Forty Loads

by Brett Cogburn

Overview

Outnumbered, outgunned, and hell-bent on beating the odds.
 
When the beautiful McGaffney twins hire Faro Wells to escort them to New Mexico to claim their inheritance, Faro thinks his luck has finally turned. But a world of trouble stands between him and the supposed fortune: a raging war, hostile Indians, and every raider on the wild frontier. Not to mention the South’s most famous villain, the Black Knight, is hard on Faro’s trail. And the twins may be the worst trouble of all…

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780698144484
Publisher:	Temple Publications International, Inc.
Publication date:	09/02/2014
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	150,637
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Brett Cogburn is the great-grandson of the man who inspired True Grit, Rooster Cogburn. He was reared in Texas and the mountains of Southeastern Oklahoma, where his grandfather taught him to ride a bucking horse and his father taught him to hunt. For many years he made his living from the back of a horse. Somewhere during his knockabout years cowboying and working in oil fields, he earned a B.A. in English with a minor in history. He lives with his family on a little ranch in Oklahoma, where the West is still teaching him how to write.

Read an Excerpt

 

PROLOGUE

The old Mexican stood long in the shadows of the balcony, staring at the lighted windows across the street from him. He waited unmoving, despite all the long miles behind him. Patient, yes, but that wasn’t the only thing that kept him still. He was sure that he was being followed. Perhaps all that he had to do was to walk out into that street—so small a thing, dying, the matter of a few steps.

His weariness made it easier to wait. The journey had demanded much of him, and he wasn’t sure how much more he had to give. There was only so much one could do out of loyalty. He was only a man, after all, and an old man at that. Terribly tired—the kind of tired that would take away a man’s cautious edge, make him impatient . . . get him killed.

He scanned the mold black shadows carefully, but nothing was stirring except for the moths and mosquitos flittering in the pale light thrown from the row of windows and balconies lining that long ribbon of stone cutting through the old city. The gas lamps spotting the edges of the street glowed feebly, as if the hot, humid dark was too thick and heavy to allow light to pass through it.

Gut instinct, if nothing else, told him that trouble was near. He couldn’t name his enemies, but twice, bandits had lain in wait for him along the trail. Maybe he was simply unfortunate enough to be the next traveler to come along after they set their ambush, or perhaps they waited for him in particular, some criminal sixth sense telling them that he carried a thing of great value. Gold will do that to wicked men, and oftentimes to men only a little wicked.

Quick footsteps sounded, and he sucked back tight against the wall. His hand found the butt of the ancient, smoothbore pistol tucked behind his broad belt. He pressed the trigger so that the hammer would make no sound as he thumbed it back, and then relaxed his finger when the gun was at full cock.

The white of his eyes followed the slave girl as she passed him by with her bundle of laundry clutched under one arm, her skirt hissing over the cobblestones. She never looked right or left in passing, as if she too realized the night bore bad tidings and wanted nothing more than to get behind the locked door of her master’s home. He listened as her footsteps faded, and then to the sound of someone singing in French far up the street, accompanied by an instrument he could not name. The music was happy and light, and it was no way in keeping with the mood that had overcome the Mexican. A riverboat’s horn bellowed from down at the docks.

It smelled as if it was about to rain, but then again it always smelled to him as if it was going to rain in the city of New Orleans. It rarely rained where he come from, other than the brief monsoon season in the fall that quickly lost itself in the parched sands. But the water in Louisiana seemed to swell up from the ground itself, and the black earth smelled like worms and rotten decay.

Travel overland to New Orleans from the west turned out to be a chancy thing at best, and his last weeks amidst the swamps had been a nightmare. Time and again, when he left the road for fear of pursuit, he found himself blocked by some dead-end bog or flooded quagmire. It seemed as if he had waded or swam most of his way to New Orleans, but it was the loss of his horse that bothered him most. While crossing a great, stagnant slough, a giant alligator had taken hold of his good gelding’s hind leg and drug it down into the oily, black water. The last he had seen of his loyal animal was when its head appeared one last time above the roll of churning water, with its nostrils flared wide and its eyes wild and wide with terror. He knew that it would have screamed if it could have.

The Mexican felt for the scabbard on his hip and was soothed somewhat by the long-bladed knife there. He could always trust his knife. All men bled when pressed against sharp steel. A gun might fail you, hearts and tongues might lie, but a good blade was always true.

He held the pistol before his eyes. Truly, it was a poor peon’s gun, and there were far more modern and better weapons to be bought by a man with more money than he. However, it had always served him well enough, and it comforted him like an old friend. The three of them waited together: the knife, the gun, and the man.

He stepped from under the balcony when the moon passed behind a patch of slow-moving, smoky clouds. He was halfway across the street when he heard a horse coming. He started down the street in the opposite direction, but only made two steps before he heard the whispered talk of men moving toward him. He didn’t have to listen long to determine that they were seeking him.

It started to rain, and not gently. The boom of thunder sounded like a starter’s gun, and the dark sky opened up and poured forth big, warm drops slanting through the pale streetlights. He stood trapped in the middle of the lonely street with a steady stream of water running off the broad brim of his sombrero—a hat that marked him for the foreigner he was in a place where no men wore such things. He went back to the door he had studied so long and knocked on it. He knocked again and still no answer.

Stepping from under the balcony overhead, he craned his neck until he could see the second floor and the curtains of an open window billowing in the light breeze the rainstorm brought. He took the bag from his belt, and with a grunt, lobbed it through the open window and listened to the heavy thump of it landing on the floor inside, hoping that he had the correct address. Not perfect and not as he had envisioned delivering that which was entrusted to him, but the best he could do.

In the end, that was all a man could hope for—to say that he had done his best. He started up the street, wanting to get as far away from the house as possible, so that maybe his pursuers wouldn’t guess where he’d been or what he had left behind.

He didn’t go far before he spied a lone rider coming toward him. The stranger rode a horse almost as dark as the night, and the Mexican could see nothing of his hands under the black, caped oilcloth overcoat he wore. Rainwater ran like glowing quicksilver down the silhouette of man and beast when they parked broadside before him.

“El Hombre Viejo de la Muerte,” the Mexican whispered, half in fear that the dark angel would hear him, and half as if greeting an old friend.

He had talked to a man at a tavern back up the trail three days before that looked very similar to him that waited there and then. That man had asked too many questions about his journey. However, it had been daylight then, and never had he thought that the man was any more than a man—a cutthroat maybe, but at least a man.

Staring at the thing caped in black before him, the Mexican knew he was about to die. He knew that, not just by the blackness that surrounded the thing, but also when he saw that single, Cyclops eye tilted down at him and the leering smile with the quicksilver rain parting around it, as if no moisture could wet those grinning teeth.

