The Outcasts (21 page)

T
he steamer captain, a
gens de couleur
named Pascal, invited Nate into his quarters to share an evening meal of battered-and-fried catfish steaks and cornbread. With an amused turn of his lips, he watched Nate eating hungrily and set a bottle of brandy on the table.

“That man you pounded on is going to be eating nothing but apple mash for a while,” the captain said, pouring them each a glass full. “I know you’re Texas law, so what’re you doin’ going to New Orleans?”

“I’m after a man and his accomplice. A prostitute.” Nate tasted the brandy and grimaced. “I made a promise to someone.”

“Family?”

Nate nodded. “Near enough.”

The captain drained his glass and poured another one for himself. “Who’s this man you’re hunting?”

“A killer of children.”

The captain sat back in his chair, motioning for Nate to drink up. “You know your way around New Orleans?”

Nate shook his head. “Never been there before.”

“I was born and raised in New Orleans. I know all the streets and alleyways,” he said. “I’ll draw you a map.”

Nate thanked him and held his breath to take another sip.

“I’ve spent my whole life on the river,” the captain said, warming to his topic. “I’ve seen every rapid and current, snag, sawyer, and mud bank from the Gulf entry to Natchez, nearly four hundred miles away, so I understand bold action. I’ll do what I can to help you.”

He took a piece of brown paper and drew a rough map of New Orleans. “You start here,” the captain said, resting a finger over a few intersecting lines, “at St. Charles and Canal, and go your way to City Hall. There you’ll find the forty thieves. In these few blocks, there are more than forty gambling dens and sporting houses, which stay open all hours. If your man is game, he’ll be there sometime, somewhere.”

He moved his finger above Canal to Basin Street and he smiled. “This, or thereabouts, is where you’ll most likely find your lady.” He traced out a rectangle, moving clockwise from the border streets of Basin to Canal to North Robertson to St. Louis. He pursed his lips meaningfully. “Now, if you’re lookin’ here, I will certainly be happy to help you look.”

Nate frowned and the captain’s smile widened. “You got some money? ’Cause you’re gonna need it.”

Nate looked over at the Whitworth propped in a corner of the steering cabin, thinking he’d sell it if he needed to.

The captain moved his finger towards the snaking outline of the river. “Now, you hear me. You stay away from Gallatin Street. Your man, if he owns a watch and can tell time, will not go there. Even the army stay away from that hellhole.” He folded the map up and handed it to Nate.

Nate tucked the map into his jacket and went back out onto the open deck. He sat on the starboard side under a deck lantern, facing the black water of the Gulf, and began writing to his wife.

The steamer docked in the early morning and Nate stood on the pier waiting for his horse to be led off with the others. The big bay, already saddled and bridled, followed the small herd of horses off the steamer with a lowered head, but at the first shrill release of the boat whistle, he reared, breaking the line, and clattered away from the docks. He raced northwards, up Tchoupitoulas Street, scattering dockworkers and skittering around cargo wagons, his hooves missing traction on the bricked-over streets where they were slick with the mire of refuse and rain.

The steamer captain, standing next to Nate, pointed towards the thoroughfare. “You better go on for him quick before he get to Canal or he gonna be in somebody’s stew.”

Nate thanked him and set off on foot as the captain called after him, “Just be glad he don’t go the other way. Towards St. Thomas. Then he’d be glue!” He laughed once at his own rhyme and Nate waved his thanks over one shoulder, trying to orient himself to the map of the city the captain had given him. Nate looked back once towards the crowded harbor choked with jockeying vessels, the packet boats and steamers skirting one another like pieces in a chess game played at breakneck speed, and he saw that the captain was still watching him, his mouth downturned, worriedly shaking his head.

Nate continued walking northwards as fast as he dared. He passed warehouses and storage shacks, the workers frantically off-loading bags, barrels, crates, and boxes from wagons and handcarts; the men signaling and calling to one another in a language unknown to Nate.

