Smugglers' Gold (6 page)

Ryder supposed he could have shot the man, captain or not, but let him keep on bawling orders as a couple of the men who'd come aboard the
Southern Belle
leaped back in the direction of the
Revenant.
One made it, rolling nimbly on the weather deck and springing to his feet among his shipmates, but the other timed his jump poorly, his face smacking the clipper's rail before he dropped into the water, quickly sinking out of sight.

The
Revenant
was veering off to westward now, frustrated crewmen loosing off a blaze of parting shots, but in another moment they were out of range, tacking southeastward toward the Keys, or maybe Cuba, farther on. Ryder was glad to watch them go, until he heard a growling sound behind him, and a woman's gasp.

Irene McGowan stood before him, trembling in the grasp of a straggler who'd missed his ride home. The pirate was bald, with skin like tanned leather, a thick blond mustache masking lips like a slash in his face. Those lips were drawn back in a snarl now, as he held a Bowie knife to Irene's throat.

“George, please!” she said.

“George,
please,
” the pirate mimicked her. Then, with a glance to sea, he growled, “The hell are they goin' without me?”

“Looks like you missed the boat,” Ryder replied.

“Screw that. You're putting me ashore.”

“Do I look like the captain?”

“You look like the guy who's gonna tell him what I need.”

“Or, what?”

“Or you can see this little piece without a head. How's that?”

Instead of budging, Ryder raised the Henry to his shoulder, sighting on the pirate's face. “How do you see that working out for you?” he asked.

“I mean it, boy! If you don't think—”

The Henry spoke, and he was gone, a dead weight sprawling on the deck behind Irene. She screamed, and might have fallen to the deck if Ryder had not closed the gap between them, taking her into his arms. He felt her shivering against him, weeping as she spoke.

“My God, he . . . You . . . How did you . . . ?”

Lucky shot,
he thought. But said, “You're safe now, let it go.”

It wouldn't be that simple, he imagined, but the
Revenant
was nearly out of sight, soon to be lost among the Keys. All that remained aboard the
Southern Belle
was dealing with the wounded and the dead.

*   *   *

T
he captain—Angus Gleason, Ryder learned, from chatter overheard in passing—pulled himself together before coming down to deal with his excited, frightened passengers. A quick search of the steamer, carried out by crewmen who had disappeared during the fight, revealed no living pirates left on board. Three corpses were recovered, two male passengers and Ryder's kill, all stowed together in the
Southern Belle
's cold room pending arrival at Tampa, some nineteen hours hence. Ryder helped wrap them in tarpaulin, bound with heavy twine, and made sure they were separated from the steamer's stock of meat and vegetables.

When that was done, life on the
Southern Belle
returned to normal, more or less. One of the passengers who'd died was traveling alone, no one to mourn him on the steamer, but the other one had been a married man. His widow shut herself inside her cabin, telling anyone who tried to talk her out that they could go to hell or she would see them in St. Pete. Among the other passengers, some five or six had minor injuries, small cuts and bruises suffered when the pirates came aboard. The captain's worry, now, appeared to be that they might sue the Leary Line, and he was circulating in a bid to charm them out of it.

Retreating to his cabin, Ryder cleaned the Henry and returned the rifle to its leather case. The busy work permitted him to ponder what had happened, wondering if he should take it as an omen for the job he'd been assigned in Galveston. That was a stretch, he realized, but when was the last time he'd even thought of pirates, prior to being given his assignment by Director Wood? Sometime in childhood, probably, never believing that they still existed in the flesh.

Maybe it was true, he thought, that wonders never cease.

But linking the attack to Bryan Marley, still some seven hundred miles and forty hours distant, with the stop-off at Tampa, was stretching things too far. Even supposing that he dealt with pirates roaming through the Keys, that didn't mean he knew about specific raids they staged on coastal shipping. And he obviously couldn't know that Ryder had been sent to find him, traveling under an alias.

Unless there was a spy at Treasury.

Ridiculous.

Even if Marley had a spy inside the Secret Service, newly formed in Washington, willing to tip him off, how would he get the news in time to mount a raid against the
Southern Belle
? And would he waste that kind of energy, trying to reach a single passenger among the several hundred traveling aboard the paddle-wheeler, without knowing who he was or even what he looked like?

No. The very thought was foolish.

His stomach growled, reminding him of how long it had been since breakfast. Ryder checked his pocket watch and saw he'd have to wait another hour until lunch was served, assuming that the dining hall opened on time.

