POWDERHORN PASSAGE by Tom Townsend

TOM TOWNSEND

award WINNING AUTHOR

email: tom@tomtownsend-toyland.com

Phone: 713-502-4377 3123 CR 2407 Rusk, TX 75785

POWDERHORN PASSAGE
By
Tom Townsend

Read the excerpt below

HISTORICAL FICTION

Sequel to WHERE THE PIRATES ARE and THE DARK SHIPS. In this book you find out if Jem and Tava are brother and sister.
Reading Level 5^th grade and up.

Published by Eakin Press
ISBN 0-89015-642-5
$9.95 paperback

     Polishing boots was hard work, but it was much safer than being chased by pirates, shipwrecked in a storm,
or shot at by the Mexican Navy.
      Raif Garcia came to this conclusion one hot summer afternoon in Galveston. All of those things had happened
to him in just the past two years, so now he figured that he should not have to worry about anything else dangerous                                                         coming his way for a very long time.
     He was wrong.
     Little beads of salty sweat trickled down his dark brown forehead. They ran along his nose and dripped
onto the porch of the Tremont Hotel. In spite of the heat, he whistled and popped his polishing cloth as he put a
deep, glossy finish on the black boots which rested on his shoeshine box.
     Raif was not sure if the customer who was attached to these boots would be a good tipper or not. Although
he had learned to tell a great deal about his customers by just looking at them, this one confused him.
     The man's accent was very British. His light tan suit, wide-brimmed white hat, and gold watch chain indicated                                                            that he had money. But his body did not match his clothes.
     There was not an ounce of fat on the man. It occurred to Raif that he looked almost as thin as the long cheroot
cigar he held loosely between his fingers as smoke drifted leisurely in gray curls about his head. His face was the
color of mahogany wood, deep brown and weathered with tiny lines. An old scar ran across his right cheek. Raif
had seen enough scars to know that one of that length and shape had probably been put there by a sword. There
were scars on his wrists also, deep reddish-blue streaks that could only have been left by chains. And then there
was the earring, a small Spanish gold coin in his left ear, like only a few of the old sailors still wore.
     His polishing rag popped one last time, and Raif could see his own face reflected on the boot's toe. "There you
are, Senor, all finished. You now have the finest boots in all the Republic of Texas."
     The stranger stared down his nose and raised one eyebrow slightly. "By Jove, you could be right, lad." There
was a twinkle in his blue eyes as he removed a coin from his vest pocket and flipped it in Raifs direction.
     "Thank you, Senor," Raif answered as he caught a glimpse of two pistols attached to the vest beneath the
man's coat. He turned the coin in his hand and saw that it was a Spanish four-real. For a moment Raif was shocked
by the size of the tip and started to thank him again, but as he looked up, the stranger was just disappearing
around the corner of the hotel.
     Raif was still admiring his coin when another customer seated himself in front of his shoeshine box. With-
out looking up, he pocketed his coin, said "Good after-noon, Senor," and began applying polish to the new pair
of boots.
     This customer, he decided, looked older and much poorer. His hair and mustache were silver gray, and he
walked with a cane. An old blue seaman's coat hung fromhis shoulders over baggy trousers of faded sailcloth.                                                                  A straw hat was pulled low over his eyes. Raif wondered if the man would have enough money to pay for his shine.
Then, Raif began to sense something familiar about the man. His very presence seemed to bring back memories
of those frightening adventures of the past two years, adventures which Raif would just as soon forget.
     Raif was still wondering what it was that was so familiar about him when the old man spoke.
     "Hello, Raif," he whispered.
     The voice sent chills up Raif's spine and he almost dropped his shoe polish. His eyes got large as he looked
up into the face of the man he had met only once a few months before in the far reaches of Double Bayou.
     "Mister Lafitte . . . !" Raif gulped. "Madre Maria, it is you! But why are you dressed like that and—"
     Lafitte's cold, dark eyes shifted from side to side. He touched a finger to his lips. "For now the name is
Lauflin, Mr. Jean Lauflin, of St. Louis, Missouri."
     "But . . . But what are you doing here? I thought you were—"
     "Some things have changed, for the worst, I fear. Can you deliver a note to my son? It is most important."
     Raif was too shocked to answer. He managed only to nod as he was handed a small piece of paper.
     "I have a room here at the Tremont." Again, Lafitte's eyes shifted nervously. "But I may not be able to stay
