Smugglers' Gold

by Lyle Brandt

  “What?”

  “It means they’re pirates, and they plan to come aboard.”

  5

  Ryder led Irene McGowan to her cabin on the Southern Belle’s topmost deck, instructed her to lock the door, then hurried back downstairs to his own cabin amidships. There, he donned his pistol belt, double-checking the Colt’s cylinder, then loaded fifteen .44-caliber rounds into his Henry rifle’s tubular magazine. A quick pump on the lever-action put one cartridge in the chamber, permitting Ryder to load a sixteenth round before he left and locked his cabin.

  When the Union Army had begun to issue Henry rifles, Confederates armed with muzzle-loading weapons had complained that the new guns could be loaded on Sunday and fired all week. That wasn’t strictly true, of course, but its high rate of fire—up to forty-five shots per minute by some estimates, in true expert hands—had proved devastating against charging lines of graycoats.

  Ryder had only used his Henry for target shooting so far, but he knew that 200-grain bullets fired from its .44 rimfire cartridges left the rifle’s muzzle traveling around eleven hundred feet per second. Too slow for big-game hunting or a long-range shot of any accuracy, but the slugs were hell on human targets out to fifty yards or so.

  And Ryder didn’t think the pirates would be that far from the Southern Belle.

  The packet’s whistle shrieked as Ryder made his way back to the main deck, jostling other passengers along the way. Panic was spreading, heightened by a crack of pistol fire across the water as the clipper closed to firing range. Some of the people Ryder passed drew back from him, seeing the rifle in his hands, but he ignored them. What they thought of him was meaningless. His sole priority was to prevent the raiders clambering aboard the Southern Belle and wreaking bloody havoc there.

  They had a decent chance, he thought, assuming that the steamer’s captain didn’t quail and cut his speed in some misguided bid to save the boat. In that case, Ryder knew, it could mean fighting hand to hand along the rails, and from the flight of passengers he’d seen so far, it didn’t seem that many were inclined to risk themselves in combat for the Leary Line.

  What they’d forgotten was that once the pirates came on board, no one was safe.

  The very thought of pirates raiding in the modern day and age struck Ryder as ridiculous, but it was happening, and it brought back to mind what William Wood had told him about Galveston. He had no reason to believe that these were Bryan Morley’s men, but meeting them was an ironic introduction to his job in Galveston.

  Now, all he had to do was stay alive for the remainder of the trip.

  Which might prove difficult.

  The clipper was already close beside the Southern Belle when Ryder reached the main deck, one of its burly crewmen leaping toward the packet, catching hold of its brass rail. He was a bearded thug, with a revolver tucked under his belt and a long knife clenched in his teeth, freeing both hands for climbing as he came aboard, snarling at nearby passengers to frighten them away.

  Instead of fleeing, Ryder stepped up to the rail and slammed his Henry’s brass butt plate into the scowling face, driving the blade back through its hairy cheeks with an impressive splash of blood. Squealing, the pirate lost his grip and tumbled backward, falling in between the clipper and the Southern Belle, where he was lost to sight.

  Another burst of gunfire crackled from the clipper, sending Ryder down below the steamer’s gunwale to avoid the bullets flying overhead. As he was ducking, Ryder glimpsed the name painted across the clipper’s bow: Revenant, which, if he recalled correctly, was some kind of ghost or evil spirit.

  Apt enough, under the circumstances.

  Ryder wormed his way along the gunwale, moving forward, while his would-be killers wasted ammunition on the spot where they had seen him last. One of the fleeing passengers was cut down as he headed aft, thrashing around a deck suddenly slick with blood.

  Ryder popped up, shouldered the Henry for a hasty shot, and winged one of the pistoleers who lined the clipper’s starboard rail. The man let out a squawk and lurched away, his left arm dangling, while the others turned their guns toward Ryder and he ducked back under cover.

  There’d been no opportunity for him to count the men aboard the Revenant, but guesswork pegged the number visible on deck near twenty-five or thirty. Not a large force, in comparison to passengers aboard the Southern Belle, but none of those showed any inclination yet to join Ryder in fending off attackers. He could understand the women running, some with kids, but he had hoped at least a handful of the men would stand and fight.

