The Chuckwagon Trail

by William W. Johnstone

  Mac didn’t see how the butler signaled, but the bodyguard who had watched the door the night before and then accompanied Pierre Leclerc lumbered from the rear of the house. He cracked his knuckles and smirked. The misplaced nose and scars on his face turned him into a juggernaut of pure evil.

  “Remove him. Don’t get any blood on the floor. It is difficult to clean off.” The butler stood back to let the bruiser tear Mac apart.

  With a feint to the right, Mac got the mountain of gristle and meat to commit. Smaller, quicker, he darted left and ran into the parlor where he startled Mrs. Holdstock. The woman looked up at him with bloodshot eyes. She had been crying.

  “Ma’am, I need to talk to Evie.”

  “H-he sent her away,” she said. “After he fought with you, he sent her away.”

  “Where? Where is she?” He saw his death coming through the door. The guard opened and closed his hands, anticipating wrapping them around a scrawny neck and squeezing all the life out.

  “The convent. He—I shouldn’t tell you. Micah wants to kill you.”

  “Convent? Which one?”

  “Please leave,” she said. Her hands fluttered like upset birds. “You are intruding. Evangeline is marrying Mr. Leclerc’s son. It’s all decided.”

  “She loves me! You can’t agree to an arranged marriage with a man she doesn’t even know, much less love.” Mac dodged the guard’s groping hands and scurried around to the far side of the settee where Mrs. Holdstock perched. She looked around, confused and distraught.

  But she made no move to call off the bulldog of a guard. He began circling, arms outstretched to grab the intruder.

  “She and Pierre will be married the first week of October in the basilica.”

  “That’s hardly a month off!” Mac protested.

  “So much preparation is required. I know it will be hard, but Micah is adamant about the marriage being consummated quickly. Something about shipping contracts and—”

  Mrs. Holdstock let out a yelp as the guard lunged over her and seized Mac. The powerful grip pulled him toward sure death as the guard cocked back a fist, ready to deliver a punch capable of knocking out a bull.

  Mac threw up his arms and protected his face. His forearms took the blow. From the shock of pain, he thought both arms had been broken. As the guard drew back for another punch, Mac twisted hard and kicked the settee away from him. The furniture, carrying Mrs. Holdstock, smashed into the man’s knees and toppled him over her. With squeals of outrage from the woman and angry shouts from the butler and others of the staff in the foyer, confusion gave Mac the chance to pull free.

  He made one last attempt to learn what he needed to know. “Where, Mrs. Holdstock? Where is Evie?”

  He got nothing coherent from her. He darted from the parlor and into the dining room. The bruiser had gotten untangled from Mrs. Holdstock and came after him.

  Dodging around the table already set for dinner, Mac reached the kitchen. He had two escape routes. Out the kitchen door took him into an alley and safety. From there he could easily circle the house and retrieve his horse. The other was a staircase used by the staff to reach the second floor.

  “Evie,” he muttered as he took the steps three at a time. He couldn’t make himself believe she was really gone. Reaching the landing, he twisted into the upstairs hallway lined with the ugly paintings and peculiar sculpture he had always joked about before. He pounded down the carpeted corridor to her bedroom door.

  He started to knock, then heard pursuit coming up the main staircase from the foyer. Ignoring politeness, he opened the door and burst into her bedroom.

  “Evie, I—”

  He stared in disbelief. Her wardrobe door stood open. Half the clothing inside had been removed, leaving only the fancy ball dresses and other clothing better suited for social occasions. Her jewelry remained on a dresser, and several pairs of shoes had been lined up along the far wall, only to be abandoned. Her trunks and carpetbags were gone.

  Mrs. Holdstock hadn’t lied. Evie’s father had shipped her off to a convent until her marriage to Pierre Leclerc.

  Despairing, he turned to leave, only to face a policeman. In the hall behind him stood another. Of the boxer-guard he saw nothing. Whether the butler had summoned the police or these were the ones who had chased him from the Dueling Oaks hardly mattered. The copper reached for him.

