Vendetta Trail

by Robert Vaughan

  “What do you mean, ‘the man who played the piano’?”

  “He is no longer there, Don Tangeleno. He has left New Orleans.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “He took a job on the riverboat Delta Mist and is on his way to St. Louis.”

  “St. Louis?” Tangeleno picked up a napkin and dabbed at his lips. “So, the man who played the piano in the same house where the whore Rachel worked is going to St. Louis.”

  “It is even more interesting, Don Tangeleno,” Vizzini said. “I have heard that the whore and this man Hawke knew each other from before. They were friends before the American Civil War.”

  “When did the boat leave New Orleans?” Tangeleno asked.

  “It left yesterday morning.”

  “And the whore left last night.”

  “Yes.”

  Tangeleno smiled. “Now we know why she didn’t buy a ticket all the way to St. Louis. She plans to join the boat in Memphis.”

  “Don Tangeleno, I think there is something else you should know about this piano player,” Vizzini said. “This telegram came from Steffani Bellini in Denver. He held it out.

  “Read it,” Tangeleno said.

  Vizzini cleared his throat and began reading. “‘Understand you have had run-in with Mason Hawke Stop You should know that he is one of the deadliest gunmen in the West Stop I do not know what he is doing in New Orleans, but do not take him lightly Stop.’”

  “So,” Tangeleno said. “It would appear that we had a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

  “Sí, Don Tangeleno.”

  “Vizzini, send telegrams to Memphis and to St. Louis. I want the piano player and the whore dead, and I will pay five thousand dollars to whoever does it.”

  “I will send the telegrams,” Vizzini said.

  “And just to be certain that the job is done, you and I will go to this place in Kansas where the whore is going.”

  “You want me to go to Bellefont with you?”

  “Yes. You are il mio tenente fidato, my trusted lieutenant. If all others fail me, I know you will succeed. And when we have killed them both, I will give you your own city.”

  “I thank you for your confidence, Don Tangeleno,” Vizzini said with a proud smile.

  Chapter 20

  IT WAS AN ALL-NIGHT TRIP FROM JACKSON TO Memphis, and Rachel woke up the next morning, just as the train was backing into the station. The sound of steel wheels rolling on steel tracks, as well as the puffing of the steam engine, echoed back from the roof that stretched overhead.

  As this train would be going on to Cairo, she did not have to detrain, so she lay there, enjoying the comforting and almost guilty sensation of being able to remain in bed while others were having to move about.

  She had just about dozed off again when she heard something that alerted her.

  “Is your name Rachel?”

  The question was asked by a man, and, very carefully, Rachel peeked through the still-closed curtains that shut off her upper berth. She saw two men standing in the aisle, about three-quarters of the way toward the far end of the car.

  “No, my name is not Rachel,” a woman answered. The woman was blonde, and about Rachel’s age.

  “I beg your pardon for disturbing you, ma’am,” the man who asked the question said.

  The two men passed on through the car, but, as the woman sitting in the seat was the only woman who was close to her age and description, they didn’t ask anyone else.

  “What’s her last name?” one of the men asked.

  “I don’t know. The telegram from Tangeleno didn’t say.”

  Rachel’s blood ran cold when she heard Tangeleno’s name.

  Even as the first man was answering the question, he jerked open one of the closed curtains.

  “Hey! This berth is taken!” a man’s voice said from behind the curtains.

  “Sorry.”

  Rachel was terrified! How did Tangeleno know she was on this train?

  “Maybe she’s already off the train,” one of the men said.

  “Could be, but I’m not going to take any chances. Tangeleno’s not a man you want to disappoint.”

  Rachel heard another curtain jerked open. “This one is empty.”

  They were coming here!

  Rachel moved to the inside of her bed, where it attached to the side of the car. Reaching back to the edge, she pulled back, causing the bed to pivot up, then snap closed. It was tight and dark inside. She heard the curtains open.

  “She’s not here. This bed has already been folded up.”

