Day of Independence

by William W. Johnstone

  He let Andy drop, staggered back until he bumped against the hotel wall, then stared in gape-mouthed horror at his bloodstained hands.

  Veins popped out on Hacker’s forehead and breath wheezed in and out of his chest in short, shallow gasps. He felt as though he’d stepped out of himself, an onlooker uncertain of what to do.

  He had not meant to kill the boy.

  It had been an accident.

  He didn’t know his own strength.

  The boy should have answered his questions, told him what he wanted.

  It wasn’t his fault.

  Nobody would blame him. How could anyone be expected to know that the damned kid was so fragile? Besides, the boy was a useless ragamuffin, a nobody who would have fallen to the guns of Perez’s men anyhow. It was a justifiable homicide.

  Hacker’s cartwheeling brain stopped its mad turning and jolted to a halt on a single thought: Get rid of the body.

  He stumbled through the gloom, a thin shroud of mist parting around him, and made his way to the end of the passage.

  Behind the store, thrown carelessly in a jumbled heap, lay a pile of empty packing cases, including, Hacker noticed, a large tea chest stamped with the word CEYLON.

  The fat man stepped back to the dead boy and dragged the body to the tea chest, panting from the effort.

  Small and undernourished, the child fit into the chest quite well.

  Hacker then kicked the box over on its side and covered it with packing cases.

  No one would find the corpse until the cases were removed... and that could be never.

  Hacker leaned against the wall of the hotel and let his breathing return to normal. He told himself that the boy’s death had been unfortunate, but by and large, he was quite happy.

  Very happy, in fact.

  He was as pleased as punch that his heart had stood up so well to all the fuss and bother.

  Huzzah! And again, Huzzah!

  Not even a twinge of pain, not so much as a tingle in his left arm. It all boded well for his upcoming nuptials and political future.

  As to what happened by the river, let it go to hell. Sancho Perez would deal with it.

  Hacker shouldered himself off the timber wall.

  This was not the time to push his luck.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Abe Hacker let himself back into the hotel.

  His hands covered with the dead boy’s blood, he had to use a corner of his robe to wipe a red stain off the shiny brass door handle. He went directly to his room, glad that no one had decided to make a nocturnal trip to the outhouse.

  Nora sat up in bed and when Hacker stepped inside she looked at him in horror, then tossed the sheet aside and jumped to her feet.

  “Abe, were you shot?”

  “No. It’s nothing,” Hacker said.

  He poured water from the pitcher into the basin.

  “You’re covered in blood,” Nora said. Her face was very pale.

  “I told you it’s nothing,” Hacker said. “Damn you, go back to sleep.”

  The water in the bowl turned red.

  Nora took a step back. “My God, Abe, what have you done?”

  Hacker turned his head to the woman. In the low lamplight his eyes were wild, his fleshy face masked by demonic shadows.

  “I killed somebody,” he said.

  Nora shrank from him. “Who, Abe?” She stared at the bloodstained front of his robe. “Who did you kill?”

  “Does it matter?”

  The woman said nothing but her wide eyes signaled her alarm.

  “It was a boy. A troublemaker. Just a ragged guttersnipe.”

  “A child?” Nora said.

  “I didn’t mean to kill him. It just happened. He wasn’t strong.”

  Nora was appalled, horror and disbelief vivid in her eyes.

  “You murdered a child?”

  “He was nothing. A bug I squashed underfoot. Can’t you understand that?”

  For a few moments Nora stood petrified, her mouth open but empty of words.

  Finally she said, “You’re a monster, Abe. You’re... evil.”

  His hands dripping rust-colored water, Hacker advanced on the terrified woman.

  “You’ll keep your trap shut or the same thing will happen to you.” He pulled the derringer from his pocket. “I warn you, Nora. Don’t try my patience.”

  But Nora Anderson had been raised hard, and her early adult life had been spent in the cribs where every day was a struggle for survival. She had sand, and Hacker gravely underestimated her. “You’re a child murderer, Abe, and if I stay silent about it I’d be just as guilty and evil as you are,” Nora said.

