Deadly Shoals (5 page)

Back in October 1836 there had been a big sale of provisions and salt to a man by the name of Rowland Hallett. Since then, trade had fallen off so drastically that the store was probably on the verge of collapse, which provided a good reason for Wiki's guess that Adams had grasped the chance to “sell” the schooner he'd been hired to look after, and pocket the money before handing her back to her rightful owners.

That left the puzzle of the disappearing goods, however, because there was no record of a recent sale of that magnitude. Was Stackpole right, and Adams had stocked the schooner before absconding with her? Wiki looked about the empty storage space again, noting the marks in the dust where barrels and boxes had recently stood, and said to the clerk, “On the fifteenth, when you came to find Senhor Adams gone, was the store empty like this?”

The clerk drew himself up. “Of what crime do you accuse Senhor Adams?”

“I'm accusing him of nothing. I asked you a question.”

“Because of an illness in the family, I was away for a week. On the fifteenth I returned to find Senhor Adams gone and the store empty. Yet still I remained at my post, and did my work.”

“And you have no way of telling when the goods were removed?”

“It is not in the account book, so how can I tell?”

“I see,” said Wiki. He was deep in thought, meditating that the storekeeper would have had to equip the
Grim Reaper
with more than provisions before setting out for the open sea.

He said, “Are there seamen for hire in this village?”

The clerk didn't answer, looking around evasively instead, and Stackpole said, “What did you ask him?”

Wiki repeated the question in English, and watched the whaling master's brows bristle upward as he realized its significance. “I've never once had a Río Negro man apply to me for a berth on board my ship, not in all the times I've been here. They're horsemen, not sailors,” he said. “So how did Adams find a crew?”

“What about the Indians?”

“They're sealers, not seamen, and have to be trained, at that.”

“Deserters? Maybe some men jumped from the
Athenian
while she was here, and were hanging about the waterfront, looking for another berth.”

“The
Athenian
?” Stackpole shook his head. “She did uncommon well, so why would any of her crew walk away at the end of a profitable voyage? They'll get a nice packet of money after dropping anchor in New York.”

“There might have been other ships,” Wiki said, because he had never known a ship without potential deserters in the crew. “There's a number of men set to jump ship and leave the expedition at the first opportunity,” he added wryly, thinking that if Adams had delayed the theft of the schooner until the fleet arrived, he would have had no trouble filling his berths. Though the morale of the expedition seamen was slowly improving from its parlous state when they had left Norfolk, Virginia, back in August, the unpredictable and ascerbic nature of their commander didn't help.

Stackpole said derisively, “Life ain't all that great in the navy?”

“Seven men in particular would run first chance,” Wiki assured him. “If there was a sealing voyage in the offing, they'd probably kill to join it. But,” he added, “they aren't navy men.”

“They're sealers?” guessed Stackpole, looking very interested.

“A gang of sealers we rescued from their sinking ship at an island off northeast Brazil,” Wiki said, then turned to the other ledger, which looked very different from the first, being tall and narrow.

To his surprise, it was an apothecary's account book. He turned the pages curiously, finding that Adams had sold everything from absinthe to zinc, plus patent medicines with names like “Turlington's Balsam of Life,” and “Carter's Spanish Mixture.” It ended eighteen months earlier, with a black line ruled underneath the last entry, which read, “Last of stock sold to Dr. Ducatel.”

When he asked the clerk about it, the old man proved a lot more amenable, evidently possessing none of the loyalty to Ducatel that he held for his employer. Dr. Ducatel, he revealed, had rented the side room for a surgery, but in the months since that last sale he had gone out of business. No medicines could be obtained now, as the brutal administration of Buenos Aires did not allow drugs of any kind to be exported from that city. Even if they were available, no one in El Carmen could afford a doctor, as no one had been paid for many months. Accordingly, Ducatel was now running a ranch—he was
estanciero,
having married the daughter of a local landholder—and the surgery was locked and out of use.

