According to Hoyle (27 page)

“No,” Rose answered patiently as he walked further away and began poking around at a stack of luggage piled beside the crates of gold. “They’d be left awake and aware of danger in an open space from which it would be easy to escape. Rather than asleep and unawares in their beds, left to burn and drown.”

Flynn frowned thoughtfully and glanced up as if he could see through the ceiling and into the salon above them. “You think that’s what they’re doing?” he asked hopefully.

“No, I think he plans to kill them all,” Rose answered distractedly as he fiddled with the edge of a canvas tarp. “They’re probably tied up even as we speak and think if they behave they’ll live through the night.”

Flynn glared at the man.

Rose turned and looked over his shoulder when he felt Flynn’s eyes on him. “What?” he asked with a defensive shrug. “You asked.” He poked at a small box.

“Shut up,” Flynn growled with a huff as he stood restlessly and walked toward the door.

“What do you suppose this is, Marshal?” Rose asked him.

Flynn turned to look at the wooden box under Rose’s hand. It was roughly the size of a breadbox, and it was attached by thick leather straps to a pallet with handles on either side, made for two men to carry it.

“It’s a box,” Flynn answered flatly.

Rose looked over at him testily. “What do you suppose is in it?” he asked as he slid his long fingers across the leather of one of the straps. “I don’t recall ever seeing something shipped quite like this.”

“Been holed up in a lot of cargo holds, have you?” Flynn asked distractedly.

“More than you’d imagine,” Rose answered wryly under his breath. He knocked on the wooden box and turned his head, as if waiting to hear a response from the contents. He gripped one of the wooden handles and hefted it. “It’s quite heavy. If I’m not mistaken, I’d say it’s lined with lead.”

Flynn shrugged and looked away, examining the darkness of the corridor beyond the doorway. His concern didn’t lie with the odds and ends of the cargo. “Open it up and see what it is,” he suggested negligently.

“It’s padlocked,” Rose told him in annoyance.

Flynn turned back to look at him, frowning slightly. His eyes drifted over the boxes of gold bullion and he frowned harder. The gold crates weren’t even padlocked. “You sure?” he asked as he stepped closer.

“Why do you keep asking me that?” Rose demanded of him irritably. “Yes, I’m sure.”

Flynn found himself smirking as he met Rose’s eyes. He cleared his throat and shook his head to dispel the urge to make another comment. It was almost a relief to see the man perturbed, and Flynn had to work hard not to poke at him a little more. He moved closer and peered at the padlock on the small box.

“Think it belongs to a passenger?” he asked as he knelt beside Rose.

Rose shook his head and leaned closer, reaching for the tarp that half-covered the box. Flynn found himself leaning away as Rose’s hair brushed against his cheek. The man made him uncomfortable, and Flynn just couldn’t get around that. How did he have any hope of ever telling Wash how he felt if he couldn’t even let Rose innocently touch him by mistake?

Rose pushed the tarp away to reveal another government brand on the top of the box. “It does not belong to a passenger,” Rose muttered as he tugged at the edge of the box experimentally. The box rocked, but the lid didn’t budge. It was nailed down.

“Nailed down and padlocked,” Flynn said. He looked over his shoulder quickly to make certain no one was out in the corridor, then he shifted, moving away from Rose and kneeling at an angle where he could watch the door as he examined the box.

“It’s quite heavy too. I’m positive it’s lined. I heard stories once of boxes that were moved like this,” Rose said idly as he brushed his palm over the stencils. “Off a ship in New Orleans to a monastery. I forget the name. Holy relics, nailed shut and protected by boxes lined with lead.”

Flynn shook his head distractedly as he looked around the cargo hold for something that could be used to pry the lid off the box. He knew they had more important matters to be tending to, but Rose’s scrutiny and the odd security measures taken with the little box had piqued his interest. It might be what these hijackers were here for.

“What could be more important than gold?” Rose posed. The tone of his voice made it sound almost as if he might suspect what was in the box.

Flynn looked up at him critically. Rose was frowning down at the box, his brow furrowed and his lips pursed. “Any ideas?” Flynn asked him carefully.

Rose’s eyes shifted to meet his. He worked his jaw back and forth and shrugged. “I might have one or two,” he admitted.

