Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1955 Read online

  Ben stopped dead, his eyes wide. Laffite turned gracefully toward an old woman who offered a basket of autumn flowers. He dropped a bright picayune into her hand, selected a blossom, and carefully arranged it in his buttonhole.

  “Walk with me,” he said in the same soft voice. “Appear not to be surprised or uneasy at what I will say. Now, you are listening? Bien, twelve miles above New Orleans is a plantation called Tchoupitoulas. Hard to say, yes, but a beautiful place, the home of Monsieur Soniat du Fossat. Our Governor has been there for several days, ill of a fever. And to this place called Tchoupitoulas, Wicks now takes his way.”

  “To see the Governor?” asked Ben.

  “To kill the Governor, he has indicated to me.”

  “What?”

  “Gently, I beg. Wicks hopes that I will help him and his friends. You yourself are amazed more than a trifle that I do not listen to him, that I have put him off with vague words, yes? But,” and Laffite shrugged, “as a privateer, I have fought and taken Spanish ships. And it is the Spanish who employ Wicks.”

  “He wants the Spanish to take New Orleans?” prompted Ben.

  “He does, but I do not. The King of Spain’s officers would have something to say to my disadvantage, did they come here. You comprehend me, eh?”

  “But why talk to me?” demanded Ben. “You ought to warn the garrison, the American officials—”

  “Ah, bah! Would they not say that Jean Laffite makes one of his bad smuggler’s jokes? And so I have come looking for a loyal American. I did not find Frank Parker, but I have found his nephew—brave, young, energetic.” Laffite’s iron fingers closed on Ben’s wrist. “You must act, my friend, and at once.”

  “Act? How?”

  “Carry the newrs to Claiborne, and do not delay,” Laffite bade him earnestly. “But take care, do not mention my name in this matter. If you do, I must say that you lie. Some of my associates have taken Wicks’s side, I fear, and they could make things awkward for me.”

  He released Ben’s arm. “But here I am at my own house. My cafe and ironworking shop, as you see by the sign. Come and visit me some day—when you are less busy than you will be these next six hours or so.”

  He flicked his hat brim with his forefinger, smiled, and walked in the door.

  V. The Assassins

  Ben stood gazing blankly at the door that had closed behind Jean Laffite. He realized that he held his hat in his hand. Slowly, absently, he put it on, settled it in place with a smart buffet on its top. He turned and started along the street toward Beaumont’s. Within seconds, he had quickened his pace almost to a run.

  Hastening along the bricks opposite the Beaumonts’ door, he turned so suddenly at the curb that he almost upset a vendor of pralines. Crossing the street, he ducked precariously under the nose of a cart horse. Casimir looked out of the drawing room as Ben entered the passageway.

  “I’m ready to fence with you,” Casimir greeted him. “Both my father and I think that you have learned enough, perhaps, to seek out a real master for advanced lessons—”

  He broke the suggestion in the middle and looked narrowly at Ben. “But, my friend, what ails you? Have you seen something that upset you?”

  “I saw Jethro Wicks,” said Ben, “and Jean Laffite.” “Jean Laffite I know, but not this other name.”

  “Casimir,” said Ben, “I’m going to trust you with something. Don’t interrupt me, now. Just listen.”

  Casimir did so, with the utmost attention, while Ben recounted his meeting with Laffite and the warning about Claiborne’s enemies. When Ben had finished, Casimir stood with hands clasped behind him, head cocked sideways, the picture of baffled concern.

  “Is this to be credited?” he suggested, as though hoping for a negative answer. “Might he be making one of his jokes, this so-humorous Jean Laffite?”

  “That’s just what he was afraid of,” said Ben, “that people would think he was joking. I’ve told you that Laffite gave me the news, but neither of us must tell his name to anyone else— he made that condition. And let me say that, if ever anyone was dead serious when he spoke, Laffite was that person. Casimir, we must warn someone.”

  “Warn who?” burst out Casimir. “The Governor is not even in New Orleans.

