Must the Maiden Die (38 page)

So it was figured.

As Rhys Bevan had said, the men who loaded
and unloaded the guns were small fish. They might not even know
where the cargo was headed. If captured, their arrest would only
serve to warn those who masterminded the operation. Thus the
objective was to catch the big fish.

Bronwen swung the glasses east to scan the
ground. Somewhere down there, waiting on horseback, were Jacques
Sundown and Rhys Bevan with a band of Treasury agents. They would
have only a small window of time in which to identify and seize the
contraband. Bevan's greatest worry was a premature ground attack,
which might give the ones in charge an opportunity to escape.

Slowly Bronwen moved the field glasses to
sight along the river. Then she stopped, moved the glasses back a
fraction, and held. "Professor, I've got something along the river!
Almost due east!"

"Please give me a point of reference."

She squinted, running through the
calculations he had taught her to determine distance. "Maybe a mile
or so above Fulton hamlet on the west bank. I just saw wagons come
from behind some trees. There's a big clump of willows hanging into
the water and next to it I can see the end of a wharf. Must be a
long one the way it's jutting out into the river."

She concentrated as she moved the glasses to
the south. Several minutes later she said, "Professor, I think this
is it! Those three low-riding, northbound boats—they're past Fulton
now. It looks like they could be heading for that wharf! And all of
a sudden there's a lot of activity that wasn't there the last time
I looked."

Lowe's glasses were now moving beside
hers.

"Yes, I see them!" he said. "Boats with
heavy cargo, probably bayonets, heading north while the boats with
rifles head south from Oswego—and they rendezvous at a site
mid-river. Very clever."

He lowered his glasses and said, "Time to
get under way! Keep watching the boats while I contact the
ground."

He reached beneath the bench where his
equipment was stored. Bronwen had heard excitement in his voice
that echoed her own, but she knew without looking that his
movements would be steady and methodical.

She felt the basket tilt slightly as he
leaned over the side. "Loose ropes! Loose ropes
now!"
came
booming from his megaphone. The basket listed again, as Lowe leaned
out farther to see those below who were releasing the mooring ropes
from their anchors.

Now came the part Bronwen dreaded most. The
worst thing about ballooning, hands down, was the stench of the
coal gas. She would describe it as smelling like an open sewer
filled with rotten eggs. While it didn't seem to much bother Lowe,
whenever she saw him reach for the gas valve, she held her
breath.

The air seemed so still that Bronwen, her
eyes glued to the river activity, couldn't tell if the mooring
ropes had been loosed. She risked a sideways glance at Lowe, who
was throwing out several sandbags of ballast. Then—she sucked in
her breath—he turned the valve at the base of the silk envelope to
let a small amount of the gas "blow off." The
Enterprise,
with a diameter of forty-two feet, could hold over thirty thousand
cubic feet of gas. If released all at once, Bronwen imagined the
stench would topple a herd of elephants.

While her glasses were trained on the
wagons, three more canal boats, which must have been concealed by
the willows, suddenly appeared. "Professor," she said urgently, "I
think we need to get moving. Right now!"

She heard a soft chuckle behind her, and
looked down to see their mooring site receding. It amazed her, as
it had the first time aloft, that she had no sense of motion. And
yet they must be floating somewhat faster than usual on a whisper
of breeze from the west.

"You'll be on your own for a minute or two,
Miss Llyr," the ever courteous Lowe told her. "Please watch and
report, because I'll be checking the lines."

He climbed up into the hoop, a ring between
the basket and the balloon envelope on which the guide ropes were
fastened. Bronwen scrutinized the ground for Jacques and the
Treasury men. They were divided into two groups: one to the north
of the
Enterprise,
the other to the south.

She found them. A number of horses and
riders waiting some distance ahead. She guessed they were on a
grassy rise, but from the air she had no accurate sense of depth
perception. Then she saw their white flags waving to indicate they
had the balloon in sight .

"Professor, I can see the Treasury men." She
could hear her voice tighten. "How far are we from the mark, do you
think?"

Jacques and Rhys would have field glasses,
and she was supposed to signal them when the
Enterprise
was
a mile from the target.

