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She remembered the old woman then, the vendor of rock-oil in Whitechapel, and
the queer look she'd given Mick when he'd questioned her. Did others work in
concert with the angel of Goliad?
How had so strange a figure managed to enter Grand's tonight, to enter a
locked room? Where could such a man hide, even in London, even amid the
tattered hordes of American refugees?
"Say he's drunk?" the Texian said.
Sybil started horribly. "What?"
"Houston."
"Oh. Yes. In the smoking-room. Very drunk."
"Be his last, then. He alone?"
"He . . ." Mick. "He's with a tall man. I don't know him."
"Beard on 'im? Arm broke?"
"I . . . Yes."
He made a sucking sound between his teeth; then leather creaked as he
shrugged.
Something rattled, to Sybil's left. In the faint glow from the curtained
window she glimpsed the gleaming facets of the cut-glass door-knob as it began
to twist. The Texian leapt from his chair.
With the palm of one hand pressed tight against her mouth, he held the great
dirk before her, a hideous thing like an elongated cleaver, tapering to a
point. A length of brass ran along its spine; with the blade inches from her
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eyes she saw notches and nicks along the brass. And then the door was opening,
Mick ducking through, his head and shoulders stenciled out by the light in the
corridor.
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She must have struck her head against the wall when the Texian flung her
aside, but then she was kneeling, the crinoline bunched beneath her, watching
the man hoist Mick against the wall, a single great hand about his throat, the
heels of Mick's shoes beating a frantic tattoo against the wainscoting --
until the long blade struck, twisted, struck again, filling the room with the
hot reek of Butcher Row.
And all that happened after, in that room, was a dream to Sybil, or a play she
watched, or some kino-show wrought with balsa-bits so numerous, so tiny, and
so cleverly worked, as to blur reality. For the Texian, lowering Mick quietly
to the floor, closed and re-locked the door, his movements unhurried and
methodical.
She swayed where she knelt, then sagged against the wall behind the bureau.
Mick was dragged away, heels scraping, into the deeper darkness beside the
wardrobe. The Texian knelt over him --
there was a rustle of clothing, the slap of the card-case flung aside, a
jingle of change and the sound of a single coin, falling, rolling, spinning on
the hardwood floor . . .
And there came from the door a scratching, the rattle of metal on metal -- the
sound of a drunken man trying a keyhole.
Houston, throwing the door wide, lurched forward on his heavy stick. He
belched thunderously and rubbed the site of his old wound. "Sons of bitches,"
he said, hoarse with drink, listing violently, the stick coming down with a
sharp crack at each step. "Radley? Come out, you little whelp." He'd neared
the bureau now, and Sybil snatched her fingers back silently, afraid of the
weight of his boots.
The Texian closed the door.
"Radley!"
"Evenin', Sam."
Her room above the Hart seemed distant as childhood's first memories, here in
the smell of slaughter, in this dark where giants moved -- Houston reeled
suddenly to slash at the curtains with his cane, tore them open, gas-light
catching the patterns of frost on the glass of each mullioned pane,
illuminating the Texian's kerchief and the grim eyes above it, eyes distant
and merciless as winter stars. Houston staggered at the sight, the striped
blanket sliding from his shoulders. His medals gleamed, quivered.
"Rangers sent me, Sam." Mick's little pepperbox pistol looked a toy in the
Texian's hand, the clustered barrels winking as he took aim.
"Who are you, son?" Houston asked, all trace of drunkenness abruptly gone from
his deep voice.
"You Wallace? Take off that neckcloth. Face me man-to-man . . . "
"You ain't giving no more orders, General. Shouldn't ought to have took what
you did. You robbed us, Sam. Where is it? Where's that treasury money?"
"Ranger," Houston said, his voice a rich syrup of patience and sincerity,
"you've been misled.
I know who sent you, and I know their lies and slanders against me. But I
swear to you that I
stole nothing -- those funds are mine by right, the sacred trust of the Texas
government-in-
exile."
"You sold Texas out for British gold," the Ranger said. "We need that money,
for guns and food. We're starvin', and they're killin' us." A pause. "And you
mean to help 'em do it."
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"The Republic of Texas can't defy the world's great powers, Ranger. I know
it's bad in Texas, and my heart aches for my country, but there can't be peace
till I'm back in command."
"You got no money left, do you?" the Ranger said. "I looked, and it ain't [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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