someone knocked at the parlor door, and it swung open, letting in a clamor of talk, laughter, and piano music from the tavern. A black man wearing a bartender’s apron stepped inside and said: “Begging your pardon, Miz Molly, but four French army officers want credit until payday. What do I say?”
“You say yes,” Molly said. “They’re good for it.”
After the man left, Battles said: “French army officers?”
“Yes, from the regiment stationed just across the border. They come in quite often, including their colonel, for a drink and sometimes a woman.”
“How about the enlisted men, are they native levies?”
Molly shook her head. “No, they’re white soldiers.” The woman thought for a moment and added: “I remember Colonel Blanchard, a proud-talking man, telling someone that he commands the best regiment of line infantry in the world.”
She looked at Battles, puzzled. “Why are you so interested in French soldiers?”
“Because if Warful tries to take the palace and the French intervene, a regular infantry regiment will cut him and his men to pieces.”
The puzzled expression didn’t leave Molly’s face. “Matt, why do you care?”
Battles hesitated and then said: “I don’t know. I don’t give a damn if Warful dies, but the rest ... well, they’re my fellow Americans and when you come right down to it, we’re in the same business, only on opposite sides. Maybe in the end it boils down to professional courtesy ... or that I can’t idly stand by and see men slaughtered because of a madman’s fantasy.”
“You owe those gunmen nothing, Matt, nothing at all. Let them get killed.”
Battles shook his head. “I can’t let them die needlessly. Don’t ask me why, but I... just . . . can’t . . . do ... it.”
“Then you’re a fool.”
“I know that,” Battles said. “Nobody knows that better than me.”
Battles lay in bed in the room overlooking the dock. The moon bladed through the window and cast a cross-shaped shadow on the opposite wall.
He heard the bedroom door creak and reached for the revolver on the table beside him.
“Don’t shoot, Matt,” Molly Poteet said.
She stood by the bed and dropped her shift, leaving her naked body bathed in moonlight.
“Will you send me away?” she said.
“No,” Battles said, the word husking in his throat. “I reckon not.”
The woman slipped into bed beside him.
“It’s been a while,” Battles said. “Maybe I’ve forgotten how it’s done.”
“I’ll remind you,” Molly said before her mouth met his.
Chapter 46
Durango’s Warning
Next morning Matt Battles sat in the dining room eating breakfast when he was joined by the two men he least expected to see.
Durango and Lon Stuart pulled up chairs and sat opposite him, neither with a gun showing.
“How’s it going, Matt?” Durango said. The breed was smiling, always a warning sign with gunmen of his kind.
“I’m doing just fine,” Battles said. “You?”
“Fine, Matt. Just fine.”
Battles laid his fork on the plate, his appetite fled.
“You know the Lila is gone?” he said. “The gold’s at the bottom of the Atlantic.”
“Heard that,” Lon Stuart said. “And I heard tell you saw the whole thing.”
“Uh-huh. I was on the gunboat that sank her.”
“Matt, we need to talk,” Durango said.
“That’s what we’re doing, ain’t it?”
“Not chatter. War talk. Deep talk. About the king’s treasure.”
“Did Warful send you here?”
Durango hesitated, blinking, then said: “Hat wants to bury the hatchet, let bygones be bygones.” He picked up Battles’s fork, speared a piece of pork, and put it in his mouth. Chewing, he said: “You seen what happened to his lady wife?”
“I saw it.”
“He’s all cut up about that. He’s hardly the same man anymore.”
“He still want to be king?”
“Yeah, he does.”
“Then he’s the same man.”
Stuart turned as a waiter stepped past. “Hey, boy,” he said. “Bring us more coffee here, chop-chop, huh?”
The man flashed Stuart a white grin. “Right away, sah.”
Stuart directed his attention back to Battles.
“We got it all figured,” he said. “Last night we talked with the captain of a Dutch trading sloop. He says he’s willing to take us on board and drop us off farther down the coast, maybe the German colony. We’ll be so rich by then, we can pay a boat captain to take all of us back to the good ol’ U.S. of A.”
Durango said: “The way I see us playing it, we gun our way into the palace, leave Warful a-settin’ on the throne, and then head for the dock with the treasure. It’s an in-and-out job, Matt. Fast, real fast. In, grab the treasure. Out, skedaddle to the dock and the waiting boat.”
Stuart said: “Can’t be more simple than that. Sure, we’ll lose a few men, but it means a bigger share for them of us that are still alive.”
The waiter laid cups and a china coffeepot on the table.
When the man moved away again, Durango leaned forward so his face was closer to Battles.
