Again he grew a bit misty at the Daigles’ generosity. If everyone emigrating West has that kind of heart, it will be a fine place to live, he thought, and for the first time it occurred to Archie that he could take Jane across the mountains just as Peter and Marie were shepherding their brood. Why stay in New York? His job was certainly lost, and in hindsight it was becoming clearer to Archie that Bennett had never intended to offer him a promotion.
A rush of optimism made Archie giddy and left him wondering why his emotions had been so extreme lately. Western editors wouldn’t be so narrowminded. They would need good men with sharp minds and a bit of experience with presses and type.
Well, he thought. Won’t Jane be surprised?
He caught himself smiling as he strolled up Third Street in search of lodging, riding a wave of certainty that everything would end well. He discarded his earlier idea of simply stealing Jane away; it was cowardly, for one thing, and in any case it was probable that the chacmool, even if it couldn’t pinpoint his location, would know he was coming. There would be no secrets from this point on, no hiding behind proxies and henchmen. Archie meant to end this once and for all. No other father should ever have to endure what he had.
Passing two hotels that looked beyond his means, Archie set his sights on a third, another block away from the waterfront and across the street. Remembering he was in a city again, and not among friends, he reslung his bag underneath his coat and reflexively touched the knife sheathed at the small of his back. He felt strong and focused, prepared for the task at hand; a good night’s sleep and then he would be ready to battle the chacmool on its own ground.
The hotel he’d chosen was flanked by saloons, with clusters of revelers blocking their doors and spilling out onto the street. Archie watched the crowds, remembering similar evenings at Belinda’s Bright and pitying whatever poor soul had to clean up after Louisville’s drunkards. He was smiling a bit, thinking of all the bizarre circumstances that had led him to this place, when one of the figures in the crowd caught his eye.
It was the red piping on the man’s trousers that drew Archie’s attention. He stopped and retreated into the shadowed doorway of a shuttered milliner’s, all of his good cheer flushed away as he recognized Royce McDougall.
His first impulse was simply to keep walking, to find another hotel and disappear early in the morning. Thinking it over quickly, though, Archie realized that if Royce was here, Steen was likely nearby. If his dream was any indication, the chacmool already had Jane, but Steen would know where she was. And Royce would know where Steen was.
What to do, then? He could follow Royce and hope the Rabbit led him to a rendezvous with Steen. But what if he lost track of Royce? Time would be wasted and nothing accomplished.
That settled it. He would have to ambush Royce and just force some answers out of him. The idea seemed foreign, foolhardy even; Royce would be easily Archie’s match in a brawl.
But, Archie reminded himself, he was armed. And if ever their was a time for foolhardiness, it was now.
Royce dropped a handful of coins into the palm of an Indian occupying a stool near the hotel door. Then he broke away from the crowd and walked back down Third Street, in the direction of the waterfront. He’s posted his sentries, Archie thought, and now he’s going to stake out the ticket window himself.
Or he was paying the Indian for whiskey, or a whore, or any number of other things. Ease up, Archie told himself. You have enough problems in this world without inventing more.
Archie thought fast. Perhaps he was jumping at moonshadows, but he had a feeling he was down to his last mistake. Best to assume that Royce was going to the ticket window, and better yet to beat him to the spot.
Taking care to avoid the sight of Royce’s scout, Archie circled around the few blocks back north and east to the dock where he’d first stepped onto Kentucky soil. The fragrant bales of tobacco were gone, but at the base of the dock a pile of broken lumber and debris offered excellent concealment, with a good view of the entire waterfront. Archie climbed over it, mindful of protruding nails, and settled behind it in a weedy patch between the paved street and the riverbank.
From there he watched pedestrians spill out onto the waterfront until he saw Royce. The Rabbit paused at the corner, searching up and down the docks. After a moment, he strolled casually past the Mammoth Cave Stage window and took up a position almost directly across the dockside square from Archie’s hiding place.
