by Tim Champlin
This was more information than Kinealy had ever divulged at one time. Even though his plans sounded tentative, and he had shown he was capable of improvising on the spot, Packard filed away his remark in the back of his mind for later use in case Kinealy managed to get away from here before the Secret Service could nab him.
While the others were selecting places to bed down, McGuinn and Packard went out and drove the buckboard behind the house. By the light of the lantern they unhitched the team and put them in a small barn. Rodents had chewed through the sacks of oats and corn. What hadn’t been eaten or scattered was mingled with droppings, or had gotten damp and sprouted. They did manage to find a few scoops of dry corn that had been sealed tightly in a hogshead.
“Looks like everything was left just as it was when the Hanrahans died years ago,” Packard observed, dumping the grain into the feed box.
“Yeah,” McGuinn said, without offering any further comment. He seemed more tight-lipped than usual, as he shook the dirt out of two empty buckets and carried them through the back door into the kitchen to pump water for the animals. When he returned, Packard silently picked up the lantern and led the way back to the house. His cover as a gang member was wearing as thin as the leather soles of his old boots. The time had come for him to escape. It would have to be tonight.
When he reëntered the parlor, Janice was wiping off the slick surface of the black horsehair sofa with a damp towel from the kitchen and was preparing to lie down on it with her hooded cape for a cover. He was surprised she and Kinealy hadn’t claimed one of the bedrooms. But then he remembered the pack rats in the front bedroom and assumed she had refused to move any deeper into the recesses of this old mansion.
He was on edge himself, but not because of sharing sleeping space with any vermin. Sagging with fatigue, he knew there was a good chance he wouldn’t wake up before daylight. His only hope, if he couldn’t discipline himself to stay awake, was to rely on the cold and the hard floor to wake him after an hour or two. Betting that Kinealy would not post a guard, he needed to make sure the others were comfortably asleep. To that end, he took up a lighted candle and went down the hall, looking for a linen closet that might have some blankets. Behind him, he heard McGuinn mention building a fire in one of the brick fireplaces.
“Sure. Build a fire. Be comfortable. We’ll hold a public Lincoln exhibition up here as soon as everybody sees and smells the smoke,” Kinealy snapped.
“We get the point. You don’t have to be so sarcastic,” Janice complained, slapping a cloud of dust out of a sofa pillow.
As Packard walked off, he heard a low-voiced exchange between Kinealy and his wife. He could distinguish only a few words, but what he could hear and her vehement tone indicated she was refusing to take a room with him.
Under the staircase he found a musty-smelling linen closet piled deep with quilts and towels and sheets and carried an armful back to the parlor. Just as he’d hoped, everyone helped themselves. To his relief, Kinealy and McGuinn opted to seek the bedrooms. Kinealy even climbed the creaking steps to the floor above, possibly to have a better lookout point from the upstairs windows, come daylight.
“I’ll just curl up on the floor in the back parlor to keep an eye on the body,” Packard said with a grin. Nobody answered, but Hughes carried his blanket only as far as the next room that had once been a library. Packard pulled the big sliding door out of its wall recess partially to shut off the view from the front parlor. The dry rollers squalled on their metal tracks. His last view, before he snuffed his candle and lay down on the quilt on the carpet, was of the wrapped coffin, setting across two chairs a few feet away. He purposely didn’t wrap up in the quilt to keep from getting too comfortable.
But, in spite of his resolve, and the chill that pervaded the deserted mansion, he must have dozed off, because suddenly consciousness returned and he lay there with cold-stiffened muscles, wondering what had awakened him. It was either his mental alarm clock or something external. A shiver ran over him as he heard the wind moaning around the eaves. The old house creaked and groaned, like the timbers of a ship in a seaway. These noises were normal, as were the faint scratchings of what he assumed were mice or rats in the baseboards. No human sounds reached his ears except the slight snoring from McGuinn in the front bedroom.
