Wilderness Double Edition 15, page 25
“What a marvelous liar you are, vixen,” Ellery said. “You’ve missed my wallet, not me.” He nuzzled her neck with relish. “I can’t make any promises, my dear. My friends and I are on a crusade.”
“We were born in the wrong age,” Bellows remarked.
“We should have been knights of the Round Table. Just think! The quest for the Holy Grail. Rescuing damsels in distress. Always chivalrously, of course.”
Lou couldn’t resist. “What the three of you know about chivalry wouldn’t fill a thimble. You’re not fit to lick Sir Galahad’s feet.”
Ellery’s smug mask developed a crack. Glowering, he balled a fist as if to strike. “Who are you to judge us, you little witch? You’re the one set to marry a damnable heathen.”
“I love him!” Lou was itching to kick him where it would hurt most. “He’s more of a gentleman, more of a man, than you’ll ever be.”
Quivering with barely contained fury, Ellery took a half step closer. Suddenly Bellows let go of Lou and gripped his friend by the wrist, preventing him from swinging, and inadvertently sparing him from Lou’s foot.
“She’s no good to us beaten to a pulp.”
“You heard her!” Ellery fumed.
“Obviously, the poor wench has been living on the frontier too long,” Bellows said. “She’s misguided, is all. She thinks she really cares for that ’breed.”
Payne chortled. “We’ll set her straight.”
Like hell you will! Louisa thought, and vented her seething emotions by kicking Payne in the shin. Yelping like a stricken coyote, he released her. In a twinkling, Lou spun and ran. She had no idea where she was running, no idea which direction she was going. All that mattered was eluding her three abductors and finding Zach.
Shoes pounded in Lou’s wake. They were after her. A glance showed Ellery was the fleetest, his contorted features hinting at his intentions if he caught her. But Lou was confident he wouldn’t. She was as fit as the proverbial fiddle, her sinews honed by her life in the wilderness. Bounding like an antelope, she gained ground, although not as rapidly as she would have liked. The streets were too crammed, too many people lined the walks. She had to thread through them as if threading through a stand of high-country aspens. Had the streets been deserted, she’d have outdistanced the trio in no time.
Several men with bottles in their hands reared in Lou’s path. They were cackling, having a grand old time. She veered to the right to go around, bumping one, who swore lustily and tried to snatch her sleeve. “Sorry!” Lou said, springing past, into the street.
“Land sakes!” one of the others declared. “Was that a girl in those buckskins?”
Lou looked back again to gauge her lead. Belatedly, she registered the hammering of hooves, the clattering of wheels. A speeding carriage was bearing down on her!.
“Out of the way!” the driver shouted, making no effort whatsoever to stop.
With hardly a split second to spare, Louisa flung herself to the left. She saved herself from being trampled and run over but not from being clipped by one of the horses. Sent sprawling, she slid onto her hands and knees, scraping them and bruising herself. Frantic, she bolted forward again, all too aware of heavy breathing close behind. The mishap had enabled Ellery to narrow the distance.
“Stop, damn your bones!”
Lou wasn’t about to do any such thing. Sprinting madly, avoiding pedestrians, she came to an intersection and bore to the left. By accident she had chosen well. The street was narrower but nowhere near as packed, nor as well lit. Even better, it led into a residential area, with hedges and trees and broad yards.
“Don’t make this harder than it has to be!” Ellery called out.
Lou smiled to herself. He could threaten all he wanted. She was in her element now. Giving them the slip would be child’s play for someone who had eluded Piegans and Utes. Slanting toward a gap in a high hedge, she sped into the opening and on across a neatly trimmed yard dotted by towering maples. At the next one she came to, Lou stopped to check on her pursuers.
Ellery and Payne were just inside the hedge, Payne doubled over and wheezing. Neither was in the best of shape. Lack of exercise had sapped their stamina, had rendered them soft, whereas Lou’s life in the mountains had made her as tough as whipcord.
“They’ll never catch me now,” Lou softly vowed. Keeping the trunk between them, she ran toward a huge mansion. Gleaming marble columns and a magnificent portico testified to the wealth of its owners. She realized she was in a wealthy section of the city, maybe the very section where her three tormentors lived. How fitting, she thought, to lose them there.
