“Hold your fire!” Preacher yelled. “I’m on your side, blast it!”
Both men came to a stop facing each other. Crowe’s face wore a look of open astonishment. “Preacher!” he exclaimed, then glanced at the trees where a battle was raging and added, “Then who—”
“Jabez Sampson and some of his pirate crew,” Preacher explained. “He’s double-crossing Simone and trying to take over. I found out about it and came back to stop him.”
Crowe frowned and rumbled, “You’d help her, after what she did?”
“I got a score to settle with her, but a bigger one with Sampson. Those are friends of mine tusslin’ with that no-good bunch right now, along with Long Sam. He’ll vouch for me once this is over.”
With guns roaring nearby, Crowe couldn’t take long to ponder the situation. The fact that a rifle ball suddenly hummed wickedly through the air between them hurried his decision. He whirled toward the trees and brandished the pistols. “Come on!”
Side by side, Preacher and Crowe charged into the fracas. Rifle and pistol balls whined through the branches and thudded into tree trunks. One of Sampson’s men loomed in front of them, grimacing as he tried to bring a pistol to bear. Preacher would have shot him, but Balthazar Crowe was quicker. The giant’s left-hand gun blasted, and Sampson’s man flew backward as the ball smashed into his chest.
An instant later, Preacher fired, too, but his shot passed close by Crowe’s head. Crowe glared at him in surprise, then saw a rifleman’s body tumbling out of the brush where he’d been drawing a bead on the huge black man. Preacher had spotted him just in time to save Crowe’s life. Realizing that, Crowe jerked his head in a curt nod of gratitude.
They forged on, into a madhouse of noise and powder smoke, trying to root out the rest of the attackers.
The melee continued for several minutes. Preacher and Crowe each gunned down another of the attackers. The man Preacher shot had a cutlass shoved behind his belt. Preacher didn’t know where he’d gotten it—the man hadn’t had it when he’d been set adrift from the Calypso with Sampson and the others—but he took it from the corpse and grinned as he hefted it.
“I sort of like these big pigstickers,” he commented.
He got to use it as another of Sampson’s men charged out of the brush at him, rifle lifted to strike at him with the butt. Preacher whirled and thrust with the cutlass, which went into the man’s gut with surprising ease. The entrails spilled out as Preacher ripped the blade loose.
“Balthazar! Balthazar!”
The anxious shout made Preacher and Crowe wheel around. Long Sam panted up to them. His face and the bandage around his head were grimy from powder smoke, but he didn’t appear to be any the worse for wear since the last time Preacher had seen him.
“Long Sam!” Crowe rumbled. “What happened? Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Sampson’s bunch raided the Catamount’s Den and then headed out here when they found out where mam’selle was. Is she all right?”
“She was when I left the house,” Crowe said.
Chimney, Tyler, and the rest of the men came up behind Long Sam. Echoes from the gunfire still lingered, but no fresh shots rang out, telling Preacher the battle was over. Some of the men sported scrapes and bloodstains from minor wounds, but he was relieved to see that all of them had made it through the battle.
Then Tyler asked, “Where’s Sampson? Have you seen him?”
“You fellas didn’t get him?”
“We never laid eyes on the varmint,” Chimney said. “We was hopin’ you put him down like the mad dog he is, Preacher.”
A bad feeling welled up inside the mountain man. He had just started to shake his head when more shots blasted, coming from the direction of the plantation house.
Every instinct in Preacher’s body told him that was where Jabez Sampson was. Abner Rowland might be there, too, if he had escaped from that alligator.
And that was where Simone LeCarde was, as well.
CHAPTER 44
Preacher and Balthazar Crowe led the charge back toward the house, bounding right over the pair of steps leading from the portico to the entrance. Crowe flung the heavy wooden doors open as if they weighed next to nothing but then abruptly skidded to a halt on the marble floor. Preacher came to a stop alongside him.
On the other side of the large entrance hall, Jabez Sampson stood with his left arm around Simone’s waist, holding her tightly against him while his right hand pressed a pistol against her ribs. His captain’s cap was gone, and blood trickled down his cheek from a gash on his forehead, but he didn’t appear to be badly hurt.
