I ran back to the door in the adjoining room and opened it suddenly.
There was a little light from the window, and the bulk of a man waiting by the door. A shadow moved as the door swung wide ... there was another man!
They came for me, both of them. They were big men and were probably considered quite tough. They came for me, one from each direction. I had my knife and I had my Colt, but the Colt seemed an unfair advantage, and no doubt there was folks asleep upstairs or around me. I stepped in to meet them as they came at me from two sides, but I hooked a toe behind a chair and kicked it in front of the one coming from the right, and, as he fell over it, I lowered the boom on the second one with a good right fist.
He was ambitious, that gent was, and he was coming in fast, so when he met my right fist halfway he was driving right into it with all the thrust of his legs.
There was a splat, then a crunch, as his nose folded like an accordion under my fist. As he hit the floor I kicked him in the side of the head.
The first man was starting to get up, but I was through fooling around. I put the point of my knife against his throat right over the jugular vein, and I said, "I don't care if I do or I don't. What d' you think?"
He was sure of one thing, and he didn't need to be sure of anything else. One twist of that blade and tomorrow morning they'd be throwing dirt over him.
He held right still. "For God's sake, mister! Don't kill me! I didn't mean nothin'!"
"Who set you up to this?"
"I don't--"
That knife point dug a mite deeper. A tiny push now and he'd be bleeding on the carpet. "You tell me. You tell me who sent you and what you were to do with me."
"Swan sent me. The Hippo. We was to lay you out and pack you out the back way and down to the swamp."
"Get up, then." I took a step back and let him up, and I didn't much care if he wanted to open the ball or not, but he'd had all he wanted. There was a trickle of blood down his neck and it scared him. He was only scratched, but he didn't know how much and he was so scared he was ready to cry.
"Take that," I pointed my foot at the other man, "and clear out of here. Next time you tackle a Sackett, you be sure his hands are tied."
He backed away from me. "I had nothin' to do with that. It was him," he gestured to the man on the floor, "an' Hippo. They done it."
For a moment I looked at him, then, the edge of my blade up, I stepped toward him. "Where did they take him?"
His voice was a whisper. "To the swamp. To a houseboat on the bayou. I don't know which one."
"Get out!"
He stooped, lifting the other man with an effort, and staggered out. Closing the door after him I lit the light, then I closed and locked the door to the adjoining room. There was a spot of blood on the point of my knife and I wiped it clean.
There was a light tap on the door. It was the Negro again. "The key, suh? I supposed you might be through with it."
"Thanks--I am. But I believe I've broken a chair."
He glanced at it. "I hope that wasn't all," he said quietly. He gathered the pieces. "A chair can be replaced."
"What's your name?" I asked him, suddenly aware that I wanted to know.
He did not smile. "Judas, suh. Judas Priest."
"Thank you, Judas."
The Negro turned at the door. "Two of them, suh? That's doing very well, suh."
"You saw them?"
"Oh, yes, suh! Of course." He slipped his hand into his pocket, and it came out wearing a very formidable set of brass knuckles. "We couldn't allow anything to happen to a guest! Not at the Saint Charles, suh!"
"Much obliged. That's what I'd call service. I'd better put in a good word for you to the management."
"If you don't mind, suh, my participation would have been entirely my own responsibility."
"Thank you, Judas."
He drew the door shut after him, and I dropped down on the bed. Orrin was in a houseboat on a bayou. That was mighty little to know, for there were dozens of bayous and probably hundreds of houseboats.
Orrin might be dead, or dying. Right now he might be needing all the help he could get. And I could not help him ...
Chapter IV
Settin' on the side of the bed I gave thought to my problem. I had to find Orrin and almighty quick. They had no reason I could think of for keepin' him alive, but Orrin was a glib-tongued man and if anybody could find them a reason, he could.
There seemed no rhyme or reason to it. Most killings these days started from nothing, some measly argument that suddenly becomes all-fired important. But even allowing for that there still seemed to be more to it.