  Mac grabbed the door, put his shoulder to the paneling, and slammed it hard on the man’s hand. The loud shriek and snapping sound told of a broken wrist. That wouldn’t set well with the police. They would want to arrest him even more now.

  As the copper pulled his hand back, Mac closed and locked the door. Spinning, he retreated through the French doors. He couldn’t help himself. He looked down at the latch he had slipped open using the knife the night before, the knife that had murdered Micah Holdstock. He slammed through the doors and never stopped when he got to the railing. A quick vault took him over and down to the street. Landing heavily, he paused an instant to recover his breath and looked around.

  The police hadn’t blocked off this street. He stood and walked to the corner. Two officers stood outside the front door, rapping their night sticks against their palms. A shudder passed through him. They duplicated the same gesture that Pierre Leclerc had used, only he had smacked gloves against his palm before challenging his rival for Evie’s affection with a slap across the cheek.

  Shouts from inside the house caused the two policemen to hurry inside. Not rushing because he didn’t want to draw attention, Mac walked to his horse, mounted, and rode away slowly. When he reached the corner, he put his heels to the animal’s flanks and galloped off.

  He had a hell of a lot to do before the entire city was looking for him, and first was finding Evangeline Holdstock.

  CHAPTER 4

  There were too many convents in New Orleans. Even if he found the right one, he couldn’t just waltz in and ask to see Evangeline Holdstock. The very idea of a convent was to protect those inside, to sequester them from the outside world. Mac tried to remember hearing either of Evie’s folks mention one in particular.

  He finally gave up. He hadn’t known Evie long enough to have those kinds of discussions, the rambling, lazy afternoon, mind floating free and memories drifting by kind of talks. Their passion had flared, and they hadn’t been willing to bank those fires. His most memorable times with her weren’t spent talking of their past.

  “Where would he send you, my dearest?” Mac muttered to himself. He noticed the stares he got from people passing by along Canal Street and bit his lip. Talking to himself was a sure way to draw unwanted attention. Considering the patrols along the main streets, usually two or three policemen walking together, he knew any such mistake would land him in jail.

  After breaking one cop’s hand and shooting another’s horse, they would likely string him up from the nearest lamppost.

  He rode slowly away from the main streets and down alleys where he could find peace and quiet and think. Who had killed Holdstock? The man wasn’t pleasant to anyone, and Mac wondered if he had abused his daughter at some time in the past. He certainly ignored his wife and made her the butt of cruel jokes when they were together.

  Micah Holdstock was a banker and over the years must have recruited an army of people willing to slit his throat. How many had he foreclosed on? What businesses had he ruined, whose homes had he taken away? From hints he had dropped, his business extended to things less than legal. Perhaps not illegal but certainly frowned upon by polite society.

  Mac knew finding a killer in any of those circles was beyond him. Not only did he travel in the wrong level of society, the police hunted him.

  He jerked upright in the saddle when two coppers stopped in the mouth of the alley where he had paused to think. One nudged the other, and they started toward him. Wheeling his horse around, he rode out the far end of the alley, then galloped off. As much as the solitude helped him think, he had to remain in crowds where he became just another face.
As long as he didn’t stand out, he was safer. For the moment.

  “The knife. My knife.” He reached behind him and pressed his coat down over the sheathed knife that had killed Holdstock. Keeping it hidden was smart, but how had it gotten to the scene of the murder? “Someone took it from Evie’s bedroom. Her pa. He must have taken it.”

  It made no sense for Holdstock to have furnished the weapon that murdered him. Mac shuddered, remembering the gruesome scene. Holdstock had not killed himself. Someone had taken the knife from him and used it to frame Dewey Mackenzie.

  “To frame a rival for her hand,” he said. Cold fury built within him. “Pierre Leclerc. You’ve got some questions to answer, you fancy-pants son of a bitch.” He touched the knife again, vowing to use this very weapon to extract the answers if he had to.

  Mac remembered hearing that the elder Leclerc ran a shipping company, a big one. He headed down the street toward the docks. The nose-wrinkling smell of dead fish and hot machinery grew as he neared the Mississippi River.