  “No, Laffite says he’s twelve miles north of here. I can’t give the name of the place. It belongs to someone named Du Fossat—”

  “Tchoupitoulas,” supplied Casimir at once. “I have visited that house. And the Governor is ill, you say? And this Wicks goes to kill him?” Casimir flung up his head in sudden fierce excitement. “Even if anyone would listen to this wild tale from us, there would not be time to reach the Governor after hearing it.”

  “But—” Ben started to say.

  “We ourselves must ride to Tchoupitoulas. Now, at once! ” Casimir’s voice rang with sudden decision. “There is no time to stop and speak to officers or friends. Whoever we tell would have the same distance to ride.”

  “We’ll need horses.”

  “Colonel O’Rourke’s stable is of the best. I’ll go and ask for two. You know how to ride, I hope?”

  “I don’t need Creole lessons in horsemanship,” snapped Ben. “A North Carolinian can ride anything you can cinch a saddle on.”

  With no further word, Casimir rushed from the house. Ben strode into the drawing room, snatched pen and paper, and swiftly wrote a brief statement of what he had heard about Wicks and the Governor, omitting the name of Laffite. Dashing sand on the wet ink, he rang for Archimede.

  “This letter must go to my uncle’s office,” said Ben earnestly. “It is of the greatest importance.”

  “At once, M’sieu’,” said Archimede. “I will bear it myself.”

  “Well thought of, that note,” approved Casimir, hurrying in as Ben spoke. “I, too, will leave a line for my father. Meanwhile, we must change into riding clothes while the horses are being saddled.”

  “Then Madame O’Rourke lent them to you,” suggested Ben.

  “I ask my aunt?” said Casimir, scribbling in his turn. “Pas si bete> mon ami! Had I done so, she would have swooned at my first two words. No, I sought out Felise, and told her that you and I ride to save Governor Claiborne’s life.”

  “Felise?” repeated Ben. “And she wasn’t nervous or afraid?”

  “You forget that red hair of hers,” said Casimir, with a smile. “My difficulty was in swearing her to silence, and dissuading her from riding with us.” He folded his letter and wrote his father’s name on the outside. “Now, riding clothes, at once!”

  Upstairs, Ben changed to stout breeches and boots, and put on the black coat and broad hat he had brought from North Carolina. Casimir joined him on the stairs, in riding coat and shiny high boots with spurs.

  “Our horses are coming to the door,” he said, “but wait, we must be armed.” Leading the way back to the drawing room, he pointed to the crossed swords on the wall. “Strap on one of those. I will take the other. And these also.”

  From a drawer he produced a case, opened it, and showed Ben two handsome pistols. “I will load them,55 said Casimir. “Can you fire a pistol?”

  “I’ve done it in my time,55 said Ben, and seized one, poured in powder from a flask, rammed down a ball, and carefully primed it. Thrusting it into the pocket of his coat, he went to the door.

  At the curb a Negro groom held the bridles of two fine- looking bays. Ben swung into the saddle of the nearest, and Casimir swiftly mounted the other.

  “Now,” cried Casimir, “forward!”

  Briskly they clattered up the street. Ben found his borrowed horse ready and intelligent, and as they crossed the canal to enter the Faubourg Sainte Marie he enjoyed the sense of brisk power he bestrode. Casimir pressed his own mount close to Ben’s as they reached the edge of town.

  “It was nearly two o’clock when we left home,” he said between the hoofbeats, “and this assassin of yours, this devil-anointed Jethro Wicks, will have the head start of us. We must hasten.”

&n
bsp; He set his horse’s head to a rough clay trail that stretched northward between dense thickets of wet green trees. Ben rode after him in the gray afternoon.

  Casimir’s horse picked up its feet smartly. It pulled ahead.

  Ben lagged for a moment, then kicked the bay flanks of his own mount and hastened to overtake his friend.

  “Easy!” he cried as he came close. “Easy does it!”

  “No time to waste,” called Casimir over his shoulder.

  “I mean it, not so fast! You’ll blow that horse sky high before you’ve done half the distance!”

  Casimir started upright in his saddle, as though this were a new and disturbing thought. He checked speed a trifle and glanced around again.

  “This muddy footing will tire the horses,” insisted Ben. “They’re good, but not for twelve miles at a gallop over puddles and muck. Slow down—we can’t afford to be left halfway there with nothing to carry us the rest of the way.”

