According to Hoyle

by Abigail Roux

  Cage licked his lips cautiously and then nodded. Whether it was said out of jealousy or spite, Cage liked the sound of it. Of course, they had no idea whether it was Gabriel down there or not. More likely was the possibility that it was the soldiers guarding all that gold bullion. But the thought that it was Gabriel made Cage feel better, and apparently Stringer was just riled enough to blame every twist in the wind on the English gunman now.

  Stringer growled at him and strapped his holster back on with jerky, frustrated movements. “At least he’s proving himself worthy of you.”

  The words settled low in Cage’s chest, and he very nearly smiled. He had to fight hard not to. If Gabriel really was free, he could easily escape the boat and be on his way now that Flynn had bigger things to worry about. If he was still on board, Cage knew it was because of him. The thought buoyed him, making him feel that if he could just live through the night, it might all work out.

  Stringer turned to his remaining men and then looked at the passengers. “Start tying them up.”

  “We ain’t got enough rope,” one of the men said.

  “You ever seen a lady’s undergarments?” Stringer asked in frustration.

  The man blinked at him in confusion. From the looks of him, he probably hadn’t.

  “Tear ’em up and use those! Make ’em tie each other up, and make sure it’s done right!” Stringer shouted. His calm façade was beginning to crack as he hit more snags in his plan. Cage also knew some of it was physical frustration now. Stringer was a lot of things, but he enjoyed his partners only when they had a say in the proceedings. Stringer must have anticipated Cage cooperating, at least to some degree. Cage almost winced at the display. Stringer was mean enough when he wasn’t all fired up with nowhere to take it.

  The men scurried to obey the shouted orders. Cage remembered giving similar orders several years ago while they had been surrounded in a tiny bank in El Paso. He’d done so through gestures, of course, but Stringer had always understood him. They had stripped a woman of her petticoats and torn the yards and yards of flounces from them to use them to blindfold the people inside the bank. In the ensuing confusion and terror, they’d then hidden the linen masks they wore and blindfolded themselves as well, tying themselves up and making it appear as if the “bandits” had absconded under the very noses of the law, leaving behind a room full of people who were unable to even describe the men who’d robbed them. Cage and his men had then walked away from the bank after being rescued with the rest of the victims, leaving the money behind where they’d found it.

  Despite the disappointment of not getting away with any loot, it had been a success. That had been the robbery that had given the Border Scouts such notoriety; the inexplicable escape that hadn’t really been an escape at all.

  Cage lowered his head as regret coursed through him. He had thought he could leave his misspent youth behind, toss off the wild ways that had driven him to become one of the more infamous men in the West and simply fade into the vastness of the country. He was still a relatively young man, not yet thirty years old, and he had thought he’d run far enough to escape himself. But he was beginning to realize that he would never be able to escape what he had done or who he had been. Even if he could make amends for all the harm he had caused, he could never stop the men he had left behind. Men like Bat Stringer.

  Cage glanced over at Wash and found the man watching him intently.

  “Jack Kale?” the marshal whispered. His voice was tentative; as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer. But it was the first opportunity they’d had to speak, and Cage knew the earnest marshal just had to ask.

  Cage swallowed hard and then shook his head vehemently in answer. Wash continued to stare at him uncertainly, but he soon nodded and clenched his jaw. Cage had the feeling that the man knew he was lying, but something in the way Wash looked at him told him that the marshal didn’t care who or what he had been, so long as he did the right thing now.

  That was the way of the West.

  He was even more determined to do his part to stop what he knew Stringer was going to do, just like Flynn and Gabriel were off doing. He glanced over at Stringer and wondered whether he could take him now, while his back was turned and his other five men were busy scaring the passengers into tying each other up. If he waited until they were all tied, there’d be no chance of help. It was now or never.

  Cage began working at the tie around his wrists again. If he’d had both hands before, he might have been more successful. In his haste, Stringer had never tightened the cloth, and it didn’t take much to pull one hand free. Cage glanced up to meet Wash’s eyes. The marshal looked torn, but he nodded furtively. Cage knew it might get them both killed, but it could be their last chance.

