by F. M. Parker
Morissot jumped down from the wagon and uncovered Verret’s corpse. Unceremoniously he caught the man’s jacket at the collar and dragged him out of the vehicle and to the edge of the water.
* * *
Tim Wollfolk awakened to the rumble of the deep Mississippi River flowing past close beside him. He tossed aside his blanket and climbed erect.
He was three days riding south of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The evening before, he had made camp on the top of the river levee. The embankment, some fifty feet wide, fell away steeply to the river. While on the opposite side, it sloped down at a gentle angle to the old floodplain and the main road. A dense woods, still dark with lingering night shadows, lay beyond the road.
Thick gray clouds hung close overhead. To the north rain hung like curtains along the full length of the horizon, and was moving directly down the broad river valley. Tim smelled the threatening rain. The storm would be upon him in an hour.
He glanced down river. There, somewhere within four or five miles lay the one-hundred-and-thirty-year-old city of New Orleans with its one hundred thousand inhabitants. Tim’s pulse increased. Soon he would enter that great port city. He would locate the lawyer, Gilbert Rosiere, and claim his inheritance.
Two weeks earlier, Tim had received a letter from the New Orleans lawyer informing him that his uncle, Albert Wollfolk, had died and that Tim was the main beneficiary of his will. Rosiere indicated that properties of value were involved.
Tim’s mother had died when he was but a boy. His father had died in an explosion of the boilers of a steamboat five years past. That had left his Uncle Albert as Tim’s last living relative. He felt a bitter sorrow for not having known his uncle before his death. Now Tim stood alone as the last of the lineage of Wollfolks.
Tim had quit his job as accountant in the Lynch and Lynch Steamboat Company at Cincinnati, Ohio, and purchased a ticket on the steamboat Rainbow. In five days the boat had reached Baton Rouge. Wanting to see the land and plantations at a close range, Tim had left the riverboat. He bought a saddle horse and rode south, marveling at the huge cotton and cane plantations with the elegant mansions. As he drew nearer New Orleans, the land had become swampy and the broad cultivated fields fell away behind. The road often wound through dark bayou country and long stretches of forest.
The horse snorted a sharp blast of air and stomped the ground. It stood tense, ears thrust forward and staring across the road at the woods. Tim looked in the same direction to see what bothered the animal. He saw nothing threatening in the woods, only the indistinct boles of the trees and the leaf-filled branches swaying to the wind.
Probably the horse had caught the scent of a prowling panther or maybe an alligator. Tim had heard the animals were present and sometimes took livestock. An alligator rarely killed a human.
He turned and walked down the slope of the levee to the river’s edge. For the past few days the Mississippi had been rising slowly from springtime storms. The water had continued to climb during the darkness of the night and now hurried past in a tide of brown, muddy water nearly three-quarters of a mile wide. Patches of floating foam and brush rushed by. A large tree torn loose from its hold on some distant upstream piece of land wallowed and rolled as it was shoved along by the current. A flock of ducks glided in to inspect the river, then climbed up and away from the rolling waves kicked up by the jostling, swirling currents. They flew off searching for quiet water. A rattlesnake driven from its den and caught by the river swam by in a sensuous, undulating twist of its long body.
Tim was used to the flooding Ohio; still he was amazed at the titanic flow of the Mississippi pouring past.
He knelt to wash his hands in the cold water. After a quick bite to eat, he would ride into New Orleans.
“Hey, fellow, turn around,” a loud voice shouted from the top of the levee.
Tim twisted to look behind in the direction of the call. He jerked, startled, for three men with pistols in their hands stood staring down at him. The pistols pointed straight at him.
“Stand up,” shouted the same voice, coming from a tall skinny man, “and get your hands above your head where I can see them.”
“What do you want?” questioned Tim, rising slowly to his feet.
“Now, how about that?” the first man said. “He wants to know what we want.” He grinned without mirth.