  Casimir reined to a more reasonable pace. “You have reason,” he admitted, but his voice sounded tense and troubled. “We must get there, both of us. I pray we do not get there too late.”

  Ben glanced up at the bright pearly blotch the sun made among the clouds. “If we left home at two o’clock,” he figured, “we ought to do the twelve miles by half past three—”

  “With luck,” put in Casimir.

  “Well, the afternoon will be only half gone. Wicks won’t make a sudden rush by daylight. He’ll have to work slowly. We’ll be in time to catch him.”

  “Ah, well said,” approved Casimir, more hopefully.

  They emerged from the thicket-rimmed trail upon a broader, more open road of clay, damp and slippery. It sloped gently upward, and Ben found himself riding with the river on his left hand, while on the right, somewhat lower down, stretched an open field where a tattered man guided a plow.

  “We ride on the levee now,” explained Casimir as Ben came alongside on this broader way. “The road keeps to its crown and leads past all the riverside plantations above New Orleans.”

  Ben now saw that they traveled upon a broad bank of earth and clay, massively made and hard packed to confine any high water that the Mississippi might gather to threaten houses and farms. He had paid little attention to any levee except the one in front of the town itself, and he examined this one with interest as he rode upon it.

  “Does it extend all the way, too?” he asked.

  Casimir shook his head. “Not as it should. Those who own land upon the river keep it built and repaired only to shield their own property. But there are big stretches where nobody lives or claims ownership, and sometimes a flood makes its way in there. My father thinks the levee should be solid and strong on both sides, all the way to Baton Rouge at the least.”

  This discussion relaxed the tension they both felt a little. They covered more than three miles on top of the great earthwork. Then the road sloped down again, and became narrower and rougher. Here and there, in its low spots, expanses of soggy mud could be seen.

  “Alors, you need not beg me to go slowly here,” remarked Casimir, reining his horse around a sloppy hole at the very center of the roadbed.

  “Look yonder,” said Ben suddenly, rising in his stirrups and pointing ahead. “Somebody else has been traveling here —several somebodies.”

  Pulling up, he sprang down to examine the road. “Several,” he repeated. “Three horses, at least, and not too many minutes past, either.”

  “I do not understand,” said Casimir, almost plaintively, as he dismounted in turn. “How can you say?”

  Ben did not reply at once. He squatted on his heels to look narrowly at hoofmarks in the wet clay. There were two sets, side by side, and over some of these were stamped the tracks of a third horse. Three riders, then—and water trickled into those tracks from the surrounding mud, but had filled none of them.

  “Three men riding to Tchoupitoulas,” announced Ben again, as he straightened up, “and not very far ahead of us.”

  “Then to horse again, quickly!” cried Casimir. “We must catch those three men.”

  “Wait, Casimir,” called Ben, hoisting his leg over his horse’s back. “Wait for me!”

  For Casimir had struck in his spurs and was galloping forward at headlong speed. With a muttered exclamation of impatience, Ben rushed his own horse in swift pursuit.

  “Casimir, not so fast! ” he yelled. “We must come up carefully behind them, not let them know—”

  Casimir, thundering ahead, paid no attention whatever.

  He rode as if he were in a race for some priceless stake. Ben lashed his horse’s flank with the loose end of his reins, seeking to catch up; but he could not. The two animals were well matched, and Casimir had seized a lead and rode pounds lighter than his friend.

  “Stop!” called Ben after Casimir’s fleeing back. “Let me tell you—”

  Just then Casimir’s horse seemed to whirl halfway around, to plunge almost into a somersault, then to dive into the road as if it were a pond of water. Casimir went flying over its shoulder and struck with a mighty splash of mud.

  Ben pulled up as he drew alongside on firmer ground. He fairly hurled himself down to the road. Casimir’s horse, sunk to its very belly in boggy mire, strove and floundered crazily. Casimir came to the surface just in front of it, splashed and clotted from head to foot with mud and slime. He waded thigh-deep to grab the bridle of his struggling mount.

