Kill or Die (14 page)

There were two men in the rowboat along with their lunch in greasy paper sacks, a can of orange paint and a brush. Timothy Gray was the dauber and Fighting Pat Grundy the rower. Both men were in their early forties, both illiterate, and were entered on Ritter's payroll as laborers.

Gray's job was to daub paint on the trunks of the next cypress to be cut, making sure they had a free fall into open water and not onto a tree island where their removal could be difficult.

The task had taken them far into the swamp, marking cypress trees that were not scheduled to be cut for weeks yet. But it was a job that had to be done and it was far better than working for the engineer, carrying all those heavy parts for his steam saws.

“Now did you see that size of that reptile on the bank, Pat?” Gray said in his heavy Irish brogue. “That was a big beast and teeth on him as long as the knife on my belt.”

“Indeed I did to be sure,” Grundy said. “It was twice the size of our little boat. I think the devil himself had a hand in his creation.”

“Well, they will do you no harm if you don't trouble them,” Gray said. “At least that's what I was told.”

“Sure they won't, and them as ignorant as the pigs of Docherty with not the sense God gave a gnat.”

“Over there,” Gray said. “There's a bejasus big tree that will fall right into the channel. I'll put a lick of paint on that one and then we'll rest for a while and break out the bottle.”

Once the cypress was marked Fighting Pat Grundy shipped the oars and pulled the cork on the whiskey bottle. “You first, Timothy,” he said, extending the bottle to his partner. “It is the mannerly thing to do between gentlemen.”

“No, it is myself that would never dream of it,” Gray said. “You have been doing all the hard graft at the oars so by right the first swig should be yours. And the second if the truth be told.”

“The truth. Aye, so it is then.” Grundy took a swig, let out a long, satisfied
ahhh
and then passed the bottle to Gray. “You must have the second, being the artist that you are, a-painting of the trees like Mr. Whistler himself.”

Gray held up the bottle, its amber contents catching the morning light, and said, “Here's to you, Pat. May you live as long you want and never want as long as you live.”

Those were the last words Timothy Gray ever said. The arrow that thudded into his chest stopped his tongue forever. He died with his eyes wide open, a look of surprise on his face and a bottle of whiskey in his hand.

Pat Grundy received his “fighting” accolade as a pugilist and not a shootist. There was no gun in the boat. He grasped the oars and frantically tried to row away from there, his dead partner staring at him the whole time without a sound. He managed to travel a few yards before the arrows pounded into his back. Bristling like a porcupine Grundy bent over the oars and joined his partner in death.

The rowboat drifted and made slow circles in the sluggish current and the whiskey ran out of the bottle and scented the air with the peaty fragrance of good Irish booze.

 

 

“I don't need this,” Brewster Ritter said. “Why is this stuff happening?”

“Because you're cutting down the trees, boss,” Bonifaunt Toohy said.

Ritter looked up at him, his eyes deadly. “That wasn't funny.” He reached for the bottle beside his cot and poured himself rum. “There are no Indians in this swamp. They've been dead for hundreds of years, wiped out by smallpox. Why have they come back now?”

“Ghosts?” one of Ritter's less intelligent gun hands said.

Ritter threw an arrow at the man. “Does that look like it was shot by a spook? Now we got Indians in the swamp. Why does this always happen to me?”

Toohy said, “Boss, maybe they just wanted to kill white men and got the opportunity. It doesn't necessarily mean they're planning to make war on us. Hell, they may be blanket Indians who wanted the dauber team's whiskey.”

“Yeah, maybe that's right,” Ritter said. “Or maybe it was white men who shot those arrows. Or breeds. Hell, the swamp is full of breeds.”

“Could be,” Toohy said.

Ritter was quiet for a spell, then his latent viciousness oozed to the surface. “I've been so busy logging that I've let the swamp rats run wild,” he said. “It's time to slap 'em down again and teach them a lesson they'll never forget.”

“You got a plan, boss?” Toohy said.

“Yeah, I got a plan,” Ritter said. But it didn't call for Toohy, a man he didn't quite trust because he suspected that he might have a conscience. “Neville, Bayes, you stay here. The rest of you get out.”

