Smugglers' Gold

by Lyle Brandt

  *

  Pale light and bustling activity on deck woke Ryder as the sun began to rise behind Timbalier Island. His first view of the barrier island, lost in early morning haze, showed that it was long and narrow, with an irregular shoreline. He guessed it might stretch close to ten miles from east to west, with fair-sized trees inland, and underbrush around them. Sandy-looking soil told him there would not be much difficulty when it came to excavating shallow graves.

  Why make that plural? Because Ryder didn’t plan on going down alone if anything went wrong.

  Breakfast was more of last night’s stew, washed down with coffee in tin cups. Ryder had little appetite but ate his helping, anyway, certain that he would need the energy for whatever might lie ahead. By half past seven, lifeboats had been lowered and the Banshee’s crew began to go ashore. Seitz rode the first boat, standing in its bow like old George Washington crossing the Delaware, while Ryder caught the second. Marley’s men were not assigned to man the oars, but rather carried picks and shovels for the digging, once they’d landed.

  Altogether, Pickering sent twenty men ashore, plus Marley’s thirteen, counting Otto Seitz. Four buccaneers stood watching from the clipper’s deck, detailed to guard the Banshee and presumably make sure the ship did not drift off without its landing party safely back on board. A couple of the men who stayed behind were holding Enfield rifles, while the other two had pistols tucked under their belts.

  Expecting trouble?

  Ryder knew that the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service had boats stationed around the Gulf of Mexico but didn’t know exactly where they berthed or whether they patrolled the stretch of coastline where the Banshee had dropped anchor. Like the Secret Service, Revenue Cutters operated on behalf of the Treasury Department, hunting smugglers and enforcing other tenets of maritime law in American waters. They’d been pressed into military duty on various occasions since 1812, and one of them—the USRC Harriet Lane—had fought the first naval engagement of the War Between the States, near Fort Sumter, in April 1861.

  Ryder didn’t expect a Revenue Cutter to save him, wasn’t even sure he needed saving, and besides, he preferred to gather more evidence against Marley’s smuggling operation if he could.

  As long as he survived to testify.

  Once ashore, Ryder waited with the men from Marley’s group who had preceded him. Seitz paced along the surf line, restless, while the life boats doubled back, took on another load of able bodies, and returned. The Banshee crewmen shipped their oars then, dragged the boats well up on shore, and joined the rest while digging tools were passed around.

  “This way,” said Pickering, who’d ridden in the last lifeboat to reach the island. Seitz walked in his shadow, while the rest of them came straggling along behind, the furthest thing from any kind of military order in the ranks. They hiked inshore for something like a mile, then stopped with Pickering as he examined landmarks, matching them against a yellowed, often-folded piece of paper in his hands.

  A treasure map?

  In other circumstances, Ryder would have smiled at the idea, or maybe laughed out loud, but there was nothing humorous about his present situation. He had good reason to believe the loot existed, based on items he’d already helped unload in Galveston. The Tariff Act of 1857 had taxed imports at an average rate of 17 percent, now on its way to being doubled by Republicans in Congress since war’s end. How much was that, lost to the government in revenue of cargo Marley smuggled into Galveston? On gold and silver? Gems? The silly-sounding ganja?

  Thousands, certainly, assuming that the pirate booty was not confiscated outright on discovery.

  “This is the spot,” said Pickering, grinding a heel in the sand between two live oak trees, set roughly fifteen feet apart.

  Ryder half expected to find an X drawn on the ground, after the style of fabled pirate maps from novels he had read in childhood: Fanny Campbell, The Queen of the Sea, or The Secret Service Ship. It was unmarked, however, aside from Pickering’s footprint, designating the spot for their digging to start.

  “Come on, then!” Pickering bellowed, when no one moved immediately. “Put your backs into it! Dig!”

  And dig they did, working in relays, following the Banshee captain’s orders to outline, then excavate, a pit some eight feet long by four feet wide and six feet deep. A good-sized grave, thought Ryder, as he took his turn, wielding a spade, careful to step back when the men with pickaxes were swinging. It was sandy soil, all right, but live oak roots made digging difficult until they had been chopped and hacked away.