  “En avanthe gurgled, pulling with all his strength. “Up, show your courage, my brave one! Out with you! ”

  Ben ran his left arm through his own bridle and made a quick stride to the edge of the quagmire. With both his big hands he caught Casimir under the armpits. Exerting all his strength, he plucked his friend out of the mess like a water- weed.

  “Let me go,” spluttered Casimir. He had lost his hat, and his eyes glared from a mask of mud.

  “Not until you show some sense,” scolded Ben, shaking Casimir powerfully. “You’ll lame that horse, dragging it around like that.”

  “We must catch Wicks,” argued Casimir, and again strove to be free, but the stronger Ben held him fast.

  “We can’t afford any mistakes,” he raised his voice, shouting Casimir down. “They’re three to our two—they came to kill the Governor, and they won’t stop a second over killing anybody who gets in their way!”

  “You think I fear?” demanded Casimir wrathfully.

  “No, and neither do I. But we can’t be dead heroes 3 we’ve got to stay alive and help Governor Claiborne!” Again he shook Casimir. “We’ve got to hound them in and surprise them! The important thing is that they mustn’t carry out their plan!”

  Casimir relaxed in Ben’s hands. He wiped his filthy face.

  “Alors he said, more calmly, “again you have reason, always you have reason.”

  “One of us has to have reason,” Ben reminded him crossly. “Now, let’s try to get your poor nag out of his mud bath without crippling him.”

  It was not easy to do. At first, the animal’s frightened laborings seemed only to make it wallow deeper. At last Ben held its bridle securely while Casimir again waded in and slapped its far shoulder smartly, at the same time shouting exhortations in both French and English. Ben tugged and twitched to make the beast rear. It responded pluckily, got its fore hoofs on firmer earth. Finally, with a mighty heaving effort, it scrambled clear of the mudhole and stood panting and trembling.

  Dolefully Casimir surveyed the mud-coated flanks of his mount. Ben led it a few steps back and forth, then knelt and ran his hands over the clay-coated legs, one at a time.

  “There doesn’t seem to be any strain,” he reported. “Get back on, Casimir.”

  “On that filthy saddle?” groaned the Creole protestingly.

  "It’s no filthier than you are. Hurry, we can’t fool around making ourselves presentable.”

  Casimir obeyed. Again they resumed their journey, this time with Ben to the fore as leader and director.

  Pus
hing ahead, and taking care to avoid other sodden pitfalls in the levee road, they passed the dooryards of several handsome houses. Time wore on. Casimir pulled a watch from the pocket of his mud-caked waistcoat.

  “It is well past three,” he announced. “We are nearly there.”

  Ben did not reply. He was reining in to dismount again. Casimir leaned down from his saddle.

  “What now?” he inquired.

  “Look,” and Ben pointed to the road. “Our three horsemen left the main way right here. They headed into the woods to the east yonder—not long ago, either, to judge from the tracks.”

  At once Casimir turned his horse’s head toward the woods, but Ben grasped his bit with a quick hand.

  “No, don’t go crashing and tramping after them on horseback,” he warned. “Get down off that mudcat you’re riding; he needs a rest right badly, anyway.”

  Casimir dropped to the road beside Ben, and they tied their horses to a tulip tree below the levee.

  “We go forward on foot from here,” said Ben, as crisply as his soldier-father issuing battle orders. “You can see where they pushed into the thicket yonder—there’s some kind of path or trail. Stay behind me, and don’t make any more noise than you can help.”

  “This is like warfare of Indians,” remarked Casimir.

  “I’ve gone hunting with Indians in my time,” Ben told him. “They taught me how to sneak up on ’possum and ’coon and deer, and maybe I can snuggle up pretty close to Jethro Wicks before he’s aware of me. Come on.”

  He advanced along the path with all caution, straining eyes and ears. Casimir kept close at his heels, and the only noise he made was to loosen the silver-mounted sword in the sheath at his side. Ben carefully drew branches out of his way and did not release them until Casimir’s hand had caught them in turn. For two full minutes they worked their way along the narrow trail through trees and dense undergrowth, and then Ben came to a halt so abrupt that Casimir almost bumped into him from behind.

  Turning, Ben shoved his lips close to his friend’s clay- daubed ear.