He grinned. “I figured you boys would be right along, if my men didn’t manage to wipe ye out.”
Preacher’s gaze darted around the entrance hall, quickly taking in the rest of the scene. Over near the marble staircase that curved up to the second floor, Colonel August Osborne stood with Abner Rowland pointing a pistol at him. Nearby, on the steps themselves, Edmund Cornelius lay crumpled, his head supported on Lucy Tarleton’s lap as she sat with him. A large, dark bloodstain was visible on Cornelius’s white shirt. He had been shot or knifed in the belly but was still alive, wide-eyed and gasping in pain.
“I see you got away from that gator,” Preacher said to Rowland.
“No thanks to you,” the tattooed man snarled. His hat was gone, so the inked patterns on his bald head were more visible than ever.
“Likely you would’ve made him sick to his stomach anyway.”
Sampson snapped, “That’s enough banter. I want this business settled—now! Where’s Simon LeCarde?”
Simone began to laugh. “You fool! Haven’t you figured it out by now? There is no Simon LeCarde! I have no brother. There’s only me, and I run this gang!”
Sampson frowned at her. Preacher saw the surprise in the burly pirate’s eyes.
Sampson muttered, “I knew old Catamount Jack had a daughter, too, but I never thought—”
“That’s right. You didn’t,” Simone broke in. “Because you’re an idiot. All of you were. You took the orders from ‘Simon’ that Balthazar relayed to you and never dreamed they were coming from me.”
Sampson tightened the arm around her waist enough to make her wince. “It don’t matter,” he declared. “Simon or Simone, your days of runnin’ things around here are over. I’m the boss now, and Abner there is my second in command. ’Tis time for us to get rich.”
“That will never happen,” Simone declared confidently. “My organization will never follow you.”
“They’ll follow whoever brings them the most loot, and ye know it.”
Preacher suspected that Sampson was right about that. He’d heard the old saying about honor among thieves, but he’d never seen much evidence of such a thing in real life.
He saw the way Simone kept glancing at him from time to time. She was astounded to see him back in Louisiana when she expected him to be exiled on San Patricio. But there was no time to worry about any of that. The menace of Sampson and Rowland was much more pressing.
“Now, here’s the way things are gonna go,” Sampson continued. “All of ye are gonna leave here except for you, Crowe. Ye’ll saddle two horses, and then Abner and me are ridin’ away from here with the lady. Ye can find her later at the Catamount’s Den, where she’ll hold a meetin’ of all her lieutenants and inform them that she’s turnin’ the business over to us.”
“That will never happen,” Simone told him coldly.
“’Tis the best deal ye’ll ever get, lass. Otherwise we kill ye here and now.”
“If you do, you’ll never walk out of here alive.”
“Then I reckon nobody’ll get the business, but ye’ll still be dead, won’t ye?”
Simone looked at Crowe and said, “Don’t do it, Balthazar. That’s an order. Listen to me. You, too, Long Sam. And Preacher. Preacher, I have no right to ask anything of you, but please, all of you . . . don’t allow these animals to get away with what they’re trying to do.”
Rowland said, “That’s some high-and-mighty talk for a woman. Why don’t you just go ahead and shoot her, Cap’n? I’m willin’ to take my chances.”
“No, lad. They’re gonna give in,” Sampson said. “They’ve no choice, no matter what this strumpet says.” He added a particularly foul oath describing Simone.
Preacher expected the standoff to break one way or another, but when it did, the break came from an unlikely source.
In response to Sampson’s obscenity, Colonel Osborne shouted, “Sir, I can stand no more!” and rushed Rowland.
Instead of firing, the tattooed man lashed out with the gun in his hand and slammed it against Osborne’s head, sending the old man spinning off his feet. Sampson’s eyes turned involuntarily in that direction
Sensing that his attention was diverted for a split second, Simone grabbed the barrel of his pistol and shoved it down. The gun went off with a roar, counterpointed by her cry of pain.
At the same time, Balthazar Crowe flung himself forward. Crossing the entrance hall in two bounds, he crashed into Sampson and jolted the pirate captain away from Simone, who crumpled to the floor as she clutched at her wounded leg.
