Smugglers' Gold Read online

  Not that it would matter much, but he preferred to go down fighting if it came to that.

  The only light he had to guide by on Timbalier Island was the moon, now, as he made his slow way westward toward their landing beach. Each step he took seemed dangerously loud and grating to his ears, but no one challenged him along the way. No muzzle flashes blasted at him from the shadows as he tracked the smugglers’ party back toward shore.

  And Ryder saw the reason why as he approached the final tree line, overlooking sand and surf. The last lifeboat had nearly reached the Banshee, lamps on deck keeping the oarsmen on a straight course toward the clipper. No one from the crew or Marley’s gang had stayed on shore.

  Next question: were they leaving, sailing back to Galveston, or would they ride at anchor through the night, then come back looking for him in the morning? Was it worth their time, the risk of being spotted, to remain and run him down, scouring the island end to end?

  Ryder walked halfway to the water’s edge and sat down on the sand. It didn’t matter now if he was visible from the retreating lifeboat, though he doubted it. Plain logic told him that they would not turn around and risk another landing, this time under fire. As far as sniping at him from the lifeboat or the clipper, distance and the cloak of night should keep him safe enough.

  For now.

  He sat and stared across the moonlit water, watching as the lifeboat reached the Banshee, was tied off to hoisting lines, then started to unload its crew. They scrambled up a long rope ladder, one man at a time, until all nine were safely on the weather deck. At that point, other crewmen raised the lifeboat, aided by a block and tackle system, swung it inboard, and prepared to lash it down.

  No answer yet to Ryder’s question, but he soon received one, as the Banshee’s crew began unfurling sails. It didn’t take them long, with practiced hands at work. Within a quarter of an hour, maybe less, the clipper had weighed anchor and was underway, gliding eastward, away from Ryder on his lonely stretch of sand, with moonlight on its sails.

  His first, fleeting sensation of relief quickly gave way to something more like dread. Marooned, he thought, like Robinson Crusoe. And how was he supposed to deal with that?

  His stomach growled out a reminder that he’d eaten nothing since that morning’s breakfast of reheated stew aboard the clipper. It was common knowledge that a man of average size could last a month or more without a meal, before he starved to death. Fresh water was more critical, but Ryder guessed that he could dig for some if necessary, starting where the island’s trees and shrubbery grew thickest. Getting off Timbalier Island was his first priority, of course, but that could pose a problem.

  Sailing up to it, aboard the Banshee, he had calculated that the island lay ten miles from the Louisiana mainland, likely farther. Could he swim ten miles? The thought had never crossed his mind before, and now it seemed a daunting task. Adding the risk of sharks and other predators sharply reduced his prospect of surviving. And if he could reach the distant shore, where would he find himself? From what he’d seen of the Louisiana coastline as they passed, it was a maze of rivers, swamps, and hummocks overgrown with jungle. What was waiting for him there, except a wild menagerie of alligators, snakes, and panthers?

  Speaking of animals …

  Ryder decided that the first thing he required, immediately, was a fire. He had a box of matches in his pocket, driftwood on the beach, and there was bound to be some kindling back beyond the tree line. Weary as he was, he rose and set about the task of making camp.

  *

  Despite the fire that warmed him, sleep eluded Ryder as the night wore on. Crabs the size of dinner plates appeared from somewhere after sundown, clicking and skittering over the beach around him. They avoided Ryder’s campfire, but their shadows lurched across the sand like monstrous spiders, circling him as if they hoped he might dispense morsels of food.

  There was no food, of course. Though maybe if they didn’t move too quickly he could rustle himself up some of those crabs. His stomach had progressed from growling to a kind of hollow achy feeling. He was thirsty, too, and while that combination likely would have been enough to keep Ryder from sleeping, he was focused on escape. His mind presented fantasy scenarios—building a raft, meeting a kindly fisherman who’d strayed ashore—and quickly moved from there to visions of revenge, confronting Otto Seitz and tracking down the others who had stranded him.

