Deadly Shoals (18 page)

Rochester said happily, “I didn't look forward to being a lieutenant until I was a gray-haired chap past thirty—it seemed as distant as the Day of Judgment!”

“It's only what you deserve,” Wiki said, though he privately thought it probably had a lot to do with George's grandfather, who had raised George after both parents had died. Both power and wealth had been necessary to get George a junior midshipman's commission in the first place, only the sons of lofty individuals like great navy captains, important merchants, and U.S. senators being eligible, but George's grandfather was both rich and influential.

Then a thought struck him, and he said, “Wilkes's name wasn't in the list? They haven't made him a proper captain, yet?”

George shook his head, and Wiki winced. He asked, “Does he know you've been promoted?”

“I haven't announced it—though you should have heard me exclaim for joy when I finally understood what I was reading, Wiki! But you know how scuttlebutt gets around the fleet, old chap.”

There was going to be hell to pay, Wiki thought—Wilkes would be both jealous and vindictive. However, he wasn't going to spoil George's mood by pointing this out, so instead he said, “And you couldn't wait to come and show off your new glory to me—I'm flattered, George.”

“I thank you,” said George, very complacently indeed. “Mind you,” he added, “I will have to change the swab around once we get back on board the dear
Swallow
.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Because I'm in
command,
you see.”

“I don't understand.”

“A man below the rank of captain who is a commanding officer wears one epaulette on the
right
shoulder.”

Wiki blinked, and then said cautiously, “That's why you've been wearing that swab—as you call it—on your right shoulder all along?”

“Exactly.”

“So, if you hadn't come on shore with a left-shoulder epaulette, I wouldn't have had a notion that anything had changed?”

“Exactly,”
said George.

“Good God,” said Wiki, completely flummoxed. Then he said, “Why is my father sailing with the fleet?”

“Surely Ringgold told you, old chap? Carpenters, Wiki, carpenters! Your father demanded a gang after the
Vin
and then the
Peacock
run afoul of him on the way out of Rio and spoiled the looks of his pretty brigantine. Wilkes handed a couple over, it seemed, but with the stipulation that the
Osprey,
being perfectly seaworthy, if somewhat untidy, kept pace with the fleet while the repairs were carried out.”

“And my father agreed to that? I can't believe he caved in so easily! Mind you,” Wiki went on with a grin, “he was probably relieved that the
Vin
and the
Peacock
didn't do the same good job of stoving him as you did on the way into Rio.”

“Cruel, Wiki, cruel!” George cried. Two months earlier, when the fleet had been entering the great harbor of Rio de Janeiro, George's brig
Swallow
had been involved in a nasty collision with Captain Coffin's
Osprey,
one that had sent the
Osprey
to the shipyard for the next four weeks. “It wasn't my fault, and you know it!”

Wiki merely laughed, and George said thoughtfully, “What do you think of your father's mate—that Alf Seward?”

Wiki pursed his lips, surprised at the change of subject, and said, “I can't say I know anything about him. I glimpsed him herding the six cadets around while the
Osprey
was being fixed in the shipyard at Rio, and thought he looked like some sort of schoolmaster, and saw him once on board my father's ship, when she was starting to be restowed. He was informing my father exactly how it should be done, and taking no ifs or buts or arguments. I got the impression that he bosses him around unmercifully.”

“With amazing good results,” George told him. “I've never seen a vessel kept so shipshape, not even in the navy. I'd swear there's not a ropeyarn out of place, and the standing rigging is as taut as a Baptist pastor—and yet the crew is as happy a bunch as ever I saw. Those six cadets seem to idolize him, for all that he treats them so strict. But when I tried to compliment him on his housekeeping, he looked me up and down and stalked away.”

“A good first mate doesn't have to be a gentleman—and in my experience very often isn't,” Wiki said.

“It's more than that. For a while I wondered if he bore a grudge because it was my ship that knocked that great hole in the
Osprey,
but then I got the strange impression that he's jealous of my friendship with your father.”

