Preacher wasn’t really sure how much time had passed when Simone broke the kiss again and suggested, “Why don’t we go sit over there on the divan?”
“Sounds like a good idea,” Preacher said. “You want your wine?”
She shook her head. “I don’t need it.”
She came into his arms again as soon as they were sitting down. When she leaned back, Preacher went with her. For a time, the two of them were lost in the sensuousness of this shared experience.
He remembered an old trapper telling him, when he was a young man, that it was never smart for a fella to get involved with a woman who had more troubles than he did. If everything he’d heard about Simone LeCarde was true, then running a criminal empire certainly qualified.
But there were times—and this was one of them, Preacher realized—when he just didn’t give a hang about following somebody else’s advice, no matter how good it was.
* * *
As they sat on the divan with Simone in Preacher’s arms, leaning against his shoulder, she said, “My father was a wonderful man, but there’s no denying the fact that he was disappointed when I was born.”
“Why in blazes would he feel like that?”
“Because he was hoping for a boy, of course. A son to carry on in his footsteps, to someday take over as the captain of the Calypso.”
“That was his ship?”
“Yes. A beautiful little fore-and-aft-rigged sloop, as fast as anything on the water, he claimed.”
“I’m a dry land sort of fella,” Preacher reminded her. “I don’t know much about ships.”
“Well, the Calypso could outrun just about any pursuit. And it carried enough guns to put up a good fight, if running wasn’t going to work. Catamount Jack harried the British from one end of the Caribbean to the other during the war. He disrupted their shipping lanes between the islands and England and kept a lot of cargoes meant for the army from arriving. I like to think he contributed a great deal toward winning the war.”
“I’m sure he did,” Preacher said. “Did he teach you all about sailin’?”
“Yes, and how to scramble up the rigging and handle a sword and a pistol, as well. As I said, he wanted a boy . . .”
“So he raised you like one.”
“He tried,” Simone said with a faint note of bitterness in her voice. “Unfortunately, I let him down. I took to sailing and fighting quite well, but never well enough to replace the son he’d hoped for. I wasn’t going to take over for him as a buccaneer, and he knew it. So now I follow in his footsteps in other ways.”
“I thought you said he wasn’t a pirate.”
She sighed. “I’d like to believe that he wasn’t . . . but I’m not a child anymore, blind to what was really going on. Yes, he was a privateer during the war, fighting for his country in the best way he knew how, but afterward . . . well, he continued targeting British shipping, and Spanish and French and Portuguese, too. He dreamed that someday he would rule an empire stretching from Panama to Bermuda. The largest empire of pirates ever known, bigger than Teach or Flint or Morgan ever achieved.” Slowly, Simone shook her head. “That dream died with him. He knew I’d never be able to fulfill it. So instead, I do what I can. I have the Catamount’s Den and other enterprises here in New Orleans, as well as a number of ships operating in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, including the Calypso. It’s under the command now of one of my partners, a man named Jabez Sampson.”
She fell silent, and after a few moments, Preacher said, “I’m glad you’re comfortable talkin’ to me, but why are you tellin’ me all this?”
“I meant what I said earlier about expanding my operations. Natchez is the next logical spot, and St. Louis after that. But I need a good man helping me. A man tough enough to take on any challenge.” She turned her head to look up at him. “As soon as I saw you during that battle tonight, Preacher, I knew you were that man. I felt it in my bones . . . and I trust my instincts.”
“So do I,” Preacher said. Those instincts were telling him that if he played along with Simone LeCarde for the time being, that was his best chance of finding Edmund Cornelius and Lucy Tarleton and recovering some of the money they had stolen.
Of course, that would mean pretending to be a criminal. That went against the grain for Preacher, who was as honest as the day was long and always had been. But it wouldn’t be for long, he told himself. Once he found Cornelius and Lucy and dealt with them, he would be on his way back to St. Louis and Simone could stay in New Orleans, dreaming of empire and hoping to live up to what she believed her father would want of her—whether that was truly the case or not.
