“Do you think I’m acting like a scared child afraid of boogermen?” Flintlock said.

  “Oh, yeah, for sure,” O’Hara said.

  “No, I don’t,” Evangeline said. “O’Hara, Sam is right, there’s something headed our way and I suspect it’s a storm but Lady Esther will know for sure. Why are you so interested, Sam? I can assure you, I’ve lived through storms before.”

  “I want to know when it will hit,” Flintlock said. “I mean, tomorrow? The next day? I need to know for sure.”

  O’Hara said, “What’s cooking in that mind of yours, Sammy?”

  “I can tell you better after I talk with Lady Esther.”

  “Sam, you’re a man of mystery,” O’Hara said.

  “Help yourself to more coffee, Sam,” Evangeline said. “Then I’ll get changed and we’ll go.”

  Flintlock poured coffee, grabbed a chunk of cornbread and followed O’Hara onto the deck. The morning sun was warm on his battered face and it felt good.

  “All right, Sammy, what’s on your mind?” O’Hara said. “You can tell me now that it won’t scare the womenfolk.”

  Flintlock smiled. “You ever seen Evangeline scared?”

  “No, I haven’t. So out with it. Scare me.”

  “I want to use the storm as an ally,” Flintlock said. “Hit Ritter while it’s raging, the very time he’d least expect it.”

  “Hit him with what?” O’Hara said.

  “You, me, the Atakapan if they’re out of mourning. It all depends on when the storm will hit.”

  “And you figure the old English lady will know?”

  “She should. Lady Esther has lived in the swamp for fifty years. She must have lived through a heap of storms. Maybe she’s seen enough to tell me when it will get here.”

  “Sammy, if we can fight in a storm, so can Ritter’s boys,” O’Hara said. “Have you thought about that?”

  “Sure I have. But we’ll have surprise on our side. Catch ’em with their pants down.”

  “You know, it’s just crazy enough to work.”

  “It’s all in the timing, Injun. All in the timing.”

  Evangeline, wearing a black bustle skirt, buckled corset and boots, stepped onto the deck. Her hair was pulled back in an elaborately pinned bun and she wore an English riding top hat.

  “Evangeline, you look . . . beautiful,” Flintlock said.

  “Well, thank you, kind sir. When one is visiting a lady one tries to look one’s best,” Evangeline said. She looked over Flintlock’s battered hat, stained shirt, baggy pants and scuffed boots and said, “Sam, I suppose you’ll just have to do.”

  Lady Esther Carlisle’s cabin lay on the bank of a shallow bayou between two massive cypress. She’d modeled the front of the cabin to look like the façade of an Elizabethan country house, her childhood home in miniature.

  Only after a ritualized tea ceremony that included fish-paste sandwiches and sponge cake did Flintlock feel he could bring up the subject of the approaching storm. To his surprise Lady Esther answered the question he had not yet asked.

  “Ah yes,” she said. “It won’t be a hurricane, derived from the Carib word Hurican that was the name for their God of Evil, don’t you know? Now where was I? Oh yes, it won’t be a hurricane but we can expect a powerful tropical storm. Judging by the sky, I’d say it will hit us the day after tomorrow in the early afternoon. More tea, Mr. Flintlock? It’s Earl Grey, Lord Carlisle’s favorite.”

  “Are you sure about the time, Lady Esther?” Evangeline said.

  “Time for what, my dear?”

  “The storm.”

  “Oh yes. It will be here the day after tomorrow in the afternoon. What was it Lord Carlisle always said? ‘Batten down the hatches, we’re in for a blow.’ Yes, that was it. He was so funny, was Lord Carlisle.”

  “Will you be all right during the storm, Lady Esther?” Evangeline said. “You’re welcome to come to my cabin.”

  “No, I’ll be just fine, my dear. And I have Ahmed here to protect me.” The old woman touched her wrinkled forehead with her fingertips. “Oh dear, I’m afraid it’s time for my nap. It was so nice of both of you to visit. We must do it again soon. Ahmed will see you out.”

  “I wish you’d let me do the paddling, Evangeline,” Flintlock said. “Sitting back here trailing my fingertips in the water, well, it ain’t manly.”

