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,”