“Care to share?”

Rose studied him for a time, then sighed and nodded. “Several months back I met with a man in Denver. The government man we saw in St. Louis, in fact. He wanted someone to steal something for him, an Indian artifact the Army was trying to recover from a burial.”

“Did you steal it?”

“No, Marshal Flynn, I refused and the man tried to kill me, just like I told you,” Rose answered heatedly. “I am not a thief and I am not a hired gun, no matter the low opinions you may have of me.”

Flynn held up his hand to sooth him. “Okay, okay. How’d you get away?”

“An earthquake,” Rose answered curtly.

Flynn narrowed his eyes and peered at the Englishman. “An earthquake?” he finally repeated incredulously. “What, you just keep those lying around ’til you need one?”

“Don’t be glib, Marshal Flynn. It doesn’t suit you.”

Flynn snorted at him. He waved his hand through the air. “So you used a handily timed earthquake to escape from this government man who tried to kill you. Go on.”

Rose glared at him. “You remember what I said out on the plains? About the Santee searching for something they called the ‘terrible stone’? I believe Baird was looking for the same thing. He told me I had knowledge of the object he was seeking.” He looked down at the box worriedly.

“What could possibly make you think this is the same thing?” Flynn asked.

“That man we saw with Cage, the big man. His name is Bat Stringer. He was at that same meeting. If he’s here, it has to do with what Baird was after. And it wasn’t gold,” Rose said pointedly. “And to be honest, that’s the only object I can think of that I have knowledge of.”

Flynn looked down at the box, pondering the lead lining and the nails and the heavy-duty padlock.

“The Santee spoke of it with something like fear. At first I thought it some sort of religious trinket, something spiritual to lift and unite their tribes. But now, I believe I was wrong. I believe they viewed it as a weapon,” Rose said in a hushed voice. “And whatever power they believed it had, someone else obviously believed it too or they wouldn’t be after it.”

Flynn looked back up at him and nodded in understanding. Whatever was in that box was probably either very valuable or dangerous. Or both. Regardless, it didn’t need to fall into the hands of the wrong people.

 “Search those soldiers, see if one of ’em has a key,” he told Rose as he stood and went to hunt through the darker corners of the big room.

B
AT
S
TRINGER
sat at one of the dining tables in the large salon, scowling at the doorway. Finding Cage here had been a stroke of pure luck, an opportunity Stringer didn’t intend to overlook. But his good mood had swiftly gone downhill with the discovery that Dusty Rose was on this boat as well. Of all the people in all the wide world to step into his path, he’d stumbled over the one person who might be able to figure out what he was doing.

The idea that Rose had teamed up with Cage made his blood boil. It was even worse when he considered that Cage may well have been in Denver with Rose when they’d had the meeting with Baird, despite what the marshal had said about how long they’d known each other.

Stringer gritted his teeth.

“Cap?”

“What?” Stringer snapped as Alvarado came over to him tentatively.

“Things still running to plan?” Alvarado asked as he knelt at Stringer’s side.

Stringer looked up and glared at him.

“If Rose is down there with that
—
”

“I’m well aware,” Stringer snapped. “We’ll just have to make certain he doesn’t leave this river alive.”

Alvarado nodded and moved away, sensing Stringer’s mood and knowing not to cross him.

Stringer’s eyes strayed to Cage, who lay on the floor where Stringer had left him. He was torn over what to do with his old companion. On one hand, he wanted to tear him limb from limb and drag him across the bottom of the river. But on the other, Stringer admitted to himself that he was still just happy to see him.

Cage must have felt his eyes on him, because he turned his head just slightly and cut his eyes to look at him. They locked eyes unerringly, and Stringer sat wondering what he would do with him when the time came.

If only Cage would come back to him, it would save him the trouble of having to kill him. Stringer didn’t know if he could forgive him, but he was more likely to do that than pull the trigger.

A
QUICK
search produced no key to the padlock, but Rose and Flynn had managed to open several of the large crates of gold to investigate their contents. They’d been slightly nonplussed to find nothing but rocks and debris inside.

“We have ten crates of rock and one box of mystery content,” Rose surmised as he stood with his hands on his hips and looked down at the rocks within one of the crates. “I think I’ve lost the thread, Marshal Flynn.”

