Blackwater

by Abe Dancer

  ‘Hah. Does he sound like the kind of feller who’d go along with that? Are we talkin’ o’ the same person?’

  ‘Well that’s the buzz. I’ve got to ask.’

  An’ you did, Sheriff.’ With a curt nod in the direction of McAllister, Savoy turned on his heel and strode away.

  McAllister immediately looked to Buckmaster. ‘The whole thing’s kind o’ curious, don’t you think?’

  Buckmaster was still pondering on Savoy’s response about Jack Rogan. ‘What is? What’s curious?’ he asked.

  ‘We get ourselves a peaceful society goin’, then them swampers move in, an’ gunfights break out all over.’

  ‘You offerin’ a connection?’ Buckmaster asked.

  ‘Connection, coincidence, it’s all the same kidney. Can’t pretend it ain’t.’

  ‘You’re gettin’ to sound like one o’ them rednecks Savoy’s been harpin’ on about. Gettin’ a tad picky about the bloodline of a neighbour.’

  ‘Picky?’ McAllister exclaimed. ‘Why there’s town kids wonderin’ where their cats an’ dogs are disappearin’ to. You understand what I’m saying, Sheriff? You think that’s daybreak mist hangin’ over their goddamn tents? You ever smelled hillbilly stew?’

  Buckmaster shook his head tolerantly. ‘Got anythin’ else on your mind, Mac?’

  ‘Yeah. Me an’ one or two others have been wonderin’ who this Jack Rogan feller might be. You know, what’s he here for? Has Savoy brought him in on purpose, like … backup if he needs to win arguments? Folk don’t take kindly to them sort o’ manners, Sheriff.’

  ‘You know what I think, Mac?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think the minute I’ve left here, you’ll be back to chewin’ on mescal beans.’

  McAllister snorted, and set about assembling the two plain coffins. ‘Was only tryin’ to be helpful,’ he muttered. ‘These men ain’t here to cut a rug. There’s somethin’ in the wind, I know it.’

  The carpenter wasn’t such a sharp blade any more. Nowadays, he was indulged as a harmless prophet of doom. But this time, Buckmaster had a gut feeling that something bad was about to happen.

  Jack heard the sound of his own footfall in the quiet that descended when he walked into the High Chair Saloon. It was midday, and there was a good crowd of drinkers at the long bar. The poker and blackjack layouts hadn’t opened up yet, and only the tiger on the faro box was turning.

  To a man, they watched him, pretending not to. Eyes were raised to the back-bar mirror, before quickly dropping away. Yesterday, Jack had been the outsider from Whistler who rode a ploughboy mule; today he was a killer of men.

  He walked to a vacant spot that emerged at the bar, and ordered whiskey. The man at the pianola sat immobile, his fingers suspended over the black and white keys. As Jack’s drink clicked hard on the counter, the man hit a key, and the roll started up with a lively, kicking-heel tune.

  The barkeep nodded and Jack nodded back. At a table near the door, he pulled up a chair. There was a deck of cards and he started organizing them into suits and numbers. His hands were steady but he looked pale.

  Five minutes later, the batwings swung aside and Gaston Savoy came in. He saw Jack and made straight for his table.

  ‘I was wondering where you’d be. Take a seat,’ Jack said without looking up. ‘I want you to return my horse and thousand dollars, now. I want the hell out of this town,’ he added trying to avoid anyone overhearing.

  Savoy took a moment to consider Jack’s words. ‘It shouldn’t have happened,’ he offered. ‘What the hell Loop was doin’ out there, I don’t know. Really, I don’t. What I do know is I can’t let a little misunderstandin’ mess up our association. My plans ain’t bore fruit yet.’

  Jack continued to shuffle the cards. He knew Savoy wanted to keep him around for whatever reason, and last night was almost certainly a lead up to more trouble. To a professional card player, the shooting dead of two men wasn’t an everyday occurrence. He knew he was being pushed into a worsening situation.

  ‘I hear there’s some disturbance back at Whistler. There’s some still there, an’ some have gone back. Ride out with me an’ you can see how the sorrel’s doin. It’ll give us time to consider one or two things.’ Savoy gave Jack a hard, black-eyed stare as he got to his feet. ‘Half an hour,’ he said.