Archie crouched watching him until it was fully dark, shifting often enough to prevent his legs going numb and silently willing Royce to move to a location more vulnerable to surprise attack. Leaning on the front stoop of the Rivermen’s Baptist Church, Royce commanded a view of the entire waterfront spreading west to the neck of Shippingport Island. He could even have seen Archie if the night hadn’t been cloudy and the docks poorly lit.
A last few boats unloaded their wares on the dock above Archie’s head, and he drew a few strange looks from boatmen and shore’ workers, but no one bothered to roust him. Apparently it wasn’t unusual for men to hide behind piles of rubbish here in Louisville, or maybe nobody wanted to provoke a man with no ear and the stink of the river on him.
The later it got, the more raucous were the voices and music from the saloons clustered along Main Street and its side alleys.
Archie began to realize that it was only a matter of time before his position was given away by wandering drunks or the local constabulary. He was in a relatively obscure spot, far at the eastern end of the waterfront, but boots still clumped occasionally along the dock above him and enough people were passing that one of them would sooner or later comment on the vagrant peering around the lumber pile by the bank.
Surprise was Archie’s only advantage over Royce; all of his plans depended on it. But Royce stood calmly, working on the stub of a cheroot, scanning the docks even though he must have known that only a handful of boats would arrive and moor before morning.
Of course. Archie could have slapped himself for his obtuseness. Obviously Royce had figured out that he’d missed Archie somehow. That was why he’d set up his impromptu sentry network and returned to the docks—he was assuming that Archie had eluded his attention. So he had returned to keep an eye on the one place in Louisville Archie had to visit sooner or later, the Mammoth Cave stage offices.
And Archie, in his efforts to escape Royce’s surveillance, had instead trapped himself like a rabbit in tall grass. If he moved, there was no way to hide it.
Wait, though; there might be a way to turn this reversal back around. Royce knew that he didn’t know where Archie was, but he didn’t know that Archie knew where he was. So now the trick was to lure Royce into a trap, rather rhan spring a stationary ambush. It sounded simple enough, but how to actually do it?
Before he could give it too much thought, Archie stood up, made a great show of looking around, then set off west along the river. He walked briskly in a more-or-less straight line, aiming for the downriver end of the waterfront, where he’d seen narrower streets when wandering earlier. A quick glance back toward the Rivermen’s Baptist Church showed that Royce had left his station, but Archie couldn’t locate him in the crowd and didn’t make much of an effort to; best just to trust that Royce was as good at following as Archie was at leading.
Passing a row of dingy gin mills, Archie saw a narrow space between two of them, too slight even to be called an alley. It looked more like the result of an error in measurement on the part of one of the buildings’ architects. He stopped, waiting a beat to make sure Royce would see him, then sidestepped into the space.
It was barely shoulder-wide, and dark enough that Archie couldn’t see how far it extended. He pushed on into it, kicking bottles and bits of refuse aside, hoping he could get out of sight before Royce came after him. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, a wider alley appeared, intersecting this one another thirty or forty feet ahead. Archie broke into a run, half from fear and half hoping that the noise would draw Royce
after him before the Rabbit’s vision could adjust.
Coming around the corner, Archie slipped on a patch of wet bricks surrounding the base of a tain barrel. His feet went out from under him, and he landed hard on the bare bricks of the alley, jarring his tailbone. He looked up at the sound of crashing from the narrow side-cut and saw a pig standing perhaps ten feet away, a huge sow weighing at least twice what Archie himself did. The pig looked back at him for a long moment as if she was calculating something, then trotted off down the alley, her bulbous body impossibly dainty on tiny feet.
Archie drew the knife and flattened himself against the wall next to the rear door of a groggery. Water dripped into the rain barrel at his left, and his heart slammed against his ribs hard enough that he could actually feel his body moving against the damp wall at his back. Just like a rabbit, he thought again, run to ground not by dogs but by a Rabbit. Irony followed him everywhere. But this rabbit wouldn’t simply die of fright, no.
Then someone stepped into the alley and Archie drove his knife into the man’s midsection.
In the split second before the knife struck home, Archie was terrifyingly convinced that this man wasn’t Royce at all, but just some beggar or cutpurse seeking an easy mark. Christ, he thought. What if I’ve killed an innocent man?
