shot which smashed a window close to his head.
No longer wrestling with his conscience about shooting at a fellow man, Wes fired and knocked the pirate out of the boat and into the river. He and Aaron’s shots both hit the fourth man – and the fifth.
The sixth and last river pirate in the boat fired off a last desperate shot which, judging from the shouts which came from the deck below where Wes and Aaron were firing, had hit one of the Missouri Belle ’s defenders. With his last shot before needing to re-load, Wes eliminated the threat posed from this particular would-be robber.
By now, firing had erupted from a dozen separate vantage points on board the Missouri Belle . Most came from men who had been briefed by Schuster and were aimed at the pirates attempting to board the riverboat via the stage plank, but their colleagues travelling with Ira Gottland had shown their hand now and a number of small but desperate gun battles were being fought on board the steamboat.
The pirates attempting to board the Missouri Belle via the stage plank quickly realized they had not only lost the element of surprise, but were walking into a well-planned ambush. With more than half their number already killed or wounded, the survivors turned tail and tried to escape.
Only a very small number were successful. By the time the remaining survivors disappeared among the trees and all shooting had ceased, more than three-quarters of their number had become casualties. The battle was over – and more river pirates had been killed than had surrendered.
Soon, the bodies of the dead pirates were laid out on the main deck with the wounded prisoners seated behind them, watched over by Aaron’s triumphant ‘private army’.
The men defending the Missouri Belle had suffered only a single fatality. Sadly, this was ex-Confederate Captain Harrison Schuster, killed by the very last shot fired from the ‘fishing-boat’ in the brief but furious battle.
Checking the dead, wounded and captured river pirates, Aaron quickly discovered that Ira Gottland was not among their number and when Aaron asked if anyone had seen him, one of the wounded defenders said that after being shot, he had seen Gottland jump from the Missouri Belle into the river.
A passenger who had not been involved in the fighting declared that he had seen a man clinging to the side of the fishing-boat as it drifted away downriver, adding, ‘Might that have been the man you’re looking for?’
‘It almost certainly was,’ Aaron replied, furiously. ‘Damn! I particularly wanted him … the action sharpened my brain and I remembered where I had heard his name. He was in the Union army, but he never held a commission. He was a sergeant and with two privates was charged with raping a Southern girl when they raided a farm looking for food. The papers on the case came to me but he was never charged because his unit was involved in some very heavy fighting and immediately afterwards he deserted. Rumour has it that he then joined the Rebel army.’
‘But wouldn’t he have changed his name, in case he came across someone who had known him then?’ Wes, queried.
‘There is no reason why he should,’ Aaron replied, ‘With all that was going on at the time he wouldn’t have expected the report to have ever reached me. Besides, the war has been over for a long time – and the company he’s keeping now wouldn’t care what he’d done in the past.’
Despite the escape of Gottland and the tragic death of Harrison Schuster, Aaron expressed satisfaction with the outcome of the thwarted raid on the Missouri Belle .
‘It will put the gang out of action for a very long time,’ he said to Wes, ‘In fact, I’ll be very surprised if we are ever troubled by river pirates on the Mississippi again.’
‘I’m sure you’re right,’ Wes agreed, ‘But I’m disappointed that Gottland wasn’t among those accounted for.’
‘That troubles me too, Wes, but don’t take it to heart,