The Ghost Rifle: A Novel of America's Last Frontier

Book 1: Ghost Rifle Western

by Max McCoy

Genres: Historical Fiction; Sagas

Synopsis

“An instant Old West classic! Max McCoy writes about mountain men and the fur trade with passion.”  
—Stuart Rosebrook, editor True West magazine

Three-time Spur Award winner Max McCoy combines fast-paced action, frontier history, and powerful family drama in this epic saga of life, love, and death in the American west.

SEARCHING FOR A GHOST, A LEGEND, AND A DREAM . . .

Descended from a long line of ramblers and rogues, Jack Picaro came to America to seek his fortune. But after killing his best friend in a drunken duel, the apprentice gunsmith flees westward, leaving behind children he does not know, Gus and April. As Jack ventures up the Missouri River, he finds an unspoiled land where a man can live free—and also be attacked by an Arikara war party. His rifle stolen in the bloody skirmish, Jack sets out alone to reclaim it. His wild escapade ends in a fight to the death with a legendary Crow warrior named Standing Wolf. So begins a fateful epic search across the last frontiers of the untamed West. From the muddy banks of the Mississippi to the shining peaks of the Rockies, Jack Picaro will leave a trail of clues for an abandoned son, Gus, to find him: a famous gunsmith who will make history with a weapon of his own design—and forged a legend that would be passed down for generations. This is the story of . . .

THE GHOST RIFLE
 

 

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Release date: May 25, 2021

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 318

Sample

Jacques Aguirre was hungry. He was always hungry, even when he had just eaten, and if he wasn’t hungry for food, he wanted whiskey, or the thrill of laying money on the turn of a card, and always the attention of women beyond his station. There were other hungers that ebbed or rose according to his spirit—a fascination with clever objects, a thirst for respect, the yearning for freedom—but his essential condition was ravenous.

Even now, as he stood with a heavy dueling pistol in his right hand, muzzle to the stars and the flint ratcheted back, he could not untangle his whiskey-soaked mind from his hunger; his thoughts wheeled back around to food, and the shortbread pies filled with sweet blackberry jam that he had eaten as a child at the sturdy oak table in his grandfather’s great stone house across the ocean.

“Ready?” Aristide Rapaille called.

“Always,” Jacques said, drunkenly overconfident.

“Then point your piece at the ground,” Aristide chided.

“Ha,” Jacques said. He lowered the pistol and gave his friend a sly grin.

Aristide was standing twenty paces to the side, his arms folded in Gallic disgust, his stylish boots planted wide in the sand and mud on the banks of this narrow island in the middle of the Mississippi. Even standing in muck, he had the air of a patrician, and his face with its fine features seemed always to be privy to some hidden joke.

It was not yet spring, but no longer winter; on this first Thursday of March 1822, the island was cold and the willows rippled in the midnight breeze. Beyond the willows and other scrub trees, at the river’s edge, the water swirled past, driven by spring rains. The moon was climbing the southern sky, nearing full, blocking out the nearby stars, rendering the island and the river beyond in a muted and surreal palette.

The moon reminded Jacques of an unblinking cat’s eye, seeing all but moved by nothing. The thought—and the whiskey in his gut—made him laugh.

“Will you be still?” Aristide scolded.

Aristide turned his head to look at his uncle. The moonlight gleamed and rippled on the slick beaver felt of his high hat. The hat had cost an ounce of gold, weeks of labor for the average tradesman, and was fitting for an individual of Aristide Rapaille’s position—son of one of the wealthiest families in St. Louis, friend of former territorial governor William Clark, and owner of the most expensive, if not the best, gun shop in the city. It was at the shop, on Chestnut Street just around the corner from the St. Louis County District Court and Jail, where his friend Jacques spent twelve hours of every day. The difference in stations between them was a scandal for the Rapaille family, for Jacques was not just an employee but an indentured servant.

“Are you ready, tonton?”

The uncle, Guy Rapaille, was holding the pistol at an awkward angle, in order to examine the lock in the moonlight. Rotund and bespectacled, with an expensive hat that rose even higher than Aristide’s, the uncle was having second thoughts about having challenged a man less than half his age, and far below his class, to settle a manner of honor. Unlike the Rapailles, Jacques had no hat, or fancy vest, and instead of a fine coat with bright brass buttons, his was plain dark cotton with bone toggles.

