“Yeah, keelboaters,” Dave said. “Abner Rowland don’t own the boat, but he’s the captain of that crew. Likes to brag that they’re the toughest bunch on the Mississipp’. And to be honest, he ain’t far wrong.” A frown creased Dave’s forehead. “When you head back to the riverboat you came off of, you might better keep a sharp eye peeled in the shadows. I ain’t sayin’ they’d try to jump you in the dark . . . but I ain’t sayin’ they wouldn’t, either.”
“I tend to be a mite careful,” Preacher said. He touched the butt of one of his pistols.
“I believe it. What do they call you, anyway?”
“Preacher.”
Dave’s eyes widened at that. He let out a surprised whistle. “I’ve heard of you. Rowland may not know it, but I reckon he’s lucky to still be alive! Still, you watch out for him. He’s mean as a snake and twice as twisty.”
And it was still a long way to New Orleans, Preacher thought.
CHAPTER 11
Before leaving Rancid Dave’s, Preacher checked both pistols and his rifle to make sure they were in good working order. He slipped his knife in and out of its sheath and repositioned his tomahawk slightly, making it easier to reach. If anybody tried to ambush him, he would be ready.
Nothing happened as he returned to the docks and went aboard the Powhatan. Either Abner Rowland had given up on the idea of revenge—or he had decided to wait and try for it at a better time. He could have heard Preacher say that he was a passenger on the stern-wheeler. If Rowland’s keelboat was headed downstream, too, he could afford to take some time to plot his vengeance.
Or it could be that Rowland’s parting threat was nothing but bluster, an attempt at saving face in front of his men. Preacher didn’t really care one way or the other. Abner Rowland didn’t scare him, and he always tried to be careful, anyway.
He found himself a place to curl up on the riverboat’s deck. The snores from the other deck passengers didn’t bother him, and he soon drifted off to sleep, though a part of his brain remained on hair-trigger alertness.
He woke up in the morning with the freckle-faced boy and his little sister standing beside him, staring at him. Preacher took his hand away from the pistol he had automatically reached for when he realized someone was hovering over him.
“You scamps shouldn’t ought to sneak up on a fella that way,” he growled as he sat up.
“We didn’t sneak up on you, mister,” the boy said. “We were standin’ out here in the open where anybody could see us.”
“Yeah, but not somebody sleepin’.” Preacher stretched. “Anyway, what do you want?”
“We’re fixin’ to leave. Thought you might want to be awake for it. Anyways, the cap’n is gonna blow the steam whistle any time now, and that would’ve woke you up.”
“It’ll be loud and scary,” the little girl said.
Preacher managed to smile at her. “Well, don’t you worry, honey. You ain’t got nothin’ to be scared of.”
“There’s always something to be scared of,” she said solemnly. “Sometimes you just don’t know what it is.”
Preacher grunted. The little girl had a grim way of looking at things, but he really couldn’t argue with what she said, either.
And the boy’s comment proved to be true, too, when mere moments later the boat’s whistle let out a shrill, earsplitting blast that would have jolted Preacher out of his slumber in a pretty surprising and unpleasant manner. The Powhatan’s paddle wheel began to revolve, slowly at first and then faster and faster as it backed away from the dock and turned out into the great river’s current.
Preacher kept an eye out for Abner Rowland on the keelboats they passed during the day but never spotted the burly, tattooed man. The same situation held true over the next couple of days as the Powhatan steamed downriver. The kids hung around with him quite a bit but proved not to be too annoying, although they asked a lot of questions. The little boy, who told Preacher his name was Jonas, seemed to be pretty smart. The little girl was called Sara Beth. She had a rag doll she carried around with her, and she paid more attention to it than she did to Preacher, which the mountain man didn’t mind.
Most of his thoughts centered on Edmund Cornelius and Lucy Tarleton. Preacher had been on the river four days and knew they probably had reached New Orleans on the Majestic already. If anything had happened to delay the other riverboat, the Powhatan would have caught up with it. One thing about traveling down the Mississippi, a steamboat couldn’t just veer off in another direction and disappear. The boats could go only north or south.