“Well?” she said, breaking into his reverie. “Are we going to work together or not?”
Preacher nodded and said, “We are.”
CHAPTER 21
Simone insisted that Preacher shouldn’t have to sleep in the hayloft at Jean Paul Dufresne’s livery stable. There was a perfectly good room above the carriage house behind the Catamount’s Den. Balthazar Crowe and Long Sam also had their quarters there, she explained.
“I reckon I can go along with that,” Preacher said as they sat at the table later and finished off the bottle of wine. “My possibles bag and rifle are at the stable, though, so I should go and fetch them.”
“Long Sam can do that for you.”
Preacher shook his head. “I’ll tend to my own gear.”
He saw a flicker of annoyance in Simone’s dark green eyes. She didn’t like having one of her suggestions questioned, he thought, even something as minor as this. But the reaction lasted only for a second, and then she smiled.
“Of course. Whatever you like, Preacher. I know you said you don’t allow anyone to run roughshod over you. That should include me as well, or else I’ll lose my respect for you.”
“Not much chance of that happenin’. You runnin’ roughshod over me, I mean.”
Her lips tightened. “Just don’t get the idea you can defy me simply for the sake of defying me.”
“We’re workin’ together,” Preacher said, even though he had no idea what she actually wanted him to do. “No point in us squabblin’.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
Preacher left the tavern a short time later after saying good night to Simone and agreeing to have breakfast with her the next morning. He took the same narrow staircase down to the alley door, and as he descended, he heard the raucous noises still coming from the main room. Things probably wouldn’t slow down in the Catamount’s Den until after midnight.
Bourbon Street was less crowded than earlier in the evening, although more people were still out and about than Preacher was used to seeing at that hour, even in St. Louis. His long legs carried him quickly along the street and out of the French Quarter to the livery stable and adjoining blacksmith shop.
He had blown out the candle before leaving with Balthazar Crowe, so the place was in darkness when he entered. Preacher had moved around in the stable enough when he was there earlier that he was able to find where he had left his bag and rifle, despite the lack of light. He picked them up and turned back toward the entrance, then stopped short. His keen eyes saw movement silhouetted against the faint glow that came from lights farther along the street.
“Kill him!” a harsh voice growled, followed by a rush of footsteps.
Preacher dropped the possibles bag. He knew his rifle wouldn’t do him any good in the close quarters, so he let it fall to the hard-packed dirt at his feet, too. He had recognized the voice uttering the curt, guttural command. It belonged to the riverboatman named Shugart, who must have returned to the Majestic to get some help from his friends after the fight with Preacher at the tavern. They had watched the Catamount’s Den until he came out and then followed him.
Preacher had no doubt that they intended to stomp him into the ground, so not knowing exactly how many opponents he faced and that his life was at stake, he did the only sensible thing.
He yanked the pistols from behind his belt,
thumbed back the hammers as he thrust the weapons toward the men rushing at him, and pulled the triggers.
The double boom was deafening in the low-ceilinged room. A tongue of flame almost a foot long licked out from the muzzle of each gun. The bright orange flash lit up the inside of the livery stable like a bolt of particularly garish lightning.
In that split second of illumination, Preacher saw four men charging him—Shugart and three companions almost as brawny and ugly. The men should have thought twice before agreeing to help Shugart get his vengeance on the mountain man. Two of them ran right into the heavy lead balls from Preacher’s pistols. The impact of those balls slamming into their chests at close range pitched them backward as if they’d been flicked off their feet by a giant hand.
With the pistols empty, Preacher cast them aside and reached for his knife and tomahawk. His incredibly sharp hearing saved his life. Despite the commotion of the attack, his ears picked up the metallic sound of a pistol being cocked. He dived forward as the gun went off. Sparks flying from the barrel landed on the back of his neck and stung for a second. He rolled over on the ground and came up lunging with the knife in his right hand.