  Stern-wheelers and side-wheelers jockeyed for their turn at the docks to unload cargo from farther north and to load cotton, jute, sugar, and other agricultural products from Louisiana. Pitching in the middle of the river were several sailing ships fresh from trips around the Cape and the West Coast and up the Atlantic seaboard and Boston. If Leclerc profited from even a small portion of such incredible commerce, he had to be rich.

  If he was owner of the biggest shipping company, he had immense wealth and ought to be easy to find.

  For the first time in a couple days, Mac’s luck held. He silently thanked Dame Fortune and dismounted in front of a four-story building at the foot of Tchoupitoulas Street near Jackson. Judging by the wagons going in and out of the attached warehouse and the ant-like stream of men hauling cargo from the dockside, this had to be the center of a vast shipping empire. Even without the name Leclerc International emblazoned across the front of the building, Mac figured that out on his own.

  He watched the ebb and flow of men and cargo for some time, wondering how he was going to find out where Evie was. Even if Pierre Leclerc had framed him, the man might not know where her father had sent her.

  He worried over the problem until almost noon, then perked up when he saw the younger Leclerc come from the side door. The man impatiently looked at his pocket watch every few minutes until his buggy was brought around. He pushed away the attendant, got into the buggy, and drove himself away from dockside.

  This couldn’t have worked out any better for Mac. Eventually there’d be a place where he could waylay Leclerc. With the Smith & Wesson resting on his hip, he could make the statue of Andy Jackson in Jackson Square talk. Added to that, his desperation to find Evie would give him the wildness necessary to frighten Leclerc. He doubted the man was all that brave without the two burly bodyguards.

  As he trailed the buggy, he frowned as a new thought came to him. Those had been Holdstock’s bodyguards. Or were they? Did they get paid by Leclerc? Holdstock might have had spies in his midst and never known it. One of them easily could have picked up the fallen knife and used it to kill Micah Holdstock.

  The shipping company owner’s son crossed Canal and went into the Vieux Carré. Mac’s heart beat faster in anticipation of Leclerc leading him directly to Evie. There were several convents in the old French Quarter, all hidden behind high walls and iron gates. He would never have found Evie if she had been sequestered in one of them, but Leclerc could lead him right to her. A quick touch of his hand against his gun reassured him he had the firepower necessary to free her so they could get the hell out of New Orleans.

  He frowned when he saw Leclerc step down from the buggy in front of a brothel. If Holdstock hadn’t already been dead, Mac would have killed Evie’s father for putting her into a whorehouse to keep them apart. He tethered his horse and walked past the door, which opened into an inner courtyard, Spanish style. A quick look around, and then he ducked inside. Many of the rooms had windows that opened into the courtyard.

  He worried that finding Leclerc would be impossible without causing too much of a ruckus when he heard the man’s arrogant tone coming from a window not ten feet away. Mac hesitated to stare into the room but chanced a quick look.

  The woman in the room wasn’t Evie. From her exotic, sultry look she was Creole. He sank down near the window so he could spy on Leclerc and the woman.

  “Marie, you are so lovely. I want to kiss you all over.”

  Mac blushed when the sounds indicated that Leclerc was doing that very thing. He heard a bed squeaking. In his mind’s eye, he pictured the two wrestling passionately. He decided this was the perfect time to draw his gun, get the drop on Leclerc, and force him to talk. He had to know where Evie was. And if he didn’t, there might be a dead man in a whore’s bed.

  “Wait, stop, Pierre. No more.”

  “What? You can’t excite me so and then deny me. You can’t deny me this. Or this. Or—”

  Mac heard a grunt as Marie pushed the man in her bed away.

  “What is it?” Leclerc demanded. “Have I made you angry?”

  “Of course you have. You think to marry that little slip of a girl. She is nothing. She can give you nothing I can’t, but you are marrying her!”