No lights showed in any of the windows. The owners were either asleep or gone. Lou swung wide of the porch, thankful for deep shadow that cloaked her like an inky glove, and jogged toward the rear. She made no more noise than the breeze.
Presently a new obstacle presented itself. To Lou’s consternation, she was confronted by a wall seven feet high. She relaxed when she saw it was covered with ivy. Climbing over would pose no problem.
Lou had only twenty feet to cover when something growled, to the right. She looked, her blood chilling at the sight of a powerfully built black dog that had materialized out of the darkness, its lips pulled back over gleaming fangs. Lou hoped against hope it was tied or chained, but the next moment it barked ferociously and charged.
The dog was twice as far from Lou as she was from the wall, but it was moving twice as fast. She fairly flew, her heart racing, the slavering canine streaking toward her like a Sioux arrow.
Lou wouldn’t make it. Not if she ran up to the wall and tried to scale it. So she did the only other thing she could. When she was seven or eight feet away, she girded herself and vaulted upward, leaping for all she was worth, her fingers hooked to catch hold of the dangling ivy.
Teeth gnashed at Lou’s heels. She felt brief, lancing pain where the dog nipped her. Then she was hurtling' through the air. She hit harder than she anticipated, nearly knocking the breath from her lungs. The ivy wasn’t as thick or as strong as it had appeared. Lou grabbed for purchase, but the slim strands wouldn’t hold. Scrabbling wildly, she sought to cling on.
Below her was the black dog, froth rimming its mouth. Barking and snarling, it coiled, then arced at her legs.
Fear enabled Lou to cling on, and she heaved higher as shearing teeth snapped shut inches from her calves. Her upthrust arm hooked the top of the wall, and for a moment she hung there, as weak as a newborn kitten. But the weakness didn’t last. Again the dog sprang, galvanizing Lou into pulling herself onto the top of the wall, where she lay for a bit catching her breath while the frustrated animal jumped and snarled and howled.
Lou glanced toward the front of the mansion. Ellery and Payne would come on the run and blunder smack into the dog. She chuckled. It couldn’t happen to two more deserving people. Carefully lowering herself over the other side, Lou dropped lightly to the ground. She was in another narrow street, even more dimly lit. Lou turned to the left. If memory served, that was the direction which would eventually take her back to the bawdy house—and her darling Zachary. She was in dire fear for his life, afraid the rivermen had slain him.
The wall ended at an intersection. Lou stepped into the open and paused to listen for the racket sure to break out when the dog spied Ellery and Payne. Instead, she heard the metallic rasp of the hammer of her own Hawken being thumbed back and felt the jab of the muzzle against her arm.
“Don’t so much as twitch,” Reginald Barclay Bellows said. “As a general rule, I don’t believe in harming the fairer sex, but in your case, you little savage, I’ll happily make an exception.”
Chapter Eight
Zachary King was beside himself with anxiety. He dashed from one side of the street to the other, seeking the woman he loved. The awful truth brought him to a stunned stop, and he blurted, “She’s gone! She’s really gone!”
“No one ever disappears into thin air,” said the man who had broken up the fight. “We’ll find her, son.”
Zach was mad enough to battle a grizzly barehanded. “I’m not your son!” he declared. Zach didn’t know why Adam Tyler had come to his aid, and he really didn’t care. Other than old George Milhouse, he hadn’t met one white in St. Louis he’d trust farther than he could throw a buffalo.
“A figure of speech,” the man in black said. “I meant no insult.” He smoothed his sleeve. “I’ve never had a son of my own, so I reckon I’ve taken to calling most everyone younger than me that, out of habit.”
Zach turned. Tyler’s expression was kindly, but bitter experience had taught Zach that sometimes a man’s right hand was offered in seeming friendship while the left clutched a hidden knife. “Why did you butt in?” he demanded.
Adam Tyler shrugged. “It wasn’t a fair fight, for one thing. For another, I’ve never been fond of rivermen. They’re poor losers.”
“Poor losers?”