The Mexican gave the Devil no chance to ask for his soul, or time to make any demands on the bit of life he had left. He lifted his pistol and squeezed the trigger. His powder was too wet, and the metallic snap of the hammer fall was the only sound in the world. Misfire.

The one-eyed devil’s coat moved, and a pistol appeared out of those dark folds. It was a ridiculously large revolver, and the rain made the charcoal blue barrel shine like polished ebony. The horse stamped nervously in the road and the pistol wobbled and strained to locate its target, moving in synchronization with the cold eye behind it.

The Mexican threw aside his own pistol and drew his knife. He could hear shouts and running footsteps splashing up the street behind him, but he ignored them and charged with his blade bared. Flames flashed before his eyes and the Devil disappeared.

The next thing the Mexican knew, he was lying on the street with water rushing down his sides and the rain falling gently onto his face. Couldn’t move and didn’t seem to have the will to. He was vaguely aware of a group of men standing nearby, silently watching him, faces devoid of all emotion. He looked up into the dark sky overhead until the Devil’s face filled his sliver of vision and stared back at him with that leering eye. He knew what the Devil wanted to ask even before he asked it.

“You are a hard man to follow.” The Devil cocked his head, his one good eye like a bird of prey studying its food for signs of life.

The Mexican smiled, although he didn’t know why. For some reason, both his fear and his pain were gone. He felt light and careless, and found it amusing that the Devil spoke with a slight French accent. In all his life, he never would have guessed that. Living was full of all kind of surprises, and dying seemed no less adventuresome.

“I mean to have what I came for,” the Devil said.

It took the Mexican three tries to speak again, and he felt his own blood on his chin, warmer than the rain, and seeping from him with every working of his mouth. “And you’ll die for it, as I have.”

The Devil’s one eyebrow tilted down. “You could have given it to me back at the tavern, whatever this precious thing is that you carry. Who knows? Maybe I wouldn’t kill you.”

“I was never going home.” The Mexican hacked up a ragged spray of the rainwater flooding his open mouth. “I knew it from the moment . . . the moment I said I would come here.”

“Here? To this place?”

The Mexican tried to shrug, but only coughed again.

The devil eye staring at him was as wide and wild as a scared horse’s, and the mouth below it parted like a cadaver’s slowly contracting flesh into a patronizing grin, teeth wet and yellowed like varnished, aged ivory—an ancient smile, fallen, as old as the turning of the earth. “I’ve been here many times. This moment. Different places and different names, but still the same. Sometimes it pays; sometimes not. But this time . . . ah, yes . . . wouldn’t be any other place since I guessed what it was you carried. Something very heavy in your purse.”

The Mexican exhaled a groan.

The Devil held his stamping horse by one rein and squatted over his victim. He gestured casually and languidly with his pistol barrel for emphasis while he spoke—as if the Mexican wasn’t dying, as if it wasn’t raining, and as if they were two friendly strangers who had met on the roadside with all the time in the world for pleasant, idle conversation. “And that is the true measure of worth in all things, old man. The world balances itself. Am I to blame for being willing to take your life for something that is so valuable that you are willing to die for it? I think not. You were simply here, as I’m here. There could be no other reckoning.”

“Fool. Pendejo!” The Mexican was too weak to spit in the Devil’s eye, but it still felt good to call him a dumbass.

The Devil laughed. “But there is a chance, and a good chance, mon ami, that I will die a richer fool than you. Tell me what it is you know, and about this thing you carried that is so precious to you. You’ve got my bullet in your guts. Big bullet, maybe busted your back from the way you’re lying, no? Hurts, doesn’t it? Tell me now, and I’ll put another one in your head. Ease your suffering.”

The Mexican was too close to death to feel any more pain, and the Devil’s voice seemed to come from afar. He felt cold hands slipping inside his vest and tugging at his pockets. He tried to find the moon above him again, but it had long before disappeared somewhere into the smoky clouds drifting so low overhead. There was nothing but raindrops pelting his face and spotting his fading vision.

He took one last ragged breath. The things men would do for gold—pack loads of dull, yellow metal waiting for the taking a thousand miles toward the setting sun. Fools. Had he not been dead he could have told all who would listen that el oro was much easier to find than it was to keep.

CHAPTER 1

“I’ll call.” Faro Wells shoved a small stack of coins into the middle of the table and counted twenty heartbeats waiting to see the result of his decision. The swaying lantern above the table intermittently lighted half of his still, unreadable face.

Faro knew he was a loser, even before the riverboat captain showed his hand. The slow smirk building at one corner of the man’s walrus mustache gave it away. He wished the fat man had been so easy to read earlier, then maybe he wouldn’t have called.

“Tough luck,” the captain said as he reached out with one hand and smeared the winning cards faceup across the table before him.

“Full house, ain’t that the drizzlin’ shits.” The slave trader beside Faro let out a low whistle when he saw the captain’s hand. He paused with a smoldering cigar suspended between two fingers before his lips and clucked like an old hen and shook his head somberly, as if he would have played Faro’s cards differently.

The captain leaned forward to encircle the pot with both forearms. “Can’t say as I blame you for staying on three jacks. I’ve risked more on worse hands.”

Faro Wells watched stoically as the last of his fortune was slowly drug across the scarred oak table and into the fat captain’s belly. He frowned at the pasteboards he’d just thrown down as if they’d failed him. He was dead broke, courtesy of another losing hand. And not just the no-money-in-your-pockets kind of broke, but the no-money-in-your-pockets, lose-everything-you-have, nasty-people-wanting-to- break-your-legs-for-what-you-owe, soon-to-be-no-roof-over-your-head, starving kind of broke.

Faro shrugged. He leaned forward until his entire face was in the light. It was a rugged face, with the angle of his jaw darkened with a two-day growth of whisker stubble. A round, seamed scar the diameter of a pinky finger dimpled the cheekbone just below his left eye. His lips parted to reveal a perfect row of white teeth, but the forced gesture fell short of its nonchalant intent. It was a pirate’s smile that both those who knew him and those who didn’t were never quite sure how to take.

“You know what they say, Captain. Sometimes the worst hand a man can have is a good one.” Faro fought back the exasperated sigh that he so badly wanted to let escape his lungs.

“Better dig in your purse for some more coin.” The clammy-skinned lunger beside Faro coughed into a filthy kerchief before gathering the cards to shuffle for his deal. “You win some, you lose some.”