  “Don’t make a move toward the door or I’ll kill you, Nora,” Hacker said.

  His eyes, lost in folds of fat, glittered.

  “Abe, there’s something I should have told you a long time ago,” Nora said. She grabbed her robe. “Go to hell!”

  The woman made a rush for the door, but Hacker, like many grossly obese men, could be as light on his feet as a ballet dancer.

  He grabbed Nora just as she turned the handle and dragged her away from the door. As the woman cried out, Hacker, cursing, violently threw her across the room.

  Nora stumbled and as she fell her head crashed into the top of the brass bed frame. She sprawled onto the floor, stunned, but tried to rise.

  Hacker was on her like a cougar on a whitetail doe. His meaty hands circled Nora’s neck and his thick thumbs dug deep.

  The reality of killing up close and personal left Abe Hacker horrified.

  He had ordered men killed before, but those were assassinations and death kept its distance. But the killing of the boy and now Nora was a new experience for him, apart from Jess Gable, who had been a dead man already.

  The murders lay heavy on him, not because of a guilty conscience, but because the blood was on his hands.

  Damn it all, he was a businessman, not an assassin.

  Hacker paid lesser men to perform that chore, men like Mickey Pauleen.

  He toed Nora’s body. The woman lay still and was not pretty in death. Her face had contorted grotesquely in her final agony and her eyes were open, accusing.

  Hacker looked away, shut that image from his mind.

  He laid the derringer on the bedside table and took off his stained robe. Outside a coyote, hunting close, passed Hacker’s window like a gray ghost, a bloody, kicking thing hanging from its jaws. Farther away a woman cried out in her sleep, then the tranquil tick of the hallway clock testified that all was well.

  Abe Hacker forced himself to think.

  Two killings in one evening and yet another body to hide and through no fault of his own.

  Recently it seemed that the whole damned world was against him.

  Naked, he threw himself down on his chair by the window, scowling.

  Think... think... think...

  All would be well by late tomorrow afternoon. That much was certain.

  Yes! He’d wrap Nora’s body in his robe and stuff her under the bed. Plenty of room there!

  Now Hacker’s mind reached longer into the future.

  He’d leave Last Chance when the town was burning and the slaughter of the rubes was well under way. He and Mickey would harness the pair of mules to the wagon that had originally brought them here and head upriver. Once they found a settlement a quick wire would set his friends in Washington scrambling to get him back home to his bride and his future.

  The wagon parked behind the livery had not yet been supplied with food and water, but Mickey could enlist a couple of Sancho’s men and take care of that. Hacker sat back and beamed.

  There, that wasn’t so difficult.

  He rose to his feet and dragged Nora into the middle of the floor by her feet. He picked up his robe and began to wrap the body in it.

  Damn, she was heavy! Nora had put on weight, no doubt because he’d treated her so well these last few years. Finally, with an effort that left him exhausted, Hacker managed to shove Nor
a’s body under the high brass bed.

  Her elegant left hand remained exposed, and he pushed it under with his foot.

  Worn out from his exertions, Hacker rolled onto the bed and lay on his back. His massive belly made him look like a man trapped under a beer barrel.

  He shifted his weight and the bed creaked.

  Now he did it more purposefully, rolling back and forth.

  Now the creak became a screeching squeal of protesting brass and steel.

  Hacker rolled faster... faster...

  “You like that, Nora?” he said. “You like my lullaby?” Hacker laughed.

  He laughed until tears rolled down his cheeks and wet the pillow.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Ephraim Slough was not a sleeping man.

  Too many four-on, four-off watches on men o’ war had disrupted his slumber in the past and he’d gradually lost the habit of it.

  Thus it was that when he restlessly prowled around at the back of the livery, a dark, jumbled and cobwebby place, he found the chair. Slough realized that he’d made a valuable find.