  Jack dealt himself a hand, turned the cards over and considered the result. ‘Total rubbish,’ he muttered. ‘Just as well I’m leaving.’ He carefully replaced the cards on the bottom of the deck, drained his glass and stood up. He wanted to be gone now, away from Whistler, Frog Hollow, Lis Etang, goddamn Blackwater and anyone remotely connected with them.

  At the batwings, he held the doors apart for a moment. He turned his head to look at the groups of shapes and faces that were still watching him. Then he walked away, trying to recall the voice he’d heard out on the bayou. He knew it … just couldn’t tag on a name or face. Half an hour, it is, he thought. And I’ve considered one or two things of my own.

  13

  Jack was sitting out on the double-planked levee of Gaston Savoy’s cabin. He was watching the wood ducks that lapped up weed from under the fishing platforms. At that moment, Beaumont, Texas seemed further away than it had ever been. He didn’t feel much like someone who had made a sizeable grubstake, collected a handful of prized, personal possessions and was returning home to consider investing in a future. He had those things going for him, all right, but for the time being they had been taken away, sort of confiscated, and he wanted them back. For the umpteenth time he checked that his Colt held a fully loaded cylinder.

  Whistler’s settlement had been created around a clutch of crudely built cabins. On the far side of the broad compound, one or two homesick family members were exchanging concerns with malingerers. They were packing chattels, still preparing for their belated journey to Blackwater. The small group weren’t quite so enthusiastic to make a move as they had been. They’d just got used to Savoy and his henchmen not being around to dominate them.

  Melba had been right, Jack mused. This was her father’s dream, a dream that was fast becoming a delusion. And you took all my worldly goods, he thought. You deserve all you’re going to get.

  Over in the pole corral, the sorrel had its nose buried deep in an oat sack. The horse was still under guard, but Jack guessed that if he wandered too close, the man would make a run for it. The new found reputation of Jack Rogan had travelled ahead. In a couple of local incidents, Jack had gone a lot further than dishing out a few slaps and punches.

  It was a standing that suited Jack. It gave him the moments he needed to consider a strategy, possible line of attack.

  A door of one of the larger cabins opened and Homer Lamb appeared. Jack watched the wide-shouldered man with the long beard take a long searching look his way. He didn’t know, only half suspected it had been Lamb down at Lis Etang, who tried to put him in the canning factory. Then again, like Savoy’s thinking, with the hullabaloo and darkness, it could easily have been someone else.

  Minutes later, Melba emerged from the settlement’s old forage store and started across the compound. Lamb spoke to her, but she ignored him, kept walking in Jack’s direction. She hadn’t spoken to him since the gunfight, but he didn’t think he’d improved his reputation in her determined eyes.

  ‘Good morning, Melba. I guess you know what I’m doing back here, what about you?’ he asked coolly.

  Melba didn’t answer back. She just studied him, her shoulders dropping casually.

  Yeah, take a lot to unnerve you, Jack thought. Some other time, certainly another place and who knows.…

  ‘I lived here for ten years,’ she replied. ‘Coming back to say goodbye’s not so strange.’

  ‘No,’ he agreed. ‘My ma told me that everyone who says goodbye isn’t gone.’

  ‘She’ll be expecting you back then?’

  ‘Oh yeah. But we’ve been through that, Melba.’

  ‘You still thinking about what happened out at Li
s Etang?’

  ‘I know what happened. I’m thinking about who was behind it – the two who got away.’

  ‘How about why?’

  ‘Well, they weren’t out there fishing, that’s for sure. It must have something to do with me asking questions about Winge Tedder. It was that soon after.’

  Melba showed surprise. ‘If it did have anything to do with it, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Okay, but it won’t alter anything. Now, either your clan’s come to town, or a local rancher’s lost some of his herd.’

  Gaston Savoy was walking towards them. He was flanked by his sons Eliot and John, nephew Cletus and a family mix of Lambs and Boudros.

  ‘They’ve come en masse this time. It’s likely one of them knows something.’

  ‘They’ve probably been off chasin’ coons. It’s something you can’t do from Blackwater,’ Melba replied.