“I gamble for a living. And more often than not, when I beat rivermen at cards, they groan and moan and mutter threats. Not to my face, you understand.”
“They were scared of you,” Zach recalled.
“To be exact, it’s my reputation they fear. I’ve been in a few duels over the years. Barroom gossip has embellished the stories to where everyone thinks I’m one of the deadliest gents on the Mississippi. Or anywhere else,” Tyler added offhandedly.
“My pa saw a duel once,” Zach mentioned. “Almost twenty years ago, when he was on his way west.” His father had related the tale many times, at Zach’s enthralled request. “In Illinois, at an inn where he was lodging overnight. Two gamblers—”
Tyler tensed. “Illinois? Two decades ago? Was the inn called the Cork and Crown, by any chance?”
“Why, yes, it was,” Zach confirmed in astonishment. “How did you know?”
The gambler shared Zach’s amazement. “I’ll be damned. This world of ours is smaller than we imagine. That was your father I befriended? I never learned anything about him—who he was or where he came from.” Tyler shook his head. “I can’t believe it’s been that long. All of a sudden I feel as ancient as Methuselah.” He touched his side, low down. “I was one of those gamblers. The other was a blowhard by the name of Noah Clancy. He cheated during the duel and shot me in the back, but I blew out his wick.”
“You live in St. Louis now?”
Tyler nodded. “I have for years, plying my trade on various riverboats and at the best gambling dens in the city. Your guardian angel must be watching over you, to bring us together like this. If anyone can help you find your fiancée, I can.”
“How?” Zach asked. The crowd had dispersed, everyone going on about their business except for a few stragglers who were more interested in the man in black than in him. Tyler walked toward a bench occupied by a skinny, wizened bundle of bones in a tattered coat and baggy, torn pants, who was sipping from a silver flask.
“Donovan,” the gambler said.
The man jerked the flask down as if it had scorched his lips. Squinting out of bloodshot eyes, he said, “Oh, Adam! It’s you, old friend! Haven’t jawed with you in a quite a spell. How have you been?”
“Can’t complain,” Tyler said. “And you?”
“Hard at work drinkin’ myself into oblivion,” Donovan answered. “Another year or so and I reckon I’ll succeed. Then I can join my sweet Marcy and baby Jessica in the hereafter.” He took an overly long swig and smacked his lips. “Might even be sooner, the Lord willin’.”
The gambler pulled a wad of bills from an inner jacket pocket and peeled several off. “Perhaps this will help. In return for a little information, if you’d be so kind.”
“Anything,” Donovan said cheerfully.
“You witnessed the dispute a short while ago involving this young man?” Tyler asked.
The drunkard peered intently at Zach. “That I did. It was a good scrape.” He took another swig. “What’s your name, youngster?”
Chafing at the delay, Zach introduced himself.
“His fiancée was with him,” Tyler elaborated. “I suspect you saw what became of her, and we’d very much like to know.”
“That gal in buckskins?” Donovan sniffed the air and scrunched up his nose as if at a foul stench. “It was those three cocky brats. The lords of St. Louis, they style themselves. But between you and me, the three of them combined ain’t worth a soggy pile of dog droppin’s. I still remember that time they were beatin’ on me with their damnable canes and you came along.”
Tyler, Zach saw, had grown as flinty as a Blackfoot on the warpath. “Ellery and his bootlickers took her? Did you happen to overhear where they were headed?”
Donovan treated himself to more whiskey. “Nope. Sorry. There’s never any tellin’ with that bunch.” Capping the flask, he unbuttoned his shirt and slid it underneath for safekeeping. “Sittin’ over here by my lonesome, I couldn’t help but notice, though. She didn’t look none too pleased.”
Zach was anxious to begin the hunt. “You know these men?” he asked the gambler. “Then what are we waiting for?” Whoever they were, they would suffer. Zach had gone easy on Sylvia Banner and Titus, but he wouldn’t make the same mistake again.
“We can’t go off half-cocked,” Tyler said. “St. Louis covers a lot of area. It would take weeks to find her blundering around like waifs in a snowstorm.”
“What would they want with her, anyway?” Zach asked. Donovan was folding the money. “Now, there’s a harebrained question, boy. Those three will bed any female they take a shine to, whether the female is inclined or not.”