  Where was the crew? Were there no arms aboard for such emergencies, when they were hauling U.S. mail?

  Instead of waiting for a hero to appear, Ryder continued on his slow way toward the steamer’s bow, staying below the gunwale as he crawled along on hands and knees. The deck was clear now, as other passengers had ducked into companionways or fled back to their cabins. He supposed they meant to hide out if the Southern Belle was overrun, a sign that fear had robbed them of their basic common sense.

  If pirates took the steamer, they’d be going door to door in search of plunder, maybe killing as they went. He didn’t like the women’s chances of remaining unmolested, thinking some of them might be hauled off as hostages or worse. He didn’t know of any slavery per se remaining in the world, but chivalry and pirates didn’t go together in his mind, either. Ryder imagined females being used, then tossed over the side to rid the Revenant’s rough crew of witnesses, wherever they were going next.

  Unless he stopped them here and now.

  *

  The next time Ryder risked a look over the rail, the Revenant seemed to be losing speed, letting the Southern Belle pull out ahead. It made no sense, until he saw a clutch of half a dozen pirates at the clipper’s stern, manhandling a pair of wooden beams they’d propped across its starboard rail. He took another moment, putting it together, then saw that they meant to jam the steamer’s paddle-wheel if they could manage it.

  He risked a rifle shot from where he was but missed, and the returning storm of pistol fire drove Ryder back below the gunwale. All that he could think of now was getting to the pilothouse, to warn the steamer’s captain and avert what might be crippling damage to the Southern Belle.

  But that meant leaving cover for a spring up narrow stairs, exposed in daylight to the shooters on the Revenant. Ryder supposed the run up to the bridge would take a minute, maybe two, in normal circumstances, but he couldn’t outrun bullets on the best day that he’d ever had. Granted, the pirates hadn’t shown much skill at marksmanship so far, but any hit at all—even an accidental one—could finish him.

  Or, he could wait right where he was, until they jammed the paddle-wheel, then poured over the rail in strength.

  No choice, really, at all.

  Ryder was up and running in another heartbeat, half crouched, with his shoulders hunched in grim anticipation of a hot slug in the back. The pirates poured it on, but they were either hasty shots or poor ones, peppering the Southern Belle’s bulkhead but doing poorly with a moving target. Even so, as Ryder reached the stairs—or “ladder,” as the sailors called it—rising to the wheelhouse, he was sure that he had stretched his luck beyond the breaking point.

  Somehow, he made it to the bridge without taking a hit. The port side door was closed, but opened to his touch. Slipping inside, he ducked again as gunfire smashed the window to his left, glass flying everywhere.

  Ryder had glimpsed the steamboat’s captain from a distance, several times during their voyage, and had been impressed with both his size and his demeanor. Six foot four or five in height, and barrel-chested, graying hair and beard to match. He hardly looked the part of a commander now, as Ryder found him on one knee behind the steamer’s large spoked steering wheel, cringing from bullets as they whistled overhead.

  Seeing Ryder with his rifle on the bridge, the captain closed his eyes, clung to the wheel, and said, “All right, then. Shoot! You may as well.”

  Ryder crou
ched down beside him, saying, “Listen, Captain! I’m one of your passengers. You probably have pirates on the Belle by now, and they’re about to jam the paddle-wheel.”

  “We’re finished, then,” the captain told him, bitterly. “My crew’s not worth a damn for fighting. In the old days—”

  “Can you get more speed out of the engines?” Ryder interrupted him.

  “Maybe a knot or two.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It’s a measurement of—”

  “Never mind. Do what you can. I’ll try to hold them off.” Retreating toward the open wheelhouse door, he paused and added, “If you get a chance, why don’t you ram the bastards.”

  “Dangerous,” the captain said.

  “You think we’re not in danger now?”