  Near midnight by his pocket watch, Ryder heard something he could not identify at first. A chugging sound that brought to mind a locomotive, running in the distance, but he didn’t think that sound could carry from the mainland to his camp. Besides, from what he’d seen by daylight, there were only mangrove swamps along the coastline of Terrebonne Bay, no solid ground that would support a set of railroad tracks.

  He sat and listened, curious, until he’d satisfied himself that he was not imagining the sound. It seemed to emanate from somewhere to his right, roughly northeastward, drawing closer by the moment on a course from east to west. A steamer, he decided, but with no idea how close it was or how far it would pass offshore from where he sat, beside his meager fire.

  Ryder was reaching for another piece of driftwood when he hesitated. Could this be some trick by Seitz or Pickering to draw him out? The Banshee had no engine, but could they have found another ship since stranding him and sent it back to see if Ryder would reveal himself? If so, they were approaching from the wrong direction. They had sailed away westward, back toward Galveston, and would have needed hours to return, circling around the island just to dupe him.

  No, he finally decided. Not the men who had marooned him—but they could be other smugglers, pirates, outlaws trolling on the Gulf for easy prey. He almost doused the fire, then, but decided it would be a foolish move to hide when help might be at hand.

  Some fifteen minutes after Ryder heard the engine for the first time, he saw lights across the water. Lanterns on a ship’s deck, clearly, and he started piling driftwood on his dying fire, fanning the low flames with his hands until they caught and leaped into the island’s dark, moist air. He tried to judge the ship’s size from the space between the lanterns at its bow and stern, guessing around one hundred feet.

  Was anyone on watch to see his fire, and if so, would they pay it any mind?

  Ryder decided it was worth a gamble. When the ship was opposite his stretch of beach, perhaps three hundred yards offshore, he drew his Colt Army and aimed it skyward, squeezing off two slow and measured shots that echoed from the island’s tree line out into the night.

  Another moment, and a voice sounded across the water, hollow-sounding, clearly amplified by virtue of a speaking-trumpet. “Ahoy! Are you in need of help?”

  “I am!” he shouted back, throat parched, with no idea if it would carry to the ship.

  “Stand by!” the tinny call came to his ears, then nothing more except for creaking, splashing sounds. A lifeboat being lowered?

  Ryder stepped off from the fire, determined not to make himself an easy target if there was some treachery afoot, his pistol still in hand. Ten minutes later, he heard oars slapping the water, muffled conversation from the boat as it approached the beach. He stood well back, watching the oarsmen drag their boat ashore, noting their uniforms before he put his Colt back in its holster and stepped forward.

  Polished brass reflected firelight from the tunic collar of the man who greeted him. “Lieutenant Holland, with the U.S. Revenue Cutter Andrew Jackson,” he said. “And you, I think, must be Gideon Ryder.”

  *

  The Andrew Jackson was, in fact, one hundred and twenty feet long, a schooner-rigged steamer with three tall masts and a belching smokestack amidships. Its main cabin lay aft, with the lifeboats in their slings, while a pair of three-inch guns on swivel mounts were planted near the bow. No sails were rigged as it proceeded under power toward Galveston.

  Ryder ate his first meal within twenty-odd hours, while Lieutenant Holland told the story of his rescue. His telegrams had reached Dire
ctor Wood, and mention of Timbalier Island had inspired the Secret Service chief to send a cutter snooping in the area, after a decent interval, in case something had gone awry. Holland had not been briefed on Ryder’s mission otherwise and gave no indication that he cared to know about it.

  “The message,” Holland said, “is that you can’t expect assistance and you shouldn’t trust the local law. Does that make sense?”

  “It does,” Ryder replied. Unfortunately. “I appreciate the lift,” he added, pushing back his empty plate, “but I can’t risk you dropping me at Galveston.”

  “I’ve thought about that,” Holland told him. “There’s another way to handle it, but you’ll be on your own.”

  “I’m getting used to that,” said Ryder.

  “If you’re sure …”

  “Let’s hear the plan.”

  “Pelican Island,” Holland said.

  “Okay. Let’s hear a little more.”

  “It lies north of Galveston proper, connected to the larger island by a plank bridge. Some fishermen have shanties there. Moonshiners, too, we reckon, though we’ve never actually caught them at it.”

  “So?”

