CHAPTER 52
“When El Niño and I reached Mr. Wooley’s stables, we found the liveryman up and sending Mrs. Hastings and Marcus off in the specially padded rig (he’d put a feather mattress in the bed) what the Doctor’d ordered. We waited for the man to go back into his house, figuring he would never have agreed to hire one of his animals out to a pair like us; then we shot over to the barn, where I made short work of a big but simple padlock with the set of picks in my pocket. Once inside, I looked around for the little Morgan what I knew to be such a strong, reliable animal; finding him, I told El Niño to get a bridle and saddle ready, while I scrounged around in an old desk by the door for a pencil and a scrap of paper. I wrote out a note explaining where Mr. Wooley could locate his animal-at the Troy train station-and then folded the note up with more than enough cash to cover the “loan.”
By the time I was finished, El Niño had the horse ready to ride; and as it turned out that he’d done some time with a band of horse-riding raiders in French Indochina, I helped him shorten the stirrups and then let him take the front of the saddle and the reins, while I got behind and grabbed on to his shoulders. Moving at a quiet walk out past Mr. Wooley’s house, we picked up a little speed as we trotted toward the southeast edge of town; and once on the Malta road, the aborigine turned the Morgan loose, so that we began to fly along at a pace what was both jarring and reassuring.
It was better than twenty miles to Troy, but that little Morgan-though loaded down with two riders-made short work of it, as I’d expected and hoped he would. Less encouraging was the news we received at the station: we’d missed the last passenger train to New York for the night, and we wouldn’t be able to secure seats on another until six P.M.But there was a West Shore Railroad freight train due through in another twenty minutes; and so, leaving our trusted mount behind, the aborigine and I made our way to the edge of the station yard, where we waited to hop aboard one of the boxcars of the train as it slowed to pass through the city. This arrangement, though less comfortable and picturesque than a ride in a passenger car (the West Shore traveled on inland tracks as far south as Poughkeepsie), turned out to be far better suited to our purposes, being as the freighter only made a few stops on its journey south; and though its final destination was Weehawken, New Jersey, across the Hudson from Manhattan, there was a ferry line based in that town, one whose boats ran all night across the water to Franklin Street, which was only some twenty-five blocks south of the Dusters’ headquarters on Hudson Street.
None of which made the trip any easier on our spirits. For the first part of the train journey El Niño just sat in the open doorway of our box car, staring at the black countryside what was passing around us. Sometimes he looked like the hate he now felt for Libby Hatch had turned him to stone; other times his face softened and he wept quietly into his hands or knocked his head against the wooden doorway. Nothing I found to say consoled him, though I’ll admit my efforts weren’t the most determined; besides still being nearly heartbroken myself over what’d happened to Mr. Picton, I was far too worried about Kat to make any claim that things would all turn out all right in the end. And so when the west bank of the Hudson came back into view below Poughkeepsie, I just sat beside the aborigine and took to staring out at the river, trying but failing not to calculate how much blood Mr. Picton must’ve lost in the long minutes he’d lay there alone on the basement floor of the court house or how fast Libby Hatch might’ve gotten out of Ballston Spa.
That Libby’d arrive in New York considerably ahead of us was a given; the only question was what she would do when she got there. Was her main concern now getting rid of all traces of Ana Linares, securing what money she could from Goo Goo Knox, and then heading out of the state, probably to the West, where wanted criminals could and often did disappear into new lives under assumed names? Such would’ve been the most logical set of moves, but nobody’d ever accused Libby Hatch of being logical. Clever and devious, yes, to a point what sometimes made her look brilliant; but at bottom her actions-her whole life-were deathly nonsensical, and I knew that if I was going to predict her next steps I’d have to think like the Doctor, instead of drawing on my lifelong experience with criminals whose goals were more practical.
As we crossed into New Jersey and dawn started to turn the sky a strange, glowing blue I put my mind to this task and came up with only one consideration what I figured was cause for hope: with all that she’d been through upstate, with all that’d been discovered and revealed about her life of murder and destruction, Libby’s desire and even need to keep Ana alive-to nurture her as a way of proving that she could, finally, care properly for a child-would be increased. She’d try to escape the city, there was no question about that; but I figured she’d make the attempt with the baby, and so long as she didn’t try to do Ana any harm, there wouldn’t be any cause for Kat to try to step in and maybe get herself killed. This reasoning was, I told myself, sound; and I clung to it as tightly as our train hugged the inner side of the Palisades on its way into Weehawken.
El Niño and I jumped off the train as soon as it came within sight of the Weehawken yard, then ran full out for the ferry station, still not exchanging a word. More and more the aborigine was becoming all business: having rested his hopes for a new life on Mr. Picton, he was determined to have his revenge, an act what, it seemed, was very important in the part of the world where he came from. All the way across the Hudson on the ferry he took to sharpening his arrows and knife and readying his short bow, along with mixing ingredients from a few small pouches into a small wooden vial what held a sticky, gluelike substance. This, I figured, was the poison what he used to coat the tips of his missiles, and I could only guess that he was tampering with the mixture to make it more deadly than it’d been on any of the occasions when I’d seen him use it. So dark and determined did his face become as he went about this process that I began to feel that I needed to get a few things straight with him.
“El Niño,” I said, “nobody knows better than me how you feel. But our first worry is making sure that we get Ana and Kat out alive, right?” The aborigine just nodded slowly as he dipped the points of his arrows into the wooden vial. “And you know what the rest of them-the Doctor and Miss Howard and the others-would say about what comes after, don’t you? They’d say that if we get the chance, we should take Libby Hatch alive and hold her for trial.”
“She has had her trial,” El Niño mumbled back. “Because of the trial she almost went free. I know that the others believe this, Señorito Stevie…” Tucking his last arrow carefully inside his jacket, he looked me dead in the eye. “But do you?”
I just shook my head. “I’m telling you what they’d say. Once we’re sure Kat and the baby are okay, what you do is your business, so far as I’m concerned.”
He nodded, looking toward the Franklin Street ferry station as it began to loom up large before us. “Yes. You and I understand these things…”
There wasn’t any other way to handle it. If I’d tried to stop El Niño from doing what he believed he had to, I’d’ve only ended up at odds with him; besides, I wasn’t at all sure that his way wasn’t best. Libby Hatch was like a snake, one what seemed able to squirm or kill her way out of any predicament she found herself in; and I couldn’t imagine anybody better suited to deal with such a strange, deadly serpent than the little man from across the seas what was sitting next to me.