When the boat tied up at the landing about half a mile south of the long line of wharves that jutted out into the river, Preacher led Horse off onto solid ground again, which the rangy gray stallion seemed to appreciate. The other men disembarked as well, including the gambler. He swung up onto his expensive saddle and rode off toward the main part of town. Preacher followed him, although he didn’t care about the gambler. He was going that way anyway, because the ferryman had given him directions for how to find the whorehouse known as Jessie’s Place.
Preacher had been to St. Louis many times before, so he actually knew his way around the settlement fairly well, although he was pretending to be a stranger. He hadn’t heard of Jessie’s until today, though. It had been a while since he’d been here, and things sometimes changed fast on the frontier. Although St. Louis was civilized, it was right on the edge of a vast, untamed wilderness, and some of that wildness had rubbed off on it. There were a lot of different ways a man could get killed on the prairie or in the mountains, but the same was true here in the city.
Preacher thought maybe it was even more true here.
He had two possibilities for the first step in his plan: the fancy saloon called Dupree’s and Jessie’s Place. He was confident that if Jessie’s was the best whorehouse in St. Louis, Shad Beaumont was bound to own it. From what he knew of Beaumont, the man was involved in everything shady that went on in the settlement. He wanted to be sure that Beaumont heard about “Jim Donnelly.”
Unlike most of the houses of ill repute in St. Louis, Jessie’s wasn’t located near the waterfront. Instead it was in a quiet neighborhood on the north side of town where trees grew around the houses and there were flower beds full of brilliantly blooming flowers in the yards. The house had two stories and wore enough coats of whitewash that its walls gleamed. It looked like the sort of place where a wealthy merchant would live.
Which was exactly what it was, Preacher supposed. Jessie might not be the owner, but she was in charge here, and she definitely had merchandise for sale.
Preacher couldn’t afford that merchandise, even if he’d been in a buying mood. He hadn’t come to St. Louis looking for a woman, he reminded himself as he tied Horse at a hitch rail in front of the house. Several others were tied there, and Preacher frowned slightly as he recognized one of them. It was the big black from the ferry, the one that the sandy-haired gambler had ridden.
Well, that wasn’t too much of a surprise, he told himself. A man who dressed that well and owned a horse like this would want to patronize the best whorehouse in town.
Preacher went up a flagstone walk bordered by flower beds to the front porch. There was a brass lion’s-head knocker in the middle of the heavy door. He rapped sharply with it and waited.
The man who opened the door was tall, broad-shouldered, and black. He was bald except for a fringe of gray hair around his ears that trailed around the back of his head. Age didn’t seem to have withered him any, though. The muscles in his arms and shoulders bulged against the coat he wore.
He took one look at Preacher, got a superior sneer on his face, and said, “If you’ve brought those barrels of wine from the boat, you need to take them around back.”
“You see a wagon full of wine barrels out here?” Preacher asked.
The man frowned and looked past him. “No. What do you want?”
“This is Jessie’s Place, ain’t it? What do you think I want?”
Preacher started to push past the man, who put a hand on his chest to stop him. Preacher felt the strength coming from the man’s arm and shoulders.
“This ain’t your kind of place, mister. You need to go back down to the waterfront. The girls in the cribs there’ll be more than happy to accommodate you.”
Preacher sneered right back at the man. “You talk mighty fancy for a slave.”
“I ain’t a slave,” the man said with a shake of his head. “I’m a freedman, and I ain’t afraid of you just ’cause you’re white, mister. The law around here ain’t gonna blink an eye if I whup your ass.”
Preacher returned the man’s cold, level stare. “So you’re a freedman, eh?” He turned his head and spat. “That’s just a fancy word for a darky who’s got too big for his britches. I got money, damn your black hide.”
“Not enough,” the man said. “I can tell by lookin’ at you. Now, are you gonna leave peaceable-like, or—”
Preacher didn’t let him finish. He swung a wild punch at the man’s head instead.
The man ducked under the blow and lunged forward, wrapping his arms around Preacher’s waist. Suddenly Preacher felt himself jerked up off the ground. He let out a startled yelp that was completely genuine as the man hoisted him above his head.
With only a slight grunt of effort, the man heaved Preacher all the way off the porch and into the yard. He came down hard enough in one of the flower beds to knock the breath out of him. As he rolled over and gasped for air, he looked up and saw the big man stomping toward him, a look of outrage on the black face.
Well, thought Preacher, it looked like this part of the chore was about to turn out to be a mite harder than he’d expected.
Chapter 11
“You son of a bitch!” the black man yelled. “You landed right in my nasturtiums! I’m gonna thrash you within an inch of your life!”
“Well, you threw me here, you damn fool!” Preacher shouted back as he leaped to his feet. “Nobody does that to Jim Donnelly!”
Preacher knew he couldn’t take it easy in this fight. He had drawn an opponent who was too fast and strong for that. If he didn’t put his best effort into it, he might wind up crawling away with broken bones, and he couldn’t afford that.
So this time he waited for the other fella to throw the first punch, and when the big, hamlike fist came sailing toward his face, he slipped aside so that it barely grazed his ear as it went past and stepped in to hammer a right into the man’s sternum.
That was a good move, or at least it would have been if Preacher’s fist hadn’t felt like it had just slammed into a brick wall. The man brought up a looping left that clipped Preacher on the side of the head and sent him rolling on the ground again as rockets went off behind his eyes.
“Damn it, you’re in my flowers again!”
The man reached down and slapped his massive hands on Preacher’s shoulders. As he hauled Preacher upright, Preacher sent his right fist whistling skyward in an uppercut that caught the big man on the jaw. Preacher had hoped that anybody as solid in the middle as the black man might have a glass jaw, but that hope was dashed as the man shrugged off the blow and started shaking Preacher like a terrier shaking a rat.
The big son of a bitch had to have a weak spot somewhere, Preacher thought, so he went for the most likely area.
He kicked the fellow in the balls.
Finally, something went right. The man’s eyes widened, and the black face turned an ashen shade of gray. His hands slipped off Preacher’s shoulders. He didn’t double over in agony as most men would have done, but at least he hunched his shoulders and bent over a little as he clutched at his injured groin.
Preacher clubbed his hands together and swung them against the corded muscles on the left side of the man’s neck. That sent the man staggering to his right. While the man was off balance, Preacher kicked his right knee. That leg collapsed, dumping the man on the ground. Preacher landed on top of him and swung his clubbed fists again, back and forth, slamming them into the man’s face twice.
“That’ll be enough.”
The cold, dangerous voice spoke from the porch. Preacher twisted his neck to look back over his shoulder. He saw the sandy-haired man from the ferry standing there, a small but deadly pistol in his hand. The gambler pointed the gun at Preacher. It was cocked and ready to fire.