Faro merely grunted at the sickly cardsharp. Win some, hell, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d walked away from a poker table a winner. A man could tell himself that his luck was bound to turn for only so long. He’d always been good with numbers, and he did a swift mental calculation of just how poor his luck had been for the past year. The answers he came up with were quite astounding—astronomical in fact—when considering that a man could be dealt so many poor hands and play what good ones he garnered so badly. It was a miracle of the worst kind, and the kind of miracle he believed in.

“No, I’m played out,” Faro jerked a thumb in the direction of the slave trader to his left. “I haven’t got the price of Fontenot’s cigar on me.”

The wick on one of the kerosene lamps adorning the papered walls was trimmed badly and smoking up the globe. Faro had spent half a decade in such dark, smoky backrooms, but suddenly he felt claustrophobic in the shadowed glow of such a den.

He rose slowly and straightened his coat. He raked back his coal black hair with his fingers and set his broad-brimmed straw planter’s hat on his head, nodding to the men at the table. “Gentlemen, it’s been interesting, if not profitable.”

The slave trader rocked back in his chair with the cigar clenched between his snaggled teeth and his thumbs hooked in the armholes of his brocaded vest. “If it’s a matter of money, my offer still stands.”

“Fontenot, you’ll have to wait in line with the rest of them if you want a piece. There’s not one thing left on Royal Oaks that doesn’t have a lien on it, including the slaves,” Faro said.

The men at the table looked down or away, and the room, already quiet, grew uncomfortably so. Although there were no gentlemen present—the farthest thing from it—the group liked to think of themselves as such. And no gentleman liked to discuss another man’s financial woes. It wasn’t proper, even though they all knew that Faro’s finances were in shambles. Social etiquette demanded that one avoid scandalous conversation, at least until the victim of the gossip had removed himself.

“I can stake you with a bit if you want to stay in the game. Your credit’s good with me.” The fat captain put a hand on a pile of money before him. “You’ve ridden my boat off and on for years, and you’ve always been good for your debts.”

And well he could afford to be generous. The man had three riverboats plying the Mississippi from New Orleans to Missouri, and not even the war seemed to slow the man’s profits. His knack for winning at poker proved just how lucky he was.

“Captain, your offer is kind, but I never gamble on borrowed money.”

“Lady Luck can be finicky. You’ve just got to wait her out.” The lunger had gathered control of himself after another round of coughing and sat pitifully hunched over the table, looking more like a beggar than a successful riverboat gambler, even with his suit, silk hat, and gaudy diamond cravat pin.

“You make your own damned luck.” The captain pounded his fist on the table and glared as if he dared any of them to argue with him. “I’ve lost a quarter of a million dollars at one time or another to this old river, but I’ve made money too. I’ve seen my ships sunk and run aground and had the creditors howling at my door like a pack of hounds. A man’s just got to keep picking himself up and coming back for more. Damn them all: drift logs, sandbars, and tight-fisted bankers. I’ll die rich in spite of them.”

Faro stood in the dark corner of the room, waiting for the circulation to return to his stiff knee after so long at the table. He looked down at his coat and plucked at a frazzled hole in the bend of one elbow. A tailor on the Vieux Carré had charged him eighty dollars to make the suit. Its style was supposedly the rage in Paris at the time it was made. When viewed from a distance, or in the dark confines of the room, it was a fine suit indeed, just like all the other dashing, custom-made clothes hanging in his closet at home. But up close, in good light, the suit was as worn and threadbare as Faro felt. It was as pretentious and fake as the empty wallet in his coat pocket, and nothing more than a hint of better times.

Faro started across the room. “I bid you all adieu.”

The captain’s bass voice stopped him at the door. “Faro, keep your chin up. You’re the kind that will come through when all’s said and done. You’ve just got to find something worth betting on.”

Faro paused with one hand on the open door, his tall frame shadowing the doorway with the lights of the docks behind him. “I bet and won once.”

“Hope you do again. The secret’s staying afloat until something else comes your way.” The captain studied the cards the lunger had just dealt him.

Fontenot looked over his own hand at Faro, the humidity of the room transferring itself to the sheen of sweat on his forehead. “I suppose I’ll see you at the auction in two days.”

“I’ll be there,” Faro said.

“I’ll have my hired man there early to look over your bunch.”

“You do that.” Faro made no attempt to hide his disdain for the man. Fontenot was a greasy, shifty type, even for a slave trader. There had been a time when Faro was far pickier about the company he kept and the men he gambled with, but his latest string of bad luck had shortened his list of options. Playing cards with such riffraff was a side effect of his misfortune.

“Good night, Faro.” The captain said absentmindedly, his mind already back on the game. “Give your father my best wishes. He’s always been a man of vigor, and it does many of us who know him no good to see him laid low with illness.”

“I will.” Faro tipped his hat to the room and went out the door.

Once outside, he rubbed at his aching eyes and took in the sun just beginning to peek over the city. He had no clue that he’d been so long at the table, even though the sun and a glance at his pocket watch told him he’d been at the game for better than thirty-six hours.

The riverboat on which he stood was docked alongside the riverbank. Every kind of watercraft imaginable stretched in a long line to either side of her. The great smoke stacks of steamships and riverboats and the masts of sailing vessels stood silhouetted in the dim light as far as he could see. He readjusted the leather and metal brace on his left knee and took the stairs down to the main deck. There was a slight limp to his gait, and he leaned heavily on his cane when he made his way down the gangplank to the dock.

Normally, a carriage or a buggy would have awaited him, but the high sheriff of the parish had impounded them, along with all the other chattels and property of Royal Oaks plantation. He would have had one of the captain’s cabin boys or deckhands fetch him a cab driver, but he hadn’t the price of a fare.

He crossed the breadth of the small wooden dock and made his way toward the low, earthen berm of the levee that lined the river some fifty yards back from the water’s edge. The bare, silty ground was muddy from recent rains and high water, and a cypress plank sidewalk had been laid down for foot traffic. Once over the levee, stacked cotton bales, mule carts, and other piled goods created an alleyway with only a small view of the riverfront warehouses and a portion of St. Louis Street ahead. Faro paused when a black coach with high red wheels and polished brass lanterns halted at the end of that alleyway. The driver watched him with seeming unconcern, but it was obvious that he was waiting. The doors remained closed.

Faro felt for the Colt .31 inside the leather pocket sewn inside his waistband at a cross draw just in front of his left hip. The riverfront was no place to be for a man alone at night or so early of a morn. Better where he was than across the river in Algiers, granted, but still a place where bad things could happen to those less cautious. Regardless, most of those who would rob a man and roll his body into the river didn’t travel in fancy coaches, but he had reason to worry anyway. Lately, his debts had grown, and many of those he owed money to were wealthy enough to afford such wheeled conveyance. More important, many of those gentlemen wouldn’t be above sending a strong arm or two to collect for them . . . or make an example of him.

