Dead water - Barbara Hambly [47]
But in that case, why pay to have bogus chests taken back on board?
Or are they going elsewhere? To some house or receiving-office in Natchez? Did Weems and Fischer actually intend to stay for a time, until they recognized Hannibal?
January trailed the cart down Silver Street, and into the criss-crossed mangle of alleyways that spread along the feet of the bluff. Due to the lowness of the river the streets were fairly firm, but in high water at least a quarter of the buildings, to judge by the height of the stilts on which they stood, must flood. Crazy lines of duckboards zig-zagged among the sheds and shacks, and rude stairways ascended walls or rises of the ground. Mosquitoes hummed everywhere under the shadows of the houses, where weeds grew rank in standing puddles.
The dray was definitely not going back to the boat.
January recalled Mrs. Fischer's sharply intelligent dark glance, and the cool command in her voice. You're not touching a dime. . . .
He could easily imagine her as at home in Natchez-Under as she was in the Ladies' Parlor, sympathizing with Mrs. Tredgold about the proper methods of disciplining children.
He hung back as far as he could behind the dray, and thanked God that the blistering heat seemed to be keeping most of the troublemakers indoors. A couple of the black whores, and one who might have been Cuban or Mexican, called out to him from their windows, but he only smiled and waved and shook his head, and tried to look as unobtrusive as possible. Toward the end of Silver Street the ground grew sodden: here the river had cut in behind the last of the buildings and the ground sloped down to a sticky morass of dessicated gray weeds and puddles teeming with crawfish and gnats. On the edge of this slough, the buildings all stood on stilts, and the farthest out—whose rickety gallery was occupied by half a dozen drinkers spitting tobacco down into the water—was reached by a crazy plank gangway that stretched from its door to terra firma. Beneath it the shore currents surged sluggishly around the pilings that held it up, and little drifts of leaves, tree-branches, and what looked like the dead body of a British sailor snagged up against them, to provide footing for legions of rats.
Before this crooked gangway the dray drew rein, and January saw next to the gangway a roughly painted sign announcing the building to be the Stump.
And the man waiting for the dray at the bottom of the gangway, with an ax and pry-bar in hand, was none other than the Reverend Levi Christmas.
EIGHT
It took the Reverend two whacks of the ax to open the trunk. He and the drivers didn't even bother to carry it indoors.
“Piss on it,” said the Reverend, and drove his ax-blade into the ground so he could momentarily remove the cigar from his mouth. “Fuckin' bricks.”
“Fuck me.” The driver scratched his head—not in puzzlement, but with the air of a man who has good reason to do so.
From where he watched, crouched behind a tangle of weed and hackberry under the stilts of a near-by shack and up to his insteps in rank-smelling seepage—January could see that the trunk did indeed contain bricks.
A flash of pink on the gangway behind him made the Reverend whirl, and like a panther he bounded to intercept the dainty form that tried to scurry past him. He caught her by the wrist and dragged her to the dray with such violence that her stylish hat tumbled from her head, but January had already recognized the frock, with its ruffles of blond lace and its bunches of silk roses on the sleeves.
“You been diddled, you little spunk-bait! You and that toss-pot Irish boat-driver of yours!”
“Piss on you!” retorted Miss Skippen, trying to pull her wrist from the Reverend's iron grasp. “Molloy said they'd stole money and was takin' it north! He said he knew the man from seein' him at the bank! This has got to be a trick!”
“Of course it's a trick, you brainless