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along.”
    “I don’t like this any better than you.” Johnny gnawed the meat from a rib bone and dropped it back into the bowl, then sopped some juices with a corn dumpling. “I’d hardly call you a nosegay. And if we looked real close, we might find a flock of crows nesting in that briar thicket you call a beard.”
    O’Keefe was taken aback by the boy’s outburst. Johnny Fuller was hardly the shy and quiet type. The Irishman had been deceived by the lad’s show, the way Johnny had clung to the widow and hidden behind the folds of her dress.
    “Smart whelp, eh?” O’Keefe scowled. “Mind you keep a civil tongue in your head or I’ll cut it out and toss the meat to the widow’s hound outside.” The Irishman grunted in satisfaction, and spearing a particularly stringy morsel of meat, he plopped it in his mouth and wiped his lips on his sleeve.
    “Too late for that,” Johnny said. “You just ate him.”
    “Christ almighty,” O’Keefe muttered, and spat the chunk of meat halfway across the room. It landed a few feet from the hearth. Only when Johnny could no longer hold back his laughter did the Irishman realize the trick the eight-year-old had played on him. He started to scold the boy, but launched into a spasm of coughs that shook the bed. Finally, when the worst of it subsided, O’Keefe caught his breath and muttered, “You’re a black-hearted ragamuffin.”
    “Did I do something wrong?” Johnny asked, all innocence again.
    O’Keefe sat up in bed and, with his hook, skewered a chunk of meat from Johnny’s bowl. The boy fell silent as the Irishman slowly nibbled at the morsel. The ominous demonstration had the desired effect. Iron Hand licked the grease from the vicious-looking barb that capped his stump.
    “How’d you lose it?” the boy asked, staring at the hook.
    “A shipmate of mine asked me to lend him a hand. I did. The impudent son of a bitch never brought it back.” O’Keefe looked completely serious.
    Johnny Fuller was a child in years, but the eight-year-old knew a tall tale when he heard it.
    “I may have been born at night, Mr. O’Keefe, but it wasn’t last night,” the boy retorted.
    Iron Hand O’Keefe chuckled and settled back against the pillow. The lad was as sharp as a needle and there was no denying his spunk. Reminds me of me, thought the Irishman, resolving to keep his observations to himself. Johnny Fuller was cocky enough.

Chapter Three
    C ESAR OBREGON TOOK HIS hair snips and carefully trimmed the curled tips of his blond mustache, then cleared a little of the “underbrush” from around his mouth. When he walked Raven out into the night and took his kisses, he wanted her to feel the full effect of his sensuous lips. Cesar Obregon was a fair-skinned Castilian garbed in a black waistcoat and trousers and a black silk shirt that fit loosely over his slender six-foot frame. His straight ash blond hair was brushed back from his features and hidden beneath a black silk bandanna that covered his head. His fingers were long and slender, his physique wiry and as resilient as whipcord. His brown eyes never wavered as he concentrated on trimming his mustache.
    “If vanity were a virtue, you’d be a saint.” Obregon shifted the mirror to the flat homely features of Honeyboy Biggs, the chief gunner aboard the Windthrift.
    “And if I was a temperamental captain, you’d be a mute,” Obregon said. With a twist of the wrist, Biggs vanished from the hand mirror, a gilt-edged trinket that had found its way into Obregon’s possession during his days as a freebooter. The privateer finished his trim and then reappraised his appearance. Damn, if there was a finer-looking gentleman in all of New Orleans, Cesar Obregon didn’t know the man. He sat the mirror down.
    “Come outside and join us by the fire. Young Reyner Blanche has his concertina, and Angel Mendoza has cooked up a squirrel stew that’s fit for King George if he were but sane enough to hoist a spoon.” Biggs was a