The man’s pallor, such as could be discerned through the dirt and whiskers that smudged his face, was the sickly pale color of sour milk. Suddenly it flushed flaming red with anger. “Like hell I will! The sun’ll never rise on the day Oscar Turlick goes even one inch out of his way for the likes of you three and that vermin-ridden horse. Now you clear to one side—and be quick about it—or I’ll do the clearing of you pieces of dock garbage!”
So saying, Turlick raised high one meaty arm and took a step forward. Clutched in his fist, with a loop curling back around the wrist, was a braided leather quirt about two feet in length. “I’ll start with that sorry piece of horseflesh that looks like he’s been sadly lackin’ the taste of leather up to this point, anyway!”
Turlick’s forward motion stopped abruptly when, quicker than the blink of an eye, the Colt from the holster on Buckhorn’s hip flashed into his hand and was extended at arm’s length, muzzle centered on the point above the bridge of the beefy man’s nose where his shaggy eyebrows came together.
“You lower that quirt one inch closer to my horse,” Buckhorn said, his voice like two stones rubbing together, “I’ll be looking at daylight through the holes I ventilate your head with.”
Air whistled out of Turlick’s flared nostrils as his piggy eyes glared directly into the Colt’s muzzle. “You didn’t have that gun, you wouldn’t be so brave, would you, you dog-eatin’ heathen redskin?”
“The point is, I do have the gun,” Buckhorn told him. “And, even though I’ve only been in this neck of the woods for a short time, I’m already out of patience when it comes to dealing with wharf rats and bayou scum like you. Now, are you gonna try your luck with that quirt against my Colt? Or are you gonna find a path to slink around me and my friends and get the hell out of my sight?”
“Come on, Oscar,” the smaller mule herder urged. “There’s plenty of room to get around. Let’s just go. Can’t we? Please?”
Grudgingly, Turlick lowered his arm and began tugging his team wide around those he’d claimed to be in his way, but his glare stayed fixed on Buckhorn every step of the way. “Another day, dog-eater. We ever meet again, I’ll be ready for you. I’ll pluck out a section of your gut, just a short little string at first, and use it like a lead rope to take you back into the swamps.” He gave Buckhorn a gap-toothed grin. “We’ll have us a time.”
CHAPTER 4
As it turned out, the message in the envelope Lucien had given him served to facilitate Buckhorn’s intentions well. Inside the envelope was a handwritten note from Andrew Haydon.
Dear Mr. Buckhorn—,
As a first-time visitor to our heralded city, I can only imagine you must be anxious to experience some of what it has to offer before getting down to business. Toward that end, I have taken the liberty of booking you into one of the French Quarter’s finest hotels, just off Jackson Park. You will find yourself in the center of much of the city’s most colorful and charming diversions. Whatever you desire, use my name with any of the Laffite’s front desk attendants and they will guide you. Enjoy. Tomorrow evening, I will send Lucien to pick you up. I request that you join me for dinner and a detailed discussion of the matter for which I seek to hire your services.
Sincerely,
Andrew Haydon
Buckhorn couldn’t help thinking that Haydon was shaping up to be one of the most accommodating employers he’d ever worked for. If he ended up working for him, that was. But all signs seemed to be pointing toward that likelihood.
For the balance of that day and night and throughout most of the following day, Buckhorn did indeed have himself a time. It was something he’d been planning, of course, ever since agreeing to come to New Orleans for the meeting with his prospective employer.
Buckhorn used the time allotted him to full advantage. He cut a wide, busy swath through the French Quarter. He feasted on spicy Cajun food, drank a variety of excellent wines, listened to a fascinating blend of music, absorbed much in the way of local color and even some art, and inevitably dallied for a very memorable few hours with a breathtakingly lovely (and talented, in the way of such things) Creole belle named Lucretia.
When Lucien came tapping on the door to his hotel room late in the afternoon of the second day, Buckhorn welcomed him with what was closely akin to a sigh of weary relief. On the ride to Haydon’s residence, the exhausted visitor leaned back in the well-cushioned seat of the carriage and actually dozed for a bit.
