Natchez

by Paul Lederer

  He beached on an empty stretch of white sand. He waited a long hour, yet saw none of his compatriots. Perhaps none of them had survived.

  Slowly, unsteadily, he stood and walked through the forest. Parrots fluttered and called out, going toward the palace he had seen from the ship. Emerging from the deep blue-green of the jungle he saw it once more, white in the high sunlight, golden minarets brilliant, guttering. He walked in the high doorways of the palace. Heads turned, eyes dark, alien, laughing at his appearance. On a high throne of gold, the arms carved into the resemblance of lion heads, sat the Yahif in a conical gold crown.

  And behind a screen of brass a woman stood. In white, eyes dark. Curious dark eyes shining from a perfectly formed face. Her full lips trembled, forming an unspoken question. Then she disappeared, hurried away by other arms.

  Her name was Kirstina.…

  The wagon hit a deep rut in the road, and the jolt brought Spectros from his reveries. How long can a man dream? Spectros threw back his head and wearily passed a hand over his iron gray hair.

  How long can a man dream? The wagon swayed and rolled on.

  As long as there is someone to dream for.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Ray walked the quays of Natchez, searching the waterfront. The wharfs were busy, cotton bales were stacked high, backs bent to the task of loading, splicing, scraping barnacled hulls. There were ships from far up the Ohio and Missouri there, stern-wheelers, paddle-wheelers from Saint Louis and New Orleans and as far away as Cincinnati. Signs of life, of commerce.

  Yet there were other signs.

  On the bluffs the burned out shells of buildings still rested, smoked black, timbers burned through like matchsticks. Where the echoes of wartime bombardments still sounded in memory. Men sat in front of shops wearing the old gray, patches over their eyes, sleeves pinned up. The war was not long gone from Mississippi.

  He turned up Magnolia, heading back toward the heart of town when the surrey pranced past and Featherskill caught a glimpse of a familiar face. It was only a momentary glimpse. The surrey swished past behind a strutting Tennessee Walker, its tail braided with yellow ribbon. There was only the flick of a whip, the clop of hoofs and the momentary glimpse of a fair-haired, beautiful woman. The woman he had seen at the hotel.

  “Hey!” Ray called out. He held on his hat and ran after the surrey. He thought the girl’s head turned back, but the surrey continued on, vanishing around a corner.

  “Hey!” he yelled again in frustration. He stood in the center of the narrow street, hands on hips. But the surrey was gone, and with it the girl who might have wanted him murdered.

  “That ain’t no way to court a gal,” a voice said.

  Ray Featherskill turned to see an old-timer sitting on a bench, slouch hat tilted back. He spat a stream of tobacco and winked at Featherskill.

  “Wasn’t trying to court her,” Featherskill said, walking up to the man. He wore a three-day growth of salt and pepper whiskers and a toothless grin. “Just wanted to slow her down a bit.”

  “Either way, you’re bucking a stacked deck,” the old-timer commented. “That’s Melinda Toures.”

  “You know her?” Ray asked.

  “Who don’t,” the old man said. He pulled off his hat and scratched at his thinning hair. “That’s the daughter of Sam Toures, heard of him?”

  “Somewhere… I’m not from around here, yet the name rings a bell.”

  “General Toures, he was, C.S.A. The Toures Plantation used to cover near three thousand bottomland acres. He come back from the war covered in glory; his house was intact, his reputation polished some.

  “The Toures family been in Mississippi for two hundred years. When they come up wasn’t no one here but Natchez and Choctaw Indians. He held out against them like his family held out against the French. Then he held out against the war and all of its hellfire.”

  “The carpetbaggers and reconstruction people didn’t bother him?”

  “Hell, they tried, young fellah, but Sam Toures,” he laughed, “he sceered ’em off. Or bought ’em. One way or t’other. Sam Toures—he is Natchez, mister. He damn near is Mississippi.”

  “And his daughter?” Ray watched the empty street where the surrey had disappeared.

  “Belle of Natchez,” the old man said. “A beauty, as you seen, and a bit high-tone. A man was to touch her, he’d be strung up and set fire to.”

