by Tabor Evans
As long as Clement was walking around free and breathing perfectly good air, Longarm wasn't going back to Denver.
Avoiding Billy Vail's orders had necessitated a bribe out of Longarm's own pocket to a telegraph operator in New Orleans. The key-pounder had sent back a wire saying that there was trouble along the line and to please repeat the last message, and Longarm had lit a shuck out of that Western Union office and headed for the hotel, then the docks.
Luck had been with him, and within an hour, he was on a ship sailing for Saint Laurent. The vessel had other ports of call in the West Indies, but Saint Laurent was the only one in which Longarm was interested.
The captain of the ship came up and leaned on the railing beside Longarm. "Are you sure you want us to put you ashore here, Marshal?" asked the man. "There's a good-sized port city just down the coast a few miles."
"This'll do fine, as long as it's not too much trouble for you and your men, Captain," replied Longarm.
"All right," the captain said with a shrug. "I'll have the men lower a boat, and we'll have you safely ashore in a few minutes."
Longarm supposed that making this voyage had been in the back of his mind from the very moment he had discovered that Paul Clement had not perished in the burning warehouse. He had gotten hold of a map of Saint Laurent and sat down with Annie so that she could show him where the Clement sugar plantation was located. Longarm tried to keep the conversation light and innocuous, but he thought he could see awareness in Annie's eyes. She wanted him to go after Paul too.
Claudette had not been quite so understanding. When he had stopped by the St. Charles to throw a few things into his warbag, she had caught hold of his arm and looked up at him worriedly.
"Custis, you are not leaving yet, no," she had insisted.
"Afraid I've got to," Longarm had told her. "There's something left undone."
"You are not responsible for bringing justice to the whole world, you."
"I'm responsible for my part of it."
"But Custis..." And here she had lowered her voice and come into his arms, reaching down to slide her hand over his groin and then cup his shaft, which was growing hard despite his best intentions. "There is so little-little time, and so much we have not done, us."
"Maybe I'll be back to New Orleans someday," Longarm had told her in a husky whisper.
She had turned away from him and flounced across the room. "An' maybe I will not be here, me."
That was how they had left things, and even now, Longarm felt like sighing in regret as he climbed down into the small boat that would take him ashore on Saint Laurent. Claudette was one hell of a woman.
But when you came right down to it, he had ultimately said good-bye to every woman he had ever met. That was part of the price of carrying a badge. Other lawmen might be able to marry and have families, but Longarm had never figured he could manage it. The chances were too good he would leave a widow behind, probably with a passel of kids who would miss their daddy something fierce. The bitter-sweet pain of always saying good-bye was easier to bear.
At least he hadn't had to say good-bye to Marie Laveau. He had only seen the Voodoo Queen that one time, and if he never crossed trails with her again, that would be just fine with him.
The small boat's hull scraped the sand of the beach, and one of the crewmen jumped out to pull it higher out of the water. Longarm stood up carefully, his warbag thrown over his shoulder, and stepped out onto the sand. "Much obliged, gents," he said to the men who had brought him ashore.
The second mate, who commanded this detail, said, "The cap'n told me to tell you, Marshal, that we'll be in port down the coast for a day, if you want to catch up to us once your business is taken care of."
Longarm nodded. "I'll sure try to do that, old son. Reckon you've got room for another passenger besides me?"
"Plenty of room in the brig," said the young sailor with a grin.
Longarm returned the grin and touched a finger to the brim of his hat as the boat was pushed off. The sailors didn't know exactly what had brought him to Saint Laurent, but they had a pretty good idea. They had figured out that he hoped to have a prisoner with him on the return voyage.
Longarm hoped so too. Paul Clement deserved to spend some time behind bars--before he wound up at the end of a hangman's rope.
The closest Longarm had ever been to the tropics was the jungles of southern Mexico. The thick vegetation here along the coastline of Saint Laurent was similar, and so were the prevalent smells of rich earth and decay. He pushed through the clinging plants and walked inland, watching for snakes and other varmints. He almost wished he had a machete, so that he could chop an easier path through the jungle. Even an old-fashioned Bowie knife would have come in handy.
Luckily, though, he didn't have far to go. By late afternoon, he had reached the edge of the fields that were planted with sugarcane. It would be a while before the crop was ready for harvesting, but the stalks were already pretty tall. Longarm was grateful for their concealment as he hunkered down among them and waited for the sun to go down.
He would wait for nightfall before he paid a visit to Paul Clement.
Somewhere far off in the darkness, a jungle cat of some sort let out a howl. Longarm grimaced. Back in his usual stomping grounds, such a sound would have come from a wolf or a coyote or maybe even an Apache on the prowl. Here on this tropical island, he didn't know what sort of big cats might be wandering around.
He glanced up at the sky overhead, black as sable and dotted with pinpricks of brilliant light. He would be glad when he was once more under the light of Western stars.