The coach waited in silence, except for the occasional stamp of the pair of fine bay horses’ hooves upon the street. The window curtains were drawn, and he could see nothing of who might be inside. He was sure the coach’s appearance meant no good for him, but he was too proud to turn back to the ship, and too stubborn to keep standing there like he was lost. He started toward the coach, keeping a close eye on the window curtains.

When he had closed to within a few yards of it, the near door swung open and a black man in a tall hat and a fancy red coachman’s coat slid his long legs to the ground. He studied Faro carefully and there was more than a little hint on his face that he wasn’t impressed with what he saw. He reached his right hand inside his coat.

Faro raised his cane and held it a foot before the man’s stomach. “I’d go easy there.”

The black man didn’t bat an eye. Instead, he ever so slowly produced an envelope and held it forward. “I have an invitation for you.”

Faro kept a careful watch on the man as he leaned forward to take the envelope. His own name was written there in a fine, slanted, calligraphic script. He took two steps back and broke the wax seal. The envelope smelled of perfume. He read the brief invitation once, and then a second time more slowly.

Monsieur Faro Wells,

It has been brought to my attention that you are a bold man who can be trusted to be discreet. It is my wish to meet with you to discuss a small but challenging business venture pertaining to a shipment of gold bullion. Should you be willing to hear my proposal, my driver will bring you to my home.

Sincerely,

Rue McGaffney

Faro searched his mind for what kind of con was being worked on him and could barely keep from laughing. Was it a ruse to get him somewhere where there were no witnesses, or somebody’s practical joke? He tried to decide who might be behind the matter. Offhand, he could think of no one who would bother with mysterious notes and carriages. It all seemed too theatric. Anybody wishing him harm could do so with far less extravagance, and there was no one he knew who would go to such great lengths for a joke’s sake.

If the black man recognized Faro’s conundrum, he didn’t show it. “The coach awaits.”

Faro looked up the river, past the team, in the direction of his home—a home that was only to be his for a few more days. He told himself not to be a fool grasping at straws.

Who was Rue McGaffney? The long hours without sleep and the perfume filling his head made it hard for him to think clearly. A desperate man with few options, the mention of gold had quickened his pulse. He knew what he was going to decide, even though he gave himself a thousand reasons to send the coachman on without him.

“Sucker,” he whispered.

“What’s that, sir?” the coachman asked.

“Nothing,” Faro said as he went past the man and put a foot on the ornate, cast-iron step. “I was just saying what a fine morning it was for a drive.”

He ducked his head and crawled inside the coach to recline on the overstuffed leather cushions on the rear bench. The door latch clicked ominously in place behind him. He was committed and tried to prepare himself for whatever was about to befall him. He was sure that his current run of bad luck would continue and that any fortune that fell out of the sky wouldn’t land in his lap but would instead hit him on the head and kill him. Still, it might turn out to be an interesting morning.

The carriage rocked slightly as the coachman crawled up beside the driver, and the team took off with a lurch. Faro made small openings in the rear window curtains to either side of him so that he could keep his bearings, and sat back to enjoy the ride. However, he did lay his revolver in his lap. He might be a fool for a woman or gold, but he was a cynical fool.

CHAPTER 2

The coach traveled at a high trot up St. Louis Street, past the great warehouses lining the river, and then turned east, aiming for the heart of the oldest part of the city, the Vieux Carré, or what some were beginning to call the French Quarter. In the distance to the southeast, Faro could see the tall spires of the St. Louis Cathedral and the neighboring Presbytere rising above the city.

The clop of the horses’ hooves on the street echoed as if from the bottom of a well. While originally settled by the French, the architecture of that influence had burned in a great fire long before and was replaced during the Spanish rule of the city. Buildings of brightly painted stucco and red tile roofs were jammed tightly against each other in an almost solid wall lining the thoroughfare. Multistoried balconies and galleries fronted almost every residence and shop.

The coach halted before a two-story, yellow town house, and the coachman opened the door for him. Before climbing out, Faro caught a flash of a white dress and a face equally pale disappearing from the balcony directly overhead.

The coachman waited patiently while he stood in the street to let the stiffness leave his bad leg, and then led him to the front door beneath the wrought iron balconies overhead. The coachman raised the hinged doorknocker and rapped gently upon the wood with it.

The door swung slowly inward. An elderly black woman in an apron and with her head bound in a scarf stood framed in the lamplight glowing behind her. The window curtains were drawn tight, and all that Faro could see of the apartment was the narrow strip behind her. She slowly stepped aside and bid him entrance into the house with a nod of her chin. The coachman remained behind when Faro removed his hat and stepped inside.

The house servant led him down a short hallway into a large parlor. A young woman sat before an open window across the room. She sat very straight and on the edge of a small couch with her hands hidden in the lap of her hooped skirt. Her eyes were wider than they should have been, as if her composed appearance was requiring effort.

And what lovely blue eyes they were. She could have been no more than eighteen, maybe twenty, with a luxuriant headful of blond hair gathered up high and a dimpled chin above a lovely neck. She gestured gracefully with one hand for him to take a seat in one of the two chairs across from her.

“Monsieur Wells, I presume?” Her voice had a slight French accent.

“At your service.” Faro was distinctly aware of the awkward squeak of the hinged metal straps on either side of his knee brace as he walked across the carpeted floor. He suddenly felt shabby in his threadbare and wrinkled suit.

“I’m Rue McGaffney,” she said.

“Pleased to meet you.” He took a seat in a high-backed mahogany chair and studied the other expensive furnishings of the room. It didn’t look as if she was hurting for money.

The black maid went into another room, leaving the ticking of a grandfather clock in the corner of the parlor as the only sound. Faro hung his hat upon one of his knees and watched the brass pendulum swing back and forth while he waited for the McGaffney woman to break the ice.

“Would you care for some hot tea?” She gestured to the kettle and cups on a silver tray on the small table before her.

“No, thank you.”

“I can have some coffee brought.”

Faro shook his head. “I would much prefer for you to explain the message you sent me.”

Her eyes betrayed a slight annoyance, but she quickly covered it. “I was told you could be a brusque man.”

One corner of Faro’s mouth lifted in a smirk. “I admit, I’m usually far more content to while away the hours with a pretty woman, but the night was long and your message has intrigued me to point of impatience.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she said with a hint of mocking in her tone. “I hear that you’re quite the cad among the ladies, but I assure you that only business matters have brought you here.”

“Is that all you’ve heard about me?”

“It is said that you’re all but broke and about to lose your plantation because you gamble too much and too poorly.”

Faro was more impressed by her candor than he was offended by it. “If you’ve heard such things about me, then why am I here?”