  He dragged the chair out of its hiding place and instantly caused a clattering avalanche of old harnesses, timber boards, and empty paint cans.

  But once the chair was exposed to the lamplight, Sough’s suspicions were confirmed. It was indeed a treasure.

  He did a little wooden-legged version of that jig mariners call a hornpipe, and then, after he used a rag to dust off the chair, examined his find more closely.

  It was a superb wheelchair with a hickory and oak frame and wicker seat and back. It had two iron, rubber-tired wheels to the front and a smaller version at the rear. A discreet little brass plaque screwed into the top of the frame declared that the chair was made by Jas. Brougham & Son, Market Street, Boston, Mass.

  Slough thought the contraption superb, and just the thing to get Ranger Cannan around come the fight on the river.

  The only trouble that Slough could see was that Cannan was a big man and the chair itself weighed close to sixty pounds. It would take another big man, and strong, to push it. Slough rubbed his stubbled chin, thinking it through.

  There was only one candidate, big Simon Rule the blacksmith. But Rule had already been chosen by Cannan as one of his fighting men. Also on the downside, the smith was inclined to surliness and very down on demon drink and had often made Slough himself the object of his temperance tirades.

  But Rule was the only man in town who could push the chair with Ranger Cannan in it, so no matter how distasteful it may be he was the obvious choice.

  The wheels squeaked a little and Slough used his oilcan until they turned smoothly. Then he stepped back and admired the chair again.

  It was a fine chariot for a Ranger and would sure help him get around come morning.

  But Slough was not a man to do things by half.

  He rolled the chair out of the livery to take it for a trial spin. It pushed very well empty, and Slough walked it along the street, alone but for himself, the restless mist, and the waning moonlight.

  As he approached the Cattleman’s Hotel the wheels began to squeak again.

  Slough stopped but the squeaking continued, loud and increasingly frantic. Then he realized the noise was the steady shriek of a bed coming from the front room of the hotel.

  Slough’s jaw dropped.

  What was going on inside, and now he heard a man’s laughter rise above the screech... screech... screech... was indeed a heroic copulation.

  Awed, Slough removed his hat, bowed his head in silent homage to the industrious stud, and turned the chair around.

  Suddenly feeling inadequate, Slough got ready to retrace his steps to the livery when he saw the last of the moonlight glint on something lying in the narrow alley that separated the hotel from the general store.

  The old sailor was ready to dismiss the gleam as moonlight on an empty bottle or can, but to satisfy his curiosity he let loose of the chair and stepped closer.

  What he stooped to pick up was a five-pointed star that he’d seen before, pinned to the shirt of Mrs. Edith Kilcoyn’s mischievous son, Andy.

  Slough shook his head. Had the boy lost it already, or thrown it away? The latter seemed unlikely. The star was solid silver, the words TEXAS RANGER picked out in gold. As a piece of jewelry it had not been cheap to make and Andy, a street urchin, would appreciate its value.

  The boy had lost it then.

  But what had he been doing at the Cattleman’s Hotel?

  Slough peered into the alley but saw only darkness.

  He put the star into his pocket and stepped to the wheelchair again.

  The bed in the front room was now silent and Slough gave a second, perfunctory bow in the direction of the window before walking back to the livery.

  The same moonlight that illuminated Ephraim Slough’s path streamed through Henriette Valcour’s window and bathed the old woman in mother-of-pearl radiance as she sat by the fire.

  Her lamp was not lit because she’d hung the flag outside her door to mark Independence Day and a loup-garou, attracted by the thirty-eight stars, had squatted on the porch and tried to count them.

  But such a number was well beyond any werewolf’s ability and he’d continually lost his way and had to start all over again. Finally, after three hours, he’d bellowed his frustration like a bull alligator out in the swamp and had scurried away.

  Henriette waited a while to make sure the loup-garou was gone. While not clever, they were sly and very dangerous, especially if they’d recently lost count.

  Finally the old woman rose to her feet and stepped onto the porch.

