According to Hoyle (29 page)

“It ain’t coal,” he declared with a sigh. He knew what it was, though. He was all too familiar with it. “You ever heard of the
Sultana
?” he asked.

Rose frowned and shook his head uncertainly. “Should I have?” he asked.

“Might be before your time,” Flynn acknowledged as he looked Rose over. The man probably wasn’t even thirty yet, and the Sultana had met her end nearly twenty years ago. “She was a riverboat, ’bout like this one,” he told Rose. “She was built to carry near to three-hundred and fifty people,” he murmured as he stood again and absently stepped away from the spreading pool of blood on the floor. “Towards the end of the War, the
Sultana
left Memphis carrying about twenty-two hundred women, children, and released Union prisoners of war back North. There was an explosion in the boiler as she sailed upriver. About seventeen-hundred people died when she went up in flames, burned to death or drowned in the river ’cause they was too injured to swim.”

“I believe I have heard of her,” Rose murmured, still frowning in confusion. “A tragic story, to be sure,” he murmured sincerely, “but what’s that got to do with us?”

“Well,” Flynn said as he turned the false piece of coal over in his hand. “I lost my only brother to her that night,” he told the other man grimly. “I spent a lot of time dwelling on it, until Wash finally pulled me back to my senses. Before that, though, I heard tell in the saloons of St. Louis of a man who would get drunk and claim he had been responsible for the explosion. Said there was a captain in the Rebel Secret Service who had invented something called a coal shell. I started looking into it, and I found the northern papers had called them coal torpedoes when they reported about them. Seems the Rebs used them a lot there, near the end.”

“Desperate measures.” Rose stepped closer and plucked the bomb from Flynn’s hand. “A coal torpedo,” he repeated dubiously as he looked up at Flynn.

“It was made kind of like an artillery shell, with a mold made of beeswax from a real piece of coal. The outside of it looked just like coal,” Flynn explained as he pointed to the bomb as evidence. “Then, it was filled with black powder and all they had to do was go to the docks and set it in with the pile of coal being loaded onto a ship. As soon as it was shoveled in the fire, it’d catch and blow the boiler.”

Rose chewed on his lip thoughtfully and weighed the bomb in his hand as he looked down at it. “Doesn’t sound easy for your average man to make,” he finally murmured doubtfully. “Means they went to a lot of trouble to procure this thing,” he decided with a heavy sigh.

“Makes me think your government man theory is getting more likely.”

“Why not just use dynamite?” Rose asked.

Flynn was nodding solemnly. “They meant for this to be slipped into the coal and have it take down the ship after they’d hightailed it out of here, after the crew thought it was safe. They get the loot with nobody the wiser; people’d just think it went down with the rest of the ship in a plain ol’ boiler explosion.”

“A fair plan,” Rose murmured in what may have been admiration. “But if that’s the case, then why have all the passengers been rounded up?”

“Plan changed,” Flynn suggested.

“Yes,” Rose murmured with a frown. “I wonder what made them change it?”

“Well, we know it weren’t us,” Flynn answered with a shrug. “We weren’t even supposed to be on this boat, remember?”

Rose looked up and met his eyes, nodding almost imperceptibly as he bounced the coal torpedo in his hand. Flynn could practically see his mind working behind his dark eyes, and he found himself oddly eager to hear what Rose was thinking.

“I don’t see a way around a showdown at high noon, do you?” the Englishman finally said in a troubled voice.

Flynn shook his head solemnly. “I don’t like being in the dark when I’m up against something. And so far dark’s all we’ve got.”

Rose nodded in agreement. “Our only advantage is that they know that,” he decided after a moment of silence.

“How’s that?”

“Whoever’s in charge is smart,” Rose explained, holding up the coal torpedo as evidence. “Whether it’s Stringer or someone else, we have to assume he’s already trying to decide what
our
next move will be. He knows we can try to sabotage their route of escape, but that still leaves us outgunned with a boat full of hijackers and hostages.”

“All right, I follow.”

“They know we have no other options but to confront them, in the end,” Rose said regretfully. “We just need to figure out how to use that against them.”

Flynn nodded but remained silent.

“Any ideas?” Rose asked hopefully.

Flynn stared at him, his mind churning with suggestions that would get them badly maimed or killed in a hail of gunfire. After a moment of thought he pursed his lips and shook his head. “Nope,” he admitted.