She sipped at her tea before answering, her eyes never leaving him over the rim of the cup. “I asked you here because it’s also said that you’re a man who knows mining and who has some knowledge of the western frontier.”

Faro shifted in his chair and straightened his bad leg out before him. “You can hear anything in this city, but for the sake of conversation, why would those two things interest you?”

She set the teacup down on the table. “First, promise me that what I’m about to tell you won’t be shared with others lest you agree to what I’m about to propose.”

Faro was keenly aware of the silver brooch lying against the pale skin just below her collarbones, and he fought his eyes away from the where the square-scooped neck of her dress ended above the swell of her breasts. “You have my word as a gentleman, although it seems you may doubt I’m such.”

She smiled again and leaned back against the divan, playing idly with one pearl earring dangling from her right earlobe. “What would you say if I told you my deceased father has left me a gold mine in the mountains of New Mexico Territory?”

The mention of gold was just enough to break Faro’s attention away from that earring. “I would say you’re a fortunate young woman if the mine is producing profitable ore.”

“And what would you say if I told you that he left me a good deal of refined gold in those very same mountains?”

It was Faro’s turn to smile. “And I suppose this is the part where you offer to sell me this wonderful gold claim?”

“You’re a very suspicious man.”

“If you think I know something of mining, then you know I went west in the gold rush of ’49. Stories like yours are a dime a dozen out there,” he said. “Walk into any saloon in California and there’ll be some sharp or drunkard trying to sell you a supposedly rich claim or a map to a treasure that doesn’t exist.”

The muscles in her long neck and those in her jaw tensed. She took a deep breath and turned slightly to look down the hallway leading deeper into the apartment. “Armand, could you come in here for a moment?”

Booted feet sounded in the hallway as soon as she spoke, and a massive man stepped into the room. No, he wasn’t tall, almost short in fact, but he was wide of shoulder and carried that width down through a barrel chest and tree-trunk thighs. The only hair on his hatless, shaved head was a handlebar mustache waxed into curls at the corners of his mouth. He was dark-eyed and swarthy-skinned with a crooked pug nose and brawler’s face marked with the kind of scars knuckles make. He stood there looking at Faro with the thumbs of his meaty hands hooked in the braided rope belt tied around the waist of his coarse spun cotton pants. The handle of a knife and the grip of a muzzle-loading pistol stuck out of the top of the belt between those fists. He spoke something to the woman in Cajun French.

Faro didn’t speak French, much less the Acadian dialect peculiar to the swamps of south Louisiana. However, he could tell from the look on the man’s face that a certain recent arrival, a particular gambler, might be in trouble.

Rue McGaffney studied Faro for a long moment, seemingly making her mind up about something. She finally sighed and leaned forward again. “Mr. Wells, you’ve insinuated that I might have brought you here for amorous reasons, and that my word is no better than a drunkard’s. That’s twice you’ve insulted me in my own home. If you do so again, I’ll have Armand take you outside and use a buggy whip on you.”

One look at the brawler and Faro had no doubt that he was more than capable of doing what she asked.

“My apologies. Have your man stand back, and I’ll mind my manners,” Faro said. “You must understand that it’s not every day that I’m called to meet with a woman about a supposed fortune in gold she’s inherited. It’s only natural that I assume that I’m being played for a fool.”

The squat Cajun remained where he was, his expression no friendlier.

“Forgive Armand. He’s just very protective of me since my parents are gone,” she said.

Faro tried to ignore the man glaring across the room at him. “I’m sorry for your loss, but just who was your father?”

“Gregory McGaffney. I believe he was known out west as Tin Pan McGaffney.”

Faro let that soak in. “They say Tin Pan would have been rich if he had worked half the claims he located. Liked to hunt ore, the way I heard it, but lost his enthusiasm for a good claim once he found it.”

She nodded. “He sold a promising gold claim on Feather River for twenty thousand dollars that it is said made its new owners as rich as kings.”

Faro couldn’t help but chuckle. Tin Pan was a legend in the far western mountains, and it was hard to imagine that the old sourdough sired the pretty young thing across from him. “They say he drank most of that money up in a week, with barely enough left to outfit himself to head back into the mountains prospecting for another find.”

Her face grew hard again. “He sent a good deal of that money home to see to his family.”

Faro could have kicked himself for thinking out loud. “I’m sorry.”

“Never mind. Although I didn’t lay eyes on him for the last six years of his life, I’m more than aware of my father’s reputation and his wandering ways.”

“And you would have me believe that the same man located another rich claim and invested the time and effort to make it produce in such volume? That doesn’t sound like it fits Tin Pan.”

“Why waste your time? Just show it to him.” Another young woman shoved past the Cajun henchman and walked across the room to Faro.

Faro’s knee had grown stiff again, but he struggled to his feet anyway, just in time to meet her. If at all possible, she was more beautiful than Rue, or perhaps her beauty was merely different—dark and sultry where her sister was as fair as white linen. She stopped before him and held out a hand. He grasped her fingers gently and bowed courteously, feeling even more at a disadvantage than he had with only one woman in the room.

“Come now, Mr. Wells, don’t be disappointing. My sister has to threaten to have you horsewhipped, and yet you bow and act the gentleman when I walk into the room.” She leaned back and clucked her tongue while she looked him over. “I might think you found me unworthy of any scandalous effort on your part.”

Usually never at a loss for words when it came to the fairer sex, he found that he was tongue-tied. And for good reason; she was stunningly beautiful. She was almost as tall as he, and the house robe tied at her waist did little to hide her curves. Her hair hung wildly in long, natural curls. The shiny black of it was in sharp contrast to her olive skin and green eyes. Her mouth was wide and her lips were almost too full. He had the distinct impression, even when she wasn’t speaking, that she was taunting him. It was plain to him that she had just come from her bed—too plain, and the thought wouldn’t leave him.

“And so you meet my sister, Zula,” Rue said dryly. “Forgive her, for she can be as forward as you.”

Zula arched one eyebrow. She gave her sister a look and then she startled him with a conspiratorial wink. “Don’t mind her, she can be such a bore sometimes.”

Faro was under no false impressions that all women wore angel wings, but ladies of good reputation didn’t usually wink at strange men either, nor meet with them half dressed. He noticed that she still held on to his hand.

“Let him go, Zula,” Rue said. “My God, you’re worse than a housecat sometimes.”

The dark-haired beauty tossed her hair with a flip of her head and snorted softly through her nose. She let go of him and went to sit beside her sister, putting more than a little effort into the sway of her hips. She ignored Rue’s straight-backed, proper posture, and flounced against the arm of the couch with one leg curled under her. She smiled at him again, and he had the disconcerting feeling that he provided great amusement for her.