About fifty yards from where Longarm crouched, the plantation house belonging to Paul Clement loomed in the middle of a clearing that had been hacked out of the jungle. A broad veranda ran all the way around the house, and several tall, broad-shouldered men carrying rifles patrolled it regularly. Longarm had been able to establish that much after spying on the house for only a few minutes. As one of the guards turned a corner, another rounded the far corner, so that each side of the house always had a sentry watching for trouble. Getting in there was going to be a challenge--and he wasn't even sure that Paul Clement was inside, although it seemed likely considering the way the place was guarded.
And there was really nowhere else Clement could have gone. The police in New Orleans had searched the mansion on Chartres Street and found no sign of him. Officers had been left on duty there in case he returned. But Longarm thought it was much more likely--and Annie agreed with him--that Clement had run back home to Saint Laurent. Though his schemes had been ruined, here in this stronghold he could live out the rest of his life without being disturbed.
Or so he thought. Longarm didn't intend to let that happen.
A door leading onto the veranda opened, and a man stepped out to speak in low tones to the guard who was patrolling that side of the house at the moment. Slender, dressed in immaculate white trousers and a blousy white shirt, the man was undoubtedly Paul Clement. Longarm's jaw tightened as he watched Clement talking to the guard. The big man nodded, and Clement went back inside.
A couple of minutes later, two more men came from the direction of the slave quarters. They had a young black woman with them. The dress she wore was short and so tight that her lush body seemed to be on the verge of bursting out of it. She looked scared and reluctant, and Longarm wasn't surprised when she was taken up on the veranda and led into the house. Clement had almost certainly sent for her so that she could warm his bed tonight.
Longarm's fingers strayed to the walnut grips of the Colt he carried in his cross-draw rig. He was no cold-blooded killer, and he wasn't just about to take the law into his own hands... but a man like Clement made him at least ponder the possibility for a few moments before discarding it.
If he could, Longarm was going to take Clement back to New Orleans so that the law could deal with him. But if Clement made that impossible... well, Longarm wasn't going to lose a hell of a lot of sleep over it. Or
any sleep, for that matter.
It was going to take a distraction for him to be able to get into the house, Longarm realized. But what was it going to be?
The sudden shouts that came to his ears through the warm night air made his head jerk up. He looked around, toward the slave quarters. An orange glow lit the sky in that direction, and even though Longarm didn't speak much French, he knew that whoever was hollering over there was alerting the plantation to the fact that something was on fire.
Providence, thought Longarm. He looked toward the house and saw that the other three guards had run around the veranda to join the one on this side. All four of the sentries were staring toward the slave quarters.
Clement appeared in the doorway behind them, his shirt open to the waist. He yelled at them in French and waved a hand toward the fire. Three of the four sentries took off in a run, and passed within ten feet of where Longarm was hidden at the edge of the path. None of them saw him.
As he had back in New Orleans, Longarm thought about luck and how he basically distrusted it. But since nobody knew he was here, this couldn't be a trap for him, and besides, he doubted that even somebody as ruthless as Clement would burn down the slave quarters just to bait a trap.
No, this was an opportunity Longarm had to take advantage of, and he intended to do just that.
He began circling the house, working his way through the brush. He didn't know the names of most of these tropical plants, but they were persistent in clinging to him. Not wanting to make much noise, he couldn't hurry, but even so, within a few minutes he reached a spot where the sole remaining sentry couldn't see him. Longarm drew his gun, emerged from the undergrowth in a crouch, and sprinted across the clearing toward the plantation house.
When he reached the veranda, he slowed and stepped up carefully, rather than bounding. Silence was still important, although judging by the shouts in the night, none of the other sentries were paying attention to anything except the fire. Longarm glanced in that direction again and decided it wasn't the slave quarters that were burning after all. The blaze that lit up the night sky was too big for that.
It looked to him like the cane fields were on fire.
If that was the case, then no wonder Clement was so upset that he had sent all but one of his guards away to help battle the blaze. The sugarcane was all he had left to help him recoup his losses from the destruction of the slave-running ring.
Longarm cat-footed along the wall to the nearest door and carefully tried the knob. It was locked, which came as no surprise. Maybe one of the windows...
Each of them that Longarm tried was latched as well. He didn't have time to go around the entire house trying all the doors and windows. He had to get inside more quickly than that.
He went to the edge of the veranda. There was a railing around it, and it took only a moment to step up on that railing and reach up to the edge of the roof that overhung it. Longarm had to holster the gun so that he could use both hands, but he was able to swing up onto the roof of the veranda without much trouble. Maybe one of the windows on the second floor wouldn't be fastened.
He saw right away in the moonlight that none were. In fact, one of them stood wide open so that the night breezes could flutter the thin white curtains that hung inside it. Longarm slid the Colt from its holster once more as he moved to the window. The room inside was dark, and no sound came from it. Longarm swung a leg over the sill and dropped through the window.
He landed on something soft--something that let out a muffled cry and then started flailing away at him furiously.
Longarm figured out what had happened and lifted an arm to ward off the blows. "Stop it!" he hissed. "I'm here to help you! Settle down, damn it!"
The whispered words got no response, so he had no choice but to grab the figure struggling with him. She was young and lithe and naked, and he didn't have to be a genius to figure out that she was the same young woman who had been taken reluctantly into the house to serve as a plaything for Paul Clement. He managed to get hold of both her wrists with one hand and found himself sitting astride her on a fourposter bed. "Hush!" he said quickly as he heard her draw a deep breath in preparation for a scream. "I'm the law, and I've come for Clement!"