Wiki was silent, because he understood how Seward felt, if so, as he felt a little jealous of the warm friendship his friend and his father had struck up, himself. After the two vessels had collided, the
Osprey
had been so near to sinking that most captains in Rochester's position would have taken the crew of the crippled ship on board, and then left her to founder. Instead, George and his men had struggled to get a patch over the hole in the hull, and then tow the
Osprey
to the shipyard. Naturally, Captain Coffin had been profoundly grateful—but the friendship was based on a mutual respect and liking, too. They had so much in common and got along so well that when Wiki was in their company he almost felt excluded.

“Perhaps Seward's the possessive type,” he said at last. Then he was distracted by a glimpse of movement on the far side of the braided shoals—a party of horsemen on the opposite bank, with the tall figure of Ringgold in their midst. It seemed that they had crossed the river at El Carmen by boat, because they were riding different animals. Wiki wondered what had happened to the mounts he had hired on their behalf, and whether the
ranchero
would tax him about them when he delivered the two horses. Ringgold and his companions weren't going to make that nine o'clock appointment, obviously, which wouldn't do anything to improve the tempers of the four scientifics, he thought.

Then he saw that George was studying his outfit meditatively, from the red silk bandanna that half tamed his wild black curls to the two folded ponchos draped over one shoulder. His friend said, “Is that a set of bolas round your middle?”

“Aye.” As was usual with gauchos when away from their steeds, Wiki had wrapped the cords of the bolas around his waist. He said, “Do you remember Juán Bernantio?”

“I do indeed. The hardest taskmaster on the pampas. He taught us both
las boleadoras
and the
lazo
.”

“I've become well acquainted with his brother Manuel.”

“Here?” George was astonished, and looked around the headland as if he expected the gaucho to gallop into sight.

“Aye. Apparently he and his friends spend the summer months ranging about the Río Negro, and go back north in the fall. They were very useful to me.”

Wiki reached up the flagpole, released the lanyard, brought down the rendezvous flag, and folded it. Then he unhitched the bridles of the two horses, who were companionably cropping the tussock.

George said, “The mare is yours?”

“How did you guess?”

“One can't mistake the look of deep loathing she casts in your direction, old chap. I'll take the other horse,” said George with great animation. “Let's have a lassoing contest.”

Wiki, amused, was greatly enticed. It would be like being a sixteen-year-old student again, when he and George had prowled the forests of New Hampshire with the local Abnaki huntsmen. It was a testament, as well, to how much more relaxed Rochester felt now that he had a competent and experienced second-in-command on board the brig, he thought.

However, he objected, “I should be getting the horses back to the ranch.”

“Nonsense, old chap. We have plenty of time. Seward and his boys will be happily fishing and crabbing for hours. Hand me the bolas, and let's see if I'm still better at throwing 'em than you are.”

Wiki laughed, and stopped arguing. “Wear this poncho Stackpole kindly handed on to me,” he said. “You don't want to spoil your beautiful swab.”

He pulled on his own poncho after unwinding the bolas, and for the next hour the two friends galloped back and forth about the headland, poncho fringes flying as they took turns to relearn the exhilaration of throwing
las boleadoras
. The hand ball was firmly gripped as the rest was whirled about the head, the two larger balls flying out side by side at the far end of their strings, which were firmly secured to the end of the hand-ball cord, so that the whistling bolas was a total of six feet in length.

A wild shout as the hand ball was released and the bolas was cast, and then suspense as it flew on and on for fifty or more yards, the three balls spinning about the knot that tied the three strings together, out to their fullest extent. It looked like a three-legged symbol of violence as it blurred through the air, to collapse with a slap as it connected. If well aimed, the three strings wrapped around the target, driven by the momentum of the stones. It was the most effective long-distance grapple imaginable.

“Dismantling shot,” Rochester remarked once, as he handed the bolas back to Wiki. He was panting and sweating, and flushed with high enjoyment.

“What?”