Preacher’s quarry had a small lead on him, less than twenty-four hours. But twenty-four hours in New Orleans wasn’t the same thing as that amount of time on the frontier. A person could find a lot more places to hide in a big city.
But wherever those two hid, Preacher would root them out. He never doubted it and struggled to contain his eagerness to get there and begin the search for justice and vengeance.
* * *
The New Orleans waterfront sounded like a madhouse. All the shouting in different languages, from the crews of boats from all over the world, might as well have been the raving of lunatics, Edmund Cornelius thought as he led Lucy Tarleton down the gangplank from the Majestic. The docks were crowded, and so were the streets.
“It’s exciting, isn’t it?” Lucy said with a breathless note in her voice as she looked around. “All these people, I mean.”
“Lots of easy marks, I imagine,” Cornelius replied.
“Oh, that’s not what I meant at all! I’m talking about how colorful and . . . and exotic everything is. And everyone.”
Cornelius wasn’t sure he would have called this area along the river colorful and exotic. The air stank of dead fish, rotting vegetation, and too many people. Many of the buildings were constructed of unpainted lumber that had warped and faded in the constant humidity. The sturdier stone buildings still had a patina of age overlaying them. Founded a hundred and twenty years earlier, New Orleans was an old town, squatting on the Mississippi delta like a fat, evil, ancient toad.
And yet Cornelius felt the excitement in the air, too, just as Lucy did. This was a place of infinite possibilities, especially for anyone possessing as few scruples as the two of them had.
When they paused on the dock, Lucy hugged his arm and asked, “What are we going to do first?”
“Find a place to stay, I suppose,” Cornelius answered.
“A nice place. We have money. I don’t see any reason we shouldn’t enjoy it.”
She wouldn’t see any reason for that, Cornelius thought, because she never got her own hands dirty obtaining that money. When there was real work to be done—like dealing with that foolish young trapper back in St. Louis—Lucy was always nowhere to be found. Cornelius handled the chores that involved blood and violence and death.
But she did have her own talents, he reminded himself wryly, and she was good enough at them to make the things he did for her worthwhile. He said, “I knew that’s what you would want, so I already spoke to one of the stewards on board and made arrangements to have our bags delivered to the St. Charles Hotel and a room rented for us. The man assured me that it’s the best place in town, and it’s very near the French Quarter.”
Lucy squeezed his arm again. “I’ve heard so much about the French Quarter. I can’t wait to see it for myself.”
“Soon, my dear, soon.”
They strolled arm in arm along the street. One of the locals gave them directions to the St. Charles Hotel, which was an impressive four-story building with Greek columns along the front and a towering dome on the roof like the one Cornelius had heard adorned the capitol building in Washington City. Lucy peered up at it with awe and admiration on her pretty face.
“This is where we’re going to stay, Edmund?”
“It is,” he assured her. “Nothing is too good for you.”
“You’re so wonderful. Let’s go inside.” A sultry smile curved her lips. “I want to show you just how wonde
rful I think you are.”
Cornelius hoped the hotel had their room ready for them.
* * *
That evening, they ate dinner in the hotel’s luxurious dining room, then went downstairs to the ornately furnished, octagonal barroom in the basement. That seemed an odd place for a bar, but Cornelius had to admit it was something to see as he escorted Lucy past a statue of George Washington and down broad marble steps. A large crowd was on hand, the men all dressed in fine suits, the ladies wearing expensive gowns in a wide variety of colors and styles, many of them cut low in front so that the upper half moons of their bosoms were on provocative display.
None of those ladies were quite so sensuous and lovely as his own companion, though, Cornelius thought as he glanced over at Lucy, exquisite in a dark green gown that bared her creamy shoulders. A necklace he had bought her rested in the hollow of her throat, and earrings dangled from her lobes. She had piled her thick, dark hair high on her head in an elaborate arrangement of curls. The sight of her would take any man’s breath away. It certainly did where Cornelius was concerned.