  “Yet she…” Ray shut up. Something was wrong. What, he could not guess. But the star in the crown of an aristocratic southern family could not have been in the hotel, could not have been tied in with Blackschuster. Or could she? Could there be two women so similar in appearance?

  “This Toures plantation. You know where it is?”

  “Reckon!” the man laughed. “Everybody knows where it is. But there ain’t many invited out there. Unless you’re some kinda foreign diplomat, or federal monkey.” He looked Featherskill up and down. “You don’t seem to be nothin’ of that kind.”

  “No,” Ray admitted. “But I’d be obliged if you’d tell me how to get there. I’ll worry about the invite later.”

  Ray rented a horse from a stable near Dixie Street, not liking the center-fire saddle or the owner of the stable. The roan was a leggy, high-stepping animal, however, proud and trim. Yet he missed the touch of mustang blood he liked in his stock; he missed that gray gelding he had ridden for six years before a little red-haired girl in Mexico had ridden off on it, never to return.

  It was quiet along the lanes, dragonflies with orange bodies and purple wings darting over the swamps. Great waving cypress trees and tupelo hung over the roadway. A white-tail deer lifted its head then sprang into the underbrush. The day was sultry, the long cottonfields fallow, empty.

  Ray stepped down from the roan, loosening the cinch, leting the horse cool in the shade, drinking from the clear water of a narrow creek.

  He leaned back against an oak, tilting his hat low. He dozed for a moment, listening to the horse mow grass. Then the horse blew, stepped excitedly away, and Ray was on his feet, stepping behind the oak, gun drawn.

  There was nothing. The wind stirred the silver oak leaves, a turkey chortled in a persimmon grove. Ray held his position. The roan’s ears were pricked, its eyes watching a spot in the underbrush where scrub oak clotted a draw.

  Someone moved. Ray raised his gun, cocked it. The sun flashed through the oak, and Ray caught a glimpse of a scarred, tattooed face. Then the man disappeared, catlike.

  A Telinga. The man had probably only wanted the horse, perhaps to eat.

  The man had filed teeth and a deliberately scarred face. Ray came forward, taking the roan’s reins slowly, his blue eyes searching the shadows and the oak brush. He had come like a shadow, and was gone like one. The Telinga made Ray think immediately of the Apache, that master of guerrilla tactics, of silent, stalking warfare.

  Why should there be much difference? The Telinga, fresh from his jungle habitat, warred and hunted by stealth and cunning, as did the Apache. War and hunting were the same in any wild habitat. Ray stepped into the saddle, yet he did not ride away immediately. In his saddlebags he had a supply of dried beef and salt, dried fruit and sugar. He portioned out some meat and sugar, dried peaches and salt, and left them for the Telinga. Perhaps the man had not been hungry—there was an abundance of game—yet if he was, Featherskill would see no man starve while he had provisions to share.

  It was midday when Ray came up on a great white house set back among the blossoming magnolia and pecan trees. There were several coaches in front of the mansion and two armed men waiting beside the road.

  “Howdy.” Ray reined up beside them, the settling dust drifting eastward with the slight breeze. He mopped at his forehead and watched the two men, neither of whom spoke, smiled, or scratched. “Hot, ain’t it?”

  Ray swept back his hair and replaced his hat. The sweet scent of magnolia lay heavy in the sultry air. The two guards had not loosened their grips on the rifles they carried. Both were re
d-haired, the older one boasted a broken nose.

  “Best turn tail,” he advised Ray quietly.

  “Well,” Ray smiled. “I would, but I had a notion to call up at the house. I heard the man has a pretty daughter.”

  “You’re not wanted there,” the other man said. They appeared to be brothers, perhaps cousins, but related anyway. Both had a dull sheen in their pale eyes, and a slack-jawed, cruel expression.

  “I guess I won’t know that till I go calling,” Ray said. He was still smiling, but mentally he was taut, aware of the weight of the revolver on his hip. He had seen men like these before, not overly bright, but bulldogs, willing to die on command.

  “General Toures wouldn’t let you call on his cows, boy,” the older man said savagely. Maybe it was the heat, the boredom of standing watch. He seemed to itch for the chance to pull that trigger.

