River Runs Deep (24 page)

Pennyrile stared at the rock, his eye twitching. Elias could see the grease and fat smeared at his neck sores glistening in the torchlight, the wrapping soaked through. He looked stronger than when he'd last been in the cave with them. He'd come all through the cave with Mat, and still seemed fresher than he had that day Croghan had forced them all to exercise. It dawned on Elias that Pennyrile's feebleness had been part of his trickery. He'd been sick, but not as sick as he let on. It was the only thing that would have accounted for him being able to escape the cave with Stephen's book so quickly that night.

“No, boy, I don't think I will,” Pennyrile said. “Men, show the Negro why we won't be turning back.”

Elias watched as the pack of men rearranged itself, many of the men drawing pistols of all varieties into view. The barrels glinted in the torchlight as they pointed at the rock Elias and Nick hid behind.

Elias drew back. “You see, we've come prepared,” Pennyrile explained. “And all it will take is one of us to come across. We'll have your lantern and be on our way, and won't think twice about leaving a few neat holes in you for our trouble if you have any more tricks planned.”

Pistols. Six of them. But the men continued glancing nervously at the pit, none ready to be the first across. Elias knew how they felt. Still, it wouldn't hold them long.

“So,” Pennyrile said, taking a step forward, the toe of his boot only inches from the edge. “Will you do the wise thing and help us outright?”

Nick said nothing.

“Well, then,” Pennyrile rasped, sounding more impatient. “Your kind are simple, I know. I'll give you to the count of three before we come and get you.”

He began to count. “One.”

Nick made no sound.

“Two.”

The torch popped, another ember breaking free.

“Three.” Pennyrile almost sounded disappointed. “Very well,” he said. “Jones, you—” Pennyrile twisted to address the men, but maybe too quickly. Because as he did, another chunk of the torch burned free, broke off, and caught in the draft of Pennyrile's movement. It dropped straight down onto his shoulder.

“Damnation!” Pennyrile cried, moving to brush it off, but it was already too late.

All that bear fat. All that whale oil. All of it smeared on his neck, all of it soaking his neck scarf, all of it rubbing off on his own coat.

Pennyrile was halfway to being a torch himself.

It happened almost too quickly for Elias to believe. Pennyrile's deft fingers scrabbled at the knot with his free hand, undoing it and sending the scarf fluttering down into the pit. But the flames had spread to the coat, and now Pennyrile panicked and tried to slip his arms from the sleeves, only to fumble his grip on the torch. As he lunged for it, he lost his balance.

His men began to scream, began to understand what was happening, but by then it was too late. Pennyrile's feet danced beneath him, his whole body teetering at the edge of the drop. He was too close for any of his men to try and tackle him to put out the flames. None were
that
loyal, save his brother, who took a step forward. “Victor!” he yelped.

Pennyrile fell. It seemed to Elias that the time between realizing the pirate would fall and the time he actually did was impossibly long. Long enough for Pennyrile to look across the pit, toward the darkness of Elias and Nick's hiding place.

Elias would never forget the sight or the man's eyes or the smell of grease and oil and smoke and fear as Pennyrile tumbled over the edge, the chamber descending again into black.

A second later Elias felt the line in his hand go taut. Instinctively, he held on, the full weight slamming him and Nick into each other and into the rock. It took him a moment to realize what it was.

Pennyrile had caught the rope!

A faint glow from six or seven feet below the pit's lip confirmed it. Elias held fast, the men on the other side were shouting, horrified. Pennyrile's brother wailed along with the others.

“Nick?” Elias managed.

“I know!” Nick grunted back.

But all at once, the line went slack. Elias tumbled back, knocking his head hard against the rock.

Pennyrile had let go.

“Victor!” Pennyrile's brother screamed.

But there was no answer. Only the faint sound of the draft created by the falling weight of Pennyrile, and then the sickening thud that came impossibly later.

And no more.

A sob erupted from the dark. Pennyrile's brother began to call, “Victor! Victor?”

When no reply came, Nick sighed. “Tol' him not to move.”

