Only the Gallant (6 page)

McQueen reached down to his right boot and tugged free a Smith & Wesson .22-caliber pistol. Sporting an octagonal barrel a fraction over three inches in length, the seven-shot rimfire weapon made a perfect “hideout” gun. It was light and sturdy and, at close range, quite lethal. He’d bought the revolver from a Cairo gunsmith a few months after his experience with Colonel Baptiste’s lynch mob during the fall of New Orleans. Its rosewood grip was a reassuring weight in the palm of his hand.

Jesse crouched behind the porch of Bradley’s Rooms for Ladies. He looked up at the post closest to him. Lamplight glinted on the bone hilt of a knife sprouting from the wood. He focused again on the church, studying its front yard and steps leading up to paneled double doors. The front windows were shuttered. No threat there. Jesse judged the distance across the street and estimated it at better than thirty feet. Above him, on the second floor of the rooming house, a window began to flow as someone lit an oil lamp. No doubt, Ophelia Tyrone was preparing for bed. Jesse grinned, his thoughts turning lascivious. But the attempt on his life dulled his ardor. He stood and worked the knife free from the post. His assailant would have had to feel pretty sure of himself to try a knife at such a distance. He studied the carefully honed double-edged weapon in his hand. He knew of only one man that sure of his prowess, Titus Connolly, cousin to the Stark brothers. A lean cautious little man, a knifemaker by trade, Titus had carved his way through a number of tavern brawls. The Starks might be a rough and arrogant lot, but Titus Connolly … now there was bad blood.

Jesse returned the .22-caliber pistol to his boot and tucked the knife in his belt. He cast a wary glance toward the starkly sinister facade of the Congregational church and headed back toward Market Street and the Delta Hotel.

He kept to the shadows as best he could. Twice he was hailed by patrols and allowed to pass once his uniform and second lieutenant’s rank were recognized. The dimly lit lobby of the Delta Hotel was empty save for Elmo Dern perched on a stool and hunched forward, his head cradled on his folded arms upon the front desk. The stairway behind the snoring proprietor led to the second-floor rooms. Men’s voices and the clank of glasses drifted in from the adjoining tavern, and Jesse considered joining those unseen patrons for a drink then changed his mind and continued up the stairs. Dern remained impervious to his passing. The hall upstairs could have used an extra lamp. Jesse had good reason to be leery of shadows. He was thankful that his room was close to the top of the stairs. He felt a tightness in the center of his spine as he turned his back on the dark hall to unlock the door to his room. A turn of the key. The sound of the latch seemed ominously loud in the stillness of the hall. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him, breathed a sigh of relief, and relaxed, but not for long. The curtains were drawn, and Jesse’s eyes struggled to adjust to the darkness. For a few seconds he was blind, vulnerable, and one thing more.

He was not alone in the room.

Peter Abbot might have passed for a schoolmaster but he was a major in the army of the United States. A bookish man of average height with a penchant for the classics, at forty-seven Abbot had caved a niche for himself in Washington among the military leadership directing the Union war effort. After Abbot created a network of agents that had directly aided in the capture of New Orleans, the War Department began to take him seriously and had handed him another mission. And like before, Jesse Redbow McQueen was Abbot’s man.

Seated on one of the beds, Abbot struck a match and lit the oil lamp beside him on the end table. The glow played upon his snow-white hair, brushed forward to hide a receding hairline. Wire-rim spectacles precariously perched upon the bridge of his Roman nose. He had exchanged his uniform for a black frock coat and gray and black vest, white shirt, and black string tie. The right-side pocket of his coat bulged from the weight of the navy Colt .36 he always kept close at hand. This “schoolmaster” was a crack shot.

Jesse closed the door leading to the hallway and took a seat on the bed where he’d left his carpetbag and gunbelt.

“Bravo the dashing hero,” Abbot quipped. “Rescuing the fair maid, the sister of Bon Tyrone no less. I couldn’t have planned it better.”

“I suspected your hand in it, Major,” McQueen replied. Peter Abbot had been a close friend of Jesse’s father. Ben McQueen and Peter Abbot had pulled each other out of some tough scrapes in Mexico, and Abbot had been a frequent guest at the McQueen farm in the territory. Jesse had grown up calling the man “Uncle,” but this night “Major” seemed more appropriate. After all, such a clandestine visit could hardly be considered a social call: Abbot had stolen into the room and waited with curtains drawn for McQueen to return. His tone of voice was cordial, but his slate-colored eyes were hard as steel behind the round lenses of his spectacles.

