Jack Iron Read Online Free PDF Page B

rotund seaman in beige baggy breeches, loose yellow shirt, and a heavy wool coat made of beaver pelts to ward off the cold. Biggs was bald save for a fringe of soot-colored hair that crept up from his bushy sideburns and trailed off in a shaggy growth just past his ears.
    “It is a fine crew I have, mi amigo , but not a one of my brave compadres can hold a candle to the senorita that awaits me on Bourbon Street.”
    “A half-breed girl, eh?” Biggs snorted in disapproval. “You’ve enjoyed the charms of many a fair maid. What makes this girl so special?” Biggs hooked his thumbs in the wide leather belt circling his waist. At forty-six, he was old enough to be Obregon’s father and tended to address his captain in a paternal manner when the two of them were alone. “Now see here, my fine Hawk, this girl brings trouble, you mark me well. A man like Kit McQueen is no trifle either. Going against him will be inviting misfortune, like a hard tack in a hurricane. I warrant McQueen’s sent under his fair share of men or I’m a three-toed lizard.”
    “I can handle the lieutenant,” Obregon replied, and for added emphasis, he reached toward his wrists and in a blur of motion freed a pair of double-edge throwing knives from the sheaths hidden beneath his sleeves. The six-inch blades glittered in the lantern light. The image of a hawk’s menacing talons had been etched into the length of the watered steel. They were silent, deadly weapons in the hands of a capable man. Obregon was a master and had a powerful arm that could hurl the daggers with uncanny accuracy.
    “You forget this Hawk has talons,” Obregon replied.
    “The girl is not worth it.”
    “How would you know, my fat friend? When was the last time you took a wench to your ample lap without first crossing her palm with silver?”
    Biggs scowled at the Hawk of the Antilles. Obregon’s words cut as deeply as the daggers hidden in the Castilian’s sleeves. “Hmmm,” he muttered, and “Humm” again, and glanced around the cabin that was but one of many hurriedly erected structures dotting the fallow fields of the Chalmette plantation south of New Orleans. Jackson’s Tennessee Volunteers lived in damp leaky huts and drafty barns, while the Baratarians like Obregon and his crew and Laffite’s freebooters had furnished their makeshift abodes with comfortable bedding, woven ground coverings, and tables and chairs brought out from their homes in town. Even the commonest privateer had a chest of belongings to make his miserable station more endurable. Manning the breastworks that guarded the southern approach to the city was onerous enough without sacrificing the pleasantries of a civilized existence, thought the Baratarians.
    “It is a wise captain who curries his gunner’s favor. One day you may need these sharp eyes o’ mine when we pull a broadside and dance under the cannon of a war brig just waiting to blow us out of the water.” Biggs’s expression brightened as his gaze settled on a bottle of jack iron, raw cane rum with a bite like an alligator.
    “And just what might you do, chief gunner?” asked Obregon, playing along with the older man’s game.
    “I might just blink,” said Biggs, and with a smile of self-satisfaction he confiscated the bottle of rum and headed for the door.
    “Where are you going with that, old thief?”
    “Me and the lads thank ye for your generosity. As you’ll be warmin’ your toes at the widow’s tea table, we aim to fire some jack iron to keep us from freezin’ on this damn winter’s night.” A bracing cold gust of wind brushed past the man in the doorway and blasted into the room. Obregon reached for his frock coat, and followed his gunner and his bottle of jack iron out into the night air.
    A group of men were huddled around the leaping flame of Angel Mendoza’s cookfire. The cook was crouching over a black kettle and stirring the contents with a long-handled wooden spoon. He lifted the spoon to his lips