He felt the blade go into something soft, then come to a stop as the hilt jarred against the attacker’s belly. With almost a foot of razor-sharp steel buried in his guts, the luckless man groaned. Preacher ripped the knife from side to side and then yanked it free. He felt the hot spill of guts over his hand and pushed the dying man away.
That left just one of the attackers. Preacher heard something whipping through the air toward him, probably a club, and ducked again. The man gave a grunt of effort as the blow missed. Preacher lashed out into the darkness with the tomahawk in his left hand and felt it strike something. The attacker cursed, and his voice was enough to identify him as Shugart. He had brought three of his friends to their deaths, but he was still alive and fighting.
Shugart bulled forward and rammed into Preacher, knocking him backward. The two men’s feet tangled, and Preacher lost his balance. When he went down, Shugart fell on top of him, driving the air out of Preacher’s lungs.
Gasping and half-stunned, Preacher realized crashing to the ground had jolted the knife and the tomahawk out of his hands. He knew he wouldn’t be able to find them in the dark.
With no time to just lie there and try to recover, Preacher forced his muscles to work and shot both hands upward. Something cracked against his left arm and made pain shoot all the way up to his shoulder. Pure luck had allowed him to block another blow from the club Shugart was using to try to bash his brains out.
Preacher’s other hand landed on Shugart’s face. He clenched his fingers and tried to dig them into Shugart’s eyes. Roaring in anger, the riverboatman wrenched his head back, away from Preacher’s clawing fingers, but that allowed Preacher’s hand to slip under Shugart’s chin and close around his neck. Preacher’s grip was like iron as he clamped down on his enemy’s throat.
He bucked up from the floor, the muscles in his arm and shoulders bunching as he heaved Shugart to the side. Over the pounding of the pulse inside his skull, Preacher heard a clatter and figured Shugart had lost his club. That was it bouncing away as the men rolled over and over.
A great commotion filled the livery barn. The pistol shots and the smell of blood had combined to spook the horses. They whinnied shrilly and kicked at the walls of their stalls. Chaos ruled, and Preacher and Shugart battled in the middle of it, smashing punches blindly at each other.
Preacher landed a solid blow and knocked Shugart away from him. That gave him a chance to surge to his feet and stand there for a second with his chest heaving as he dragged in great gulps of air. That harsh breathing just gave Shugart something to aim at, he realized as he heard rapid footsteps pounding toward him again. Preacher wheeled to the side and reached out to tackle his opponent. Grappling fiercely, they reeled across the room, slammed into the wall between the livery stable and the blacksmith shop, rebounded from it, and then lurched back and forth as they continued to struggle.
Something hard rammed painfully into Preacher’s hip. He grimaced in the darkness and tried to fend off Shugart with one hand while he reached down with the other to feel around and find out what he had run into. He was a little surprised to discover it was the anvil in the blacksmith shop. He and Shugart had stumbled through the open door between the adjoining businesses while they were fighting.
Shugart rammed a knee into Preacher’s belly. Preacher was lucky it hadn’t landed in his groin, which might well have disabled him enough for the man to finish him off. As it was, he doubled over as once again the breath was knocked out of him. He had barely recovered from the other times that happened.
The worst part, though, was that Shugart took advantage of the opportunity to clamp both hands around Preacher’s neck. The tables were turned, and Shugart began squeezing the life out of the mountain man, bending him backward over the anvil. The anvil’s edge cut painfully into Preacher’s back, but that was nothing compared to the terrible pressure on his throat and the crimson haze that began to drop down over his eyes like a curtain.
Preacher had been in plenty of tight spots in his life, had been a hair’s-breadth away from death many times. Whenever that happened, the will to survive welled up inside him with overwhelming force. As Shugart choked him, he felt around on the broad wooden pedestal on which the anvil sat and after an interminably long moment closed his fingers around the handle of the blacksmith’s hammer.