  “How come the curtains are closed?”

  “I don’t know, but she’s not here.”

  “If she’s already off the train, we better get out there and find her.”

  “Yeah.”

  Rachel remained very quiet for a long time. Not until the train began moving again, did she start knocking on the bunk and calling out.

  “Is someone in there?” a man’s voice called.

  “Yes! I’m in here!”

  She heard the key being put into the keyhole, then, mercifully, the bunk was pulled down. She found herself looking directly into the face of a black porter.

  “Lord have mercy, miss, how’d you get yourself wound up in such a fix?” the porter asked.

  “I don’t know,” Rachel said. “I just turned over against the inside of the bed and it pivoted up.”

  “Well, how long you been in there?”

  “Since we arrived in Memphis.”

  “If that don’t beat all. I’m terrible sorry, miss,” the porter said. “I’ll take a good look at it to see that it don’t happen again.”

  “Thank you.”

  As the train approached Caruthersville, Missouri, Rachel decided to get off. Somehow the two men who were looking for her in Memphis had known that she was on that train. The only way they could have possibly known was to have traced her through the ticket agent who sold her the original ticket, back in New Orleans.

  Since they did not find her in Memphis, what would keep them from learning that she had bought a ticket to Cairo?

  The answer was: Nothing could prevent them from making that discovery. But if she arbitrarily decided to leave the train in Caruthersville, who would know? She had told nobody of this decision. She had not even come to this decision until just before the train reached Caruthersville.

  Caruthersville was a river port, and the train was now well ahead of the Delta Mist. All she would have to do is wait here for a few days, then board the boat when it made its port call.

  “I beg your pardon?” the conductor asked when she told him she wished to get off.

  “I want to get off here,” she said again.

  “I’m not authorized to give you a refund for the unused portion of your ticket,” the conductor said.

  “I don’t want a refund. I’ll use it to complete my trip later,” Rachel said. She told him the lie, because she believed that the fewer people who knew her real plans, the safer she would be. “It’s just that I would like to visit here for a while.”

  “I wish you had told us that earlier, miss. It is going to be difficult to locate your luggage.”

  “I’m sorry for the inconvenience.”

  Within a few minutes of the conversation, the train began slowing as it approached the depot. Rachel stepped down onto the wooden depot platform and waited as the conductor went up to the baggage car to arrange for her luggage. Despite his protestations, her suitcase was produced quickly, and she stood there with it beside her as the engineer blew two long whistles, then started forward.

  It was Rachel’s plan to remain as inconspicuous as she possibly could until it was time for her to board the riverboat. If nobody knew she was here, there would be no way of tracing her.

  The problem with her plan, she learned as soon as the train pulled away from the station, was that Caruthersville was a very tiny town. And as an attractive single woman, she was guaranteed to attract attention.

  “What b
rings you to our little town, Miss Smith?” the hotel clerk asked reading the name Rachel had used for her registration.

  “I’m on my way to St. Louis to take a job as a schoolteacher,” Rachel replied.

  The clerk looked surprised. “I don’t understand,” he said. “You just got off a train that is going to St. Louis.”

  Rachel started to ask how he knew she had just left the train, but knew the answer without having to ask the question. The hotel clerk knew because everyone in town knew. No doubt, everyone in town knew what she was wearing also, as well as how tall she was, and the color of her hair and eyes.

  “The motion of the train was making me ill,” Rachel said. “I thought, perhaps, the slower and more leisurely pace of a riverboat would be less disturbing.”

  “Yes, riding on a train can make one sick,” the clerk agreed. “I have been sick a few times myself.”

  Rachel took the key from the clerk, went upstairs to her room, and settled in for the two-day stay. She wondered how she was going to keep herself occupied during her stay, then she thought of Louise. This would be the perfect opportunity to send a telegram, because she would have the time to wait for Louise’s reply.