He had not removed his boots, coat, or gun belt, so he was ready to go. Very carefully rolling over on his hands and knees, he bowed his back, stretching all the muscles he could before getting to his feet. Then he rose and felt his way around the open edge of the big sliding door. Proceeding by memory only, he placed one foot ahead of the other across the front parlor past the sofa where Janice lay. He paused two or three times, when she sighed or shifted her position on the couch. The sound of her regular breathing stopped, and he wondered if she had awakened. He took two more steps and cringed as the floorboards creaked loudly under his weight.
“Who’s there?” she whispered in a tremulous voice.
He didn’t move or breathe for the space of at least thirty seconds, hoping she’d think it was only the timbers of the old house working. He couldn’t have been more than four feet from her and realized she probably felt his presence. It was almost as if he could hear her heart pounding with fear. Finally, he took one more step — and kicked over the lantern. It rolled on the floor with a metallic clatter that could have been heard in St. Joe.
Chapter Eighteen
“Oh, my God!” Janice screamed.
Packard made a dash for the front door, got the handle, and flung it open.
“Hold it right there!” Hughes yelled.
Darkness covered Packard as he leapt outside, but his first step was his last as his right boot crashed through a rotten spot on the porch floor. One leg went down at least two feet, throwing his upper body forward, and he did the splits. It was the only thing that saved him as a shot blasted, and the slug clipped a porch post.
Cursing, he yanked his own gun and twisted around to fire blindly into the darkness behind him. But, at the last instant, he thought of Janice and barely had time to tilt the barrel up before his hand reflexively squeezed off a shot that shattered glass in the big chandelier.
He put both hands on the floor, desperately trying to jerk his leg out of the hole. Rolling over, he finally pulled loose, raking skin off his leg with the jagged edges of the boards.
“There he goes. Get him!” Hughes cried.
Packard sprang to his feet and turned to flee. Someone slammed into him with a tackle that nearly crushed his ribs. The two of them went flying off the porch and landed hard in the yard, jarring the pistol out of his grasp. He lay stunned on his back, unable to breathe. He had never been hit so hard in his life and was hardly aware that his assailant had gotten up.
“Get the light! Quick!”
Packard’s spinning head began to slow, and his eyes picked up the bobbing, weaving light of a lantern coming toward him.
“Damned if it ain’t Packard!” McGuinn said. “You ain’t hurt, are you?” he asked, reaching down with a big paw and yanking him to his feet before he was ready. Packard’s head was still reeling, and he staggered and fell against McGuinn.
“Whoa, there. Take it easy.”
“Where the hell you think you’re going this time o’ night?” came Hughes’s suspicious voice.
Packard shook his head and only half pretended to be dazed as he sat down on the porch step.
Just then Kinealy appeared in the light, puffy-eyed and gun in hand. He was wearing only his long johns.
Before he could open his mouth, Packard spoke up. “Thought I heard something outside and was slipping out to take a look,” he said, holding his ribs and moving gingerly to pick up the gun that had been knocked from his hand. “But the floor gave way, and then that son-of-a-bitch started shooting at me.” He gestured at Hughes. “Lucky for me, his shooting is as rotten as this porch.” He couldn’t resist needling the man.
“I tackled him before I knew who it was,” McGuinn added.<
br />
“If you can punch like you tackle, I’d hate to face you in the ring,” Packard said, drawing a deep, painful breath. It never hurt to throw a compliment to keep your enemy off balance.
Kinealy lowered his gun and blew out a deep breath, rubbing his sleep-swollen eyes. “Well, thanks to you idiots, probably half the county heard those shots and knows somebody’s up here.”
Hughes was giving Packard a baleful stare, but said nothing.
“Aaww, boss,” McGuinn groaned. “Don’t tell me we’re going to have to lug that body some place else.”
“Not tonight. But, as long as you can’t sleep for hearing things, Packard, you can stand guard for the rest of the night. Daylight couldn’t be more’n three or four hours off.”
