"Mebbe we starts callin' ya 'Iron-Bound' 'stead o' th' Ram-Cat, sah." Andrews tittered, immensely relieved and slightly teasing.
"We will not!" Lewrie snapped, struggling to sit upright despite his sailors' protests. He gaped downwards, thinking it must have been a weakly propelled shot, for all of Charite's remorseless accuracy. It had further been blunted by his white leather sword baldric that angled cross his chest, by a doubled-over gilt-laced coat lapel atop it, and lastly, by the insubstantial obstacle of his waist-coat and shirt that had absorbed most of the ball's force. Even so, his flesh had been split by its impact, and when he gingerly massaged his chest near the seeping, slight wound, which was already swelling and turning the most garish shade of purply green in a bruise as wide as his hand-span, he thought he could feel something broken inside-a rib or two perhaps, his breastbone chipped, maybe? Dented? Thank the Lord, indeed, though, there wasn't a gaping, spurting, grape-red hole in his hide!
"Damn my eyes, but she shot me," Lewrie wheezed. "She actually shot me! Tried t'kill me!"
Not that I really blame her… much, Lewrie told himself with chagrin; 'Tis a bloody wonder some woman didn 't try ages ago! And by the queasy expression on Andrews's phyz, his longtime Cox'n must've been wondering the same thing.
"Where is she?" Lewrie demanded, head aswivel in search for her. "Way off yonder, sah," Andrews had to say, waving northward at a fog-hazed horizon. Lewrie couldn't spot another boat anywhere.
"Damme, we've lost 'em. But if Jugg is still after 'em… we might get lucky yet," Lewrie sadly decided. "Might have 'em in irons by nightfall."
"We head back to de ship, Cap'm?" Andrews solicitously asked. "Ya need t'let Mistah Hodson an' Mistah Durant, de Surgeons, tend to ya, sah. Bind up yer ribs an' such?"
"Aye, Andrews, that'd be capital," Lewrie was forced to agree. "It strikes me that I might've done enough and more today for King and Country. I've earned myself a lie-down!"
"Amen t'dat, sah," Andrews said with a chuckle. "Make y'self comf'table as ya can, an' Desmond an' me'll fetch ya back to Proteus, quick as a wink. Mebbe Jugg will cotch dat girl for ya, an'… "
"Ah-hemm!" Lewrie growled at that unfortunate slip, tossing in a grumbly "Arr!" for good measure as he pressed his handkerchief over his wound and eased down to sit on the gig's floorboards, seepage and the state of his uniform bedamned, to lay against the forward thwart. Half prone, he found it easier on his ribs to breathe.
Andrews and Desmond got the gig turned about and set themselves a slow but deep-biting stroke that would get him to safety and still not completely exhaust them, and the metronomic rumbling creak of oars in ungreased tholes, the thrust and glide of the boat between strokes, and the gurgle-chuckling of passing water began to lull him.
Do I really want her captured? he asked himself, puzzling over why he didn't utterly despise her and wish her heart's blood, since she'd come damned close to spilling his. All in all, Lewrie reckoned, it had been a shitten business they'd done… but it was done. And even if Charite escaped, once the report on this affair was published in London papers the tale would make its way to New Orleans sooner or later and it would be up to the incensed Spanish to do the real dirty work. In spite of all the depravities she'd been involved with, he could almost pity her, when the Dons got their hands on her.
Luck to you, girl, he thought, lolling his head back to admire the clearing, bright blue sky; but, damme if I ain't pleased t'be shot of you!
He would have laughed at his play on words,… but he suspected it would hurt.
EPILOGUE
Miranda: O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world
That has such people in it!
– The Tempest, Act V, Scene 1
William Shakespeare
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Crack! went the Girandoni air-rifle, little louder than the dry snap of a twig on the forest floor, and the wily old torn turkey leaped as its tiny skull was shattered, wings flapping, breaking into a staggering run for a second or two before it realised it was dead and fell in a feathery heap.
"Waaw! "Peyton Siler marvelled. "An' at a hun'erd paces, too!"
"Damn if 'at don't beat all, Jim Hawk!" Georgie Prater cheered, as loud as he dared on the lawless Natchez Trace without drawing undue attention from a roving Chickasaw or Choctaw band, a pack of frontier outlaws, or down-on-their-luck and desperate travellers. "Wisht I'd o' bought me one, too."
Jim Hawk Ellison painfully rose to his feet from where he knelt, still stiff from his healing wound, one hand dug into the bark of the tulip poplar tree he'd used for cover at the end of his stalk. "Damn' if it ain't a God-Hell wonder, at that, boys. There's gonna be a lot o' surprised squirrels in Campbell County once I get settled. Eat on squirrel an' dumplin's ev'ry goldarned night."
"Dependin' on whether ya find a wife t'cook 'em for ya," Siler said with a sly chuckle.
"Figger, with what I won off those two sailor boys in Natchez, I just might manage, Peyton." Ellison gently laughed along. "Georgie, I'd much admire did ya go fetch Mister Tom. Still got a hitch in my get-along." And Georgia Prater dashed to do his bidding, though not without an Indian's caution to go silently and skirt the clearing roundabout near the trees, his Pennsylvania rifle at the ready.
"Leastways, somethin' good come outta Looziana," Siler grunted. "B'sides gettin' outta New Orleans with our skins still on, and a wind down our gullets."
" 'Tis a filthy, damp country, Peyton," Jim Hawk commented as he slung his air-rifle over his shoulder, a wary eye kept on the dark and thick woods even so, for an unwary man on the lonely Natchez Trace was as good as dead, and even a party as large as his could still be taken in ambush, did they ever let their guard down. None of them would lay in easy sleep 'til they reached tiny Nashville. "At least we can say that we came all this way, saw it, and had us a little adventure. But I'd not give you five dollars for th' whole damn' place. Why Congress is hagglin' over sendin' an army down there t'take it, well… more power to 'em, but they've not had t'live in it like we did. They decide to try 'er on, I'll hoot an' holler loud as anybody else, an' pat 'em on the back as they march by, but… no thankee."
New Orleans, Spanish Florida, and Louisiana would, Jim Hawk was certain, be American someday… but not anytime soon, as he reckoned it. President John Adams already had himself half a war, a quasi war with France, and he doubted if he'd be able to bring Congress round to his point of view before the coming elections. If Jefferson got in, he might manage it, but… soon as Jim Hawk was back in Nashville, he'd put his reports in the mails to Washington City, along with his letter of resignation, and head back to the Powell's Valley to make a new beginning; a secure, settled civilian life, after years of war and filibustering for richer men. He had 250 Spanish dollars in his saddlebags, and that was enough for a man to found a mountain empire! So something good had, in truth, come from Louisiana!
"You foolish, foolish girl!" Papa Hilaire de Guilleri fumed yet again. Since he and Maman Marie had rushed back to New Orleans, he'd whiplashed between bawling, drunken grief over the loss of his sons and his patrie, to jib-bering dread of exposure, trial, and garotting, to anger directed to her, the only living target for his icy wrath. "What were you thinking, you…"