  “Well,” Ray shrugged. “That’s the way she goes.”

  “Where you from,” the older man asked, and had stepped in quickly, taking Ray’s reins as he turned the horse to go, “you ain’t one of them famous Texas gunfighters we hear about are you?”

  “Not famous,” Ray said mildly. The red-headed man’s eyes were vicious now, figuring he had the stranger on the run. He clenched the reins to the roan and drew his face nearer to Ray’s.

  “Suppose you step down,” the man said. “Suppose you just step down, Tex?” Then he stretched a hand out toward Ray’s gun.

  Featherskill sighed, shook his head slightly then kicked out savagely with a boot which caught the man in the face. He crumpled up, a gasping curse filling his throat. The other man started to bring up his rifle, but Featherskill had already drawn, cocked and sighted the bead of that Colt of his on the man’s heart.

  “Down.” Ray gestured and the man dropped his rifle and stepped away from it as if it were red hot.

  The man on the ground had gotten to his knees. He clawed at his bleeding nose and glared at Ray.

  “You’ll pay, Tex. Nobody does that to John Questler.”

  “You kind of asked for it,” Ray said. “You know—a man never does know just who he’s buckin’ till he tries it. Don’t try it again, not with me. And the next stranger comes ridin’ up here, smile back when he smiles.”

  “I’ll try you again,” the man panted. “I’ll try you again soon, Tex. And next time you won’t be smilin’, I’ll promise you that.”

  “You,” Ray said, shifting his pistol back to the younger man. “Hand me those rifles. Pick ’em up by the barrel. Real nice.”

  The man handed them up to Ray, the big man contemptuously watching. Ray tipped his hat, spun the horse and rode off, John Questler still kneeling in the dust, cursing the other man.

  “That was real fine,” Featherskill told himself. “Can’t even shake a bush without finding a snake, can you, Featherskill?”

  Whatever he had hoped to discover at the Toures plantation had been destroyed by the incident. Ray had no hope now of learning anything about the Toures girl, her involvement in the hotel shooting, not without inviting another shooting.

  No matter if Questler had been hunting trouble, Ray told himself, he should have found a way to avoid it. The doctor’s search was only hindered by these incidents. Yet he wondered—what was it the Questlers were protecting so venomously? All those coaches, fancy horses at the mansion. Could there be something to it? It was unlikely that Blackschuster, that solitary devil could be involved in anything so open, so Ray tried to shake the notion; still—it was something to tell the doctor.

  He stopped near a stream. Water gurgled merrily over the stony bottom, mockingbirds chattered in the persimmon trees. The water danced in the sunlight and sparkled.

  Ray washed his face and drank slowly from the cool brook, letting the roan have its fill. He took the rifles the Questlers had used and threw them into the stream, startling a mustached catfish which had been dozing in the shadows of a water-whitened log.

  Then he glanced up, and she was there.

  Across the stream, in the deep green fern, the shadows of the branches overhead crossing, the girl stood, smiling faintly, temptingly.

  Ray had been squatting on his haunches, but he leaped to his feet, dumbfounded for the moment. She stood smiling, hair loose around her throat, wearing a white dress cut off her shoulders.

  She lifted a hand and hoisted her skirts with the other. Then, smiling back across her shoulder, she slipped into the shadows. Ray was frozen for only a moment, then he splashed across the stony bottom of the silver creek, calling after the girl.

  “Melinda!”

  He looked left and right, rushing into the beech and hickory forest, the leaves crumbling under foot.

  “Miss Toures?”

  He stopped in the shadows, the perspiration cool on his face. He thought he heard a long, lingering laugh from far away, yet it was only a wild turkey chortling in the deep thickets.

  Ray waded through the underbrush, searching for footprints, for broken twigs, crushed grass, yet he found nothing. There was only the faintest scent of jasmine lingering in the still air.

  He leaned breathlessly against the trunk of a great, lightning shattered oak and listened. There was nothing.

  Am I going crazy? he wondered.

  There was nothing. Nothing at all. Only the deep, silent forest, the rustle of quail in the brush.

