According to Hoyle (33 page)

“Stringer!” Wash called out in warning. “You can’t win this fight!”

“We’ll just see about that,” the big man called back calmly. “Unless you aim to see Micajah’s blood on this deck, you’re going to let me pass!”

“You don’t think I can shoot you between the eyes before you take a step?” Rose murmured in the gloom, his voice carrying through the darkness and fog eerily.

Flynn found himself shivering.

Stringer moved, pulling Cage to face where Rose was crouched. He obviously thought Rose the greater threat. Flynn heartily agreed.

“Cage!” Rose shouted hoarsely.

Cage jerked in response, but the larger man held him firmly, using him as a shield with his gun held to the underside of Cage’s jaw.

“I’ll kill him,” Stringer threatened, though Flynn thought the man’s voice wavered with the threat.

Rose answered with the very distinct sound of the hammer on his gun being pulled back.

Stringer lowered his head until he was peering around Cage, completely hidden unless Rose chose to shoot through the very man he claimed to care so much about. Neither Flynn nor Wash had a clear shot. Stringer knew where they were and he knew how to stay out of their line of fire. He was certainly no greenhorn.

Even though their numbers favored them, Flynn couldn’t help but feel like they had the disadvantage. There was no expecting help from inside. All the passengers who could escape had already done so, and none of them had chosen to stick around and help. The ones who would be willing had likely been tied better than the others, and were probably still inside, struggling to free themselves.

Suddenly, Rose removed himself from the darkness where he had taken cover. He stood and faced Stringer, lowering his head as he very deliberately eased the hammer down on his gun and slid it into his belt. The challenge was painfully clear. Flynn and Wash watched in morbid fascination, unable to do anything other than stare as the first rays of the sun’s light began to stretch across the deck.

Cage held out his hand pleadingly to Rose, shaking his head as if to stop the confrontation. Flynn uncharitably wondered which man he was trying to protect. Stringer was careful not to allow him too much freedom of movement, though, obviously not trusting him any more than Rose did at this point. Stringer’s grip on his gun tightened, but he still had it aimed at Cage’s head rather than at Rose. He moved sideways, out the door and onto the deck. Rose stood stock still as he watched and waited, his head down and his stolen hat throwing his dark eyes into even further shadow. He deliberately moved to follow them outside. Flynn and Wash crept along after them, more out of morbid fascination than any ability to help.

“What are you waiting for, Stringer? Noon?” Rose finally asked with a maddeningly cocky smirk when he had reached the doorway.

Stringer moved, shoving Cage out of the way almost as if he was afraid the man would be caught in the crossfire, and he lifted his gun and took aim. Rose pulled his weapon, the motion so fast and smooth that Flynn wondered if he had somehow been holding the gun in his hand all along. He fired from his hip at almost the same moment that Stringer pulled his trigger. The guns went off with resounding simultaneous blasts, echoing each other in the heavy air of the dawn.

Flynn knew that the advantage in a draw was not, as most people thought, who drew the fastest. Fast helped, of course, but you had to aim too or you were a dead man. Stringer and Rose both obviously knew that. Neither would have lived so long west of the Mississippi if they didn’t.

The two men stumbled back from the showdown, both of them hit and bleeding but still very much alive.

Flynn stood and aimed his gun, but Wash reached for him and stopped him just as Cage moved into his line of fire and tackled Stringer to the ground. They slid across the tilting deck of the boat toward the doors and grappled as Rose fell to his knees, stunned and bloody. Flynn could see two blood trails on his body in the diffused dawn light filtering through the skylights and the doors, one at his side as if the bullet had grazed his ribs, and one at his thigh. Flynn knew he himself had hit Rose before. He wondered which shot had been his, and which had taken Rose down this time.

As Flynn looked at him, Rose kept his eyes on Cage and Stringer and raised his gun again. “Cage,” the Englishman shouted in warning.

Cage turned his shoulders, abandoning the punch he had been about to land, and he spread out his arms, shielding Stringer as the man rolled to his knees and brought his own gun up. Rose hesitated even as Stringer took aim, then he jerked his gun and quickly fired two shots, missing Stringer and hitting the gas lamp hanging from a hook near the ship’s hull. Sparks flew as the bullets glanced off the metal lantern and slashed the hot oil inside, and both Stringer and Cage flinched away from them. Rose lunged to his feet and held his gun in both hands, limping closer to the two men on the ground now that he had stolen the advantage.

“Dust the iron,” he ordered in a strained voice.

Stringer glared up at him from where he’d taken cover on the deck. Flynn finally forced himself to move. He and Wash both stood, circling around the man and covering him from all angles.

Stringer looked around at them all mutinously, but then very slowly set his gun on the ground. Cage was on his knees next to him, one hand pressed to his ribs as he hung his head either in pain or defeat. Rose edged closer, his wary eyes on Stringer as he knelt next to Cage and placed a hand on his head.

“Are you okay?” he asked softly, so softly that Flynn barely heard it.

Cage looked up at him and nodded. “I’m sorry,” he mouthed silently. The hard lines of Rose’s face seemed to soften, and he ran his hand through Cage’s hair and knelt to whisper something in his ear.

Flynn’s eyes were inadvertently drawn to the sight. He never saw Stringer move. Wash did, but not in time to do anything aside from shout out an ineffectual warning and raise his gun.

Stringer lunged at Rose and Cage with a large knife drawn. It flashed wickedly in the dawn light as he brought it down toward Rose’s back. Cage’s arm shot out to block the blow, catching Stringer’s wrist between his forearms and twisting it away from Rose as Rose reeled to the side. Cage lunged to his feet, Stringer’s arm still in his grasp, and they wrapped around each other as they fought for control.

