Natchez

by Paul Lederer

  Natchez

  Spectros, Book Four

  Paul Lederer writing as Logan Winters

  CHAPTER ONE

  It was a dark, cloudless night. The flatboat lazed down the broad black shadow which was the quiet flowing Mississippi. Along the willow-clotted shoreline frogs croaked and a lone alligator splashed into the water after some doomed prey, leaving a scar of white water behind it.

  A fire flickered in a sheltered cove along the riverbank. Telingas. Slaves who had arrived from Africa only to be suddenly, unexpectedly freed by war’s end. They spoke no English, knew no American ways, were hated and feared even by other blacks. The Telingas had taken to the bush as they had in their homeland. Confused, savage, they knew not what direction to take. They had been transported to the moon, across a broad river, their chief told them. And so they hid from the moon men, feared them.

  Some moon men were as they were, dark-skinned, yet others had taken on the moon’s tones and were pale, capable of strange feats, wielding strange, powerful weapons.

  Hidden eyes watched the flatboat scud past.

  “Africo camp,” Bennett said, nodding toward the fire which glowed in the thicket.

  “Africo?” Ray Featherskill slipped to the rail, standing beisde Bennett. The old riverman nodded, spat a stream of tobacco juice and pointed again.

  “Back in there. Telingas, they call themselves.”

  “Slaves? After all this time?” The blond man frowned. The war had been over ten years. Yet he had learned that for some in Mississippi the war died hard.

  “Ain’t slaves,” Bennett said, pushing hard on the tiller to avoid a sawyer—a snag—in the river. “Africos. Telingas.”

  “Black men?”

  “Oh, yeh. But they come over late. Colonel Lawson, he had ’em crated up on the wharf at Natchez when the Union forces come. Union soldiers cracked them cases and away they run. Don’t know a word of American, them. Do their voodoo and such… yonder shines Natchez,” Bennett said.

  They had rounded a bend in the river, and on the bluff lights twinkled, paling the water, showing a sandbar in their path. Bennett put the tiller over again and smoothly swept past it.

  Ray Featherskill went to the bow, hat tipped back, watching the southern town draw nearer, the bow cutting a tiny white wake.

  Featherskill was a born rebel—up from Texas, but his people had been cattlemen, and had owned no slaves. A slave couldn’t be chained to a cowpony, and on the range without bonds, any man would naturally ride off. Yet he had seen plenty of slavery, and he understood, or believed he did, both slaves and slavers.

  The wharf loomed up beside the flatboat and Bennett coasted to an easy stop, the boat rocking gently in the mild current.

  “Hope you find what you’re looking for, cowboy,” Bennett said, tossing Ray his bag.

  Featherskill nodded and stepped onto the wharf, Natchez glittering before him. He hoped he found what he wanted too. Somewhere the man prowled. The killer, the extraordinary slaver, Blackschuster.

  Bennett had tied up, and the fat man climbed up beside Featherskill, taking in the Natchez skyline. A gun uptown split the night, then came a woman’s shrill curse.

  “You watch your step, young man,” Bennett advised him, lighting a stubby pipe. The match flared in his hairy hands, shadowing Bennett’s pushed-in face. “Natchez is a rough-and-tumble town. There’s a lot of people from up North come to make a killing, a lot of men from Dixie who figure the war ain’t over and figure salt’s bein’ rubbed in their wounds. There’s Telingas and gators out back. You watch yourself.”

  “I figure to,” Ray said, shaking the river man’s hand.

  “And maybe you can,” Bennett said to himself as the tall, blond kid walked up the wharf, satchel in his hand. These western men with their low riding Colts and easy manners, they were a tough breed. Bennett shook his head and tied his bowline fast, tilting back his blue cap as he strode toward Salty’s, and a loving woman he knew.

  Ray Featherskill walked the cobbled streets. The men were mostly sailors here, and they turned to study the man in the western boots, the hat with the silver conchoes and the easy stride.

  A brawl had broken out in a river front saloon and Ray walked quickly on, wanting none of someone else’s troubles. He had enough of his own, and a prey more desperate and deadly than Telingas or gators.