They shouldn’t have dined together, and they should have entered the hotel’s bar separately. Normally, that’s what they would have done, so it wouldn’t be obvious they were together and Lucy could search for a suitable target for their schemes.
But for now, they had agreed to put that aside. As Lucy had pointed out, they had money. They weren’t desperate for funds the way they sometimes found themselves. They could afford to put aside their normal activities for a while.
A white-coated waiter showed them to a table next to a potted palm and took Cornelius’s order to bring them a bottle of brandy. When it arrived, the waiter poured the liquor into snifters, and Cornelius lifted his to toast Lucy with, “To you, my dear . . . the loveliest woman in all New Orleans.”
“Oh, you exaggerate, Edmund,” she scolded him, but he could tell she enjoyed the compliment. “I mean, just look around you. This room is filled with beautiful women, and it’s only one bar in one hotel. There must be many others.”
“None to compare to you,” Cornelius murmured.
They drank their brandy and looked around the room.
Only a few minutes had gone by when Lucy said quietly, “Edmund, look at that old gentleman in a white suit at the bar. The one with the white hair and goatee.”
Cornelius saw the man she described, standing next to the bar talking to several other men. “What about him?” the gambler asked.
“Look at the stickpin he’s wearing in his cravat. That’s a diamond in it, and a valuable one, too.”
Cornelius frowned. Lucy had a fine eye for gemstones, so he didn’t doubt what she said. “You’re right, I’m sure, but what of it?”
Lucy’s eyes gleamed as she said, “We could take that pin from him, along with everything else he has.”
For a moment, Cornelius didn’t say anything. Then he reminded her, “Lucy, we said we weren’t going to do anything like that for a while, that we would just enjoy the money we have.”
“We have it now,” she said, a sharp edge entering her voice. “But in time it will run out, Edmund. It always does. You know that.”
“And when it does, we’ll find some other source of funds. That always happens, as well.”
“But if we had more money, we could stop worrying about it for even longer,” she said.
He couldn’t dispute the logic of her argument.
Her tongue darted out for a second and licked her lips eagerly. “Think about what it would be like to be really rich.”
She painted a pretty picture of it, and the sight of her—breasts rising and falling in the low-cut gown as she began to breathe a little quicker—was a very pretty picture as well. A picture too pretty to argue with.
“All right, my dear,” Cornelius said. “Should I just sit back and watch?”
“Of course.” She stood up and went to work.
CHAPTER 12
Balthazar Crowe sat in a high-backed rattan chair in an alcove at one side of the St. Charles Hotel’s basement barroom, partially screened by one of the potted palms scattered around the big room. He stretched his long legs in front of him and crossed them casually at the ankles. From time to time he lifted a snifter of cognac from the small, marble-inlaid table beside him and sipped from it. His dark brown eyes never left the white-goateed man standing at the bar. His job was to keep an eye on Colonel Augustus Osborne, and Crowe was very good at his job.
A massive, shaven-headed man with skin the same shade as café au lait, his excellently tailored suit made it less noticeable just how big he really was. Thinking that Crowe had to be a slave, a rich man had wanted to buy him a few years earlier, offering Crowe’s employer a good price for him. The man had regretted that temerity. Balthazar Crowe was a free man, had been since birth. And he worked for one of the most powerful individuals in New Orleans—if not the most powerful.
Crowe’s nonchalant attitude disappeared as a very attractive young woman approached Colonel Osborne. She didn’t appear to be a threat, but she was a stranger and Crowe never fully trusted strangers. Ready to stand up and let his long legs carry him quickly to the colonel’s side in case of danger, Crowe continued watching as the young woman spoke animatedly to Osborne with a friendly smile on her face.
