Only the Gallant (2 page)

Back at the Orleans House, the Creole guardsmen dismounted and led their horses away. The hotel’s residents had already begun to rush from the burning building. One woman saw the hanged man and fainted. Baptiste and Charbonneau chanced a couple of shots. Jesse winced as hot lead whined past his ear. Charbonneau was a good shot and Henri Baptiste was fully his equal, but the downpour and the decreased visibility ruined their aim. Both men holstered their weapons as Gerard brought up their horses and walked the high-strung animals away from the spreading flames. The two mares dragging the broken remains of the singletree fled down the street after Jesse, further ruining the Creoles’ aim.

“After him!” Baptiste roared. “He’ll not escape us, by heaven. I swear it!” Jesse had already disappeared behind a wall of water, but the colonel was determined to avenge the honor of the Baptistes and that of the Creole guardsmen. He was confident of recapturing McQueen. After all, just how far could a man get riding bareback through a downpour with his hands bound behind him and a hangman’s rope trailing from his neck?

The frightened bay veered to the right and rounded the corner from Toulouse onto Bourbon Street. Somehow McQueen managed to stay astride the animal. Jesse McQueen had grown up riding bareback across the plains and foothills of the Indian Territory. He was a horseman first and foremost. But the downpour, while concealing him from his pursuers, also worked against him. It took all his skill to cling to the mare’s rain-slick back. His legs were growing numb from the effort.

The mare splashed through a puddle and galloped past a half-dozen ragged looters who had broken into a bootmaker’s shop and were helping themselves to his wares. The thieves were too absorbed in their ill-gotten gain to take notice of the mare and its hapless rider. As Jesse flashed by the shop the lynch rope worked its way to a corner step and a furrow in the splintery wood. Jesse felt the noose begin to tighten around his neck. For an instant he considered sliding from horseback and taking his chances, which were none too good without a pair of hands to break his fall upon the hard street. Then the last of the rope cleared the steps, sparing Jesse yet again. But he knew he was living on borrowed time. Sooner or later the rope would wrap around a hitching post or catch beneath a wagon wheel, and that would end it. Buildings skimmed past, blurred by the rain and the dense smoke that drifted up from the waterfront and hung like a pall over the city, choking entire blocks in its black embrace. The bay showed no signs of slowing. Smoke and flames, distant explosions, the bedlam of a rioting populace drove the animal onward in its headlong flight. Jesse McQueen needed a miracle if he was to see another sunrise.

He got one, a block from Canal Street. Fifty pounds of Mississippi blue-heeler darted from an alley alongside La Bonne Nuit Café. The short-haired hunting dog dashed out into the middle of Bourbon Street in front of the bay mare. Horse and hound caught each other off guard. The heeler’s gray-speckled coat rendered him almost invisible in the rain until he bared his fangs, snarling and barking, hackles raised along powerful shoulders.

The bay mare skidded on the slick street, reared, and whickered in terror. Its hooves pawed the air. Jesse relaxed his hold, slipped from horseback, and landed on his back in a puddle. He sat up, sputtering, just in time to see the bay mare reverse its course. He rolled to his left and the mare missed trampling him by an arm’s length. Jesse McQueen staggered to his feet and looked about at the empty rain-swept street. Well, almost empty. A silhouette of a narrow-shouldered man in a greatcoat and beaver hat materialized out of the shadows. Jesse retreated toward the nearest street lamp, which cast a dim circle of amber light that the storm threatened to obscure.

“Help me,” Jesse rasped. “My hands are tied.”

The man in the greatcoat reached up and shoved his wire-rim spectacles back up the bridge of his nose. He continued to stare at the torn, mud-spattered figure confronting him.

“Untie my hands,” Jesse said. Still the man in the coat made no move. “At least take this noose off me. I’d do it myself, but you see I’m sort of at the end of my rope.”

“Don’t know you. Ain’t none of my business,” the stranger at last muttered. “But I could use your horse.” And with that he brushed past McQueen and ran off after the bay.

“Son of a bitch,” Jesse muttered. He was alone again, save for the blue-heeler, who continued to growl and bark. Every time the dog came within range to snap, the bound man aimed a kick at its head. At last the dog retreated, finding something new to inspect.