Rowland swung the pistol toward Preacher, who drew back his arm and threw the cutlass. Rowland pulled the trigger and the pistol boomed as the cutlass buried itself in his chest with a solid thunk! The shot went high and wild, shattering a crystal chandelier hanging in the entrance hall.
As the broken crystal showered down, Rowland staggered to the side, dropped the empty pistol, and pawed at the cutlass. Blood poured from the wound as he pulled the blade free. He fell to his knees, and the cutlass clattered on the marble in front of him.
Preacher scooped it up again and rested the point against Rowland’s bloody chest.
Rowland glared up at him and rasped, “You never did . . . beat me . . . hand to hand . . . in a fair fight.”
Preacher said, “As long as you’re dead, you sorry varmint, I don’t much care how you got that way.”
Then, as Rowland’s eyes rolled up in their sockets and his final breath rattled in his throat, Preacher pushed him over backward with the cutlass. Rowland sprawled on the marble floor, limp in death.
Preacher turned to see Balthazar Crowe rising from a huddled shape that had been Jabez Sampson, whose head sat at a grotesquely unnatural angle on his shoulders. Preacher figured Crowe had come close to twisting it off before Sampson died.
Long Sam had already rushed to Simone’s side. He knelt beside her and supported her head and shoulders as he cried, “Mam’selle! Mam’selle!”
“I . . . I’m all right, Long Sam,” she told him. She was pale and shaken but composed. Her dress was bloody but not excessively so. “That shot . . . just grazed my leg. I’ll be fine.”
“Balthazar!” Long Sam called. “Come help me with the mam’selle!”
Knowing that Simone was in good hands for the moment, Preacher went over to Colonel Osborne and helped the old man to his feet.
Osborne had a bloody lump on his head from being clouted with Rowland’s gun, but he said, “I’m all right, sir. I must help tend to Mademoiselle LeCarde.”
Preacher let him do that and turned toward the stairs where Edmund Cornelius still lay gasping with Lucy Tarleton beside him. She glared defiantly at Preacher, who stood over them still holding the bloody cutlass.
Cornelius was the one who spoke, though. “Go ahead . . . kill me. Avenge . . . your friend. Isn’t that . . . what you want to do?”
“The thought crossed my mind,” Preacher admitted. “But I’ve seen plenty of men gut-hurt like that, and not many of ’em survived. So I reckon you’re done for, anyway, Cornelius. What I want to know is how you got shot.”
Lucy answered that angrily. “He was trying to defend Mademoiselle LeCarde. He tried to fight off those horrible men when they came bursting in. Doesn’t that count for anything?”
“He knifed my friend and left him for dead,” Preacher said. “Doin’ one good thing don’t square up a lifetime of bein’ a thief and a killer.” The mountain man shrugged. “But I reckon it’s that much on the other side of the scale. Don’t really matter now anyway.”
Lucy looked down at Cornelius’s face and cried out. The life had gone out of the man’s eyes.
“Preacher.”
He heard Simone call his name and turned to see that Crowe had picked her up in his massive arms and was cradling her like a child.
“Preacher, I want to tell you . . . I regretted what I’d done, once you were gone. In my zeal to keep my secret, I . . . I went too far. I’m glad to see that you’re alive. We have much to talk about, you and I, once all this”—wearily, she waved a hand at the carnage around them—“once all this is cleaned up.”
Preacher just nodded. He didn’t say anything as Crowe turned and carried Simone up the stairs, followed by Long Sam and Colonel Osborne.
Let her think what she wanted, he mused, but as far as he could see, the two of them didn’t have a whole lot to say to each other.
St. Louis, ten days later
“Are you sure I can’t convince you to come with me?” Charlie Todd asked. “Just for a visit? I’m sure my family would like to meet you.”
Preacher smiled and shook his head. “No, if I’m gonna make it back to the mountains ’fore it gets too late in the season, I’d best get a move on.”
“The next time you see Hawk, give him my best wishes.”
“I sure will,” Preacher promised.