“We need your gun, Matt,” he said. “Say it plain now: Will you join us?”
Battles watched Stuart pour himself coffee, then took the pot and filled his own cup. Finally he said: “There is no treasure and there is no King Brukwe. The only person living in the palace is Marcel Toucey, and he’s a clerk for the French government.”
Battles’s statement was greeted by a prolonged silence.
“Then you’re agin us,” Durango finally said, slamming back in his chair. “Lying to us to protect your French friends.”
Battles shook his hea
d. “Durango, I’m not for you or agin you, and the only people I’m trying to protect are you and the others. I don’t want to see all of you killed for a treasure that doesn’t exist except in Hatfield Warful’s mind.”
“Who’s paying you?” Durango said, pushing it. “Is it Toucey?”
“Nobody’s paying me. Hell, I can’t even ante up for this breakfast. The man who said he’d stake me went down with the Lila.”
“You’re lying to protect somebody, maybe even the damned king,” Durango said. “There’s treasure in the palace, enough to make us all rich. You know it, and I know it.”
Battles kept his mouth shut. Durango’s mind was made up and nothing he could say would change it.
Stuart took time to drain his cup. Then he stood.
“Battles,” he said, “I told you once before, I was born and raised in hell and I make a real bad enemy.”
“I’m not your enemy, Lon,” the marshal said. “Warful is.”
“Then join us, damn you.”
Battles shook his head. “You’re chasing shadows, but you’ll do it without me.”
Durango jumped to his feet.
“Matt, then stay in this hellhole and rot,” he said. “A man doesn’t get second chances with me.”
He and Stuart stepped to the door, but Durango turned and said: “Take a word of advice. From now on don’t let our paths cross in the street unless you’re heeled.”
Chapter 47
A Pact with the Devil
“When do you think they’ll attack the palace?” Molly Poteet said.
“I don’t know,” Battles said. “Soon, I guess.”
“There’s no stopping them?”
“No. They’re convinced there’s treasure. Maybe if the Lila hadn’t sunk and was still in port, Durango would’ve listened to reason and settled for the gold on board. But now the treasure is all he’s got and he’s grabbing at it like a drowning man clutching at a feather.”
“You tried, Matt,” Molly said. “You’ve done all you can.”
“Seems like,” Battles said.
It was an unsatisfactory answer and the woman pushed it.
“Since when does a lawman care so much about outlaws and killers?”
“Because if there were no outlaws and killers, there would be no lawmen.” Battles grinned. “And star-strutters like me would be plumb out of business.”
Someone knocked lightly on the parlor door and then it creaked open.
Hassan stepped inside, his face split in a huge grin.
“What do you want, you little sneak?” Molly said.
The boy’s grin widened. He ran to Molly and grabbed her hand.
“Come see,” he said. He made the tall gesture. “Big man outside with coffin, peoples crying. You’ll see.”
Battles got to his feet, his hand dropping to the butt of his gun.
“How many men with him, Hassan?” he said.
“No men. Just womens.” Now he ran and grabbed Battles’s hand. “Come see.”
Molly got to her feet. “I suppose I should go see what he’s talking about.”
“I’ll come with you,” Battles said.
Warful and his coffin had already passed the Saracens Head, and Battles and Molly followed Hassan farther along the street.
They passed a bunch of woman, a few black but mostly Arab, who wailed, lamented, and tore at their clothes as they sang the praises of the deceased.
“Hired mourners,” Molly said. “A sight we see often in this town.”
Six native men carried an ornate coffin on their shoulders, draped with black crepe. Warful walked in front, wailing louder than anyone else, tears running down his skull face. He’d acquired a broadcloth suit, several sizes too small for him, and a new tile hat.
In his hands, held high in front of him, he bore a placard that read:MURDERED
BY
JEWS
Warful raised a hand and stopped the procession; then he yelled to the gawking crowd: “My lady wife is gone! The most beautiful, most wonderful woman in the world, thrown to sharks by the Jewish enemy!”
Most of the grinning onlookers couldn’t understand the sign or Warful’s English, but they cheered or jeered, depending on their inclination.
A knot of drunken English sailors shouted: “Up with the workers, mate!” and “Down with the aristocracy!” But their comments were so off target that Warful chose to ignore them.
He waved the procession forward and led the pallbearers and shrieking, mourning women with a stately step, holding his vile banner high.
“Where the hell is he headed?” Battles asked Molly.
“The old graveyard on the edge of town,” she said.
“He’s going to bury an empty coffin?”