“It was none of my doing. I was damn near tempted to buy the Starks a drink for their help. But Milo was in a ‘pretty pickle,’ and I didn’t want to bother him.” Abbot chuckled, enjoying his own cleverness. Then he became serious again. “I’d watch my back if I were you; the whole Stark family has brought a herd of horses up from—”

“I know,” McQueen said, interrupting his friend. He held up the bone-handled knife. “They’ve already come calling.”

Abbot frowned. He needed Jesse McQueen alive, not lying dead in some Memphis street, the victim of a private feud. Maybe he ought to step in and have Sherman toss Doc, Milo, Emory Stark, and their inbred cousin into the nearest prison stockade. Then again, they had proved useful once, and might again.

Jesse studied the older man seated across from him. He remembered Abbot’s last visit to the Indian Territory shortly after the Confederates had fired on Fort Sumter, plunging the nation into war. Jesse had been eager to enter the fray. He was young and hungry for adventure. He had been reared on the exploits of his ancestors, a father, grandfather, and great-grandfather who had joined their fortunes with that of the country they loved. The Union was threatened and Jesse was determined to do his part. When “Uncle Peter” offered him a field commission, the young man jumped at the chance. But his experience in New Orleans had left him older and wiser. It had taught him something of the reality of war and shown him the dark side of Major Peter Abbot.

“Let me worry about the Starks,” Jesse replied. “Why don’t you tell me why I’m here in Memphis, demoted to a second lieutenant?” He removed his coat and shirt. He thanked the powers that be for the breeze stirring the curtains.

Abbot nodded. He stood and crossed the room and noticed the English coin dangling against McQueen’s muscled chest.

“So the medal’s yours now. When did Ben pass it along to you?”

“Before I left for New Orleans. I like to think it brought me luck.”

“Maybe it did. You’re alive.”

“Were you worried for me, Uncle?”

Abbot met his gaze, quite frankly. He did not waver for an instant. “I never had the time,” he said, his features impassive, even guarded. Jesse was unable to tell just how serious the major really was. The man with the spectacles coughed and reached inside his coat to remove a map of Mississippi and part of Tennessee. He spread the map on McQueen’s cot, forcing him to slide to one end. His index finger traced a line to Memphis then south down to Jackson, Mississippi, and westward, a distance of about thirty miles to the undulating scribble denoting the Mississippi River.

“Do you know the
Iliad
, Jesse,” Abbot asked, “how the Greeks besieged Troy in a war that cost the lives of many a gallant warrior?”

“Father read it to me,” Jesse replied, puzzled.

The major placed the tip of his finger upon Vicksburg. “This is Troy. As long as it stands, we cannot control the river. Troy must be taken.”

“And what am I do in all this?” Jesse pressed further. It was time to lay all the cards on the table.

“Why … Jesse, don’t you see?” Abbot replied, shoving his wire-rims back upon his nose. “You are my Trojan horse.”

T
ITUS CONNOLLY DIPPED HIS
head in the horse trough and straightened, brushing his stringy, shoulder-length black hair back from his face. He glanced around at Milo and Emory, who waited impatiently for their cousin to tell them what had happened. After all, he’d been gone all night and they had feared the worst.

Titus grimaced as he noticed the torn right elbow of his coat and cursed the fence that had snagged him as he raced past the Congregational church after hurling the knife at McQueen.

“Well, did you git him?” Milo blurted out. He’d wrapped the knuckles of his right hand with strips of cloth. Pain continued to etch his features and his eyes smoldered.

“No,” Titus remarked offhandedly. “Bad luck, there. So I lit out and found Doc at the cathouse. We run us some whores.” He shrugged. “Lost me a good knife, too,” he added. Titus pulled on his short-brimmed hat and headed across the corral toward the barn. The horses they had brought up from the territory parted as the three men headed for the gate. Stallions and mares tossed their manes and nervously stamped their hooves, churning clouds of dust that billowed gold in the morning light.

Titus took the lead, but Milo, with his long stride, quickly pulled abreast of his cousin as they neared the barn. They followed the smell of the coffee Emory had started brewing at sunup.