  Gunfire was crackling from the Revenant as he emerged, the pistols’ popping punctuated by a shotgun blast. From his position at the apex of the steamer’s superstructure, Ryder had a clear view of the pirate clipper and its men still laboring to jam the larger vessel’s paddle-wheel with wooden beams, her captain shouting orders at them from the bridge. Although exposed to gunfire from below, he paused to aim his Henry down the full length of the Southern Belle and triggered two quick shots in the direction of the wrecking crew.

  One found its mark and dropped a pirate twitching to the deck. Without him, two more who’d been helping aim one of the long beams toward the steamer’s paddle-wheel were thrown off balance, lost their grip, and watched it tip over the gunwale, gone.

  Which just left one.

  Unfortunately, shooters on the Revenant had Ryder spotted now, and they were pouring on the pistol fire. Their aim had not improved, but they came close enough to make him drop and crawl along the deck, working his slow way toward the stern. Beneath him, Ryder felt the steamboat shudder as it put on extra speed, but he had no idea if it would be enough.

  And there were pirates on the paddle-wheeler now. He heard them calling back and forth to one another from the main deck, mostly cursing, while a woman screamed somewhere below him, toward the stern. It set his teeth on edge, but Ryder knew there were too many passengers aboard the Southern Belle for him to help them individually. His first priority was making sure the pirates didn’t stop the Belle dead in the water, where it would be easy prey.

  And that was proving difficult enough.

  In fact, he thought, it might turn out to be impossible.

  *

  Throughout his tenure with the U.S. Marshals Service, Ryder had been called upon to fire his pistol only once. As luck would have it, that event had ended his career—and, indirectly, placed him in his current life-or-death predicament. He wasn’t squeamish when it came to shooting, but he’d never pictured holding off an army, either.

  Or, was this part of a navy?

  Either way, quick action was required, or he was sunk.

  When he had crawled approximately half the steamer’s length, Ryder popped up again and risked another glance in the direction of the stern. All five remaining pirates there were grappling with the one remaining spar, trying to jam the churning paddle-wheel, but its ungainly length and weight was stalling them. Before their shipmates had another chance to spot him, Ryder raised the Henry rifle to his shoulder, sighting down its twenty-four-inch barrel toward the clipper’s stern.

  His first shot drilled one of the pirates closest to the rail, pitching him forward so his body fell across the beam, adding more weight as his supporting grip was lost. His next round hit the crewman bracing up the butt end of the spar and sent him tumbling to the deck. Before Ryder could fire again, the other three gave up and scampered off in search of cover, while the beam slid overboard.

  One problem down, but now the pistoleers were after him again, slugs hammering the steamer’s woodwork all around him. Ryder ducked into a nearby passageway that ran from port to starboard and descended to the middle deck from there, safe for the moment with the full bulk of the Southern Belle between the pirates and himself. As for the boarders from the Revenant, he’d have to hunt them down and deal with them as best he could.

  And it appeared that he’d be doing it alone.

  Ryder heard shouts, screams, crashing sounds as cabins were invaded, raiders kicking in the doors. He ran in that direction, through another passageway to reach the port side of the boat, nearer the Revenant. Halfway along, another figure blocked the daylight at the far end of the passageway—a burly, bearded man with a revolver in his hand, aimed straight at Ryder’s face.

  The shooter pulled his trigger, and the pistol’s hammer fell with a resounding snap.

  Misfire!

  Ryder bellowed and charged him, swung the Henry’s butt into the big man’s groin and heard the air evacuate his lungs as he hunched over, clutching at himself. Ryder’s momentum carried both of them along the short remainder of the passageway and to the steamer’s railing, where a final shove was all it took to roll the pirate overboard.

  Shark bait? It didn’t matter, just so long as he was gone.

  Close to the Revenant again, Ryder took cover at the gunwale and began to rapid-fire across the rail, spraying the clipper’s deck with lead. He hit one of the crewmen, likely not a fatal wound, and saw more of them dive for cover. From the bridge, one of the crew—maybe the man in charge—was shouting to be heard over the sharp reports of gunfire, calling to the members of his boarding party.

  “Ahoy! Belay the boarding! All hands back to me!”