At least the battle had not killed his appetite. In fact, the only thing he felt, aside from hunger, was relief at having come out of the scrape alive and well. Did that make him unusual, somehow? Should he be suffering from guilt? If so, for what?

A sudden muffled rapping on his cabin door brought Ryder's right hand to his holstered Army Colt. He rose, leaving his bunk, and crossed the narrow space, standing to one side of the door. No point in taking chances, just in case.

“Who is it?”

“George?”

Irene.

He opened up. She had changed clothes since Ryder saw her last, with pirate's blood spattered across the bodice of her dress, but still looked flustered. Glancing down, she saw the pistol on his belt and asked, “More trouble?”

“Nope. Just haven't packed it up. Are you okay?”

“I think so. Shaky, but he didn't hurt me. Thanks to you.”

“My pleasure.”

“While I was changing, it occurred to me,” she said. “I never thanked you.”

“You just did.”

“No, I mean properly.”

“Not necessary,” Ryder told her. “Anybody would have done it.”

“No one did. Just you. May I come in?”

“Come in?”

She blushed. “Rather than standing in the hall.”

“Oh, sure.” He stood aside to let her pass. “There's barely space to turn around.”

“I'm sure it's big enough,” she said, closing the door behind her. Then, a breathless tone, “Turn me around, if that's your pleasure, George.”

“My pleasure?” Ryder felt the words catch in his throat.

“It's only fair,” Irene replied. “I would be dead now, if it weren't for you.”

“Well, I—”

She stepped in close to him and smothered Ryder's answer with a kiss, then whispered, as it broke, “The hero claims his prize.”

Hero?
Ryder would probably have laughed at that, in other circumstances, but her lips and hands distracted him.
Why not?
he asked himself.

And once again, before they started grappling with each other's clothes.
Why not?

T
hey tried to be discreet. Over the best part of their final day and night together on the
Southern Belle,
mealtimes aside, they stayed in Ryder's cabin or Irene's, dividing their time between bedrooms afloat, watching out for other passengers in transit as if they were spies engaged on some perilous mission behind hostile lines. In Ryder's case, that would soon be a fact, but for the moment he enjoyed the playful intrigue, slipping in and out of rooms, scuttling down passageways, pretending to meet accidentally in the dining hall.

It ended on arrival at Tampa, tucked away at the northern end of a bay that shared its name. It didn't look like much from shipboard, still recovering from multiple engagements in the recent war and rife with yellow fever, as Irene described it. Eight hundred people, more or less, trying to build the settlement back up to something like its antebellum size. When Ryder asked why she was bothering to go there in the first place, she'd described an ailing, widowed sister with two children to support, and he had let it go. There was no arguing with family.

They parted with a chaste handshake as Irene went ashore, the tone of her good-bye communicating a regret that Ryder shared. Once she was gone, though, he returned his focus to the task ahead of him, preparing for his debut on a stage where actors who forgot their lines could wind up dead.

It was another seven hundred miles to Galveston, his last day and a half aboard the
Southern Belle
. After their run-in with the pirates, Captain Gleason kept the steamer fairly close to shore, although it did not seem to Ryder that the wild coast they were passing offered much in terms of sanctuary if they were attacked a second time. Some of it looked like jungle, from the tales he'd read of Africa, but most of it was scrub land, spiky with palmettos. All of it seemed inhospitable to Ryder, causing him to wonder if the former Rebel state had any value other than its ports on the Atlantic side.

Their last stop, on the way to Galveston, was at Biloxi, Mississippi, where they put some mail ashore and took on half a dozen passengers. None went ashore, and Ryder couldn't blame them. Once again, as at Miami, the main feature of the settlement appeared to be its lighthouse, tall and painted white. The stevedores unloading other ships in port were white and black, the work crews strictly segregated, but all labored with the sluggishness of weary men who hated their jobs.

Ryder spent his last full day aboard the
Southern Belle
sleeping and eating. There was nothing more for him to do before he went ashore and tackled his assignment in a nest of smugglers, thieves, and cutthroats. Without knowing when or where he'd sleep next, what the food would be like, or how plentiful, it was the only way that he could think of to prepare.

He had his cover story memorized, such as it was. He'd have to play the rest of it by ear, waiting to see what happened, how accessible his targets proved to be. Marley and Seitz were criminals by trade, which meant they'd be suspicious, maybe quick to take offense, and dangerous if riled. They hadn't earned their present reputation by permitting their competitors to poach on territory marked off as their own.

One false step, Ryder understood, could be his last.

