"Out, pig-man, or I'll throw you out," the private threatened, his eyes bright with anxiety.
Valentine relented, and the man escorted him out, and turned the key in the lock of the steel door. It looked like the only modification to the outside of the structure in dozens of years.
Valentine stepped aside on the porch. The guard hurried around me corner, undoing his suspenders with the shotgun under his arm.
He heard the lock turn.
"Daveed, I thought you'd never come," Narcisse said, smiling up at him. "Let me show you where they keep the spare keys."
* * * *
The tall private returned, a little white-faced. His face drained even more when he unlocked the door and found a phalanx of rifles and shotguns pointed at him.
"You want to put me gun down?" Valentine asked from a corner, a tiny .22 automatic he'd found in a box marked "local confiscations" in his hand.
The private's eyelids fluttered and he toppled over in a dead faint.
"Beats shooting him," Wilson said, picking the dropped shotgun off the floor.
"About time we got a break. Andree, Botun, handcuff him and get him in a cell. Jefferson," Valentine said to the other Texas teamster, "keep your gun at his head."
"What did you put in the food?" Valentine asked Narcisse as his men tied the private lying against the bottom bars of a cell. Post was still in the vault, choosing weapons and ammunition for their flight.
"Cascara Buckthorn bark, child. Opens them up good."
They repeated the procedure when the lieutenant staggered back in.
"Fuck me," the old man groaned when he read the situation.
"No thank you," Valentine said, pulling the revolver out of the lieutenant's hip holster. "I'll leave that for the Hoods."
The man put hand to collarbone, as if to ward off the probing tongue snaking its way toward his heart already. "They'll have me."
"Hard luck."
"Like you care."
"Help me get past the gate and I'll let you get a running start for Dallas, Lieutenant. Or wherever. You might have a chance."
"Seems to me it's my choice of the frying pan or the fire," the old man said.
"A fight is the last thing I want," Valentine said.
"You're the leader of the column, right? Some kinda Indian scout for the commissary wagons? They said he had black hair and a scar."
"You going to trust this turncoat, sir?" Jefferson said. "I say we don't even give the Reapers the satisfaction. Leave the two of them hangin' with greeting cards for when they come back."
The old man stiffened. Damn, almost had him.
"Jefferson, make yourself useful in the kitchen, please. Narcisse is packing up, and we need food." He turned to the Quisling. "Look, Lieutenant... err..."
"M'Daw, mister good cop."
"I'm going to offer you a deal, M'Daw. Help us get away clean. You're a lieutenant; you must have some idea where patrols and so on are out. You get us out of this town without bloodshed, and I'll let you go in a day or two with food and water to walk to safety."
"Shove, dunk," M'Daw said.
"Let me finish. The alternative is we kill every man of your troop in town. There can't be that many of them."