“I’d advise you not to do anything else to bring yourselves to my attention, at least in the near future,” she added to the crooked pair.
“Of course,” Cornelius murmured. He took hold of Lucy’s arm and steered her out of the sitting room. Both of them looked glad to be leaving as they followed Long Sam from the room.
“Balthazar, you stay here,” Simone ordered. She stepped away from the table and went closer to Preacher. “I really did have high hopes for our association. Our . . . friendship, if you will. Otherwise I never would have revealed my secret to you. But you didn’t really care about me. All you wanted was to find those two thieves, wasn’t it?”
“That’s why I came to New Orleans,” Preacher said. He wasn’t going to lie to her, try to weasel his way out of this predicament with honeyed words. But he wasn’t lying when he added, “I was mighty glad the two of us seemed to be gettin’ along so well, though.”
Her lips tightened again. “If you had found Cornelius and the woman first . . . ?”
“I would’ve dealt with ’em. Wouldn’t have been no need to bring you into it.”
“And then you would have gone back to St. Louis.” Simone’s voice was flat, accusatory.
“I would’ve had to see how Charlie’s doin’. And he needs money to get back to Virginia, where he comes from. After that . . .” Preacher shrugged. “Reckon I’d have headed for the mountains again.”
“To spend the winter with some . . . some Indian squaw?”
Preacher didn’t say anything.
“You and I could have worked well together,” Simone said after a moment. “It’s a shame your ulterior motive has ruined all that.”
“I’m sorry if I hurt your feelin’s. That wasn’t part of the plan.”
“My feelings aren’t hurt!” She laughed, but Preacher could tell the sound wasn’t genuine. She might be a ruthless criminal, but she felt like a woman scorned, whether she wanted to admit it or not. “I’m fine. Just annoyed that now I have to deal with this problem.”
“And how do you figure on doin’ that?” Preacher’s muscles were tense, ready to move. He didn’t believe she would order Balthazar Crowe to shoot him in the back, right in the middle of her sitting room, but if her eyes flicked toward the big man, Preacher was prepared to act fast. Turning, drawing his pistols, and firing before Crowe could get a shot off would be difficult, but maybe not impossible.
“I’m not going to have you killed. There are other ways to handle this.”
“I told you, I ain’t gonna promise to leave town and not bother those two thieves—”
“You don’t have to promise,” Simone said, “but you will be leaving New Orleans.”
Preacher suddenly knew she had made up her mind what she was going to do before Crowe and Long Sam even took him up there. She had to side with Cornelius and Lucy. Her reputation depended on it.
But maybe she really did feel something for him. Maybe what he had sensed between them the previous night hadn’t all been false, on either side. She didn’t want to just have him killed outright, but she had to do something—
Those thoughts flashed through his mind in a fraction of a second. Simone hadn’t given any signal to Crowe as far as Preacher could see, but he knew he needed to act anyway. He had started to whirl around when he felt a sharp sting on the side of his neck. Preacher reached up automatically, felt the tiny, feathered dart stuck in his flesh.
“A little something from the islands where my father used to sail,” Simone said. “A trick he picked up from the natives and taught to Balthazar.”
Preacher reached for his pistols, but his muscles didn’t seem to obey his brain’s commands, and his movements were incredibly slow. Crowe’s rapid footsteps were slow and echoing in Preacher’s ears. The room felt hollow, and so did he. He finally managed to turn around, just in time to see Crowe’s enormous fist looming larger and larger as it came toward his face.
Preacher felt the impact of that fist, but he wasn’t aware of hitting the floor. He was already out cold when that happened.
CHAPTER 24
Water sloshed in Preacher’s face, filling his nose and mouth and making him sputter as he jerked his head up to get away from it. He got a bit of relief, but then the world shifted under him and the water washed over his head again. In addition to almost drowning him, the vile, oily, scummy taste of it gagged him and made his stomach wrench in protest. When he got his head above the surface, he spewed out what he had just swallowed.