  Blackschuster.

  Ray walked several blocks uptown, through the swirl of milk white fog which rose off the river. Far upstream a riverboat bell sounded. The shadow of a cat tensed then fled as Ray approached.

  The hotel was old, white, decorated with gingerbread moldings. Ray pushed in from the dampness of the street and dropped his bag at the counter.

  “Suh?”

  Ray turned to the woman, eyes narrowing. Young, she was, fair-haired, with a full figure straining at the white lace of her dress. She smiled engagingly, her blue eyes offering invitations… or were they simply laughing?

  “I need a room,” Featherskill said, waiting as the girl lifted the gate in the counter and slipped behind it, sliding the massive register to him, handing him a pen.

  Their hands brushed briefly as she did.

  “Your dress,” the girl said in a rolling, southern drawl. “You can’t be from hereabouts.”

  “No, ma’am.” Ray scratched his name out.

  “You’re from across the river, Mr. Featherskill?” she asked, turning the book to read his signature.

  “Ma’am?” It took a moment. The way she said “the river” as if it were the only one in her world. Across the Mississippi—all else was alien, strange to those soft eyes.

  “Yes, ma’am, I’m from across the river. Texas, by way of Colorado and some other hills, holes and hovels.”

  “How you talk,” she laughed. She slipped the brass key onto the counter. “Room 14,” she smiled.

  Ray nodded, smiled in return and hefted his bag. He moved down the long, carpeted hallway, turning back once to the girl. But she was already gone. Quietly, ghostlike.

  He found the room and stepped in, hand on his gun butt out of habit and painful experience. He let the satchel drop to the floor as his eyes searched the room. A window opened onto the alley, which he didn’t like. He walked to it, tested the latch, and watched the curlicues of fog loaf past. A reddish light from somewhere on the bluffs filtered through the haze.

  Ray threw his hat on the bed post, then cautiously he drew the shade and pulled the bed across the room from where it had been.

  He drew off his boots, splashed at his face with the cold water in the blue enamel pitcher, and toweled off, examining his face in the mirror.

  Still young, with blue eyes which smiled, and a mouth which did not frequently, he was in need of a shave and a hair trim.

  Ray leaned against the bureau heavily for a moment. He shook his head at his mirror image and pulled off his shirt.

  Ray checked the door latch, leaned a chair under the knob and rolled up in his blankets, his Colt cool in his hand.

  He slept a while in the darkness. A twisted dream filled his mind for a time, a dream of wild country and headless horses. He awoke suddenly, in a sweat.

  What had awakened him he could not be sure, but he was wide awake, gun in hand, muscles tense, eyes straining against the darkness.

  Flame erupted and the thunder of guns filled the room. The shattered window exploded into flying fragments. Red fire thrust into the room again and again, aimed at the spot where the bed had been, beside the window.

  Suddenly it stopped.

  Two shadows slunk away, up the alley. Ray jumped from the bed and sprang through the splintered casement into the fog-shrouded alley. But there was nothing, no sound. Inside someone pounded at the door and Ray stepped back over the sill, holstering his Colt, brushing
back his blond hair.

  “Open up in there!” a man’s voice called. Then again fists pounded on the door.

  “Open up!”

  Ray removed the chair and slid the bolt. A nervous little man with thin hair stepped in, throwing his hands to his head.

  “What in the world… whatever…” he surveyed the room, the shattered window, the bullet-gouged floor. Then he turned to the shirtless man.

  “Who are you?” he asked Featherskill.

  “Just another satisfied patron,” Featherskill said. He pulled on his shirt as the little man watched.

  “You have no business here,” the little man said, his face reddening. He pointed a finger at the cowboy in black. “You have no business…”

  “Now just a minute,” Ray said coldly. “I’m a guest here. Paid and penned. The most I bargained for was a night’s sleep.”

  “You are not a guest,” the little man said, crossing his arms indignantly. “You are an intruder, and you’ll pay for this damage. I’ll see that the constable knows about this.”

  Ray had to smile despite himself. The little man was clucking around the room like a worried hen.

