Deadly Shoals

by Joan Druett

  Straightfaced, Wiki said, “I haven’t a notion.” The Indians’ language was the strangest he had ever heard, being composed of clicks, grunts, and a harsh sound made by clenching the throat. However, his knack for picking up repeated phrases, allied to the abundant clues given by gesture, expression, and posture, was serving him well, so he had a very good idea indeed what was happening—the young men were discussing the American, and comparing his pale, soft-featured looks somewhat unfavorably to their own.

  “It’s very distracting,” Mr. Hale complained.

  “I’m sure it is,” agreed Wiki amiably.

  “And I think that you are the cause of it. You seem to attract a lot of attention. I really do believe I would do better on my own.”

  There was nothing Wiki wanted more than to leave, but he couldn’t resist saying, “You’re sure you can manage?”

  “Of course I can manage!” Horatio Hale snapped, and Wiki took himself off to the pulpería.

  * * *

  The interior of the adobe building was large, dim, and crowded with both men and goods. The wall by the doorway where Wiki had come in was studded with pegs, from which hung horse gear of all kinds—bridles, stirrups, spurs, and pieces of saddle. He saw sheepskins heaped in a corner of the baked mud floor, great piles of bagged maize and jerked beef, and shelves piled with ponchos and lengths of bright cloth. Barrels of molasses, ship’s bread, and salt beef and pork were stacked along another wall, along with hogsheads of tobacco—a telling contrast to the ransacked state of Adams’s store.

  Wiki found that his guess that this store was a botillería was a correct one, too, because at the far end of the room the proprietor stood behind a wooden palisade, presiding over Dutch gin and Spanish wine, aguardiente from the Azores, and Brazilian caña. There was a strong, all-pervading smell of sweat, leather, wool, aniseed, and horses, and the noise was deafening. Gauchos and Indians hammered on the counter with the flat blades of their knives, saluted each other at the tops of their voices as they passed cups of harsh red wine around, and shouted while they argued about revolutions and horse brands. A drunken musician strummed a guitar just inside the doorway, setting dogs to howling outside.

  Captain Stackpole was standing brace-legged in a corner, an empty heavy-bottomed tumbler in his hand, looking all the better for having swallowed whatever had been inside it. Wiki eased over to him, and asked if he had found any of the Indian sealers. When the whaleman glumly shook his head, Wiki lifted his voice, shouting for Ramón, Ramón being the Spanish name the Indian cacique, Huinchan, had given his son. Five men answered, but only one was Indian.

  Ramón, son of Huinchan, had the same flat, cruel face as his father. He was also half drunk, evidently still celebrating his good fortune on the sealing ground. Luckily, he was in an amenable mood, and ready to chat—in a remarkably polyglot kind of way, as over the sealing voyage he had picked up quite a lot of English to add to his gaucho-style Spanish.

  “I liked to go a-sealing,” he informed them. Not only had the adventure yielded wonderful riches, but he’d found he had a natural talent for killing and skinning seals. Also, Captain Hallett had been a fair and just caudillo, who worked as hard as his men.

  Wiki said curiously, “How many skins did you get?”

  “Five thousand,” said the Indian, and puffed his chest out.

  It didn’t sound terribly many to Wiki. Though he’d be the first to admit that he knew nothing about the sealing trade, he’d read of ventures that yielded twenty thousand pelts or more. However, Ramón was clearly pleased with the number, so Wiki observed, “It must have been tempting to sail with the schooner again.”

  “The opportunity, señor, was not there.”

  “Because of Captain Hallett’s injury?”

  “He died,” the Indian told him. “He went to Dr. Ducatel’s ranch and when the doctor cut off his arm his life leaked out of the end.”

  Stackpole shifted abruptly, exclaiming, “He went to Ducatel’s ranch?”

  “Captain Hallett died at Dr. Ducatel’s ranch,” the Indian confirmed, adding solemnly, “He died on the Sabbath.”

  “My God!” The whaleman sounded on the verge of exploding.

  Wiki waited, but Stackpole didn’t elaborate, so he carried on with the cross-examination, saying to the Indian in Spanish, “The schooner was bought from Captain Hallett for another captain, who was taking the schooner a-sealing again. Would he not want to use the same gang that had done so well with you as capataz?”

