Buck might have been offended to realize this stranger had been spying on him, but he found himself returning the smile instead. “Ten o’clock then.”
Tracker shook his host’s hand and left the room.
“An interesting fellow,” Buck commented after he heard the front door close behind him.
“The two of you seem to have hit it off. I’m glad. He’s a good man. You can have complete confidence in his total commitment and integrity.”
They stepped into the hall and down to the dining room opposite the sweeping staircase. A minute later they were seated at the long table with the lace cloth, bone china and silver candelabra. The last wasn’t in use this evening, however. A single candle in a glass base was the sole source of light. Even the well-off had to conserve on consumables.
“Will Emma be all right?” Gus asked. He was sitting at the head of the table, Miriam on his right, Buck on his left.
“She’s plumb worn out,” Miriam opined, scooping up a serving of collards onto her plate. “She’s been taking care of that child all by herself for almost two years. I declare she’s lost fifty pounds since the last time I laid eyes on her. Hardly recognized her. I reckon she gave him most of the food she managed to get hold of, but she’ll be eating regular now.”
“I sure hope she likes kosher cooking,” Gus commented with a grin. “She’s going to miss the fatback in her greens.”
Miriam screwed her mouth and arched her brows disdainfully. “I don’t imagine she’s had much of it lately.” She grinned. “Besides, you can slip her some of yours, dear.” She nodded at the separate bowl of greens the cook always managed to slip beside his plate.
Gus snickered and passed the dish to Buck.
“Aren’t Sarah and her mother joining us?” Buck asked.
“While they’re sitting Shiva—that’s deep mourning for the loss of Mr. Greenwald,” Miriam explained, “they’re taking their meals privately in their rooms.”
The cook brought in a platter of meatloaf and set it in front of Mr. Grayson.
“Alice,” Miriam remarked, “be sure Quintus takes Emma’s carpetbag to her.” She turned to Buck and Gus. “There’s not much in it, but it’s all she and the boy have for now. Tomorrow I’ll see what I can find for her and the child.”
“There goes the budget,” Gus grumbled good-naturedly and served Buck a double portion of vegetable kugel.
#
The side room of Lexington County’s notorious groggery was long and narrow. The ripe odor of unwashed bodies and equally rank clothing mingled with the cloying stench of stale beer, cheap cigar and pipe smoke. The racket sent up by raucous, cursing voices and the clank of glasses and pewter mugs reverberated off the wooden walls and tin ceiling.
Rufus was standing at the plank bar, sucking on his second tankard of sour suds. Definitely not one of Shifty’s better batches of beer, not that anyone seemed to notice or care.
“We heared you was a sharpshooter in the war,” a voice said behind him.
Rufus turned. Tall and bony, Zeke had been one of his brother’s gang members.
“Hank says you want our help getting the critter what killed your brother and Fat Man. Floyd always looked out for us, and Fat Man was a real good cook. Tell us what you want us to do.”
Rufus had always worked alone. He didn’t need help, and he sure didn’t like anybody muscling in, questioning, arguing. He’d do it all himself, except . . . The war was over. You couldn’t shoot someone now without someone else asking questions. In war, you were expected to kill. In this so-called peace if you planted a bullet in a body, they accused you of murder and gave you a trial before stringing you up.
“Yeah, I could use a hand,” he admitted. “But under one condition. You do exactly what I say. No killing until I tell you it’s all right.”
“Balderdash,” Clyde snapped in a deep authoritative voice, his gray beard brushing against the bib of his faded overalls. Strong language for him. He used to be a preacher till he got caught inappropriately inspiring one of God’s sweet angels. “We’ll help you get Floyd’s killer, but we ain’t asking your permission to shoot him dead when we find him.”
Zeke, standing beside him, nodded. Rufus realized Zeke would’ve nodded at anything Clyde said. “We don’t need no boss.”
Rufus slammed down his mug on the rough board, spilling beer over the side. “Listen to me, damn it. I know Buck Thomson and what he can do. You don’t. Let me tell you, he’s almost as good a shot as me, and I’m better than Floyd and Fat Man was combined. So unless you think you can outshoot me—” he paused to let the words sink in “—you do it my way or it’s no deal.”
When the other men didn’t answer him back, he went on. “I’m gonna kill Thomson with or without y’all.”
“What do you need our help for then?” Zeke demanded.
“Thomson and his lady friend are taking the stage to Charleston on Monday. I need to know who all’s with them, how many guards they’re taking, and the road they’re gonna take, so’s I’ll know where to hit ‘em.”
“What’s in it for us?”
“The stage carries a strong box, don’t it? Probably contains gold, right? Men passengers carry cash, and for sure Doc’s rich bitch’s got fancy jewelry with her. You can divvy it all amongst yourselves.”
Zeke slanted a quizzical eye at him. “We get to keep all the money and jewelry?”
“That’s what I said.”
“What about the woman?” Clyde wanted to know.
“She’s all yours too, dead or alive.”
“Oo-ee.” Clyde took off his hat and waved it over his head. “When’re we going?”
#
Tracker knocked on Buck’s door at precisely ten o’clock that night. No longer in riding attire, he now sported a casual cream-colored linen suit and maroon cravat. He also carried an elegant silver-knobbed walking stick that Buck suspected was more than an affectation.
They again shook hands. Buck offered him a drink from the small collection of decanters on a side table, wasn’t surprised when the tender was declined, then waved him to one of the fiddle-back chairs in the sitting room. Buck took the matching settee at a right angle to him.
“What’s your relationship with the Sneads?” Tracker asked.
Buck reviewed the history of the two families and made no attempt to disguise his contempt for Saul. With what he hoped was clinical dispassion, he itemized the man’s offenses, physical and moral, against the plantation’s defenseless slaves, as well as his defrauding the owner he worked for.
Tracker listened without comment. Buck had no doubt he’d heard similar stories in the past. Given the man’s own amalgamation, he had to wonder what experiences Pierre Bouchard might be able to personally narrate.
Buck then described Clay’s murder by a red-headed little man, the ensuing miserable deaths of the Hewitt family at the hands of depraved ruffians, thanks to the same assassin’s leaving the desperate woman and her children stranded with a useless, half-dead horse, followed by Buck catching a glimpse of him at the port in Charleston and subsequently learning his identity.
Without a nod, Tracker then said, “Tell me about your trip here from Charleston.”
Had he not met the man earlier, Buck might have taken umbrage to the repeated demands, since they constituted an essential reversal of roles. Buck was no longer interviewing a prospective guard. Tracker was interviewing him—to see if he was worthy of his protection. But their brief exchange earlier in the evening and Gus’s utter confidence in him, to the point of entrusting his beloved wife’s life to his care, allayed any misgivings Buck might have had.
Over the next half hour, he gave an account of the fateful journey.
“Any other incidents?”