When it came right down to it, I had little to go on, and nobody ever accused me of being brighter than average. I can handle any kind of a fightin' weapon as good or better than most, and I'm rawhide tough and bull-strong, but when it comes to connivin' I ain't up to it. Straight out an' straight forward, that's me.
Orrin had come to town lookin' for some sign of that Frenchman who had gone off with pa to the western mountains, and a small chance of finding it, yet somehow he had evidently come up with something. Then, settin' at table he had struck up conversation with those LaCroix people and a name had been dropped. Out of the words that followed, Orrin, always good at keeping a witness off balance, asked what had become of Pierre? And he struck a nerve.
Pierre had not returned from a trip to the western lands. Andre Baston had been on that trip. Andre had not liked that question about Pierre, so what could a body figure from that? Maybe he had run out and left Pierre in a fight. Maybe he had taken something that belonged to Pierre ... and maybe he had killed Pierre.
All that was speculation, and a man can get carried away by a reasonable theory.
Often a man finds a theory that explains things and he builds atop that theory, finding all the right answers ... only the basic theory is wrong. But that's the last thing he will want to admit.
Pa had left New Orleans for the western lands at about that time. The name Sackett had jolted Andre when Orrin spoke it. And right after Orrin had introduced himself as a Sackett and prodded Andre Baston with the name of Pierre, Orrin disappeared.
What I had to do now was find one houseboat where there might be four or five hundred, and the only way I knew to look was to head for Gallatin Street, and after that the swamp. I spoke reasonable Spanish of a Mexican sort, and a few odd words of French, picked up in Louisiana or up along the Canadian border. I'd need them words. New Orleans had been a French and Spanish city for nearly a hundred years before it became American, and a lot of folks along the bayous spoke only French, like along the Bayou Teche, where the Cajuns lived.
First off, I needed somebody who knew the bayous, so I'd start down yonder where folks have all manner of secret knowledge. Time was I knowed a few folks.
Somebody had told me Bricktop was gone.
Bricktop Jackson was meaner than a grizzly bear with a sore tooth and apt to be on the prod most of the time. There toward the end she hung out with a man named Miller who had an iron ball where his hand had been. One time he come home with a whip and tried to take it to her. She took the whip from him and beat him half to death, so he tried a knife, and she took that and fed it to him five or six times. Miller got tired of it then and up and died on her. They'd fit many a time before, but he spited her this time, and when the law came and found him they carted the Bricktop off to prison.
At one time I'd helped her a mite, not even knowing who she was, and I don't know whether that surprised her more than me going on about my business. Only she told folks I was one man she'd go to hell for. I think she went to hell for a lot of men.
But along the river a man meets a sight of strange people, and I never had no preaching in mind. I'd made a friend hither and yon, and it seemed likely there were a few down on the mean streets, so I went there.
The folks who decided what sin was never walked Gallatin Street in its wild days. Had they done so, their catalogue of evil would have
stretched out a good bit, and we'd have a hundred commandments rather than ten. It was thieving, brawling, and murderous. There was the Blue Anchor, the Baltimore, the Amsterdam, and Mother Burke's Den. (The Canton House was closed after Canton kicked a sailor to death.) Nobody needed to hunt for a place in which to get drunk or robbed, and nine times out of ten if it was one it was surely the other.
Tarantula juice was the cheapest drink, two gallons of raw alcohol, a shaved plug of tobacco and half a dozen burnt peaches mixed in a five-gallon keg of water. If they stinted on anything it was the alcohol, but in the meaner dives they were inclined to add almost anything to make up the volume.
From joint to joint I went, keeping a weather eye open for a face I knew. All were familiar. I guess you could find them on any waterfront in the world, swaggering, tough, ready with fist or knife, and in Murphy's dance-saloon I struck it rich. I'd ordered a beer--his beer was usually safe--and was looking around when a tall, slim man with a gold ring in his ear came up alongside me.
