According to Hoyle

  Cage and Gabriel Rose were two men who prayed not to be recognized. They were men it paid not to recognize. But some men, mostly foolhardy outlaws and young colts who were too stupid to know any better, wanted their names known. They wanted that dime novel title, that reward poster circulated, and they wanted people to call them out in the streets. Usually, they didn’t live long enough to see it happen.

  Wash knew all this, just like Cage did. He seemed to be trying to decide which type of man Bat Stringer was. Finally, he just shook his head in answer to the question.

  “I know you don’t,” Stringer cooed to him. “You know why?”

  Wash just stared at him, seeing that it was a rhetorical question this time around.

  Stringer turned to the passengers and raised his hands. A frightened silence fell on the room. He was an impressive figure, standing tall and foreboding, seeming to loom over Wash and Cage with his hands spread wide.

  “There are two known outlaws on this boat with you tonight!” he shouted in a booming voice. “I ain’t one of ’em! One of ’em is right here at my feet, though. You might know him as Whistling Jack Kale!”

  Several gasps sounded at the mention of the dreaded outlaw. A lot had been said about Whistling Jack Kale in recent years, but Cage had never paid much attention to the rumors. The man had disappeared nearly a year previous, but the name still stirred terror in the hearts of those who knew it. And a lot of people knew it.

  Cage glanced around in alarm after Stringer’s words, his stomach roiling in a slow panic. Eyes were on him, looking him over, trying to decide if they believed Stringer or not. Cage had never been more thankful for a new suit of clothes. At least he didn’t look the part of an outlaw just now. He glanced at Wash to find the marshal staring at him in disbelief. Cage shook his head vehemently, denying the accusation.

  “You folks going to let this marshal forfeit your lives for the sake of a no-good, murdering owl hoot?” Stringer continued loudly.

  “What do you want us to do?” one terrified man called out. “We got womenfolk and children on board!”

  “Tell me who the other prisoner is!” Stringer demanded in a voice that boomed through the large room.

  Several of the passengers cowered and others shifted restlessly. Cage knew that most of them would have shouted out the answer in a heartbeat if only they had known it. They didn’t understand that Gabriel and Flynn being free and, more importantly, being anonymous and underestimated, was probably their only hope of living through the night.

  It wasn’t Stringer’s style to leave crowds of witnesses, no matter what he was telling these people. Usually he came and went and no one was the wiser until they discovered the bank empty or the cattle missing. No one could even draw a picture of him, until now. This endeavor was wholly unlike Stringer, from top to bottom. Cage just didn’t know why. All he knew was that none of these people would make it to port alive if Stringer had his say.

  “It’s Dusty Rose,” a man suddenly answered from the far corner of the large room.

  Cage’s chin jerked as he turned to look at the man. His hand was bandaged and he stared back at Cage hatefully. Cage recognized him as the man who had drawn down on Gabriel earlier, the man Cage had shot.

  Wash lowered his head and shook it sadly. Cage’s heart sank. Now Stringer and his men would know what they were up against and react accordingly. Gabriel and Flynn didn’t have a chance.

  Stringer stared at the man who had spoken and then returned his attention to Cage. “That true?” he asked in a deceptively neutral voice.

  Cage glared back at him, trying desperately not to give anything away.

  “That who you’ve been partnerin’ with these days?” Stringer asked with something close to jealousy. Stringer had always been possessive; Cage knew that all too well. Gabriel was a dead man if he showed his face now, regardless of how false the assumption was that he’d left the Scouts to ride with Dusty Rose. This farce had gone far enough that Cage knew Stringer wouldn’t believe him even if he did answer now.

  He shook his head in answer anyway.

  Stringer viciously backhanded him. “Liar!”

  Cage didn’t move. He remained on his knees, twisted to the side, with his head hanging and his lower lip welling with blood yet again. He stared at the floor as a cold calm flooded through him. The next time Stringer raised his hand, he’d find himself missing another finger.

