Ride the Panther (34 page)

He crouched against the floor and peered through the ribbed wooden back of a chair as Shug turned near the top landing.

“Get ’em, Shug. Drive ’em out into the open!” Cap bellowed. A haze of powdersmoke hung in the air and made the eyes water. Instead of firing on the man below, Shug sagged against the banister. The Dragoon Colt in his hand slipped from his fingers. He turned and Jesse saw a dark patch of crimson spread across the back of his shirt. Shug turned again and hung over the railing. The weight of his body pulled him forward and he rolled over the banister and came crashing down on top of the piano, shattered the wood frame, and thudded to the floor, to die in discord.

“AAAAHHHH!”
Enos Clem rose up from concealment and clutched at his neck. He fired down at the floor at his feet. Jesse realized he was shooting at the rattler. Enos turned and staggered down along the bar, his hand at his throat. Blood seeped through his clenched fingers. The rattler had given him a mortal wound and he knew it. But he wasn’t going to die alone. The gambler turned and leveled his revolver, thumbed the hammer back. Pacer shot him through the heart. The gambler crashed against the whiskey bottles, a card slipped from his coat sleeve—the three of spades—and then he fell in a rain of shattered glass down behind the bar.

Cap Featherstone sat cross-legged and grabbed a fresh cylinder from his pocket, broke the gun apart, and reloaded, checking to make sure there was a percussion cap over each chamber. His shoulder hurt like hell, but he forced the pain from his thoughts and peered to the side of the table he had chosen to hide behind.

Jesse crawled across the floor to Pacer, who sat with his legs out and his back against the wall. His hat was gone and his left arm had been peppered with shot from the shotgun blast. His face was pale and his lips were drawn into a tight line. Jesse examined his younger brother with cold-eyed scrutiny. Pacer shifted his weight. His pants leg was sticky near the thigh. He’d been hit in the left leg by buckshot ricocheting off the chair he’d thrown. If his wounds were serious, Jesse wasn’t letting on.

“Have I been ‘elected’?” Pacer asked. Shock was starting to set in. The hurting would come in waves until he lost consciousness.

“No,” Jesse told him. He wrapped his bandanna around Pacer’s thigh. “But you got ‘nominated’ real good.”

“Your brother needs doctoring,” Cap called out. “Looks like we’ve all taken some losses.” He scrambled to his knees. He saw his sword cane broken in half by his fall. Another bad omen, Cap thought. It was time to leave. He could try for the back door. But that would leave Ben’s boys alive to hunt him down. No. Better to end it here. “Why don’t you drag him out of here, Jesse. Else you’ll have his death on your conscience.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Pacer shouted.

Cap wagged his head and sighed. He scratched at his beard and took in the saloon’s interior. His dream of an empire had begun with the Medicine Wagon. Was it to end here as well? No, he told himself. No. Damn Lucius Minley, he should have killed him right after Samuel Roberts’s murder. That was his mistake. He’d left the wrong man alive. He wouldn’t make it again. He’d show no mercy and bury his enemies from now on—starting with Ben McQueen’s troublesome whelps. “Time to die,” he called out.

Jesse shuddered. Menace flowed toward him from the shadowy reaches of the saloon. Icy talons clawed at his heart and for one brief moment his courage almost failed him. Then Pacer Wolf stirred at his side. He shoved his revolver into his brother’s hand. “Stop him,” he said in a hoarse whisper. And in that moment, Jesse’s fear left him, exultation filled his soul. And his voice rang out in a clear, strong challenge.

“C’mon, Cap. What are you waiting for? Ride the panther!”

Cap rose from the floor. He hauled the table up in his left hand, holding the round oaken shield before him as he lumbered toward the front door, firing his revolver as he charged. An animalistic roar tore from his throat. He was a juggernaut, seeming unstoppable, a massive figure of fire and rage and blasting death.

Jesse stood his ground; the Colt revolvers in his hands fired in rapid succession. Bullet holes appeared in the surface of the table, wood chips exploding into the air. Pain seared his right side, but Jesse refused to yield as bullets heated the air and thudded into the batwing doors behind him. Thirty feet, twenty, then ten. Jesse emptied his guns.