He tried to paw at his eyes and wipe the nasty stuff out of them, too, but he couldn’t raise either hand. As awareness and understanding began to seep back into his brain, he realized that his arms were pulled back painfully and his wrists were lashed together behind his back. He attempted to kick his feet and found that his ankles were bound, as well.
He forced his eyes open and blinked them rapidly. After a few moments, his vision cleared, but he couldn’t see much. Thick shadows wrapped around him in the gloomy darkness. Here and there a thin shaft of brilliant sunlight slanted through the gloom. The light came in through cracks between the boards that formed his prison, wherever that might be.
Gradually, as he twisted around and worked his way into a sitting position with his back braced against a slimy surface behind him, Preacher’s brain began to work again. He heard creaking and slapping sounds, and the water-covered surface on which he had been lying constantly tilted back and forth beneath him. The water was only a few inches deep, he saw as his eyes adjusted more to the poor light, but he had almost drowned in it anyway.
He was in the hold of a ship, and based on what he was experiencing, it had to be at sea.
It wasn’t Preacher’s first time on a seagoing vessel, but his experience in such matters was very limited. Luckily, he had a strong stomach, or he might already be heaving his guts out. It could still come to that, he thought.
He shook his head to get his wet hair out of his eyes. If he had more trouble headed in his direction, as seemed likely, he wanted to be able to see it coming.
As he sat there breathing hard, he thought about the dire situation and how he had come to be in it. The last thing he remembered before waking up with that bilgewater in his face was being in Simone LeCarde’s sitting room on the upstairs floor of the Catamount’s Den. Simone had honored her deal to protect Edmund Cornelius and Lucy Tarleton by getting rid of Preacher. She had claimed that she wasn’t going to kill him, and clearly, she hadn’t.
But he was willing to bet he was no longer in New Orleans, just as she had said would be the case.
The questions were, what ship was he on—and where was it bound?
He listened and heard footsteps and voices overhead. Shadows occasionally blocked the shafts of sunlight coming through the cracks. The ship’s crew was at work as the wind took the vessel wherever it was going.
Time passed interminably. Preacher began to wonder if his captors had forgotten he was down there. Maybe they were just giving him a chance to drown and would come into the hold later to retrieve his body and pitch it into the ocean.
A little while after that grim thought went through his mind, blinding light suddenly spilled around him. Someone had lifted a hatch in the deck. A ladder was lowered into the hold and booted feet and thick legs clad in canvas trousers descended the rungs. Preacher squinted against the glare and watched as the man reached the bottom of the ladder and turned toward him.
The man had a thick torso and prominent gut under a short blue jacket. A black cap was pushed back on a thatch of curly, graying brown hair. Beard stubble grizzled his beefy face. He leered at Preacher, revealing square yellow teeth.
“You’re awake, are ye?” the man rasped. “When the African brought ye on board, ye seemed half dead from whatever foul concoction he’d stuck you with. I wasn’t sure if ye’d even wake up. Not that ol’ Balthazar would’ve cared if you didn’t. That boy don’t like you, son.”
Preacher found his voice, but it wasn’t easy. His mou
th and throat were so dry and his tongue felt swollen to twice its normal size. He sounded rusty to himself as he said, “I know that. I ain’t sure how he managed to stick me with that dart, though.”
The visitor waved a hand with fingers like short, stubby sausages. “Oh, he has a little wooden tube he uses to blow them darts. Them Africans all know how to do that, and so do them Indians out in the Caribees. A lot of them devils are half African, at least, you know.”
Preacher shook his head. “I don’t know a thing about that.”
The man laughed and said, “I reckon ye wouldn’t. From what I been told, you’re one of them frontiersman. Ye know about the mountains and the red Injuns and grizzle bears and the like, ain’t that right?”
“I’ve fought a griz or two in my time.”
“I wouldn’t mind seein’ something like that. Bet it’s a pretty good show. No grizzle bears where you’re goin’, though.”
“And where’s that?” Preacher asked.
“You’ll find out when the time comes. Until then, there ain’t no need to worry about it.” The man put his hands on his hips. “You know who I am?”
“No earthly idea.”
