Free Smugglers' Gold by Lyle Brandt Page B

I need.”
    â€œOr, what?”
    â€œOr you can see this little piece without a head. How’s that?”
    Instead of budging, Ryder raised the Henry to his shoulder, sighting on the pirate’s face. “How do you see that working out for you?” he asked.
    â€œI mean it, boy! If you don’t think—”
    The Henry spoke, and he was gone, a dead weight sprawling on the deck behind Irene. She screamed, and might have fallen to the deck if Ryder had not closed the gap between them, taking her into his arms. He felt her shivering against him, weeping as she spoke.
    â€œMy God, he . . . You . . . How did you . . . ?”
    Lucky shot,
he thought. But said, “You’re safe now, let it go.”
    It wouldn’t be that simple, he imagined, but the
Revenant
was nearly out of sight, soon to be lost among the Keys. All that remained aboard the
Southern Belle
was dealing with the wounded and the dead.
    *   *   *
    T he captain—Angus Gleason, Ryder learned, from chatter overheard in passing—pulled himself together before coming down to deal with his excited, frightened passengers. A quick search of the steamer, carried out by crewmen who had disappeared during the fight, revealed no living pirates left on board. Three corpses were recovered, two male passengers and Ryder’s kill, all stowed together in the
Southern Belle
’s cold room pending arrival at Tampa, some nineteen hours hence. Ryder helped wrap them in tarpaulin, bound with heavy twine, and made sure they were separated from the steamer’s stock of meat and vegetables.
    When that was done, life on the
Southern Belle
returned to normal, more or less. One of the passengers who’d died was traveling alone, no one to mourn him on the steamer, but the other one had been a married man. His widow shut herself inside her cabin, telling anyone who tried to talk her out that they could go to hell or she would see them in St. Pete. Among the other passengers, some five or six had minor injuries, small cuts and bruises suffered when the pirates came aboard. The captain’s worry, now, appeared to be that they might sue the Leary Line, and he was circulating in a bid to charm them out of it.
    Retreating to his cabin, Ryder cleaned the Henry and returned the rifle to its leather case. The busy work permitted him to ponder what had happened, wondering if he should take it as an omen for the job he’d been assigned in Galveston. That was a stretch, he realized, but when was the last time he’d even thought of pirates, prior to being given his assignment by Director Wood? Sometime in childhood, probably, never believing that they still existed in the flesh.
    Maybe it was true, he thought, that wonders never cease.
    But linking the attack to Bryan Marley, still some seven hundred miles and forty hours distant, with the stop-off at Tampa, was stretching things too far. Even supposing that he dealt with pirates roaming through the Keys, that didn’t mean he knew about specific raids they staged on coastal shipping. And he obviously couldn’t know that Ryder had been sent to find him, traveling under an alias.
    Unless there was a spy at Treasury.
    Ridiculous.
    Even if Marley had a spy inside the Secret Service, newly formed in Washington, willing to tip him off, how would he get the news in time to mount a raid against the
Southern Belle
? And would he waste that kind of energy, trying to reach a single passenger among the several hundred traveling aboard the paddle-wheeler, without knowing who he was or even what he looked like?
    No. The very thought was foolish.
    His stomach growled, reminding him of how long it had been since breakfast. Ryder checked his pocket watch and saw he’d have to wait another hour until lunch was served, assuming that the dining hall opened on time.
    At least the battle had not killed his appetite. In fact, the only thing he felt, aside