  The Western Union office was in the depot, and as she walked there, she met at least half a dozen other pedestrians and was greeted as Miss Smith by all of them. Even the telegrapher knew the name she had registered by.

  “Hello, Miss Smith,” he said. “I hope you are enjoying Caruthersville.”

  “Yes, it’s quite a lovely town. I would like to send a telegram.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the telegrapher said. He picked up a tablet and pencil. “Who is your message to?”

  “It is to Mrs. Louise Smalley in Bellefont, Kansas,” Rachel said. “‘Is Queen of Hearts still for sale?’”

  “Is that it?” the telegrapher asked.

  “Sign it ‘Rachel’.”

  “All right,” the telegrapher said. He counted the words. “That will be four bits.”

  Rachel gave him a dollar bill, then received fifty cents in change. “How long will it be before I receive an answer?” she asked.

  “Well, that’s pretty much up to Mrs. Smalley. I expect she’ll have this message in no more’n half an hour from now.”

  “Oh, isn’t this the most wonderful invention?” Rachel asked.

  “Yes, ma’am, it is.”

  As Rachel returned to the hotel, though, she remembered that the men who had come on the train in Memphis had been alerted to her presence by telegram. The same telegraph service she was so enthused about was making it possible for Tangeleno to continue his hunt for her.

  One hour later Rachel was lying on the bed in her room when she was surprised—and a little frightened—to hear a knock on her door. She sat up but said nothing. Had they traced her here already?

  “Miss Smith?”

  Smith? Rachel breathed a little easier. Nobody but the residents of this town would call her Smith.

  “Yes?” Rachel answered.

  “I have a telegram for you,” the voice called from the other side of the door. It was obviously the voice of a young boy.

  Rachel opened the door and saw a red-haired, freckle-faced youth of about fourteen. She gave him a dime.

  “Thank you!” the boy said, grinning broadly at the tip.

  Closing the door, Rachel walked back into her room and sat on the bed before she opened the telegram. She breathed a quick prayer that the response would be what she wanted.

  Yes Stop Come as Soon as You Can Stop Louise

  Rachel’s spirits were greatly buoyed by the telegram. Until now, she had been unsure of what she was going to do, other than escape Tangeleno. But with the news that the Queen of Hearts was still for sale, and with well over two thousand dollars in cash, she felt a sense of direction in her life for the first time since she had left Georgia.

  Chapter 21

  THE LIGHTS OF CARUTHERSVILLE, MISSOURI, SLIPPED behind the riverboat as it beat its way upriver on the way to St. Louis.

  In the Grand Salon, Mason Hawke was playing Chopin’s Piano Concerto Number 2 in F Minor to an audience that was more attentive—and much quieter—than his usual saloon audience. It had been eight days since Hawke signed on to the Delta Mist in New Orleans, and he had been providing music for the passengers nightly ever since.

  When he finished the piece, he was rewarded with a generous applause, to which he stood and made acknowledgment with a small graceful bow.

  With his last set completed, Hawke slid the bench under the piano and decided to take a break.

  “Beautiful music, sir,” someone called to him.

  “Thanks,” Hawke replied.

  “That was lovely, Mr. Hawke, truly lovely,” an elderly woman said.

  “I appreciate your compliment, ma’am,” Hawke said. He picked his way through the crowd, then pushed through the double doors and went out on deck to the refreshing coolness of the night air.

  Hawke walked back to the stern of the boat and stood there for just a moment. As the boat progressed upriver, it left a wake of frothy foam behind the rapidly rolling giant wheel. The wake gleamed white under the moon that hung full and silver in the night sky.

  As Hawke looked at the wake, he had a sudden and irrational thought. What if, like this boat, his life left a wake? And what if he could find a way to follow that wake fast enough—and far enough—to go back in time, to visit earlier portions of his life?

  Would he really want to do that? There were times in his life that he really would like to visit; growing up on a plantation in Georgia, wrestling, fishing, and hunting with his brother. He would like to revisit his concert tour in Europe, just before the war began.