  Cage pushed himself up into a crouch, eyes on Stringer’s back. He waited a breath to settle his nerves and then launched himself at the man. Stringer moved when Cage did, drawing his gun and firing with lightning speed as Cage lunged at him.

  The bullet passed through Cage’s brand-new shirt, just under his arm. It seared his skin as he hit Stringer and sent them both crashing down to the Oriental rug.

  The gun skittered across the floor and several people let out ear-piercing, terrified screams as Cage and Stringer grappled. Cage straddled him and managed a punch that he thought might knock the other man unconscious, but the larger man wavered only for a moment before he shook it off and retaliated with a jab to Cage’s side, just above the bloody tear in his shirt. The fresh furrow caused by the bullet burned as if Stringer had set a match to it. Cage growled low and hit him twice more in rapid succession, then wrapped both hands around Stringer’s neck, putting the weight of his body behind it. Stringer bucked and clawed at him, but Cage held fast, intending to choke the life out of him.

  A shot was fired into the air.

  Cage flinched and ducked, glancing over to see one of Stringer’s men with an arm wrapped around a small boy who kicked and struggled in the man’s arms. He put a gun to the boy’s head.

  Cage loosened his grip and raised both hands. Another man came up behind him and swung down with the butt of his shotgun. Cage tumbled off Stringer and sprawled on the floor, the world wavering precariously around him.

  When he tried to push himself up, the toe of Stringer’s boot caught Cage in the side of his head and sent him sprawling again.

  This time, Cage didn’t get up. He stayed spread-eagled on the floor and watched the ornate ceiling of the paddle steamer’s salon spin above him as his head throbbed. He feared for a moment that he might lose consciousness. There was no telling what Stringer would do to him if he was incapacitated, so he took a few deep breaths, willing the dizziness to go away.

  Stringer knelt beside him and grabbed his chin. Cage inhaled sharply as the warm barrel of Stringer’s gun pressed to his temple. They locked eyes, and Cage could feel each beat of his heart thrumming through his body. Stringer bent over him, studying his eyes with a sneer before standing back up again and giving his ribs another wicked kick.

  Cage tried to roll with the impact, but it still hurt like blue blazes, and he curled on the floor, holding his injured side.

  “Anyone else want to be a hero?” Stringer bellowed to the cowering passengers.

  The gamblers and shootists in the corner rumbled rebelliously, spurred on by Cage’s actions, but they had been the first ones tied up. They couldn’t attempt to help if they had wanted to now.

  Cage coughed, pain lancing through him as he moved. He planted a hand flat on the floor and tried to gather himself in order to stand.

  Stringer heard the movement and turned his head, looking down at Cage over his shoulder. His words of warning were soft and almost sad. “Stay down, Boss.”

  Cage shivered at the familiarity of the murmur. Stringer had never called him Jack Kale. It had always been just an affectionate “Boss.” A part of Cage, a part he thought he had killed and buried, ached for the way they had been. The term was “thick as thieves” for
good reason. Part of Cage longed to return to what he had given up. The rest of him wanted to cut the rest of Stringer’s fingers off and toss them in the river.

  He stayed down despite all that. He knew when he was outmatched.

  As Cage floundered on the floor, the ferrety man Stringer had sent to the cargo hold came running back into the salon, bloodied and panting.

  “Frank,” Stringer said in surprise as the man stumbled in. Cage distantly realized he remembered the man. Frank Alvarado stammered the story of what had gone on below, recounting how they had been attacked by a man claiming to be a US Marshal. Cage’s heart thumped with both renewed hope and with terror. One man. Could Gabriel be gone? Had he seized the opportunity to escape rather than sticking it out?

  He rolled onto his hands and knees and gasped involuntarily as pain lanced through his newly cracked rib. It began to throb as he moved.

  Stringer was listening to the tale with a deepening scowl, his upper lip curling into an angry snarl as Alvarado finished his story. “You sure it was just one?”