But here, on Bloody Island, their clothes mattered little. Many before them had come to this broad sandbar between the Missouri and Illinois shores—where dueling had long been outlawed—to settle personal differences. Local attorney Thomas Hart Benton had killed Charles Lucas, another lawyer, here just five years before, settling in honor (if not in truth) which one was the liar.

As Jacques was the challenged, the right to choose weapons belonged to him—and of course he chose pistols.

The pistols had not been made at the shop, which specialized in the new short-barreled, large-caliber, half-stock rifles favored by the free trappers who ascended the Missouri River in search of the finest beaver pelts, from the coldest and highest places in the unimagined West, from which Aristide’s hat was made.

The pistols were a boxed pair, made in London by Manton, in .51 caliber with 10-inch octagonal barrels. The stocks were walnut and the furniture was silver, and they were loaded with balls that had been cast from lead taken from the mines in Washington County, a day’s ride to the southwest.

“Are you having difficulty with your piece?” Aristide asked.

“Of course, he has difficulty,” Jacques called. “Just ask his wife!”

“Please,” Aristide said. “No more. This is an affair of honor.”

“He has no honor,” the uncle said. “Look at how he has mistreated your poor sister, Abella. He should be ashamed, but instead he cracks wise. How can you befriend such a person? He is a jack, a knave—no more than a picaro, a rogue.”

Jacques had heard the term thrown at him before, across the gambling tables in the dark dens along the Mississippi below the city, or from the wealthier patrons of the shop when he was so bold to address them directly, and from Sheriff Brown when he cautioned Jacques against his libertine ways. He rather enjoyed the sound of rogue.

“I am unsure of the flint,” the uncle said.

“I loaded the pistol myself,” Aristide said. “The flint is seated well, and the pan is primed.”

“Might you not have allowed your affection for your friend—”

“No, Uncle.”

Jacques muttered and cursed in the language of his childhood.

“In English or French, if you please,” the uncle snapped.

“I do not please,” Jacques said.

“Nobody can understand that guttural argot,” Uncle Guy said. “It is not Spanish, but it sounds Gypsy.”

“I am not Romany,” Jacques said. “I am Basque, from the ancient city of Carcosa. My native tongue is Euskara, and if you had heard my grandfather sing the ballads of love—well, you would never mistake Euskara for Romany again—or perhaps some lesser language, like French.”

“Your impudence will be your death,” the uncle said, in French.

“Perhaps,” Jacques replied, in English. “But not tonight. Would it be satisfactory if we traded pieces?”

The uncle conceded that it would.

Aristide went about the careful business of swapping the guns, one at a time, turning his shoulders to the moonlight to ease the work. Standing twenty yards away, in the direction of the skiff that had brought them to the island, was Dr. Mason Muldridge, hands clasped in front of him, watching silently.

“This would be simpler, Uncle, had you a proper second,” Aristide said, as he handed over the new piece, butt first. “Our good doctor seems ill-suited to such a venture.”

Muldridge stared, but said nothing. He had been pulled from his bed and the arms of a well-earned sleep by drunken and frantic pounding on his front door, expecting to attend to some calamity, perhaps the loss of a limb. Because he could not refuse his friend Rapaille, he had made it clear he would take no part other than to care for the injured or pronounce the death of one of the principals.

“Well, it’s good that old Muldridge is here,” Jacques said. “After this is settled, I could use a shave and a haircut. That was your profession before, was it not? A barber?”

Muldridge took a pinch of snuff.

“This is all forbidden by the Code Duello,” Muldridge said. “Never at night.”

“Galway rules or Kilkenny?” Jacques taunted.

Muldridge’s nose twitched.

“The latter allows nights and every other Easter, seconds to be chosen from among the finer bordellos, and coffee and beignets at dawn.”

Muldridge sneezed mightily.

“Leave him alone, Jacky,” Aristide said.

“If this were proper, the combatants would be gentlemen,” the older Rapaille said, squinting to inspect the pistol’s lock. “I lower myself to right a wrong.”

“You only lower yourself to make water.”

“Jacques!” Aristide chided.

“But does he not look like an old woman?”

“Just what I would expect from a drunken peasant.”