  Stringer stepped closer and bent toward him, whispering in his ear so only Cage and the marshal could hear him. “You left us. You left me. High and dry, claiming you was tired of the life. You left me. And here I find you runnin’ with Dusty Rose and a marshal’s escort. You think he’s better’n me? Hmm?”

  Cage’s gaze rose until he met Wash’s eyes. The man was looking at him with a new glint in his eyes, obviously having decided that Stringer was telling the truth about Cage’s identity, and probably wondering what Cage had really been up to all this time. He had no way of knowing that Cage wasn’t that man anymore. Cage closed his eyes and lowered his head. And who would believe him now anyway?

  Stringer straightened up and glanced around. “Spread out,” he ordered several of his men. “Bring Rose here. Alive. I’ve got business with him.”

  “The gold’s in the cargo hold,” Flynn told Rose.

  The shootist nodded as they stopped at the end of the deserted corridor on the third deck, and he peered around the corner. He motioned for Flynn to move and they continued until they were certain no one was patrolling the upper levels. It was odd that a search party hadn’t yet formed. Surely, other passengers had been able to escape.

  It was an intelligent preemptive move on the part of the hijackers, Flynn was beginning to realize, to put all the passengers and crew in one place. On a riverboat there was no need to set a lookout, and with everyone in one central location they could be guarded with a minimum of men while the bulk of the boarding party did the work of hauling the loot. That didn’t explain why they hadn’t just snuck down and offloaded the gold in the middle of the night with nobody the wiser. Flynn was past trying to decide why these men were doing what they were doing.

  But it was strange that no one was out searching for errant passengers. It made Flynn’s teeth itch. He and Rose knew one thing for certain: the intruders were now aware of their escape, and even though they weren’t searching yet for whatever reason, Flynn knew they could soon be swarming the ship looking for them. He and Rose had to move quickly while they still could and be thankful of the reprieve.

  It still made his teeth itch.

  Rose stopped in a dark corner and knelt, holding his side and breathing hard.

  “You okay?” Flynn whispered as he knelt beside him. The ruined material of Rose’s fine vest shone dully in the light. He was bleeding again.

  But Rose nodded, and he winced as he peered out at the approaching fog bank. It seemed their luck had turned. The fog would be to their advantage for now.

  “Where is the cargo hold?” Rose asked as he watched the rolling mist.

  “What? It’s below.” Flynn made an ineffectual gesture toward the bottom of the boat. “Below . . . decks.”

  “Yes, Marshal, thank you. But how do we get there?”

  “I don’t know,” Flynn answered with a shrug.

  Rose stared at him blankly.

  “Don’t you?” Flynn asked him in growing alarm.

  “Have you seen me being shown the way to the cargo hold at any point in this prisoner escort? I don’t know where I’m going!”

  “But you said you knew ships!” Flynn hissed angrily.

  “I know the top parts of ships! As a passenger!” Rose told him, practically spitting out the words as he tried to keep his voice down. “I don’t know what’s on the main deck any more than I know how to play a fiddle!”

  Flynn fought hard not to reach out and throttle the man. He closed his eyes to calm himself and breathed deeply. “Just . . . head down,” he said finally with another point at the floor. “
Down.”

  Rose rolled his eyes and pushed away from the wall, continuing slowly toward a junction in the corridors and what Flynn hoped were the bowels of the ship.

  Voices echoing through the soupy mist stopped them short, and Rose flattened his body against the side of the causeway. Flynn followed suit silently.

  “Give me a knife,” Rose said urgently.

  “What? No!”

  “Knife!” Rose demanded, and he held out his hand.

  Flynn grumbled under his breath and slipped him the Arkansas toothpick he kept in his boot.

  He watched with a growing dread as Rose handled the knife. The man took it and expertly twirled the long blade over his fingers, then gripped the handle upside down, holding it backward with the flat of the blade resting against his forearm. Flynn had seen some of the Rebel soldiers fight like that during skirmishes, the ones who came from the hills or the bayous, and later the Indians had shown him just how deadly a knife could be, holding their blades upside down in one hand and a tomahawk in the other, twisting round in circles as they slashed at their opponents. It had always struck Flynn as an oddly pretty sort of thing to be so destructive.