“You and me both,” Flynn muttered. He was still staring at the little box, confounded by the way it was secured. Rose seemed to have moved on, though, content to let the box keep its secrets and already hot to leave the cargo hold and go off to confront the others.

“Marshal.”

“What?”

“We have no gold,” Rose pointed out needlessly.

Flynn nodded, frowning as he stood slowly. They had no gold to exchange. They could try to pass off a crate as their ransom, but Flynn wasn’t fooling himself into thinking that would work. Not anymore.

“Are you done pondering this over now? There is no other choice. I’m tired of being on the defensive,” Rose muttered in frustration as Flynn distractedly tried to listen for any sounds of approach. “We need to move, Flynn.”

Flynn turned and frowned at the Englishman. “You plan to pick them off one by one?” he asked dubiously. “Without warning? You want to sneak around and kill them all?”

“It’s called guerilla warfare, Marshal,” Rose answered as he put out his cigarette on the wood of the crate under him and slid the remainder into his pocket. “You Americans should know something about it,” he added wryly under his breath. “During the Napoleonic Wars the Spanish knew they were outgunned, so they took to going about in small bands and undermining the larger French forces by attacking strategically and without warning. I believe we should learn from their ingenuity.”

“Why the hell can’t you speak English?” Flynn asked in frustration as he stared at Rose and scowled mightily.

Rose rolled his eyes. “What I’m saying, Marshal Flynn, is they’ve obviously split up looking for us,” he explained patiently. “They’ll be easy to take by surprise if they’re in smaller groups and isolated, and since they’re men like you, they won’t be expecting us to attack.”

“Men like me?” Flynn asked as he bristled and turned to face Rose.

“I mean, they’re Americans,” Rose said without responding to Flynn’s obvious ire. “They expect us to stand up and wave our hands and say ‘Here we are, please shoot us so we can die honorably!’” He waved his hands over his arms. “You said we were doing this my way, remember? And my way is to go about this in as dastardly and underhanded a manner as possible.”

Flynn stared at him, wondering if he was trying to be funny, or if he just didn’t see the irony in that statement. Flynn didn’t think Rose was joking, though. “I don’t like it,” he finally informed the man.

“I understand, Marshal. It’s a wild and wooly western thing, right? Cowboy honor? The Rattlesnake Code? Always warn before you strike?”

Flynn nodded and shifted from foot to foot restlessly, scowling heavily. There was a difference between the rules of war and the rules of upholding the law.

“Believe me, I do understand that,” Rose responded grimly. “I live by it. The people who come after me looking to make a name for themselves? They don’t. I always have to be aware of an ambush, and in learning how others would do them, I myself have learned a great deal about ambushing. And I would like to remind you of the exception to that little unspoken rule of the plains,” he murmured in that oddly sincere yet sarcastic way he had. “They’re here to kill
us
. They’re out there hunting us as we speak, with every intention of gunning us down, with or without warning. If they don’t expect us to be firing back, then that isn’t our concern. The code doesn’t account for stupid.”

Flynn frowned and pursed his lips. There was a certain seductive logic to that. He wondered if that was how Rose’s mind worked all the time. With cold, twisting logic, absent of morals or emotions. He wondered if that was how he lived with the things he did, by convincing himself it was right.

“I’m not going to lie and say it’s the easy way,” Rose continued as Flynn frowned at him. “What I don’t like the thought of is Cage and Marshal Washington being dead because we were too honorable to do anything about it.” He stood and slid his new hat onto his head. It was a dark brown felt with a wide, low brim. Rose had curled it until the sides had rolled up and the front hung low over his eyes. In the back, it rested low across his neck. It suited him much better than the bowler had. The effect was impressive, with the shadow always covering his already black eyes.

“Ain’t supposed to wear another man’s hat. Don’t you know that?”

“I don’t think he’ll come looking for it,” Rose drawled with a nod of his head at the dead man he had taken the hat from. They’d left the hijackers where they’d fallen, lying dead in their own blood. The soldiers who’d been guarding the cargo, though, they had covered with empty burlap sacks. They lay lined up in a row that reminded Flynn far too much of his time in the war. He looked over at them and grimaced, looking away again.