Day of Independence (5 page)

Abe Hacker, wearing a red robe and slippers of the same color, padded along the hotel hallway, his flabby face intent.

The grandfather clock in the lobby struck two as the fat man reached the door of Room 11.

Hacker stood for a while and listened to the soft groans of pain coming from inside. He smiled. Jess Gable was doped up on morphine, or he'd be screaming by now.

Ah well, perhaps it was easier this way. Quicker, certainly.

Silently, Hacker turned the door handle and stepped into the room.

For a few moments he stood still and let his eyes adjust to the gloom.

The air was fetid, heavy with the stench of a man's ruptured bowels and the strange, elusive vanilla odor of morphine.

On the bed, Gable moaned, the pain that was beyond pain building in his belly again.

Morphine is a good friend, but ultimately a fleeting and treacherous one.

Hacker took the Scottish dirk from his pocket.

A gift from some visiting British diplomat in Washington, it was not the puny pea-sticker worn as part of Highland dress, but a heavy fighting knife with a thirteen-inch blade, forged a hundred and fifty years before from meteoritic iron by a blacksmith who was said to have sold his soul to the devil in return for the secrets of steel.

A shaft of moonlight angled through an opening in the curtains and rippled on the blade as Hacker stepped on quiet feet to the bed.

His breath hissed between his thick lips, and beads of sweat formed on his forehead. His eyes, hidden in shadow, and the whiteness of his face gave him the look of a skull.

“Jess, are you awake?” he whispered.

Gable lay on his back, and the grayness of death gathered in the hollows of his cheeks and temples. His pale lips were flecked with blood.

He made no answer.

“All right, Jess, we'll do it the hard way,” Hacker said, smiling.

He raised his arm and brought the silver, disc-shaped pommel of the knife down hard into Gable's belly.

The dying gunman's eyes flew open and he shrieked in mortal agony.

Hacker's beefy hand quickly covered Gable's mouth and stifled his screams.

He brought his mouth close to the man's ear and whispered, “You couldn't even get rid of a sick Ranger for me, you yellow, worthless dog turd.”

Gable violently kicked his legs and tried to rise, his frantic eyes filled with fear and pain.

Hacker enjoyed the feel of the man's open mouth against his palm, the saliva slickness of his silent screams.

A morphine syringe stood on the table beside the bed.

“Jess, do you want your medicine?” Hacker said. “Would you like that?”

The man lay still for a moment, then nodded, his wide-open eyes pleading.

“No!” Hacker said, enjoying himself. “You don't deserve to have it after the way you failed me.”

Jess Gable was not a cowardly man. He made a supreme effort to fight back his pain, and his lips moved as he mumbled something into Hacker's suffocating hand.

“What's that, Jess? I didn't hear you,” Hacker said.

Gable's lips moved again.

“Let me take my hand away, Jess,” Hacker said. He giggled, his jowls quivering. “I'm such a good nurse, am I not?”

This time Gable managed to speak... just two words.

“Kill me,” he whispered.

His head cocked to the side like an inquisitive bird, Hacker said, “I'm thinking about it, Jess.” He smiled. “Hey, yellow belly, how's your poor little tummy-tum?”

“Please...” Gable said, his voice as soft as a woman's sigh.

“Well, you didn't even laugh at my good joke, and thanks to your whining this is getting boring,” Hacker said. “It's time I returned to my warm bed and willing woman.” He grinned. “That make you jealous, Jess, huh?”

Gable grimaced, his teeth bared against the waves of agony that broke over him with fiendish intensity.

Then, for the first time since he was a child, his lips moved in prayer.

“Well, that does it for me,” Hacker said. “Jess, you really are a worthless lowlife. And I've got nobody to blame but myself for hiring you in the first place.”

He held the knife low, ready for a thrust. “Nobody, but nobody, fails Abe Hacker and lives to boast of it,” he said. “Go to hell, Jess!”

Hacker rammed the dirk into Gable's throat, just under the man's chin. He pushed until the blade went in to the hilt, then withdrew it again.

Wiping the knife clean on the sheet, he said, “Are you dead, Jess?”