The big man’s smooth brow gradually furrowed as the conversation continued. The old colonel threw back his head and laughed at something the young woman said, and then she reacted the same way when he responded. The two of them seemed to be having the time of their lives. Then the young woman rested the fingertips of her left hand on the right sleeve of Osborne’s white coat. The touch lasted only a second but carried an undeniably seductive air.
Balthazar Crowe had seen enough. He stood up, rising to his towering height, and set the snifter of cognac on the table. Without seeming to hurry, he moved into the crowd and headed toward the bar. People got out of his way, not because of his expression, which was emotionless, or his dark skin, but simply because the sheer size of him intimidated most folks. Crowe counted on that.
He stepped up behind the young woman, being careful not to touch her. He was a free man, had been born a free man, but even so, the sight of a black man putting his hand on a white woman invited trouble, and Crowe never hunted trouble.
He said quietly, in a voice so deep it sounded as if it came from the bottom of a well, “I think it would be better if you moved along now, miss.”
Colonel Osborne glared over the woman’s shoulder at him, pooched his lips out in annoyance, and said, “See here, Mr. Crowe, I believe I have the right to speak with anyone I want to, do I not?”
“You do, sir,” Crowe replied. “But you know my job tonight is to look out for your best interests, and I don’t believe this young lady has them at heart.”
The young woman had turned her head to look at him when he first spoke, and her eyes widened at the sight of him. Anger replaced awe, though, as she began, “Why, I never—”
“Please, miss, don’t make a scene,” Crowe said. Then he stiffened, mentally berating himself for allowing someone to get behind him, as he felt something sharp prick his back.
A man’s voice said, “You make a move, boy, and I’ll put this knife right in your heart.”
* * *
Like everyone else in the room, Edmund Cornelius had seen the big black man emerge from the alcove and approach Lucy and the old-timer. He didn’t look particularly threatening other than his size, but that was enough to alarm Cornelius. He had never seen a black man dressed in such a fancy suit and acting like he belonged around white folks. Having grown up in New York, Cornelius had encountered a few free blacks, but none such as this.
The man didn’t look or act threatening. He hadn’t touched Lucy. If he had, Cornelius might have sunk the dagger in his back without even saying anything. But his size was ominous enough by itself. Cornelius wasn’t going to have him bothering Lucy.
The black man spoke up in a rumbli
ng voice. “This isn’t necessary. I mean no harm.”
“Then why are you harassing this lady?”
The white-suited old man said, “Please, sir, don’t concern yourself with this. Mr. Crowe here would never harm your lady friend. I can vouch for that.”
Cornelius frowned as he looked past the black man’s bulky form. “He’s your slave? Your servant, sir?”
“No, no,” the old man said hastily. “He’s not a slave, and he doesn’t work for me. His employer is M’sieu LeCarde.”
Cornelius had never heard that name before and didn’t really care who Crowe worked for.
The old man went on. “Allow me to introduce myself, sir. I am Colonel Augustus Osborne, with an e. Of the Jefferson Parish Osbornes.”
Lucy said, “This is my friend, Mr. Edmund Cornelius.”
Now that he had gone over and stuck his knife in Crowe’s back because he thought she might be in danger, there was no longer any point in pretending that they didn’t know each other. Lucy was smart enough to have realized that right away, so the only thing to do was manipulate the situation to their advantage.
“It’s an honor to make your acquaintance, sir,” Osborne said. He moved a hand in a languid, eloquent gesture. “Now, would you mind removing that pistol or knife or whatever it is you have stuck in Mr. Crowe’s back?”
Cornelius hesitated for a moment longer, then took the dagger away from the black man and slipped it back into the sheath under his coat. The man stepped to the side. His head swiveled on his thick neck so he could look at Cornelius. Despite the impassive expression on his face, his eyes smoldered with anger.
Cornelius didn’t care. He didn’t intend to apologize, not to Crowe at any rate. However, he turned to Osborne, tipped his head forward slightly, and said, “I regret any unpleasantness, Colonel. It wasn’t my intention to cause a scene. I simply reacted to what I perceived as a possible threat to Miss Tarleton.”
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