  Alvarado shook his head. “Could’ve been more, I guess. I didn’t catch sight of him at first, when he yelled at us. Only saw a dandy with a shotgun and then all hell broke loose.”

  Cage closed his eyes and his lips twitched in a relieved smile. “Dandy” certainly didn’t describe Marshal Flynn. It didn’t describe many marshals at all.

  “So, they’re on the loose,” Stringer muttered, obviously coming to the same conclusion Cage had. He narrowed his eyes at Cage. “How much does he love you, Cage?”

  Cage looked up at him and shook his head.

  Wash had made an attempt at taking a gun from one of their captors as Cage had grappled with Stringer, but his too had been ill-fated. He was on his knees once more, a gun held to the back of his head. It didn’t stop him from interjecting, once again standing up for Cage when he didn’t need to. “They ain’t known each other but a fortnight.”

  Stringer glanced at the marshal and then down at Cage in surprise. “A fortnight?” he asked. He knelt in front of Cage and peered at him incredulously. He began to laugh. “He don’t even know what you are, does he? He’s gonna get himself killed for you, and he don’t even know who you are.”

  Cage met his eyes and then looked away as anger and guilt flooded through him. He hated that Stringer’s words might have the ring of truth to them, and he despised even more that he couldn’t quite find it in himself to hope Stringer would end up dead before morning.

  Flynn and Rose waited in the cargo hold, anticipating that others would come running to try to pen them in after the firefight. They were confident enough in their position and their vast amount of ammunition to lie in wait like rattlesnakes in a pit. But no one came. Flynn didn’t know whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. He had tried to think like the man running this show, but at every turn he had found himself guessing wrong. It was time for a new tactic, one he hated to resort to.

  “What would you do?” he asked Rose begrudgingly as they sat in the cargo hold on two of the crates with the stenciled US government letters on them.

  “What would I do when?” Rose was heavily armed now, having stripped the dead guards of their weapons. He looked like an armored porcupine, with knives and gun barrels sticking out of every strap and pocket in his clothing. He had “borrowed” one of the dead men’s hats and now sat with a lit cigarette between his lips as he played with the felt hat, trying to mold it into a shape he liked.

  “If you was the man in charge,” Flynn said in a disturbed voice. He couldn’t believe he was stooping so low as to ask an outlaw for advice. But it seemed logical. If you wanted to think like an outlaw, you had to be an outlaw. Right? “What would you do if you was running this show?”

  “I’d take out a bar of gold and lick it,” Rose said with a slightly far-off look in his eyes and a smirk.

  “After that,” Flynn asked, completely unfazed by the answer.

  “I don’t know, Marshal, I’m no paddleboat gold-thief,” Rose said in annoyance. He glanced over at Flynn and twisted the felt hat. “And I know what you’re thinking. I’m no outlaw, either.”

  “I didn’t say you was,” Flynn replied with forced patience and only a hint of dishonesty. He hadn’t said it, he had merely thought it. “But you’re supposed to have such a damn brilliant mind. And I know you been thinking ’bout how to get off this boat ever since I told you we was going downriver. This man don’t go according to Hoyle, and neither do you, so out with it.”

  Rose glared at him for a moment and then sighed as he looked away. He stood up and paced a few steps, then shook his head and looked back at Flynn from under lowered brows. He watched Flynn carefully as he spoke. “If it were me. If, mind you,” he emphasized with a point of his new hat in Flynn’s face.

  Flynn nodded impatiently and gestured for him to answer.

  Rose sighed and slapped his hat against his thigh. He shrugged. “I’d blow the boiler.”

  “What?” Flynn asked in alarm.

  Rose placed his hand-rolled cigarette between his lips and inhaled deeply, nodding. “It’s quite common on these riverboats,” he said as he exhaled, the fragrant smoke roiling toward Flynn with his words. “I’d round up all the passengers, just like they’ve done, into a big open space. Then I’d send men I trusted to load the gold onto a small boat.”