“You've killed him, you low-down—”

“Afore you start your jabberin', let's get something squared.”

The men began to shout and scream and curse again, each word fouler than the last until Nick had had enough. “Pipe down!” he thundered.

Elias had never heard him so angry. He'd never heard him angry at all. But it worked. “Till I hear the sound of six pistols getting tossed into that pit, I ain't lightin' m'lamp, and I ain't sending word back up to my crew to come down and fetch you,” Nick growled.

“Never!”

“No!”

“We'll whip you till yer bones are showin'!”

The rest of the insults and hate were swallowed up by the roar of all the men shouting and screaming at once.

When the men finally began to lose steam, finally ran out of different ways to insult and threaten Nick without getting a rise out of him, the anger gave way to panic.

“Is he gone?” one whispered.

“He wouldn't leave us—” another said back.

“We're gonna die down here in the dark!”

“Get back here, you dirty low-down—”

“Hush up,” Nick called over to them. Then he muttered to Elias, “Lord. What a bunch. Gonna whip me one second and want me to hold they hands the next.”

“I ain't getting rid of my pistol!” one of them shouted out.

“Suit yourself,” Nick said lightly. “But you can't eat no bullets when you start to get hungry. Can't use 'em for light, neither. And it don't matter how many matches you got between you; it ain't enough to find a way to this side, or to get yourselves out. But I wouldn't figure on that, 'less one of you was dropping breadcrumbs 'long the way. There's near a hundred miles of passages we know of down here, and even more we don't know.”

“Yer lying!”

“Don't think I am. Cave's mighty big. Big enough nobody ever gonna find a mess of dead pirates. So if you want to live, chuck them pistols. If you don't, then you might as well follow your friend Pennyrile down that hole. Bad way to go, down Smiley, but I 'spect it's a sight better than waiting in the dark for death to find you in its own sweet time.”

Elias smiled. Nick's words were surely finding their mark on the other side. He heard whispers across the chamber.

Something clattered across the floor and into the pit.

Nick remained calm. “C'mon, now. I know the sound of a rock getting throwed when I hear it.”

More cursing.

“Don't be trying to fool old Nick. I'm a heap smarter than I look. Which you'd know if you had any light to see me by.”

Elias almost whooped with laughter.

A second later he heard the first sound of something heavy whistling through air, clattering against the walls of the pit as it spun down.

“That's one,” Nick said. “Old Pennyrile—devil rest him—he liked countin', didn't he?”

A bellow, half rage, half anguish, came in reply, but Pennyrile's brother didn't say any more.

Then Elias heard another pistol go over. Nick was right: they didn't sound a thing like rocks.

“Two,” Nick said. “Now you gettin' the hang of it.”

And then a shower of guns, one after another, some thrown so hard that they landed on the side where Elias and Nick hid. After the last pistol had been thrown, a voice shouted, “Now the light!” Elias recognized the rat-faced one's voice.

“Not quite,” Nick replied. “I think I'd like to hear some knives going down too. They sound altogether differ'nt, I expect.”

Elias listened as coats shifted, knives were tossed. Nick was right again. They did sound different. Some whistled. The blades clanged like broken bells.

“That's all,” the big one pleaded. “We got no more weapons. Just give us the light and let us go!”

“Go?” Nick sounded offended, spitting a great stream of tobacco off into the black. “Y'all just got here. No hurry.”

The men began to shout and curse and volley insults again.

“Naw,” Nick said in a voice that gave up his smile. “Cave's a good place. Good place to sit and think. 'Sides, no good ever come of rushing through nothing. Make yourself at home. I think we'll sit a spell.”

F
unny thing, sitting in the dark. Real, complete darkness. The kind where no light from anywhere showed. The kind where a body could wave a hand in front of his own face and only know it's there because he felt the breeze from the movement of it.

Full dark like that did a number on a man. If Elias hadn't been in it before, hadn't been sitting right next to Nick, hadn't spent the last month buried down there under tons of rock where it threatened dark all the time, he wasn't sure what he would have done while they waited for Mat and Stephen to return.

