Natchez

by Paul Lederer

  “Yet think what such a power, if it could exist,” Toures said, “might be worth. Think of the suffering that could be eliminated. Think!”

  “I have, often,” Spectros said. “Yet it seems to me that nature may be tampered with, warped, but she will not be overcome. Time may not be stopped, nor death.”

  Toures sipped slowly at the last of his brandy, still watching this silver-haired stranger who spoke of incredible things. Incredible to those who had not witnessed them.

  “I cannot stay,” Toures said, rising suddenly. “Tell Berta I am sorry. You, sir,” he said to Spectros. “I would be interested in pursuing the topic further some time. Perhaps you would consent to be my guest one evening for dinner.”

  “I would,” Spectros commented. “I imagine such a conversation would be mutually enlightening.”

  Toures bowed curtly to each man then stepped to the door, just as Berta Greene, dark eyes shyly downcast, entered the parlor. Relief seemed to flash in her eyes.

  “The general is just leaving, Berta,” her father said. “Women,” he added, directing his words to Spectros, “they are liable to spend so much time dressing for their man that the man grows impatient of waiting.”

  Spectros smiled faintly, yet he could see plainly that the girl was reluctant, perhaps even terrified of the general who was twice her years. As Toures and his procession rushed out of the yard as if a battle were to be joined, Spectros saw Berta’s eyes gazing toward the stable, on the opposite side of the yard.

  Ray Featherskill, shirt off, hat tipped back, whistled as he worked on the harnesses. And Berta’s eyes were as bright as a child who has seen her first rainbow.

  Greene, who had been watching Toures turned back to Spectros and caught Berta’s gaze himself, following it to the young blond cowboy. He seemed taken aback, confused by his daughter’s interest.

  Spectros was looking at him when he turned back into the house. “I don’t…” Greene began.

  “They are young,” Spectros said. “Youth seeks itself. Don’t worry. It is harmless.”

  “But the general…”

  “Is a much older man, hardly the sort to capture a young woman’s fancy.”

  Greene said nothing, working on a thought as if it were very remarkable. “I want the best for her.”

  “Yes. I am sure you wish her to be happy,” Spectros said.

  Greene shook his head and poured a second drink for himself. He studied the silver-haired man before him.

  “Toures and you, Dr. Spectros, you were speaking of something more specific than the notions of Eastern shamans. You were speaking of Melinda Toures.”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought so.” Greene downed his drink. “The girl was dead at midnight, Doctor. I swear it. At eight the following morning she was riding her horse again.” Greene’s voice was hushed. “It was impossible! If I were not a man of science…”

  “I would suggest that science has not yet reached its boundaries, Dr. Greene. One day we will discover through science what certain shamans, holy men, magicians already know. Life is a totality, all of nature a unity. Each life a limb, every form of life a partner in common existence.”

  “You do not speak of all you know, sir.” Greene shook his head again, running long fingers through his thinning gray hair. “You have lived a mysterious life, I would guess. Where you have studied, why you are called ‘Doctor,’ I would hate to suppose.

  “But this Dr. Black—you know him? He is the one who treated Melinda Toures, is he not?”

  “Yes, he is the man. And I know him, sir. I know him well.” Spectros excused himself and walked toward the door. Without turning around he told Greene, “I am expecting a friend to join us, sir. With your kind permission he shall also be staying with us here.”

  “Of course,” Greene replied. His mind was working on several thoughts at once, he hardly thought to ask until Spectros was nearly outside on the porch.

  “Your friend’s name? If the man should appear in town and not find you there? Whom should I be expecting?”

  “A Mr. Soledad,” Spectros replied, smiling faintly. “Kid Soledad, they sometimes call him. The black horse—it is his. I would venture to guess that he will soon be making an appearance.”

  Kid Soledad. Had he heard that name before? Greene bit at his lip thoughtfully. In the West, he knew, gunfighters sometimes carried such names. Soledad. He could not recall the name, yet it rang a distant bell. Thoughtfully he watched Spectros step from the porch into the bright sunlight, crossing the yard to where his friends worked.