  Savoy looked their way and nodded an acknowledgment. He held up his hand in a way that meant he wasn’t going to trouble Jack with anything just yet.

  Jack stood and put on his hat. ‘Melba, about this man, this agency that’s buying you out?’ he inquired.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘I know your pa’s had some pretty big offers to sell up over the years, particularly from Morton Pegg. I’m wondering why he turned them down but accepted this particular one. Have you any idea?’

  ‘No. But I know Pa wouldn’t ever sell out if he thought there’d be loggers moving in. Not after what the Pegg lumber company has done to the land. He doesn’t sound or look much like it, but in his own way he respects the country as much as any of us.’

  ‘In his own way while you lived there, that’s for sure,’ Jack agreed quietly, slightly questioning. ‘These people’s credentials are genuine … blue-chip, I suppose.’

  ‘I know he’s a government man. Something to do with the Department of the Interior. He says he’ll fix things up real good here. It’ll stop the loggers moving in.’

  ‘Yeah, government men always mean well when it comes to land issues,’ Jack started. ‘The Sioux and Cheyenne will tell you as much.’

  ‘Times are changing,’ Melba said flatly.

  ‘Yeah, times have. There’s still a lot of folk who haven’t, though, Melba. Do you happen to know what sort of money’s involved?’

  ‘It’s obviously enough to get all our people resettled. And then some to give us a good chance – a stake.’

  ‘Hmm. Whatever it was, it’s probably worth ten times that,’ Jack suggested. He turned slowly, letting his eyes rove across the lush, thickly timbered setting. And if you did happen to be a lumberman, a hundred times that, he thought.

  When somebody called out for Melba, Jack ambled across to the corral. Kept separate from the mules, the sorrel immediately stomped, tossed its head with pleasure. Jack laughed, nosed it happily under the nervous eyes of two young, but well-armed stock guards.

  ‘Keep calm, fellers. I’ve done my quota killings for this week,’ he said wryly. He patted the sorrel’s silken muzzle, pushed his face in close to the side of its head, the blind side of the guards. ‘Don’t go all green-eyed when you see me ride out on one of their knob-heads. I’ll see you later. We’ve got unfinished business.’

  A short while later, Jack rode from the settlement. He was free to come and go more or less as he wished. Nobody was going to challenge him while Savoy held his money and his sorrel remained under house arrest. But even if he had his horse under him, it was unlikely he would have made a run for it. What interested him today was finding out what had happened to Winge Tedder.

  Jack had heard that Tedder was suspected of being on Morton Pegg’s payroll, that Pegg’s crony, Harry Grice had been seen with Tedder soon before he disappeared. From the way people spoke of him, Tedder didn’t sound like a hardcase or a weakling, but it looked pretty certain now that something bad had happened to him. There was other stuff on Jack’s mind that didn’t dovetail, like Pegg’s connection with Tedder and the offer made for the land around Whistler.

  Jack took a deep, troubled breath, let Savoy’s saddle mule carry him at a shuffling trot away from the settlement towards Lis Etang.

  ‘What in tarnation’s wrong with you, Hockton?’ Beatrice Marney said. ‘You’ve been like a mare full of cockleburs all morning. What do you want the surrey for? You look like hell.’

  The mayor looked miserable because he felt it. One of the reasons being that his wife was spending most of her time with Gaston Savoy.

  ‘If you spent more time at home, I wouldn’t look such a dupe when you’re painting the town with that bull-necked piker, Savoy.’

  ‘Ah, it is about you, then. I thought as much. For what it’s worth, I’ve allowed Gaston to take me some places because you’re always too busy to take me anywhere. And the fact he’s been holding a torch for me for ten years, isn’t easy to ignore. I’m not totally without compassion.’

  ‘Hah, you could’ve fooled me.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Beatrice said, but without emotion. That feeling was long gone. Her husband had always wanted everything of value he could lay his hands on. Such was his avarice that it sometimes included goods of little or no value. Unfortunately Beatrice had been one of the packages, but she hadn’t realized until it was too late.

  ‘It means I’m late for an important meeting,’ Marney barked, and hurried off without another word.

  A half hour later, Marney was pulling up at the back office of the Morton Pegg Lumber Company, where a bunch of men quietly waited.