  The voices began to materialize into shapes as they waited at a corner, and Flynn pulled his head back as Rose remained. There were two men, obviously on some type of patrol or finally performing the search Flynn had been expecting. They moved slowly, speaking in whispers as they approached the corner where Flynn and Rose were hidden on the other side. Flynn moved next to Rose to peek around the corner again, confident the fog would hide them.

  “Got a bee in his bonnet ’bout something,” one of the men was saying, sounding disgruntled.

  “Something about that quiet feller he don’t like,” his taller companion said. “Steve says the boss knew him back when.”

  “That quiet feller is Whistling Jack Kale. Used to run tight with Stringer. Taught the auger everything he knows.”

  “Think he taught him to be fast enough to take Dusty Rose?”

  “I don’t know. But I’m sure looking forward to seeing that showdown.”

  “Sorry to disappoint.” Rose lunged out into their path and turned in a graceful half circle, sliding the knife through the air and slicing through the first man’s throat. Flynn winced back from the spray of blood. With a complete turn of his body and another arcing swing of his arm as he turned the knife outward, Rose took the second man down without so much as a shout being uttered by either of them.

  Flynn carefully moved out onto the causeway, looking left and right, and then took a step toward Rose and the spreading pools of blood that were soaking the deck. Rose was watching him expectantly.

  “Where’d you learn to do that?” Flynn asked softly.

  “Their language wasn’t the only thing I learned from the Santee, Marshal.”

  Flynn stared at him warily for a long moment and then merely nodded in acceptance.

  “Should we hide ’em?” he asked with a gesture toward the two victims.

  “Let them be.” Rose bent and wiped the knife on one of the dead men’s legs. He began a grim search for all their weapons, patting them down. “They’ll serve as warning to anyone who finds them.”

  “Do we want them having warning?” Flynn asked as he watched Rose’s movements warily. He was sorely tempted to ask for the knife back, but Rose was otherwise armed now, anyway. There wasn’t any point in making an issue of it. Yet. He scowled at the bodies. “Seems to me we want surprise on our side.”

  Rose gazed up at him thoughtfully and then down at the bodies of the two men. “We can’t hide the blood no matter what we do with the bodies. We’ll just be wasting our time and vigor. Besides. They know we’re here. We won’t be surprising anyone, no matter.”

  “Right.”

  Rose continued to methodically relieve the dead men of their weaponry. To Flynn’s surprise, he didn’t go through their pockets looking for loot. Flynn was beginning to come to terms with that fact that Gabriel Rose was the real deal. The amusing nicknames and the self-deprecating jokes were just a façade. He wasn’t some two-bit horse thief or common grifter looking to make a name for himself. He wasn’t some dandy who’d ridden the rails out west and merely enjoyed the fame his luck had brought him. He was a deadly man, one who’d been taught and respected the hows and whys and rights and wrongs of killing. He was a man Flynn was sort of glad to have on his side tonight, a man he’d hate to have to go up against in a fight.

  After stripping the two men of all their iron, Rose stood again and handed Flynn one of the spare guns, then after making sure it was clean, he returned Flynn’s knife. Flynn took it wordlessly, and Rose nodded toward the rear stairwell.

  Cage was still on his knees, head lowered, his eyes closed as he prayed. He had never been a praying man, and he had always scoffed at the people who had prayed at the end, just before their lives had been taken. Most had been wretched men living wretched lives, never having believed in God and with no hope of redemption in their last violent seconds. Sort of like Cage.

  He didn’t pray for himself now, though. He didn’t know how or when it had occurred, but he cared about what happened to the two marshals. His conscience couldn’t handle any more deaths, but especially not the death of someone he respected, like Marshal Washington. Marshal Flynn had his good points too. He was a decent, honest man, and he didn’t deserve to die at the hands of Bat Stringer for trying to uphold the law and save lives.