It had been a desperate fabrication, but they seemed to buy his story. He looked at Janice who was standing with her cape around her shoulders and eyeing him with a very strange look. Intuition must have told her that his story was a sham, but she still wasn’t sure what he was up to.
Their breaths were smoke in the frosty night air as Kinealy said: “Get that lantern out of the doorway. This house may be visible to anybody on the road down below.”
It was unlikely any travelers were abroad on the river road at this hour. Nevertheless, they moved inside and shut the door. McGuinn turned the lantern low, but left it burning as he set it on the parlor floor.
Kinealy clumped back up the stairs, using the banister to steady his heavy tread.
“Helluva way to wake up from a sound sleep,” McGuinn yawned, stretching and heading back into the front bedroom. He mumbled something unintelligible as he pushed the door partway closed.
Rip Hughes seemed reluctant to return to his interrupted sleep in the library and leave Packard awake with Janice in the front parlor, but, finally, he pointedly shoved his pistol back into the waistband of his pants. He had removed only his wool suitcoat, gun belt, and boots. With his shirt-tail out and his pomaded hair splayed comically erect on one side of his head where he had been lying on it, he gave the general appearance of an unmade bed — totally unlike his usual debonair self.
Baiting this man was something Packard’s reason told him to avoid as long as he was trying to retain his cover as a member of the gang. But it was almost a reflex, or a compulsion — something he couldn’t help doing at every opportunity. It wasn’t as if he were trying to win Janice from him; she had already expressed her revulsion at his advances. There was just something about the man that irritated him, like fingernails raking a slate blackboard. He didn’t know exactly what it was — maybe something as subtle as his facial expressions, or his demeaning attitude. At least with McGuinn he knew what to expect; he came at you like a battering ram. There was nothing devious about the ex-boxer.
Hughes reluctantly turned to leave, giving Janice a look that slithered over her like a lascivious tongue. She recoiled as from a physical touch, averting her eyes and wrapping her cape closely about her.
Packard moved to her side in a protective gesture as Hughes went back into the library. When he disappeared, Packard drew his gun and punched out the one empty shell, replacing it with a fresh cartridge. He also filled the sixth chamber which was normally kept empty for safety reasons.
“Don’t worry about him,” he said, his mouth close to her fragrant hair. “I’ll be on watch the rest of the night.”
“I know,” she replied, moving away from him and sitting on the sofa. “Come here and let me look at your ribs.”
She had apparently noticed him favoring his left side. He dutifully stood before her and pulled up his shirt and undershirt. “Turn toward the light.” He turned. Her touch was light, but he still winced at the pressure on certain spots. “Left an imprint. Can you take a deep breath without pain?”
He tried it. “Yes.”
“Don’t think any ribs are cracked, but you’ve got a good bruise there.”
“I guess I’ll live.”
Her fingers trailed down below his rib cage, and he looked to see her touching the livid scar where the Yankee ball had ripped into his side. The spot was still white, thirteen years after the wound had healed. He shivered, and it wasn’t just from having his skin exposed to the chill in the room.
She looked up at him. “Remember this?”
“It aches in cold weather. But I don’t mind, since it brings back pleasant memories. I’d be bones and dust now, if you hadn’t found and taken pity on me.”
“It wasn’t all pity,” she said softly, running her smooth hand over his belly. He began to grow warm.
“What about your leg?” she asked, suddenly the practical nurse again.
He glanced down at the few small spots of blood that had wet his right trouser leg. In all the excitement, he’d forgotten about the splintered boards raking his leg, just below the knee, and had not even felt it after the first sting.
She tried to push up his pants leg, but the torn material wouldn’t slide up over his calf. “Let down your pants so I can see how bad those cuts are,” she said matter-of-factly. “You might even have some splinters.”
He hesitated.
“Go on. I’m not going to hurt you.”