“Name’s Sampson. Jabez Sampson. I’m the master of this ship, the cap’n of—”
“The Calypso,” Preacher interrupted, remembering the story Simone had told him about her father’s ship.
Sampson looked a little surprised. “Aye. The finest, fastest sloop in gulf waters.”
“That would make you a pirate.”
Sampson frowned and drew back, clearly offended by that statement. “This is a trading vessel,” he declared, “and I be an honest trader, just like ol’ Catamount Jack afore me.”
Preacher just grunted. Sampson could tell himself whatever lies he wanted to, but Preacher didn’t believe any honest man would work for Simone LeCarde.
After a moment, he asked, “So what am I doin’ here? Are you supposed to murder me and drop me over the side?”
“Nobody said nothin’ about murder. Might as well go ahead and tell ye, I suppose. Accordin’ to the African, Monsieur LeCarde wants ye taken to his sugar plantation on the island of San Patricio. You’ll work as a member of me crew on the way there, and once we reach the island, you’ll work on the plantation. It’ll be a hard life, lad, devil if it won’t be, but better than dyin’, eh?”
Preacher wasn’t so sure about that. Being condemned to spend the rest of his days on some godforsaken sugar plantation on an isolated island, with no way off . . . sounded like pure torture to him, who had always lived his life roaming free.
“I don’t reckon I’ve got any choice in the matter?”
“Well . . . I suppose ye could always jump overboard. No one’ll try to stop ye. But then you’d have to swim miles and miles through shark-infested waters to reach land again. If ye believe you’re up to that task . . .” Sampson shrugged.
The captain was right, Preacher thought. He was trapped as effectively as if he’d been locked away in a prison cell. There was no point in fighting because there was nowhere to go.
He had seldom experienced despair in his life. Hardly ever, in fact. And he didn’t give in to it now. Resolve stiffened inside him. Surrendering to fate wasn’t in his nature. Biding his time, waiting for the right moment to strike back—that he could do.
“I reckon I’ve got just one question,” he said.
“What’s that, son?”
“You think I could get somethin’ to drink? This mouth o’ mine tastes and feels like somethin’ curled up and died in it.”
Sampson’s face split in a grin as he brayed, “Haw, haw! Now you’re talkin’, son! I’ll have some of the lads cut you loose and bring you up to the deck. Things may not look very good to ye right now, but I guarantee they’ll look a wee bit better after a couple of swallows of rum!” He turned and went up the ladder with a catlike grace that belied his bulky build.
Preacher leaned back against the hull and waited.
Only a couple of minutes passed before heavy footsteps sounded above his head and then more legs appeared coming down the ladder. The first man to reach the bottom turned toward Preacher and grinned, revealing blackened stubs of teeth. He was lean to the point of gauntness with lank hair the color of straw. He had a knife tucked behind the length of rope tied around his scrawny waist that served as a belt.
The second man was a lot bigger and more muscular. His feet were bare, his long legs clad in tight canvas trousers, and he wore only a brown vest above the waist, no shirt. As he came farther down the ladder, Preacher spotted the tattoos on the back of his neck and stiffened. The tattoos climbed under the flat-topped beaver hat perched on a head that appeared to be bald except for the ink.
The man reached the bottom of the ladder and turned toward Preacher. A grin stretched across his ugly face. Abner Rowland, the keelboater Preacher had battled to a draw in Rancid Dave’s tavern, said, “Remember me?” and added a vile obscenity. “When I saw who it was that big darkie was bringin’ on board, I couldn’t believe my luck!”
CHAPTER 25
“What’re you doin’ here, Rowland?” Preacher asked. The dryness of his mouth and throat made his voice a croak, which annoyed him.
“I got tired of that blasted river. No real challenge to it. I used to be a seafarin’ man, so when we got to New Orleans this last time, I went lookin’ for a berth on a real ship. Never figured we’d wind up sailin’ on the same one!”
“Cap’n said we was to cut him loose and get him up on deck,” the other man reminded Rowland. He reached for the knife at his waist. “We better get to it.”
Rowland stuck out a brawny arm and held it across the man’s chest to bar his way. He held out his other hand and said, “Gimme that knife.”