  Cage couldn’t even think of Gabriel Rose without a violent shudder running through him. He thought maybe he could have loved the man, given the chance. Maybe he already did. The thought of finding that and then having it yanked away so suddenly was both terrifying and heartbreaking. He was desperately trying to think of some way to stop all this from happening, but he was no longer in a position of power or influence. He didn’t even know what was going on, much less how to stop it.

  Cage opened his eyes and jerked instinctively when he heard the sound of running feet on the wooden deck outside the salon. Stringer had been observing him, apparently, watching him for cues like he’d always done. Cage’s hearing was excellent, perhaps a bit of compensation from his maker for not being able to speak.

  Stringer turned away from him when Cage moved, aiming his gun at the open doorway.

  “Cap,” someone called from without before they ever came into the line of fire. The Border Scouts were still well-trained, Cage thought with a hint of pride. He was mostly responsible for that, even if these boys were all new. While Stringer had been the figurehead of the group, they had led it together, teaching their men to ride and shoot and fight and think. After the moment of self-congratulation passed, Cage cursed himself for having done any of it.

  Stringer lowered his gun and two men stepped into the circle of light thrown by the gaslights in the salon. Cage blinked at the unnatural darkness outside the stained glass windows. There was no moonlight. He hadn’t realized the fog had enveloped the boat so completely. It made it feel even more isolated on board the riverboat. There was no chance of outside help, no chance of anyone discovering their plight until it was far too late and the steamer had run aground full of dead passengers.

  Suddenly, Cage wondered who was steering the riverboat. The captain and pilot sat trussed up with yards of flounces in the corner, just like the rest of the crew. Surely Stringer had thought of bringing someone to take the helm. But would that person know how to navigate the tricky Mississippi?

  “Did you find them?” Stringer asked the new arrivals.

  The brawnier of the two men shook his head in answer. The thinner man was breathing hard, as if they had run to get there. “We got two men dead up top,” he said, panting as he held his hand to his hat.

  “What?” Stringer asked in a flat, stunned voice.

  “Logan and that new man, Harris,” the man said with a nod. “There’s blood ever’where. He butchered ’em.”

  Cage saw Stringer go pale. One thing Stringer had never been good at wa
s dealing with the unexpected. That had been Cage’s specialty, and that was something you couldn’t teach.

  As if he were thinking the same thing, Stringer glanced down at Cage and frowned. Again, Cage felt the brief pang of familiarity—memories of thinking their way out from between a rock and a hard place while looking into Stringer’s eyes—and again, he missed the life and the people he had left. For a moment.

  It passed quickly, however, when the two men began to tell what they had seen in more detail. Someone had attacked the two hijackers with nothing more than a blade, and quite handily at that. One of the men compared it to the aftermath of Apache attacks he had seen, their throats slit open and blood so thick the victims were barely recognizable.

  “Rose.” Stringer spat the name as if it left a foul taste behind. “That low-dealin’ piece of horseshit. Get back out there and find him. And watch your damn backs!” he shouted after the two men as they hustled off to do his bidding.

  With those men gone, just five men and Stringer were left to guard all the prisoners. Stringer didn’t seem bothered by the numbers. Cage slowly began to work at the cloth that bound his wrists.

  “Whistling Jack Kale,” Stringer said, as if turning over the name and testing how it sounded aloud. He began walking toward Cage with his hands behind his back. “Know why he whistled?” He was asking no one in particular. The passengers were all too scared or distressed to respond in any way.

  Cage swallowed heavily and tensed.

  “Whistling Jack Kale couldn’t talk,” Stringer informed his rapt and terrified audience. “But he could whistle. Couldn’t you Cage?”

  Cage glared at him hatefully for a moment, then closed his eyes and lowered his head again. He wished he could speak and refute it, but the fact that he couldn’t just lent more credence to what Stringer was saying.

  There was a heavy silence that followed the words. Cage opened his eyes when he felt Stringer moving. The big man was kneeling in front of him, meeting his eyes. His lips curled into a smirk. “Let’s you and me go have a little quiet time.”