Jack Iron (17 page)

“Smell the land,” said Jean Laffite, moving up to stand alongside McQueen. He turned and shielded his eyes as he checked to see that his flag, a skeleton dancing a jig upon crossed cutlass blades, was fluttering from atop the mainmast. “We’ll be dropping anchor off Morgan Town in about an hour… if the wind holds.”

“And then…” Kit said. The voyage had taken its toll on him as well. For six weeks he had enacted in his mind the punishment he intended for Cesar Obregon. He had never feared for Raven’s safety, oddly enough. Deep in his heart, Kit felt he understood Obregon. The man might be a rogue and a larcenous rascal, but his actions, however rash, were born of the privateer’s passion for the half-breed Choctaw. He certainly meant her no harm. But that wasn’t going to keep Kit McQueen from beating the bastard’s brains out if he got the chance.

“And then I trust you will allow me the opportunity to deal with Obregon. I wish to avoid violence. He will listen to me.” Laffite spoke calmly and with authority. Kit nodded. Reason overrode his quick temper. He considered Laffite’s request and wondered just how far the buccaneer could be trusted. Was he hoping to get his hands on General Jackson’s “gold”? If so, then Laffite was in for a rude awakening. And yet the captain of the
Malice
had been nothing but forthright and generous throughout the voyage. Maybe it was time to lay all the cards on the table and find out just where the players were sitting.

“The Hawk of the Antilles has found himself a splendid lair. The people of Morgan Town trust him. They have made decent lives for themselves. Many of the town’s best families are founded by freebooters who’ve managed to cheat the gallows and lowered their black flags for good,” said Laffite, his tone of voice uncharacteristically wistful.

“You envy them?” Kit said, turning to look at the legendary sea rover.

“That I do,” said Laffite. “When a man grows older, the wandering life loses its appeal. A man wants to belong to something. To build something. America is my chance. So I serve General Jackson and I receive a pardon for my… illustrious past… and I begin to build a respectable life. I aid an American officer to recover the woman he loves and I shall return the gold to Old Hickory.” Laffite hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his rust-colored waistcoat. He pursed his lips; for a moment he was lost in thought, imagining “Jean Laffite, respectable gentleman.” The notion had begun to sound good to him. “Why, I might even take a wife…” and then added with a chuckle, “Here and there.”

The aroma of fried salt pork and biscuits wafted through the doorway at the bow as Iron Hand O’Keefe, Harry Tregoning, and Nate Russell with Strikes With Club at his side emerged from the ship’s kitchen. O’Keefe held half a loaf of crusty bread in one hand and a sizzling chunk of fried pork spitted on his hook. Gorging himself was O’Keefe’s way of dealing with his anxieties. The closer he came to retrieving his daughter, the more worried he became and the hungrier he seemed. It was the inability to act that drove him frantic. Now, with Obregon’s island within sight, it was all the Irishman could do to keep from diving overboard and swimming for shore. He had waited long enough. The war chief of the Choctaw wanted Raven back. Now. But there was nothing he could do, at least not yet. So he kept his guns loaded and his belly filled, and waited.

Harry Tregoning nodded to McQueen and Laffite. The British marine arrived on deck with tea in hand. Kit overheard the Englishman as he continued his discourse on the nature of God and creation and the teachings of the Old Testament. Tregoning, with all the smug security of his Christian upbringing, had taken it upon himself to convert these heathen savages, thereby saving their souls. Tregoning seemed oblivious to the fact that Nate Russell had already been baptized and taken a Christian name. Poor Nate had received his share of Bible lessons from the marine. However, today, Harry Tregoning was concentrating his sanctimonious efforts on Strikes With Club, who had yet to see any merit in Tregoning’s beliefs. Of course, Strikes With Club was at his weakest, and Kit wondered how long the youngest of the two Choctaw would prevail.

“Now you see, God said to Adam that he could have anything in the garden, anything at all but the fruit of one tree. This special fruit was kept special and Adam and Eve were to leave it be,” the marine explained. “Now you understand so far?”

“Yes. The white man’s God does not wish to share. But the All-Father gives the Choctaw everything to use. All the forest is ours and the rivers and the animals that walk the ground or fly above us or swim in the rivers,” said Strikes With Club. He hurried his steps to the starboard side of the boat, putting as much distance between himself and O’Keefe’s salt pork as possible.

“He’s worse than having a Jesuit aboard,” Laffite muttered.