And suddenly, Cap halted and the bullet-riddled table crashed to the floor. He stared in disbelief at Jesse, who was still standing, still blocking his path. The whole of Cap’s shirt was matted crimson and puckered with bullet holes where the flattened slugs had ripped his flesh and shattered bone.

“I don’t understand,” he gasped, and then sank to his knees. Cap stared at his adversary. The world was shimmering out of focus, but he willed himself back from the brink of death because he had to know. “Why—aren’t—you—dead?” he gasped. He sank forward, losing his hold, feeling the creep of cold and the bliss of final darkness. Jesse’s voice followed him into death with the last words Cap ever heard.

“A McQueen is a hard kill.”

B
EN MCQUEEN WAS ASLEEP
in his cane-backed wheel chair. He’d fallen asleep on the bluff behind Doc Curtis’s hospital that overlooked the Missouri River. It was midmorning on the last day of October. With war going to the east, it had taken a Herculean effort on Major Abbot’s part to secure a surgeon capable of the operation Ben required. But a week ago the surgery had finally taken place. Ben was still weak from the ordeal, and the wheelchair, while a temporary conveyance, often came in handy after an exhausting early morning walk. It was with great relief that Ben McQueen received the news that his son had brought a column of abolitionists and staunch Union loyalists out of the embattled Indian Territory and across the border into the comparative safety of Kansas. Free of concern for Jesse’s well-being, Ben’s healing seemed to accelerate. But Ben had worked hard today and his exertions had taken their toll.

“Don’t worry. He rests every morning, in the same place. It’s the warmest spot in the yard. You know, he never grows tired of watching the river,” Abbot said, standing in the shade of Doc Curtis’s back door. The half-dozen soldiers posted out front had halted the carriage and called for the major. Pete Abbot had instantly identified Raven, Jesse, and to his complete amazement, Pacer Wolf McQueen.

Abbot waved toward the sleeping man. “Doc says he’s healing nicely. It won’t hurt for you to wake him up.”

Raven didn’t need any urging. She had come all this way to see her son, and nothing or no one was going to stand in her way. Pacer also excused himself and hurried after his grandmother. He was hoping to avoid an uncomfortable exchange with the major. The Choctaw Kid intended to slip away from the clutches of the Yankees at the first opportunity.

As for Jesse, his side was still stiff and he moved too slowly to completely escape Abbot’s grasp.

“You did a splendid job, Captain.”

“Thank you, sir,” Jesse replied.

“I’d like to know how in the name of heaven you managed to—”

Jesse saluted and brushed past the major and rushed to his father’s side, forsaking military protocol out of love for Ben McQueen.

“See here,” Abbot indignantly began, shoving his spectacles back on the bridge of his nose. He started to take offense. But when he saw Ben awaken and reach out to enfold first his mother and then his two sons, the major’s anger melted away. “I suppose it can wait.” Abbot retreated into the doctor’s house and closed the door, allowing the family McQueen their moment in the sun.

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December 17, 1814.

A
FTER SAILING HIS THREE-MASTED
brig into the harbor of Natividad and unleashing his two-hundred-and-thirteen-man crew on the inhabitants of Morgan Town, Captain Orturo “the Cayman” Navarre promptly captured the island’s governor—Josiah Morgan—and ate him. Navarre neatly prepared his midday meal, flavoring cuts of the governor with peppers, wild onions, garlic, plantain, and chunks of guava. Then, in front of the subdued people gathered in the public square, the Cayman proceeded to dine.

The product of a Spanish father and a Carib mistress, Navarre had been raised by his mother’s people to be strong, to suffer pain without flinching, to be cruel and merciless to his enemies, and ruthless in battle. The Caribs were cannibals; however, Orturo took his ritualistic meals of human flesh more for the effect they had on others than to appease his own gruesome appetites.