One look at the man's face, frozen in a death mask of agony and horror, convinced Hacker that he was.

Hacker slid the dirk into his pocket, then slapped the sides of his huge barrel of a stomach.

“Now, time for a little bedtime snack, I think,” he said.

 

 

Henriette Valcour woke from a restless sleep and a warning dream.

The fat man had killed again... but so far her Baptiste was safe. The dream had made that clear.

Still, she was fearful and rose from bed and sat by the dying embers of the fire.

Was it the fat man and his strange, blood-blackened knife that had scared her so badly... the dire fact that by killing with his own hand he'd gained enormously in power?

Or was it just old Jacques St. Romain with his talk of the loup-garou ball to be held right there in her own bayou?

Earlier that day, Jacques stood in his canoe and hollered at Henriette from a safe distance, his eyes fixed on the still surface of the water.

“Las' night I seen their lanterns in the swamp, me,” he said. “Over on the bank by the dead tree. When the loups-garous got lanterns, I t'ink it means they plan to have their ball in this bayou.”

“Go home, Jacques,” Henriette had said. “Hang a colander on your door.”

“I ain't got one of them, Madam Valcour.”

“You got a calendar, you?”

“Got a Union Pacific Railroad on my wall, but it's for 1882.”

“It will do very well, Jacques. Nail it to the outside of your door,” Henriette said. “The loups-garous will stop and count the dates, just like they count the holes in a colander. They can't add up real good, they always make mistakes and have to start over and over again.”

“How come the loups-garous got to count stuff, Madam Valcour?” Jacques said.

“It's just how they are, Jacques. They'll count anything, the holes in my colander and the numbers in your calendar, and never try to get through our doors.”

“Them's words of good advice,” Jacques said. “Soon as I get home, I gonna nail that Union Pacific calendar to my door, me, and keep them loups-garous busy.”

Then, before he paddled away, the old man said, “I got some fish an' a piece of poke loin from a hog I shot t'other day. I'll t'row them on your po'ch, Madam Valcour, but don't you go lookin' at me none, you.”

“Go right ahead, Jacques,” Henriette said. “I'm going inside now anyhow, me. Got a turtle in the pot.”

Henriette had no fear of werewolves, poor, cursed creatures that they were, and the colander was powerful protection. The loups-garous were also deathly afraid of frogs, and there were plenty of them jumping around her home.

So let the werewolves enjoy their ball and howl at the sky. If they did not trouble her, she would not trouble them.

It was the fat man who scared her so.

He was evil and dangerous, and Baptiste was in peril as long as the man lived.

Restless, Henriette left her chair and stepped onto her porch.

Fireflies danced in the gloom of the swamp and the air was heavy with the perfume of night-blooming wild petunias. The moon was not yet full, but it was as bright as a silver coin.

If she was to be Baptiste's guardian and save him from the fat man, she needed more power.

Henriette untied her nightgown and let it drop and puddle around her feet. Naked, she tilted her face to the dark cauldron of the sky, stretched out her arms to the moon's radiance, and bathed in its mother-of-pearl light.

Someone rapped on Hank Cannan's door, an apologetic tat-tat-tat.

Groaning, he reached out and unholstered his Colt.

“Come in,” he said. “And you'd better be grinnin' like a possum.”

The door opened, and a man stuck his gray head inside. “I hope we're not intruding, Ranger Cannan,” he said.

“Folks come in and out of here all the time,” Cannan said.

“Then we can come in?”

“Come right ahead.”

Three men filed into the room, respectable-looking citizens who seemed to have dressed for the occasion in their Sunday best.

“My name is Frank Curtis,” the gray-haired man said. “I'm mayor of Last Chance. These are my associates, Ed Gillman and Ben Coffin.”

Gillman was a tall, slender man with an open, pleasant face. Ben Coffin was plump, jolly, with a wide, copper-colored nose. Thin strands of pale hair were fastidiously arranged across his balding pate.

He stuck out his hand and grinned. “Coffin by name, Coffin by nature,” he said. “Put it there, Ranger.”

Cannan placed his revolver on the bed and accepted the man's hand.

