Sword of Vengeance (21 page)

Tibbs took another pull on the bottle. A knock sounded softly at his door. He strode over to a heavy oaken table on which was strewn a map, an oil lamp, pistols and shot, a few coins, and a plate of congealed stew beside a cup of cold coffee. He sat in a leather-covered wing chair.

“Yes?” Tibbs said.

The door opened and Arturo Gomez, the riverboat’s first mate and Tibbs’s right-hand man, entered the cabin. “Well, what is it now? More bad news?”

“No, my captain.”

Gomez doffed his cap to reveal a shaved head. He was slight of build. A thin mustache outlined his upper lip below a hooked nose and narrow-set eyes. He wore a gold ring in his right ear. Pistols jutted from the leather belt encircling his narrow waist.

“Miguel has repaired the ship’s engine, a valve in the boiler or something.” Gomez shrugged and smiled his bucktoothed grin. “And the patch is complete; we no longer take in water. Tomorrow morning we finish digging out and with the engines in reverse, we will be free!” Gomez liked having good things to report.

His gaze moved toward the scimitar.
My, such a sword of wondrous beauty.
His heart seemed to skip a beat just to behold the jeweled weapon. Maybe one day Captain Tibbs would have an accident and the wonderful sword would pass to Arturo Gomez. He caught himself staring and returned his attention to the man behind the desk.

“You bring me excellent tidings,
mí amigo
.”

Tibbs tossed the dregs of his coffee into the nearest corner and then poured a measure of the Irish whiskey into the cup and slid it toward Gomez, who grabbed it up, offered a silent toast to his captain, swilled the spirits, and slapped the cup down on the tabletop. He sucked in a lungful of air and smacked his lips. His eyes began to water.

“Tell the men well done, and break out the rum. See that each man has a tankard, but I want no one staggering blind and too sotted to work come morning.”

Tibbs glared at the leftover stew. He took the plate and set it on the floor. A calico cat trotted out from beneath the bed and hurried over to make a meal on the leftover pork and potatoes.

“When you’ve seen to that, assign the guards and then come back here and help me kill this bottle,” Tibbs added.

“It will be my pleasure,
el jefe
,” Gomez replied, and hurried from the captain’s quarters.

Tibbs was under no illusion as to the sincerity of Gomez’s loyalty or affections. Both ran as deep as the linings of Tibbs’s pocket. The gunrunner lifted the scimitar and stared into the gleaming ruby on its hilt.

Even with his back to the wall and desperate for money, Tibbs had not been able to part with the sword. There was magic in it. This he believed. As long as the blade was his, Tibbs felt invulnerable, the conqueror of worlds. He pressed the cold jewel to his forehead and imagined he could hear the Macedonian armies tramping across Persia, sense the carnage of battle and experience the rush of victory that Alexander the Great must have known.

Part with this treasured blade, give it up? No.

“You are mine,” he whispered to the curved steel and the pulsing, blood-red jewel reflecting Tibbs’s own image. “You will always be.”

Miguel Medrano was not a violent man by nature. Nor could he rattle off the names of many enemies. At the age of fifty he considered himself above the vices of drunkenness and debauchery that permeated the character of the rest of the crew. They were a mixed lot, Spaniards and Frenchmen and Yankees from the north, and a couple of mixed-bloods that Miguel suspected of being cannibals.

Yes, they were an unsettling blend, thirteen rivermen and any one of them capable of violence. But only Miguel could keep the small steam engine running. He took pride in the fact that he was aboard for a skill other than with musket or cutlass. He kept clear of quarrels and avoided confrontations with other members of the crew. He did his job well and expected an ample reward and perhaps even another bonus when Captain Tibbs returned to Mobile after a successful river run. The bonus Miguel received this night came as quite a shock.

The round-shouldered, weary engineer rubbed his eyes and then stretched out on his bedroll near the woodpile by the furnace when he heard the scrape of wood against the paddle wheel. He started to ignore the sound, then thought the better of it. Some stretches of the Alabama River were an obstacle course of half-submerged logs and floating brush that could damage the paddle wheel by catching in the steam-driven blades.

