Kill or Die (19 page)

The whores had all gone and Mathias Cobb was a disappointed man.

He tried to take solace in the black rum that Ritter had given him, found it disgusting, and decided to take a short walk around the compound before retiring for the night.

Cobb slipped a .38 self-cocker into the pocket of his broadcloth coat and stepped out of his tent into darkness. There was no wind and the swamp, usually full of night sounds, was strangely quiet. Lamps glowed in the tents of the loggers and now and then a man's voice raised in a laugh. Somewhere a guitar picked out the melody of “Juanita” and a man crooned its simple tale of unrequited love.

Cobb passed a logger who looked at him and then looked again, a well-dressed man with a huge belly and waddling gait out of place among a community of lean loggers and laborers.

“I say, my man,” Cobb said. “Stop a moment.”

Catching the ring of authority in the fat man's command, the logger stopped and knuckled his forehead. “What can I do for you, mister?” he said.

“What's your name?” Cobb said.

“Grover Shaw.”

“And what do you do around here?”

“I'm a bucksawyer. Been a bucksawyer all my life, man and boy.” Then, taking Cobb for a tenderfoot, “I cut the cypress logs to size.”

“Then, my fine fellow, you'll be glad when the steam saws are set up, will you not?”

“Make my life easier,” Shaw said. Then, a puzzled look on his grizzled face, “Who are you, mister?”

“My name is Mathias Cobb. I'm taking over from Mr. Ritter as overseer of this enterprise.”

“Well, I'm surprised. But it's nice to meet you, Mr. Cobb.”

“Don't worry, I plan to make changes around here,” Cobb said. “And I'll make sure that there will be plenty of whores and whiskey for you boys, lay to that.”

“Well, I don't drink and I'm a married man,” Shaw said. “But some of the others will appreciate that, I'm sure.”

Cobb smiled. “Well, carry on with your excellent work, Mr. Shaw.”

His mood little improved by his encounter with Shaw, Cobb decided to seek out Ritter and reassert his authority. He stepped to Ritter's tent and from outside said, “Brewster. Will you walk with me?” Ritter opened the flap. He stuck out his head and cringed when he saw Cobb. “Will you walk with me, Brewster?” the fat man said again.

“Of course. Be delighted,” Ritter said. He emerged from the tent wearing shirt, pants and boots. “Wait, I'd better get my gun,” he said.

“No need, Brewster,” Cobb said. “I have a self-cocker in my pocket.”

Ritter stood beside the fat man. “Where do you want to walk, Mathias?” he said.

“Perhaps down by the swamp, but first I must clear up a little misunderstanding. I am your superior and you must call me Mr. Cobb.”

“But you called me Brewster. I thought—”

“You thought wrongly,” Cobb said. “You are my inferior and therefore I may call you by your given name. But you must always say Mr. Cobb. Is that understood?”

Ritter was a simmering cauldron of suppressed rage, but he managed to say, “It's understood.”

“Excellent,” Cobb said. “Then we are perfect friends again. Now, shall we promenade and enjoy this wonderful evening?”

“Some of the loggers say a storm is brewing,” Ritter said.

“Nonsense,” Cobb said. “I haven't lived in Texas for very long, but I assure you I know our great state's weather. It's going to be balmy, Brewster, balmy. My, how quiet the swamp is tonight, and how dark. I can't even see my cypress.”

“Don't get too close to the water's edge,” Ritter said. “There are always alligators around.”

“Is that right?” Cobb said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his .38. “Perhaps I'll get a chance to take a pot at one.”

Ritter said, “Fire a shot this late and you'll alarm the whole camp.”

“It's good for the men. Keep them on their toes.” Then, his eyes searching the swamp, he said, “Why did you send the whores away?”

“I didn't. They left because they thought it was getting too dangerous around here.”

“Another symptom of your gross mismanagement, Brewster. Unlike rats, whores never desert a sinking ship. They stay where the money is to the bitter end. Hola! What is that?”

“Where?” Ritter said, seething.

“Over there among those floating plants.”

“It's a log caught up in the hyacinth.”

Cobb looked down at the soggy ground under his feet then took a couple of steps closer to the water. “I'll be damned if it is,” he said. “That's an alligator.”

“Are you sure?” Ritter said.

“Of course I'm sure. Unlike you, Brewster, I'm always sure.” He raised his revolver to eye level. “Watch him kick!”

So intent was Cobb on his prey that he never saw Basilisk's head rise from the water. From a standing start, over a distance of thirty feet, an alligator can outrun a horse and when Basilisk, who weighed half a ton, hit Cobb his speed was twenty miles an hour. His bite tore the fat man's left leg off just above the knee and sent him sprawling.