  And the scent of jasmine.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The sun bled in the high silver clouds, shooting rays of crimson into the deep purple of the skies. The Mississippi rippled past, rolling on as it had for eons—placid, and tinted red by the dying light.

  Featherskill walked the roan around the corner then drew quickly back. There were two men lounging near the door to his hotel and he didn’t care for their looks. Walking silently through the close, dark alley behind the hotel he saw four horses tied together and glimpsed another man, hat pushed forward, leaning against the wall behind the rain barrel.

  Quickly Ray turned on his heel, leading the horse back toward the livery barn. There was no one there, so he led the roan into a stall and swung the saddle off, dipping some oats for the animal. He fished out two silver dollars and left them balanced on the dark leather of the saddle.

  It was full dark when he came out of the stable, the coming moon only a pale silver promise below the horizon. Ray walked rapidly toward the river front, keeping to the shadows. He had stirred them up. If a fight could not be avoided, then let it happen; but this one could be avoided. For the time.

  He walked the long wharves, finally spying the familiar outline of the flatboat. He slipped aboard and tapped at the cabin door. Bennett’s face appeared in the lanternlight, puzzled, affable.

  “Give up on Natchez so soon?” the river man asked.

  “Thought I’d give it a rest,” Ray smiled. “I’d like to put up here for a time. If you’re not shipping out.”

  Bennett took down a bottle and two glasses. “No. I’m running some molasses to New Orleans later in the week, but I’m free now. Stay awhile. You in trouble?” he asked suddenly, handing Ray a glass of liquor as he sagged into his worn chair.

  Ray told him briefly of the scuffle with the red-haired men at the Toures mansion. Bennett let out a low whistle.

  “You don’t fool around, do you, Featherskill? Those Questler brothers—man, they’re pure poison, pure hatred.”

  “They’ll cool off and forget about it,” Ray said.

  “Not them.” Bennett drank his whiskey in a gulp and poured another, standing at the mantel. “Not them Questler boys. They won’t forget it till you’re buried.”

  It dawned slowly on Bennett. His pushed-in face puckered up questioningly. “Just what were you doing out at the Toures plantation? What could that man mean to you?”

  “Maybe nothing. I was looking into something. The Toures name came up.”

  “Then let it drop and lay,” Bennett advised him. “The Questler brothers are mean and dangerous. But General Toures… Brother, he’s Satan hims
elf when he’s aroused.”

  Ray slept well that night despite Bennett’s warnings. He had heard such talk too many times to be worried by it. Every town had its bully, boss, and boaster. It had been that way in Socorro, in Denver, Kansas City, and Nogales.

  Most times the talk had the ring of truth, and the men were tough. But often the local talk had inflated their reputations, and these tough men saw themselves as being a little tougher than they were. As long as they had but two arms and a single head, Ray figured they were put together the same as he was.

  Bennett had untied and pulled off some fifty yards to lie beside a sandbar. There no one could easily slip on board the flatboat. It was a warm evening. Ray slept on deck under a single blanket, watching the endless streams of white stars float through the deep indigo of the night skies, the boat gently rocking beneath his back.

  For a while he thought of Melinda Toures, trying to make sense of that puzzle. Failing at that, he shut his eyes and dropped easily off to a quiet sleep.

  The dark man with the hooked nose and catlike movements rested silently in the shadows along the river. Inkada had not moved for more than an hour, watching the strange spectacle before him, across the clearing.

  In his hand he held a gold-handled kris knife, and he crouched, ready to use it at any moment. Torchlight illuminated the clearing, and a swamp boat, black-hulled, and sinister, rested low in the water, a gangway leading to it.

  There were a half-dozen brutish-looking men near the vessel, and from time to time the glare from the torches allowed Inkada a clear look at their faces. One huge man with a sunken face and a striped shirt seemed to be in command. They called him Bangston.

  “How many more?” Bangston demanded.

  “Six.”

  “Get them the hell aboard,” Bangston growled. “It’ll be light in four hours.”

  The other man nodded and disappeared into the swamp, holding his rifle high. After a time there was a rustling in the cypress and from the deep moonshadows six men in chains were prodded forward, heads bowed in misery, hands and ankles shackled.