The blackened, shattered window of the café looked promising. Jesse staggered up onto the porch. The foyer of the café reeked of smoke. Its windows stared vacantly back as he peered inside. The place stood empty, its clientele frightened back to their homes and apartments once word had reached them of the impending arrival of the Union fleet. Jesse McQueen took a moment to catch his breath, grateful for the porch and the shelter it offered from the elements. He wrinkled his nose as the damp, charred smell of the fire-gutted café wafted out through the ruined windows. Jagged shards of glass still jutted from the whitewashed wooden frame like dragon’s teeth. Just the thing, Jesse thought. He backed over to the remains of the window, chose the largest shard, and sawed at the ropes binding his wrists. Suddenly the lynch rope went taut and pulled him off balance even as it constricted his windpipe. The blue-heeler had found the hangman’s rope to be of keen interest. Tail wagging, the dog clamped its powerful jaws around it and began to play tug-of-war.

“Not now,” Jesse gasped. “Christ Almighty!”

The dog continued to pull and tighten the noose around McQueen’s throat, enjoying this new game. Jesse held his ground, though barely able to draw breath.
Choked to death by a damn dog is a hell of an epitaph
, he thought. He continued to saw at his bound wrists.
Come on. Come on.
He was beginning to lose consciousness. The already murky street was beginning to darken even more at the edges, and slowly … ever so slowly … to tilt. Pain jolted him. He straightened and yelped as the glass shard sliced across his flesh. The bonds fell away and his arms swung free. He worked the slipknot loose, pulled the hemp necktie up past his ears, and tossed the lynch rope into the street. Then he sagged against the nearest post, where the café posted its menu for the day. Tonight’s main course would have been smoked oysters, pork loins in a mushroom sauce, sliced wild onions and tomatoes with a vinaigrette dressing, and scalloped potatoes drizzled with butter.
And dog
, Jesse wished. He tossed a shard of glass at the animal, who retreated to the alley. Jesse’s anger gradually subsided. He could not imagine anything sweeter than being able to breathe, even with the stench of burned cotton permeating the air. He was bruised and cut and his clothes were torn, but he was alive. He had made good his escape from Colonel Baptiste and his rabble.

Almost.

A bullet blew away a fist-sized chunk of the wooden menu board and thudded into the windowsill. Jesse dived for the street as a voice shouted, “Here! I’ve found him, Colonel. He’s here!”

It was Charbonneau, and he was coming at a gallop, eager to atone for his past mistakes. He had a score to settle with Jesse McQueen.

Somewhere in the city there were streets that the looting and destruction hadn’t yet reached. There were streets where families waited in the drawing room and parlor, discussing the tragic turn of events that had caused the city’s surrender. Brave words were spoken about resistance to the bitter end, then the children were trundled off to bed, to sleep away the hours of invasion while their parents sipped sherry. And waited. Somewhere in the city men chose their favorite whores and tumbled into bed, all kisses and sweat and liquor and muffled cries of passion, and it made sense and sure as hell beat dying for a cause, any cause. These were the lucky ones. Had it not been for the driving downpour, the flames from the burning warehouses and stockpiles of cotton on the waterfront would have engulfed the crescent city and turned it into a wasteland of rubble. Still, where the fire could not spread, hatred found its way and violence followed close behind.

The Creole called Charbonneau was so intent on being the one to recapture and kill the fugitive that he never slowed his pace but rode headlong toward the dimly seen figure of the man he had tried to hang. He never noticed that Jesse no longer wore the hangman’s rope. Nor did he heed how Jesse tossed the noose over the stone hitching post in front of La Bonne Nuit and then ran out across the street, playing out the lynch rope with every step. Charbonneau twisted in the saddle, preparing to ride past him and empty his pistol into the fleeing man.

The Creole had his shot but no chance to take it. Jesse hauled on the rope and it snapped from the rainwashed street, catching Charbonneau’s stallion, leg high. The animal tucked its head under and neighed in terror as it fell forward, sending Charbonneau flying.

The Creole made a rough landing, rolled over a couple of times, and stopped spread-eagle, groaning and muttering faint curses facedown in the middle of Bourbon Street.

Approaching horses drummed an unmistakable tattoo upon the stone-and-shell surface a few blocks away. Jesse heard the clatter of hooves and ran past the fallen Creole. A few yards farther along, at the corner of Bourbon and Canal, Charbonneau’s horse struggled upright and stood trembling in the rain. Jesse caught the animal’s reins, knelt, and checked its legs. Blood oozed from a number of superficial cuts. Other than that, the animal seemed sound. Jesse spoke soothingly to the frightened steed the way he used to calm horses as a youth in the Indian Territory. He had learned the ways of his grandmother’s people in such matters, and their talents were his as well. The animal quieted.