“I am drunk,” Jacques said. “Blessedly and enthusiastically and dangerously drunk. But, my sir who is almost my uncle by virtue of my brotherly friendship with our beloved Aristide, my birth is as noble as your own. Ah, I see you are confused. Should I speak slower? Allow me to make it plain: In the Basque country, my family are aristocrats, lords of the land, masters of the sea, and I was their prince. It is only through an unfortunate series of miscalculations involving certain games of chance that has resulted in my temporary servitude. But rest assured, I am your peer, if not your better.”

The older Rapaille snorted.

“My better?” he asked. “Surely this bootlick jokes. He cannot even vote.”

“Please,” Aristide said. “We are all of us Americans now. Let us remember the Declaration of the Rights of Man and to not bring the prejudices and ignorance of the Old World into this new one.”

Jacques smiled grimly.

“It seems not all Americans are as equal as others,” he said. “It is true that I cannot yet vote, although I am counted as a free man. My status enrages me. And do not forget, my dear friend, that the Rights of Man gave birth to the bastard Corsican, dead but still stinking on St. Helena. Let us all be done with Bonaparte.”

“We have the Bill of Rights,” Aristide said.

“Ever the optimist,” Jacques said. “Why should we expect Americans to fare any better? In time, these declarations too shall be perverted from an instrument of freedom to one of bondage and chaos. But here, standing on an island between and beyond the states, we are truly equal, and I am about to cast a leaden and irrevocable vote with the most democratic of ballots.”

The uncle blinked back fear.

“Stand well clear, doctor,” Jacques said, waving a hand at Muldridge. “Your skill as a surgeon might be required before the night is out, and it would be a shame if an errant ballot found a home in your breast.”

“I beg you,” Muldridge called, as he stepped back a few more yards. “Stop this lunacy.”

Jacques laughed again, turned, and threw a rude salute to the moon.

“Let us wait,” Aristide offered. “Next month Jacky will have completed his term of service and will be a free man. In that month he might sober up enough to regret his loutish behavior and offer a proper apology.”

“And allow him to ruin other young women,” the uncle asked, “like a dog in rut?”

“Now you call your own niece a bitch,” Jacques said.

“And my sister,” Aristide cautioned.

Jacques did not hear the uncle’s protestations, for he was suddenly awash in guilt for this last bit of cruelty. His affection for her seemed genuine. But how was he to know? He remembered the last time they had embraced, a fortnight ago, in the shadow of the old Spanish Tower that overlooked the river. Abella was a pale and lissome girl, with black hair that cascaded down to her thin waist, with trusting eyes and kind hands, skin that smelled of vanilla, and a mouth that was ripe to be kissed.

“Jacky!” Aristide called once more. “Stay awake!”

Jacques looked up.

“Is the challenged ready?

“I am,” Jacques said absently in Euskara. He was still thinking of Abella, for she had promised to meet him again tonight, beneath the Spanish tower. He was glad the moon was full, because it would better illumine her graceful form.

There was a muttering behind him.

“I am ready,” he said impatiently. “I am eternally ready.”

“In French, if you please.” Jacques laughed.

“I do not please,” Jacques roared. “I am never pleased! I am hungry, as God is my witness, and I starve for life. Let us get on with it, so that I may continue my pursuits—of good whiskey, blind luck, and bad women. For God’s sake, Ari, hand me the flask from your pocket for courage before your uncle’s lack of wit and paucity of charm forces me to use my pistol on myself.”

Aristide warned him about further insults.

“Does he never shut up?” Uncle Guy asked. “All he does is talk. A torrent of words pour from his mouth, equal parts bile and self-aggrandizement, but not an iota of wisdom.”

Jacques waved him off.

“Will you not offer an apology?” Aristide inquired. “This whole business can be avoided.”

“I will not accept,” the uncle said.

“And I will not offer,” Jacques said. But at the edge of his mind there was a softly formed thought that perhaps he should, that he should not always be so ready to court trouble, that the uncle was right, every word in his head tumbled unchecked from his mouth.

“Very well,” Aristide said. “Is the challenger ready?”

“I am,” the uncle said.

“Then take your ground,” Aristide said. “The challenged has chosen the weapons and, and as required by the code, the challenger specifies the distance. How many yards, tonton?”

The old man began to speak, then hesitated.

“You must give a distance,” Aristide said gently.

“Thirty yards,” the old man stuttered.

“Why not a hundred?” Aristide asked. “The result will be the same.”