“We want your money, fool,” said a second man.
“Then maybe we’ll have you take a long swim in the river,” the third man said.
The three men laughed as if the threatened robbery was some huge joke.
Tim’s heart thudded within his ribs. “I only have fifty dollars,” he said. “It’s there in my belongings near the blanket.”
“Clovis, see if he tells the truth,” directed the skinny man.
Clovis quickly stooped and rummaged through Tim’s possessions. “His pocketbook is here,” he said. He counted the coins and paper money. “Fifty-two dollars and some change.”
The skinny leader of the robbers jabbed his pistol in Tim’s direction. “Damn little money. Turn your pockets wrong side out. Hurry it up.”
Tim dug into his pocket and turned them outward. “I only have this knife and some lucifers.” He held them up for the men to see.
“He might have his loot in a money belt, or he may be carryin’ it in his boot,” Clovis said.
“Go down there and check,” ordered the leader.
Clovis scrambled down the steep face of the levee. He warily approached the well-muscled young man. “Now, don’t try anything,” he warned. “Throw that knife away.”
Tim dropped the knife and matches to the ground. His fear grew. These men would not simply walk off and leave him alive. It was obvious they were practiced robbers. They would know dead victims would tell no tales to the law.
Clovis, holding his pistol cocked and pointed at Tim’s head, reached out to feel for hidden money.
It’s now or never, thought Tim. His hand flashed down and caught Clovis’ outstretched arm in a viselike grip. He spun the robber around and at the same time dodged to the side to get from in front of the man’s pistol.
The gun fired with a brain-jarring explosion. Tim rocked to the mighty concussion. The burning gunpowder scorched the side of his face. The acid smoke stung his eyes.
But he was not hit by the bullet. He jerked the man again to keep him off balance and caught him by the gun hand. Bodily he lifted Clovis and swung him to a position so that his body, though smaller than Tim’s, would be a partial shield between him and the two remaining robbers on top of the levee.
A horrible blow struck Tim in the left shoulder. He staggered back under the punch of the bullet. He caught himself in knee-deep water. His feet slipped on the steeply down-shelving bottom of the river, and he almost fell. The swift current pulled at his legs.
“I thought you’d try something,” yelled the bandit leader. “But you made a mistake. I can shoot your eyes out at this range.”
The angry voice added strength to Tim’s arms. Trapped as he was against the river, he knew there was little chance to survive. But damn them all to hell, he wasn’t dead yet. He wrenched the pistol from Clovis’ hand and swung it to point up the slope at his enemies.
The bandit leader fired again as Tim’s side showed for an instant from behind Clovis. The bullet went true to his point of aim.
Tim felt the bullet skittering across his ribs, ripping muscle loose from bone, and tearing free from his back. His breath left him with a swish.
Clovis felt Tim’s grip loosen. He broke away.
Tim was hurled backward by the slam of the hurtling chunk of lead. His feet found no bottom in the deep water.
Tim sank at once, the cold water of the river enclosing him like ice. Down, down he went, the swift current catching him, tumbling and rolling him, adding confusion to his pain-filled brain.
At some great depth, Tim’s shoulder bumped the bottom of the river. Knowing for an instant which direction was up, he tried to
stroke to the surface. But his left arm refused to respond to the frantic commands of his mind, and his clothing and boots were like lead holding him down. He tumbled helplessly along the gravelly bottom of the river.
2
Tim let the powerful current of the river take him where it willed. Using his one good hand, he struggled at a boot until it came free. Laboriously he tugged at the second. It too finally came loose. Fighting his pain, he jerked his belt buckle open and kicked out of his trousers.
With his lungs ready to burst, he shoved off from the river bottom and fought upward, clawing at the slippery water with his right hand.
He broke free of the suffocating water. He sucked a mighty draft of the life-giving air. God, how delicious!