  “So, I was thinking you could go ashore, maybe in uniform, then change into civilian duds and cross the bridge to Galveston, like coming in the back door. I surmise the scurvy rats who left you won’t expect you to come in behind them.”

  Ryder nodded. “I believe you’re right.”

  “Of course, there is another way.”

  “And I appreciate the thought,” said Ryder. “But if I come roaring in with your crew, they’ll just scatter. We’d be lucky to collect a handful of the flunkies.”

  “As you like it,” Holland said.

  “I don’t like any of it,” Ryder told him. “But I’m in this far and bound to see it through.”

  “It’s your decision,” the lieutenant said. “When you get done here, we can fit you for a uniform.”

  Ryder finished his coffee, set the tin cup down, and said, “Let’s get it done.”

  It was half past five A.M. when the Andrew Jackson dropped anchor off Pelican Island, a roughly triangular land mass separated from Galveston’s north shore by a narrow strait, spanned by the bridge that Holland had described. Ryder bid his rescuers farewell before the landing party went ashore, with him in uniform. The borrowed clothes fit poorly, but it hardly mattered in the first gray light of dawn, surrounded as he was by other crewmen dressed the same. The fishermen—or smugglers?—who were up and on the move so early made a point of ignoring the revenue officers, even avoiding eye contact.

  Ryder carried his civilian clothes and gunbelt tied up in a bundle, tucked beneath one arm as inconspicuously as he could. When the other members of his party fanned out on the pretext of conducting a search, he left them behind, ducked into a dark grove of trees, and changed outfits, leaving the uniform behind. Dressed as himself again, he hiked off toward the south side of the island with its bridge, facing across the strait toward Galveston.

  His first stop, he decided, ought to be his boardinghouse. The landlord might be wondering what had become of him, and Ryder didn’t want the man disposing of his rifle or his other belongings. Beyond that, he craved a change of clothing, a bath, and a shave, before he went back on the hunt.

  It was a different game, now that he had been marked for death by Otto Seitz. Ryder still didn’t know if Bryan Marley was behind that move, but he’d decided that it was irrelevant. Seitz would have given Marley his account of the events as soon as he returned to Galveston. The time for argument had passed.

  He had a job to finish. And it seemed he would be doing it alone.

  15

  Bryan Marley glowered at the two men facing him across the table in Awful Annie’s back room. One of his men who’d done some boxing had adjusted Otto’s broken nose a bit, but there was nothing to be done about the purple bruises underneath both eyes. Behind him, glaring back at Marley, sat Stede Pickering.

  “He hit me with a shovel, in the face,” Seitz said. “He killed Bob Jacobs.”

  “And one of my men, too,” the Banshee’s captain added. “Stoney Rogers.”

  “After you drew down on him,” Marley replied to Seitz, teeth clenched in anger.

  “What’n hell was I supposed to do?”

  “Leave him alone, goddamn it, like I told you to!”

  “Bryan—”

  “You started riding him the minute that I brought him in,” said Marley, “and for no damned reason.”

  “But he ran. He shot two men!”

  “With them shooting at him. Would you stand there and let somebody kill you without fighting back?”

  “You’re saying this is my fault?”

  Marley slammed his fist onto the table, making whiskey glasses dance. “And who else should I blame?”

  Beneath the bruising, Seitz wore an expression of amazement. “All the years we been together, if you still don’t trust me—”

  “Trust you? When I give an order time and time again, but you ignore it?”

  “There was somethin’ wrong with him, I tell you! If you’d seen him—”

  “Shut it!” Marley growled. He turned to Pickering. “And you …”

  The captain rocked back in his chair and aimed a thick finger at Seitz. “He told me that the two of you were square on this. I went along with it and lost a good man on the deal. That’s it, as far as I’m concerned.”

  Seitz was half turned in his chair, toward Pickering, staring at each of them in turn. “So I’m the goat? Is that it?”

  “Three men down for nothing,” Marley said. “You brought it on yourself.”

  “Brought what on?”

  “You went behind my back, Otto. Ignored my orders. What do you think I should do?”

  Seitz stiffened. “I suppose you’d better tell me.”