“You will now each count off fifteen paces, in opposite directions,” Aristide said. “Then you will stop and turn to face your rival. The signal to fire will be when I drop this.” Aristide produced a square of white silk. “No shooting into the ground or the air is permitted, nor is any advance or retreat. You must stand your ground and exchange shots. If, after the first exchange, neither party has received a ball, then the pieces may be loaded and the signal repeated. But in no cases will more than three exchanges be allowed. Understood?”

“Yes,” the old man said.

“Of course,” Jacques said.

“Then take your ground.”

Then the men stepped away from one another, counting as they planted each foot in the sand.

“Un,” Uncle Guy said.

“Bat!” Jacques returned in Euskara.

“Deux.”

“Bi!”

“Trois.”

“Hiru!”

“For God’s sake, gentleman,” Aristide said. “Be good enough to count in the same language.”

“Four.” This, in unison.

Jacques reached fifteen first, and he turned as the older man continued, a bit unsteadily.

“Fifteen,” Uncle Guy said, finally, and turned cautiously.

“Very well,” Aristide said. Then he held out his right hand, the silk square, undulating in the breeze, at shoulder height. The combatants raised and cocked their pistols.

Aristide released the square, and his uncle fired before it had touched the ground. Jacques saw the shower of sparks and tongue of fire from his opponent’s pistol. The scene was frozen for an instant in his mind, as when a flash of lightning captures a lingering moment, and by the time he heard the sound of the blast, he felt the air ripple as the ball nipped at his right shoulder.

Outraged, he placed the moonlight-gilded sights of his dueling pistol on the uncle’s nose and flicked his finger forward to set the trigger. Suddenly, he was sober. It would take only a few ounces of pressure from his right index finger to reduce the dotard’s head to mush. But his hungers did not include bloodlust, so he shifted his aim to the top of the uncle’s beaver hat and squeezed the trigger. The pistol thundered and bucked in his hand, and he watched with satisfaction as the ridiculous hat wheeled wildly into darkness.

The old man dropped his pistol and clasped the top of his head with both hands, as if to make sure his skull remained intact.

“Nicely placed,” Aristide said.

“Thank you, my friend.”

“Are we done?” Jacques asked.

“No,” the uncle said. “Reload.”

“Very well,” Aristide said tiredly, and took the pistol offered by Jacques. Carefully he tamped down fresh powder and patched ball, primed the pan, and handed it butt first to his friend. But as Jacques grasped the handle, Aristide would not release his hold. Blood, as black as ink in the moonlight, was running down Jacques’s wrist and dripping to the sand.

“You have been hit,” Aristide said, letting go of the pistol and calling for Muldridge.

Jacques cursed.

“Did you not feel it?” Aristide asked.

“No,” Jacques said. “Not until now.”

Jacques suddenly felt the weight and awkwardness of the pistol and wanted to be done with it. He slipped the weapon into the outside pocket of his coat, then removed the jacket, noting the hole in the sleeve.

“Take off your shirt as well,” Muldridge directed, suddenly competent.

Jacques lifted his left arm while Aristide helped pull it over his head. Because Jacques was a working man, his dress was simpler than that of Aristide; not only was he disallowed a shirt with separate cuffs and collars, he could not afford one, either. The shirt had to be given a little tug, because the fabric of the right sleeve stuck in the warm blood coating his elbow and forearm. There was a light sheen of sweat on his chest and on his ribs, betraying a fear of being shot at that whiskey could not smother. From a silver chain around his neck swung a curious piece, a milled and polished brass disk that was some three inches across, with four curved arms in the center. The design was odd, like that of a cross with curiously lobed ends, facing left. On the outside was a row of teeth punctuated by indents around the rim, with another circle of teeth and indents nestled inside.

“What is the medallion?” Uncle Guy asked, staring at the disk.

“Let me conduct my examination, for God’s sake,” Muldridge said. He gently touched Jacques’s shoulders and turned him gently this way and that in the moonlight, his face inscrutable in concentration.

Jacques could not see the wound, but was alarmed by the amount of blood.

“Well?” Aristide asked. “How bad is it?”

“It will leave a scar,” Muldridge said.

“So does amputation,” Jacques said.

“For God’s sake, doctor, how bad is it?” Aristide pressed.

“No bones broken, or damage to the biceps,” the doctor said. “Your arm was bent, holding the barrel of the pistol upright, when Monsieur Rapaille fired. The ball passed through the fabric and gave you a nasty bite. It will leave a scar, nothing more. Keep it clean and pray that it does not fester.”