That wasn't strictly true. He was a hell of a long way from anywhere where he had jurisdiction. But he meant to bring Paul Clement to justice anyway. That fact must have penetrated the young woman's brain, because she stopped struggling. After panting for a moment, she said, "M'sieu Clement... is an evil man."
"Don't I know it," said Longarm.
"You are here to... to kill him?"
"I don't rightly know. It depends on what he does. But I can promise you this, ma'am... he won't ever bother you again."
"If you can... kill him!" The vehemence in her voice made Longarm's blood turn a little icy.
The next instant, he heard a footstep outside the door of the room, and he was already rolling off the young woman as the door opened and Clement stepped through. "It's nothing to worry about, darling," said Clement. "Everything is under control, and I have that champagne I promised you, to put you more in the mood-"
The light from the hallway fell through the open door and revealed Longarm standing beside the bed, the Colt in his hand leveled and cocked as he said wryly, "That's mighty kind of you, sweetheart, but there ain't enough champagne in the world to put me in mind of messing around with a skunk like you."
Clement didn't waste any breath exclaiming in surprise. He just flung the heavy glass bottle in his hand at Longarm's head and threw himself to the side as the lawman's gun roared.
Longarm tried to get out of the way of the champagne bottle, but fortune had guided Clement's throw. The bottle clipped Longarm on the side of the head, knocking his hat off and making bright red rockets explode behind his eyes. He was pretty sure his shot had missed. As he stumbled back a step toward the window, he saw the young woman go flying through the open door, and heard the slap of her bare feet as she fled down the corridor outside the bedroom. Knowing that she was clear, Longarm triggered the Colt twice more, firing blindly.
Clement crashed into him from the side, his hand clawing at the wrist of Longarm's gun hand. Both men went down, and Longarm's hand cracked against something hard, probably the edge of the bedside table. His fingers went numb, and the Colt slid out of them. Clement made a grab for the gun, but Longarm managed to twist around and kick it, sending the weapon skittering out of reach across the floor.
He had to end this fight in a hurry, Longarm knew. Those shots would bring the guard from downstairs, and he might summon more of Clement's men to come with him. Longarm planned to knock Clement out, recover his gun so that he could deal with the sentries, and haul Clement into the jungle with him. Then it would be just a matter of eluding the inevitable pursuit, reaching the port city with Clement as his prisoner, and taking him on board the ship that would ultimately carry them back to New Orleans.
That was all.
Longarm's right hand was still numb, so he used his left to punch Clement in the face as they rolled back and forth on the floor, grappling desperately with each other. Enough light came into the room from the hall for Longarm to be able to see what he was doing. Unfortunately, Clement was fighting like a madman, and even though Longarm was larger and heavier, the plantation owner held the advantage for the moment. Clement slammed his knee into Longarm's groin, and as agony shot through Longarm, making him double over, Clement managed to loop an arm around his throat from behind.
Clement's arm was like a bar of iron across Longarm's neck. Every time he turned around in this case, Longarm thought wildly, some son of a bitch was trying to strangle him. First it had been that blasted zombie, then one of Clement's men, and now Clement himself. Longarm was sick and tired of it.
He drove an elbow back into Clement's midsection. That loosened Clement's hold, and Longarm was able to grasp his arm and pull it away. As he twisted around, he gulped down a breath of air to ease the terrible tightness i
n his chest and then clubbed both hands together and swung them at Clement's head. The blow sent Clement skidding away across the floor.
Longarm heard the rattle of gunfire close by, maybe as close as downstairs. He wasn't sure who was shooting at who, but for the time being, that didn't matter. He wanted to press his advantage over Clement, so he scrambled to his feet to lunge after the plantation owner.
Something rolled under Longarm's foot and dumped him hard on his back, knocking the breath out of him. That damn champagne bottle, he realized as he lay there half-stunned. It hadn't broken when it struck his head and then fell to the floor, and now it had tripped him up.
Worse than that, it rolled to a stop right beside Clement, who snatched it up and threw himself toward Longarm, holding the neck of the bottle with both hands as he raised it over his head.
That bottle was heavy enough to crush his skull when Clement brought it crashing down, Longarm knew. He gasped for air and gathered his muscles to try to get out of the way of the death blow.
He didn't have to make that probably futile effort because someone stepped into the room from the hallway, lifted a pistol, and squeezed off a shot. The bullet struck the bottle, shattering it and sending a shower of champagne and glass shards over both Longarm and Clement. Clement was left crouching over Longarm, the jagged bottle neck still clutched in his hands.
"Drop it, Clement," said Claudette, smoke curling up from the barrel of the revolver she held in her fist.
Longarm didn't know what was the most surprising: the sheer fact that Claudette was here, the lack of a Cajun accent in her voice as she spoke, the dark shirt and trousers she wore, so unlike anything he had seen her in before, or the accuracy with which her shot had broken the champagne bottle. All he could do was gape at her.