Ducatel
—
ranch.
The two words seemed linked. Wiki frowned, and turned back to the first ledger, the one that recorded ordinary trade. A little gust came in the front door as he riffled through the pages, and a paper fluttered out of the back.

“What's that?” said Stackpole.

Wiki bent to retrieve the document, which had fallen to the floor. Then he unfolded it, and spread it out on the top of the counter. Stackpole breathed heavily from behind his shoulder as he read it.

The paper was a standard printed form, with gaps that had been filled in with inked names, a date, and a sum of money, and had been signed by Adams and a man who wrote in an illegible scrawl. Wiki scanned the copperplate script with growing stupefaction:
“… whereas said schooner and outfits as she now lies at El Carmen de Patagones is this day sold by Rowland Hallett to Caleb Adams on behalf of S. R. Stackpole for the sum of one thousand
…”

He looked up at Stackpole and exclaimed, “It's the deed of sale for the
Grim Reaper
!”

The whaling master's eyes widened for an instant, but then he grimly nodded. To have it confirmed that Caleb Adams had bought the schooner with his money and then sailed off with his property did not surprise Captain Stackpole at all.

Three

When Wiki crossed the verandah of the store and went out into the afternoon sunshine, to his great surprise he found that a dozen gauchos on angular, unshod horses were waiting in the street, though he hadn't heard them arrive. They were sitting sideways on their great fleece-covered saddles, brushing back their ferocious black mustachios to puff judiciously at skinny cigars of flaked tobacco wrapped in scraps of paper, and gave every appearance of having been there quite a while.

Wiki studied them, and the cowboys studied him back with narrowed eyes. A gust lifted their ponchos and ruffled the hairs on the back of Wiki's neck. Then, as the striped fabric fell back against their lean bodies, one of them lifted a yellow-stained finger, and in the accent of the
arribeño
of the upper provinces stated, “We believe you have lost an article of value.”

Stackpole asked, “What did he say?”

“They know you've been robbed,” Wiki told him.

“They're probably the men who helped Adams sail off with my schooner,” the whaleman growled. “Now they've come to claim a fee for pretending to hunt for it.”

“Be careful what you say—they often understand some English. They're
rastreadores,
professional trackers, and very proud men. They make their living by finding strayed animals, and hunting down thieves.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I've ridden with men like them before.”

“So how do they know I've been robbed?”

“By magic,” said Wiki dryly. It was well known in the Río de la Plata that if the owner of a
ranchería
woke up one morning to find horses or cattle gone, a
rastreador
would magically arrive at his door. “If there's a chance of getting your schooner back, these are the men who'll do it.”

Meantime, he was studying the
rastreadores'
spokesman very thoughtfully. Walking up to him, he asked permission, and then inspected his steed. It was a good horse, with one white forefoot and one white hindfoot, which according to gaucho lore guaranteed it to be fast. As further testament to its quality, it bore several marks on its flanks, evidence that it had been bought and sold several times. When a man acquired a new mount, he put his personal brand on it, and then when he sold it he repeated the brand, doubling it to show that the horse was no longer his property.

Wiki tapped a double brand made up of four stars in the shape of the Southern Cross, and said, “I knew the man who owned this mark.”

“My brother,” said the rider.

“Your brother?” Wiki echoed, astonished, and said, “May I ask your name?”

“Bernantio,” said the other. “Manuel.”

Wiki lifted his brows, amazed at the coincidence, though he knew from personal experience how wide and far the gauchos wandered—and how many brothers they had, some by birth, others adopted. “I believe your brother is Juán,” he said after identifying himself. “A year ago, I rode with him.”

“He spoke of you,” said Bernantio without a trace of surprise. Then he added, “He also said that your comrade was a tall man with yellow hair whose face resembled that of a sheep.”

Wiki ducked his head, partly to hide his grin at this apt description of George Rochester, and partly to show his respect for the gossip of the pampas, which apparently was as accurate as shipboard scuttlebutt.