The knife plunged into Stringer’s ribcage as the two men stayed locked in the violent embrace. Cage didn’t look at all shocked or regretful as the knife slid home, but Stringer certainly did. Cage let him go and he staggered backward, toward the railing of the ship.

He looked down at the knife Cage had shoved into him, then up at Cage with a mixture of rage and confusion. He lurched sideways, gathering his strength for one last act of revenge. He wrapped his arm around Rose’s neck, then threw himself backward over the railing. Rose kicked his feet out, pulling on the arm that held him and struggling to get away as Stringer used his larger body mass to send them both over the railing. The two men seemed to hang suspended in the air for a moment as Rose kicked and struggled against the pull of Stringer’s heavier weight. His hands closed around Stringer’s forearm at his neck, and with one last gasped, struggling breath, both men went tumbling over the railing into the darkness and the swirling fog.

A splash below into the rushing waters of the Mississippi was all that signaled their passing.

Chapter 16

T
HE
sun was rising toward its zenith by the time the steamer was tugged off the sandbar and everything was getting straightened out. The workers had been forced to bank much of the freight the boat was carrying, taking all the cargo to shore in order to lighten the ship enough to be able to pull it off the sandbar it had struck. Manpower was scarce, and Flynn had told the riverboat captain in charge that there was no need to post a guard on the riverbank. There was nothing of value there anyway.

Once they were free of the sandbar, all those boxes of fake gold were loaded back on the ship, along with the bags and stacks of sugar, cotton, and tobacco, and they were under way.

Bodies were lined up in the salon and covered with rough canvas as the boat limped toward port in New Madrid, Missouri. Several lawmen boarded the steamer after it began heading back up the river, including an aide from the territorial Supreme Court Justice.

“We received your telegram, Marshal Flynn,” the aide informed Flynn when he boarded, just north of where they had gone to ground.

“What telegram?” Flynn asked the aide in confusion.

The man produced a folded yellow piece of paper and Flynn looked it over. It warned of an impending hijack and begged the local authorities to meet the riverboat at New Madrid to give aid. There was no name on it.

“I didn’t send this,” Flynn informed the man as he handed it back.

“If you didn’t, Marshal, then who did?” the aide asked.

“I couldn’t begin to tell you, son,” Flynn answered quietly.

The confused aide nodded, then thanked the marshals for all they had done aboard the ship that night and wandered away to join the investigators who were questioning others about what had happened.

“You think it was Stringer who sent it?” Wash whispered just as soon as they were alone again.

“Can’t imagine who else it would be,” Flynn murmured with a frown.

“Why would Stringer warn anyone about what he was about to do?” Wash posed.

“Why did he do anything he did?” Flynn countered with a shrug. “He hijacked a steamer full of fake gold and did nothing but herd people back and forth and get bunches of folks killed. I’m not going to waste my brain on figuring him out,” he declared determinedly. “He’s gone. I’m going to leave it there.”

Wash nodded, but he looked troubled as Flynn turned away.

There was a lot of preening and huffing as the various and sundry law officers tried to figure out who should be in charge, and Flynn and Wash sat idly by and watched until someone decided to hear from them what had happened.

They both told their stories, as did many of the officers of the ship and the passengers that had been rounded up. The authorities were still trying to decide what to do about the incident when the port of New Madrid came into view.

Wash and Flynn stood side by side, watching as the port grew larger. They were silent, unable to think of anything more worth saying after the events of the previous night. Even the elation of the few small kisses they had shared and the promise the future held for them now could not cut through the overwhelming sorrow of the loss of a man neither of them had known they even liked. Gabriel Rose had proved himself in the end, and Flynn was sorry to see him go the way he had.

Cage sat alone, his head hanging and his eyes closed. To Flynn, he seemed even more silent than usual, drowning in sorrow and pain. His wounds had been tended and his bruised ribs had been wrapped tight, so that even if he had wanted to slump as he sat he would not have been able to do so.

They had searched the river as best they could that night, calling out for any hint of life from the rushing water below. But no sign of Gabriel Rose or Bartholomew Stringer had been found. They had simply disappeared, like so many before them, into the muddy water of the Mississippi.

“Gentlemen,” the Justice’s aide addressed them as they stood at the railing.

Flynn and Wash both turned to face him, greeting him solemnly.

“It has been determined that this was not an escape attempt on the part of your prisoner,” he informed them.

Wash and Flynn stared at him. Flynn fought hard not to scoff at the man, and even harder not to hit him. A day ago, he probably would have thought the same thing. Rose had tried to escape several times and in creative ways. But, at the end, he had stuck with them. He had given his life to save innocent people, even if his reasons had been selfish. That had to stand for something. The measure of a man was when he did the right thing even if no one was watching.

“We have also taken into consideration your suggestions,” the aide continued officiously, “and both your prisoners will receive a full pardon for their heroic efforts. “

A weight seemed to lift off Flynn’s chest and he nodded gratefully. A posthumous pardon for Gabriel Rose wouldn’t do the man much good. It would probably even have irked him, Flynn thought fondly. But for Cage, a pardon would mean everything. Wash turned away from the aide and went to join Cage where he sat. He knelt in front of the silent man, unlocking his irons and telling him the news.

Cage nodded woodenly and looked over at Flynn for a moment, his eyes sad and lost. After a moment, he reached into his pocket and extracted a small, shiny object and handed it to Wash. Flynn realized it was Wash’s badge, hidden away and saved from the hijackers. The gesture both warmed his heart and made him inexplicably ache all over.

They had told whoever would listen what Cage had done, trying to prevent anyone from being hurt and taking most of the punishment on himself. Flynn knew he would never really know what had happened or what the truth behind the whole matter was. Cage was the only one who knew, and he couldn’t tell them. Or wouldn’t tell them.