“There he is!”
Bell leaped the space between the first and second barge and ran faster. He barely heard the howls behind him, his eyes fixed on the next barge, and the next, and the single light burning on the steam tug. He jumped from the last barge onto the tug and cast off its lines. The current took it immediately and dragged it downriver swiftly into the dark, beyond the mob, but away from the breakwater where Jim and Mary were hiding.
7
MISTER, WHAT IN TARNATION ARE YOU UP TO?”
The little tug was a simple flatboat with its boiler and smokestack standing on deck between the helm and a coal bin. Isaac Bell had just grabbed a fireman’s scoop and was reaching to open the furnace door when an elderly night watchman with a long white Civil War beard rose, yawning, from a sleeping nest of coiled rope and canvas.
He saw the dark silhouette of the tall detective loom against the burning courthouse, and he pawed a six-gun from his waistband.
Bell snatched it away.
“Sir, I’m only going to borrow your boat for a short ride. Can you let me do that?”
“No, sir. She’s not your boat. She belongs to the Gleason Coal Company. I cain’t let you steal her.”
“Don’t make me throw you overboard,” Bell snapped, praying the old fellow would believe he meant it because, if he didn’t believe him, Isaac Bell had no idea what he would do next.
The old man blinked, looked down at the black water, and said, “Don’t hanker to go swimming, just now.”
“Does she have steam up?”
“A mite. I threw some coal on a while back.”
“Throw some more on.”
“Well, all right. It’s not like I’m helping you steal her, is it? I mean, I cain’t just let her drift into the rocks. Which she’s about to do.”
Bell opened the quadrant, sluicing steam into the piston, felt the propeller engage, and spun the spoked wheel. The little tug stopped drifting and headed upstream into the current. He steered for the now distant breakwater and tried to coax more power out of her. The steam gauge showed that with her furnace banked for the night, she had barely enough pressure to make headway.
The old man scooped some coal into the firebox and banged the door shut. “Son, you a river pilot?”
“No, sir.”
“Looks like you run steamers before.”
“Only yachts.”
“Yachts? Mr. Gleason’s got a yacht. Named Monongahela, after the river— See that courthouse burn? I declare, it will ignite the company store next.”
Mary Higgins, thought Bell, was probably cheering from the bank.
He steered past the barges and the dock to the breakwater where he had left them. They were gone. Searching the bank, he spotted them, running back toward the courthouse. Three men were hot on their trail. Bell swung the tug toward them.
One of the pursuers pulled ahead of the pack, waving a baseball bat. Two yards behind Mary, he raised the bat high in the air. Bell let go the wheel, drew his Colt, took careful aim, and fired his last bullet. The man dropped his bat and fell. His friends tumbled over him.