  It anything was buried there, Ryder knew that those roots had sprouted in the meantime, reaching out for sustenance and interweaving to protect whatever lay below them. How long would the treasure have been resting in its hole? If Jean Lafitte had planted it, and he had truly died in 1823—a date disputed, since his corpse was never found—the loot had been underground for at least forty-two years. Plenty of time for trees to sprout, grow tall, and lace the island with a maze of roots. Tack on another decade for the days when the Lafitte brothers had raided British shipping in the War of 1812. What would remain of treasure buried that far in the past?

  He knew that gold, silver, and gems would not decay, although the chests or bags that held them might be gone. Ryder supposed they could forget about retrieving any paper currency planted for half a century, but chances were that it would have been printed by some bank long since defunct, in any case. If they found anything, he guessed it would be heavy and would take a fair amount of time for transportation to the Banshee.

  His thoughts were thus engaged when Ryder’s spade struck something solid, with a heavy thunk. He hesitated, then began to scrape the dirt away more carefully, two other men with shovels helping him, until the curved lid of a brass-bound chest had been exposed. Encouraged by the sight of it, and by commands from Pickering, they started digging out around the chest’s four sides, until a pair of rotting leather handles were revealed. One of them ripped through on the first attempt to hoist it, and more excavation was required before three men could climb into the hole, standing around the chest, and lift it clear.

  It was approximately three feet long, two wide, and eighteen inches deep. The padlock on its hasp had long since rusted shut, but three blows with a pickax shattered it. Seitz moved to lift the lid, but Pickering moved in to shoulder him aside and claim that honor for himself. A moment later, sunlight gleamed on golden coins—hundreds, by Ryder’s estimate—untarnished by the years.

  A cheer went up, cut short when Pickering began selecting men to take the chest, carry it back to where the lifeboats had been beached, and row it over to the clipper. Those who stayed behind, Ryder among them, would keep digging for a second chest that was supposed to occupy the pit.

  They found it fifteen minutes later, raised it in the manner of the first one they had found, and let the captain open it. This time, a rainbow glimmered in the sunshine: rubies, emeralds, and diamonds, some in precious settings, others tumbled loose into the chest. No cheering this time, as a second party was selected for the long trek back to shore.

  “Now, we fill it in,” said Pickering. “No point in advertisin’ what was here.”

  By we, he meant the workmen still remaining, he and Seitz retreating to converse beyond earshot while Ryder and his nine companions sweated through refilling the deep pit, then wiping out all traces of the dig as best they could, scattering sand over the spot.

  When they were done and standing idle, Pickering and Seitz returned, taking their time about it, Pickering smoking a pipe. “That does it,” he informed them. “All except one little thing.”

  “One piece of business still needs takin’ care of,” Otto said. Ryder could feel the short hairs rising on his nape then, as the smuggler’s eyes focused on him.

  “Bidness?” Harry Morgan echoed.

  “I smelled a rat when Bryan brought you into Awful Annie’s,” Seitz told Ryder.

  Bluff it out, he thought. And answered back, “How do you figure
that?”

  “It’s pretty damn convenient, how you showed up just the minute that he needed help.”

  “Right place, right time,” Ryder replied. “Why would I help him, if I meant him any harm?”

  “To worm your way inside, maybe.”

  “Hey, Otto,” Morgan interjected, “you ain’t makin’ any sense.”

  “Oh, no? You think it’s just coincidence he turns up as we go to war with Menefee?”

  “He helped us kill Jack Menefee,” Harry shot back. “Don’t tell me you’re forgettin’ that.”

  “I ain’t fogettin’ anything,” Seitz said, drawing his Colt. “I’m takin’ out the trash.”

  No time to think about it, then. Snarling at Seitz, Ryder lashed out and slammed his spade into the smuggler’s face, then turned and ran.