“You’ll note he avoids giving any lectures on the benefits of marital fidelity,” Kit said with a grin. He glanced toward the quarterdeck where Francis Luc Benard manned the ship’s wheel. The quarrelsome Benard brothers weren’t all that difficult to tell apart. Francis Luc was by nature even-tempered and stoic, while his brother Jean Baptiste was the brawler and had the scarred and battered features to prove it. “Will Francis Luc pilot us into the bay?”

“With me at his side,” Laffite said. He waved to one of his lieutenants, a sour-faced Frenchman with an autocratic bearing, who went by the name of Lesconflair. “Antoine… find Jean Baptiste and instruct him to see that the carronades are properly loaded and primed! Then take up position below-decks.” Four carronades had been loaded aboard in Barataria. The short-barreled deck guns fired a sixty-four-pound projectile and at close range were capable of inflicting massive damage on an opponent’s ship. Lesconflair nodded, brushed a trace of snuff from the front of his waistcoat, and replied with an “As you wish, Captain” before departing to carry out Laffite’s orders.

“Are you expecting trouble, Captain Laffite?” Kit asked. He had assumed the
Malice
was sailing into a friendly port.

“Always…
mon ami
.” Laffite touched his fingers to his forehead in a casual salute and then sauntered off toward the quarterdeck. The crew of the
Malice
gave way as the buccaneer passed. The anticipation of a fight swept through the crew, and several of the men cheered as Laffite’s shadow swept across them.

Kit watched with renewed respect how the cannoneers under Laffite’s command speedily readied their guns. Flannel cartridges of black powder were rammed down the black iron barrels, solid shot followed the powder, and for a fuse, shortened lengths of goose quills were filled with gunpowder and inserted into the priming holes at the rear of the cannon. One man in each gun crew was assigned the task of keeping a steady supply of the quills handy in a fight.

McQueen shifted his gaze to O’Keefe, Tregoning, and the Choctaws who made their way over to join him at the bow. Watching them approach, McQueen thought back to the departure from New Orleans. As the
Malice
had begun to slip away from the dock and head out into the wide muddy waters of the mighty Mississippi, Kit had huddled with his companions and revealed Andrew Jackson’s ruse, pointing out that Laffite might turn on them once he caught up with Obregon and discovered the truth about the stolen gold.

The four men refused to be put ashore. O’Keefe was determined to stay—after all, Raven was his daughter. The two Choctaw warriors were resolved to follow “Chief Iron Hand,” and as for Tregoning, a look of alarm did indeed cross his blunt homely features, but the marine shrugged off his concern and restated his intention to fight alongside his former foe. After six weeks at sea, Kit wondered if the marine still felt that way.

“We’ll be dropping anchor within the hour,” McQueen said.

“From the way these lads are making ready, we could be sailing into a fight.” Tregoning checked over his shoulder and then scratched at his bald pate. Just above the fringe of hair circling his head, the previously sunburned flesh had begun to dry and peel. The constant itching threatened to drive him to distraction.

“Then I hope you will be ready to meet your Christian God,” Strikes With Club added.

“Let me baptize you and you could enter heaven,” Tregoning said.

“Would my father and mother be there? Would my little sister, Star Leaf, meet me? And my warrior brothers, would they join in the hunt? No. Then why should I go?”

The marine sighed in exasperation. He studied O’Keefe and Kit with hapless wonderment. “How you managed to live among these people is beyond me.”

“I learned not to argue with them.” Kit chuckled.

“Does Laffite expect Obregon to be waiting for us?” asked O’Keefe. “I don’t fancy running under the bastard’s guns without I get a chance to put a lick in for myself.”

“We’ll find out when we put into Morgan Town,” said Kit.

“Why not come around the island and put in at Obregon Cove?” asked Strikes With Club. To the brave’s relief, O’Keefe gobbled the last of the pork from his hook. The warrior’s belly was shrunk from the pitifully little amounts of food he had been able to keep down.

“Laffite needs to find someone in Morgan Town who will guide us through the reefs guarding the approach to the pirate’s sugar plantation,” Kit explained.

“It will please me to walk the land again,” Nate interjected. He lifted his eyes to the great expanse of water.

“You, too?” said Strikes With Club. “Yet you have not suffered as I. You have taken your meals in peace.”

“Do not think because my belly is without pain that my heart is light,” Nate told the young warrior. “The spirits of the dead have spoken to me in dreams. They watch us from below the Great Water and have called me by name.”