  “Another captain?” Ramón let out a derisive sound, and then said in English, “Ah, who could that be?”

  Wiki had been thinking of Stackpole, but instead he said tentatively, “Señor Adams?”

  “Adams?” Another contemptuous snort. “What kind of man would allow himself to be shipped by a pulpero?”

  “A pulpero who is missing,” Wiki remarked meaningfully, and waited.

  Silence. The Indian looked away, glancing all about the crowded store.

  Giving up, Wiki said in English, “What about the schooner?”

  “Ah, she sailed away.”

  Stackpole exclaimed, “Where?”

  “Up the river.”

  Stackpole and Wiki looked at each other. Then the whaleman demanded, “When did she come back?”

  “I did not see her come back,” said Ramón indifferently.

  “So who was it who sailed her up the river?” Wiki asked.

  “Peter and Dick, they sailed her,” said Ramón.

  “Who?” said Stackpole, thunderstruck.

  “Our seamen,” said the Indian, and then added in Spanish to Wiki, “My men and I, you understand, were the sealers, not the sailors. We did not sail the schooner. Peter and Dick did the sailing work.”

  So Peter and Dick were members of the Athenian crew—men who had been seconded to the schooner. Wiki wondered if they had been opportunistic enough to pirate the Grim Reaper after Adams had failed to come back from the salinas. More likely still, he suddenly realized, they could have been recruited by the killer after he’d returned from burying the corpse. Or were they murderers themselves?

  He said, “Did she not have a captain when she sailed up the river?”

  “No captain of the schooner I saw, just a common pulpero who held the tiller while Peter and Dick worked the sails,” Ramón said with disdain, and lifted his glass and drank.

  Wiki stared at him. While this confirmed that Adams had stolen the schooner and sailed her upriver, it simply deepened the mystery of the men who had driven the packhorses to the salt dunes, and the horseman who had pursued them. Then, while he was phrasing another question, all hell let loose in the toldería outside.

  Threatening shouts in the Indian tongue were punctuated with bloodcurdling screams, and the insane yapping of dozens of dogs. When Wiki shouldered his way through the crowd and out of the pulpería, it was to see Horatio Hale backing off rapidly from the tent where he had been collecting words. A young Indian man was jabbing menacingly with his long knife as he advanced on the philologist.

  Wiki found himself shoved aside as Bernantio and his gauchos rushed with enthusiasm to the rescue. Their ponchos had been wound around their left arms, which were held across their stomachs to protect their vital organs; their facóns were gripped in their right hands, and their lean, high-cheeked faces were hungry for battle. The Indian stared at them aggressively, but his knife was lifted to jab the philologist.

  Wiki raced obliquely toward Hale, dived, and wrestled him to one side just as the Indian’s knife started its downward plunge. The young scientist thumped to the ground with a startled yell. Wiki rolled, staggered to his feet, and yanked him up again. Then he propelled him into a headlong dash with a palm planted between his shoulder blades.

  When they were well clear, he said, “What the devil happened?”

  “I was merely about my work.” The philologist was looking back at the developing fight with a bewildered air. “After eliciting the words for horse, house, knife, and
writing them down, I was then trying out the adjuncts, your horse, his house, my knife—and he took fire, supposing some awful insult.”

  “Oh, Lord,” said Wiki, instantly seeing what had happened. “He thought you were challenging his ownership of these things—that you were calling him a liar.”

  “But we were doing so well until the misunderstanding. Even the dogs were friendly. In fact, they gave me fleas. Can’t you explain it to him, so we can go back to work?”

  “God, no,” said Wiki, casting a comprehensive glance at the scene. “You’re the cause of the trouble, I’m afraid. The sooner we remove you, the better.”

  He shoved Hale toward his horse, saw him mount, leaped on board his own mare, and looked about for Stackpole. The whaleman, as alert to trouble as all of his kind, had found his own steed in the confusion, and the three of them galloped down the steep slope to the river, hooves kicking and sliding in the rush. Into the water they plunged, and labored briskly toward the other side, getting ashore a couple of hundred yards downstream from the pueblo.

