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As soon as the carriage stopped, Josephine and Gifford could hear the Gulf, and tried to take comfort from it. “Almost there,” Josephine lied to herself and to him—and though he knew better, he did not correct her.
She threw open the cab’s door before the driver could see to it, and as she jumped down off the stair, she heard Ruthie climbing to the ground on the other side. Ruthie walked around the front, stopping to pat the horse’s sweaty brown head. She rejoined her employer by the time Gifford could extricate himself.
Josephine handed off a few coins, one of which ought to be several days’ wages for the old driver. He thanked her with a mumble, grasped the front of his pants, and tucked in his shirt. He tipped his rumpled cap and wished the lot of them a good night, and he was on his way immediately—leaving the three would-be rescuers standing at the edge of a milling group of other travelers, all of them waiting for the ferry.
The low, flat barge was sidling up to the pier even as they watched. Its engines rumbled with the same sound and the same fuel as the rolling-crawlers, forcing the side wheel to dig deep through the current and haul the thing along. Carriages, horses, and two or three stray messengers and merchants crowded eagerly forward. Sailors on board threw ropes to the workers on the pier, lining up the long, pale boat and cinching it against the launch. Then a wide double ramp was lowered drawbridge-style from a power-driven pulley, allowing the ferry’s late-night guests to disembark.
There weren’t many people on board—not at this hour, coming up close to nine thirty, and not with the curfew dealing a death blow to the nightlife.
Only a few tired-looking travelers led yawning horses off the boat, and behind them came half a dozen Texians. Three were in uniform, three were not; but anyone who’d seen a Texian official knew the posture anywhere. Josephine recognized it as easily as the smell of baking bread. They wore an insouciance and a swagger she found infuriating. They walked as if they had authority, and they did not expect to be asked any questions about it.
Still, she smiled tightly and with civility. Some of them ignored her; one said, “Ma’am,” in passing; and the la
st one off the boat tipped his hat in her general direction. As this final passenger debarked, a Texian almost too young to wear the uniform went running up to him, saying, “Ranger Korman, there you are. It’s so good to meet you, sir. I’m so glad you could make it. ”
Rangers. Hat tip or no, they were the worst of the bunch.
A dockhand made the call for travelers to board with fares in hand. Gifford Crooks led the way, still in his Texian uniform and looking like less trouble than his two companions. Then again, considering that he was accompanied by two ladies of the evening, perhaps he looked like the most trouble anyone had seen all week.
Josephine might have passed for a respectable spinster—someone’s governess or middle-class aunt, hidden under her cloak—and she might have even passed for white, for Gifford’s mother, in a pinch. But Ruthie, in her flamboyant garb, darkened eyes, tea-colored skin, and brightened lips, would fool no one on any count.
They scrambled aboard quickly and settled in for the trip, but no one was very settled, except perhaps Ruthie, whose face had firmed into a look of grim, ambitious concentration. Despite her initial vows to the contrary, Josephine was glad Ruthie had insisted on coming along. She even reached out and took the woman’s gloved hand in her own, just to have something to hold that wouldn’t mind being squeezed a bit too hard.
Across from the pair of them, seated on a bench and trying not to slump there, Gifford Crooks worked hard to appear alert and ready for action; but it was easy to see that he’d had a rough afternoon, and he hadn’t intended to go back to Barataria tonight.
The ferry fought the river, foot by foot, and the paddle wheel dragged the lightly laden barge to the west bank. The engines strained and the diesel spewed out over the water, where fish occasionally slapped against the surface and floating logs rolled over as lazy and large as the alligators that hung closer to the marshes—outside the current’s pull, where the water was stagnant and smelly.
Behind them, the French Quarter drifted away. Its gas lamps struggled against the darkness, signaling the stars and mimicking the moon. But the fog had rolled in hard, and it blanketed the blocks with its warm coverage and left the curfew-quieted neighborhood a low, gray smear against the waterline.
Finally the ferry pulled up against the western pier, and another crane lowered another drawbridge down against the deck. The passengers disembarked into near emptiness.
Josephine shivered despite herself, and despite her too-warm cloak. “Now comes the hard part,” she breathed.
“Pourquoi?”
Gifford Crooks answered Ruthie as they walked away from the water, back toward the docks and the small shipping district that springs up around any ferry’s destination. “Now we have to cross the marshes. Now we have to get to the island. ”
Ruthie nodded. “Then, on y va! Before it gets any later. ”
Josephine asked, “You’ve never been to Barataria before, have you?”
“How do you know?”
“If you’d ever been, you’d understand why the rest of the trip is a problem. Gifford?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Where’s our boat?”
“A mile from here down the river road, on the edge of the canal,” he said quietly.
She asked, “Are you sure?”
“No, but that’s where we’ve been leaving the blowers for coming and going—and that’s where I left mine, when I came to town to give you Fletcher’s message. If it’s not there, I don’t know what we’ll do. ”
“If it’s not there, we’ll come back and look for something else. Mr. Crooks, do you have a light?”
“I do,” he promised, and he pulled an electric torch from his jacket. It was small, but it’d have to do. The roads up and down the marsh’s edges were not uniformly lit, and they were dangerous.