  The feral smell of the loup-garou lingered. The flag was undisturbed.

  A gray fog hung on the swamp like a fallen raincloud, and out in the darkness Henriette heard a splash, followed by another.

  “Jacques St. Romain, is that you out there?” she called.

  The old black man’s voice sounded hollow, like a bass drum in the darkness.

  “I sure am, Miss Henriette.”

  “You fishing?”

  “No, Miss Henriette. I trying to shoot me a wild hog fo’ dinner today, me.”

  “You can’t see in this mist.”

  “I kin hear a hog, smell him, too. Got me my forty-five.”

  “Jacques, you see a loup-garou at my door?”

  A long pause, then the old man’s voice carried flat across the swamp.

  “I sure didn’t, Miss Henriette. Is that why you sound troubled?”

  “I can’t see you, Jacques.”

  “You don’t need to see me an’ I don’t need to see you to know you feel bad.”

  “I have a troubled mind, me.”

  “You havin’ them visions again, Miss Henriette?”

  Moonlight tinted the fog lighter gray in places but was so thick the old woman could barely see her front door.

  “I see blood and murder and the deaths of children,” Henriette called.

  She heard the splash of oars and again there was a long pause before Jacques St. Romain answered, his voice echoing through the mist. “Don’t you go tellin’ me that now, Miss Henriette. I don’t want to hear that.”

  “I mean no harm to you, Jacques,” Henriette said. “You’re a good man.”

  “I’m leavin’ now, me,” the old man yelled. “Got my hand on the cross around my neck so nothin’ can harm me ’cause the Good Lord will watch over me.”

  “Jacques...” Henriette called.

  But the old man had disappeared into fog and distance and a solemn silence settled on the bayou but for the croak of frogs among the roots of the cypress trees.

  Henriette stepped back into the cabin, lit a lamp, and made herself tea.

  She sat, cup in hand, and stared long and hard at the doll on the table beside her, the one she’d made in the shape of the fat man who so haunted her dreams. The old woman finished her tea, laid the cup on the table, and picked up the doll and a pin.

  For a while the pin hovered over
the doll’s chest, but finally Henriette sighed and set down both doll and pin.

  To thrust at the fat man’s heart and bring about his death would deplete her power and she’d need all her strength to save Baptiste.

  She couldn’t be left weak and helpless when the battle—Henriette could not tell from her vision what it was—began when the sun was high in the sky.

  It would be then that her grandson would be in the greatest peril. The fat man who had murdered the child would have to wait.

  His time would come.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  The coming of the dawn of Independence Day woke two men in Last Chance at the same moment.

  One was Ranger Hank Cannan, the other Abe Hacker.

  The sky was a riot of color, cobalt barred by vivid scarlet, jade, and fish-scale gray, like an impressionist artist’s vision of a medieval tournament. Buildings cast long shadows on the street, shop windows tinted red, and the morning air was fresh, July 4, 1887, coming in clean.

  Abe Hacker woke to horror, the remembrance of what had happened in the night returning to him in jagged, bloody shards, one painful piece at a time.

  Hacker lay still, his eyes open, listening. But the dead make no sound.

  “Nora?” he whispered.

  The room was still. Nothing moved, as though frozen in time.

  Five minutes passed... then ten...

  Hacker stared at the ceiling.

  Two murders. Two bodies.

  One in this very room.

  Hacker’s gasp of apprehension was almost a sob.

  Please, Sancho, come soon and free me from this hell!

  He made an effort, rolled off the bed and glanced nervously at the floor... then shrieked.

  Nora’s hand, white as marble, the long nails blood-red, again lay exposed on the rug. Her forefinger was bent, as though beckoning Hacker to join her. The fat man stared at the dead hand with revulsion, then rage.

  Like a man possessed, he stomped on the hand again and again as though it was a pale spider that had crawled out from under the bed. Hacker felt bones splinter under his heel and he stamped harder, harder, harder still, cursing, his breath fluting through clenched teeth.