“We’re here, Mr. Buckhorn.”
He opened his eyes to find they’d arrived at a secluded home on the outskirts of the city. The house was at the end of a narrow, tree-lined lane with a circular turnaround area in front. In the middle of the circle, on a patch of neatly trimmed grass, was a somewhat weather-pitted statue of a stag.
The house was fashioned after a plantation-style mansion, though scaled down in size. Still, it had tall pillars and a set of broad steps leading up to a rather ornate front door. In the rapidly dimming light of evening, brightly burning lanterns bracketing the door provided a wash of more than adequate illumination.
“Just go knock on the door, sir,” Lucien said after bringing the rig to a halt. “Mr. Haydon is expectin’ you and Sterbenz, his butler, will show you on in. I’ve got to tend the horse and carriage. Sterbenz will let me know when you’re fixin’ to head back. I’ll be around front here when you’re ready.”
Buckhorn climbed down from the carriage. “Where do you take dinner?”
“I eat back in the kitchen with Sterbenz and my mama. She’s the cook.” Lucien grinned. “I don’t know what she’s makin’ tonight, but whatever it is, I guarantee you’re in for some good eats.”
“You got me looking forward to it.”
* * *
Buckhorn’s use of the heavy brass knocker on the front door was promptly answered by a tall, painfully thin elderly man with wavy silver hair combed straight back and a blank expression that looked permanently stamped on his narrow face.
After he’d taken Buckhorn’s coat and hat, the sight of the Colt riding prominently on the gunman’s hip almost stirred a reaction on that stony countenance, but he held it in check and merely said, “Please come this way, sir.”
The long dining room table where Buckhorn’s host and potential employer sat waiting could have seated two dozen. From the silent, empty feeling of the big house, Buckhorn got the sense it seldom, if ever, saw anything near that many guests. In fact, his presence might be considered something of a crowd.
The man who’d been seated at the far end of the table rose up with some awkwardness and promptly tucked a dark, highly polished crutch under his right arm. As he came around the corner of the table, Buckhorn saw that he was missing his right leg below the knee, the empty bottom half of his trouser sleeve neatly folded up and pinned behind his thigh.
“Good evening, Mr. Buckhorn. I’m Andrew Haydon.” He extended his right hand. “A pleasure to meet you in person at last.”
Haydon’s grip was firm, felt sincere. He was a couple inches above medium height, lean, and solid-looking. He appeared to be about fifty, the lines around his eyes suggesting that some of those years had not been without a share of hardship. He would be considered moderately handsome, with streaks of gray running through his otherwise brown hair and a neatly trimmed mustache given over completely to the grayness.
After they’d shaken hands, Haydon gestured Buckhorn into the only other chair with a place setting before it.
Buckhorn started to sit but then paused. Straightening up again, he unbuckled his gunbelt and said, “I guess I wasn’t thinking. If I leave this hogleg on, I might scratch up some of your fine furniture.”
Sterbenz stepped forward. “I can take that for you, sir.”
Haydon held up a hand. “Perhaps it would be best if you didn’t, Sterbenz. I suspect Mr. Buckhorn would prefer to keep his gunbelt close at hand, even if not actually on his person.”
Buckhorn grinned sheepishly. “I don’t suppose trouble is likely to come
blazing through the front door, but yeah. If you don’t mind, I’ll just lay it here on the carpet next to me.”
“That will be fine.”
Sterbenz withdrew a step and said to Haydon, “Shall I start bringing in your meal then, sir, or would you perhaps enjoy a drink before you dine?”
Haydon put it to Buckhorn. “Which would you prefer?”
“Whatever’s going on back in your kitchen smells mighty good. If it’s all the same to you, I’d just as soon go ahead and eat.”
Haydon smiled wanly. “Excellent choice. Go ahead, Sterbenz. Start serving.”
Once the butler had gone from the room, Haydon said to Buckhorn, “According to a reliable and highly impressed source, I understand you had occasion to use that Colt of yours almost immediately upon arriving here.”
