Gonna be the blond jasper with the scar. Twenty-five cents on it."
"You got it."
"There-the door moved."
Still completely unseen, January checked the site, made completely sure of his aim-for he knew he would only have the one shot-and with quiet deliberation, squeezed the trigger and blew off the back of Claud Trepagier's head.
Even as the Creole's body pitched forward January caught up his shotgun, ducked behind the nearest oak and yelled at the top of his voice, "Fire at will, men!"
At the same moment a shot cracked out from the house and Shagrue flung back his head with a gasp, clutching and grabbing a hole the size of a teacup at the base of his neck. Someone fired in January's direction but McGinty was already running for the trees.
The rivermen knew the folly of standing between an enemy and flame. Their chief gone, they fled, melting into the darkness on the heels of their employer without waiting to see who or how many their assailants were. Without a chance of getting paid it no longer mattered. Emerging from the smoke-filled lower story of the house, Madeleine and Augustus got off a couple of pistol shots, but-aside from Augustus's first target on Shagrue -hit nothing.
Four of the rivermen were picked up later by Lt. Shaw's guardsmen on the road. McGinty was arrested the following afternoon on the levee, trying to get steamboat passage to St. Louis. He was subsequently hanged.
Lt. Shaw came walking out of the darkness as January was checking old Albert's wound, the coachman laid out on the damp grass of the garden border on a quilt fetched from the kitchen. Madeleine, who went to the kitchen to bring whatever bandages she could find, found Claire the cook and Ursula the laundress tied to their bedsteads, bleeding and bruised. Claire returned with her, bearing medicines and a pitcher of tafia. She bound the ripped graze in Augustus's arm with perfunctory speed, and when Shaw appeared was dividing her solicitude between Dominique-who she assumed to be on the threshold of miscarriage in spite of Minou's assertions to the contrary-and Hannibal, stretched on another quilt and coughing bits of blood as well as smoke.
The house blazed like a massive torch, flames rising thirty feet from its roof. By that livid glare Madeleine, in her honey-colored gown, looked like a gold idol burning in sunset. She brought the rifle up at the muted squeak of the policeman's boots on the grass, and Augustus, scarred face smudged with soot and hair a spiky tangle, called. out, "Qui vive?" and slipped into the deeper shadows of the willows, just in case.
"Lieutenant Abishag Shaw," called out that high, nasal Kaintuck voice. "You folks all right?"
"We have two men wounded and one ill." January rose and went forward to meet him. From the kitchen quarters Madeleine had also brought him a shirt, rather short in the sleeves over his powerful arms. "Can your men help us carry them to the overseer's house? There's nothing that can be done for the house here," he added.
Shaw considered the conflagration thoughtfully, cracked his knuckles, and said, "I have to 'low you're right on that. And those fellas?"
He nodded toward the two bodies that still lay between the house and the trees, the blood smell almost' drowned by the gritty stink of smoke.
"One of them is my brother-in-law, Claud Trepagier," said Madeleine, with soft dignity. "The man who was behind this-ambuscade. The man who murdered Angelique Crozat in mistake for me." Her dark eyes were very calm, looking up at the tall policeman with a kind of defiance. "The other man is one of those he hired, first to ambush me, then to come here ahead of me in the hopes of catching me alone.
They locked my servants in the mill house. We..." She passed her hand quickly across her brow, and that steely strength wavered. "They're probably chained. The keys..."
"They'll be on Claud's body," said January. Together, he and Shaw walked to the sprawled mess that had been Claud Trepagier.
"Nahurn Shagrue," remarked Shaw and spat into the glittering grass. "As I do live and breathe. I wondered where he came by that money he was gamblin' yesterday. Mighty pretty shootin'," he added. "What was it, a long rifle?"
January hesitated, then said, "It looks that way." He bent to empty the man's pockets. There was a black iron key there on a ring-simple, a pattern he recognized of old. Looking at it in his bandaged palm brought back the wave of