“Well, he can hardly bury her in the shark that swallowed her, can he?” Molly said.
Out of what they willingly recognized as morbid curiosity, Battles and Molly followed the funeral procession to the cemetery. An overgrown, treeless tract of ground, its tumbled headstones lay like dead soldiers on an ancient battlefield.
A hole had already been dug, and one of the gravediggers picked yellow bones out of the dirt pile and tossed them away.
The pallbearers none too gently dropped the coffin beside the grave, and the hired mourners increased the volume of their lamentations.
Not to be outdone, Warful vented his grief in a series of wails and heartrending cries and threw himself, sobbing, on top of the coffin, hugging the polished timber with his arms spread wide as though embracing his wife.
Then he lay still in that posture, a man paralyzed with grief.
The mourners, figuring they’d now earned their wages, began to drift away and Battles and Molly joined them.
Warful’s fragile sanity was now shattered and the man would be capable of any lunacy, any violence.
Battles made up his mind.
When it came right down to it, he was still a man sworn to uphold the laws of civilization, even in darkest Africa.
It was time to make a pact with the devil.
Chapter 48
Toucey Turns a Deaf Ear
“Matt, Marcel Toucey is a shifty little rodent,” Molly said. “You can’t trust the man.”
“I know that, but I don’t have any choice,” Battles said. “The only way to prevent needless bloodshed is to get the French involved.”
He read the doubt in Molly’s face and said: “Warful is completely insane. If he attacks the palace a lot of people will die. I’ve decided it’s my duty as a man and a peace officer to stop him.”
“It’s Toucey’s duty to stop him, not yours.”
“He’ll stop Warful with guns. If I stand back, do nothing, and watch Americans massacred, I could never again hold up my head in the company of men.”
“I said it before, Matt, and I say it again,” Molly said. “You’re a fool. You’re risking your life for a bunch of outlaw riffraff.”
“And, as I said before, I agree with you.”
The woman stepped to her cupboard and came back to the table with a bottle and a couple of glasses.
“I’m coming with you,” she said. “Toucey owes me favors from way back.”
“It’s too dangerous, Molly,” Battles said. “This is not your fight.”
The woman poured bourbon for them both.
“Cheers,” she said, holding up her glass. “Some liquid courage will do us good.”
Battles drank, but he said: “I mean it, Molly. I’m going this alone.”
“Just try and stop me,” the woman said.
Battles and Molly Poteet jostled their way through the teeming main boulevard, fighting off street urchins who offered to sell them anything from carved wooden elephants to their sister.
The main palace entrance was guarded by Iron Handmaidens as before, and what was left of Luke Anderson still hung in the cage.
“Stay right here and let me do the talking,” Molly said. “They know me.”
Arguing with Molly w
as a waste of breath, and Battles did as he was told.
He watched from a distance as the women spoke with the guards, tall, aggressive Amazons who crowded around her and bared their teeth in what Battles hoped were smiles.
After a few minutes and much coming and going by the Handmaidens, Molly waved Battles to her side.
“They say Monsieur Toucey is recuperating from his wounds, but he’s agreed to see us,” Molly said.
“Nice of him,” Battles said.
A guard waved them toward the door, and once inside, Battles found himself in a huge marble hallway, an elegant grand staircase directly in front of him. Among a forest of potted plants, statues and busts of great Frenchmen stared at Battles with stone eyes, and Napoleon scowled at him.
The Handmaiden led the way to a door at the left of the stair. She knocked, opened the door, and motioned them inside.
Toucey sat behind a small desk in a small room with a small window, indicating that the French colonial powers held him in small esteem.
The man had a fat bandage of his head and a frown on his face.
“I’d rather hoped, Mr. Battles, that I wouldn’t see you again until the day I hung you,” he said. He looked at Molly. “Good morning, Mademoiselle Poteet. You keep rough company.”
Battles felt his spirits sink. Now that the Lila was gone, it seemed that Toucey had no further use for him except as gallows bait.
The Frenchman regarded Battles with scant enthusiasm.
“What can I do for you?” he said, his voice flat.
“How’s your head?” Battles said, in a desperate and pathetic attempt to be ingratiating.
“It hurts. What can I do for you?”
Battles gathered his thoughts, then said: “I believe this palace will soon come under attack by Hatfield Warful and his hired gunmen.”
“Then he’s a fool,” Toucey said. “This palace is French soil, and I only have to call out my soldiers to end his adventurism.”
“I know, but a lot of men will die, Warful’s and yours.”
Toucey shrugged. “That is war, monsieur. Men die.”
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