CAPTAIN RUSSELL WAS not a heartless man; merely one with a problem; or, to be strictly accurate, a man with many problems, of which the latest was the most surprising and difficult. He found himself in the somewhat ambiguous position of being an admiral, a supreme commander on the deck of a craft where courtesy as well as tradition required that he should not interfere with the captain or his running of the ship.
In the wide-reaching plan to gain sudden wealth at the expense of others, looting the gold camps while appearing to serve as their agent, the idea and the details had all been Russell’s. That made him the senior officer or, less elegantly, the boss. In his own mind he preferred to think of himself as a businessman, an executive who had seen and grasped an opportunity.
Others might assess such activities as criminal. Russell avoided the term as distasteful. A criminal, to his mind, was someone who worked crudely, got caught, and suffered the consequences of his folly. He was above all that.
He had endured some agonizing moments when the Belle was lost, and it had seemed that his life and the golden booty of months of planning might go along with it. But even that misfortune had been turned to good account, and he had come on deck in this new dawn with the satisfied conviction that the world was again as bright as the promise of the rising sun.
The shout from a deck hand which attracted his attention presented the new problem, one which he would have counted not only unlikely but impossible. There was flotsam on the river—not merely one, but a pair of swimming, almost foundering horses. The animals were some distance apart but within his range of vision. Each animal was burdened and in danger of becoming prey to the current. With increasing amazement, he recognized all three of the humans. One was Molly Molloy. Always appreciative of beauty, particularly feminine beauty, Russell had been distressed at the necessity of abandoning her to an uncertain, or perhaps only too certain fate, when taking off from the wreck of the Belle.
Unbelievably, she had survived up to now, clinging alongside the one cayuse until it went down. Her brother and Montana Abbott were with the other.
A quick survey confirmed his first impression, that all three were in desperate straits, in need of help. His first impulse was to lend it, if possible. But a second thought, crowding hard on the first, was reason for at least a third.
The coup which he had managed had come about only by careful planning and cold execution. A successful executive never allowed himself to be influenced by sentiment.
A substantial portion of the gold which he had grasped belonged to this trio, or at least to their custody. So to risk losing it when victory was assured would be to undo the work of months.
All that was really necessary was to remain uncertain, to hesitate a few extra moments, while the river solved the problem. On the other hand, to do nothing seemed heartless.
The dilemma was taken out of his hands. He was Captain Russell, but this was the Star of the West, and Captain Foster was in command. He had grasped the situation, but only in part, and was issuing prompt orders, getting a small boat and oarsmen over the side in record time. At his request, Captain Russell took charge of the rescue boat.
That was a logical choice. No man was more at home in turbulent waters, more fitted to command in such a situation. This was an emergency which called for prompt action.
There had been no time for argument or explanation, and Russell was curiously relieved. The pull of the current favored him. He saw a bobbing head, reached, grasped a wrist, then drew Molly aboard. This really was working out nicely. She was a woman and should be saved; and her unsupported word would pose no real threat.
Now they had only to work back to the Star, and the swirling Missouri would do the rest.
Under such circumstances, even a pretty woman could look as bedraggled as a drowned mink. Hauled into the boat, Molly appeared on the verge of collapse. Water streamed from her clothes, while her hair straggled across her face and eyes. But she did not behave as might be expected of a lady, sinking into a swoon or even collapsing. She cleared her eyes with a quick gesture, looking about hopefully, almost desperately. Then she cried out and pointed.
Despite its double burden, Abbott’s pony was still doing very well. Both Montana and the horse had been aided when Mike Molloy went limp, fainting instead of his sister. Illness and strain had exacted its toll. Buoyed by the water, he was easier to hold.
But it was taxing to maintain a grip on both man and horse when harried by the buffeting of the current. The flood tide raged toward the bank, only to be thrown back by it, the millrace dragging, sucking, irresistible. All at once the horse was gone, still heading for the shore. Montana was left with Molloy.
Alone, he might make it. Together, the odds were higher than a gambler would find prudent. The current worked to shove them away from the shore, and below was white water, the narrowing race of a canyon.
All that was in Molly’s cry as she comprehended the situation. Being a woman and perverse, she did more than exclaim. Snatching a loose oar, she leaned far out, extending the blade so that Montana could grasp it.
You did not fight a woman, especially under such circumstances. Russell assisted Molly in dragging the pair into the boat.
The sun came slanting across the decks as they were hoisted aboard the Star. Mr. Severson, who had been mate of the Belle, raised his eyebrows in a sardonic question, but assisted Montana to a room and a change of dry clothing.
Montana gulped three cups of hot coffee, and then reaction and exhausted claimed him. As sleep overcame him, he was vaguely aware that the Star of the West was getting under way.