  Montak had fired the ancient forge and was forming some shoes for the horses, his massive shoulders glossed with perspiration. Ray had finished his harness-stitching. Kesey sat on a fence rail, idly twirling a rope. Inkada was not around.

  “Well?” Ray asked. He was pulling his black shirt back on.

  “You were right, Ray. There’s no doubt. Toures has a connection with the man.”

  Kesey glanced from one to the other, puzzled. He slid off the fence, walking up to Spectros. “Sir,” he said, “I figure I’m in this, unless you don’t want me here. If that’s the case, tell me, and I’ll ramble on. But if I’m into somethin’, I figure I’ve the right to know what it is.”

  “You have the right,” Spectros said. “Ray—will you fill Mr. Kesey in? I’m tired, and I would like to rest. In the wagon.”

  Spectros took three steps before he stopped. “If I do not see you again, Mr. Kesey, thank you for helping Ray out of a jam.”

  “If you don’t see me again?” the cowboy’s face was perplexed.

  “You may not wish to stay after you talk to Ray—” Spectros smiled enigmatically, momentarily, then continued on, walking to the black wagon which rested beside the tall red barn.

  “I don’t get it,” Kesey said, the rope still coiled in his hands. “Does he think I’ll rabbit?”

  “It’s not like that,” Ray said, taking his gunbelt from the fence post. The ringing of Montak’s hammer sounded rhythmically. “Let’s walk a ways.”

  Kesey nodded, watching as Ray strapped on his gun. They walked through the mottled shade of the willows along the canal, the sun flashing brilliantly in the gaps.

  “Most often,” Ray said, “folks do leave when they hear the story.” He watched his boots as they walked the dusty path. “Or they figure us all for a pack of lunatics. I mean Montak, Inkada, me and the doctor. We’ve ridden some long trails together.”

  “And you got no place for an outsider.”

  “No, it’s not that.” Ray stopped beside a great cottonwood, its leaves silver in the sunlight. He looked into Kesey’s eyes. “We’re looking for a man. A very dangerous man. He kills in ways you never thought of.”

  “I seen my share of dirty fighting.”

  “Have you fought a cougar hand-to-hand?” Ray asked. Kesey, slightly impatient, stared back.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean this man can be a cougar. He can be a crow or a snake. He can do strange things. His name is Blackschuster, Will. He’s a magician.”

  “A magician!” Kesey laughed, but Ray’s eyes were serious. “You mean it, don’t you?”

  “I mean it.”

  Were they a pack of lunatics? Will Kesey hooked his thumbs into his belt and studied Ray Featherskill. Suddenly he smiled. “You’re joshin’!”

  “No.”

  “How come you’re after this man—sayin’ there is a man like that?”

  “He took Dr. Spectros’ woman, Will. Years back. Many years back.”

  Kesey shook his head. “I can’t pick up on all this at once, Ray. Suppose you lay it out to me piece by meal.”

  Ray did so, going through the incredible story slowly as the two men rested on the canal banks, tossing pebbles into the sun colored water.

  “And Kid Soledad!” Will Kesey hung suspended between belief and rejection. It was all so strange, all alien to his way of thinking, his life’s experience.

  “That’s all the
re is to it, Will,” Ray smiled. “You see, it’s like I told you at the top. Some folks think we’re crazy and they get shut of us fast. The others, those who believe us, they’re scared, with every right to be.”

  “I believe you, Ray.” Kesey said slowly. “Damn my soul if I don’t believe you. I don’t get the whys and wherefores, but I believe you.”

  “That’s the way it lays, Will. Spectros figured you had the right to know. Now you do. The decision is yours. We’d be proud to have you with us, but I guess you’ve got no reason to stick.”

  “No reason at all, Ray. Yet I got no real reason to leave. Me, I’ve been driftin’ all my life, chased out, run out, shut out. I got no place to go home to. I guess I’ll stick.”

  “It’ll be dangerous, Will.”

  Kesey laughed. “Dangerous? My life has been dangerous, Ray. There’s bullets layin’ spent in Texas which should have had my name on them. I’ve run with luck, when it peters out, I’ll accept it.” Kesey was silent a moment, meditative. Then he smiled. “You noticed that daughter of Dr. Greene’s? She’s not bad lookin’, Ray, is she? In a quiet way. A nice woman. Kind I ain’t known much of.”