“Yeah, me either,” the Englishman muttered as he looked back down at the coal torpedo in consternation.

“Got any more earthquakes up your sleeve?” Flynn asked wryly.

Rose shook his head slowly. “But New Madrid does sit on a fault line,” he answered dejectedly. He was smiling sadly as he said it, but as Flynn watched him the smile fell and his eyes lit up as he looked away. “We need an earthquake,” he blurted.

“Thought you said you didn’t carry those around in your pocket,” Flynn muttered, not amused by what he thought was Rose’s attempt at levity.

Rose pushed the coal torpedo against Flynn’s chest and patted his shoulder. “I do now.”

C
AGE
sat bolt upright as the night was rent by a small explosion somewhere near the prow of the ship. Before he could move to stand, though, Stringer was beside him with a gun in his ear, telling him to get back down on his belly.

Cage did so slowly, putting both hands out in front of him and sliding them across the soft Oriental rug under him as he laid out. For the first time, Stringer looked truly concerned. He either hadn’t expected the explosion, or it wasn’t supposed to have happened yet.

Stringer and several of his men held their breath, waiting and listening, all of them tense like they were ready to flee. When nothing more came of the explosion, they all relaxed, shoulders slumping and giving each other wry, still worried smiles. Whatever they had been expecting to happen obviously hadn’t. That meant whatever was coming was big.

Cage met Wash’s eyes worriedly. The man was watching him, a frown set on his handsome face and his green eyes deeply troubled. Cage just shook his head helplessly. He had no idea what was going on.

“Go find out what it was,” Stringer ordered one of his men. The man hesitated. Stringer glared at him. “You ain’t gonna tell me you’re afraid of him, are you?” he asked in a low voice.

The unfortunate lackey swallowed hard. “Ain’t many come back after checking. Maybe we should
—
”

Stringer raised his gun and fired before the man could finish. There were muffled screams and whimpers from the onlookers as the man’s body hit the deck.

Stringer swung his gun around to aim at one of the others in the salon. “Go check on it,” he ordered.

The man scurried off obediently.

“Dusty Rose,” Stringer murmured through gritted teeth. He turned to stare at Cage, who met his eyes unfalteringly from where he still lay on the ground.

“
W
HAT
the hell are you doing?” Flynn shouted at Rose as they stood at the railing, both of them drenched from the spout of water the exploding coal bomb had produced when Rose had thrown it overboard into the hijacker’s dinghy.

“You said we needed to hobble their other boat.”

“I didn’t mean blow it up!”

“You should be more clear,” Rose told him calmly as he took off his hat and waved it around, throwing droplets of water.

Flynn swatted at the water and then reached out to grab Rose by his lapels, pulling him until they were nose to nose. He growled unintelligibly for a moment before taking a deep breath to regain control over his temper. He slowly released him without yelling or throttling him like he wanted to.

“Nicely done, Marshal,” Rose complimented tightly. He smoothed out his shirt and drew one of his guns, checking it to make certain it was fully loaded. “Let’s see who comes to investigate, shall we?” he asked cheerfully.

“If you live through this whole thing, I’m gonna kill you myself,” Flynn grumbled.

“I look forward to the attempt.” Rose plopped his hat back on his head. They could hear footsteps coming closer, booted feet on the deck trying to be quiet. Rose inclined his head, pushed the hat forward and gave Flynn a rakish grin. “Let’s dance,” he said with relish as he drew the other gun and cocked them both.

M
ORE
shouts sounded from outside the salon as Bat Stringer yanked Cage to his feet. Cage doubled over and held his hand to his possibly cracked ribs with a pained groan.

A man jogged into the room and waved a hand wildly behind him. “He got to the boiler room, too,” he gasped. “Blowed up one of our boats! What do we do now, Cap?”

Stringer placed the barrel of his gun against Cage’s temple and pulled the hammer back with a growl.

“Let’s go talk to the man,” he drawled in a low, dangerous voice as he dragged Cage toward the doors to the salon.

All of the passengers were tied up, and Stringer’s men stood by, restless and anxious. The thought of Dusty Rose out there playing Indian in the Grass was making them all very nervous. It was a perfect disaster waiting to happen, and they all knew it.