Jacques nodded.

His left hand fluttered upward and instinctively grasped the brass disk dangling from the chain around his neck, his thumb skimming the teeth, as he muttered thanks to both Saint Ignatius and the chthonic goddess Mari.

“Is it a religious symbol?” Guy asked with suspicion. “It resembles Ezekiel’s dream of a wheel within a wheel.”

“Exactly,” Aristide said. He knew the truth, that the pattern in the disk was the lauburu, the ancient four-headed cross of the Basque people. But he wanted to deflect his uncle’s questions. “It is some pagan symbol, which Jacky’s people revere. But such strangeness cannot be accounted for. Best to leave it alone, rather than court the devil.”

Uncle Guy crossed himself.

“You are a lucky fool,” Muldridge told Jacques. “You mocked me until you needed attention. What if the ball had shattered your arm, or ruined your hand? What kind of living would you have made then, unable to run a nut or turn a screw? What would an apology have cost you? If your life means so little to you, what about that of the girl, Abella? What of her life?”

“You speak out of turn,” Jacques said.

The doctor pursed his lips, holding the words back.

“Then this affair of honor is over,” Aristide said quickly. “The challenger has drawn substantial blood. I assume this is enough to represent satisfaction?”

“It is,” Guy said, his relief evident.

“I have grown tired of this,” Jacques said as Muldridge bandaged his upper arm with a strip of cloth ripped from his ruined shirt. “Now that we are all Americans again, let us return to the public house beneath Tower Hill. We will toast our fine adventure casting ballots of lead on Bloody Island.”

Aristide put his back into the oars as the skiff drew near the end of Lucas Street, where the ground dipped gently to the river’s edge. This was the broad levee, where the steamboats docked, took on firewood and offloaded passengers and goods, and made repairs. It was edged by storehouses and workshops and businesses decorated with columns and capitals, whitewashed walls, and broad vaulted windows where an occasional candle burned.

The skiff was an eleven-foot boat of the kind that fishermen up and down the river used, with a flat stern and a snub bow, and coils of rough hemp rope in the bottom. They had found the boat tied beneath one of the lesser docks and had borrowed it to make their way to Bloody Island, for it had just enough seats for the dueling party of four. They had been halfway across the river when they discovered the boat leaked; it wasn’t enough to cause an immediate concern of sinking, but was enough to swell the coils of rope and damp their boots. So on the way back, Aristide—who was clearly the only viable candidate for rowing—rowed now with purpose, both to cut across the current in order to round the shallow bar that guarded the deeper channel along the levee, and to reduce the amount of time they would have to spend with their toes sloshing in the Mississippi. But Aristide, facing the stern, was having a difficult time steering the boat, because the required maneuvers seemed backward.

“Aller à droit!” Uncle Guy cried out. Then, “A gauche! A gauche!”

The wooden bottom of the boat scraped over the sand and gravel of the towhead. There was a chill wind on the water, and it seemed to grow suddenly colder as the boat slowed.

“Pull,” the uncle said.

Aristide did, and the boat resumed its forward motion.

“Snag!” Jacques cried.

With a groan the boat lurched up on a submerged tree trunk, pivoted wildly, and then was free. Aristide pulled one oar handle and pushed the other in an attempt to make a line again for shore.

“My God, Aristide,” Jacques said. “Have you never rowed a boat before?”

“Not at night or with people shouting directions or with a head still singing with rum. If either you or my dear uncle can do better, you are welcome to try.”

“No, thank you,” Muldridge said from the stern.

“Thank you, doctor,” Aristide said.

The boat was now heading roughly in the right direction, but the faster current in the channel was sweeping it downstream.

“Faster!” Jacque shouted, then laughed.

Aristide cursed and pulled harder.

“Ah,” the uncle said, as the levee neared.

Then the boat crossed the eddy line to calmer water, and Aristide lifted the oars from the water as they glided toward a dock. It wasn’t the dock they had taken the boat from, but it didn’t matter to them.

Uncle Guy rose from his seat in the bow and reached a hand out to grasp the dock. He missed, then caught a plank on the second try and pulled the skiff in close.

