Treasure Mountain (1972) (2 page)

"Of course," he said. "I'd be glad to come." When she seated herself at her own table, she looked at her brother and uncle. "There!" she said. "Now it is up to you! What did we come here for, anyway?"

Chapter
II

We Sacketts been going down to New Orleans ever since there was a town yonder.

This time I wasn't going to see the lights or dance the fandango, but to help Orrin work out a trail. The trail along which we had to read sign was twenty years cold, and it was the trail of our own father.

Pa was what you'd call a wandering man, a mountain man in his later years, who understood the trapping of fur and how to get along with the red man.

He had been to the shining mountains a time or two, but the last time he never come home. That wasn't so unusual as to raise sweat on a man, for those were perilous times, and many a man went west and nobody saw anything of him after that but maybe his hair at some Indian's belt.

We boys knew the country ways, and we figured pa was thrown from his horse somewhere on the high plains, got caught without water, or run short of powder and lead with the Indians closing in. There was a sight of things could happen to a body in western lands, and betwixt us we'd come up against most of them.

The trouble was with ma.

She was growing old now, and with the passing of years her memories turned more and more to pa, and to wondering what had become of him. She was fearful he might be stove up and helpless somewhere back in the hills, or maybe held hostage by some Indians. Of a night ma didn't sleep very well, and she'd set up in her old rocker and worry about pa.

Now pa was a knowing kind of a man. He could make do with mighty little, and, given time, he could edge himself out of any kind of a fix. We boys figured that if pa was alive he'd come home, one way or t'other.

We were living in New Mexico now. Tyrel was trying to sell his holdings near Mora, figuring on moving west to the new town of Shalako. Orrin was busy with his law practice, but he said he could take some time, and I guess I was actually free to roam. Anyway, no woman, except ma, would worry for me.

"I'll go to New Orleans, Tell," Orrin told me, "and I'll check what records I can find. When you come along down I'll try to have a starting place."

The three of us set down with ma to talk over pa's last days at home to find some clue to just where he was going. The Rockies are a wide and wonderful bunch of mountains, but they aren't just one range. There are hundreds of them, so where in the high-up hills do you begin to hunt for a man?

Do you start hunting sign in the Black Hills or the Big Belts? The Absarokas, Sawatch, or Sangre de Cristos? Do you search the Greenhorns, the Big Horns, Wind Rivers, San Juans, La Platas, the Needles, Mogollons, Lintas, Crazy Mountains, or Salish? The Abajos, Henrys, Peloncillos, the Chiricahuas, or the Snake Range?

Do you cross the Black Rock Desert or the Painted? Do you search down in Hell's Canyon? On the Green or the Popo Agie?

Where do you hunt for one man where armies might be lost?

New Orleans was a far piece from the fur-trapped streams where the beaver build, but it was there the trail should begin, for it was there pa headed when he rode away from the Cumberland Hills of Tennessee.

Cities made me uneasy. A body couldn't blaze a trail in a city, and folks weren't out and out what they seemed. Usually, they made it a point to show one face while hiding another.

Orrin was city-wise. He could read city-sign the way I'd track a mustang horse across a flat-rock mesa. Of course, Orrin was also a fair hand at tracking and nigh as good in a shootout as me or Tyrel. Orrin had started early to reading law, packing a copy of Blackstone in his saddlebags and reading whenever there was time. He was also an upstanding, handsome man, and when he started to talk even the rocks and trees had to listen. We Sacketts were English and Welsh mostly, but Orrin must have taken after the Welsh, who have the gift of speaking with a song in their words.

New Orleans wasn't no new place to me, like I said. We Sacketts, along with other hill folks from Kentucky or Tennessee, been floating rafts of logs downstream for a coon's age, but the places I knew best weren't likely to be on Orrin's callin' list. Come to think of it most of those places were joints where I'd gone to roust out our shanty boys to get them started home. Places like Billy Phillip's 101 Ranch, Lulu White's Mahogany Hall, the Five Dollar House, and the Frenchman's. Or maybe Murphy's Dance House on Gallatin Street.

You had to be a man with the bark on to even go into those places. I never paid 'em much mind, but when you went downriver with a shanty-boat crew you wound up in some mighty rough places. I usually had to lead the fight that got them out, and those fights aren't for the delicate. It was fist, skull, an' batter 'em down, and you stayed on your feet or you got tromped.

The Saint Charles Hotel was a mighty fine place, the like of which I'd not seen before. In my dusty black suit and boots I didn't shape up to the kind of folks they quartered there.

The clerk had his barn slicked down like he'd been licked to be swallered, and he looked at me like I was something a dog dragged up on the porch. "Yes?" he said.

"I am hunting Orrin Sackett," I said. "He's bedded down here."

The clerk took down a big register and checked the list. "Oh, yes! Mr. Sackett.

But he is no longer with us. He's been gone--let's see--he left on the twentieth, sir. He's been gone two days."

Now that just didn't set right. Orrin had said positive that he would meet me at the Saint Charles today. So if he was gone, he'd be back.

"You sure? He was to meet me here."

"I am sorry, sir. Mr. Sackett checked out and left no forwarding address."

"He took his duffle, his bags, an' like that?"

"Of course, he--" This gent held up suddenly like he'd thought of something.

"When I think of it, he did leave his saddle here and a rifle, I believe."

Now I was worried. No Sackett goes off anywhere without a saddle and a Winchester. It just didn't stand to reason Orrin would.

"I guess you better let me have a room," I said. "The same room he had if it's available."

He hesitated, evidently not sure if I could stand the traffic, but I took out my poke and shook him out a couple of double eagles. "You set that by," I said, "an" when she's et up, you give me a whistle.

"Whilst you're about it, send up a tailor. I got to order some Sunday-go-to-meetin' clothes."

