A Longer Fall (Gunnie Rose #2)(49)

I looked at the baggy jowls and the drool and I figured it might be a little hard for Clete to do that. Smart he might be, but he was not lovely or appealing, at least to this Texoman. The dog and the man resumed their walk, and I congratulated myself on avoiding the drool.

When I looked up from checking my shoes, Eli was there. He was alone, I was glad to see.

“My telegram came,” he said, spotting the yellow paper.

I came down the hotel steps to meet him. “Sure did. Telling you Felix was coming, and telling you to share everything with your gunnie.”

Eli looked away with a smile. “I’m sure it said that.”

“It did. Doesn’t make any sense to keep things from the one who’s protecting you.”

“Say anything about Iron Hand?” He was still thinking.

“That G doesn’t know anything about Iron Hand.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Lot of that going around.”

“Like Felix’s arrival,” Eli said. He was frowning as hard as I’d ever seen him frown. “The guild either trusts me or it doesn’t. Why send help when I hadn’t given any sign of distress? When I hadn’t been wounded, and the enemy hadn’t even appeared to confront me?”

I nodded, but he was thinking too hard to notice. We were ambling along now, because he seemed to like to move while he worried at things.

I was looking around us, because that was my job. I saw a pickup truck creeping up the street after us. There were two men in the cab. Though he was wearing a hat pulled down and a kerchief over his lower face, I was sure the one in the passenger seat was Friend. There was another man in the truck bed. Intended—What was his name? Harvey?—Nellie Mercer’s fiancé.

“Eli, they’re coming for us,” I said, and his head jerked around. “We don’t want to talk to the sheriff.”

Eli didn’t waste time asking me if I was sure, and he didn’t ask any questions. He blew out the two tires on our side with a gesture, and the truck suddenly sagged to the left. There was a lot of yelling, and Harvey leaned out as far as he could with a pistol in his hand. Eli blew a cloud on them, and while they couldn’t see we took off walking as fast as we could. We took the first right, an alley, to get out of sight. When we emerged onto the street where the shoe repair shop was, I got my bearings, and steered us toward the back way to the hotel. Though it was now enemy territory, it was all we had. I figured neither Mercer, nor Nellie, nor her Intended and his buddies, would attack us in the Mercer place of business, which was also their home. Probably.

We scooted up the stairs to our room at a more unremarkable pace.

Closed the door. Locked it. Stood and stared at each other.

“I’m going to tell you everything,” Eli said. “If I get killed, I want you to know why.”

I didn’t remark that I was just as likely to get killed as him. I just pulled off the damn shoes and scooted up against the headboard, while Eli collapsed into the armchair.

“You’re not religious, so you may not know this,” he said. “But our church, the church of Holy Russia, is Orthodox.”

I nodded, to show I was listening.

“We don’t believe everything the Catholics believe, and we worship differently from the Protestant churches, too.”

I already knew that, thanks to my mother. I waited for him to go on.

“But we are a Christian church, and we have our own saints. One of our early saints is African.”

I didn’t care one way or another where his saints came from. I made a beckoning gesture to tell him to keep going.

“Saint Moses the Black—some people call him Saint Moses the Ethiopian—was a big man, a violent man, a runaway slave. He was a fugitive when he got to Wadi al-Natrun.”

I had no idea where or what that was. Not going to ask, either, not now.

“Though Moses was a robber and a killer, he converted to Christianity when given shelter at a monastery. There are all kinds of stories about him resisting temptation to return to his violent ways, though he wasn’t always successful. When he was old, his monastery was attacked by bandits, and he chose to be martyred.”

“So in the chest…?”

“His bones. The remains of Saint Moses the Black.”





CHAPTER SEVENTEEN


So the Lucky Crew’s first and only job had been protecting a dead man.

“How long ago did he die?”

“Fifteen hundred years ago.”

“And there are still remains?”

“Yes. If the British can find tombs of ancient Egyptian kings, and see their preserved bodies, the bones of a saint can certainly survive.” Eli sounded very certain.

I didn’t know about any Egyptian tombs, and I didn’t care. I was concerned with the here and now. “So the thinking of the Holy Russian Empire was that…?”

“Our priests have been in contact with the Negro people here for a couple of years, very secretly, spreading the story. Moses the Black has become the most beloved saint of poor people here in Dixie.”

That sounded like a secret religion to me, and kind of creepy. But I kept my mouth shut.

“It’s no surprise that the Catholic church—the priests who know about this—has become incensed.”