Jonas Neville and Arch Bayes were contract killers, men who murdered with the gun, knife, club or poison, whatever got the job done. Highly paid assassins, they were as sly as outhouse rats and deadly as rattlesnakes. Between them they'd killed twenty-seven men and five women and their consciences didn't trouble them in the least.

Ritter had called for those two men and as Toohy walked away from his tent he knew Brewster planned on bringing Hell to the swamp.

 

 

Brewster Ritter held up two fingers. “Two, and I want them alive. Bring them here. Understand?”

“Any two?” Jonas Neville said. Like his partner Arch Bayes he looked and dressed like a small-town parson, favoring a faded brown frock coat to his knees, a white shirt with a cravat of the same color and button-up knee-high gaiters.

“Any two. The choice is yours, boys,” Ritter said.

“We kill people,” Bayes said. He was a cold man that no human emotion could ever touch. The only Commandment he ever broke with regularity was the sixth. “You sure you want them alive? That is not our way.”

“In this instance, yes,” Ritter said. Talking to those two unnerved him. It was like trying to hold a conversation with a pair of hooded cobras.

Neville had the eyes of a carrion eater. “When?”

“As soon as possible, gentlemen. But tomorrow would be just fine.”

“When you are done with the people, we must kill them,” Neville said. “If we don't, our job will not be completed and our reputation ruined.”

Ritter smiled. “Oh, you can be in at the kill, if you wish. I plan to hang them.”

“We wish it,” Bayes said. “And we have hanged people before.”

Ritter beamed. “Good, then it is settled. Would you boys care for a drink before you go?”

“Why would we drink with an employer?” Bayes said. “That is not businesslike.”

“Oh, I don't know. Because we're all friends here, I guess.”

“You are not our friend,” Bayes said. “Why would you say such a strange thing? You are our employer.”

“We don't have any friends,” Neville said. “We kill people. Who knows, one day we may be contracted to kill you.”

To his annoyance, Ritter's hand shook as he poured himself another drink. His smile was forced. “Let's hope that never happens, huh?”

“We don't care,” Neville said. “We kill people. That is our profession. Perhaps we already put poison in your glass.”

Horrified, Ritter jerked the glass from his mouth.

The grin of the alligators in the swamp was warmer than Neville's smile. “I made a good joke,” he said. “It made you jump like a jack-in-the-box.”

“Yes, yes, of course you did,” Ritter said. He was sweating. “That was very funny.”

After the killers left, he tossed away the whiskey in his glass and took a long, shuddering gulp from the bottle.

The cypress were being cut, the bank robbery had not brought Mathias Cobb out of his hole and now the Indians could tip the balance even further in Ritter's direction . . . and Sam Flintlock gloomily decided he was losing the war.

“We're losing the war, Evangeline,” he said. “Seems like we take one step forward and two back.”

“Not if the Atakapan help us,” Evangeline said.

“Why would they help a bunch of people who moved into their swamp without as much as a do you mind?” Flintlock said.

“Because the Atakapan don't want the cypress cut. If there are no trees there is no swamp, just a mud-hole.”

“What do you think about Cornelius's hit-and-run force?” Flintlock said.

“Not much. You'd need well-trained men for that, Sam, and you don't have them.” Evangeline watched Flintlock dip a chunk of cornbread into his buttermilk then said, “The butcher's bill would be high, more than the swamp people could sustain.”

Flintlock nodded. “That's pretty much how I figure it.” He yawned then said, “Where's O'Hara?”

“Fishing,” Evangeline said.

“The whole damned world is falling down about our ears and the Injun is fishing.'

Evangeline smiled. “He said he was going fishing, but I suspect he's trying to make contact with the Atakapan.”

“Does he know that they're headhunters?”

“I suppose he does. O'Hara is half Indian himself. He might do well.”

“He's also half Irish. I bet them savages will hate the mick of him.”

Evangeline smiled. “What did the Irish ever do to the Atakapan?”

“I don't know. But I'm sure they did something.”