“Show him the egg,” she said.

Rue frowned at her but gave a nod to the Cajun bodyguard. “Show it to him.”

The stout Cajun disappeared into the hallway for a few moments and returned with a small leather bag in his fist, which he laid upon the table. He stepped back and waited with his broad arms crossed over his chest. There was enough of a smirk on his mouth that Faro could see that he was missing a few of his front teeth.

My, but they are a smiling, smirking bunch.

The beaded leather bag was of Indian making, although Faro couldn’t identify what tribe. Many a man on the frontier carried one for a purse or a wallet. It was a larger version of the small drawstring medicine bags many Indian men wore about their necks to carry their magic trinkets.

Rue reached inside the bag and pulled forth a small piece of tanned deerskin the size of a table napkin when she unrolled it on the table. He leaned forward and saw that it was a map with prominent landmarks laid out in a combination of paints and dyes. Portions of the map even seemed to have been tooled, or carved into the thin leather. In other places, it looked as if the mapmaker had written by stabbing a charcoal-coated awl into the leather, or used some other sooty black dye. The block writing was crude, smudged, and in some places barely legible. The mine or claim site was marked somewhere to the northeast of Santa Fe, but no specific directions to it were to be seen.

Faro took note of the smug looks on their faces, as if the map proved anything. “And how did you come by this map?”

“Before he died, our father instructed a trusted Mexican friend to deliver a message to us in the event of his demise. Two days ago, the courier from New Mexico brought us this,” Rue said.

Faro spun the hide around until it was right side up, although he didn’t have a clue about most of the landmarks. Many of the town or settlement names were in Spanish, and if Santa Fe and Fort Union hadn’t been clearly marked he could have easily mistaken it for a map of anywhere—Mexico or South America for all he knew. However, that didn’t stop him from acting like he recognized the represented geography and to nod his head occasionally. He was still sure that he was the focus of some kind of con, but thought it might be smart to act like he knew more than he did, at least until he’d heard them out.

“I take it you have detailed directions to the mine to go with this map?” he asked.

“We do,” Rue said. “Do you think us foolish enough to give you that information?”

Faro waved a hand over the supposed map. “Is this all you’ve got?”

Rue smiled and reached once more into the sack. She came out with a gold ingot in the shape and size of a chicken egg. She sat it on the table with a gentle thump where it rolled and wobbled across the table for a moment before coming to a stop. “There are two more of these in the bag.”

Faro couldn’t take his eyes off of the egg on the table, and even the women who had obviously seen it before were quietly watching it. Zula ran the tip of her tongue over her upper lip.

The egg was dull and obviously crudely refined and containing impurities, but it was real gold. Faro reached out and hefted it—at least two pounds or more of gold worth over eight hundred dollars. Either they had gone through great trouble and expense to con him, or he was going to have to rethink the matter.

“There’s enough of those eggs to fill the packsaddles of forty mules,” Rue said.

“Forty loads,” Zula repeated.

CHAPTER 3

“If you have a mine capable of producing these”—Faro tossed the egg in the palm of his hand like a ball, still sensing that he was being conned—“then why do you need my help?”

The two women locked eyes and passed an unspoken thought between them before Rue answered. “Within that same pouch was my father’s last will and testament granting the mine and the gold to Zula and me.”

“And?”

“Apparently, the pack train of gold has never left the site of the mine,” she added.

“And?”

“As you know, transporting so much gold could be . . . well, difficult. We want you to hire a party of men and take us to go get the gold. While there, you can also ascertain the value of the mine and the financial feasibility of further work on it.”

Faro set the gold on the table and leaned back in his chair. “For the sake of argument, let’s say all is as you say it is.” He made a temple of his fingers while he thought out loud, “How do you know the gold is still there?”

“We think it is still there,” Rue’s voice rose slightly.

It was plain from the looks on their faces that both of them had considered the question he brought up, and that it worried them.

“If this gold came from ore, then it required crushing and smelting, and that suggests a large enough operation that there’s no way that you could keep the mine a secret.” He paused to make sure they were really listening to him.

“What if the egg was melted down from gold dust?” Rue asked. “Father used the word ‘mine’ in his letter to us, but perhaps he meant it just as a term for a claim. I understand they wash gold dust and small nuggets from the streams out there.”

Faro nodded. “Placer gold, maybe, but still you can’t keep such a find a secret, at least not long enough to gather forty pack loads of gold. As soon as word leaked out, every miner and prospector in the West would have been drawn to the area like flies to sugar. And I’ve seen no such discovery or mention of a New Mexico boom camp in the newspapers.”

“He worked the mine by himself and didn’t let anybody know of the find except for his Mexican hired man.”

“However secret he may have kept his claim, there’s the high probability that you would find your gold claim jumped by others and your stored gold gone.”

“It’s still there. My father stated that the gold was well hidden, and that the mine was in a very remote location.”

“Would you mind if I read the letter he sent you?”

The sisters looked to each other for a long moment before Rue turned back to him. “I’ll read a portion of it to you. There are parts that I wouldn’t care to share as a matter of protecting our interests.”

“Fair enough.”

Rue pulled a wrinkled piece of paper from the pouch and carefully unfolded it. Even from a distance, Faro could see that it was soiled and water-stained and beginning to tear along the folds.

Rue read the letter. Zula sat quietly beside her, often silently mouthing the words at the same time her sister read them, as if she had already memorized it.

The story was pretty much as they had told him, at least what they had shared with him. According to the message, their father had found gold in the mountains north of Santa Fe. The claim was located in a country of hostile Indians, and Tin Pan worked the mine alone for three summers, stashing his golden eggs until he had the fortune he wanted.

“And where is the Mexican who delivered this letter? What’s to stop him from getting the gold?” Faro asked. “Maybe he has already.”

Rue didn’t seem to want to answer and made a point to look at the far wall.

“He left this package with us without our knowing three nights ago. The very same morning we found it, his body was discovered where he had been murdered just down the street from here.”

“What happened to Tin Pan? You’ve said he died, but not how.”

Again, Rue seemed reluctant to answer. “There was a brief letter from a priest that arrived a few months before we received the map—”

“The Indians killed him,” Zula interrupted her.

Faro shook his head somberly. “Do you have any clue of how wild some of that country is?”

“You should’ve let me hire us a man,” Zula said scornfully. “A real man.”

Rue bit her lip and leaned forward again, as if her nearness could pressure him into the answer she wanted. Her eyes were big and soft. “Mr. Wells, I was told that you were a decorated officer and a hero of the Mexican War. And everyone in New Orleans knows the story of how you struck it rich in the gold fields of California, and how you came back here wealthy as sin and gave half your gold to the widow of the man who went west with you.”