The man frowned. “What’re you gonna do with it?”
“Follow orders, of course.” The evil smirk on Rowland’s face seemed to say something else, however.
“I dunno . . .”
“Give me the blasted knife, Finch,” Rowland snapped.
The sailor called Finch still hesitated, but only for a couple of seconds. Then he shrugged his narrow shoulders and pulled the knife from the rope belt and slapped the handle in Rowland’s outstretched palm.
Preacher drew his knees up. With his hands tied behind his back, he couldn’t put up much of a fight but rather than just sit there and meekly allow Abner Rowland to cut his throat, Preacher planned to kick the varmint where it would do the most good. He’d make Rowland work at killing him.
As Rowland approached, though, he said, “Take it easy, Preacher. I’m not gonna do anything except what Cap’n Sampson told us to do. But I could. I could carve you from gizzard to gullet if I wanted to.”
“You could try,” Preacher said.
Rowland snorted, then turned and handed the knife back to Finch. “You go cut him loose. I might scare him to death, gettin’ that close to him with a knife, and the cap’n might be upset.”
Finch looked nervous as he approached the mountain man and said, “Don’t try anything, now. I’ll cut your feet loose first and then your hands, all right?”
“Just get it done,” Preacher growled. “I’m gettin’ a mite cramped up, sittin’ here in this dirty water.”
The knife sawed quickly through the cords around Preacher’s ankles. He leaned forward to allow Finch to cut the ones around his wrists. He could have taken the knife away from the skinny sailor then and killed Finch, and there was a good chance he could have disposed of Rowland, too.
But then what would he do? Kill Sampson and the rest of the Calypso’s crew? That seemed pretty unlikely. Even if he managed to carry out such a slaughter against overwhelming odds, could he sail the ship back to New Orleans? That was an even more farfetched idea.
He had to give Simone credit. If she wanted to get rid of him without actually killing him, this was a pretty effective way of doing so.
“All right. Get up,” Rowland ordered when Preacher’s hands and feet were fr
ee and Finch had backed off out of reach.
Leaning against the hull, Preacher pushed himself up. His legs, arms, and hands were mostly numb. He flexed his fingers to get the blood flowing again. A fierce sensation of pins and needles went through his extremities, but he didn’t show any signs of discomfort on his rugged face.
“You look strong enough to me to climb that ladder by yourself,” Rowland said. “Get moving.”
Slowly, Preacher went up the ladder into the hold below the surface deck, then climbed another ladder into the sunshine, glad to be out of the damp, gloomy bilge even though the brightness half blinded him.
Blinking, he stepped out onto the deck and looked around. Simone had said that the Calypso was a sloop, he recalled, but he didn’t know exactly what that meant. What he saw was a ship with a single mast rising from the deck about a third of the way along from the front to the back. The bow and the stern? Was that what they were called? Preacher knew what port and starboard meant, but beyond that, he was pretty much lost when it came to nautical terms.
The Calypso had three smaller, triangular sails rigged before the mast, and two larger ones behind it. All of them bulged with the wind that filled them. The vessel was about sixty feet long, Preacher guessed, and had a cabin at the rear with a short set of steps leading down a few feet into it. Half a dozen small cannon were lined up along each side, their barrels thrust through gaps designed for that purpose. He also saw openings along the sides that he took to be oarlocks, but they didn’t have any oars in them at the moment.
Men were aloft in the rigging, doing things with the sails and lines that made no sense to him. Others scurried around the deck. He didn’t know how many were aboard—several dozen, at least. Captain Jabez Sampson stood on the deck that formed the ceiling of the cabin at the rear of the ship. A crewman was beside him, his arm draped casually over the long handle of the steering tiller that extended behind the Calypso.
A strong, steady wind carried the sloop along at what seemed like a fast clip.
Preacher turned his head to look from side to side, then slowly came around in a circle. Nothing but blue water and blue sky, as far as the eye could see in every direction. His heart began to pound a little harder. He didn’t like being out there . . . on the ocean. He didn’t like it one little bit.
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