Only the Gallant Read Free Page A

away the hours of invasion while their parents sipped sherry. And waited. Somewhere in the city men chose their favorite whores and tumbled into bed, all kisses and sweat and liquor and muffled cries of passion, and it made sense and sure as hell beat dying for a cause, any cause. These were the lucky ones. Had it not been for the driving downpour, the flames from the burning warehouses and stockpiles of cotton on the waterfront would have engulfed the crescent city and turned it into a wasteland of rubble. Still, where the fire could not spread, hatred found its way and violence followed close behind.
    The Creole called Charbonneau was so intent on being the one to recapture and kill the fugitive that he never slowed his pace but rode headlong toward the dimly seen figure of the man he had tried to hang. He never noticed that Jesse no longer wore the hangman’s rope. Nor did he heed how Jesse tossed the noose over the stone hitching post in front of La Bonne Nuit and then ran out across the street, playing out the lynch rope with every step. Charbonneau twisted in the saddle, preparing to ride past him and empty his pistol into the fleeing man.
    The Creole had his shot but no chance to take it. Jesse hauled on the rope and it snapped from the rainwashed street, catching Charbonneau’s stallion, leg high. The animal tucked its head under and neighed in terror as it fell forward, sending Charbonneau flying.
    The Creole made a rough landing, rolled over a couple of times, and stopped spread-eagle, groaning and muttering faint curses facedown in the middle of Bourbon Street.
    Approaching horses drummed an unmistakable tattoo upon the stone-and-shell surface a few blocks away. Jesse heard the clatter of hooves and ran past the fallen Creole. A few yards farther along, at the corner of Bourbon and Canal, Charbonneau’s horse struggled upright and stood trembling in the rain. Jesse caught the animal’s reins, knelt, and checked its legs. Blood oozed from a number of superficial cuts. Other than that, the animal seemed sound. Jesse spoke soothingly to the frightened steed the way he used to calm horses as a youth in the Indian Territory. He had learned the ways of his grandmother’s people in such matters, and their talents were his as well. The animal quieted.
    Jesse walked the animal across the street and retrieved the gun that Charbonneau had dropped in the fall. It was a Walker Colt .44, a heavy, long-barreled cap-and-ball revolver with a kick like a Missouri mule.
    Charbonneau groaned louder now and slowly drew his knees beneath him and pushed himself off the ground. He was in no shape to stop the man about to take his horse. McQueen swung up into the saddle as the surly guardsman lumbered toward him.
    “Damn you!” Charbonneau growled. “I’ll get you yet. If I have to follow you to the ends of the earth. There’ll be a reckoning.”
    “Have it your way,” Jesse replied as he thumbed the hammer on the Walker Colt and trained the heavy barrel right on Charbonneau’s chest. The Creole paled and retreated a step. He held his hands out in a futile attempt to ward off the chunk of lead coming his way.
    “On the other hand,” Charbonneau added, tamed in the face of his own impending demise, “I ain’t the sort to hold a grudge.”
    “Now there’s a Christian attitude,” Jesse remarked. He held his fire and the Creole spun around and limped off, losing himself in a rain-shrouded alley alongside a dress shop.
    Things were finally looking up for Jesse. He was alive. He had a gun and a horse.
    “Yankee renegade!” Colonel Baptiste shouted as he held his horse to a canter and rode with saber drawn, directly toward his elusive quarry.
    Jesse swung the stallion about to face this new threat. So Henri Baptiste had found him. Well, no matter, this was one bastard he wanted to make pay for the innocent deaths he had caused. Jesse smiled.
    “Come ahead, Colonel!” he roared, brandishing the Colt. His pleasure didn’t