One thing he was certain of, he would
not
have been carrying on like Pennyrile's crew.

Those fellows were whimpering and begging. After a while Elias tossed little pebbles over their way, just to see what they'd do. But the men got so spooked every time he did it, wondering aloud what kind of thing might be creeping there in the dark, that Nick whispered to Elias to stop unless he wanted to send another one of 'em down the pit.

In the end, it was sitting in the dark like that that made them downright gentle as lambs when Mat and Stephen showed up—an hour or three later, who could tell—with lanterns and a way out. Even if they still had weapons, the sight of Mat Bransford with a double-barreled shotgun was enough to take the starch out of any man. Mat and Stephen weren't alone, either. They'd rounded up half a dozen men from the hotel, all of them armed with pistols.

Mat marched straight up to Pennyrile's brother, jabbing him in the belly with the shotgun. “Where're my girls?”

“Get this animal away from me,” Pennyrile's brother gestured at Mat but looked to one of the white men who had come down with him from the hotel. “He's got no right to a gun, much less one aimed at me!”

The man stepped forward to stand beside Mat. “Those kids're owned by Mat's wife's master. And when you go stealing another man's property, you're inclined to have all kinds of folk pointing guns yer way.”

“Tell me where my children are.” Mat buried the barrels deeper in Pennyrile's brother's gut.

“Boat's half a mile upriver. They're on board.”

“How many guards?” the deputy asked.

“One,” the other Pennyrile admitted. “We brought all the hands we had down here.”

Mat kept the shotgun in place, but rummaged inside the man's coat, rescuing the little husk doll from within. He gave one last jab with the barrel, spat quick down at the man's feet, and bolted from the chamber.

“Hey!” the deputy called, but Mat was already gone. He addressed one of the other men. “Go with him, Harlan. We'll catch up after we get this lot out of here.”

And faster than Elias thought possible, Stephen and the others had Pennyrile's men trussed up like a stringer of catfish. Hands bound and connected to each other, they began the long slow shuffle up and out of the cave.

“You all right, Nick?” Stephen called.

Nick struck a match and lit his lamp. “Never better.”

Elias found his legs and shook out the stiffness from sitting on the cave floor.

“Can't help noticing Pennyrile isn't here,” Stephen said, thumbing back toward the column of men.

“He's here, all right,” Nick said, pointing down into the pit. “But he ain't leaving.”

Stephen looked over the rim, his expression blank. Elias couldn't tell if it meant he was sorry to think of anybody—even Pennyrile—dying like that, or if he was just annoyed that he'd fallen in such a place where he'd be impossible to get out.

Elias suspected it was the latter. Stephen coiled the rope while Nick jumped across to help. Elias lingered. He'd just gotten over his fear of Smiley Pit, and now it was not only a terrifying hole in the ground, it was also a
grave
. Back in Virginia, he and the other boys used to dare one another to walk over a fresh grave in the churchyard.

He bet none of them would have taken this dare. He didn't even want to, but there was nothing for it. So he mustered his courage, took his little run, and sailed across.

“Where's Jonah?” Elias asked as he landed on the other side.

Stephen snorted. “Slipped off. He doesn't cotton to getting seen by a bunch of strangers. He's too clever for that.”

“Long as he made it okay,” Elias said.

“He's all right,” Nick said. “Probably found hisself a good perch to watch the parade.”

Elias loved the notion of Jonah hiding, watching, like always.

“C'mon,” Stephen said. “We'd better catch up. There's gonna be plenty of questions.”

The three dashed up the path and caught up to the column of men near Giant's Coffin. One pirate at the back of the line muttered something about the Negro having found himself a heck of a shortcut all of a sudden, but they shut up when Stephen hushed them.

Minutes later as they hooked into Broadway, another set of lights began moving toward them fast. “What's going on?” Doctor Croghan cried out. He held his lamp high, his eyes wide with confusion at the sight of the deputy leading the band of men under heavy guard.