The Seekers (61 page)

“The firm changed hands.”

“Financial problems?”

“Something like that.”

“Is it still operating as Kent’s—wasn’t that the name?”

“Kent and Son. Perhaps. I don’t really know. I left Boston before the matter was settled. My cousin and I—a young girl—started for New Orleans—”

Clark looked startled. “By yourselves?”

“Yes.”

“New Orleans is a long, long way from New England. Many people twice your age wouldn’t even think about hazarding such a journey. Are there members of the family down south, may I ask?”

Jared had learned to avoid the trap the question posed. “Distant relatives. We got as far as Nashville when we ran into trouble—”

In guarded language, he told the story of Amanda’s kidnapping. He omitted the rape, finishing, “The man responsible called himself Reverend Blackthorn. When they ran him out of Nashville, he mentioned coming to St. Louis. I assume he would have brought my cousin along—”

“He could have sold her as a bound girl anywhere along the route—”

“I realize. Still, I had to come looking for her. Judge Jackson said I should ask you whether you know Blackthorn, or have heard of him.”

Clark pondered. “Blackthorn. We’ve no preacher in the city by that name.”

Jared felt his worst fears confirmed. A few words from Clark and his journey was reduced to a futile exercise.

Clark saw his pain, said quickly, “He might have taken another name. A lot of men do that on the frontier. Describe this Blackthorn for me.”

Jared had no trouble recalling the greenish eyes, the yellow teeth, the damaged earlobe. “And he’s a tall man. Exceptionally tall. With big hands, and a fondness for what they call free-for-all fighting.”

“Of which we have more than enough.” Clark smiled.

“I wonder if it could be the fellow who went by the name Wilford Black.”

Jared’s blue eyes glinted as he sat forward. “Does the description fit?”

“Perfectly. We had this Black in jail a few months ago. He maimed an Osage brave who’d come in to trade some wild honey. There were witnesses to the fight, but afterward the Osage couldn’t be found. Between the time of the attack and Black’s arrest, there was a gap of several hours. The judge handling the case speculated that Black had killed the Osage in that interval and done away with the body. But without evidence, the most the court could do was throw Black in jail a short time for disturbing the peace. I don’t honestly know whether he’s still in St. Louis—”

Jared was on his feet “You didn’t hear anything about a young girl with him, did you?”

“Nothing.”

“Do you have any idea where he was staying when he was arrested?”

Clark thought again, his profile sharp against the sunlight falling through the western window.

“A place called Mrs. Cato’s. Down near the river.”

“A boardinghouse?”

Clark compressed his lips. “Not exactly. A brothel.”

Jared set the whiskey aside unfinished. “I’d best ride back to town and inquire. I thank you for your help, General.”

Clark waved. “Black may well have left us by now—no loss. We have too much scum in St. Louis. A town on the edge of civilization—and a river town at that—just normally attracts a bad element—”

Including murderers,
Jared thought. What would Clark do if he knew he were talking to one?

As he turned to go, Clark put a hand on his arm. “Mr. Kent—”

“Yes?”

“May I ask your plans if you fail to locate Wilford Black?”

“I have no plans,” Jared confessed.

“Will you stay in St. Louis?”

“I doubt it.”

“There are a good many fur traders looking for
engages.
Hired men to go up the Missouri during the winter—”

“That’s the last thing I’d do, General.”

“You dislike this part of the country?”

“Intensely.”

“Well—” Clark shrugged. “It’s your affair. However, I must pass along one caution. Should you be lucky enough to find your man, remember that we have courts. Don’t take justice into your own hands.”

“General, I’ll be honest with you. I couldn’t make any promise about that. Blackthorn’s mean and unpredictable—”

“So was Wilford Black, if they’re one and the same. Still—”

“I’m sorry, General. I’ll have to deal with him my own way.”

“And we’ll have to deal with you if it’s the wrong way.”

“Understood, sir.”

Clark’s eyes were unsmiling. “I hope so.”

Jared wheeled and left.

Mrs. Cato’s establishment stood on a dark, grubby street a block from the Mississippi. With his seven-shot tucked into his belt, Jared approached the dilapidated building shortly after the sun set around eight o’clock.