Faro looked away, uncomfortable with the story he’d heard whispered around him so many times.

Rue continued. “It’s also common knowledge that everything you own is about to be sold at auction to pay your debts. It was my hope that I could entice you to help us. You’re a professional soldier and a leader of men, and I hoped that your experiences in the war had given you a knowledge of New Mexico.”

“Ma’am, I was in Mexico proper for only a few months, Veracruz to be exact. I never got anywhere near New Mexico Territory.”

“We’ll pay you well for your trouble. How does two thousand dollars sound?”

“Why should I settle for so little?”

Rue moved quickly back and leaned against Zula, failing to hide her shock. Zula passed her an I-told-you-so glance.

Faro chuckled. Now you’ve got them listening.

“Why would you say that?” Rue asked.

“How do you think I’m supposed to hire men who won’t have the very same thought I just voiced?”

“Surely you know some honest men.” From the way Rue was biting her bottom lip Faro guessed that she had already been worrying about “honest” men.

“Ladies, listen. I don’t know if there’s such thing as an honest man when it comes to gold.” Or a good-looking woman.

“Including you?” Zula asked.

“Including me,” he said.

Rue thrust her chin out a little and straightened her posture stubbornly. “All right, what if you were to take us alone. Just we three and Armand.”

“Take you?” Faro laughed again. “Don’t you know that there’s a war going on? There’ll be ten thousand ways to die between here and there: blizzard, desert, Indians, bandits, and just plain old bad luck. I’d as soon shoot myself in the head and save myself all the suffering rather than take two women on that trail.”

“Zula has heard that it would be no problem going by riverboat up the Mississippi and then along the Arkansas to Fort Smith,” Rue said. “We could go overland to New Mexico along the Santa Fe Trail.”

“Well, you might avoid trying to run the Union Blockade in the Gulf that way, but I hear the Union will eventually try to take control of the river. Our boys in gray aren’t going to take kindly to that, and the last thing you need is to get caught in the middle of a battle. And for that matter, I hear all of the Indian Territory west of Arkansas is one big bloody fight. The civilized Indians out there are dressing up like soldiers and trying to exterminate each other.”

“What are you saying?” Rue asked.

“I’m saying you need to find someone else to help you.”

“And what if we can’t find someone else?” Rue asked.

“You’ve got those eggs,” Faro said.

Rue saw him looking around the fancy apartment. “The eggs might tide us over for a few months or even a few years, but as you can see, we’re used to a certain standard of living.”

“I wish you the best of luck, and be careful who you show that gold.” Faro rose and went to the door. “I bid you both good day.”

Rue seemed lost in thought but snapped out of it before he closed the door behind him. “Have the coachman take you home before he returns the coach back to the livery.”

“Let him walk,” Zula said.

“We brought him here. The least we can do is see him home.”

“Have it your way, but I’d let him walk.”

Faro shut the door behind him and gave the driver and the coachman directions to his home and climbed into the coach and shut the door for himself. The sun was already an hour up, and he was shocked to find that he’d been so long with the McGaffney sisters. But he’d always found that time flew when it came to pretty women or talk of gold.

Even if they were telling the truth, those two were in for some hard lessons if they thought hauling that much gold from New Mexico to Louisiana was going to be easy. He had his own troubles to attend to and told himself that the best thing he could do was to forget he’d ever met them or heard their story. And he’d vowed from the moment he walked away from the card table officially broke that he was done with gambling and taking foolish chances.

Despite his opinions, the coach was twenty minutes upriver along the road and he was still thinking about that golden egg rocking on the hard tabletop. Forty loads of golden eggs—what a story. A man could do a lot with that kind of money.

CHAPTER 4

Rue McGaffney played idly with the golden egg on the tabletop while she thought. Everything depended on getting the gold. Without it, she had few options, and all of them were distasteful.

Their mother had spent her life at the mercy of the whims of a wandering alcoholic and the feast-or-famine income he provided. Now, that same man, as if to make up for all he had done and hadn’t done, dangled an absurdly rich inheritance in front of his daughters from beyond the grave. She could almost see his leprechaun smile and hear him laughing and daring them to dream as big as he always had. No more hardship and no more worries if they would just follow the rainbow.

“I’d say that went horrible,” Zula said.

“Give him time to mull our proposal over. I hear his father is on his deathbed and will pass any day. Perhaps that’s what’s keeping him from going with us,” Rue said.

“He isn’t the only game in town. Adventurous men are two bits a dozen here.”

“No, Monsieur Wells isn’t the only man in town,” Rue said, “but everything he said bears consideration, whether we want to hear it or not. The men who could get us there and back and not rob us blind are bound to be few and far between.”

“True, but how much time do you think we have to wait around and do nothing? Someone may be stealing the gold while we sit here,” Zula said. “We’ll have to keep our wits about us, no matter who we hire, but I bet I can find someone.”

“Who?”

“Let me think on it some more. I don’t trust any man farther than I can throw him, but one thing I can guarantee you, it’s going to take a man rough around the edges to help us get what we want. I’ve no faith in a fancy pants like Faro.”

Rue threw a strange look at her sister. After so many years together, nothing Zula said should come as a shock. “Give Faro a couple of days. He’s the only man I could find in the city that knows anything of mining, and even those who don’t like him swear to his honesty.”

“My God, Rue. He’s nothing but a crippled gambler.” Zula whirled around with her green eyes flashing. “What makes you think a man that couldn’t hold on to his own gold can take care of mine?”

“Ours,” Rue said. “Our gold.”

“That’s what I meant.” Zula stared out the window.

“He is a handsome man, once you get used to that scar on his cheek,” Rue said absent-mindedly.

“Ah, sister. Who’s the little cat in heat now?”

“You can act so trashy sometimes.”

“Well, he’s tall, dark, and handsome, I’ll grant you that, and the fancy, mannerly kind that might make a schoolgirl like you warm between your thighs if you like that sort of man.”

Rue resisted the urge to chastise her twin sister for the filth that came out of her mouth. However, she knew from past experience that to scold Zula would only cause her to say something even more impolite. Most of it was just an act meant to shock her and make her uncomfortable enough to give up an argument. Their French Creole mother had a sharp tongue like Zula’s and a ribald sense of humor that would put a sailor to shame when no men or mixed company was around.

“I suppose Faro reminds you of the boys you met back East at that finishing school,” Zula said. “Did they tip their hats and blush when they wanted to hold your hand on the porch swing? Did they stop every time you passed a window so that they could look at their own reflection and admire the cut of their clothes, or tell you how beautiful you were hanging on their arm?”