  * * *

  When they arrived back at the steps that led up to the village, Dr. Ducatel was standing in the middle of the path, just as if he expected them.

  “Mr. Coffin,” he said with a formal little bow. “Mr. Hale. Captain Stackpole.”

  Stackpole roared, “Ducatel!”

  Everyone jumped with fright, including the surgeon, who spluttered, “I have merely come to deliver a message from—”

  “I heard just now that Rowland Hallett died at your ranch, not up at the barracks the way that I thought!”

  Ducatel licked his lips, visibly gathered rags of dignity about him, and muttered, “Like any rational man who was lucky enough to be able to afford the cost, Captain Hallett preferred not to be sent to the hole they call a sick bay at the fort.”

  “Afford the cost?” Stackpole echoed with thunderous fury. “Of course he could afford the bloody cost—and do you know why? Because he had my money!”

  “What m-money?” the surgeon stuttered, backing off a step.

  Wiki interrupted, “How much did Hallett have on him when he died?”

  “Enough,” Ducatel answered, his look becoming evasive.

  Stackpole thundered, “What do you mean, enough?”

  “Enough for my fee! Once I’d subtracted the amount of that, I put all the deceased’s possessions into official hands. If you don’t believe me, you can ask the governor! I handed over Captain Hallett’s sea chest the very same day that he died, even before I buried him—in my own burying ground on the ranch,” he said with an air of wounded virtue. “After filling out the death certificate, naturally,” he added.

  Wiki scowled, thinking that it had all happened in rather a rush, and said, “When did this happen?”

  Ducatel didn’t need to stop to think, saying at once, “He passed away on January thirteenth. The Sabbath,” he added, in the same solemn tone the Indian had used.

  “Was Captain Hallett at your house all the time he was ill?”

  “Right from the hour he came to consult—which he did the first possible moment after the Grim Reaper arrived off the pueblo.”

  “What date was that?”

  “January sixth.”

  So Hallett had been under the surgeon’s care for a week before he died. Thinking that the fee Ducatel charged must have been a substantial one, Wiki looked at Stackpole, and asked, “Did Adams have the money on the sixth?”

  Stackpole shook his head. “I gave it to him on the eighth, the same day I inspected the schooner. I handed it over, got a receipt, and that’s the last I saw of it, because I headed back to my ship.”

  “And he didn’t mention that Captain Hallett was on shore?”

  “Didn’t say a bloody word,” said Stackpole moodily. “He was too busy planning to steal the schooner, I reckon.”

  The whaling master was probably right, Wiki thought, but then wondered when the transaction had taken place. He asked the surgeon, “When did Caleb Adams come to the ranch?”

  “I’ve already told you I haven’t seen Adams for weeks!”

  So how had Adams managed to buy the schooner? Wiki was silent a moment, abstractedly restraining his mare as she shifted restlessly from one hoof to another, and wishing he could remember the details of the deed of sale.

  He said, “And when you subtracted the amount of your fee from the money in the dead man’s pockets, you didn’t see a bank draft?”

  “What draft?” the surgeon cried. “I don’t know anything about any draft!”

  Stackpole snapped, “We’re talking about a draft to the amount of one thousand dollars that Adams paid Hallett for that goddamned schooner!”

  Ducatel’s eyes popped. “One thousand dollars?”

  “That’s what I said—and I want to know what happened to it after Hallett died!”

  The surgeon cried, “I didn’t even know that the schooner was sold! And you’re trying to accuse me of stealing one thousand dollars from Captain Hallett? On what grounds, pray? No one has whispered a single word about any sale—the schooner was here, and then she was gone, and that’s all I know about it! Do you have any proof? I bet you don’t! And Adams never came to the ranch, I swear! If anyone stole any draft, it was him!”

  Struck with inspiration, Wiki interrupted, “You still hold a key to the outside door of the surgery in Adams’s store?”

  “How did you know I had a key?” Ducatel demanded.

  Wiki didn’t admit that he’d been guessing, saying instead, “You have it now?”

  “Yes, I do, but why—”

  “Because the proof you want that the sale really happened is there,” Wiki said, and without waiting for any more argument he slapped his reins, urging the mare up the steps into El Carmen. When Stackpole called out his name he didn’t pay attention. Instead, he listened to Ducatel’s steps as he hurried after him on foot, followed by the other two men on their horses.