Charlie looked a little gaunt. He had lost quite a bit of weight while he was recuperating from his injury, but his face was starting to fill out again and he had gotten some of his color back. By the time he reached his home in Virginia, he probably wouldn’t be completely recovered, but he would be a lot closer.
The two of them stood on the dock next to where a riverboat was tied up. Soon, that boat would be heading downriver to New Orleans, and Charlie would be on it. Once he was there, he would board a ship that would take him through the Gulf of Mexico, around Florida, and eventually to Virginia.
Preacher hoped the vessel wouldn’t run into any pirates along the way. Simone had promised him she would spread the word that whatever ship Charlie wound up taking was under her protection. Preacher figured that was the least she could do.
She had done more, though. The money in Charlie’s poke came from her. She had paid it out of her own coffers, refusing to make Lucy Tarleton turn over what was left of the money she and Cornelius had stolen from Charlie.
Preacher thought back to their last conversation.
“She’ll have a hard enough life from here on out, now that Cornelius is gone,” Simone insisted. “Girls like her always need some man to tell them what to do.”
“Just the opposite of you, eh?” Preacher asked as he sat with Simone in her quarters, sharing dinner with her.
“Are you worried that if you stay, I’ll try to tell you what to do?” She laughed. “Don’t be, Preacher. That would never happen.”
“Whether it would or wouldn’t don’t make any difference. I’m a mountain man, and that’s where I’m headed.”
He told her everything that had happened on the Calypso and in Cuba.
She told him Chimney Matthews was the new captain of the sloop, but only until he took it back to Verdugo, where he and Tyler would remain, Chimney to live out the rest of his life in peace as he had dreamed of, Tyler to see if there truly was anything between himself and Estellita.
“I wish them both well,” Preacher said.
Simone made the argument that she needed someone like him to make sure no one else in her organization ever tried to double-cross her again, but as far as he was concerned, that was her worry, not his.
“You have two very loyal and capable lieutenants in Balthazar Crowe and Long Sam,” Preacher pointed out. “There aren’t many problems those two can’t handle.”
Simone smiled at him over the glass of wine in her hand and asked, “Is there nothing I can d
o to make you change your mind? I can be very persuasive when I want to.”
“Yeah, I recollect that,” Preacher said as he got to his feet. “But it’s time for me to go.”
She stood up and came around the table to him, limping slightly on her wounded leg. She put her arms around him and murmured, “Take my memory with you when you go, then.”
Watching Charlie board the riverboat, Preacher stood to wave good-bye to his young friend as the boat pulled away from the dock and its paddle wheel churned the waters of the Mississippi. He waited until it had gone out of sight before he turned and smiled at the sight of Horse and Dog waiting for him at the end of the dock.
He had taken Simone’s memory with him, all right, along with the memory of the cat-o’-nine-tails biting into his flesh, the stink of the swamp, the gut-clenching revulsion of feeling a rattlesnake writhing on his shoulder, the terror of those gaping alligator jaws coming at him, and the sheer evil of Jabez Sampson and Abner Rowland. Preacher had found treachery and brutality in Louisiana and at sea, balanced somewhat by the friendship of Tyler, Chimney, Jean Paul Dufresne, Roger Flynn, and Estellita. No matter where a man went, he would find good and bad, and the best he could do was hope that in the end, the good would outweigh the bad.
One thing was for sure, he thought as he walked toward his four-legged trail partners and friends, getting back to the high country, seeing those snow-capped peaks, and breathing that clean mountain air would help.
Keep reading for a special preview of the new
Smoke Jensen western epic!
National Bestselling Authors
WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE
and J. A. JOHNSTONE
BLOODY TRAIL OF THE MOUNTAIN MAN
If there’s one thing Smoke Jensen hates, it’s a man who fights dirty. And no one fights dirtier than a politician. Especially a lying, cheating, no-good grifter like Senator Rex Underhill. Luckily, with another election coming up, this senatorial snake in the grass has some serious competition: Smoke’s old friend, Sheriff Monte Carson. Carson’s an honest man, and he’s got Smoke’s full support. But Underhill’s got support, too: a squad of hired guns ready to hit the campaign trail—and stain it red with blood . . .
Preacher's Frenzy Page 27