The knife buried itself to the hilt, grating along bone as warm blood surged out over Archie’s hands. The man gagged and seized Archie’s wrist, dragging Archie with him as he sank to the ground. Once he’d fallen, his grasp weakened and Archie worked the knife free, seeing that his victim was in fact Royce McDougall.
Royce lay on his side, knees drawn up and both hands clasped to his belly. He gritted his teeth against a series of short wheezing groans. “Nnnggahh,” he said. “You’ve killed me, Archie. Son of a p—” A bubble of saliva broke on his lips. “Bitch.”
Archie stood, watching Royce’s blood drip from his hands. In his dream, the night before …
Everything around him grew clear as if it were noon, and when Archie looked up into the cloudy night, he could see the shadow of a rabbit in the moon, leading the Centzon Mimixcoa in a mad dance around the earth. The smell of Royce’s blood sparked a hunger in him, and he saw through the dying young man’s bones and skin to the heart struggling in his chest.
“Yollotl, eztli,” he said. “Ompa onquiza’n tlalticpac.”
Fear broke through the sweaty mask of pain on Royce’s face. “No,” he begged, trying to push himself away from Archie on strengthless legs. “Not like that. Christ, I’m dead already, isn’t that enough?”
Archie knelt beside him, smelling blood and seeing it crawl between his fingers, along the tracery of veins beneath the skin. Black ants formed intricate whorls around the splatters of Royce’s blood staining the bricks. The knife was hungry, hot in his hands, and Archie was hungry, too.
“Please, Prescott,” Royce husked. His hand slipped on his own blood and he fell onto his back, still scraping his heels on the ground. “Please, it was business. A man’s reputation—”
He broke off and his gaze fixed on something just over Archie’s right shoulder. “Steen!” Royce tried to shout, but his voice was barely above a whisper. “Steen, God—!”
The flat crack of a gunshot stopped Royce short. The sound drove like a wedge into Archie’s mind, splitting apart the sights and smells, dropping cold reality over him like a sudden rainstorm. He saw the knife, streaked with blood like a dead man’s script. A man’s life, spilled on his hands, on his coat, on the shrinking voice of his spirit—and I wanted more than his life. I would have eaten his soul.
“Corrupts absolutely, doesn’t it?” Riley Steen said, and laughed. “Friend, I should know.”
He stepped in front of Archie, obscuring Royce’s sprawled graceless body, and waved a stubby derringer. “Rabbits,” he giggled. “Nothing but misfortune and drunkenness. Not the way you want to go, Mr. Prescott. Not the way I want to go, either. I only learn a lesson once.”
Steen ran a finger along the flat of Archie’s bloody knife. “Hemoglobin. Corpuscles. Merry little red cells. Or, if your priorities are slightly different, eztli. Chalchihuitl. The precious fluid that feeds the gods, makes the world turn. Ridiculous, isn’t it? But you and I both know it’s true. Look at me, Mr. Prescott.”
Archie closed his eyes, breaking the connection between himself and the knife clasped in his hands. When he opened them again, he could look at Riley Steen.
A maniacal grin dominated Steen’s face, spreading wide enough that his lips were actually split in several places, smearing perfect white teeth. A single dead incisor stood out, black as a tree stump rotting in spring floods. Steen’s cheeks and mouth were caked with streaks of dried gore, which still leaked in slow trails from the springs of his eye sockets.
He shot Royce right through the forehead, Archie thought, and he doesn’t have eyes to see.
And that gunshot would be drawing attention, even in a rough area like the waterfront. Archie wanted to be gone, and quickly.
“The lesson here, Mr. Prescott,” Steen said jovially, tapping at the corner of one empty socket, “is careful what you wish for. A hoary adage, to be sure, but no admonition lives to become hoary unless it has some truth to it.”
Archie searched himself for the vengeful rage he’d felt toward Steen. He couldn’t find it. Clearly the chacmool had done something horrible to him; the man stood there like a grinning nightmare parody of himself, interposed between a man he’d killed and a man he’d once tried to, and still he acted like a clown. Archie could muster no desire to kill him.