Jesse walked the animal across the street and retrieved the gun that Charbonneau had dropped in the fall. It was a Walker Colt .44, a heavy, long-barreled cap-and-ball revolver with a kick like a Missouri mule.

Charbonneau groaned louder now and slowly drew his knees beneath him and pushed himself off the ground. He was in no shape to stop the man about to take his horse. McQueen swung up into the saddle as the surly guardsman lumbered toward him.

“Damn you!” Charbonneau growled. “I’ll get you yet. If I have to follow you to the ends of the earth. There’ll be a reckoning.”

“Have it your way,” Jesse replied as he thumbed the hammer on the Walker Colt and trained the heavy barrel right on Charbonneau’s chest. The Creole paled and retreated a step. He held his hands out in a futile attempt to ward off the chunk of lead coming his way.

“On the other hand,” Charbonneau added, tamed in the face of his own impending demise, “I ain’t the sort to hold a grudge.”

“Now there’s a Christian attitude,” Jesse remarked. He held his fire and the Creole spun around and limped off, losing himself in a rain-shrouded alley alongside a dress shop.

Things were finally looking up for Jesse. He was alive. He had a gun and a horse.

“Yankee renegade!” Colonel Baptiste shouted as he held his horse to a canter and rode with saber drawn, directly toward his elusive quarry.

Jesse swung the stallion about to face this new threat. So Henri Baptiste had found him. Well, no matter, this was one bastard he wanted to make pay for the innocent deaths he had caused. Jesse smiled.

“Come ahead, Colonel!” he roared, brandishing the Colt. His pleasure didn’t last long. Gerard and a dozen or more of the Creole militia materialized out of the rain, guns blazing as they charged at a gallop and swept past the colonel as if he were standing still.

“Son of a bitch!” Jesse exclaimed, and drove his heels into the stallion. With a violent tug on the reins, he rounded the corner onto Canal, dodging a hail of lead as he headed toward the river. Behind him, the blue-heeler barked his defiance at the horsemen, then abandoned the field of battle, his defense of the city ended. Jesse chanced a couple of shots with the Walker Colt in hopes of slowing his pursuers, but the Creole guardsmen never lost a stride. They turned onto Canal and loosed another fusillade at the fleeing rider.

Jesse rode low on the stallion, leaning forward until the mane whipped his face. The gunfire behind him had cleared the street of rioters and merchants and the homeward bound citizenry of French, English, Indian, and African extraction. No one wanted to involve himself in this chase. Let the home guard and Colonel Baptiste handle their own affairs.

The closer Jesse McQueen came to the river, the worse the stench from the burning docks. Confederate blockade runners, two sleek-looking schooners, had been set afire to keep Commodore Faragut from hoisting the Union flag above the topsail. It was all a man could do to keep from weeping. Jesse would have pitied the populace if some of them hadn’t been trying so hard to kill him.

Smoke stung his eyes and set them watering. Through blurred vision he recognized Camp Street just ahead. He chanced a glance over his shoulder and saw that Baptiste’s men had lost a little ground. That suited him fine. He slowed the stallion enough to manage the corner on the slick road. A sharp tug on the reins and the stallion took the corner at a gallop. A puddle seemed to explode underfoot, and water slapped the stallion’s belly and drenched McQueen.

Camp was a dark street, only a few blocks from the waterfront. Night and the smoke from the fires limited the visibility here. Jesse was counting on that as he swung out of the saddle and gave the animal a slap on the rump to keep it on its course. As the sound of Baptiste’s riders filled the narrow thoroughfare, their quarry scrambled behind an abandoned, overturned wagon. The walkway was littered with fragments of shattered barrels. The ground underfoot was sticky with molasses.

“Oh, no,” Jesse muttered, and then with a sigh, took cover as the guardsmen filled the mouth of the street and swept past at a reckless gallop. The noise of the horses was deafening in the confines of the street, with its Spanish, stucco apartments and walled courtyards rebounding the sound. Jesse McQueen, the length of his body pressed against the long-bed wagon, checked the loads in the cylinder of Charbonneau’s dragoon Colt and found to his disgust that he’d fired the last shot back on Bourbon Street. He lowered his head and silently cursed the weapon and whatever gods were having such sport with him and waited out the din of the departing militia. Eventually the Creoles would discover they were chasing a riderless horse, but by then, Jesse intended to be safe inside a certain lady’s warm, dry apartment.