A short silence . . . Cobb in deep shock . . . feeling no pain . . . and then shrill screams that ripped apart the fabric of the night.

Ritter rushed to the fallen man, grabbed the shoulders of his coat and tried to haul him onto drier ground. But Cobb was a fat man and so heavy that Ritter could not budge him.

Basilisk drifted a few yards out, his blind, reptilian eyes above water. Ritter ignored him, still hauling on the shrieking Cobb's broadcloth coat. Blood from the man's severed leg spurted everywhere and Ritter's hands and face were scarlet. Bonifaunt Toohy and several miners arrived and pulled Cobb back from the edge of the swamp. Toohy sidestepped the squealing banker and stepped to the water's edge. He cut loose with his Colt, but Basilisk quickly submerged and all Toohy's bullets did was churn the water.

Cobb was in mortal agony and his frantic shrieks scraped across the night like fingernails on chalkboard. “A doctor!” he yelled. “Get me a doctor.”

The ground where Cobb lay glistened with blood and two inches of white bone protruded from the ragged stump of his thigh. The man's eyes were wide from pain and fear and his mouth was a scarlet O in his ashen face as he tried to bear the unbearable.

Bonifaunt Toohy reloaded his Colt slowly as he eyed the screaming fat man. The damned fool had allowed himself to get attacked by an alligator and had ruined all of Toohy's carefully laid plans. He felt no emotion but anger as he raised the Colt and fired a bullet into the center of the O of Cobb's mouth.

 

 

“I wouldn't wish that death on any man,” Brewster Ritter said. He passed Toohy a glass of rum. “At least you ended it for him.”

“Where does Cobb's death leave you?” Toohy said.

“I haven't thought about it yet.”

“You'd better. Now he's dead, who owns the bank?”

“There must be shareholders,” Ritter said. “Tomorrow I'll ride into Budville and talk to the bank manager.”

“What about the cypress?”

“We continue with the cutting. There's a fortune at stake here. But we need money to keep the loggers happy.”

“Surely the shareholders will see reason,” Toohy said.

“They should, if there are any. Maybe Cobb thought he'd never die.”

“Son of a bitch died like a dog,” Toohy said. “And he lived like a dog. My guess is that there are shareholders. And that he cheated and swindled them as he did everybody else. They may be so glad to see Cobb go they'll give you anything you want.”

“I hope that's the case.”

“You'll find out tomorrow,” Toohy said. “The loggers would never have worked for Cobb anyhow. One of the foremen told me he'd blow the whistle if they saw a fat man in the woods. It was a sign that there would be three accidents in a row.”

Ritter smiled. “Didn't bode well for Cobb, did it?” Then, “What are the loggers saying about the storm?”

“What storm?”

“Some of them say a big blow is coming.”

“I just told you that they're a superstitious bunch, even worse than mariners. Judging by the sky, the weather will remain fair and we can cut a lot of trees. Hey, I wonder where Cobb's leg is?”

“In the gator's belly, I expect,” Ritter said.

“Pity. We could have buried it with the rest of him.”

 

 

As Bonifaunt Toohy walked back to his tent he stopped in midstride. Cobb had brought luggage with him. Hell, he may have a carpetbag stuffed with money. Shocked at the manner of the fat man's death Ritter hadn't thought of that yet, but he would.

A lamp still burned inside Cobb's tent. After a quick look to make sure no one was watching him, Toohy ducked under the flap. To make himself less visible, he lowered the wick on the lamp and then looked around him. There were not one, but two carpetbags, and neither looked like it had been opened since Cobb's arrival. Toohy uncorked the rum bottle, took a swig and then laid the first bag on the cot. The tent flapped a little in a growing breeze, but he thought little of it. The bag was filled with clothing and a leather shaving set, razor, soap and brush. A silver-backed hairbrush, ajar of pomade, a bottle of lavender water and, wrapped in an oily rag, a Remington derringer. Toohy slipped the gun into his pocket and then tossed the bag away.

The second carpetbag was an even greater disappointment. Cobb had stuffed it with color-tinted photographs of near-naked women, a pair of light wrist shackles, a dog whip and a hundred dollars in single bills, obviously to pay his whores. As he had with the derringer, Toohy stuffed the money into his pocket then thumbed through the pictures. Finally he shoved them into the bag, tossed it into a corner of the tent and stepped outside into rain.

“It's raining and the wind has picked up,” O'Hara said as Flintlock carried his morning coffee onto the deck. “Sleep well?”

Flintlock took time to build and light a cigarette, then, “She was being kind. That was all.”