He was a long-jawed man with yellow eyes, and he was wearing a planter's hat with a bandana tied beneath it and a brown coat with a scarf about his neck. He was thin, but with a whipcord look of strength about him.
"You can trust the beer, Sackett, and Murphy too, up to a point."
"Thanks," I said, "but can I trust a stranger with a ring in his ear?"
"I'm the Tinker," he said, and that explained everything to a man from our hills.
The Tinker was a tinker, he was also a pack-peddler who roamed the back mountain trails to sell or trade whatever he could. He was a man from foreign places who seemed always to have been amongst us, and although he looked thirty he might have been ninety. He had wandered the lonely roads through the Cumberlands and the Smokies and the Blue Ridge. They knew him on the Highland Rim, and from the breaks of the Sandy to the Choccoloco. Among other things, he made knives of a kind like you've never seen, knives sold to few, given to none.
"I'm glad to see you, then, for I need someone who knows the bayous."
"I know them a little," he said, "and I know those who know them better. I have people here."
The Tinker was a gypsy, and among that society he was held in vast respect.
Whether he was a king among them, or a worker of magic, or simply a better man with steel, I never knew.
"They've got Orrin," I said. "A man named Andre Baston's behind it, and Hippo Swan."
"When a Sackett breeds enemies," the Tinker said, "he never looks among the weak for them. They are a wicked lot, Tell Sackett."
"You know me then?"
"I was among them who rode to the Mogollon when trouble was upon you there. I rode with your cousin Lando, who is my friend. Where will you be if I have anything to tell you?"
"The Saint Charles. If I am not in, there is a man of color there, Judas Priest, you may speak to him."
"I know the man. And who does not?"
"You know him, too?"
"He is a friend to have."
The Tinker stood away from the bar and motioned to a man who loafed not far away. He put his hand on my arm. "This is Tell Sackett, a friend of mine."
"Of course," he said.
The Tinker looked around at me. "Now you will not be bothered," he said. "Go where you will in New Orleans but I cannot answer for the swamp or the bayous."
All around us was a sweaty, pushing, swearing, pocket-picking, poke-slitting lot, but now as I turned to leave they rolled away from me, and the way was easy. Among the crowd I saw the Tinker's friend and some others with him, and usually one of them was close to me. The gypsies had their own way of doing things in New Orleans, and there were always more of them about than one believed.
I was tired from my search through the dives. I turned back toward the hotel when suddenly Hippo Swan was before me. "Bring him to the Saint Charles, Hippo,"
I said. "If I have to come after him, you will deal with me."
He laughed, and glanced around for his men, but they had disappeared and there was an open space around us. He did not like it. He was afraid of no man, but something had happened here that he could not judge, for he had come with a half dozen men and now he was alone.
He had white skin, thick lips, and small, cruel eyes almost hidden under thick flesh. He was even larger than I had at first believed, with great, heavy shoulders and arms, and hands both broad and thick.
"I will deal with you, will I? I shall like that, me bucko, oh, I shall like that!" he said.
I did not like the man. There is that in me that bristles at the bully, and this man was such a one. Yet he was not to be taken lightly. This man was cruel because he liked being cruel.
"If he's harmed, Hippo, I'll let the fish have what's left of you."
He laughed again. Oh, he was not worried by me. I always thought a threat an empty thing, but in this case I had a brother to help, and if a threat might hold them off even a little, I'd use it.
"What's one Sackett more or less?" he scoffed.
"Nothing to you, but a lot to the rest of us."
"Us? I see only one."
I smiled at him. "Hippo," I said quietly, "there are as many of us as there need to be. I've never seen more than a dozen at one time except when great-grandpa and great-grandma had their wedding anniversary. There were more than a hundred men. I did not count them all."
He didn't believe me. Neither did he like the way his men disappeared from around him, nor the look of some of the dark, strange faces in the crowd.
Perhaps they were the same he had always seen, but suddenly they must have seemed different.