very long."
     Raif's mind ran in circles. This all meant trouble, big trouble, and Raif was not a boy who liked trouble.
This was going to be trouble just like he had last year when he found himself sailing off with his best friend
Jem to search for buried treasure. Then, just this spring, he had again sailed with Jem and gotten into more trouble
than he had ever dreamed of. Both times, the mysterious Jean Lafitte had been involved.
     Raif realized that the sooner he found Jem, the sooner it would be over. "I'll find him fast," he said and, sticking                                                           the note in his pocket, ran off down the Strand in the direction of McKinnie's Wharf.
     Lafitte watched him go and rose slowly. He cast another suspicious glance at three rough-looking men lounging                                                    across the street. They looked like sailors, but he knew better. Each one had a cutlass swinging from his belt, two                                                             of them were barefoot, and the third wore a pair of woven sandals.
     Lafitte left the porch casually and walked back inside the hotel. He passed unnoticed through the crowded lobby
and slowly plodded his way up the stairs to the second floor. Just as he reached the top of the stairs, the three
sailors from across the street entered the hotel behind him. Three more drifted out of the crowd in the lobby
and joined them.
     They were an odd mixture of colors and sizes. The three from outside were Spaniards with dark, darting
eyes and long, stringy hair. Two others were a deeper shade of brown, probably Carib Indians from the islands
of the Caribbean. Their front teeth were filed to points in the tradition of their cannibal ancestors. The last was
Oriental, muscle-bound, and almost as wide as he was tall. He was bald except for a long pigtail braided down
his back, and he wore only a pair of sailcloth pants and a leather vest.
     Together, all six men climbed the stairs cautiously. At the top, they hesitated at a long hallway with doors
along both sides. Near the far end, one of those doors was just closing.
     "Careful now," one of them whispered. "He is a tricky one."
     One of the Caribs spat on the floor. "Don't look like nothin' but an ol' mon ta me." He slipped two big flintlock                                                         pistols from beneath his ragged shirt. "Can't see why they'd be no reward for that gray head."
     " 'Nough so's we don't have ta work no more, never," a Spaniard chimed in and slipped his cutlass from its
sheath. The Oriental grunted and pushed past them all. "No talk. We kill now."
     "Aye, Jongo's got the idea, he 'as," another of the men agreed, and they all followed as Jongo waddled down
the hall with his pigtail swinging behind him. He had stopped in front of the door they had just seen close and
was about to kick it down when the ominous cocking of two pistols stopped them all in their tracks.
     Pale sunlight filtered through the open window at the end of the hall. It reflected off a pair of newly polished
boots and two Colt Paterson five-shot revolvers.
     "Mexico Thompson!" one of the men hissed. "What are you doing here?"
     "Naughty, naughty," the man in the window scolded, pointing with the barrel of one of his revolvers. "I thought
I had made it all quite clear that I would be the one who kills Jean Lafitte and that I will do it my own way
and in my own time."
     "Or Firewhiskers ain't gonna like this," a Carib growled with a curled lip which exposed his pointed teeth.
     "Undoubtedly, he will not. But that was our arrangement, I believe—"
     The time for talk ended before his sentence was finished. "Blast 'em," one of the men said as he raised a
double-barreled flintlock pistol. But the Colt revolvers in Mexico Thompson's hands fired first. Long tongues
of orange flame belched from both barrels of the Colts as Thompson fired as fast as he could cock and pull the
triggers. In less than eight seconds, the guns were empty and a gray haze of powder smoke clouded the hallway.
     Blood was spattered along the walls, and a wicked collection of pistols and cutlasses lay among the five dead
bodies on the carpet. Only Jongo was not to be seen. In the heat of the first few shots, he had charged through
the closed door in front of him, taking the door off its hinges as he went.
     For a moment Thompson considered following him and then changed his mind. From the lobby below, there                                                            was screaming and shouting. He slipped the Colts back into their holsters, which were built into his vest, and
dropped easily to the alley below. He took another moment to dust off his coat and set his hat at a jaunty angle
before strolling off toward the street, whistling a merry tune.