Guided by instinct, he brought the hammer up and struck swiftly and savagely. He could tell by the impact and the crunch of bone as the hammer smashed into Shugart’s head that the fight was over. Shugart grunted and then let out a long sigh as his hands fell away from Preacher’s throat and he slumped forward, his suddenly dead weight threatening to keep the mountain man pinned to the anvil.
Grimacing in revulsion, Preacher shoved the corpse off himself and heard it thud on the ground. He pushed himself up, leaned on the anvil with one hand as once again he tried to catch his breath. He kept the hammer in his other hand, ready to strike if he needed to. He didn’t hear any other enemies moving around inside the stable or the blacksmith shop, though, just the skittish horses in their stalls.
A grim smile touched Preacher’s rugged face in the darkness. He would have to come back in the morning and apologize to Jean Paul Dufresne. The blacksmith was in for an unpleasant surprise when he found four dead men scattered around the place and a hammer smeared with blood and brains lying on the anvil!
CHAPTER 22
It took a rare woman to look as good at breakfast as she had the previous evening, but Simone LeCarde certainly fit that description, Preacher thought as Balthazar Crowe ushered him into the sitting room on the second floor of the Catamount’s Den.
Simone wore her hair down this morning, curving in two soft, raven-dark wings around her lovely face. A cloth belt cinched the dressing gown she wore tightly around her waist, but the gown hung open enough at the top to reveal the upper part of the intriguing valley between her breasts.
She spread some marmalade on a beignet, took a delicate bite, then set the pastry down on a saucer and picked up the cup of coffee beside it. After taking a sip, she said, “Please, Preacher, sit down and join me.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” the mountain man said. “I don’t want to seem ungrateful for the invitation, but do you have anything to eat besides them fancy little things? Like maybe a steak?”
Simone laughed softly. “I think that can be arranged.” She looked at Crowe. “You’ll see to it?”
“Of course, mam’selle,” he replied with a slight bow.
“Oh, and maybe some black coffee,” Preacher added as Crowe started past the table to leave the room.
“You don’t care for café au lait?” Simone asked with a smile.
Preacher grinned back across the table at her. “I like my coffee strong enough to get up and walk around on its own hind legs.”
That brou
ght another laugh from Simone. She said to Crowe, “See to that, too, Balthazar.”
Crowe nodded a little curtly and left the room.
“That fella don’t like me much,” Preacher commented when Crowe was gone.
“Balthazar is very protective of me. He and Long Sam promised my father that they would look after me and make certain no harm ever overtook me.”
“How are they succeedin’ so far?”
“Quite well, don’t you think? You can see the results for yourself.”
“That’s true,” Preacher said, nodding slowly. “You appear to be doin’ just fine.”
Simone moved the tray of beignets closer to him. “Are you sure you don’t want to try one?”
“Too sweet for me,” Preacher replied as he shook his head.
“I imagine where you spend most of your time, there are very few sweets.”
“That’s true. In the mountains, most of what a fella eats is pretty simple fare. You might come across some sweet berries now and then, but most of’em are pretty tart.”
“Like life itself,” Simone suggested.
Preacher shrugged.
She ate the rest of the pastry on the saucer in front of her, then said, “I suppose you’re wondering just what it is I want you to do for me.”
“The thought crossed my mind.”
“I have a warehouse where goods are stored,” Simone said.
Stolen goods, more than likely, Preacher thought, but he kept that to himself.
“I believe the man in charge of that warehouse has been cheating me,” she went on. “A shipment of goods will be leaving there today, to be loaded on a riverboat and sent north to St. Louis. I have a list of those goods, prepared for me by Francis Bennington. I’d like for you to go down there and keep track of everything that’s loaded on the wagons at the warehouse and transported to the docks.”
“Seems to me like Crowe or the little fella could handle that job just as well for you.”
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