  Marney’s face set even further into grief when he saw Harry Grice playing solitaire on top of an empty telegraph bench. Morton Pegg’s gunhand had been held in low regard by the mayor since the fiasco at Lis Etang. Jack Rogan had emerged only shaken from that incident, and therefore it probably seemed like a triumph for Gaston Savoy. It was a reason why the mayor wanted the sale of Whistler to be completed as soon as possible.

  Marney was also surprised to see Homer Lamb at the office.

  ‘Well he’s got to be somewhere, but he wants somethin’ done about Rogan,’ Grice explained. ‘He reckons that Rogan still half suspects he was out there. He’s worried the son-of-a-bitch will come up with somethin’. Ain’t that so, Homer?’

  ‘He made out lucky in the dark an’ all,’ Lamb growled. ‘It won’t happen next time.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought you wanted a next time,’ Marney said. ‘At the moment we’re only interested in tying up the deal. Before Savoy changes his mind.’

  ‘He ain’t goin’ to do that,’ Lamb argued. ‘I know him better’n any of you. He’s committed himself … needs one hell of a pile o’ dollars to see it through.’

  ‘Yes, our pile, our investment,’ Marney said, a touch irritably. ‘And that includes Bunce’s money from the Railroad holdings. We had to give a king’s ransom and a trumped-up story to persuade Savoy to sell out. Chester’s probably riding out right now to get that part sorted. Let’s get this over and done with.’

  Marney and Pegg drove their own rigs, with an outrider each. Pegg lit up one of his Coronas, made the journey pass thinking about his profit from an incalculable quantity of new timber. Marney sat on the edge of his seat, staring dully at the passing landscape. He felt like a music hall juggler on stage in a wild cow town. He had too many balls in the air, was very concerned about audience response if he stumbled and dropped them.

  14

  A mile out of town, Jack ground-hitched his mule. ‘Wait here,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s a lot better than going back or going forward.’

  He went on, walking carefully between dark holes from where old cypress and tupelo stumps had been dragged or blasted from the swampy ground. The trees had gone to sawmills at Port Neche and Pegg’s Mill or straight to the turpentine plant at De Quirrel.

  There had been no rain since Jack had ridden through the spooky bayou to Frog Hollow in pursuit of Cletus Savoy. Old tracks from footfalls and hoof marks had dried some, but were still visible. Getting closer
to Lis Etang, he didn’t notice the water rats until they scurried up and off a coiled cypress root into the thickly reeded water.

  Warily, he edged closer to the edge of the bayou creek, cursing under his breath when he made out the shape of a partly submerged range hat. He knew instinctively he was near to where Winge Tedder had died; the other side of the clearing from where he’d fought off the darkness attackers.

  The big water rats were already closing in for another nose around. Jack couldn’t imagine where or what they’d been doing. ‘No one’s going to last long down in there,’ he murmured.

  He turned away from the grim sight, looking up to see the top courses of a brick chimney, beyond the low vegetation. It was the empty steam-cutter house, and he pushed through the eel grass for a closer look. It was where trees used to be sliced for boating to Port Neche, and at one end of a long tumbledown building, he saw three rigs and a few tethered horses. One of the rigs was Pegg’s stylish trap; another was Hockton Marney’s surrey. Not exactly mayor country. What’s he doing with Pegg? And who the hell else is here? were among his first thoughts. He guessed he wasn’t too far from finding out, maybe from getting an answer to some of the questions he had. A curious, visceral feeling told him he’d discover what part Gaston Savoy would have him play in all of it.

  Standing alone, Harry Grice had his own reasons for keeping a slightly nervous eye on his surroundings. But he wasn’t suspicious of the lily pads that floated close. There was always something littering the surface of the bayous, stuff fallen from the cypresses or broken loose of the banksides.

  The vegetation swirled slowly, drifted on past the works buildings. Jack strode as fast as he could from the water, shuddering with disgust, hauling himself out through the reeds over the muddy bank. He swiped wet vegetation from his face, making sure he hadn’t been seen. He hoped his Colt still worked, pondered on the risk of it misfiring.

  Scrubby cover dotted the distance between creek and buildings and he made use of what there was in a series of quick, stealthy dashes.