  It seemed to Flynn that he was making it all up even as he spoke. Flynn didn’t know whether to be impressed or horrified.

  Rose gazed at the stenciled crates of gold, his brow furrowed. “After making sure it was loaded, I’d set some dynamite on the boiler and run like hell.”

  “Leaving all the passengers to die?” Flynn asked incredulously.

  “No,” Rose said patiently as he walked farther away and began poking around at a stack of luggage piled beside the crates of gold. “They’d be left awake and aware of danger in an open space from which it would be easy to escape. Rather than asleep and unawares in their beds, left to burn and drown.”

  Flynn frowned and glanced up as if he could see through the ceiling and into the salon above them. “You think that’s what they’re doing?” he asked hopefully.

  “No, I think he plans to kill them all,” Rose answered distractedly as he fiddled with the edge of a canvas tarp. “They’re probably tied up even as we speak, and think if they behave, they’ll live through the night.”

  Flynn glared at the man.

  Rose glanced over his shoulder, probably feeling Flynn’s eyes on him. “What? You asked.” He poked at a small box.

  “Shut up,” Flynn said with a tired huff as he stood restlessly and walked toward the door.

  “What do you suppose this is, Marshal?”

  Flynn turned to study the wooden box under Rose’s hand. It was roughly the size of a bread box, and it was attached by thick leather straps to a pallet with handles on either side, made for two men to carry it.

  “It’s a box.”

  Rose glared at him testily. He slid his long fingers across the leather of one of the straps. “What do you suppose is in it? I don’t recall ever seeing something shipped quite like this.”

  “Been holed up in a lot of cargo holds, have you?”

  “More than you’d imagine,” Rose said wryly under his breath. He knocked on the wooden box and cocked his head, as if waiting to hear a response from the contents. He gripped one of the wooden handles and hefted it. “It’s quite heavy. If I’m not mistaken, I’d say it’s lined with lead.”

  Flynn shrugged and looked away, examining the darkness of the corridor beyond the doorway. His concern didn’t lie with the odds and ends of the cargo. “Open it up and see what it is,” he suggested negligently.

  “It’s padlocked,” Rose told him in annoyance.

  Flynn turned and frowned at him. His eyes drifted over the boxes of gold bullion, and he scowled harder. The gold crates weren’t even padlocked. He stepped closer. “You sure?”

  “Why do you keep asking me that?
” Rose snapped. “Yes, I'm sure.”

  Flynn found himself smirking as he met Rose’s eyes. He cleared his throat and shook his head to dispel the urge to make another comment. It was almost a relief to see the man perturbed, and Flynn had to work hard not to poke at him a little more. He moved closer and peered at the padlock on the small box.

  “Think it belongs to a passenger?” he asked as he knelt beside Rose.

  Rose shook his head and leaned over it, reaching for the tarp that half-covered the box. Flynn found himself tilting away as Rose’s hair brushed against his cheek. The man made him uncomfortable, and Flynn just couldn’t get around that. How did he have any hope of ever telling Wash how he felt if he couldn’t even let Rose innocently touch him by mistake?

  Rose pushed the tarp away to reveal another government brand on the top of the box. “It does not belong to a passenger,” Rose muttered as he tugged at the edge of the box experimentally. The box rocked, but the lid didn’t budge. It was nailed down.

  “Nailed down and padlocked,” Flynn said. He checked quickly over his shoulder to make certain no one was out in the corridor, then he shifted, moving away from Rose and kneeling at an angle where he could watch the door as he examined the box.

  “It’s quite heavy too. I’m positive it’s lined. I heard stories once of boxes that were moved like this,” Rose said idly as he brushed his palm over the stencils. “Off a ship in New Orleans to a monastery. I forget the name. Holy relics, nailed shut and protected by boxes lined with lead.”

  Flynn shook his head distractedly as he looked around the cargo hold for something to pry the lid off the box. He knew they had more important matters to be tending to, but Rose’s scrutiny and the odd security measures taken with the little box had piqued his interest. It might be what these hijackers were here for.