Orphans of Empire by Grant Buday

Author:Grant Buday
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781927366905
Publisher: Touchwood Editions
Published: 2020-08-05T17:41:18+00:00

They reached Fort Hope that evening and dined on a beguiling ragout at Chez Maxie. Begbie ate with gusto. Perhaps it was the food and the bottle of pumpkin rum, but he did not share Moody’s gloom at McGowan’s having slipped their grasp, asking, after all, what the man had done aside from amass a hoard of useless hardware rusting in a damp cave, to which Moody could not help responding that it was not what he’d done but what he intended to do, with or without the iron.

“To condemn a man for his thoughts would be to kill a good many,” mused Begbie. “He knows we know and that is enough.” Anticipating further debate, he added, “I’m afraid that, for the nonce, it will have to be enough.”

Moody didn’t like it. It seemed that Begbie was choosing an odd time to be letter-of-the-law and laissez-faire.

Gosset didn’t like it either. He dug the point of his hunting knife into the tabletop and said that McGowan was laughing at them. “He and his confreres.”

“Confreres, is it?” said Begbie, picking his teeth with a silver pin.

“I propose slipping back upriver tonight and bleeding the bastard.” Gosset flashed his blade upward.

Moody was intrigued and yet felt obligated to warn that it would only incite the Americans to act.

“There’d be no inciting. Only revenge. They’d think it was that sorry bugger he ran off for losing his bloody bear.”

Moody hadn’t considered this. Later, when he was sure everyone else was asleep, he sought out Gosset who, wide awake, admitted that he had indeed met McGowan in a certain house in Munich, adding that McGowan had rallied the women to take up arms and toss the madam out the fourth-floor window. “It was a revolution. The man’s an anarchist, plain and simple.” He insisted that there was still time for him to return upriver and deal with him. “I can do it.” He added in a cold tone, “It is the reason I am here.”

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