While Holmes had engaged the deputy chief's attention, I had carefully drawn my old service revolver. At this cue, I aimed carefully and fired. Lestrade collapsed as though thunderstruck, and Holmes quickly stepped forward and put the policeman's weapon into his own pocket.
"The shoulder, Watson?"
"Villain or not, he is still a police officer and the cousin of a trusted ally," I said, hurrying to tend to Lestrade's injury. It was no glancing wound. He would live, but he had already slipped into unconsciousness and would not wake soon. "Look, Holmes," I said. I held up a small gris-gris I had discovered on a leather band beneath Lestrade's shirt.
"A symbol of fealty to Jacaré, perhaps," Holmes said. "Leave him in his cab. Your gunshot might have been noted and there is little time to lose."
If we had followed Lestrade with caution, then we now moved with reckless urgency. One carriage wheel left the ground as we spun onto the fork that Lestrade had led us away from.
"Open the chest there," Holmes said, nodding at a small wooden chest at our feet.
I did so and discovered two gun belts, each with two holstered pistols. "Good God, Holmes," I said. "Are my own weapon and Lestrade's not enough?"
Holmes steered the carriage around a deep puddle in our path. "Peacemakers," he said. "I believe those are the types of weapons the Holingbrokes favor. Should Jacaré have accomplices close to hand, we might need their assistance."
We traveled a few minutes more before Holmes pulled our carriage over again. I had spotted nothing to differentiate this stretch of road from any other, but Holmes gestured for me to leave our conveyance behind. "I smell smoke," he said. "And there is light ahead. Let us proceed on foot."
I slung the gun belts over my shoulder and followed him. What we were on could hardly be called a road anymore. The ground was muddy and split by grasses. I nearly lost my shoes at one spot. Bats swooped and dove amongst the trees around us, feasting on insects.
After several minutes we heard shouts, coarse laughter, and screams of pain. We emerged from a cluster of cypress trees into a clearing, the moonlight suddenly bright. Perhaps a dozen men were gathered near a ramshackle house beside the waters of the swamp, jostling each other as they paced along a wooden deck and a long pier, a bonfire blazing beside them near the shoreline. They looked like pirates from a century or more earlier, with wide-brimmed hats and vests over loose-fitting shirts. They brandished swords, too, though their guns were modern enough.
It was obvious which man was O Jacaré. No matter what else held their attention, the others stepped from his path with expressions of deference and fear. Jacaré wore a sweeping, rakish hat with a bandana tied beneath. A single gem, perhaps an opal, gleamed in the center of a patch over his left eye. He had a full black beard that stretched down to his belly, a jade-green jacket, and alligator boots. The sword that hung from his waist glittered with gold and gems.
But more striking even than the figure of Jacaré was the sight that held the pirates' attention. A huge, dead bald cypress tree at the water's edge was being used as a sort of gallows, a rope slung over one heavy branch and held in the massive hands of a huge pirate, bald and shirtless, nearly seven feet tall. At the other end of the rope, just barely above the water, dangled the twisted form of the Holingbroke brothers, struggling against their bonds and howling in pain and fear as the giant shook them.
As Holmes and I crept closer, I was shocked by the sight of the brothers. They were shirtless, their backs bloody from the lashes of a whip. I had seen an illustration of them before, and read of their condition in my medical journal, but my mind had trouble reconciling the sight of them, two upper bodies, nearly identical, sharing a single waist and single pair of legs.
Then I saw something that shocked me even more.
Something enormous frothed the water beneath them, some tremendous beast hidden in the muck. The pirate dangled the brothers lower until one's head splashed into the water, and then the beast reared up, trying to take his head in its enormous pale jaws. The pirate yanked them back upward and the creature missed by inches, crashing back into the water with a frustrated hiss and splashing the pier with a white, scaled tail.
I turned toward Holmes in astonishment, but he was using the distraction to run toward the bonfire at an oblique angle, keeping it between him and the pirates. I followed his example.
"Holmes, that creature-"
"An albino alligator," he said. "Quite large. Jacaré wrote about it to Professor Moriarty. It lives nearby and he lures it close from time to time for games such as these." He peered past the flames. "Twelve men," he said. "And should the large one drop his rope, it will doom the Holingbrokes. Suggestions?"
I looked at the situation again, recalling my military experience, recalling Afghanistan. It was hopeless on the face of it. Two against twelve, the leader a ruthless criminal overlord. I turned to Holmes. "Yes," I said. "I have a plan."
A heavy hand fell on my shoulder. I spun around and found myself face to face with O Jacaré, a smile cutting through the mass of his huge black beard. "I hope it's a mighty fine plan, Dr. Watson. Cause if I were in your shoes, I'd be sweating, I tell you true."
Jacaré and his pirates led us to the dock where the Holingbroke brothers still swayed upside down from the rope, their faces resolute. I'd managed to shift the gun belts away from view under my coat, though that seemed little enough advantage for the moment.
"Heard a lot about you, Mr. Holmes," the pirate said. "Impressive, you tracking me from so far away."
"Elementary," said Holmes.
"You tricked Lestrade into leading you here, right? He dead?"
"Merely incapacitated."
"Like I say, impressive. He ain't dumb. Little less impressive, though, you getting caught."
I cleared my throat. "Holmes lacks your legion of followers," I said.
Jacaré turned to me. "This your plan, doc? Get my dander up so I have my men back off and challenge Holmes to a fair fight?"
"I wouldn't recommend it," I said. "A fair fight didn't work out well for Professor Moriarty."
Jacaré leaned back and for a moment I was certain he was going to draw his sword and strike me down. Instead, he laughed, a tremendous braying laugh that echoed across the swamp and set the albino alligator back to churning the waters. "I'm not much for fair," he said. "But I like entertaining. Twelve on two, where's the sport in that? We'll make it two on two." He nodded at the huge bald man. "Darcé," he said. "Tie off that rope. You can kill Dr. Watson while I murder Mr. Sherlock Holmes."
Darcé's fingers flew as he tied the rope to the pier using some complicated sailor's knot. As he strode toward me, I saw that he was even more gigantic than I had first estimated. His muscles bulged as he stepped toward me. He smiled a gap-toothed grin. "You scared?" he asked.
I forced myself to stand straight, raising my fists in preparation. "Are you?" I challenged.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jacaré squaring off against Holmes. The pirate had drawn his gleaming sword, but my friend was unarmed and I feared for him.
Letting Holmes's plight draw my attention was a mistake. I didn't even see Darcé raise his heavy arm for the first blow. I was slammed backward, careening off the dock to the mud. My chest ached. He charged after me, standing over me and leaning over to punch me in the face. When I rolled to the left, avoiding the blow, he straightened up and kicked me in the ribs. I rolled away, gasping in pain, and this time grabbed at his ankle as he tried to kick me again. It was like trying to uproot a tree, but I rolled into it with all my weight and he toppled beside me to the ground. He growled and snorted and pulled himself to his knees. I punched him in the jaw, but I had little leverage and he seemed barely to notice.