The street sloped down toward the lights of moored river boats. From a passage on his right, Jared heard sounds of struggle. He glanced around, perceiving two dim figures. One was a man on his knees; the other was battering him with both fists. Jared had no intention of interfering. His interest was centered on two lanterns above a high stoop. The sign of Mrs. Cato’s, a man at the Green Tree had told him.

His heartbeat quickened as he approached the rickety steps. He climbed to the door, raised one hand to knock. Suddenly there was a ferocious crash inside. A woman screamed.

Jared tried the door. Unlocked. He stepped into a lightless foyer.

The racket grew louder. Men were shouting, laughing, cursing; women were shrieking; furniture broke and glass shattered. No one was in the foyer to question his presence.

He slipped forward until he was opposite a large doorway on the right, the source of the noise. In a lamp-lit parlor, half a dozen men in fringed buckskin and several women in gaudy gowns surrounded an immense, greasy-haired man who seemed bent on destroying the place. Jared gaped at the brawl from the darkness.

One of the women, older, was struggling to get hold of the big fellow doing all the damage. As he weaved on his feet, he battered away anyone who tried to grab him. Only the older woman, a dumpy harridan with dyed red hair, seemed serious about it. Some of the others were actually handing the man chairs or bottles which he proceeded to hurl against the walls, producing more squeals and laughter from the onlookers. As the big man lurched back and forth like a ship tossing in a sea of hands and heads, another man brandished a rifle and whooped encouragement.

The wrecker bellowed at the top of his lungs, “No damn snot-nosed French bastard calls me a
Kaintuck!
”

The dumpy woman managed to seize his shoulder. He knocked her hand away. The woman screeched, “Elijah Weatherby, I’ll have the military on you!”

Thoroughly drunk, the big man in buckskin laughed louder than anyone else. “Go ahead, Mrs. Cato, get ’em! I’ll toss ’em all in the river! I’m from Tennessee”—he let out a wild cry, half crow, half bark—“and calling me a
Kaintuck
is the worst insult I ever—
leggo my leg, you bitch!
” He lifted his knee to shake off a whore who was hugging his calf like a tree-trunk. She fell to the floor, giggling.

The big man accepted a small table from one of the other men. He began to break off the table’s legs. “Yes sir, I’m from Tennessee! That means I’m half horse—half alligator”—
crack
—“an’ part snapping turtle—”

Mrs. Cato seized the leg he’d dropped. She bashed him over the head. The Tennessean hardly blinked.

“—the original yella blossom of the forest! A ring-tailed roarer, by God! Men see me comin’ ”—
snap
went another leg; Mrs. Cato howled obscenities—“they step outa the way! They know I can crow like a rooster, neigh like a stallion—an’ jump ten feet in the air and bust their heads with my heels!”

Snap, snap
—that was the end of the table. Men scrambled for the pieces, holding them up as souvenirs. The whores fought to take them away as the Tennessean kept bellowing. “I can stand three bolts of lightning without a blink! Look a panther to death! Put a rifle ball into the moon pretty as you please—!”

Jared ducked as someone in the melee flung another whiskey bottle. It sailed over his head and shattered in the dark behind him. On the floor of the parlor, he glimpsed the unconscious form of a slight, well-dressed man with a goatee. The Frenchman who’d set the big man on his rampage—?

Jared’s eyes had adjusted to the poor light in the foyer. At the rear, a staircase led upward. On the second floor, voices complained about the noise. Jared looked speculatively at the stairs as the Tennessean, overwhelmed by two of the whores trying to kiss him, tumbled over backwards. He fell on top of the Frenchman, still whooping with laughter.

Mrs. Cato extricated herself from the crowd, rushing straight toward Jared in the dark foyer. “Abel? Abel, fetch the solders before Weatherby puts me out of busin—”

She saw Jared and clutched her throat. “Jesus and Mary, you scared me to death! I thought you were my nigger boy—” Breathing hard, she looked around.
“Abel, where the hell are you?”

“Mrs. Cato—”

“Leave me be, damn you! That fool’s demolishing my parlor. I should be whipped for ever letting a Kaintuck in the front door—”

Jared grabbed her arm as she swept by. “I want to speak to you!”

Mrs. Cato started to curse again. She saw his face in the light from the parlor. Something in the starkness of his expression made her catch her breath.

“You had a man staying here a while ago. Went by the name of Wilford Black—”

“He’s still here. Second door on the right, upstairs.”