"I'll choose my time," he muttered, "and I'll break you--like that!" He made a snapping motion with hands that looked big enough to break anything, and then he walked away from me, and I went back to the Saint Charles and changed my clothes for dinner.
My new suit had come, and it fit exceedingly well. All the clothes I'd had since the time ma wove and stitched them with her own hands I'd either made myself from buckskin or they were hand-me-downs from the shelves of cattle-town stores.
It seemed to me that I looked very fine, and I looked away from the mirror, suddenly embarrassed. After all, why get big ideas? I was nothing but a country boy, a hill boy if you wish, who'd put in a few years and a few calluses on his hands from work and on his behind from saddles.
What was I doing here in this fine suit? How many times would I wear it? And what was I doing in this fine hotel? I was a man of campfires, line camps, and bunkhouses, a drifter with a rope and a saddle and very little else. And I'd better never forget it.
Yet sometimes things can make a man forget. Orrin had a right to trust women. He was easy to look at, and he had a foot for the dancing and an ear for the music and a voice to charm the beaver out of their ponds.
None of that was true of me. I was a big, homely man with wide shoulders, big hands, and a face like a wedge: hard cheekbones, and a few scars picked up from places where I shouldn't have been, maybe. I had scars on my heart, too, from the few times I'd won, only to lose again.
Soft carpets and white linen and the gleam of expensive glass and silver, they weren't for the likes of me. I was a man born to the smell of pine knots burning, to sleeping under the stars or under a chuck wagon, maybe, or to the smell of branding fires or powder-smoke.
Yet I polished my boots some, and slicked back my hair as best I could, and, with a twist at my mustache, I went down the stairs to the dining room.
The traps that life lays for a man are not always of steel, nor is the bait what he'd expect. When I came through the door she was setting there alone, and when she looked up at me her eyes seemed to widen and a sort of half-smile trembled on her lips.
She was beautiful, so beautiful I felt my heart ache with the sight of her.
Suddenly scared, I made a start to turn away, but she got to her feet quickly but gracefully, and she said, "Mr. Sackett? William Tell Sackett?"
"Yes, ma'am." I twisted my hat in my hands. "Yes, ma'am.
I was just aimin' to set for supper. Have you had yours yet?"
"I was waiting for you," she said, and dropped her eyes. "I am afraid you'll think me very bold, but I..."
"No such thing," I said. I drew back a chair for her.
"I surely dread eatin' supper alone. Seems to me I'm the only one alone, most of the time."
"Have you been alone a lot, Mr. Sackett?" She looked up at me out of those big, soft eyes and I couldn't swallow. Not hardly.
"Yes, ma'am. I've traveled wild country a sight, and away out in the mountains and upon the far plains a body sets alone ... although there's camp-robber jays or sometimes coyotes around."
"You must be awfully brave."
"No, ma'am. I just don't know no better. It comes natural when you've growed--grown-up with it."
My collar felt tight, but then I never did like them stiff collars. They chafed my neck. My gun had twisted over on my belly and was gouging me. I could feel the sweat on my forehead and I desperately wanted to wipe it away.
"Your face looks so--so hard! I mean the skin! Like mahogany."
"It ain't much," I said, "although it cuts less than most. Why, I mind the time--"
Well, I caught myself in time. That there was no story for a genteel girl like this here. She suddenly put her hand up to my face.
"Do you mind? I just have to see if it's as hard as it looks!" Her hand was soft, like the feathers on a dove. I could feel my heart pounding, and I was afraid she'd hear it. It had been a long time since any woman made up to me like that.
Suddenly somebody was beside the table. "Mr. Sackett, suh? A message for you, suh." And then in a slightly different tone, he said, and it was Judas talkin', "How do you do, Miss Baston?"
Chapter V
That name did just what Judas figured it would do and brought me right down out of the clouds. He shot down my balloon with one word, and it was well he did so, because it was only filled with hot air, anyway. No girl like this one would set her cap for a man like me unless there was double-dealing in it.
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