Miguel crawled out of his bedding and stepped around the engine house. He sucked in his belly and then inched along a narrow walkway that led back to the paddle wheel. He yawned and wondered if it was midnight yet. Miguel squinted in the darkness and wished the moon hadn’t ducked behind clouds. Still, he managed to locate the source of the peculiar noise. Something indeed had drifted into the blades. He peered through the gloom, a slow frown wrinkling his bushy eyebrows. He eased down into the shallows, his bare feet sinking into the sandbar as he worked around to the
Alejandro
’s stern.

“What is this?” he grumbled.
Madre de Dios
, it was a raft piled with—A hand clamped over his mouth, shutting off his cry as a knife blade sank into his back.

Young Otter lowered the dead man into the shallows and pulled his knife free. Kit McQueen made his way past the raft and up onto the sand. He caught a glimmer of movement on the hurricane deck side of the riverboat. The guard above sauntered off toward the bow. Behind Kit, a third figure huddled by the raft. Stalking Fox waited to light the kindling.

On the riverbank, Raven O’Keefe watched in the darkness of the forest, her rifled musket loaded and ready. A screech owl swooped down from a nearby sweetgum and startled her so badly she came to within an inch of firing her gun. Sweat beaded her forehead. She took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. Then she prayed silently:

“
God of my mother’s people,

All-Father, Spirit Healer,

Guide my steps

And help me to walk in courage.
”

Her companions were hidden from view now, on the opposite side of the
Alejandro
. She felt helpless, with nothing to do but wait. She thought of Kit and the change that had come over him. Who had he seen aboard the riverboat? She had found the courage to ask him as the two worked side by side, lashing the poles together for the raft.

“An old friend,” the lieutenant had replied.

It was the tone of his voice that unsettled her. The matter of the
Alejandro
had become more than some military duty, a plan to destroy the Creek rifles and capture a British agent. Now it was personal: Kit McQueen was out for blood.

Raven stared at the riverboat. Lamplight filtered through the shuttered windows along the main deck. Music from a concertina carried across the water to be swallowed up by the forest, dark and still. There was laughter aboard the
Alejandro
and the cheerful din of a spontaneous celebration. Tapping a keg of rum had put everyone in a festive mood. It wouldn’t last long.

Young Otter crouched in the shadow of the woodpile. He looked nervously from the hurricane deck rail to the open doorway on the main deck that led down to the riverboat’s storage hold. The Choctaw repositioned himself beneath the wrought-iron stairway that led to the deck above. He heard footsteps and tightened his grip on his rifle, holding his breath.

River water lapped against the hull. A moth fluttered past and alighted on the warrior’s gun barrel, resting a moment before flying off toward the lights amidships. The sentry on the deck above turned on his heels, grumbled a complaint as to how he deserved to be in the crew’s quarters enjoying the comradeship of his friends and a hearty draught of grog.

Kit appeared in the entrance to the cargo hold. He held an oil lamp minus its glass chimney and had removed the wick. He arrived at the top of the stairs, having left a trail of whale oil in his wake. He poured the last of the lamp’s contents at the top of the stairs and knelt by the puddle. Young Otter hurried to join him. The warrior was anxious to be off this boat and into the relative safety of the forest.

“There are rifles and powder below. Enough for the Red Sticks to start a war,” Kit said. He handed his tinderbox to the Choctaw. “Light it and run like hell, my friend.”

Kit stood and started toward the black iron stairs. Young Otter caught him by the arm. “Where are you going? See, Stalking Fox has already lit the fire raft. We must hurry.”

Kit glanced over his shoulder and saw for himself the stream of smoke coming from the kindling and the faint pinpricks of orange firelight as Stalking Fox blew upon the embers and coaxed them to life. Once the raft was ablaze, the flames would consume the paddle wheel, crippling the boat. Finding the powder kegs below deck inspired Kit to plot a more explosive ending to the craft.

Young Otter knelt by the puddle of oil and prepared to strike the flint and send a shower of sparks onto the flammable liquid. He hesitated only because he was unwilling to jeopardize Kit’s safety, since Kit obviously intended to remain aboard.

“Go ahead,” Kit whispered harshly.

“What of you?” Young Otter retorted beneath his breath.

“I’ll be along.”

Kit started up the iron steps and vanished before the Choctaw could offer further protest. Kit had a rendezvous to keep and a debt to settle once and for all.