“That’s all you got to say. Bad luck?” Milo shook his head and raised a fist to the empty air.

“There’ll be another time,” Titus growled. “I didn’t see you doin’ any better.” They entered the shadowy interior of the ramshackle barn. Days ago, they had found the place abandoned with a scrawled note tacked to the door.
Goddam the Union and Goddam you, Billy Yank
.
Look for me in Vicksburg
.

The Starks had understood the note to mean they ought to make themselves at home and had done just that while a Union purchasing agent dickered over the price for their herd. Most of the animals had yet to be saddle-broke, another of the Starks’ responsibilities. Titus Connolly intended for Milo and Emory to bear the brunt of that work. Gambling and knives were his expertise, he thought as he ambled among the slanted beams of sunlight streaming through the weathered shingles.

Milo brushed past his cousin and headed straight for his saddle and bedroll. A Colt revolving rifle lay atop his saddlebags. Milo took up the weapon and checked the loads as best he could with his bandaged hand.

Emory had poured a cup of coffee for his cousin, but he changed his course and offered the coffee to the big man with the rifle.

“Calm down now, Milo. Drink this.”

Milo slapped the cup from his brother’s hand. The smaller man beat a hasty retreat, tripped over a blacksmith’s hammer, lost his balance, crashed through the side of a stall, and landed on his ample backside amid the brittle hay and dried dung.

“Son of a bitch!” Emory exclaimed, his tailbone hurt, but his pride had suffered the worse damage.

“Put your gun down, Milo,” Titus said, standing by the cook fire Emory had built in the blacksmith’s forge. A skillet had been set next to a tin plate crowded with biscuits. Eight strips of thick bacon floated on a sheen of hot grease in the skillet.

“You had your chance, cousin, now butt out,” Milo said, and headed toward daylight.

“Milo … when they were handing out dumb, you must’ve stood in line for a double share.” Titus gambled he could knock the brute senseless with the skillet before the man swung his rifle to bear. “We come here to sell these horses to the army. What kind of deal can we expect after you shoot one of their own?”

“Go to hell, Titus. I mean to have my due and I ain’t gonna wait. You had your chance, now I’ll settle this my way.” Milo started forward. Titus hefted the skillet in his right hand, prepared to cave in the big man’s skull rather than allow him to pass. The two cousins squared off, facing each other across the straw-littered floor. Dust motes, whirring flies, and an air of pent-up violence swirled around them in the rising heat. Milo had bulk on his side; brick hard and nigh unstoppable when the black rage came over him. But Titus was a lean and hungry killer. He was older by five years and twice as experienced. He knew the dark side of men. He’d lived there most of his life. Now Milo was asking for a visit. Well, he had come to the right guide.

“Now, isn’t this a pretty picture,” a man said from the entrance. The barn faced east and sunlight silhouetted the broad shoulders and solid frame of Doc Stark. No physician, the eldest of the brothers had come by his name simply enough. His Cherokee mother had been so happy at having a traveling physician deliver her firstborn son that she named the infant Doc.

Upon the death of his father years ago, Doc Stark became the patriarch of the family. Now his burly presence in the doorway defused the confrontation in the barn. Doc was a roughhewn chunk of a man who seemed to carry an invisible mantle of authority wherever he went. Not as tall as Milo, the middle brother, Doc weighed about the same, apportioning his bulk on his shoulders, legs, and the gut that hung over his belt buckle like a bay window. His features were blunt and weathered by the elements. He looked at the world through a perpetual squint that masked the cunning in his eyes. His shadow stretched out before him and lay between Titus and Milo.

“Hope you aren’t fixing to waste that bacon,” Doc said in a conciliatory tone of voice. “I’m hungry. And so’s my friend here.” He gestured off to the side, and a wiry-looking black man clad in homespun cotton shirt, brown vest, canvas trousers, and black boots joined him in the open doorway. They entered together. The black man looked to be about thirty years old. His eyes were red-rimmed from lack of sleep and darted from side to side as he nervously checked out the barn.

“This is Cicero. He used to work on the Tyrone plantation and was a driver for Miss Ophelia Tyrone. I believe brother Milo here has made her acquaintance.” Doc glanced around at the youngest of the Starks, who emerged from the stall and proceeded to dust off his nankeen trousers. He wore an expression of innocence upon his round-cheeked face.