The Whiskey Rebel

Leonidas looked as though he’d just learned of the death of a parent. His eyes grew wide with horror. “Oh, Ethan, why have you done it? Dalton’s a good man, but he won’t let this go.”

I would not defend myself, not even to say that this time it was not Ethan Saunders who took a bad situation and made it worse. Things would sort themselves out or I would die, but I would not allow my final words to be a speech of equivocation.

Mrs. Maycott walked into the foyer, followed closely behind by Dalton. The space was now crowded. Five of us stood where two or three might comfortably remain. Pearson led Cynthia halfway down the stairs but then stopped, remaining distant.

Dalton looked us over and shook his head, not bothering to hide his amusement. “They’re determined, I’ll say that for them. Now, back to their rooms. Where’s Skye and Jericho? We’ll need their help.”

“Skye’s been locked in a bedroom.” Pearson spat. “They’ve killed Richmond. Murdered him in cold blood.”

Dalton’s face turned pale and his lips, instantly bloodless, quivered as though he were a little child. Then, in an instant, his face turned cold and hard and frightening in its cruelty. He underwent a second metamorphosis, to something ugly and fierce, something that wanted vengeance. He stepped forward, then stopped. He swallowed. “Is it true?” he asked quietly. Then, when he received no response, he screamed the same words. “Is it true?” It was loud, ringing, like the roar of a deranged lion, and from his coat he pulled two pistols, primed. He held them aloft, not quite sure what to do next, and then he turned on us.

Joan said, “No, Dalton,” and stepped before him, but he pressed a hand hard to her breasts and shoved, and she staggered down the hall, losing her balance, falling upon her knees.

Leonidas took out his own pistol and pointed it at Dalton. “Fire your weapon, and you’re a dead man,” he said.

“For God’s sake, Leonidas, if you’re going to kill him, do it before he shoots me, not after. But I beg that no one shoot anyone. Look you, if you have eyes. That man there on the staircase, holding a gun to the back of his wife. He is the one who tells you we hurt your friend. We did not. It’s true we locked away your man Skye, but we did not hurt him, and he will tell you so himself.” I tossed Joan the key to Skye’s room. “Go unlock him and ask. Why should we kill one man and let another live? We would not. If this man, this known liar and thief, says your friend is dead, I doubt not it is because he did the killing himself.”

I did not know if they believed it, but it would buy us time, which was the best we could hope for at the moment.

Put away the knife, I mouthed to Lavien. To my astonishment, he obeyed, though I had no doubt he could have it out again in a matter of seconds, should he so desire. For now, however, he would give me my chance to take the devil’s soul after all.

I reached down and helped Lavien to his feet-to his foot. Whatever pain he had suffered, he appeared no more disabled than he had been before. I handed him his weapon, and I believe he made a good show of himself by using it as a crutch and doing nothing more.

“I don’t deny we wish to escape,” I said to Joan, “but that is how the game is played. You make your move, and we make ours. That is all. But that man,” I said, pointing to Pearson, “would hold a woman hostage-his own wife-which is as base a thing as a man can do. He killed your friend for no other reason than to lay the blame upon us.”

Lavien turned to Dalton and pulled his knife from his belt. It meant that he would be the target of the first fire, for a man ca

I thought back to that night in Helltown, that night that now seemed so long ago, when I had been prepared to let Dorland kill me. I had stood in the cold and the filth of the Helltown alley and considered that I might yet talk my way into living, but I held my tongue.

I would not stay quiet this time. The air smelled of powder and my eyes stung with smoke. Just behind me, a door lay open, and sunlight seeped into our little gathering storm of violence. This would likely end in more deaths. There were far too many people in the room for whom I cared-maybe the only people on earth for whom I cared-and I would not let it go that way. I had been built from my foundation with a capacity to deceive, and here, if ever there was one, was a time for deception.

“Hold!” I cried. “Hold! Let there be no more violence.”

Dalton pointed his other pistol to Lavien, who lay prostrate upon the ground, and I stood directly in his path.

All this time Cynthia had stood a mute statue; I had hardly dared to look upon her. A weapon had already been fired, and there was like to be more. I would not have my own resolve softened by her fear. But now Cynthia spoke up, and her voice, though wavering, had a kind of clarity that surprised me. “It’s true. My God, it is true. I knew he was cruel, but I never thought he could kill a man in cold blood. He walked up to him, and your man-he suspected nothing.”

Was ever anyone so in love as I at that moment? Did ever man, since the fall of Eve, so rejoice in the lies of woman?

“Shut up,” Pearson hissed at her. “It’s not true,” he said to the others, but if Cynthia had just spoken the most convincing of lies, her husband had the misfortune of sounding entirely false while speaking truth.

Leonidas trained his gun upon Pearson. “Let the lady go.”

“But they lie,” he said.

“You make a better case,” Leonidas said, “if you are not holding a gun to a woman.”

“She is my wife. I may use her as I wish.”

“Let the lady go,” Joan said, and her voice was hard and angry. Somehow Cynthia, held upon the stairs by her husband, a gun to her back, had become the most important thing to everyone in the room-not the dead man upstairs, not the two prisoners who had gotten free, not the open door to freedom that lay behind us.

He released his grip and Cynthia ran down the stairs and toward me. Our eyes met and she, for but a fleeting instant, nodded at me, and I knew that this was the moment when she must prove herself. She must be the woman she had always wished to be, or she would fail me. I dared to hold her eyes for a long important moment, and I hoped it would be enough for her to understand.

“You stupid bitch,” I snapped. “This is all your fault.”

She took a step back, the hurt on her face so real-or so seemingly real-it nearly broke my heart. “Ethan, I am sorry.”

“I told you no one gets hurt. I told you that.”

She shook her head. “I could not stop him,” she said. Tears began to well up in her eyes. “I tried to stop him, Ethan, but I could not. I tried. You should have been there for me, but you weren’t, and I could not do it alone.”

“Oh, shut up,” I said. “I never should have trusted you.”

Dalton had heard enough. He turned now on Pearson. While, in general, I do not care to see unarmed men viciously assaulted, here was a case in which I could make an exception. Dalton darted up the stairs, grabbed Pearson under his armpits, and lifted him high in the air as if he weighed no more than a baby. Dalton then locked his elbows and hurled Pearson-whose mouth was open in terror too primal for noise-through the air and hard against the wall separating the foyer from the sitting room. He struck with a sharp agonizing crack, spun slightly, and then landed with his feet against a narrow chair, his head toward us, though it was cocked at the most u