K
IT MOVED SOUNDLESSLY ALONG
the hurricane deck until he reached the captain’s quarters. Around the corner and toward the bow, the two men assigned to keep watch stood together in muted conversation as they stared out across the black river and regaled one another with stories of the women they had known from the bordellos of Mobile and New Orleans. Below, on the main deck, the rest of the crew merrily attempted to drain the recently tapped barrel of rum despite the one-tankard limit ordered by their captain.

Kit placed his ear to the door and to what he took to be a heated interchange between two men.

“But, señor, I tell them, only a tankard to a man. They do not listen.”

“You get them in line or I’ll find another first mate!”

Suddenly the door latch turned beneath Kit’s hand and the door swung open. Kit drew his pistol from his belt. Arturo Gomez stopped short. Seething with anger, he wasn’t in any mood to be confronted by what he took to be a member of the crew. Then it dawned on him that the redheaded stranger was no one he knew. Kit’s hard left fist caught Gomez flush on the jaw and sent the ship’s mate flying back into the cabin, where he sprawled unconscious at the foot of the brass frame bed.

Bill Tibbs bolted out of his chair. His own flintlock lay in the center of the map on the table, alongside a whiskey bottle and two cups. But the gunrunner froze in midreach toward his weapon. He was rooted in place by this materialization of his nightmares.

With jaw slack and mouth agape, Tibbs watched as Kit slipped into the room and shut the door. He walked across the room and stood opposite the man behind the heavy oaken table. He looked around the room, noting the scimitar dangling in its scabbard at Tibbs’s side.

Except for the bed, table, and a couple of chairs, the room had little else in the way of furniture. Only the liquor cabinet, now unlocked and with its door ajar. Two leather-and-wood-paneled chests lay against the wall. These were padlocked and no doubt would hold any wealth or contraband that Tibbs could not trust to the hold below to which his crew had easy access. Brass lanterns hung from two of the walls. A gun rack holding a shotgun and several pistols dominated the third, directly across from the door. Yet there was something bleak about the room, as if it reflected its occupant’s frequent disposition.

Tibbs seemed to have aged ten years since Kit had last seen him. The gunrunner’s hair was flecked with silver and his normally cleanshaven face was covered by a salt-and-pepper stubble. There were dark shadows like crescent moons beneath his eyes.

The room smelled of spilled whiskey and cigar smoke. The faint residue of a meal lingered in the air. And now there was the faint sick odor of fear as Tibbs fought to control himself, his mind reeling from images born of his nightmares, now embodied in the man who stood before him.

“I imagine you’re surprised to see me, old friend,” Kit said. “If you wanted me dead, you should have done it yourself and not left the job for Morales and his dragoons.”

His voice dispelled one notion. Tibbs realized he wasn’t seeing a mad vision, that Kit was flesh and blood. Somehow he had survived Florida and after all this time had tracked Tibbs to this river.

No
, the gunrunner reasoned,
McQueen could not possibly have tracked me. Blind fate must have caused our paths to cross. Or maybe it was the sword, working its magic, bringing us together, so I can kill him once and for all and put an end to my nightmares.

“You are a lucky man, Kit. Smart and shrewd.”

“Not so smart,” Kit retorted. “I picked you for a friend.”

He searched for something more to say. After all this time, finally to come face to face with the man who had left him to die, at last to confront him … Kit shook his head, feeling the hatred leak out of him like juice from an overripe fruit, leaving a part of him empty and even a little sad. He thought this would mean more. Kit gestured with his pistol toward the jeweled sword at the gunrunner’s side.

“Is that the last of it?” he asked.

Tibbs glanced down at the hilt. The Eye of Alexander glimmered, and Tibbs took courage. Even under Kit’s gun, Tibbs knew the sword would protect him and turn the situation to his favor.

“Yes. There wasn’t all that much, really. And I’m ashamed to say, my poor head for business squandered it. Yet the sword continues to bring me luck.” Tibbs pulled a silk kerchief from the sleeve of his frock coat and dabbed at his upper lip and forehead. “I have this boat, which I named after the one treasure I will not part with. And I have made new friends, profitable friends.”

“Like British agents who pay you to play traitor to your own country,” Kit said. “Sword of luck? Sword of evil! Up until this moment I thought I hated you—hated you enough to shoot you on sight.” Kit stepped back, and his eyes seemed filled with sorrow. “But now, all I have is pity for the man you used to be: I didn’t die in Florida, Bill. You did.”