  “I don’t love her. You, my darling Marie, of all people, know this. Haven’t I cared for you better than all your other lovers?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Then don’t doubt me when I say I marry her for the money she will inherit. She has no male relatives, and her mother is feebleminded and easily talked into anything I want. As my wife, Evangeline will have no choice but to do as I command.”

  “What will you command her to do? This? Or this?”

  Leclerc laughed. Just outside the window, Mac rolled his eyes and gritted his teeth.

  “She would die of fright if she tried such wonderful things, my lovely Marie.”

  “But her father . . .”

  “The old man is not a problem. He died this morning.” Leclerc laughed so hard that Mac slid his gun from its holster and looped his thumb over the hammer to cock it. Leclerc had not confessed to the murder, but he might as well have.

  “So, you are richer? How is this possible?”

  “My own father is frail and will not live to the end of the year. When he dies, I will own the shipping company and a big bank. Together, shipping and finance, I will be the most important man in New Orleans.”

  “And the richest,” Marie said in a husky voice.

  “That, too.”

  “But you marry her and not me. Will you forget me, Pierre?”

  “Never, my darling. I love you. Her, I will only nod toward as we occasionally pass. We will go to all the proper social events as befitting someone of our standing, but it will be your bed where I always return.”

  “You could take me.” Marie giggled. “What would all those prissy women say if you brought your mistress to a fancy ball?”

  “Don’t joke.” Leclerc’s voice turned cold. “I will put you in a convent if you try to make such a thing come true.”

  “Like you did her? You couldn’t be that cruel to me, Pierre. You would miss out on me doing this and this.” Leclerc groaned in response to whatever Marie was doing. “The Ursuline nuns are known for their sharp tongues, not their clever ones.”

  Leclerc began to moan louder. Mac stood, back to the wall, hand clutching his revolver. It would take only an instant to kill the man who had thought to ruin his life, but a better fate would be to snatch away his ticket to achieving wealth, power, and social standing in the city. Without Evie at his side, without her father’s commercial empire, Leclerc would have his ambitions crushed.

  Mac decided that was a crueler fate than being murdered in his mistress’s bed.

  He slipped his gun back into its holster and left the courtyard. The Ursuline Convent was on Chartres Street, not that far distant in the French Quarter. It would be the work of a few minutes to whisk Evie away and clear out of t
own, leaving behind all the trouble Leclerc had caused for him.

  He found the convent and circled the entire block, trying to locate a way into the high-walled compound. Once he climbed that wall and got inside, getting out would be difficult if Evie tried to bring all her clothing with her. He remembered thinking that a steamer trunk and some smaller bags were missing from her bedroom. Even wanting to please her, he could never scale those walls with such a load.

  Around what he considered the back of the convent, he saw a wagon delivering supplies. A heavy gate swung open, and the boxes were dropped just inside the gate before a nun closed it again. From the sound of the locking bar, it was securely fastened against even a battering ram.

  “So much to keep the women in,” he said softly. It certainly kept him out. On foot, he circled the block again, this time getting an idea.

  He tethered his horse near the back gate, then went to the north side. Across the narrow street stood a two-story building with a decent balcony running along the street. Ignoring anyone seeing and commenting on his strange behavior, he climbed a drainpipe, swung over to the balcony, and found that he could see into the convent courtyard—almost. The wall was tall enough to block most of his view, and he saw that the nuns were serious about keeping people out—or in.

  The top of the wall had been encrusted with glass shards that would cut him to ribbons if he tried to climb over. But he intended to do something different. Prowling up and down the balcony, he found a heavy rug. Determining the spot closest to the wall, he stepped over the wrought-iron railing, precariously balancing with the rug held in front of him. He gathered his strength and jumped for all he was worth.

  If the street had not been so narrow, he never could have attempted such an insane thing. He sailed through the air and landed heavily on the top of the wall.

  The rug between him and the crushed glass, he grunted, kicked hard, and flopped over into the courtyard. He landed in a flower bed and stayed in a crouch. Everyone inside the compound had to be deaf not to hear his entry.

  Then he grinned. Hymns filtered through the courtyard from the direction of the chapel. The nuns were in the middle of their daily prayers.