He paddled and kicked weakly, barely holding himself afloat. He looked around. The river torrent had swept him away from the shore and was racing downstream with him. He had been carried around a bend of the river and out of sight of the outlaws.
Above Tim a giant sycamore, a century old and weighing ten water-soaked tons, ponderously swapped ends in the muddy current. The tree had been undercut from its high bank above the river and carried off by the flooding water. Hammered by thousands of blows during its two hundred miles of travel in the turbulent river channel, the tree had all its bark stripped away, limbs beaten short, and the tough knotty roots worn to less than a yard in length.
The tree rolled, drowning one-half of its roots and surfacing the other portion. It stabilized with the massive bulk aligned with the flood, an enormous battering ram charging downstream.
Tim did not see the behemoth sycamore bearing down upon him. It struck him a bone-cracking blow on the injured ribs, driving him under the water. A sharp root caught in his shirt and held him down.
The delicate balance of the tree was destroyed by the weight of the man. The tons of wood began to rotate. The momentum built, then rolled toward a new balance point.
Tim ripped free as the tree turned. He battled to the surface, spitting out the foul-tasting water that had slopped into his mouth.
He grabbed a short length of wood floating nearby and clutched its meager buoyancy to him. He began to kick across the current for the shore. For each hard-earned foot gained toward the bank, the river swept him a hundred downstream.
Tim felt the cold and his wounds turning his muscles to wet strings. How much blood was he losing? Surely a large amount. He started to doubt that he could reach the bank which sped so swiftly past. The fear built renewed strength. He kicked onward.
Tim’s legs gradually ceased to move. Only his hold on the piece of wood endured. He floated onward.
Bit by bit his mind became numb and nearly useless. His grip on the world and the chunk of wood slipped away from him. He sank below the surface of the water. Down he went through the cold, twisting current.
His feet touched the deep bottom of the river. Weakly he kicked upward, his one good hand reaching for the surface that he knew he would never see again.
His lungs were exploding. He had to breathe. His mouth opened and water flooded into his lungs. He was drowning.
* * *
Lew Fannin dreamed. A scowl formed about his closed eyes. Suddenly he became taut, every muscle hardening, and the trigger finger of his gun hand closed once, twice, three, four times.
Abruptly Lew sat bolt-upright. His eyes flashing around, he stared hard in every direction out through the cold gristle of the dawn and into the brush and trees surrounding his camp. He glanced down at the five-shot Paterson Colt revolver in its leather holster beside his bedroll. He grinned sourly at himself. This was the third time he had refought his last battle with outlaws.
The night was spent. He rose and packed his few belongings. He saddled his big gray horse and swung astride. Without a signal from the man, the horse moved off in a swift walk along the road at the base of the levee.
Man and beast had been together all the days of the animal’s life. It had grown to sense the state of the man. Now the tumult within the man’s mind communicated itself to the horse and it tossed its head and chomped on the metal bit in its mouth.
Lew spoke quietly to the faithful horse and slapped it playfully on the neck. “All right, old fellow, we’re almost there.”
The horse nickered, swished its tail, and broke into a gallop on the road winding through the deep woods.
Lew relaxed, the riding of the gray soothing him as it always did. He would take the horse with him to Mexico.
Louisiana was the most aggressive of all the states in forming regiments of fighting men to send to the war in Mexico. The state paid a twenty-five-dollar bounty to each enlistee for joining. Lew had heard that a company of mounted riflemen was being recruited in New Orleans. He planned to join and sail south to help General Winfield Scott whip the Mexicans.
A month earlier such an action would not have interested him much. He had been in the Texas Rangers for four years. He had always wanted to be a lawman, one of the small elite band of Rangers enforcing the law over the vast state of Texas. A nation until it had recently become one of the states of the Union.
He had taken naturally to the hard life and gun fights with outlaws and sometimes with the tough Comanche braves. His most recent assignment had been at Adamsville on the Lampasas River in the center of bandit country. His last arrest had taken him on a long journey after four rapists and murderers across Comanche territory to the Red River.