  “Shh . . . Sam, I’m thinking,” Evangeline said.

  “Thinking about what?”

  “Now you finally told me what you’re planning, we must get in touch with the Atakapan.”

  “Where are they?”

  “They move around the swamp like ghosts. I’ve never sought them out before. And they are still mourning and will be even harder to find.”

  “Without the Indians I have no plan,” Flintlock said. “O’Hara and me are good men in a scrap, but we ain’t that good.”

  “I know that but . . . oh dear, Sam, we’re in big trouble.”

  “Is it the Indians?”

  “No, ahead of us, two men in the rowboat. Their names are Neville and Bayes. Do you recognize them?”

  Flintlock looked and then he said, “Yeah, I recognize them. And you’re right. We’re in a heap of trouble.”

  The job was not finished, the contract not completed. Jonas Neville and Arch Bayes could not let that stand. The fact that the man called Flintlock was still alive was an affront to their reputation.

  It was Neville’s plan to go to Evangeline’s cabin and wait for Flintlock there. But a longhaired man in a beaded shirt squatted on the deck armed with a rifle and swapping lead with him would hardly be good business. They wanted Flintlock’s scalp, his only and no one else’s.

  “We stay close to the cabin and strike when Flintlock appears,” Neville said.

  “But what if he’s gone?” Bayes said. “What then?”

  “Then our wait will have been in vain and we must search for him in other places. When we find him and kill him only then is our business with Brewster Ritter concluded.”

  Bayes glanced at the sky then said, “The swamp seems strange today. The light has changed and there are no birds.”

  “It must be the approach of fall. Let us concentrate on the job at hand, Mr. Bayes. Keep a wary eye open. I feel in the marrow of my bones that the ball is about to open.”

  Sam Flintlock looked over the side of the canoe. As far as he could tell the murky water in this part of the bayou, thick with hyacinth, was not deep, only several feet. But he couldn’t be sure. Well, there was only one way to find out. He pulled his Colt, rose to his feet and jumped out. To his relief the level came to the middle of his thighs.

  His eyes on the approaching rowboat, he waded to the prow of the canoe and pushed it back into deeper water, an effort that punished his broken ribs. “Evangeline,” he said, “get the hell out of here.”

  “Sam, what are—”

  “Git out of here, woman. Now go!”

  Flintlock forced his way through the hyacinth then dipped under the surface until the water reached the top of his shoulders. He held the Colt high and waded farther into the cover of the hyacinth, praying that the muddy bed would not suddenly drop under his feet.

  Of course, Neville and Bayes had seen Flintlock get into the water and they ignored the canoe and went after him. Like a mustached alligator, Flintlock kept his eyes just above the hyacinth, coming up now and again to breathe.

  Only Bayes was rowing, slowly, using the oar like a paddle. He and Neville had lost sight of their prey, never a good thing in a swamp.

  “You see him, Mr. Neville?” Bayes said.

  “No, Mr. Bayes. He’s somewhere among the vegetation. Stop rowing now. He can’t stay in there forever.”

  Flintlock heard that exchange and considered his options. They were few. The water was surprisingly cold and he knew he’d have to move again or stiffen up. And at any time alligators could decide to poke their ugly noses into his business. He’d be up to his armpits in alligators and no way of finding the drain to the swamp.

  “Flintlock, do you hear me?” Neville’s voice. Flintlock kept silent. He had no wish to give his position away. “Stand up, Flintlock. Meet your end like a man instead of some cowering, cowardly creature.”

  Flintlock estimated the distance between him and the assassins. It was at least thirty feet, too far for him to get his work in with any hope of scoring hits.

  He stayed where he was. There was pollen on the surface of the water and he badly wanted to sneeze. He figured he’d be the first man in the West to be killed because of a sneeze. He recalled that John Wesley Hardin had shot a man for snoring. Would he kill somebody for sneezing? Probably. And so would Jonas Neville.

  A shot! A bullet probed the hyacinths about three feet from where Flintlock squatted in the water. Then another. He couldn’t tell where that round went. And then a third . . . but that was not the boom of a Colt but the sharper sound of a shorter-barreled gun. Maybe a derringer!