  “Mr.—whoever you are—I don’t intend to pay for any of this. I was shot at in your hotel room. That’s all. Catch them that did the shooting; ask them for the damages.”

  Three other men had appeared at the doorway, one of them wearing a walrus mustache and a gold badge.

  “What happened, Ed?” the constable asked, his eyes sweeping up and down Featherskill.

  “I don’t know,” the exasperated little man said throwing up his hands. “I heard shots. Then I found this man in here.”

  “You?” the constable asked. His eyes did not smile.

  “I’m a guest of the hotel,” Featherskill said patiently. “Someone—I don’t know who—shot through the window at me.”

  “Looks like they laid down an artillery barrage,” the constable commented, studying the room.

  “But he’s not a hotel guest,” the little man said, shaking his head.

  “What?” The constable eyed Ray again, taking in the low slung Colt, the cold blue eyes. “You’re not registered here?”

  “You just go out there and ask the girl,” Ray said, growing hot. “I came in about midnight. Signed my name, paid the girl and settled down for a night’s sleep.”

  They stood watching him, not saying a word.

  “Well?” Ray demanded.

  “Mister, there ain’t no woman works here. Never has been. No girl could’ve checked you into this hotel tonight.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  They squeezed Ray for thirty-five bucks, hard cash in damages, and even with that the constable advised him to move on.

  It was nearly dawning before Ray Featherskill checked into a quiet boardinghouse, taking a second story room; but before that he had taken the time to go to the telegraph office and scratch out his message to New Orleans.

  Dan Hollister

  Hollister House

  New Orleans

  The man is here. Advise Doctor S.

  Thirty-five dollars expenses due.

  Ray

  Ray settled onto his bed, this time keeping his boots on as the sky grayed across the river. He propped himself up, hands behind his head. A mockingbird piped in the cypress beyond the warehouse across the alley and Ray let his eyes droop shut.

  The man was here, in Natchez. Murderous as ever.

  Yet the girl bothered him. Who was she, and where had she come from? Where had she disappeared to?

  It had been a very cute trick. Ray’s signature had disappeared from the register when they went to check it, vanished like the girl. A very cute trick.

  He smiled to himself. The girl had had sparkling blue eyes, a full, tempting mouth. He let his thoughts linger on her a moment longer before he fell off to a peaceful, deserved sleep.

  It was a peaceful, orange-glowing New Orleans morning. Dan Hollister knocked on the door to the house and was admitted. Spectros was at breakfast.

  “You have something for us, Dan?” the old man asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Spectros asked the servant girl to serve Dan coffee first, then he took the telegram, holding it in his long fingers without opening it for a moment.

  Dan sipped at his coffee and studied Spectros for a moment. Aristocratic in features, he had been a working cowhand in his youth, Hollister knew. The doctor had gray hair, silver almost, swept back in barbered waves. On his right hand he wore a square-cut emerald ring of great size.

  Spectros glanced up at Dan Hollister with penetrating gray eyes and opened the letter.

  He read it once quickly, then again, more slowly.

  “It’s from Ray. I thought perhaps Inkada was more nearly on the trail, going back toward Denver.” Dr. Spectros paused thoughtfully. “Natchez—does that seem logical?”

  “The man is not logical, Doctor,” the young lawyer observed. “He is instinctual. And his instincts have apparently led him to Natchez. Ray must be sure, or he would not send for you. Knowing…”

  “Knowing that I am ill, tired, weak?” Spectros smiled. “It is the truth, Dan. Don’t be afraid to speak the truth. You certainly weren’t afraid to speak up at Reg Travelers’ trial, when your own life was at stake.”

  “And Inkada’s life,” Dan remembered.

  Spectros rose from the table. He used a cane now for the first time. The incredible brawl in the bayous had sapped his tenacious strength, and it was far too soon for the doctor to be moving on, as Hollister knew.

  Montak appeared at the door to the kitchen. The amiable giant nodded to Dan Hollister and gazed curiously at Spectros.

  “We will be riding, Montak,” the doctor said.

  The mute nodded and turned, his tremendous bulk blocking out the light from the white kitchen beyond.