  “If it weren’t for all those years you talk about, I’d kill you,” Marley said. “As it stands, I can’t afford to keep you on.”

  “For God’s sake, Bryan—”

  “No. For your sake, Otto. Get out while you can. And I mean out of Galveston.”

  “You run this city now? Is that it?” Otto challenged him.

  “Why don’t you ask Jack Menefee?”

  Seitz pushed his chair back with a grating sound and stood. Beneath the table, Marley kept a Colt Navy aimed at his one-time partner’s groin.

  “You reckon this is finished?” Otto asked.

  “If you come back here,” Marley said, “you’d best come shooting.”

  Seitz seemed on the verge of answering but reconsidered it and turned away, stormed out, and left the two men seated at the table, staring after him.

  “Looks like you’ve made an enemy,” said Pickering.

  “I don’t need friends who go against me.”

  “True enough. So, how do we stand?”

  Marley said, “I take you at your word that you were misinformed.”

  “All right, then. We’ll be heading out this afternoon. I’ll be in touch when I have something for you.”

  “Fair enough. Watch out for Seitz, while you’re in port.”

  “He doesn’t worry me,” said Pickering. “At least, until he’s done with you.”

  “I’ll keep my eyes peeled. Count on it.”

  “Another glass, before I go upstairs,” the captain said. “I fancy there’s a red-haired wench out there been givin’ me the eye.”

  “Good luck to you.”

  Pickering thrust a hand into his pocket, jingling coins. “Luck’s got nothin’ to do with it.”

  “You’re right, at that.”

  He watched Pickering drain his whiskey glass, then rise and leave the room. Marley remained, alone, brooding over the trouble Otto Seitz had caused.

  He didn’t mourn for George Revere, per se, although the man had saved his life on two occasions. People died in Marley’s line of business. It was normal and accepted. What he couldn’t tolerate was Seitz, the man he’d trusted
most of any in his circle, openly defying him. They would be enemies from that point on, as Pickering had said.

  Bad blood divided them, and that was only cured by spilling it.

  If Seitz returned—when he returned—one of them had to die.

  Marley lifted his Colt and placed it on the table. He would keep it close at hand from now on, sleep with one eye open if he had to, till the deadly game was finished.

  There could only be one winner, and he planned to be the last man standing when the smoke cleared.

  *

  After a change of clothes and visit to a barbershop that offered baths, Ryder stopped at a Mexican café where he believed he was unlikely to encounter anyone from Bryan Marley’s gang. The fare was unfamiliar to him, but he found that he enjoyed it, wolfing down two enchiladas, a tamale, a chile relleno that proved to be a roasted pepper filled with cheese, and a side dish of beans that the chef called frijoles refritos. Thus fortified, with two tequila chasers, Ryder greeted early afternoon in Galveston as he began his hunt.

  He had no detailed plan per se, aside from finding Otto Seitz before he tackled any other members of the gang. Their score was personal, and at the same time, Ryder knew the little smuggler’s head was full of secrets that could sink the operation if revealed. He wanted more than just a single warehouse filled with loot, though if it came to that, Ryder supposed that he would settle for whatever he could get.

  He was desperately short of reinforcements, and Lieutenant Holland’s crew was far beyond his reach, but when they’d parted, Holland had provided Ryder with the name of another Revenue agent whose cutter—the USRC Martin Van Buren—operated out of Corpus Christi, some 190 miles southwest of Galveston. Still nine hours away at top speed, from the time Ryder sent the base a telegram, but that was four hours faster than waiting for help from New Orleans, where Holland was stationed.

  Meanwhile, anything could happen.

  First thing, Ryder took a chance and walked to Awful Annie’s by a route that took him to the back door of the bawdy house. Unseen by anyone inside as he arrived, he crept along an alley to the north, finally reached a point where he could scan the street in front, and waited for some drunks to clear the plank sidewalk before he risked a peek into the barroom through one of its dirty windows. From there, he recognized some members of the Marley gang, but couldn’t see the boss or Otto Seitz. Mixed in with Marley’s men, he spotted several faces he remembered from the Banshee’s crew—and Captain Pickering, just now emerging from one of the cribs upstairs.