  Flintlock raised his head above the level of the hyacinth. Jonas Neville stood in the boat, looking off to his right. Bayes still sat but he too had turned, trying to determine the location of the shooter.

  Flintlock took his chance. He waded forward and so far the bottom under his feet remained level. He closed the range . . . twenty feet . . . fifteen . . .

  It was now or never.

  Flintlock rose, water streaming off him in sheets. He fired at Neville but hurried the shot. The man winced as Flintlock’s bullet burned across the meat of his left shoulder. Neville raised his Remington and fired. But his shot went wild because as he triggered the revolver he took a hit. The derringer again. Damned good shooting. Bleeding from a wound on his right side, Neville sat down abruptly on the rowboat’s seat, at least for the moment out of the fight.

  But now Flintlock had Arch Bayes to contend with and the man was a steady hand with a gun. Flintlock dived underwater just as Bayes fired. The bullet stung him on the hip a split second before Flintlock’s head and shoulders hit the mud at the bottom of the bayou. Blinded by a rising cloud of dirt, he swam forward. He had no idea how fast or far. But, his lungs bursting, he finally clawed for the surface. Here the water was deeper, up to the level of the thunderbird tattoo on his neck.

  Standing on tiptoe, his hat gone, Flintlock shook water from his eyes. Where the hell was he? The answer was that he was about five feet behind the rowboat, but Neville had him spotted. The man two-handed his Remington to his eyes and he and Flintlock fired at the same time. Neville was close, very close. His bullet raised a V of water just an inch in front of Flintlock’s face. But despite the handle of his Colt being slippery from pond scum, Flintlock scored a hit. The big .45 took Neville in the middle of his chest and the man went out of the boat backward and splashed into the water.

  Now Flintlock cringed, expecting an aimed shot from Bayes. But when he turned the assassin was bent over on his seat, blood dripping onto his legs from a wound in his head.

  Then Flintlock heard Evangeline’s voice. “Sam, are you all right? Are you wounded?”

  “I’m over here,” he yelled. “I think I got shot up the ass.”

  “Bad place to get shot,” Evangeline said. She paddled the canoe closer and Flintlock hoisted himself aboard. “We’d better find my hat,” he said. And then, realizing how silly that sounded, he said, “Evangeline, you saved my life. I’m beholden to you.”

  The woman smiled. “The whole time I fired my derringer I wished it was a rifle.”

  “Two shots. Two hits. You did well,” Flintlock said.

  “Four shots, Sam. I always carry a couple of cartridges in a pocket. And I shot only Neville.”

  “What about Bayes?”

  “He killed himself. When he saw that Neville was dead, he put his revolver to his temple and pulled the trigger. I think that his grief over his friend’s death was just too much to bear.”

  “Who the hell does that?” Flintlock said, genuinely confused.

  “A man in love, Sam.”

  “With another man?”

  “That would be the case, yes.”

  Flintlock was silent for awhile, then said, “I always heard that fellers who were that way shot themselves. I guess it was true.”

  “You’re all wet, Sam,” Evangeline said. “So would you mind helping me get Neville’s body out of the water?”

  “Ah, let the alligators have him,” Flintlock said.

  “Sam, a storm is coming. Trust me, we don’t want bodies floating around the bayou when the big winds hit.”

  “You mean bury him and the other one?”

  “Yes, that’s what I mean.”

  “I already told you where I got shot and I’ve got two busted ribs that are hurting me real bad,” Flintlock said. “I can’t bury anybody.”

  “O’Hara and I can do the burying,” Evangeline said. “Now all we have to do is to get the body into the boat.”

  Flintlock sighed and jumped into the water.

  “When we get back to the cabin I’ll treat your wound,” Evangeline said.

  “No, you won’t,” Flintlock said. “I’ll get O’Hara to do it.”

  Evangeline’s smile was dazzling. “Why, Sam, I didn’t know you were so shy.”

  “Well, I am,” Flintlock said.

  Then he disappeared as he stepped into a deep hole and the water closed over his head.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  “You mean you’re taking over?” Brewster Ritter said.