“I guess your source was Lucien,” Buckhorn said with a smile. “He’s right in that I had cause to take the gun out and wave it around some on the dock the other day. Didn’t actually use it, though.”
“Sounds as if it got the job done all the same. And, like I said, your actions were most impressive to our young Lucien.”
Sterbenz reappeared pushing a cart loaded with an array of food, most of it covered with silver domes.
As he began dispensing the fare, Haydon said, “I made a guess that you probably sampled the French Quarter’s more exotic dishes pretty thoroughly by now so I instructed my cook—her name is Melody and she’s Lucien’s mother—to prepare something more traditional. It appears she chose roasted pheasant, wild rice, and sweet potatoes. I hope the selection is to your liking.”
“Not much chance otherwise,” Buckhorn assured him. “You’re looking at a fella who spends a lot of time on the open trail getting by on jerky and beans, or a jackrabbit I’m lucky enough to bag once in a while. I don’t often see a spread like this before me, and only then usually in my dreams after I crawl into my bedroll.”
“I can’t say that your dining limitations sound particularly appealing,” Haydon said, “but I have to say that other aspects of the open trail you mention—living wild and free under the wide sky and roaming the vast untamed country—stir a longing in me. A highly romanticized one, no doubt . . . but it’s there, all the same.” His face sobered suddenly. “If not for this blasted missing leg, it’s even possibly a lifestyle I might have pursued after the war.”
“You appear to have a lot of fine things about you the way it turned out,” Buckhorn countered. “Life on the open trail versus this. Can’t picture too many men who’d want to make that trade.”
Haydon looked for a moment like he might want to argue the point, but then he gave a little laugh. “You’re probably right. Like I said, I afford myself highly romanticized notions every now and again.”
“Well, one thing’s for sure,” Buckhorn said, stabbing his fork first through a piece of sweet potato and then a cut of pheasant before popping the pairing into his mouth. “Your notion about what the cook oughta consider for this meal was a mighty good one.”
Haydon chuckled around his own mouthful of food. “I’m glad you’re enjoying it.”
Buckhorn felt the need to prod his host along a bit. “Far as I’m concerned, it’s plenty good enough to stand a little business talk mixed in with enjoying it. If you’ve a mind to, that is.”
“Of course,” Haydon agreed, nodding. “After all, that’s the main point of the evening, isn’t it?”
Before they could proceed, however, Sterbenz reappeared from the kitchen, followed by an elderly woman in an apron and head scarf. For once, his carefully neutral expression had a crack in it. He looked decidedly puzzled, maybe even a bit troubled as he said, “Begging your pardon, sir.”
“Yes? What is it?” Haydon asked.
“We just had a caller at the back door, sir. He handed me this”—he held out an object he had been worrying in his hands—“and instructed me to show it to Mr. Buckhorn and also give him a message.”
Buckhorn’s eyes locked on the object Sterbenz was holding. It was little Lucien’s bowler hat. “What message? What did he say to you?”
Sterbenz’s voice was steady, but his expression was growing more anxious. “He said you should come out to the stable right away, unarmed. He said it was time to attend the party his friend Oscar had invited you to out in the swamp. He said if you didn’t hurry, they would take the boy to the party in your place.”
The woman moved up behind Sterbenz. She was quite thin and the deeply distraught expression pinched her blade of a face even tighter. “It’s Lucien he’s talkin’ ’bout, ain’t it?” she said in a trembling voice. “He’s not come in yet from puttin’ away the horse and carriage.”
“What’s going on! What is this all about?” Haydon wanted to know.
Buckhorn was already on his feet, buckling his gunbelt around his middle. “It sounds like that piece of bayou trash I tangled with on the dock the other day. He said he’d be on the lookout for me, wanting to get even for backing him down the way I did. He must have spotted me and Lucien in the carriage on the way out here and followed us. The only thing to do is give him what he’s asking for.”
“But he said to come unarmed,” Lucien’s mother wailed.
