Longarm and the Voodoo Queen

by Tabor Evans

  "Who...?" gasped Clement.

  "Call me Royale," said Claudette with a faint smile playing around her sensuous mouth.

  With a scream of deranged hatred, Clement flipped the bottle neck around and plunged the jagged edge of the glass at Longarm's throat with the speed of a striking snake.

  Claudette was faster. The gun in her hand boomed again, and Clement was thrown forward as the slug slammed into the back of his head, bored through his skull, and mushroomed out his forehead in a grisly shower of bone and brains. The bottle neck fell harmlessly to the floor as Clement pitched forward lifelessly. He flopped across Longarm's face, and Longarm hastily shoved the corpse aside in revulsion.

  Claudette slid the gun into the black holster that was belted around her hips and came quickly across the room. "Are you all right, Custis?" she asked, still missing the Cajun accent.

  "I'm fine," he said as he sat up and glanced at Clement's body with a grimace. "I never expected to see you here."

  She knelt beside him. "I'm sorry I... had to deceive you."

  "Outright lie to me, you mean." He chuckled grimly and shook his head. "Still, you just saved my life, so I reckon I can't get too riled up with you."

  She helped him to his feet, and they walked out of the room without looking back at Clement's corpse. "Does that mean you're not going to arrest me?" she asked.

  "When you've probably got a dozen or more men downstairs in the mood for trouble?"

  "Closer to two dozen," she murmured. "I didn't know how well guarded Clement would be. I'm just sorry I didn't get here in time to save you the trouble of trying to get to him."

  "You sailed out of New Orleans the same day I did, didn't you?" said Longarm.

  "I have ships available to me," she said.

  Longarm snorted. "I'll just bet you do. Smuggling ships."

  "I never ran slaves, like Clement and Millard," she said tightly.

  "No, but your men came damn close to killing me a few times. They did kill some of Millard's men."

  She shrugged. "In war, men die. And it was war between Millard and me. I didn't know then that Clement was part of it. And I would have been willing to let things go on the way they had been if Millard's men hadn't ambushed a group of my couriers a few days before you arrived in New Orleans, Custis. They got the drop on my men, disarmed them... then shot them all in the back."

  "Millard never mentioned that little detail when he said you were out to ruin him," Longarm said as they started down a broad, winding staircase to the first floor.

  "Of course not. I never set out to hurt anybody, Custis. You have to believe that."

  Longarm wasn't sure if he did or not, but at this point, it didn't really matter. He asked, "Why did you save me from your own men, down there in the shinneries?"

  "I knew you were working with Millard. I thought I could use you to get close to him and find out his plans." Her hand reached over and stole into his. "But I didn't count on coming to feel about you the way I do now, Custis."

  Longarm stopped and looked at her, and she leaned forward to kiss him. After a moment, his arms went around her, drawing her tightly to him. Then he broke the kiss and looked at her sadly. Her gaze dropped, and they started once more down the stairs, their hands no longer touching.

  "You started the fire in the cane fields to draw Clement's guards away," Longarm said after a few seconds of silence between them. "Then you came here for Clement."

  "I would have taken him prisoner and turned him over to you if I could have," she said quietly. "I really would have. He didn't give me any choice."

  "No," said Longarm, "I reckon he didn't."

  They crossed a luxuriously furnished drawing room and went out through a foyer onto the veranda. Several men in derby hats stood outside the house, holding rifles. The body of the guard Clement had left on duty lay slumped on the ground nearby.

  "Everything all right, ma'am?" asked one of the derby-hatted men.

  "Yes," said Claudette. "Gather the workers we've freed tonight and take them back to the ship, Barry. We have room for them, don't we?"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "Good. We'll take them back to New Orleans, or anywhere else they want to go."

  The man nodded, and he and his companions moved off into the darkness.

  "There's just one more thing I want to know," said Longarm.

  "What's that?" asked Claudette.

  "Why the masquerade as a bayou gal? Whose shack was that you took me to?"

  "It was no masquerade," Claudette said softly. "That bayou girl was who I was, once upon a time... a long time ago. The shack belonged to my gran'pere, and everything I told you about him and his gran'mama and Marie Laveau was true."

  "Too bad you had to reveal who you really are to your men."

  "They already knew, no matter what Millard may have told you about the mysterious Royale. They're just loyal to me, that's all." She paused, then asked, "What happens now, Custis?"

  Longarm looked into the distance, at the flames that were now dying out in the destroyed cane fields. "I've got no authority here," he said tonelessly. "In Saint Laurent, I'm just as much of an outlaw as you are. So I reckon you go your way and I go mine."

  "Yes." She lifted a hand and touched his cheek lightly. "But it is a pity that is the way it must be. If you and I were only on the same side ..."

  Still looking at the cane fields, Longarm said, "It's a pretty thing to think about, ain't it?"

  The End