  Ryder supposed he could have shot the man, captain or not, but let him keep on bawling orders as a couple of the men who’d come aboard the Southern Belle leaped back in the direction of the Revenant. One made it, rolling nimbly on the weather deck and springing to his feet among his shipmates, but the other timed his jump poorly, his face smacking the clipper’s rail before he dropped into the water, quickly sinking out of sight.

  The Revenant was veering off to westward now, frustrated crewmen loosing off a blaze of parting shots, but in another moment they were out of range, tacking southeastward toward the Keys, or maybe Cuba, farther on. Ryder was glad to watch them go, until he heard a growling sound behind him, and a woman’s gasp.

  Irene McGowan stood before him, trembling in the grasp of a straggler who’d missed his ride home. The pirate was bald, with skin like tanned leather, a thick blond mustache masking lips like a slash in his face. Those lips were drawn back in a snarl now, as he held a Bowie knife to Irene’s throat.

  “George, please!” she said.

  “George, please,” the pirate mimicked her. Then, with a glance to sea, he growled, “The hell are they goin’ without me?”

  “Looks like you missed the boat,” Ryder replied.

  “Screw that. You’re putting me ashore.”

  “Do I look like the captain?”

  “You look like the guy who’s gonna tell him what I need.”

  “Or, what?”

  “Or you can see this little piece without a head. How’s that?”

  Instead of budging, Ryder raised the Henry to his shoulder, sighting on the pirate’s face. “How do you see that working out for you?” he asked.

  “I mean it, boy! If you don’t think—”

  The Henry spoke, and he was gone, a dead weight sprawling on the deck behind Irene. She screamed, and might have fallen to the deck if Ryder had not closed the gap between them, taking her into his arms. He felt her shivering against him, weeping as she spoke.

  “My God, he … You … How did you … ?”

  Lucky shot, he thought. But said, “You’re safe now, let it go.”

  It wouldn’t be that simple, he imagined, but the Revenant was nearly out of sight, soon to be lost among the Keys. All that remained aboard the Southern Belle was dealing with the wounded and the dead.

  *

  The captain—Angus Gleason, Ryder learned, from chatter overheard in passing—pulled himself together before coming down to deal with his excited, frightened passengers. A quick search of the steamer, carried out
by crewmen who had disappeared during the fight, revealed no living pirates left on board. Three corpses were recovered, two male passengers and Ryder’s kill, all stowed together in the Southern Belle’s cold room pending arrival at Tampa, some nineteen hours hence. Ryder helped wrap them in tarpaulin, bound with heavy twine, and made sure they were separated from the steamer’s stock of meat and vegetables.

  When that was done, life on the Southern Belle returned to normal, more or less. One of the passengers who’d died was traveling alone, no one to mourn him on the steamer, but the other one had been a married man. His widow shut herself inside her cabin, telling anyone who tried to talk her out that they could go to hell or she would see them in St. Pete. Among the other passengers, some five or six had minor injuries, small cuts and bruises suffered when the pirates came aboard. The captain’s worry, now, appeared to be that they might sue the Leary Line, and he was circulating in a bid to charm them out of it.

  Retreating to his cabin, Ryder cleaned the Henry and returned the rifle to its leather case. The busy work permitted him to ponder what had happened, wondering if he should take it as an omen for the job he’d been assigned in Galveston. That was a stretch, he realized, but when was the last time he’d even thought of pirates, prior to being given his assignment by Director Wood? Sometime in childhood, probably, never believing that they still existed in the flesh.

  Maybe it was true, he thought, that wonders never cease.

  But linking the attack to Bryan Marley, still some seven hundred miles and forty hours distant, with the stop-off at Tampa, was stretching things too far. Even supposing that he dealt with pirates roaming through the Keys, that didn’t mean he knew about specific raids they staged on coastal shipping. And he obviously couldn’t know that Ryder had been sent to find him, traveling under an alias.

  Unless there was a spy at Treasury.

  Ridiculous.

  Even if Marley had a spy inside the Secret Service, newly formed in Washington, willing to tip him off, how would he get the news in time to mount a raid against the Southern Belle? And would he waste that kind of energy, trying to reach a single passenger among the several hundred traveling aboard the paddle-wheeler, without knowing who he was or even what he looked like?