The swamp and jungle vegetation disappeared for good as Mississippi and Louisiana fell behind them, pushing on toward Texas. It looked more like desert then, beyond the beaches, and they saw horsemen occasionally, trooping up and down the shoreline as if on patrol. Ryder had been expecting cattle, but he guessed they kept the beef herds farther inland, where there was something to graze on besides cattails and scrubby brown grass.

Texas was tough. Ryder knew that without having been there before, from what he had read in the press. During the war, it had supplied the Rebel side with men, horses and cattle, until Union forces seized control of the Mississippi River in 1863. Even then, no Texas territory had been conquered by the bluecoats at war's end, and the conflict's last major battle had been fought at someplace called Palmito Ranch, at the farthest southern tip of Texas, a full month after General Lee surrendered at Appomattox. Ryder had a feeling that the Texans who had fought for slavery were not about to change their attitude and welcome Union troops into their state with open arms.

Not my problem
, he decided, as the steamer's whistle signaled their approach to port. He was an outlaw now, for all intents and purposes. He ought to fit right in with the unruly citizens of Galveston.

Ryder was packed and ready as the
Southern Belle
prepared to dock. He left his little cabin and its memories, carried his portmanteau and rifle case on deck, and got in line to disembark. There was no system to it, simply waiting for the hawser lines to be secured, the gangplank to be lowered. First-class passengers, he found, had no priority in line to go ashore, though chivalry persisted in allowing ladies extra elbow room.

Ryder was pleased to have his feet on solid ground again, the first time since Key West. He had not helped unload the bodies they'd deposited at Tampa, thinking that it might be out of character and that he'd done enough, adding a pirate to the butcher's bill. Now, as he put the
Southern Belle
behind him and became a land lubber once more, it came as a relief.

Whatever happened next, Ryder believed he was prepared.

At least, he'd better be.

*   *   *

T
he port was similar to all the others he had seen before it, ships tied up to piers, with work gangs loading and unloading cargo. Bales of cotton dominated items being loaded into holds for export, while incoming products, for the most part, were concealed in wooden crates and burlap bags. He saw already how a canny smuggler could disguise a load of contraband as anything from fruit to textiles, leather to machine parts, without tipping Customs to the game.

Especially if Customs had been bribed to look the other way.

Priorities.

The first thing Ryder had to do was send a telegram off to Director Wood in Washington, announcing his arrival on the scene. They'd worked that out ahead of time, avoiding any mention of the Secret Service or the Treasury Department, with the telegram to be delivered at Wood's home. No one who intercepted the short message should be able to divine that George Revere was working for the U.S. government, or that his business on the island was a bit of treachery. For safety's sake, only Director Wood himself knew Ryder's mission and his present whereabouts.

That could be good or bad, depending on how things played out in Galveston, and back in Washington. If anything unfortunate befell his boss, Ryder would find himself cut off from any aid. Conversely, even if he needed help and asked for it, the best that Wood could do was contact local law enforcement officers—who might be working hand in glove with Marley and his gang.

Ryder found a Western Union office near the docks and paid two dollars to dispatch his simple message, stating that he had arrived and was investigating “local opportunities.” From there, he went in search of lodging and discovered that the city, with some ten thousand inhabitants, had no shortage of boardinghouses advertising weekly rates with small signs in their parlor windows. Ryder chose a neat two-story place, ten minutes from the waterfront on foot, and paid six dollars in advance for his first week.

Whatever else it might be, Galveston would never be described as cheap.

Ryder had noticed, on his short walk from the docks, that most men whom he passed along the street were wearing pistols. Some carried their guns concealed, barely, in shoulder rigs that bulged beneath their jackets. Many also carried knives of various descriptions, with Bowies and Arkansas toothpicks among the most popular. Pugnacious expressions completed the picture, suggesting a populace primed to fight at the drop of a hat.

The women, he noted, were different and seemed to be divided by class. The respectable sort appeared prim, even dour, and walked in groups of three or more if unaccompanied by men. The freer sort, including some he took for hookers with some free time on their hands, were more likely to sashay through the town alone—or, if in clusters, to be talkative, verging on boisterous.

Around the docks, he'd seen a fair number of black men working, once again in segregated parties. Others visible, along the waterfront, were Mexicans and some he thought were probably Italians, both groups mostly loading or unloading produce. He saw no Indians, but had not been expecting any, figuring that they should be out galloping across the plains somewhere, inland.

As far as smugglers went, for all he knew, half of the people working on the docks could be involved in sneaking contraband past Customs. Ryder harbored no illusions about stopping it, convinced that he would have his hands full with the Marley operation, on its own.