“He is well?” the gaucho inquired. Wiki, who had almost forgotten the elaborate courtesies of the region, assured him of George's health, and asked equally politely about the welfare of Bernantio's brother Juán. That ritual over, Bernantio remarked, “I was reliably informed that you had long hair like our own. Something has happened?”

Typically, these gauchos had hair that fell past their shoulders, and were inordinately proud of the black tresses that flew in the wind as they galloped. Wiki's own hair had indeed been as long as theirs, but was now reduced to six-inch ringlets springing ferociously about his face.

“It was cut,” he admitted.

“May I ask the reason?”

“For a woman. As a sentimental gift for her to remember me by.”

Bernantio nodded judiciously. “Without doubt she had an elegant ankle.”

“A most elegant ankle,” Wiki reminiscently agreed, then returned to business. “You can help us find the schooner that Captain Stackpole has lost?”

“Perhaps if you accompanied me to the back of the store, it would assist.”

Bernantio slid down from his horse, handed the rein to a companion, and then led the way around the corner with a great clattering of dragging spurs. He opened a big double gate in a wooden fence, revealing a spacious yard at the back of Adams's store. There was a privy in one corner, a dusty bougainvillea growing in another, a pile of empty sacks where a cat was raising a family of kittens, and a large, broken-down cart. A ramp led up to a wide set of two doors, confirming that this was the way goods were received and discharged. Alongside it was a single, narrow door, and though it didn't have a notice Wiki judged it led to the disused surgery.

He looked back at Bernantio, and waited. The gaucho blew a stream of tobacco smoke out of the side of his mouth, took out his thin, misshapen cigar, and used it to gesture about the trampled dried mud of the yard. “There were horses here,” he said. “Many horses. They were loaded, and then driven away. Another rider followed later.”

So this was how the missing goods had been carried, Wiki thought—to be stowed on board the schooner. It looked increasingly as if Stackpole were right, and Adams had paid for the
Grim Reaper
with the draft, waited until the
Athenian
men had finished their business and gone, and then placed his own goods on board to provision the voyage before taking the schooner downriver to the sea.

But why the horses? Presumably, they had been used for carrying the provisions down the streets to the riverside, to be ferried on board the
Grim Reaper
—perhaps because the cart was broken. Wiki hunkered down, but could see nothing but shuffles in the dust. He looked up and said, “By what magic can you discern all this?”

Bernantio smiled. “Can't you, yourself, see how the packhorses were always the same space apart—which means that they were roped together? The mount of the man who followed favored its left hindfoot—see how the mark is uneven? And see how its prints overlay all the others?”

Wiki peered, but could discern nothing to match what the
rastreador
said. He stood up, shaking his head in wonder, and said, “Can you tell how many days have passed since the packhorses were driven out of here?”

“Some day since the last rain,” the gaucho said, and shrugged, looking up at the bright blue sky. Obviously, it didn't rain often in the summer.

“Can you follow these tracks?” The lane that ran past the gate on the way down to the river was unpaved.

“I believe they will lead upriver.”

Wiki only just stopped himself from exclaiming out loud in disbelief. According to the bill of sale, the schooner had been lying off the pueblo at the time—and it was logical for the contents of the store to be stowed in her holds as soon as the
Athenian
men had left. Yet, as Bernantio stalked to the front of the store and remounted his steed, his demeanor was remarkably confident.

Wiki went inside, where Stackpole was back to trying to pry information out of the clerk, and conveyed this puzzling news. The whaling master didn't look particularly surprised, remarking, “The schooner must've been up at the dunes.”

“Dunes?”

“Salt dunes. They're at the edge of the river where it runs closest to the
salinas
.”

Wiki was none the wiser.
“Salinas?”

“The great salt lake. It's about five miles inland. The salt is dug there, carted to the riverbank, and piled up in dunes, ready for loading.”