  “No, not at all,” Mathias Cobb said. “I’m here to assist you in any way I can. We must get this operation running smoothly again.”

  “I need a steam engineer,” Ritter said.

  “And you’ll get one, two if you want,” Cobb said. The smell of the fat man’s sweat in the close confines of his tent was cloying and Ritter, a fastidious little man, pretended he had a cold and kept a handkerchief to his nose. “We must pull together, Mr. Ritter, and make our venture a profitable one for both of us.”

  “You said you spoke to the logger foreman earlier,” Ritter said.

  “Yes, I did, and he and the others have accepted my offer of a fifty-dollar bonus every time a logger steps into the swamp. Cutting resumes again tomorrow and it seems that the fates are smiling on us, Mr. Ritter. The weather is perfect, just perfect, for logging. No wind, cool temperatures, we can make great strides in the next few weeks.”

  “I lost my engineer, so we still don’t have the steam saws set up to buck the cypress logs,” Ritter said.

  “Just pile them up, Mr. Ritter. When the engineer gets here the bucking will go very quickly.”

  “When will I have the engineer? I need those saws working. We can’t pile logs forever. We need to move the rough-sawn timber to Budville.”

  “Soon, my dear fellow. Very soon,” Cobb said. “Now, a glass of brandy for you?”

  “No. I’ll go talk with the loggers and see if their mood is as cooperative as you say it is.”

  “Money talks better than you do, Mr. Ritter. But if you must speak with the hired help then go right ahead. No one is stopping you.”

  After Ritter left, Cobb turned to Val Rolfe and said, “The man is a spineless fool.”

  Rolfe nodded. “He sure wants an engineer to set up his saws.”

  “I’ve already made arrangement for an engineer, a man named Claypoole. He’ll be here in a week or two.” Cobb smiled. “Unfortunately, by then Mr. Ritter will be no longer with us.”

  “I’ll see to that,” Rolfe said, grinning.

  “I know you will,” Cobb said. “Now, to more pleasant things. Are all the whores gone or are there still one or two left?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Cobb, but I’ll find out for you.”

  “Good. I’m in the mood for some feminine company tonight.”

  “He thinks he’s getting the lion’s share of the timber money, but he’s not,” Brewster Ritter said. “Once the trees are cut and on flat cars headed north, Mr. Cobb and I will have a little talk.”

  Bonifaunt Toohy said, “How do you plan to cut him out of the profits?”

  “I don’t know quite yet. But I’ll come up with something, lay to that.”

  “Killing him is always an option,” Toohy said.

  “Yes, but it has implications. Whoever takes over the bank will expect a return on his investment.”

  “Unless you take it over,” Toohy said.

  “How would I do that?”

  “You get Cobb to sign over a deed of ownership.”

  “He’d never do that.”

  “He might be glad to if somebody had a bowie knife to his balls. He loves whores, you know. In fact, young women in general.”

  Ritter smiled. “And who will hold the knife?”

  “Jonas Neville and Arch Bayes spring to mind, if they haven’t pulled out by then. If they have, I’ll do it myself.”

  “Force him to sign the bank over to me, and after he does . . .”

  “He disappears into the swamp.”

  “Damn it all, Bon, it just might work,” Ritter said.

  “It will work,” Toohy said. “But I’ll expect my share of the money.”

  “Pull this off and you’ll get it,” Ritter said. “I’ll make sure you won’t lose by it. How would you like to manage a bank? At a very large salary, of course.”

  “That would set just fine by me. I’ll swap these duds for broadcloth any time.”

  “You needn’t do the dirty work yourself, Bon,” Ritter said. “Round up Neville and the other feller and see if you can convince them to stay until both the cypress and Mathias Cobb are cut.”

  “I didn’t see them around today, but I’ll find them.”

  “Maybe they went into the swamp after Flintlock,” Ritter said.

  “Could be. If that’s the case they’ll be back soon. It will be dark in an hour.”

  “Tell them that they don’t really have to geld Cobb, just threaten him with it until he signs over the deed.” Ritter smiled. “Of course, if they really want to cut him, then they can go right ahead—but only after he signs on the dotted line.”