Then she was gone into the gloom. “Abel, I’ll switch your black ass if you don’t answer me—”

Jared ignored the sounds of carnage in the parlor, wiped his lips with the back of his hand and drew his seven-barrel English pistol from his belt. He climbed the stairs two at a time, thinking one uneasy thought:
If there was ever a time you needed a cool head, it’s now.

The upper hallway smelled vinegarish. At the far end, a dim candle in a tin wall sconce provided the only illumination. Behind a doorway on his left, he heard the steady thumping of a man and woman making love.

As he tiptoed along, a door opened further down. A bearded face poked out. “Who the hell’s makin’ all the racket downst—?”

The man saw Jared, who had stopped in the center of the hallway, the seven-barrel in plain sight.

Jared raised his free hand to signal silence. The bearded fellow eyed Jared’s face, the pistol—and disappeared.

Jared stole up to the second door on his right. He leaned his head against the wood, his breathing thin and reedy. He heard irregular snoring.

Good.

He crouched, examined the crack at the bottom of the door. He detected light inside. That was good too. He wouldn’t be operating in total darkness.

He wondered why the occupant of the room had gone to sleep with the lamp lit. And the door—it was unlocked.

He inched it open slowly, saw the answer to both puzzles. The tiny room had a sour odor compounded of whiskey and sweat. Its occupant, dressed in a filthy nightshirt, sprawled on the bed. A jug lay on the floor near the man’s dangling right hand. He had evidently fallen asleep in a befuddled state, left the latch off and the lamp burning—

Jared’s jaw clenched. He could feel anger starting to seethe within him. He fought it, swallowed once, slipped through the door. At the bedside, he bent over, lowering the seven muzzles of the loaded pistol to within an inch of the head of Reverend William Blackthorn.

Then he pulled back the cock—a loud sound against the background of shouts, oaths, shattering furniture downstairs.

“Wake up.”

He repeated it, louder. The ungainly man on the bed mumbled, fluttered his eyelids—

The lids lifted. Jared stared into black dots at the center of greenish pupils.

The man stiffened, hands pressing the filthy sheet. Jared leaned one knee on the edge of the bed. Next to the head of the bed, he glimpsed his own blurred image in a smoke-stained pane of glass that showed a vista of rooming-house roofs.

“Oh God in heaven—”

Blackthorn could only get that much out before Jared pressed the seven barrels against his forehead.

“You recognize me.”

“Let me get up—”

“No. Where’s my cousin?”

Blackthorn’s right hand closed into a fist.

“You better not do that. Where’s Amanda?”

“She—she’s not here,” Blackthorn gulped.

“Goddamn you, I can see that! Answer my question straight or I’ll blow your goddamnned head onto that pillow.”

“Do that,” Blackthorn breathed, “you won’t ever find out.”

“You bastard—!” Jared exclaimed, grabbing and twisting Blackthorn’s patched, rancid nightshirt.

The hand’s constriction shifted Jared’s weight ever so slightly as he knelt. Blackthorn felt the change. His green eyes opened wider.

Realizing his mistake, Jared started to straighten up.

In that instant, Blackthorn jammed his right fist upward and out. The fist struck Jared’s gun wrist, knocking his hand aside. His trigger finger jerked. Two charges thundered at once, the balls ripping the pillow where Blackthorn had been lying a moment before.

Breathing loudly, Blackthorn seized Jared’s head, twisted his own head sideways and sank his teeth into Jared’s throat.

The pain was hideous and stunning. Blackthorn let go, drove a knee into the boy’s groin. Jared staggered back from the bed, coughing. Blackthorn’s bare foot whipped up, kicked the pistol out of his hand.

Then Blackthorn pounded him in the belly. Jared crashed against the wall.

Blackthorn lunged again, teeth and lips bloodied from biting Jared’s throat. Jared saw the blood, choked—

Blackthorn picked him up bodily and hurled him across the room.

Jared shot his hands out, smacked his palms against the wall on either side of the windowpane. His head crashed through, his shoulders—

His hands stayed his forward motion. He pushed off from the wall as he fell. The shards of glass in the frame barely missed his eyes. He knocked his head on the sill and hit the floor. A fragment of glass cut his left cheek.

He snatched at the sill, hauled himself upright. Without thinking, he rubbed the left side of his face.