That room was most elegant. Had a big flowered bowl and pitcher, and there was a bathroom right down the hall. I set my gear down and took a quick look around.

The room had been cleaned so there'd be nothing of Orrin's left, but I knew Orrin real well and had an idea where to look.

Under a corner of the rug, pasted there neat as could be, were two gold pieces.

That was a trait of Orrin's--it was getaway money in case he got robbed or whatever. Now I knew for sure something was wrong, wrong as all get-out. If he had reason to leave his saddle and rifle, Orrin would never leave without his getaway money.

Right then I set down and went to figuring. Gettin' yourself robbed, knocked on the head, or killed in New Orleans in these 1870s was about the easiest thing a body could do, but Orrin was no pilgrim. He'd been where the bear walks an' the buzzard roosts, and he was uncommon shrewd in the ways of men.

About then I pulled up and set my saddle. Orrin was knowing in the ways of men, but his record was no good when it come to reading sign on women. Tyrel or me, we were more suspicious, maybe because women hadn't paid us so much mind as they had Orrin. He had takin' ways, and kind of expected women to like him, which they usually did. More than that, he was a downright friendly man, and if Orrin was in trouble you can bet there was a woman somewhere around. Of course, you can say that of most men.

After the tailor had come to measure me for a couple of suits, I talked to the boy who showed him up to the room. "This here room," I said, "was occupied until a couple of days ago by a handsome big man with a nice smile. You recall him?"

"I do."

"Now, I am his brother, so you can talk free. Did he have him a woman around?"

"He did not. He was in his room very little. I remember him, suh. He was most thoughtful, suh."

"Did you see him with anyone else? I've got to find him." I put a silver dollar in his hand. "You ask around. Come to me as soon as you hear tell of him and I'll have another of those for you."

Disappearing is one of the least easy things to do if a body has any recognizable way of living. We all set patterns, and if we break them somebody is sure to notice, although it may be somebody we don't even know.

Orrin was a man easy to notice and easy to remember. He never made it a point to be nice to folks ... he just was. It was him. He was polite to everyone, a man folks talked to mighty easy, a man with a pleasant way about him who would sooner avoid trouble than have it. He could put you off guard and turn a conversation from trouble into casual talk better than anybody I ever knew.

At the same time he was strong, as strong as me, I expect, and I never took hold of anything that it didn't move. He was a fine boxer, a better than average Cornish-style wrestler, and a dead shot with either hand. Peaceful man though he was, I never knew anybody to take more pleasure in a plain or fancy knockdown and drag-out brawl. In spite of his easy-going ways, if you shaped up to tear down his meathouse you'd bought yourself a packet of trouble.

So I just idled about, listening and talking to a few folks about my brother, but nobody recalled anything helpful. People around the Saint Charles remembered him and so did a boy at the corner who sold newspapers, a man down the street at a secondhand book store, and a girl who served him coffee a couple of times in a restaurant down the street a few blocks. An old Negro who drove a carriage for hire told me about him going there.

It was a small place under a wrought-iron balcony. There was a table near a wide window looking out on the street. Now I'm a coffee-drinking man and always kind of had an urge for the coffee they brew down Louisiana way, so I took a table by the window and a right pretty girl with dark hair and dark eyes brought me coffee. Right off I asked about Orrin.

"Oh, yes! I remember him very well, but he has not been in lately. Not for two or three days."

"Did he come here often?"

"He surely did. And he always sat right where you're sitting. He said he liked to watch people walking along the street."

"Was he always alone?"

"Yes--always. I never even saw him speak to anyone until the last time he was in.

He spoke to a lady who comes in sometimes."

"Young?"

"Oh, no. Mrs. LaCroix is--well, she's past sixty, I'd say."

"Did they have coffee?"

"Oh, no. They just spoke. Well, she did talk to him a little. She was thanking him for something. I--I didn't listen, you know, but I couldn't help but hear. It was something that happened in the dining room at the Saint Charles. I have no idea what it was about except that Mr. Sackett avoided trouble for them, somehow."

Well, that was something.

Orrin never was much inclined to just sit around and drink coffee, so if he came here more than once he had him a reason. Orrin liked to watch the people pass, did he?

What people? There was a lot of folks yonder, and somebody was passin' every minute, but I had an idea he wouldn't sit here just on the chance somebody would pass ... he must have known somebody would go by there, or maybe there was somebody he could watch from where he sat.

I sat there about half an hour when the waitress returned to my table. The other folks who had been drinking coffee were gone.

"Sit down," I suggested. "My front name is Tell, short for William Tell, a man my pa favored for his arrow shooting and his way of thinking. It's mighty nice, just to set and watch the folks go by. I've seen more people in the last half hour than I see in two months out yonder where I've been, and I've never seen so many people afoot."

She was amused. "Do you ride everywhere?"

"A man wouldn't be caught dead without a horse, ma'am. Why, when Eb Parley was to be buried out yonder they laid him out in the hearse nice an' proper, an' d'you know what the corpse done? He got right up out of the coffin straddled a horse, an' rode all the way to the bone yard; then he crawled back into the coffin and they buried him peaceful."

At that moment a man walked out of the saloon across the street. He was a huge man with heavy shoulders, the biggest hands and feet I ever did see, and a wide, flat face. He wore boots, a red sash about his waist, and a nondescript gray coat and pants.

"Who's that?"

She looked quickly, then away. "Don't let him see you looking at him. That's Hippo Swan. He's a notorious bully. He used to be overseer at the Baston plantation before they lost their slaves. Now he just hangs around the dance-saloons."

When I returned to the hotel I went to the desk. "Did my brother leave no message at all when he left?" I asked.

"As a matter of fact, Mr. Sackett, I did not see your brother that day. He sent a messenger for his valise."