“There are steps,” Aristide said, nodding at some stones rising from the water to the top of the landing. The boat was close enough that the others could now reach across the gunwale and help pull the skiff along, and soon the bow bumped into the stone steps. The uncle grabbed the end of a coil of rope at his feet and tied a careless knot around a piling, while in the stern the doctor quickly tied an expert clove hitch.

“I am done with this leaky tub,” Uncle Guy said, stepping shakily out of the boat and up onto the steps. He kept one foot too long in the skiff, and the imbalance drove one side of the boat dangerously close to the water. Jacques was behind him, with his rough coat over his shoulders, and he put both hands on the old man’s posterior and pushed him up. As the uncle finally gained both feet on the steps, the skiff righted itself with a jolt, and Jacques fell, losing his coat, laughing. He was up in a moment, however, but forgot his coat, for he was warm yet with drink and the excitement of the duel. He put one boot on the gunwale and lightly jumped for the steps. But he did not see that his right boot had become entangled in a loop in the rope Uncle Guy had hastily uncoiled to tie up with, and it tripped him just as he made the steps.

Jacques fell heavily on the steps, and as he did the dueling pistol that had been in his right pocket clattered to the stone. Whether the gun had been cocked when he put it in his pocket, or whether the jolt had drawn the hammer back just far enough, Jacques would forever ponder but never know. What was certain was the flash of flame and the crack of thunder as the gun discharged, its barrel pointed back toward the river.

“Jacky?” Aristide asked. “What a peculiar joke.”

Jacques glanced back and saw his friend Aristide looking at him with surprise, standing with his hands out as if Christ crucified, his shirt smoldering from the burning patch and a dark-as-ink stain spreading from his right side. Their eyes met, and the last emotion that Jacques ever saw on his friend’s face was disappointment. Then Aristide buckled and he pitched into the Mississippi, the motion carrying his body away from the skiff.

Silence descended like a thunderclap. The night wind was suddenly cold on Jacques’s bare chest.

“Ari,” he said.

Jacques tore off his boots and dove from the steps into the river, swimming madly, calling his friend’s name when his head bobbed above water. Aristide was floating facedown, but as the weight of the tail of his coat slipped to one side, he turned, his hair swirling in the water around his face. Jacques thought he should be able to reach Aristide in just a few strokes, but the farther he swam, the more distance there seemed between them.

Then Aristide’s body slid beneath a downstream dock, where a dozen silent keelboats were moored. If there were watchmen on the keelboats, they were either passed out drunk or asleep, for nothing moved on their decks. Then the moon was shrouded by some low clouds, portending rain, and it was darker now than it had been on the island.

Jacques stared at the darkness beneath the docks, thinking of the snakes that were surely coiled in the driftwood and tree branches and other trash that collected there. A fear of those hidden places gripped him, and he could not bring himself to search beneath the docks for Aristide’s body. Jacques sobbed as he swam back to the skiff, calling for Uncle Guy and the doctor to help search.

Muldridge, who was still sitting in the stern of the skiff, shrugged.

“The river has him now,” he said.

“There must be something to be done,” Uncle Guy said, but his uncertain tone betrayed his words.

“Not until dawn,” the doctor said. “And even then, our task will be to find the body. Such a wound was surely fatal, and if he did survive the gunshot, he would be insensate and drown. His body will likely be carried far downriver.”

Jacques pulled himself dripping up onto the bottom step, where the sulfurous stench of black powder lingered. Out of habit, his right hand went to the brass disk around his neck. It was still there. Then he sat and pulled his knees up and rested his forehead on his folded arms. He had killed his best and only friend by accident, but it made Aristide no less dead.

“What have I done?” he asked.

“You have committed murder,” Uncle Guy said, “and for this you will surely hang.”

“But it was an accident,” Jacques said. “You saw so yourself.”

“I saw no such thing,” Uncle Guy said. “My back was turned. I only heard the shot. When I did look around, I saw my nephew Aristide murdered.”

“Then you, good doctor,” Jacques said. “You must have seen.’

“My view was blocked by Aristide’s back,” Muldridge said. “I know only the result.”

Jacques turned back to Uncle Guy.

“Please, friend’s dear uncle,” Jacques implored. “The pistol fell from my pocket when I tripped on the rope you carelessly dragged behind you. This you must know to be true.”

“You were drunk and should have watched your step.”

Jacques found himself suddenly without words. The silence that followed was excruciating, an indictment unspoken, a judgment im. . .