Smoldering like fireplace coals, Zach would have marched off then and there if not for a hail from the steps of the Gilded Lily. Down them hustled George Milhouse, pumping his hickory walking stick. Showing more teeth than a politician on the stump, he hurried over, saying, “I found out where Festerman lives! By dawn this will all be over and we can get on with our lives.” Milhouse scanned the street. “Say, who are these fellers? And where the devil is Louisa?”
Adam Tyler had questions of his own. “Festerman? Lon Festerman? The single most dangerous man in the city? Exactly what are you involved in, Zachary King?”
More precious minutes were wasted while Zach explained. The old trapper and the gambler hit it off, but Zach was too impatient to twiddle his thumbs while they became better acquainted. “I’m going after Lou,” he announced, hefting the Hawken. “Festerman will keep until she’s safe.”
“Go ahead,” Tyler said. “Waste the whole night searching. Waste tomorrow, too, and the next day. If she’s still alive when you finally track her down, tell her it took you so long because you wouldn’t listen to reason.”
“Talk, talk, talk,” Zach said. “White men are like chipmunks!”
“But we’re smart chipmunks,” Tyler said. “Ever hear of anyone catching fish in a desert? Or hunting elk in a swamp?”
Zach didn’t see what that had to do with anything, and said so.
“I’m not much of a hunter, but I know a man hunts game where it’s most likely to be found. And I might know where to find Ellery Quinton Worthington the Third and his friends. I travel in some of the same social circles. Or, rather, gaming circles.”
Milhouse poked Zach with the walking stick. “I’d listen to him, boy. You’ll find your filly a lot quicker.”
Zach had never been fond of having to depend on others, but he would make an exception in this instance. “Where do we go first?”
“My place,” Adam Tyler said.
Donovan piped up. “What about me? I can’t shoot straight anymore, but I can be of help if you’ll let me.”
“Not this time.” The gambler placed a hand on the other’s stooped shoulder. “Ellery and his crowd aren’t above slitting throats when it suits them. It’s safer if you’re well out of it.”
“I ain’t scared,” Donovan said.
Zach believed him. The drunk was courting death, not shunning it. Zach inquired why as Tyler led Milhouse and him to the south.
“About a year ago, Donovan’s wife and baby girl were wiped out in a smallpox epidemic,” the man in black revealed. “Oh, I know what you’re thinking. That can happen to anyone. But Donovan had sent them to his uncle’s farm at the first sign of the outbreak so they would be safe. Only thing is, hardly anyone in St. Louis came down with it. The epidemic struck hardest out in the country. His wife and daughter were among the first to die.”
Milhouse’s walking stick was tapping the ground in regular cadence. “They’d have lived if he hadn’t sent them away. Is that what he believes?”
“Wouldn’t you? Which is the reason he’s been slowly drinking himself into an early grave.” Tyler frowned up at the stars. “Anyone who claims life is fair must walk around with blinders on.”
“There’s nothing worse than losing a loved one,” Milhouse said. “It tears a body up inside. They’re never the same.”
“Truer words were never spoken,” Tyler agreed.
Zach was thinking of Louisa, thinking of how torn up he would be if anything happened to her. He shuddered at the prospect. The only consolation would be his own end. Not a slow and agonizing one, like Donovan’s. His would be swift and bloody, just as his vengeance on those who dared harm her would be. He caught the man in black studying him. “What’s on your mind?”
“I was just wondering what size pants you wear.”
Zachary King thrust out his jaw like a riled bull and flatly declared, “I refuse. I won’t do it, and that’s that.”
“Do you want to save your fiancée?” Adam Tyler retorted, holding out clothes he had selected from a chest of drawers and a closet. “Take these and try them on. You’re big for your age, so they might fit. If they do, they’re yours to keep.”
“My own are just fine, thank you.” Zach was grateful for the offer, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to accept.
George Milhouse stirred in his chair. “You acting like a ten-year-old. We can’t waltz into any of Festerman’s places with you wearing Shoshone buckskins. You saw for yourself what happened at the Gilded Lily.”