“Why’d you kill Royce, Steen?” he asked. “I can’t understand you doing me a favor, and he would have died anyway.”
“Certainly he would. But I was doing you a favor, Mr. Prescott. If I hadn’t shot that boy, you’d have scooped out his heart and eaten it like a flavored ice. Not—” Steen stifled a sudden guffaw, bending over and covering his mouth. He shook like a consumptive in a coughing fit, a tendril of thick fluid dripping from one eye socket onto the grimy bricks.
“Not,” he finished when he’d regained control of himself, “the proper course toward redemption of one’s daughter.”
“And what’s your interest in my saving Jane?” Archie said. He was still shaken by killing Royce, and Steen’s glibness was beginning to heat his temper.
“Propriety,” Steen said grandly. “Especially now, when I— see—things in a different light, I have a keen sense of propriety. When I allied myself with the chacmool, my reasoning was that it would be improper—unjust, if you prefer—to let pass such an opportunity to rectify the errors of Mr. Burr. To write the history of this nation. Of the world.”
“And lives don’t factor into this reasoning? My life? Jane’s?” Archie’s vision actually began to redden around the edges, and he calmed himself. Whatever else Steen said, he was right about one thing: Archie couldn’t allow himself to be seduced by the power the chacmool offered. He had to keep a level head.
Steen’s face contorted into a sort of gleeful frown. When he spoke, he sounded like a patient teacher educating a simpleton. “Greatness exacts its toll in lives, Mr. Prescott. I heard someone say that once, and I believe it. Measure your daughter’s life against the redirection of history. Surely you see my point?”
“I see that you’re a raving madman,” Archie growled. He rose to his feet, holding the knife pointed at Steen. “That’s the only reason I don’t let your guts out on these bricks. Now get out of my way.”
“Of course I’m mad, Mr. Prescott. So would you be.” Steen leveled the derringer at a point just above Archie’s navel. “But I’m a madman with one bullet left. Let’s parley.”
“If you’re going to shoot me, Steen, do it. I don’t have time for chatter with lunatics.” Archie sloshed the knife around in the tain barrel, then sheathed it and washed his hands. As he walked away, he could feel the gun aimed at the small of his back.
“Wait a moment, Mr. Prescott.” Steen ran up beside Archie, and sl
owed to walk next to him. “Surely you don’t think I’d have gone to the trouble of killing Mr. McDougall and saving you from Tlaloc’s embrace simply to kill you myself?” He stopped suddenly.
“Although the irony—ha! There would be humor in it, would there not?”
“Leave me alone, Steen,” Archie said, and kept walking.
He’d gone another ten steps when he heard Steen say, “I know where your daughter is. She’s already in the cave, and I can show you where.”
It’s a trick, Archie thought. Some demented scheme to distract me. But he stopped anyway and turned to face Steen. “And why would you tell me? Another act of generosity?”
“Hardly,” Steen chortled. “More along the lines of enlightened self-interest. You’re still opposing the chacmool; I find myself wishing to do the same. There’s a proverb among the Arabs: ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’ “
“So it’s revenge you’re after? Chacmool gouged out your eyes and you want to get back at it?”
Every trace of humor faded from Steen’s disfigured face. “You understand nothing, Prescott,” Steen said grimly. “I would give up my eyes all over again, if it meant I would only be blind.
“I’m not human any more, don’t you understand?” Steen shouted, and then he started to laugh. “My—my heart beats in my body, but I see—” Steen’s words trailed off into a long screaming laugh and he sank to his knees, fresh tears cutting clean tracks through the gore on his face.
If the shot didn’t draw attention, that fit certainly will, Archie thought. He stood watching Steen until the spasm subsided and Steen lay on his side, sweating and gasping for breath.
“I see what the dead see,” Steen finished. “And it’s all so terribly ironic.”
That’s what I saw when I killed Royce, Archie thought. That’s why everything was so bright—what do the dead need of light?
He shuddered a bit, and despite himself felt faint sympathy for Steen. Forcing it down, he prodded the deranged wagoner with the toe of his boot. “Where’s Jane?” he demanded.
Alexander C. Irvine Page 31