Lew had pushed the gray horse relentlessly along the tracks of his quarry. He came upon them as they crossed to the north side of the Red River and out of his jurisdiction. He pulled back into the trees and hurried upriver. There he crossed on a rock-bottom ford and swung back east and caught the four outlaws.
The men had fought him fiercely and he killed two of them. By then the blood of battle was in Lew’s eyes and he remembered the dead victims of the criminals. He refused to allow the remaining two murderers to surrender, but forced them to fight him. He killed everyone.
As Lew traveled the long weary days back to Adamsville with the corpses swollen and bloated in death, he reflected upon his merciless killing of the outlaws. That violence was a worrisome trait in him. He began to think of a change of jobs. However, he knew he would always be a warrior and not a farmer or office lackey.
The Ranger captain read Lew’s report and roughly reprimanded him for crossing the Red River into Oklahoma and for not taking the last two rapists prisoner. Lew knew without doubt that the captain was correct. But he was not certain he could ever allow justice be denied to a victim by a criminal merely crossing a river. He thought the savage deaths he had brought to the outlaws were justified. Lew immediately resigned and began the long journey east to New Orleans.
The concept of justice was important to Lew. He remembered his first lesson in justice and honesty. As a seven-year-old youth, he had tried to pick the pocket of an old man on the streets of Chicago. But the man felt the fingers digging for his wallet and, swifter than Lew had thought possible, whirled and caught him by the hand.
The old man lifted Lew off his feet and held him dangling from his arm. “Lad, stealin’s a bad thing, and you’re a poor thief. Where are your folks? I’m going to take you home and tell them what you tried to do.”
“I don’t have family. But I stay with a man. He’s a damn fine thief. Here he comes now. You’d better let me go, for he’s going to beat the hell out of you, old man.”
Lew smiled inside his head at the remembrance. That gray-haired, sixty-year-old man beat the younger man to the pavement in less than a minute. Then, catching Lew by the hand, he had dragged him along with him.
The man’s wife had stood in the center of the room staring at Lew. “What in God’s name are you going to do with that dirty ragamuffin?”
“He’s got no family and we got no kids. I thought we’d take him back to Texas with us. He’s had some bad friends. I think it’s our Christian duty to use our last years raising and teaching him to be fair and just to all men.”<
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And so Lew traveled to Houston with the old couple. For nine years he lived with them, until their deaths, the woman following swiftly after the man.
They were the only two people Lew had ever loved. He took their name, Lew, and considered it a very great honor.
Lew crossed the broad Mississippi River on a ferry boat at Baton Rogue and headed south toward New Orleans. Once it had rained all day without letup and he had taken a night’s shelter in a roadside tavern and lodging place.
The road entered a swampy zone and became deep with mud. Lew pulled the horse down to a walk and guided it out of the mud and up to the top of the levee flanking the river. He went on through gradually thinning woods.
A quarter-mile ahead, or a little less, a man climbed out of his bedroll on the levee and looked about. Then he walked down the bank to the river’s edge. Lew thought the clothes of the man resembled those of a horseman he had seen at a distance traveling ahead of him the day before. The fellow moved like a young man.
Three men broke from the woods on the inland side of the levee and ran up to the top of the embankment. Lew thought he could make out pistols in their hands. They talked with the first man. After a minute or two, one of the men went down the face of the levee. The first man began to struggle with the armed arrival.
The first man was being attacked, or was it an arrest? Lew had heard that travelers on this stretch of forested road were sometimes robbed, even murdered. The instincts of the lawman to investigate rose in Lew. He spurred the gray to a run through the trees. He pulled his Paterson revolver and held it ready across the saddle in front of him.
The crash of a heavily charged pistol shattered the stillness of the morning. The two struggling men stumbled out into the edge of the water. A second shot erupted and the first man was flung into deep water. He vanished below the surface.