Free Arkansas Assault by Jon Sharpe Page A

even on the Pacific Ocean, though never far from the coast.
    Cap’n Billy’s tugboat brought back a lot of memories. It was a flat craft with the sheer—the top of the tug’s sides—running only a foot high. The bow was open for loading and off-loading whatever Cap’n Billy was hiding. On a hot night like this, a myriad of acrid odors—the remnants of various things the Cap’n had hauled—kept the air sour. The sentimental sound of the squeezebox playing an old forlorn Irish sea ballad brought back Fargo’s time on the water.
    Fargo ground-hitched his stallion and walked down the hill leading to the riverside where a heavy rope lashed the tug to a large steel spike driven deep into an oak tree.
    No cargo onboard tonight. Just an old man sitting on the empty deck with a dog lying next to his chair and a cat on his lap.
    Cap’n Billy didn’t stop playing but he did look up and say, “Sara Jane told me I was gonna have a visitor tonight.”
    Fargo boarded the craft and walked its length to where Cap’n Billy sat.
    “Sara Jane is your daughter?”
    “Nope. She’s a witch.”
    “I see.”
    “I can tell by your tone you’re not a believer.”
    “Not a believer, not an unbeliever. I could be convinced either way.”
    “Have a seat, stranger.”
    Fargo smiled. “I guess she didn’t tell you my name, huh?”
    The Captain quit playing. “See, there’s that skeptic tone again. She ain’t that advanced in her witchery yet.”
    “I see.”
    “She’s my niece and she ain’t but ten years old.”
    “Oh.” Fargo knew that this wasn’t going to be fun or fast. Here was an old man who loved to talk and ramble while he talked. And getting him to focus would take some work.
    “Most witches don’t get good ’til they get their menses.”
    “I guess I hadn’t heard that one.”
    “That’s ’cause you’re like most people. You don’t want to hear it. It scares ya to think about, that there’s a whole world all around us—this invisible world—that really controls everything we do. But you’d rather not know about it because then you’d have to do somethin’ about it. You’d have to start wearin’ garlic to keep the vampires away, and keep a silver bullet to fend off the werewolves, and wear special amulets and crystals at special times of the year so the demons don’t get you.”
    It crossed Fargo’s mind that sitting out here with this old fart could get downright spooky if he let it. Just the river and the wild woods on both banks and a span of sky that seemed eerily alive with glowing stars. He half expected to see some lizard-like monster come up from the water.
    “I actually came here to ask you about Skeleton Key.”
    “You stay away from Skeleton Key.”
    “How come?”
    He was dressed in a soiled captain’s hat and a ragged red shirt that had once had longer sleeves. Apparently he’d torn them off when the weather had turned hot. He had one glass eye, an earring dangling from his left lobe, and several holes where teeth had once resided. He set his squeezebox down and picked up a violently hairy gray cat and began to stroke her.
    “The screams.”
    “The screams?” Fargo said.
    “I’ve heard ’em.”
    “On Skeleton Key?”
    “You bet on Skeleton Key.”
    “Anybody else hear these screams?”
    “You don’t take my word for it?”
    “It’s always better when you have two or three other witnesses.”
    “Well, for one, Queenie here heard ’em.”
    “The cat?”
    “You damn betcha the cat. You got somethin’ against cats?”
    “No, nothing at all. It’s just that Queenie might have a hard time telling me about the screams. If you see what I mean.”
    “Well, I can hear her just fine and dandy. She talks to me all the time. Don’t you, Queenie?” At which point the cat looked up and lapped his chin with a long pink tongue. Hell, maybe they did communicate with each other.
    “And she wasn’t the only one who heard them screams.” He nodded down to the sad-eyed