  14

  Chaos reigned behind him as he sprinted for the nearest tree line, voices jabbering with questions, Otto howling curses with a nasal twang, Stede Pickering demanding that the men still on their feet go after Ryder. He had covered thirty yards, was in among the trees, before they started chasing him. The first shot made his shoulders hunch reflexively, but it was high and wide, the bullet slapping at a tree trunk somewhere off to Ryder’s left.

  His swing at Seitz had been instinctive, pure self-preservation, but he wondered now if running afterward had been a poor decision. Harry Morgan had been arguing his side with Otto, and the rest of Marley’s men, at least, had seemed surprised by Otto’s actions. Should he have remained to plead his case after he’d pasted Seitz?

  Too late to think about that now.

  Clubbing a man who tried to kill him would be normal and expected by the gang, but running once he’d done it would be tantamount to a confession.

  “Over here!” somebody shouted, well behind him.

  “There he goes!” another cried.

  Not voices that he recognized, offhand, but then again, what of it? Any mother’s son could drop him with a lucky shot, or slit his throat if he stood still for it. Ryder had to evade them if he could, hold out till nightfall anyway, and hope they’d lose him in the dark.

  Another shot behind him, and the bullet came no closer than the first. Combine a moving target with a shooter on the run, and taking down a man was doubly difficult. The woods helped, too, with cover and their shadows. Still, there were eleven men pursuing him, presumably. Call it an even dozen if he hadn’t shaken something loose in Otto’s skull. Fanned out, advancing steadily, they had a decent chance of overtaking and surrounding him.

  As they’d approached Timbalier Island, Ryder had judged it to be ten miles long, at least. Its width and the square mileage of it still remained a mystery. Ryder wasn’t convinced that he could run ten miles without a rest, but even if he managed it, he’d find himself cut off, trapped on another beach with nowhere left to turn. They’d have him then, and it would all be over.

  Long shadows in the forest told him it was getting on toward dusk, but slowly. If he wanted to survive, Ryder would have to slow down the pursuit. Make his new enemies think twice about the hunt they were engaged in. Raise the stakes for all concerned.

  Still running, Ryder pulled his Colt Army and started looking for a place to make his stand. It wouldn’t be his last stand, hopefully—no imitation of the Alamo—but if he timed it properly …

  Live oaks and pines were all around him, offering the only cover he could hope to find. He stopped and crouched behind one of the larger trees, heard hunters calling back and forth to one another in the woods before him, drawing nearer by the moment. Ryder cocked his pistol, scanned the ground, waiting for targets to reveal themselves.

  The first was someone from the Banshee’s crew, bearded and brawny, carrying what looked to be a stubby pepperbox. The little pistol had no barrel in the normal sense, just firing chambers grouped around a central axis. Could be four shots, six, or more, depending on the model, but it would be useful only at the very closest range, compared to fifty yards for Ryder’s Colt.

  Not that he planned to try a shot from that range in the forest, with the shadows creeping in on him.

  Try twenty yards, instead, the pirate blundering along and calling back to others he’d outrun in his enthusiasm for the chase. Feeling no sympathy or urge to spare him, Ryder shot him in the chest and saw him fall, blood spouting from the hole his .44 slug made.

  More shouting then, but Ryder didn’t wait for any of the others to arrive. When they kept after him—if they kept after him—he’d try to snipe another one, and so on, whittling down their will to hunt. With two spare cylinders and one shot gone, he had enough rounds left to deal with all of those who’d stayed behind, but that would be a losing gamble, even if he managed it somehow. The men who’d gone back to the Banshee would return for Pickering if Ryder failed to appear, and that would be the end of it.

  Hang on, he thought. Just stay alive for now.

  One minute at a time.

  *

  He bwoke ma goddamn node!” Seitz bawled, probing his blood-caked face with cautious fingertips, then glaring at Pickering. “Da hell you gwinnin’ at?”

  Still smiling, Pickering replied, “I never seen you look so good.”