Cage glanced over at Stringer as the man led him toward the door, his head turning against the cold barrel of the gun. He met Stringer’s eyes warningly and Stringer growled.

“I know they’re tetchy,” he snarled to Cage in response. “You just settle this feller of yours down and no one’ll get hurt,” he snapped quietly.

Stringer pulled Cage by his elbow, holding the cocked gun to his head to make certain he wouldn’t fight back, and they stepped out of the main cabin, into the soupy fog together. Two of Stringer’s men dragged Wash behind them.

“Rose!” Stringer bellowed into the chilly night. The sound didn’t seem to carry very far, smothered by the fog and muffled by the sound of the water and the giant paddlewheel. “Dusty Rose!” he yelled again, trying to make himself heard. “I got your man down here!” he shouted as he looked around warily at all the possible angles of approach.

They were under the cover of the upper observation deck, and therefore it would have been nearly impossible to ambush them from above. Gabriel would have to hang upside down from his toes to fire at them from up there, and Cage just didn’t think the man had that in him. Although, Cage wasn’t going to underestimate Gabriel’s penchant for the dramatic; he wouldn’t put it past him to hang from the ceiling or ride the paddlewheel up from the water to get a shot off, no matter how difficult the feat might be.

The thick fog, on the other hand, made sneaking up on them from the main level all the easier.

Cage glanced around the ship’s deck and swallowed heavily. Despite the muffling fog, he could hear the creak of the wooden ship in the moisture of the night; it sounded like soft footsteps. He could hear the water rushing past the riverboat and the heavy turn of the paddlewheels as they churned ever on, sounding like the paddles of a skiff sneaking up on them. The sounds played tricks in the night. It was making him tense and he wasn’t even the one being stalked. He knew Stringer was on a hair trigger, and that made Cage even more nervous.

All else was silent as Stringer and his men waited for some sort of response. Cage knew they would get more and more on edge, until someone finally went off half-cocked and started shooting shadows. Someone was going to die out here tonight, of that much Cage was certain. Maybe a lot of someones.

Even as Cage’s mind raced to think of how Gabriel and Flynn might approach them, he was fighting the instinctive urge to give orders to prevent their attack. He’d never been able to speak, but natural born leaders didn’t have to speak to have their orders followed. Someone should be watching the stairs, and someone should be watching the sides of the ship where it would be possible to climb or jump. He tried to tell himself it was because he didn’t want Gabriel walking into this minefield for him, but he couldn’t fool himself. He had helped to lead a band of outlaws for too long. He would never outrun the habits.

Would it spare all these lives if he just gave in and went back with Stringer and the Scouts? Cage closed his eyes in determination. No, it wouldn’t. But all that made him was a man with the pedigree of an outlaw and not a single way left to redeem himself.

He had to dig his fingernails into the palms of his hands to keep himself from motioning Stringer to send men to the stairs.

“Come on down here, Rose!” Stringer shouted after a moment of tense silence. “I’ll cut you a deal for him!”

Cage shook his head minutely and rolled his eyes back and forth, trying to see the periphery of the deck as Stringer’s grip around his neck tightened and immobilized him. He was starting to get lightheaded. His fingers dug into Stringer’s arm.

“You even know who he is, Rose?” Stringer shouted as he pulled Cage further, out from under the cover of the awnings, and peered up at the upper decks of the ship. There was a scuff, like a boot heel on wood, from above. Stringer tensed and then laughed breathily. “This is Whistling Jack Kale!” he shouted at the landing above as loud as he could. “And we are the Border Scouts! I know you done heard of us!”

Cage struggled with him and shook his head desperately, hoping Gabriel was watching them from somewhere above.

“Don’t let him lie to you, boy!” Stringer continued as he held Cage tighter and laughed. He pressed the gun harder against Cage’s temple. “Those eyes of his don’t lie! He’s a killer! If you ever looked at him too close for too long, I know you saw it!”

Cage held his breath, listening. Stringer was right. Gabriel had looked into his eyes after he’d shot that man and Gabriel had seen something there. Cage had wondered, at the time, what it was. But now he knew; Gabriel had recognized him for what he was in that moment, he was sure of it. But then he had kissed him. Cage hoped what he was didn’t matter to Gabriel. The man wasn’t exactly a saint.