He shouted to a worker, asked if the man had seen a riderless horse racing by, and the man cupped a palm to one ear and said,
“Quoi?”
Nate repeated the question, and another worker also gestured as though straining to hear and responded the same way. Soon a dozen men were feigning confusion and pointing in different directions, saying,
“Quoi?…Quoi?…Quoi?”
then laughing uproariously, so that the words, sounding like a chorus of wintering ducks, followed Nate up the street.

Nate ground his teeth and continued on his way, red-faced and angry. “Yeah,” he said, waving that he got the joke and muttering, “Thank you, you sons-a-bitches.”

As he approached Canal Street, he saw a large group of men gathered in a ring and the big bay’s head and neck jerking wildly above the crowd. He ran the last block and heard someone yelling and hurling challenges from somewhere inside the ring.

He pushed himself to the front, his hand on the grip of the Dance, and saw a man with one hand on the horse’s reins, the other curled into a fist.

“I am brother to the snapping turtle!” the man roared. “I’m the spawn of the alligator mother and the panther father.”

He was large, built like a laborer, and Nate could smell the whiskey vapors rolling from the man’s lips even though he was six feet away.

“I’m the bayou bully. I wear the red feather.” The roaring man pointed to a denuded turkey feather stuck into the band of his hat as if to a medal. “And this
my
horse now.”

“Hey!” Nate shouted. He yanked the pistol from his belt and held it at his side. “That’s my horse.”

The man turned his walleyes on Nate. “Say
you.
” He swept a large skinning knife from its sheath, staggering with the motion, and jabbed crazily at the air in front of Nate’s face. The crowd kept expanding, more people running through the streets to join the circle, and Nate noticed for the first time how wide the avenue was, four times the width of a normal city street.

Nate ducked his head but held out a placating hand. “Did you try to get on him?”

The man blinked, his feet shuffling for balance. His knife hand slowed and then paused.

Nate asked him again, “Did you try and get on him?”

There was a gap of silence wherein Nate could almost hear the groaning path of the man’s thoughts. Someone in the crowd coughed once, as though to hasten the confrontation, and the man reared back, blinded by this unconsidered question.

He nodded slowly and Nate asked, “What happened?”

The knife began to waver and the man dropped it to his side. He rubbed his shoulder and said, “The beast bit me!”

Nate made a show of returning his gun to his belt, then he stepped forward calmly and eased the reins from the man’s hand before he could gather his thoughts enough to strike. “He won’t bite me.”

Nate fitted the Whitworth into its leather case and, after draping the reins over the bay’s neck, legged himself fluidly onto the saddle and then sat quietly, the horse now complacent.

The man’s eyes widened as though to an astonishing thought. He said, “That’s your horse.”

“It is,” Nate said, giving a tell with his eyes that he was ready to be on his way, and the man stepped back and faced the crowd. “Back away, all you bastards!” he yelled. “All you sons of whores and alley dogs. This man’s riding his horse. And I will personally gut anyone who tries to take it from him…”

The man’s voice continued as Nate headed down Canal Street, and when he turned to look back, the crowd had begun dispersing and the turkey-feather man was grinning and waving to him in a friendly fashion with his knife.

He found his way to St. Charles Avenue and squinted up at the three-story buildings—some new, some with decayed brick- and ironwork—housing the gambling palaces. Men and boys stood in the doorways calling out to him to come in and try his luck.

One barefoot boy trotted alongside him, his head not even reaching the horse’s withers. “We got faro on the first floor,” the boy said. “Roulette on the second, keno on the third. You don’t like that, we got poker. You don’t like that, we got ladies.” The boy reached for Nate’s stirrup and yanked it to make him stop. “Come on, mister, we got split-tail, all ages.”

Nate reined the bay to a stop and regarded the boy. “How old are you?”

The boy crossed his arms. “Twelve,” he said. “You like boys better?”

Nate thought to plant his boot in the boy’s chest and send him ass-first into the street, but instead he asked him where the Buffalo House was. The boy agreed to take him there for a dollar.