“What he said, what he deserves, and what he’s gonna get are all different things, ma’am,” Buckhorn told her as he double-checked the loads in his Colt. “You’ll have to trust me. I won’t let anything happen to your boy.”
“What do you want us to do?” Haydon said.
“Somebody go holler out the back door and tell ’em I’m coming, then the three of you stay away from any lighted windows. Better yet, come to an inside room like this one, turn the lights down, and just stay put. You’ll likely hear some shooting. After you do, don’t let anybody back in but me or Lucien.”
CHAPTER 5
As he left the house and rounded its far end, heading toward the stable and other outbuildings he’d seen as he and Lucien had rolled into the turnaround circle out front, Buckhorn felt certain of one thing. Too much hesitation, any attempt at trying to reason or negotiate with Oscar and whoever he had with him, anything that might smack to them of scheming or trickery, would only heighten the risk to Lucien.
And Buckhorn handing himself over unarmed, meeting their demand, would basically amount to suicide and probably do nothing to save the boy, either.
The response that held the most hope, risky though it might seem to others, was to retaliate swiftly and unexpectedly. Do the last thing Oscar and his bunch would count on.
The descent of late evening darkness and the deep shadows thrown by the canopy of leaves high in the numerous trees surrounding the Haydon residence gave Buckhorn good cover. The only problem was the brightness of the boiled white shirt and colorful tie he was wearing. Crouching momentarily in some bushes, he quickly unbuttoned his vest and shirt and discarded them along with the tie. The smoothly muscled, dark copper skin of his torso blended almost invisibly with the other shadows.
As he edged along the back side of the house, he could hear voices not too far ahead.
“Tell that damn breed he better be quick about showing hisself or this little darky errand boy is gonna be the one to pay for it,” the all-too-familiar voice of Oscar Turlick bellowed. “I want to see him with his hands held up empty and high and he’d better make it real sudden.”
“He’s comin’, I tell you,” Melody called from the back door to the kitchen. “Please, please don’t do nuthin’ to my little boy. He’s all I got.”
“That’s up to the stinkin’ breed you’re hidin’ in there! I’ll give him to the count of five to show hisself before we start making this baby boy of yours do some squealin’!”
“No! Please!”
“One . . .”
Buckhorn had moved up to where he could see into the stable. One of its double doors was propped open. In a cone of weak light poured down by a lantern hanging from a nail on a post, Lucien was on his knees in front of the post.
A tall man stood d
irectly behind him, one hand wrapped around both of the boy’s suspender straps, holding them jerked tight between his bony shoulder blades. The man’s other hand held the blade of a clasp knife to the side of Lucien’s throat. The lantern’s illumination angled across the tall man’s chest, leaving his shoulders and face lost in shadows.
“Two . . .”
The man with the knife wasn’t the one doing the talking. It was Oscar’s voice, like Buckhorn had judged from the beginning, but it was coming from somewhere outside the lantern light. Buckhorn peered intently, trying to penetrate the deeper shadows. He thought he saw a murky trace of movement about four feet beyond where Lucien knelt.
That could be where Oscar was—if there were only two men involved. The elongated skunk by the post certainly wasn’t the second, much shorter mule herder who’d been with Oscar the other day. Was he lurking somewhere in the stable, too, making it three men? Or was Oscar simply operating with another partner?
“Three . . .”
Buckhorn felt his vocal cords vibrate with a silent snarl deep in his throat. It was time to make his big gamble and play the surprise card he hoped would be an ace.
He drew his Colt, took careful aim just above the downward sloping edge of the cone of light where he calculated the center of the tall man’s chest to be, and pulled the trigger. The Colt bucked in his fist and he heard a satisfying grunt as what he could see of the tall man’s body jerked and fell back into the shadows, releasing his grip on the boy’s suspenders. The knife in his other hand dropped from lifeless fingers.
A fraction of a second later, Buckhorn’s next bullet screamed out and shattered the lantern, plunging everything into sudden blackness.
“Duck, Lucien! Run for cover!” he shouted. With no light to judge by, he could only hope the boy obeyed.
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