“You don't like the Irish, Sam?”

“I like them just fine, but what I'm saying is that the Indians don't.”

“Then the next Atakapan I see, I'll ask him,” Evangeline said. “You've got buttermilk on your mustache.”

She wore an ankle-length red dress, buckled down the front, and her long, slim legs were encased in high black boots.

Flintlock wiped off his mustache with the back of his hand and said, “Where do you keep all them clothes you wear, Evangeline?”

“I'm a swamp witch,” Evangeline said. But said it absently, her eyes looking over Flintlock's shoulder. “Sam, inside,” she said. “There are two men coming toward us in a rowboat and they're probably looking for you.”

“Well, let them come,” Flintlock said.

“No. I can send them away without any shooting. Hurry, get inside.”

Evangeline rose to her feet and Flintlock said, “Where is your derringer?”

“Inside. Now go. Another minute and they'll see you.”

Flintlock lifted the Colt from his waistband. “Here, take this. Hide it behind you.”

Rather than argue, Evangeline took the revolver and said, “I'll get rid of them.”

“Hell, I feel like them two rannies are putting the crawl on me,” Flintlock said.

“Go inside, Sam, and do it now,” Evangeline said.

Reluctantly Flintlock stepped into the cabin. He rested his Winchester against the wall beside the door and then for some reason he could never explain he got his Hawken, already charged with powder and ball, and held it in his hands. He was primed. Ready as a rooster with its spurs up.

 

 

Evangeline's first impression was that two men in the boat were parsons come to preach to her about the evils of witchcraft as one or two had done in the past.

But when the man in the bow jumped onto the deck with the ease and grace of an athlete she changed her mind. These men were trouble.

“What can I do for you?” Evangeline said. The man she spoke to troubled her. He had the dead eyes of a corpse.

“You will come with us,” the man said. Most males looked at Evangeline and smiled, but this man's expression didn't change, as though he didn't even recognize her as a woman.

He was joined by his companion, a man equally emotionless. That one said, “Get into the boat and do it now.”

“You see, we kill people,” Jonas Neville said. “And we will kill you if you don't do as we say.”

Evangeline, holding the Colt behind her, backed toward the door of the cabin. “I warn you, get away from here,” she said. “My husband will return very soon.”

“Good, then we will also take him,” Arch Bayes said.

“Will you come with us or do you really wish us to kill you?” Neville said.

“We can do it quite easily,” Bayes said.

“Bang-bang, you're dead,” Neville said. He brushed his coat away from his holstered Remington. “Say the word.”

Evangeline had her back to the door, thinking that now was the time for Sam to come to the rescue. He did. But he bungled it badly.

Flintlock kicked the door open and hit Evangeline so hard she stumbled forward and fell, the Colt slipping from her grasp. Flintlock's Hawken came up and he triggered the old rifle from the hip. Click! The flint fell on damp powder. It took a split second for him to realize what had happened. Then he let the Hawken drop and reached for the Winchester. Too late. Bayes pointed his revolver, hammer back, at Evangeline's head and said, “Leave the rifle alone or your woman dies.”

“She's not anybody's woman,” Flintlock said. But his hand dropped to his side.

“Both of you, into the boat,” Neville said.

“Where are you taking us?” Evangeline said. She seemed unhurt from her fall.

“Why, to Mr. Ritter,” Neville said. “You two will be the guests of honor at a hanging he's planning.” He smiled. “Hah, I made a good joke. Now please follow Mr. Bayes into the boat. Step carefully now, we don't want any broken bones.”

Once Flintlock and Evangeline were settled in the middle of the boat Neville said, “You, put your hands behind your back. Any move I don't like I'll shoot the woman.”

Flintlock did as he was told and Bayes tied his wrists together, the jerking rope cutting painfully deep. “Now both of you sit there quietly and you won't get hurt,” Neville said. “Please enjoy our little cruise.”

Flintlock looked into Evangeline's eyes and said, “I'm sorry.”

“It's not your fault,” she said. And then for the first time since he'd met her he heard Evangeline say something negative. “As you said, Sam, we're losing this war.”