“I didn't ask about that,” O'Hara said.

“I had a bad dream and I was scared about today,” Flintlock said. “Evangeline let me sleep with her.” Flintlock gave a slight smile. “Well, I slept. Evangeline doesn't sleep. Strange sky.”

O'Hara nodded. “The clouds are building.”

“And the wind,” Flintlock said.

“Are you still scared about today?”

“Yeah. You?”

“I'm not looking forward to it. I know that is not the warrior's way, but it's how I feel.”

“What can we expect, O'Hara?”

“A shooting scrape in wind and rain. Thunder and lightning too.”

“Good coffee,” Flintlock said. “Evangeline made it. I heard her.”

“When the fight comes, you'll be ready, Sammy.”

“So will you.”

O'Hara nodded. “How's the coffee?”

“Like I said, it's good.”

“Then I'll get me a cup.”

After O'Hara went inside Flintlock built another cigarette and because of the rising wind had trouble lighting it. The rain was light, a promise of things to come, just a faint hiss among the hyacinth. The sky was as gray as a shotgun barrel, the clouds banding in great sweeping arcs. The two canoes moored to the deck bobbed in the restless water.

Still troubled by his fears of the night, Flintlock stuck out his right hand and spread the fingers. His hand was steady with no sign of tremor and he was much relieved.

Evangeline came onto the deck with O'Hara. “Angry sky,” she said.

“And getting angrier,” Flintlock said.

“When do we go?” Evangeline said.

Flintlock started to say, “You're not—” but bit off the words mid-sentence. He knew telling Evangeline what she could and couldn't do was an impossible task, like trying to sweep sunshine off the front porch. “When the Atakapan get here,” he said.

“It will be soon,” Evangeline said. “The storm is coming in faster than we thought. I'll get myself ready.”

After Evangeline left Flintlock rubbed his stubby chin. “Maybe I should shave,” he said. “Make a better-looking corpse if I get shot.”

“Sammy, there's nothing anybody could do that would make your corpse look better,” O'Hara said. “But if you stop a bullet I'll shave you before we plant you.”

Flintlock angled a look at O'Hara. “Do you know something I don't, Injun? Has Evangeline seen something in her crystal ball?”

“She doesn't have a crystal ball, Sammy. And no, she hasn't seen anything and neither have I. Have you been talking with old Barnabas again?”

“No, I haven't seen him in awhile. He keeps busy.”

“You'll come through this fight like Wild Bill Hickok, trust me.” O'Hara said.

“Wild Bill got shot in the back,” Flintlock said.

“Yeah, and he made a sight prettier corpse than you ever will.”

“O'Hara, when this is over and if I'm still alive, remind me to put a bullet in you.”

“I sure will, Sam.”

Flintlock shook his head and said, “I've never been scared before and I've been in some mighty bad shooting scrapes. What the hell is wrong with me?”

“Only one thing wrong with you, Sam. You're in love with Evangeline, so this time you've got something to lose.”

Flintlock was silent for long moments, staring at the timber boards between his feet. “You're right,” he said.

O'Hara nodded. “I know I'm right.”

“What can I do about it?”

“There's nothing you can do, Sammy. Being in love is a natural fact that you can't change.”

“Now I know what ails me I feel better,” Flintlock said. “For a while there I thought I'd turned yellow.”

“You're not the brightest of men, Sam, but I'm sure in the end you would have worked it out for yourself.”

The storm grew in intensity as the morning progressed. Wind and rain increased and thunder rumbled. By noon the wind shrieked and debris cartwheeled though the swamp. Agitated water splashed over the cabin deck and the canoes danced and banged into one another. The black sky thundered and lightning scrawled across the clouds like the signature of a demented god.

Through this maelstrom, war paint running in blue, red and yellow streaks down their bronzed faces and onto their naked necks and chests, came the Atakapan, ten warriors in a pair of dugout canoes.

When Puma stepped onto the deck the morning was as dark as evening from the pall of gloom that lay over the torn and tattered swamp. Even the mighty cypress bowed their heads to the ferocity of the tempest and the alligators had fled to deeper water. Only the fish and the frogs remained.

There was little talk, the wind tearing words, half-formed, from every mouth. Evangeline appeared dressed for war, her hair pulled back with a red ribbon. She wore black tights, boots, boned leather corset, a plain white shirt and two holstered Colts in crossed cartridge belts clung close to her hips. Flintlock thought her magnificent, a warrior princess in the rain.

Flintlock motioned to the bucking canoes and after a lot of cussing and a few false starts he and the others managed to board. The Atakapan hid amused grins behind their hands.