  “Bring Khamsin as well,” Spectros said. Montak turned back, his round face creased with curiosity. It was serious, he knew, if the doctor was already sure he would want Khamsin.

  “You’ll be leaving immediately?” Dan asked. He had finished his coffee, and he stood, wiping his mouth. Spectros nodded.

  “Will you attempt to contact Inkada, Dan?” Spectros requested. “Possibly Denver. He may have stopped over at the Thalen ranch. And try Guyamas. Leave a message with Brad Tibbets. Inform him of our destination.”

  Dan Hollister nodded agreement, yet he hardly had the chance to say anything else. Already the old man had hobbled through the doorway, and Montak in the cobblestone alley behind the white house harnessed the four matched bays to the tall, black wagon.

  Dan followed Spectros to the alley and waved as the old man stepped into the enclosed, windowless wagon, the giant in the box, ready to urge the team of bays northward, toward Natchez.

  Hollister waited as Montak snapped the reins, driving the bays forward. The hoofs clopped against the cobblestones, and the high, black wagon striped with gold moved off up Lafayette Avenue, the great black stallion tied on behind.

  Dan lifted a hand in a brief wave which was never seen, then he slipped his hat on and walked uptown, toward the telegraph office.

  It was a sight. Down Lafayette and up Orleans Boulevard the four bays pranced. Eyes turned to the wagon, a gallery of black vegetable hawkers gaped and pointed. Not so much at the bays, the tall black wagon, but at the stallion which trailed behind.

  It flashed in the early sunlight like black obsidian as it pranced past, head held high. Nothing like it existed anywhere else in the world. Eighteen hands high would be a good guess, though the actual dimensions of Khamsin were even more awesome. Its muscles flowed and rippled, a silver mane and tail caught the sunlight as it tossed an energetic head and side-stepped up the broad avenue.

  Montak swung the wagon onto Northview road and settled the bays into an easy pace. The sun blinked through the colonnades of cypress along the road. A voice rose from the rice fields beyond, singing a melancholy tune.

  Inside the wagon Dr. Spectros reste
d in his black leather chair, hands draped over the arms. He needed to rest, yet he could not. They were on the road again. Ray was sure he had found the man in Natchez. Perhaps this time.…

  Spectros let his eyes sweep the wagon interior. Rows of vials and glass phials, brass and copper utensils of obscure utility lined the wall neatly. Trophies, souvenirs, mementos cluttered the room.

  A tiger skin, a narwhale tusk, a fragment of quartz imbedded in a human skull. A Persian rug, embellished with intricate arabesques decorated the floor. Spectros ran a finger and thumb down his slender, nearly aquiline nose and closed his eyes.

  He tried not to think of her, tried not to relive the days of so long ago, yet brilliant images forced their way into his mind, the golden sun through the jacaranda trees, the trumpeting of an elephant, the flash of a tiger’s eyes… the shy girl in white; dark-eyed princess…

  For long months at sea the young man from across the ocean had bided his time. Causing no trouble, they had forgotten about him. Anchored in this eastern port, the cowboy could see the green of forest, the hazy purple of the mountain peaks beyond, and he longed for the firm earth beneath his feet.

  It had begun in Galveston with a dark alley, a brief futile struggle, a piercing headache. When he came around at last he was on the wide sea, among dark pirates from an eastern land. Months drifted by, long days of endless blue seas, sudden storms, ropes cutting hands grown raw with the work, burned by the salt of the air, the water. Then they had anchored off this tropical port. The black pirate, Tear Degas, sitting the chair on the viewing deck like the Emperor of the Seven Seas.

  When would there be another chance? There was no guessing.

  Swiftly the cowboy and several slaves worked, upturning a cannon in the bow, blasting the belly of Tear Degas’s ship away.

  The cowboy leaped overboard, into the emerald sea, secondary explosions in the powder magazine shredding the pirate vessel, red and black clouds of flame billowing into the air. There was no one else in the water near him, only fragments of the ship. He clung to a broken, drifting spar and caught his breath, hair hanging into his eyes, muscles sore, clothing torn.