After he acquired his room, unpacked his things and locked the door behind him, Ryder went to see the rest of Galveston. Not all of it—the island sprawled over forty-six square miles—but enough to get a flavor of the place and learn his way around the parts that he supposed would matter to him. First, he visited the Customs house, built in 1830 and briefly pressed into service as the capital of Texas six years later, when Anglo Rebels threw off Mexican rule. The present version, all red brick and white Greek columns, had been finished right around the time that Texas had seceded from the Union. Now, with the wartime blockade a fading memory, it was a busy place, men coming and going with serious faces and money in hand.

This was the public face of Galveston, or one of them. It symbolized the kind of commerce states were proud of, business of the sort that built a civilized society with rules and regulations equally applied to all—at least, in theory. He noted that the faces trooping in and out were uniformly white, well fed, and more or less well groomed. A line was clearly drawn between the affluent and those who did their bidding on the waterfront, on fishing boats, or further inland, tilling fields.

The city had another face, as well, of greater interest to Ryder as he prowled its streets. There was another Galveston, deliberately overlooked by those who called the shots except when pleasure or another kind of commerce took then out of offices and homes to areas where the respectable were ill at ease.

The kind of place where he might find a smuggler's den to penetrate, and see what happened next.

*   *   *

T
here was no end of seedy bars, brothels, and gambling dens in Galveston. Most places Ryder visited combined the functions of all three, with liquor, women, and assorted games of chance beneath a single sagging roof. Most of the customers appeared to be seafaring men, though Ryder also saw a few who had the look of trail-worn cowboys, down at heels and wearing looks that said they wouldn't mind a fight. In fact, he witnessed brawls at two of the saloons he visited, with knives drawn in the second melee and at least one of the five or six combatants badly wounded. None of it appeared to faze the tipsy spectators, much less the hulking bouncers who moved in to pummel all concerned with fine impartiality.

It was a different world from Washington—which had its fair share of debauchery, as Ryder could attest from personal experience. In Galveston, the vice was on display like notions in a dry-goods store, for anyone to pick his poison. So far, other than some Customs agents at the waterfront, Ryder had seen no law enforcement officers in town, though logic told him there must be some, somewhere on the island. If so, it seemed that they were disinclined to interrupt the night's festivities, even when blood was spilled.

What did it take to get locked up in Galveston? If he was forced to test the boundaries, he would have liked to know the rules, but maybe that was something best learned as he went along.

One thing he learned, and quickly, was that even human frailty recognized a color line in Galveston. There were no posted signs, as far as he could see, but figured out by trial and error that the races did not mix where drinking, wagering, and whoring were concerned. The sole exception to that rule, in three of the establishments he briefly patronized, was the inclusion of black women on the menu for their upstairs cribs. Beyond that, Ryder got the feeling that if he entered a bar reserved for blacks or Mexicans, he might be lucky to come out alive. The same, he guessed, was true for any colored man who had a suicidal urge to drink with whites.

Since he was working and not celebrating, Ryder kept his drinking to a minimum while touring the saloons. He had to buy a beer, at least, to hang around and scan the crowds for someone matching the descriptions he'd received in Washington of Bryan Marley and his crony, Otto Seitz.

There were no photographs available of either man, but sketches and descriptions on a couple of old wanted posters were better than nothing. Marley was approximately six feet tall, around two hundred pounds, with handsome chiseled features under an unruly shock of dark brown hair, distinguished by a scar along the left side or his jaw. Seitz was a smaller man, five-eight or -nine, balding and bearded, with a nose that had been broken more than once. No other scars distinguished him, but he was said to have a tattoo of an eagle on his chest, if seen undressed.

No, thank you,
Ryder thought. He'd stake his hopes on Marley's scar and Seitz's shiny scalp, if it was all the same.

Of course, he'd known it wouldn't be that easy when he got down to it. Once he started on his rounds, it seemed that every second man he saw was scarred in some way, many of them balding, and most had cultivated facial hair of some description. Even those without obvious weapons on display looked dangerous. Their boozy laughter sounded like the baying of a wild dog pack.

Ryder had spent enough time in saloons to know that bartenders and bouncers knew their customers. In Galveston, with ships arriving and departing all the time, the clientele would be more fluid, but quickest way to put himself at risk would be to show up out of nowhere, asking questions about someone well known on the island as a smuggler. That approach could land him gutted in an alley, and since Ryder did not plan to end his days in Galveston if he could help it, he'd decided on another course of action.