“Ben is the town undertaker,” Curtis said. “Ed owns the dry goods store across the street.”

After shaking hands with Gillman, Cannan said, “What can I do for you gentlemen?”

Roxie Miller, who looked as though she'd just waked up the light of a May morning, had slipped into the room. “Please make it brief, Mayor,” she said. “Ranger Cannan is very weak and he tires quickly.”

Disappointment tightened the faces of the three townsmen, and Cannan figured Roxie had just said something they didn't want to hear.

“Then I'll be brief,” Curtis said. “The man you shot has been murdered.”

Cannan was surprised. “Who would murder a dying man?”

“We don't know. But someone did. Stuck a knife in his throat.”

“We think Abe Hacker is behind this,” Coffin said.

“Murdered one of his own men?” Cannan said.

“That could be the case,” the mayor said.

“Motive?” Cannan said.

Curtis shook his head and the others stayed dumb.

Cannan said, “It could be he killed Gable to shut him up. Hacker may have ordered the attempt on my life.”

“Because you were in the way of his plans,” Curtis said.

“That's how I see it,” Cannan said.

He picked up his revolver from the bed and shoved it back in the holster. “Hacker plans to take Last Chance away from you, Mayor,” he said. “Have you heard that?”

“No, we haven't.”

“Maybe it's not true.”

“He wants something, all right,” Coffin said. “That's why he's still here.”

Cannan sat higher in the bed. He tried not to let the pain show.

“He came for gold. I heard that,” he said.

“There is no gold,” Gillman said. “There never was any gold.”

“I reckon Hacker knows that by now,” Cannan said.

A silence fell, stretched.

Then Curtis said, “We hoped you could investigate the matter, Ranger Cannan.” His eyes flicked to the bloodstained bandage on Cannan's shoulder. “But I see now that it's impossible.”

Cannan closed his eyes briefly.

Roxie was right. He tired fast.

“Mayor,” he said, “how many fighting men can you raise in a hurry?”

“Two score, I reckon. But none of them are gunfighters like Hacker's boys.”

“What about the ranchers?”

“They hire seasonal punchers. The Rafter-K and the Elkhorn won't sign on more until spring.”

“Tom Battles and his two sons over to the Elkhorn are pretty good with guns,” Coffin said.

“If they come up against Hacker's men they'll need to be more than pretty good,” Cannan said. “Baptiste Dupoix is one of them, and all by himself he's a handful.”

Weak and worn out as he was, the Ranger tried to make himself think.

Finally he said, “Hacker won't try to take Last Chance by force. He doesn't have enough men to take on two score armed citizens who'll fight to keep what's theirs, even if they're not professional gunfighters.”

By nature, Ed Gillman was not a talking man, but a keen intelligence showed in his high forehead and alert eyes. “Frank, he wants to take all of it, by God,” he said. “This town, the fields, the tree groves, the ranches, the fur trade with Mexico... the whole kit and caboodle down to the last stalk of wheat.”

“And cotton,” Cannan said. “Don't forget the cotton. A man could make a killing growing cotton along this part of the Big Bend.”

“It's thin, mighty thin,” Curtis said. “Who would work Hacker's fields? His gunmen?”

“Maybe he figures he can force the people of this community to work his fields,” Coffin said.

“No. As I said earlier, he'd have a war on his hands, and he doesn't want that,” Cannan said.

“Then I can't figure it,” Curtis said, throwing up his hands.

“Me neither,” Cannan said. “But I plan to study on it.”

The Ranger closed his eyes again, pain and fatigue wearing on him.

Curtis read the signs and said, with a tinge of bitterness, “You can think about it, Ranger, but you can't get up out of bed and help us.”

“Not for a few weeks or so,” Roxie said.

“Then look on the bright side, Ranger,” Coffin said, smiling. “You'll be up and about for our Independence Day celebrations.”

As though the jolly undertaker irritated him, the mayor chose to be gloomy.

“By this Fourth of July we might all be dead or scattered to the four corners of the earth,” he said.

“Mother of God, don't say that, Frank,” Gillman said. But the store owner's worried expression betrayed him.

Gillman knew it could happen.