“It's used to destroy enemy rigging, old chap. Just like the bolas, but made of lengths of chain secured together at a common end. They're rolled into a ball, and fired from a cannon. Once in the air, the chains spread out and revolve. Any rigging they hit is smashed to smithereens. That is,” George added smugly, “if the gun captain has
my
knack for accuracy. Admit it, old chap, I'm better than you are.”

“Fiddlesticks,” said Wiki, and an argument commenced. Finally, George suggested another bout to prove his point, but it was too late for that, being high time to return the hired horses, and so they galloped for the track and the silvered fence.

After they arrived at the ranch, Wiki thought wryly that the
estanciero
must certainly be charging him for the four other horses, all of which were still among the missing, because the bill that was presented was even more hefty than he'd feared. However, George helped him out with the necessary coins, and Wiki said goodbye to the mare, who bared her teeth and stretched out her neck for a last try at a bite. Then the two companions climbed back to the headland, and trekked on foot to the flagpole, their folded ponchos draped over their shoulders, their heads down as they talked and trudged.

George had evidently been thinking in the meantime, because he said, “Why did you say that Bernantio and his gauchos were useful? Is it something to do with the theft of Captain Stackpole's money?”

“They are
rastreadores
—trackers—who offered to find the missing schooner. Manuel Bernantio picked out the tracks of a train of packhorses that had been driven from Adams's store, and we followed them to the
salinas,
and from there to the place where we found Adams's corpse.”

George said, astonished, “He's dead?”

“Very dead. His corpse was seven days old at the very least.” And Wiki described the discovery of the skull under the Gualichú tree, and the body buried beneath it.

George's brow wrinkled. “He was killed in a spot that's sacred to the Indians?”

“He might have been killed at the
salinas
.” Wiki remembered the shocking stench, and the sense of something moving slowly and malignantly inside the solid salt. “The killer could have tied his body to the saddle and led the horse to the Gualichú tree to bury him in the salt.”

“But why the Gualichú tree?”

“Why?” echoed Wiki. He kicked out at a rolling ball of furze, sending it scudding as it picked up the breeze. He shook his head, and said, “I don't know.”

“Is it the custom here on the Río Negro to bury people in salt?”

Wiki grimaced, remembering the vultures, and said again, “I don't know.” On the Río de la Plata pampas, as in Arabia, people were buried in open ground, and as quickly as possible—graveyards were only found on ranches like the one that belonged to Ducatel. Men who were lost in the great grassy waste, forced to walk because of a dead or runaway horse, often traveled in mindless circles, to collapse, die, and fertilize the ground where they lay. Twice, he and George had stumbled across a patch where the grass was taller and greener, and found a naked skull rolled in the midst of it, mute evidence of some past crisis.

“So you set out to uncover a thief, and found a murdered man,” George meditated aloud. “And you have no idea about the killer?”

“None,” Wiki admitted. “It looks as if it was the same man who stole the schooner, but for all we know it could have been part of some long-standing feud. To be frank, I don't have a notion what really happened.”

“It's not like you to have to leave a place with the murder unsolved, old man.”

“Well, it's all too likely in this case,” said Wiki, moodily, too depressed to confess that there was a second murder, equally unsolved. “Not only did Captain Ringgold order me to forget about it, as he reckons it's a local matter, but Captain Stackpole seems to have lost all interest.”

“I heard scuttlebutt that the whale the
Trojan
is boiling out is a buster.”

“That's so,” Wiki admitted. But did it account for Stackpole's strange reversal of attitude? Remembering the whaleman's anger and mortification at the barefaced robbery, it seemed unlikely.

Then he was distracted by George, who pointed ahead, and said, “Is that someone trying to get our attention?”

It was Dr. John Fox, waving from the flagpole, and looking more dusty and disheveled than ever. Wiki often wondered if Fox remembered him from the time of their youth in Salem, but thought not, because he never acknowledged him by name. Now, when he introduced Rochester, instead of embarking on polite pleasantries the doctor expostulated, “They've
marooned
us again. And what the hell happened to
you
?” he demanded.