He unbuckled his trousers and slid them down, feeling very self-conscious.
“Just some scratches. Nothing deep. Probably need to wash it off with some clean water and alcohol first chance you get.”
“You should have been a nurse,” he said.
“Actually, that’s what I always wanted to do,” she said. “But sometimes life gets in the way of dreams. I’m sure you know how that is.”
“Yes.” He was distracted by the embarrassment of standing there in front of her in his white cotton drawers and his trousers around his boots. But she was using her own clean handkerchief to wipe off the half-dried blood.
“Sterling, what were you really doing a few minutes ago?” she asked as she continued wiping his leg.
“Like I said, going to check on a noise I heard.”
She shook her head. “No, you weren’t.”
“What makes you say that?”
“When I asked who was there, you never answered.” She looked up at him. “I was scared. You at least could’ve whispered to reassure me.”
“I didn’t want to scare off anyone who might have been outside,” he said lamely.
“When Rip yelled for you to stop after you kicked over the lantern, why didn’t you sing out? You were almost shot, running like that.”
“I can’t tell you everything now,” he finally said, as gently as he could, stroking her hair as she sat in front of him, still cleaning his scratched leg.
“I don’t understand.”
“Trust me,” he continued, hating himself for deceiving her. “You’ll find out everything later,” — much to your regret, he should have added, feeling like a heel. Even this cryptic remark put a dangerous crack in his façade. With any persuasion at all, she could get the whole story from him.
“I suspected there was more to you than just being a grave-robber,” she whispered, not looking at him. “Tell me who you really are and what you’re doing.”
He hesitated, trying to think of how to answer.
That few seconds of silence was suddenly shattered by the sound of a pistol cocking behind him. Janice gave a slight gasp, and he slowly turned around.
“Figuring to make your guard duty a little more pleasurable, eh, Packard?” Hughes’s face above the steady gun barrel was positively demonic. “After I put a bullet in you, I’ll just tell Big Jim I caught you seducing his wife.”
“It wouldn’t have been a seduction,” Janice said scornfully. “Put the gun away. Nothing is going on here.”
“Big Jim will be glad to hear his wife is an adulteress.”
“Huh! You just wanted me for yourself,” she goaded him. “If Jim hears anything, it will be how you tried to take me every time we were alone.”
“You think he’s going to believe that when he finds your dead lover by your couch w
ith his pants down? Which reminds me...let’s make this even better. Drop those drawers, too.”
Anger was slowly building, driving out the initial fear. “If I’m going to die anyway, I’d just as soon not go out bare-assed and with genitals showing.”
For some reason this struck Hughes as funny. Packard had never heard him laugh before, and then he knew why. Hughes burst out in a high-pitched giggle.
“What’s so funny?” Packard asked loudly, hoping to wake McGuinn. The ex-boxer was no ally, but maybe he would create enough of a distraction to provide Packard with a few more minutes of life. At this moment, he would do just about anything to keep Hughes from pulling that trigger. Didn’t the Bible say something about a live mouse being preferable to a dead lion? He thought desperately of diving for the lantern and trying to snuff the low flame. Once they were in blackness, it would be Packard’s gun against his. But the lantern was on the floor about four feet away, on the other side of Janice. He was quick, but not that quick. Besides, there was a chance, instead of putting out the light, he’d spill the fuel and set the house afire. He thought of yelling for Kinealy, but knew he’d be dead before the shout was done.
“That’s all right,” Hughes continued, obviously enjoying the situation. “I can always yank down those drawers after you’re dead and before Big Jim gets here.”
“What’s your real reason for wanting to shoot me?” Packard asked, louder than necessary. “It’s not just because you were jilted by a married woman. Coney men aren’t murderers.”
“I’ve suspected you of being a traitor from the start,” Hughes replied. “And so has the boss. My hunches aren’t often wrong. You’re slick, and I can’t prove it just yet. But it won’t matter now that I’ve caught you with her.”