Orturo Navarre finished off the governor and washed him down with a tankard of rum, then slowly but succinctly explained to a council of the port’s stunned inhabitants just exactly what he expected from them in return for his protection. The Cayman made his point, gesturing with a rib bone while he spoke, then afterward offered the Cabilde, the town council, a place at his table. Navarre laughed heartily as the merchants politely refused and hurried off to their houses, leaving the pirate and his henchmen a tentative promise of their cooperation. No one wanted to end up as the next day’s “sumptuous feast.”

Orturo Navarre rose from the table in the middle of the town square and, followed by a dozen of his crewmen, retraced his path up the winding street toward the governor’s palace, a walled hacienda that had once belonged to the late Josiah Morgan. The palace was a small fortress with ten-foot-high stone battlements surrounding a two-story stone house. A battery of four 24-pounder cannons were nestled in a redoubt below the hacienda’s walls and guarded the bay and harbor. Swivel guns loaded with grapeshot dominated the walls of the governor’s palace. The island’s steeply sided volcanic mountains swept up from the harbor and formed a natural barrier against any attack except from the sea. The palace’s fortifications, though formidable, had been undermanned—still, the defenders might have put up quite a struggle had not Navarre brought his black-rigged ship into port under cover of night and captured the governor enjoying himself at a local tavern. (It had been Morgan, trusting to the mercy of his captors, who had surrendered the meager garrison and talked his men out from behind the palace’s limestone walls only to see his guardsmen shot down and thrown to the sharks.)

On reaching the hacienda, Orturo Navarre walked to the edge of the cliff overlooking the harbor. The maw of a cannon peered over his shoulder like some baleful black eye. The wind from the bay swept up to ruffle the hem of his dark green brocade cloth coat. He was aptly nicknamed, for his features were mottled and as leathery looking as an alligator’s. And his teeth, like those of the Carib, were filed into points. He stood six feet tall. His head, shaved smooth, was like the rest of his torso, burned dark from the sun by a life spent on the high seas. In contrast to his savage habits, Navarre wore finery befitting a European nobleman. A silk waistcoat, lighter green than his coat, sported mother-of-pearl buttons. He had a fondness for ruffled white shirts with lace cuffs. His skintight trousers matched his coat and were tucked into thigh-high boots. A bandolier draped across his chest held a matched set of flintlock pistols with bone handle-grips. A cutlass dangled at his left side. He folded his arms and looked out across the bay, fringed with soft white sand and coconut palms. A hundred yards inland, the steep ridges of volcanic rock swept up toward the azure sky. The only other protected bay lay on the opposite side of the island in a place called Obregon’s Cove. But it was dotted by reefs and required repeated tacking to reach the shore, a difficult task even for a brig like the
Scourge,
which was gaffe-rigged and could sail close to the wind. But Navarre had a use for Obregon’s Cove as he did for Morgan Town.

He turned toward the collection of shops and taverns and stone houses comprising the port settlement. The town even boasted a church, a squat, thick-walled structure with a bell tower rising above the entrance. The church faced one side of the town square and seemed solid and impervious to the grog halls with which it shared the center of town. These were his people now; every rum runner, farmer, and wharf rat.

His second-in-command, a massive-looking African named NKenai, approached his captain and spoke in a deep, resonant voice.

“Captain Navarre, the priest would speak with you.” He gestured with a wave of a broad hand toward a reed-thin, rum-soaked-looking individual in black robes and broad-brimmed straw hat that the breeze kept trying to lift from his head. Tiny red veins were etched on his cheeks and nose. His bony hands betrayed the beginnings of arthritis, his joints swollen and the knuckles enlarged. Father Albert Bernal nervously awaited permission to approach the fierce-some pirate.

Orturo Navarre nodded to his subordinate. The big African grinned, revealing a row of yellow teeth set in the tattooed ebony mask of his face. Sweat glistened on the black man’s cheeks and soaked the edges of the cobalt blue fez the man wore atop his coarsely braided hair. NKenai kept a scimitar in his belt and throwing knives tucked in sheaths at the small of his back. The priest was ringed by several grim-looking men who took care to block Father Bernal’s path should he try to retreat from Captain Navarre and return to the village below.