“I’m not arguing with you.”

“Well, while you were reading poetry books and learning how to sit in a chair straight to sip tea, I was learning a thing or two about men,” Zula said.

“You could have gone to school had you wanted to, and you don’t mean that like it sounds.”

Zula turned to her and smiled devilishly. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“Sometimes, I don’t know how we can be twins.”

Zula got a funny look on her face. “True.”

“We’ll wait two days, and if Faro doesn’t agree to help us, I’ll listen to whatever you can come up with. Agreed?”

Zula shrugged. “They’re opening the café down the street. I think I’ll go get us some breakfast. I’m starving.”

“Surely, you’re joking. You aren’t even dressed. Let Sugar cook you some breakfast.”

“That would be okay if there was anything to cook in the cupboard. In case you haven’t noticed, the pickings are getting pretty slim.” Zula screwed her lips into a pout. “I wish we could sell at least one egg.”

“I’ve told you, we need that gold to pay for getting the rest of what Father left us,” Rue said. “And besides, don’t forget that the rent is overdue.”

Zula glanced down at herself and a mischievous look spread across her face. She slid her robe and silk gown up her right leg and stretched out that long, white limb and rocked her knee side to side. “Maybe I could get us some free breakfast. That chef watches me like a puppy every time I go in there.”

Rue refrained from saying anything else to egg Zula on. She’d already said too much. She rose and went to the kitchen. Maybe there was something left to eat.

She was pilfering through their pantry when she heard the front door closing. She felt sorry for that café cook. Zula was relatively harmless, except when it came to men, or for that matter, money.

CHAPTER 5

The man in the black greatcoat stood in the shadows of a balcony across the street and watched Faro climb into the waiting coach. He waited until it was almost a block away before he walked into the street and turned his one good eye upon the apartment Faro had just left. After a bit, he whistled loudly and two men appeared around the corner of the nearest street intersection behind him. Both men were mounted, and they were leading his horse behind them.

The one-eyed man took a last look up the street at the leaving coach before tossing his long, caped coat back over his right shoulder. He put a foot into his stirrup and swung a leg over his horse’s back. The big black gelding pranced sideways in the road and pushed against the bit and the light pull of his hand on the reins.

“Boys, we might have to do something about Faro Wells,” the one-eyed man said.

A door opened, and he turned to see a woman standing at the edge of the street in front of the McGaffneys’ home. She hugged herself with both arms and frowned at him.

“Want us to kill him, King?” one of the men asked.

The one-eyed man started his horse toward the waiting woman. “Maybe. I owe that bastard one. Let me see what that little darling has to say, and then we’ll decide what to do and when.”

CHAPTER 6

Faro had the driver let him off where his driveway met the road along the river. His knee hurt fiercely, but sometimes a short walk helped his discomfort. He waved the coach away and looked up the long row of giant live oak trees leading to the white pillars of his front porch. The limbs had been trimmed high until they were like an archway hung with Spanish moss. Such a canopy was tailor-made for triumphant marches home—a victory parade for the man of the house. Instead, he started down the lane beneath the shadowed limbs with a weary effort, unaware of the brooding frown on his face and the slight scuffing, dragging sound his game leg made with every step.

He reached for the silver whiskey flask in his vest pocket. A drink might cut the edge off his aching knee. Sometimes, he swore that he could still feel that Mexican pistol ball floating around inside it. To his chagrin, he found the flask empty and put it away.

He thought about the gold while he walked. Forty pack loads of refined gold was more than enough to tempt him, but life had made him all too aware of the price often paid for taking too many chances. His right hand involuntarily reached up to place a finger in the bullet dent in his cheekbone. Even in the years past, a woman had been as much to blame for his troubles as the war he’d gone off to fight. There was some unwritten law of the universe that stated trouble went hand in hand with women . . . and money.

His knee brace was still squeaking and creaking, and he promised himself to oil it when he reached the house. It was the damned humid swamp air that rusted the metal so quickly. He couldn’t help but remember the sunny mountains far to the west and the high, dry air. It had been long since he traveled over that distant country, another lifetime.

“Mr. Faro,” somebody shouted from the front porch ahead.

Faro pulled himself away from his thoughts. It was Lettie shouting for him and she seemed excited. He noticed the buggy parked before the house for the first time.

Lettie met him in the road, well before he reached the porch, her fat legs churning to carry her great weight. She was breathing heavily. “Mr. Faro, it’s your daddy. I called the doctor, but I didn’t know where you were at to let you know.”

“It’s all right, Lettie. There’s no way you could have known where I was. I’ve been on the river for two weeks.” Faro put a hand on the old woman’s shoulder for a brief instant and then climbed the stairs onto the porch.

He started to pass through his front door but paused when he’d opened it only a crack. He turned to look back at her. “Did you and the doctor get the pistol away from Daddy?”

Her eyes were wide. “You don’t have to worry. Your daddy won’t be shooting at nobody.”

A dread built within him. He looked to the old bullet holes to either side of the door before passing inside. The house had seen better times. The furniture was covered in dust, and here and there green mold had taken hold on the wallpaper. He ascended the great, curved stairway leading up to the second floor.

He met Jethro carrying a bundle of rags and linens in the hallway above. The old slave merely nodded at him in passing. The doctor waited in the door to his father’s bedroom. He already had his bag in his hand as if he were about to leave. He too nodded somberly in greeting.

Faro stopped before him and looked over his shoulder into the bedroom. His father lay there beneath his blankets, pale and dead.

“He passed about an hour ago,” the doctor said. “The pneumonia was too much for his old lungs.”

Faro looked away. “I’m sure you did all that could be done. Did he go peacefully?”

The doctor nodded again. “He mumbled some during the night, but never woke up until this morning when he asked for his old pistol and then went back to sleep.”

Faro dabbed at his eyes before turning back to look in the doorway. “Thanks, Doc. Send me a bill.”

The doctor patted him on the shoulder and walked away. “I’ll put it on your tab.”

Faro leaned against the doorway for a long time after the doctor was gone, staring at the withered old man lying on the feather bed. Both of his hands were laid on his chest, almost like someone had placed them there to pose him. The old flintlock pistol that he carried against the British in 1812, and that he treasured so, was clutched in one of his liver-spotted fists.

Faro went downstairs and sat on the bottom step. He set his cane aside and sailed his hat across the room at the stuffed black bear standing on its hind legs in the foyer. He missed landing the hat on the bear’s head, but the sight of the ratty, moth-eaten taxidermy specimen and the thought of his father’s pistol made him chuckle sadly. One of the bear’s glass eyes was missing, and if he looked closely he would find several other bullet holes.