Dead water - Barbara Hambly [128]
“Not the gold exactly,” said January. “And that brings me, Mr. Lundy”—he turned to the old pilot—“to a great favor I would like to ask of you.”
The following day, while Rose remained with the still-groggy Hannibal, January and Lundy borrowed Sheriff Lear's shay and drove down the river road to Hitchins' Chute. Davis, Jim, and Thucydides went along as armed and mounted escorts in case Levi Christmas's surviving bravos still lurked in the woods, but they encountered no trouble. As they passed under the mottled shade of willows and sycamores, January would hear, now and then, the far-off drift of voices from some hoe-gang or wood-cutting detail, singing as they worked under an overseer's eye:
Ana-que, anobia,
Bia tail-la, Que-re-que,
Nal-le oua, Au-Monde,
Au-tap-o-te, Aupe-to-te,
Au-que-re-que,
Bo.
Or sometimes it was,
Run to the rock, rock will you hide me?
Run to the rock, rock will you hide me?
And he'd see Thu turn his head, listening, a look of calculation in his eyes.
As if he flew high above the land in a dream, January saw in his mind the cautious figures slipping from rock to rock, from brush-thicket to brush-thicket, working their way toward whatever point along the river they had heard was a meeting-place. And 'Rodus—and others—were out there somewhere, gathering them in, patiently, like the Good Shepherd going back into the stormy night when he realized one lamb was unaccounted for. . . .
Once Jim turned his head at the sound of the singing, and January thought the old valet caught Thucydides's eye. Knowledge passed between them; Jim shook his head slightly, and smiled.
And Colonel Davis of course, riding importantly ahead with a rifle on his arm, saw nothing.
January slipped his hand into his pocket to touch the rosary of blue beads, the cheap steel crucifix. Holy Virgin, Mother of God, get them safe north. Cover them with your mantle of invisibility, your mantle as blue as the sky. Lead their feet, and guide them when they get there.
Guide me, too.
As they neared Hitchins' Chute, January, who was driving the shay, said quietly to the pilot, “The more I thought about it, the less likely it seemed to me that Weems—and Mrs. Fischer, no doubt the brains of the outfit—ever took the money out of New Orleans at all. Six hundred pounds of gold, and God knows how many cubic feet of banknotes and securities, would be both heavy enough and bulky enough to call attention to itself, even split up among many trunks and crates.
“But gold, even more than banknotes, is anonymous. Once they convinced their pursuers, by their rather ostentatious flight, that the gold had been taken out of New Orleans—once they'd scattered the pursuit—how much easier to leave the gold in New Orleans itself, in some safe place to which they could return in a year, or two, and slip it out of the country a little at a time.”
“Given that wildcat Fischer's nerve,” muttered Lundy, “I wouldn't put it past her to open her own bank in New Orleans.”
January laughed, “She might have, at that. By the places she and Weems were searching on the boat, it became fairly obvious to me that what they were looking for was not gold and banknotes, but a key—the key to wherever they'd hidden the gold. It was easy for Molloy to steal that key, but Molloy knew it was easy for someone else to take it back, either Fischer or Theodora Skippen. . . .”
“Who folded her tents and vanished during the night,” put in Lundy. “Without paying the landlady, I might add—and helped herself to the jewelry of Mrs. Roberson's daughters, whose room and bed she was sharing. I'm guessing Miss Skippen went south on the Wild Heart this morning. There's no other way out of town.”
“Minx,” said Davis, who had dropped back to ride beside the shay. The side of his face twitched convulsively.
“If she shows up in Natchez again,” said Lundy comfortably, “she'll get what she deserves.”
And just what did a girl deserve, wondered