Lowe climbed down beside her and raised his
glasses. And put them down almost immediately, saying, "Get ready
to signal!"

She reached for a portion of the flexible,
telescoped wand he was elongating. On the end of it hung a large
banner of bleached canvas.

They both leaned over the edge of the
basket, gripping the now fifteen feet of wand, and extended it to
point in the direction of the target. Bronwen saw one of the horses
below already galloping hard toward the river. While Lowe collapsed
the wand, she hoisted her glasses, and grinned. That first horse,
furlongs ahead of the others, was Jacques Sundown's black-and-white
paint.

A minute or two later the
Enterprise
passed directly over him. He never even glanced up.

The balloon was approaching the river, and
with the glasses Bronwen spotted a barn set back a ways from the
opposite river bank. In front of the barn stood several flatbed
wagons loaded with crates. Another wagon stood at the wharf, while
men hauled similar crates to it from the canal boats. But what
interested Bronwen most were tall wooden kegs standing at the end
of the wharf. She had a feeling the kegs held black gunpowder.

Then she experienced a jolt of tension as
she smelled gas, which meant they were about to descend. This did
not seem too smart. It wasn't as if the smugglers had to look very
far for weapons.

All at once she heard shouting ahead. The
men on the far riverbank were making startled gestures as they
looked up and saw the
Enterprise.
Which, it seemed to her,
was now barely moving. All the activity below slowed, and then, for
a long moment, completely stopped.

The scene came alive with a sudden storm of
commotion, as if a giant had stepped on an anthill. And Bronwen
smelled gas. They were descending again. She put down the glasses
and whirled to shout at Lowe, "We're supposed to keep them
distracted, not serve as a bull's-eye!"

She was dismayed to see Lowe smiling as he
heaved a sandbag over the side. They lifted and then, with his
twist of the valve, down they went again.

The muffled report of a rifle reached her,
then another and another. She frantically told herself the basket
and balloon were still too distant to hit. Plus the men were
shooting upward at a moving target—how accurate could they be? The
professor, however, was again reaching for the gas valve. They
hadn't discussed this part of the assignment, and she felt a flare
of temper at her own inattention. It hadn't crossed her mind that
Lowe might be suicidal.

Even without the glasses she could now see
that what looked like a sagging picket fence was actually a ragged
line of guns pointing upward. And every second the
Enterprise
was getting closer to them. With the next volley
of gunfire, she decided she wasn't ready to die.

She reached under the bench and grabbed her
weapon. Snatching it from a cotton nest and holding it up, she
yelled, "I'm doing this now, Professor!"

"No, wait!" he shouted, and the stench of
gas nearly knocked her off her feet. She grabbed the side of the
basket, regaining her balance just as she heard more rifle blasts.
They sounded far too close. The balloon was descending and in less
than half a minute would be over the river.

Bronwen steadied herself against the bench,
eyeing the powder kegs at the end of the wharf. She waited, waited,
and then hurled the grenade.

Nothing happened. There were at least a
dozen rifles trained on the basket, firing at it, and nothing
happened. The damn grenade was a dud! Or had she forgotten to
insert the plunger?

BANG-BAMMM!

The explosion came as the basket lurched
downward. Water sprayed beneath her, tossing up pieces of wood and
metal. She couldn't tell how much damage had been done, because by
then the
Enterprise
was passing over the barn and descending
fast to the farmland beyond. Then, from the far riverbank behind
her, she saw a score of horses thundering into the smoking mass of
confusion.

"They're here, Professor! Bevan and his men!" she
shouted at him, pointing at the agents. He was manipulating the
ropes and just nodded, smiling broadly.

She braced herself for the coming jolts.

They made a rough landing in a field of scrub. When
Bronwen crawled out of the basket, she staggered when she took a
first step. It felt as if every inch of uncovered skin was
scratched and small trickles of blood ran down her arms. The
professor was concerned only with securing his balloon. As Bronwen
found her bearings, Loew seemed to ignore the clamor coming from
the riverbank.