  “She’s a nice-looking woman,” Ray answered.

  “Don’t guess she’d ever look at me.”

  “I don’t see why. Hell, Will, you’re a fine figure of a man yourself.”

  “Don’t kid me, Ray. I’m homely as an alley tomcat, and nearly as scarred. But I’ve found I like it. I like it fine, bein’ around decent folks. Like you and the doctor. Montak—he’s a fine bear of a man too. I’ll stick, Ray. I figure I’ll stick.”

  Spectros slept in his wagon, dreaming brilliantly colored dreams of times past. A shy, dark-eyed girl smiled through a brass screen, flowers filled a lush tropical garden with pinks and whites. A mouth reached questioningly, curiously to his.

  Then that dream was gone, and in its place came a remembrance of a cloud-shrouded retreat in the mountain meadow. There a tiny brass bell announced the presence of a seeker and a shriveled man in an ochre robe admitted the tall stranger.

  “Master?”

  Sin J’arine’s head came up, those great deep eyes shining. He wore a narrow, snow-white beard, his hands formed symbolic figures.

  “The young man…” Sin J’arine said, his voice cracked, ancient. “The young man who would waste his life seeking magical power. The man who would become a god.”

  “No, sir. The man who loved a young woman and saw her torn from him. A man of magic took her. It will take a man of magic to bring her back.”

  “It devours life, this pursuit,” the Master said softly.

  “My life means nothing without her, sir.”

  “Yet time erodes such sentiments.”

  “Not for me. Time will never erase her memory. Anger has brought me to you, sir. A determined anger…”

  There was a rap at the door and Spectros’ head jerked up. Rubbing his eyes he walked to the door and opened it, surprised by the brilliant sunlight. Big Joseph stood there.

  “I’ve decided to tell you, sir,” Joseph said. “Decided to tell you what I know of General Toures, and why I do not like the man.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Spectros opened the door to his wagon wider.

  “Step in, Joseph,” he invited the big man, “if you don’t mind speaking in such an environment. Some have termed it bizarre.”

  Joseph’s eyes swept the wagon interior, perhaps not bizarre, yet altogether fascinating. He stepped closer to the narwhale tusk, examining that curiosity, saw the skull with the fragment of quartz imbedded in it and raised his eyebrows. Finally he took the seat Spectros offered him under a copper lamp which burned with a curious green light.

  “You have quite a laboratory,” Big Joseph commented, nodding toward the far end of the wagon where a Bunsen burner illuminated rows of test tubes, chemist’s scales, other oddments and substances. “More equipment in this wagon than Dr. Greene had in his town office.”

  “I dabble with experiments when I have time on my hands,” Spectros answered. “Yet you have something to tell me, Joseph?”

  The old man reclined in a black leather chair, that odd greenish light shading his features. Joseph noticed a ring he had not seen before on the doctor’s hand. A massive, square-cut emerald, it caught and diffused the wavering light from the lantern.

  “I know about Sam Toures from my brother,” Big Joseph said, scooting forward, hands clenched together. “It was during the war—they call Dr. Greene a traitor for helping a wounded man. Dr. Greene’s a gentle soul, sir, a man’s skin color never made a difference to him, nor the color of the uniform he wore. Yet the traitor is their proud General Toures.”

  “Toures a traitor?”

  “Yes, sir. So my brother told me, and he saw it. You know, the general he fought well in the war, or so they tell it. He was wounded early, and he came home to Natchez.”

  “Yes, I have heard that.”

  “Dr. Greene used to go up there most every day to look at the general’s wounds. Him and Berta. She used to nurse the general, bring him whatever he wanted. She idolized him—well, he was a war hero, and she was just a little girl.”

  “The general has his own daughter, Melinda?”

  “Her! Dr. Spectros, that girl was spoiled rotten since she was born, after her Mama died the general just spoiled her worse. She don’t care about a person on earth but herself. It was all fancy cotillions, new dresses, ribbons, and fine ponies for her.”

  “But Dr. Greene and General Toures became fast friends during his illness.”