  There was nothing about the war that he would revisit, but so much a part of him was that war, that it was always, just on the other side of memory. There was never rhyme nor reason to those memories, nor were any specific memories ever summoned. They just arrived, like the one that was pushing its way into his thoughts now.

  The Yankees had come in by train the night before, a new regiment recently raised in Massachusetts. Not one of the soldiers, who were still wearing shiny new blue uniforms, had ever heard a shot fired in anger. They made camp, pitching their tents in neat, squared-off rows, as if they were back in Massachusetts, rather than in Northern Georgia. Laughing and talking loudly, they built fires, cooked their supper, then played guitars and banjos before going to bed that night.

  After their father was killed, Mason Hawke’s brother, Major Gordon Hawke, took command of “Hawke’s Regiment.” In that capacity, Gordon called his men to a halt about three miles away from the Yankee camp. It was his belief that the best time to strike would be at dawn, so he had his men make a cold camp and sleep on the ground without even pitching a tent. The men didn’t complain about eating hardtack and drinking water, but those who smoked were a little put out about not being able to light up.

  “Captain,” one of the men said to Mason Hawke. “Why don’t you talk to your brother and see if he’ll let us smoke?”

  “Think about it, Tommy,” Hawke said. “What would we accomplish by not having fires to cook food or make coffee if you’re going to give away our position by smoking?”

  “Oh yeah,” Tommy said. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

  If the men didn’t like it, they at least understood the validity of it, so no one violated orders that night.

  At dawn, Gordon divided his men into two groups. He gave Mason command of half the regiment and sent him around with instructions to attack the Yankee camp from the north. Gordon kept one group back to enter from the east.

  It took half an hour for Mason to get his men into position, but he got there just as the sun was peeking up over the eastern horizon. Then, as had been arranged, he fired two shots into the air. His shots were answered by three shots, which was the prearranged signal to begin the attack.

  “Let’s go!” Hawke shouted and, drawing their pistols, he and his men rode at a gall
op into the Yankee camp, firing into the air and through the canvas of the tents.

  Several of the Yankee soldiers, many of them still wearing the long-handles they had slept in, ran out into the camp street to see what was going on. Then, shocked to see that they were actually under attack, they turned and ran back into the tents. A few of the soldiers came out with weapons in their hands, though for the most part the weapons weren’t yet charged.

  For nearly all of them, that proved to be a fatal mistake. They were cut down where they stood.

  The two groups of riders met in the middle of the Yankee camp, laughing, shouting, and still firing into the air.

  “All right, Yankees!” Gordon Hawke shouted out loud. “Turn out! Turn out of your tents so we can see you!”

  When no one showed up, Gordon nodded at his sergeant, and his sergeant lit a torch, then tossed it into a stack of small wooden kegs.

  “No! That’s gunpowder!” one of the Yankees shouted and everyone scattered. The powder went up with a great roar, and when the smoke settled, there were nearly a dozen bodies lying around, including the body of Mason’s brother, Major Gordon Hawke.

  Chapter 22

  IN AN EFFORT TO BLOT THAT UNPLEASANT MEMORY from his mind, Hawke removed a cheroot, lit it, then stepped over to the railing and looked out toward the Missouri side. The riverbank was solidly covered with trees—Cyprus, oak, elm—a dark growth that bespoke of the swampy forest behind.

  “I was wondering if I would ever get the opportunity to talk to you alone,” a woman’s soft, well-modulated, and familiar voice said from the shadows behind Hawke.

  Hawke toward the sound.

  A woman stepped out of the shadows. As she came closer, Hawke could see her features, not only by moon glow, but by the gleam of a running lantern that hung from one of the pillars that supported the upper deck. She was wearing a white silk dress, cut daringly low. The dress shimmered in the moonlight.

  “Rachel!” Hawke said, shocked at seeing her on the boat.

  “Hello, Mason.”

  “What are you doing here? How did you get here? I thought you were back in New Orleans.”