She took off at a run in the direction of
the noise and the smell of gunpowder, her hair whipping around her
face, though it had not so much as ruffled during the flight. When
she tripped over the cuffed legs of her too-large, men's trousers,
she had to stop and haul them up, pulling the drawstring at the
waist so tight she could hardly breathe. Then she drew her
Treasury-issued pocket revolver and dashed forward.

She halted short of the river; it was not
wide, but it was wet. Rhys Bevan, not more than thirty yards away
on the opposite bank, stood with his revolver trained on several
scruffy-looking men.

Bronwen shouted, "Everything O.K.?
Sir!"

"Top-notch!" he answered, and jerked his
free thumb over his shoulder. He was smiling, but it was probably
because for once she'd remembered to respect his rank.

It looked less chaotic here than from the
air. Bronwen could see half a dozen men herded together, wound
tightly with rope like an upright bundle of logs. Other men with
crowbars—a few of whom she recognized as fellow Treasury
agents—were prying open crates and hauling out Enfield rifles and
sword bayonets.

Casting a quick look around her, she spied
several small rowboats beached along the riverbank. With some
effort, she shoved the first one into the water and scrambled into
it. Shortly, she was standing beside Rhys Bevan, looking down at
canal boats loaded with crates on which had been stenciled bold
black letters: pickaxes, shovels, rakes. Some crates were still
empty, some full of weapons.

"A shrewd operation they had here," Rhys
commented in his pleasant Celtic lilt. "Well planned. Not
particularly well executed, but almost good enough."

"Where's Jacques Sundown?" Bronwen asked.

"In the barn, I believe. It's a shame about
him," he added.

"Why?"

"I've never seen a man act faster. Never a
moment of hesitation, never a wasted motion or a false move. I'd
give a great deal to have him in the detective unit."

"You know he won't join."

"Yes, and even if he would, McClellan could
claim him first. He wasn't happy about Sundown leaving Cincinnati
right now, not with Confederates in western Virginia threatening
the railroads."

Bronwen grinned. "Jacques would never pass
up an excuse to come back here."

"And we know why, don't we," Rhys commented
dryly, watching Jacques stride toward them. Behind him, lanterns
were being lit, their glow keeping the gathering dark at bay.

"Everything wrapped up?" Rhys asked.

"It's done." Jacques gave Bronwen a short
nod.

"Did you get everybody?" she asked.

"All but one."

"De Warde?"

"No," answered Rhys. "I doubt very much
we'll be able to hang this on Colonel de Warde. He's too cunning.
Most of these men know only their immediate contacts. A smart move
by the one who masterminded it, because then nobody knows too much.
There's nothing to trace back to the man at the top. It won't be de
Warde, though—I'll wager he merely saw an opportunity, collected
his money, and kept his coattails clean. But we did have some good
luck. Winged a canary who wants to sing. You guessed a few days ago
who he might be, Agent Llyr, and I think we'll know soon enough
who's behind
him.
What we don't know is where the bayonets
originated."

"I think I do," said Bronwen.

Both Rhys and Jacques stared at her. "Well?"
demanded Rhys.

"Have you heard," Bronwen asked, turning to
Jacques, "of the Oneida Community?"

Jacques's flat expression almost changed;
which, if it had, Bronwen would have seen as a near-supernatural
phenomenon.

"They make steel knives," he said.

"What are you two talking about?" Rhys asked
with impatience.

"I was watching those three boats"—Bronwen
gestured in the direction of the demolished wharf—"and I think they
came from the Oneida River. And they made it into that river by way
of Oneida Lake. The Oneida Community, as Jacques said, is noted for
its steel cutlery—among other things. It has a forge, and its own
foundry. The people there are a little batty, and they might not
even know where their bayonets are going."

"Good work, Agent Llyr!" Rhys said. "Oneida
makes the sword bayonets that somebody has ordered, then someone
else entirely puts the weapons on boats and brings them to this
spot. Here they're fitted to the British Enfields come from Canada
to Oswego, and crated as farm tools. Then they're stored until they
can be delivered to the South. Think I'll pay a call on this Oneida
Community."