It might have been the clamor of his stomach, denied more than coffee far too long, that awakened him; or the change in motion could have had its effect, as the Star nosed to a convenient anchorage for the night. Tied to a tree at the edge of a bank, it swung gently to the softer push of a backwater.
The last rays of the sun slanted into the room as Montana stirred, opened his eyes, and strove to orient himself.
The room was small, though comfortable; hardly of a class with the luxurious appointments of some of the fancier packets which plied the lower river, but practical for the pioneering assignments of the unpredictable Missouri.
The immediate past seemed more a bad dream than actuality. Only the clamor of his stomach, the soreness and stiffness of his muscles, gave assurance that all had been real. This must be evening, so he had slept from sunrise to sunset. He’d lost track of just how long it had been since he’d eaten, but it had been far too long.
He was pulling on a pair of boots, noting that, like the shirt and pants, they were not his own, when the door opened.
The man who entered carried a tray, and Montana’s attention centered on it like a hound’s on his quarry. It held a meal from which wafted delectable odors, and whether this was breakfast, dinner or supper, or a combination of all three, he was in no mood to question. The bearer placed the tray on the bed and nodded.
“Cap’n thought you might be hungry by now,” he observed. “So I brought you this.”
“The captain was right, and you can tell him that I’m more than obliged,” Montana returned. “But I could have come to the regular table. No need to wait on me.”
“I hope you enjoy it,” was the reply. “The captain will look in on you a little later.”
He went out, closing the door, and Montana lost no time in helping himself. It was not until he had partially satisfied his hunger that the thought crossed his mind that he had heard a faint click as the door closed. Examination confirmed that he had not been mistaken, however lulled from his customary alertness by such hospitality. A key had been turned in the lock.
Shrugging, he returned philosophically to his supper. They had rescued him, along with Molly and her brother. It was hardly surprising that the reaction of men like Russell and Severson would be practical, if not actively hostile.
He waited calmly for the visit of Captain Foster, then stared with surprise when the door opened and the captain entered. A soft dusk was filling the room, but there was still ample light.
Foster filled the doorway, a tall, lean man, very upright, eyes as cold and impersonal as the leads of cartridges for the new Colt’s revolvers. The skin of hands and face was taut and brownish. With advancing age it would take on the hue of saddle leather.
Montana came instinctively to his feet. Momentarily they regarded each other. Foster advanced a couple of careful steps, closing the door behind him. Despite the softness of his voice, the tone held a rasp suggestive of a file.
“I trust that you are well recovered from your ordeal in the river, Captain Abbott.”
Shock still coursed in Abbott like the flood tide of the river. Whatever he had expected, he had not been prepared for this. His reply was mechanical.
“Thank you, Captain Kimberly. I’m doing very well.”
The room contained only a single chair. The captain seated himself on the edge of the bed.
“Fate plays some strange tricks, Mr. Abbott. Pranks might be the better word. I didn’t recognize you in the water this morning. Had I done so …”
He left the sentence unfinished, the words hanging suggestively. Montana understood. He had been prepared for suspicion and probable hostility from Captain Russell, but that Russell’s co-captain in piracy should be Fane Kimberly had never occurred to him.
“I would still be in the river—or in the hands of the Indians,” he finished.
Kimberly drummed with bony fingers on an equally bony knee.
“Such a solution would have simplified matters,” he agreed.
A remembering silence ran between them. It was, on reflection, not so surprising that Captain Foster was Captain Kimberly, like Abbott, late of the armies of the Confederacy. What had gone before helped to explain his presence, as well as the doubtful enterprises in which he was engaged.
They had met twice before, during the war years. It had been Abbott’s luck, or perhaps his misfortune, to stumble upon evidence which in duty bound he had turned over to his superiors; evidence that Kimberly was actually a spy for the Yankees.
That had been sufficient to endanger Kimberly and hurt his career, to engender animosity if not active enmity between them. Had it stopped there, it would have been sufficiently damaging.
But a chain of events, once started, could be like a pack of firecrackers. When one ignited, the others exploded in turn. The old Confederacy was a thing of the past, a shattered dream, and Kimberly’s loyalty or lack of dedication to that cause could no longer matter. What had counted then, and afterward, was the suspicion, leading to further revelations, that Kimberly had been not only a double agent, but a double traitor.
Had he been impelled by patriotism to take such a course, that too would have been understandable and forgivable. But loyalty was foreign to his nature. He had worked only for himself, for a single reward, gold, as he was doing now.
The war was over with, and the no-longer-existent Confederacy no longer wanted him. But the Union did. The charge, Montana had heard, was high treason.
Which went far to account for Kimberly’s presence there on the upper river, far from his former haunts; also for the change in name and identity.
As for this dabbling in piracy, it presented only a slight additional risk to a man whose neck was already in jeopardy.
Ironically, Montana’s knowledge of past events, as the only man in that part of the country who knew Kimberly, was putting his own neck in equal peril.