  “Yes, sir. Some say if it weren’t for General Toures, folks would have lynched Dr. Greene. But I don’t know. That’s the way General Toures is—he likes folks to think he’s noble and shiny, if you know what I mean.”

  “But you don’t believe him to be.”

  “No, sir. Maybe he was, maybe he meant to be, but he done one evil thing and whatever he might have been, he colored it all bad.”

  “This evil thing he did, Joseph? Did it have to do with the Union soldier who died here?”

  Joseph’s eyes opened a bit wider. “How did you know that?”

  “It was simply a guess, Joseph. Please—go on, tell me about it.”

  “It was late in a November,” Joseph said, closing his eyes, recalling what he knew of the night, what his brother had told him. “It was foggy in the bottoms, down in the swamps, but drizzling still from the high-up clouds. It was black as sin, sir.

  “My brother, Evan, he was wakened by the sounds of horses coming into the yard at the Toures House. Evan was a cook, and he was near to the drawing room when the leader of these men, Confederate soldiers, they were, tramped in, all cold and wet and sat down with General Toures, talking in whispers.”

  “A nighttime visit by a group of Confederate soldiers.”

  “Yes, sir,” Big Joseph said. “It was a secret mission they were on. Already a body could tell the South was losing. We had been whipped at Vicksburg badly. These men were desperate, ill-mounted, ill-equipped. Some just boys, dragged out of the Tennessee hills or Georgia glades.”

  “What was their mission, Joseph?”

  “They had valuables with them, sir. Money to help rearm the South, to buy horses, shoes, food. They had a fortune which had been smuggled ashore through Union blockades in some Louisiana bayou.”

  “And this money,” Spectros asked in a way which unnerved Joseph, “I assume it was in silver?”

  “Yes, it was silver money.” Joseph’s eyes narrowed. How could the man know that? “It was,” Joseph went on, “silver money in a great quantity. Evan saw it, peeking from the window as General Toures looked at it by lanternlight. It shimmered and shone, sir. A fortune!”

  Joseph closed his eyes, ran a hand across his forehead and shrugged. Slowly he went on, Spectros let him tell the rest of the story in his own way.

  “These men wanted to find Natchez Trace. They were not from Mississippi, and had no idea how the land fell, where the Union
forces might be posted. General Toures was their contact. A native of Natchez, a trusted ally. Yet when he sent them off, he sent them on the wrong road, down the Ochshaw River Road. That leads into the swamps, and Toures watched them go, waving a hand.

  “Come ten minutes or so the general comes out dressed to ride. With him were three of the Questler brothers. Then they went off and after a time there were shots fired in the swamps.”

  “They ambushed the Confederate caravan?”

  “They did. But something went wrong. They came back without the silver, one Questler boy hung over the withers of his horse, dead. The general was cursing a blue streak. The wagon had sunk into the swamps, loaded with silver. Not only that—they had been seen.”

  “By the Union officer, this Captain Morrison.”

  “Yes, sir. And he had escaped though badly wounded. I have often thought of that man, sir. He wore a uniform! He was not a spy, but a brave, dedicated soldier, probably assigned to watch for that silver train. They shot him, but he made his escape, crawling to Dr. Greene.”

  “Where he later died.”

  “Where he later died. I wonder if General Toures did not suspect that he revealed something to the doctor. Perhaps he still believes it. The attention he pays Berta, the time he spends assuring Dr. Greene that he is his friend.” Joseph sighed heavily and spread his hands. “That is the end of my story, Dr. Spectros. All I know of this man, the reason I do not wish to see him here around Berta and the doctor.”

  “There is one part of the story left untold,” Spectros commented. “Why did Evan not speak to the authorities, at war’s end. Or you, for that matter, Joseph?”

  “Evan must have been seen that night, sir. Evan died abruptly before the war ended. As for myself—what did I witness? I had no evidence. Only second-hand information which could harm Dr. Greene still more. And that I would not do.”

  “But you believe the story is true, Joseph?”

  “I believe it. Evan was my brother, and I knew him too well to think he exaggerated or imagined this tale. But you, Dr. Spectros—tell me—do you believe it?”