  “Weal fuddy!” Seitz was checking his front teeth now, grimacing as one wiggled under the pressure of his thumb. “I’m gonna kid ’im!”

  “Then we’d better hurry up,” said Pickering, “before the others beat you to it.”

  Seitz picked up his Colt, spinning the cylinder and blowing sand out of the works as best he could, checking to satisfy himself the barrel hadn’t fouled when he had dropped it. “C’mod, den,” he told the Banshee’s captain, setting off after the hunting party that was chasing George Revere.

  It hurt to run, each jolting step driving a white-hot lance of agony into his skull. It might not be the worst pain he had ever felt, but Seitz reckoned that it was close enough. Each burning stab increased his fury, pulled the knot of hatred in his stomach that much tighter.

  He had known that there was something out of plumb about Revere from the first time he’d met the bastard. Marley wouldn’t listen, but he’d have to pay attention now. Seitz would have liked to bring Revere’s head to him in a basket, but he didn’t want to push it. Find the rat and finish him—but not before Revere had spilled who he was working for and why he’d come to Galveston.

  Asking the questions could be fun, but that meant catching up with Georgie Boy before the others ran him down and shot him out of hand. Seitz needed him alive, just long enough to answer certain questions.

  And to hear him scream.

  The sharp clap of a gunshot up ahead spurred Otto on to greater speed—and greater pain. Trying to keep Revere alive, Seitz bleated out to those who’d gone ahead, “Doan kid ’im! Wade fuh me!”

  Long moments later, Otto stood over a corpse, with others grouped around him. It was one of Stede’s, which set the Banshee’s captain cursing in rare form, using some terms that Seitz took to be nautical. Seitz tried to mask his own sense of relief, assisted in that effort by the throbbing misery inside his head.

  He quickly counted those who’d stopped to view the fallen sailor. Four of nine who’d set off in pursuit of George Revere, plus one dead on the ground, left four still on the hunt. Otto had barely finished calculating when another shot rang out, off to the east, and he was running once again, dizzy and nearly sobbing from the pain and the exertion.

  Another body on the ground, and three men crouched around it, staring off into the woods. Seitz jostled Harry Morgan as he slid in to a halt and recognized Bob Jacobs stretched out on his back. He only had one eye now, and a bloody socket where a slug had punched the other back into his brain.

  “George shot him,” Morgan said.

  “Still dink he’s one ob us?”

  “I’m gonna kill him,” Harry said.

  “You’ll do it on your own, then,” Pickering informed him, as he joined their group with his surviving sailors. “I’m not puttin’ any more of my men
on the chopping block for your mistake.”

  “The hell you mead?” Otto demanded.

  “What I mean is that I’m sailin’ now. You wanna stay behind and hunt this boyo to your heart’s content, I leave you to it.”

  “Jud like dat?”

  “You heard me,” Pickering replied. “Do what you want on land, but I’m the master of the Banshee. And she’s sailin’ just as soon as I get back aboard her. Come on, men!”

  With that, the captain turned away and started trekking westward, toward the beach where they had landed. The remaining members of his party followed, one shrugging for Seitz, to show he had no other choice. Within a few short moments, they were swallowed by the dusk, nearly invisible from where Seitz stood.

  It galled him, leaving George Revere alive, but Otto knew that Pickering would sail without him and would not be coming back. It might be days before Marley could find another ship to come and pick them up—or would he even bother? Might it seem a better choice for him to wash his hands of the whole problem?

  Let the dead bury the dead.

  Slurring a curse, he told his men, “Come odd. We’ll let the bastid starb.”

  *

  Ryder heard the trackers leaving, but he didn’t trust it right away. He had nothing to gain by trailing them, except a bullet in the head, but common sense dictated that he see if they were leaving, or if they would camp out on the island, ready to resume the hunt the next morning.

  First, before he started trailing them, he swapped the Colt Army’s cylinder, two rounds gone, for one still fully loaded. If he walked into an ambush he would have six shots, at least, no fumbling in the dark while trying to reload with bullets flying all around him.