  The front door of Adams’s store was still firmly shut and locked, the windows shuttered tight. Wiki dismounted, secured the mare to the rail, and headed after Ducatel, who had walked around the corner and into the yard. Stackpole and Mr. Hale were a couple of dozen yards behind.

  First, Wiki checked the double doors, finding them solidly shut. As he remembered, there was no way of opening them from the outside, once they were bolted and barred on the inside. The only way into the store from the yard was through the outer surgery door. He looked at Dr. Ducatel, and lifted his brows.

  The surgeon fished the key out of a pocket in his coat. Judging by the way he braced himself, he expected the lock to be stiff with disuse, but instead the key turned smoothly. The door swung silently back on its hinges, revealing a large consulting room with a desk, a chair, and a long couch that had evidently served as a sickbed, because it was rigged out with neatly folded blankets.

  It was as if the surgery were ready to be put to use again at a moment’s notice, and Wiki’s neck crept with a sense of human presence. Then Stackpole let out a startled curse, accompanied by a ghoulish rattle. He had blundered into a skeleton hanging from a hook that had been screwed into one of the ceiling beams.

  “My property,” said Dr. Ducatel. His giggle sounded forced. No one else laughed.

  Papers on the desk lifted and rustled as Wiki opened the inner door, letting in a draft of dry, stale air, and flies rose and buzzed. The store looked exactly the same as the last time he had seen it, but the hairs on the back of his neck were creeping. He stood just clear of the doorway of the surgery, staring around as the others pushed past him, and warily sniffing the musty air.

  Then he heard Horatio Hale’s whine of utter horror.

  Wiki jerked around, to find the white-faced philologist pointing a shaking finger at the floor behind the counter. Four hurried strides, and he could see what had gripped Hale’s shocked attention—the distorted corpse of the Portuguese clerk.

  Seven

  The old man was lying on his back with the fallen
stool between his legs, frozen by death into a sitting-down position. His eyes were wide open, staring up from between his knees. Judging by the expression of stupefaction on the dead face, he had been taken completely by surprise. The big ledger was lying open on the counter, as if he had been absorbed in noting down the details of a sale when his killer had walked in the door.

  Wiki looked down at the body. The attack had been violent as well as sudden and unexpected, because the clerk had been struck with a very large knife so hard that the hilt had left imprints on his shirt before it was hauled out and taken away. The stain of blood about the wound in his chest had dried many hours ago. It was ghoulishly reminiscent of Caleb Adams’s corpse, except that the body was entire.

  He said to Ducatel, “How long has he been dead?”

  The surgeon was staring down at the ungainly remains, his expression withdrawn and brooding. Now he roused himself, glanced at Wiki, and said, “I need to have a better look. Give me a hand to haul him out of there.”

  Because of the cramped space behind the counter, it took three of them to drag the stiff, resistant form out into the open, Stackpole lending a hand to pull at the legs. Even though they did their best to straighten him out, the knees remained rigidly bent toward the chest, frozen by rigor mortis into the way the body had landed when it had tumbled off the stool, and the hands still grasped at the air.

  Ducatel crouched down by the corpse, and pulled back the shirt to expose the great gash in the ribs. When he stood again, his face was expressionless. “He was killed at least thirty-six hours ago.”

  Wiki said, “How can you tell?”

  “There are maggots in the lips of the wound.”

  For the first time, Wiki felt a snatch of nausea. He swallowed, and said, “What about the stiffness?”

  “It takes three to four days for rigor mortis to relax, so he’ll be petrified in that position for quite a while yet.”

  So, Wiki mused, the clerk had been dead when he and Stackpole had checked the store—he had been killed not long after their departure for the salt dunes. He wondered why he had not sensed the shocked spirit—the kehua—when they had tried the door after coming back from the salinas, and thought wryly that he was becoming more American by the moment. The flies were circling lower, and he saw two settle on the glazed eyes. Turning to the box of red silk bandannas on the counter, he plucked one up, and dropped it over the dead man’s face. It landed neatly, covering the entire head. This made the sight of the contorted body even more grotesque, but to have those staring eyes hidden was a distinct relief.