“I did not know…” said Strikes With Club, taken aback by the older man’s revelation.

“I reckon the trail to wisdom is blazed with the words ‘I didn’t know,’” said Kit, disconcerted by the warrior’s admission. He prayed to God he hadn’t led these men to their doom. “All of you should have remained behind,” he concluded.

“The hell you say,” O’Keefe interjected.

“Here, here,” said Harry Tregoning. “Who knows? Why, there might be some rather comely ladies in Morgan Town just pining to make the acquaintance of a proper Englishman.” His eyes began to twinkle at the very notion of a veritable bevy of love-starved island wenches weary of these buccaneers and their clumsy, rough-edged advances. “Never let it be said that Harry Tregoning doesn’t know how to court a lady, proper.”

“Bed but never wed,” Kit added with a grin.

“Precisely, Lieutenant. Precisely.”

Kit turned to face the island. The sun warmed his face. The sea breeze fanned his unruly red hair. The motion of the ship had not affected him; Kit had been to sea before. Indeed, his heart would have soared at the prospect of adventure but for the fact that Raven was in danger.

He blamed himself in part for Raven’s abduction. She had wanted to come to the breastworks and join in the battle. As a favor to Kit, she had reluctantly agreed to stay with the widow LeBeouf. He had wanted her to be safe. She had admonished her lover that the only safe people were asleep in the graveyards, and yet Raven had complied with his wishes and remained in town… right where Obregon could find her.

Kit resolved that whatever else happened in their lives, he and Raven would confront things together. It dawned on him what he was thinking, and yes, he refused to deny the feelings. He wanted to spend his life with Raven. Kit McQueen loved this half-breed medicine woman more than his life. The enormity of his emotions had never struck him till this moment. He must find her. He must free her and hold her in his arms and speak what was in his heart. Nothing was going to stop him, not the sea and its mysteries, not the island like a fortress in the sun, and certainly not Cesar Obregon, the Hawk of the Antilles.

“H
E ISN’T HERE,” LAFFITE
called down from the quarterdeck to Kit standing at the port side, rifle cradled in the crook of his left arm. “Obregon’s ship is the
Windthrift
,” the buccaneer added. The schooner they had just passed bore the name
Carib.
Laffite studied it a moment, then dismissed his suspicions.

Kit nodded, and waved his hand. “Then we’ll find a pilot and head for Obregon Cove.” He glanced over his shoulder at the brig lying at anchor off the starboard. “
Scourge
,” he read aloud. And beyond the brig, another vessel rose and settled with the oncoming tide.

“The
Homeward
is unknown to me,” Laffite shouted. “But the
Scourge
can belong to none other than Orturo Navarre. So be on your best behavior, Lieutenant, or the Cayman may have you for dinner.”

“I don’t understand,” Kit said to Francis Luc, the Cajun-born gunner. “Is this Navarre so sociable he invites his enemies to his feast?”

“Ah,
mon ami
, in a manner of speaking. His enemies
are
the feast. Navarre favors the ‘long pig,’
comprendre
?” Francis Luc made a noisy sucking sound like a man gnawing a bone and draining it of marrow. “He is a cannibal.” The pirate threw back his head and cackled merrily.

“Bless my soul,” Tregoning said. “If Navarre’s got a missus, point her out and I’ll be certain to keep my distance.” The marine was convinced he was irresistible to women. It was his cross to bear. He had no doubt that a cannibal made the worst kind of jealous husband.

“If he gets in my way, I’ll hand him his own liver for lunch,” O’Keefe glowered. He had no desire to confront this Cayman, but he wasn’t about to quake in his boots.

“Pray you don’t get the chance,” Francis Luc replied, and blessed himself to ward off misfortune.

“No. Let
him
pray,” Kit retorted, patting the walnut stock of his rifle. The Cajun gunner studied the lieutenant as if reassessing McQueen’s abilities. Kit ignored the man’s scrutiny. He felt no desire to prove himself, nor was he given to foolish brags. He was simply a man who was confident of his own abilities. In his thirty years, Kit McQueen had fought the British, the Creeks, raided the Barbary Coast, and plundered a caliph’s treasure, been shipwrecked, and cheated a Spanish firing squad. His torso might be scarred, but his honor was unblemished. He had never backed down from a fight, not if the cause was just, and he wasn’t about to start now. “Tell me,
monsieur
, how shall I know this man Navarre?”