The steamer captain had told Nate to go to this place first, as it had housed and succored every gambling man and trickster in New Orleans at one time or another. Nate had been told to talk little, to watch and listen, and, last, to find a seat with his back to a corner.

He tied his horse to a tether ring, walked inside carrying the Whitworth, and ordered a beer at the bar. The palace was spacious, paneled in wood, with mirrors covering the wall in front of him. He scanned the reflected room behind him and saw that even at that early hour, there were twenty or so men seated at drinking or gaming tables, a few girls in shortened frocks sitting with them. The barkeep handed him a beer and a card on which was printed:
The Buffalo House, in the only locality where decent folk do not live.
The back listed the games of chance offered and the names of the women available for “social discourse.”

The barkeep looked him over, pointed to a large clock on the wall, and said, “You got one half hour before you order another one. Or…” He finished the sentence by indicating the door.

Nate took his beer, sat at a corner table with the rifle propped next to him, and watched the faro dealer pretending not to observe him. He drank slowly and let his eyes drift over the customers. He set the beer down when he felt his hand shaking, still unnerved by the skinning knife carving the air in front of his face.

Soon one of the girls approached carrying a glass of what looked to be whiskey. She set it down on the table and gestured to a gray-haired man seated at the opposite end of the room.

“From Mr. Gorman.” She smiled at Nate but wandered away when he chose to ignore her.

Gorman lifted his own drink and smiled benignly. The man seated next to Gorman was younger and swarthy, with heavy brilliantine in his hair. Nate raised the glass in turn but set it down without tasting it. It had a burned-sugar smell that suggested the liquor was something other than whiskey.

A shout in the street pulled his attention to the open door and when he looked back, the gray-haired man was standing next to the table.

“You don’t like our good old Nongela?” Gorman asked.

Nate looked at the glass and back up at the man. “Mr. Gorman, I don’t usually drink whiskey this time of day. But I thank you.”

“Call me Sam. May I?” He sat in the chair opposite and leaned his elbows on the table in a friendly way. He crooked a thumb over his shoulder. “My partner and I have a bet going. Pierre thinks you’re a policeman. A marshal, perhaps. We both agree on your not being from here.”

Nate’s eyes flicked over Gorman’s shoulder, but no one, including Pierre, seemed to have any interest in their conversation.

Gorman waited for a response and, not getting one, continued. “I thought you were a cowboy. But what cowboy carries an English-made Whitworth? They’re quite rare, aren’t they?”

Nate moved the rifle closer to his chair.

Gorman smiled again cordially as though he hadn’t seen Nate drop his right hand off the table and onto his belt. “How far away would you say you could hit a target? Six hundred yards? Eight hundred yards?”

“Mr. Gorman,” Nate said. “I thank you for the drink, but I’m waiting for someone.”

“Someone?” Gorman looked at the serving girl.

Nate shook his head, pushed the beer away, and began to stand.

Gorman held out a restraining hand. “You have an honest face, Mr. …?”

Nate picked up the rifle and stood holding it in the crook of his arm. After a moment he said, “Cannon.”

“Mr. Cannon, you have an honest face. And so do I, which is why I’m so successful at what I do. I’m a confidence man and a burglar. But I’m seventy-five years old and I have tuberculosis. Now, I’m being straightforward with you because I want you to know that I’m going to offer an exchange that might be to your benefit.”

He gestured to the chair and Nate sat down again.

“Someone who fought at Spotsylvania told me that the Union’s Major General Sedgwick was killed by a sniper with a Whitworth who was positioned a thousand yards away. Do you believe that?”

Nate had heard the story too, but he cocked his head and waited.

“It captured my imagination, Mr. Cannon, and it’s a thing that I would like to see before I die.”

Nate propped the rifle against the wall again. “And you, being a betting man, might like to make some money on the show as well.”

Gorman grinned and leaned across the table. “I know just about everyone there is to know in New Orleans. So there’s a good chance I may know your man.”