Land of the Free (5 page)

“What?” she asked without
taking her eyes from the corpse.

“Are you all
right?”

She seemed to snap out of
the trancelike state. “Yes. Yes. I’m fine.” She tried to put the
pepperbox back in her garter but her hands were shaking too
badly.

“You might want to put the
hammer down on that.” He pointed.

“What?” She looked up at him
with, huge, black, uncomprehending eyes.

He took the pistol from her.
“It seems to have two barrels and two hammers.” He eased the second
hammer down. “It would be a sin to damage that beautiful leg.” He
handed her the pistol.

“A sin?” she
asked.

“Put that away, Miss.” He
pointed at the pepperbox but his eyes were on the smooth skin of
her bare thigh.

“Oh yes.” Her hands were
still shaking badly but this time she managed to push the pepperbox
back under her elastic garter.

Yank turned away from the
distraction to look around the room. The tavern had gone silent for
a moment when the fight started, but as the smoke cleared,
conversation went back to the normal level. Yank’s eyes returned to
the body at his feet and the spreading stain of dark blood. “What
must be done about this?”

“Drag the carcass out to the
alley or give the keeper behind the bar some money to have it done
for you,” the man across from Marina suggested. “It’s your bet,
Marina.”

“What about the police?”
Yank asked.

“You mean a
constable?”

“I suppose so.”

“I’d forget that if I was
you and let Joseph handle it.” He pounded the table. “Are you gonna
play poker or not, Marina?”

“Hold your horses.” She
picked up her cards. “My bet?” Her face was very pale but her hands
now seemed steady.

With one last look at
Marina, Yank stepped over the corpse, walked to the bar and put
down a silver dollar. “Is that enough?”

“One more would be just
right.” The tavern keeper replied with a grin.

Yank put another coin on the
bar. “Will there be any trouble with the law?”

“Nah. Nobody much liked old
Harvey anyway.” He signaled to someone at the back of the room.
“Besides. Everybody knows that Marina wouldn’t kill no payin’
customer unless she had to, not even Harvey.”

“She seems to be somewhat
shaken by it.”

“She’ll get over it. Tough
as nails, that one.”

“She didn’t look
it.”

“A woman’s looks’ll fool ya,
more often than not.”

“I suppose so.” Yank watched
as two young black men dragged the body out through the back door
and a third cleaned up the blood as if it were an everyday
occurrence. “Why did he react that way?” Yank asked. “I only wanted
to talk.”

The tavern keeper shrugged.
“With you alive old Harvey might of had to give back the money that
he was paid to take you west.”

“I hadn’t intended to
dismiss him.”

“It appears that he would of
dismissed you, if it weren’t for Marina’s little thigh
gun.”

Yank nodded. “I should thank
her but I’m afraid that interrupting the poker game again might
provoke another fight.”

“Might,” the tavern keeper
agreed. “You showed yourself slow to self defense. This here is a
dog eat dog kinda town. If folks here thinks that yer soft, yer
real likely to get some heat.”

“I would have defended
myself, if I had thought it was necessary. But I was never in any
danger.”

The tavern keeper shrugged.
“Yer either awful sure of yerself or yer awful green.”

“Perhaps a bit of both.”
Yank watched as the man cleaning the floor spread fresh sawdust
over the wet planks. “I don’t suppose it will be easy finding
another guide after this.”

“Not if you’re insistent on
a white man. Harvey’s the onliest white man around here that claims
to have been to Yellow Stone.”

“I’m not that particular
about the guide’s skin color.” He was watching Marina again.
Beneath too many layers of powder and rouge, she was quite
astonishingly pretty. The image of her silk clad calf and the bare
skin of her thigh above the fancy garter was still very vivid in
his memory.

“How about sex?” the tavern
keeper asked.

Yank jumped as if stabbed
and turned to face the bartender in surprise. “What did you
say?”

“The sex of yer guide,” the
man explained with a chuckle. “Would you have a problem pickin’ a
woman?”

“A woman?”

“Marina there.” The
bartender pointed. “She’s been to Yellow Stone.”

“Really?” Yank looked toward
her again. “Well. Hmm. A woman. No. That is… I don’t
think…”

“She speaks Spanish, French,
Latin and a bunch o’ Indian tongues.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Is she Spanish?”

“Mexican.”

Yank looked away from her,
trying to focus his mind on the mission. “How did she get here? To
New Orleans, I mean. From Mexico.”

“She lived up near
Albuquerque in the Spaniard’s New Mexico territory and got took as
a slave by Apaches when she was just a girl.” He laughed. “But she
give ‘em so much grief that they traded her to some Sioux up at
Yellow Stone.”

Yank turned back toward the
card game.

“Turns out,” the tavern
keeper continued, “the Sioux didn’t like her much better than them
Apaches. So they up and sold her to a French trapper name of
Fontenot. Now, he was a mean old bastard, that Fontenot, but not
hardly mean enough to break Marina. A few years back he brought her
here to the New Orleans slave market and sold her to Josiah
Meddling. That there is where I bought her. From Josiah
Meddling.”

“She’s a slave?”

“Yup.”

Yank looked from the
bartender to Marina and back again. “She cannot be a
slave.”

“Well she dern sure is,” the
man argued. “And I have the papers to prove it.”

“She was born
free.”

“Born free?” The tavern
keeper gave a short laugh to punctuate his words. “That don’t mean
nothin’. Half the slaves in the slave market was born free in
Africa, or somewheres. Hell, I know a few that was slaves, made
free and then grabbed up off the street and made slaves
again.”

Yank was still having
difficulty getting his mind around the idea that the young woman
was a slave. “But you said that she’s Mexican.”

“Which means she’s mostly
Indian. Ain’t much difference between a nigger and a Indian when
you come right down to it.”

“Well, if she’s a slave, how
could I hire her as an interpreter?”

“You don’t have to hire her.
I’ll sell her to you for three hundred dollars.”

“Sell her to me? I’d own
her?”

“Well yeah.” The bartender
was losing patience with the conversation. “You want her or
not?”

Yank looked
indecisive.

“Three hundred’s a dead
bargain. I could get a thousand for her on the open
market.”

“A thousand?”

“Maybe more. Them big
plantation owners in the southeast would pay a high dollar for such
a good lookin’, almost white, eighteen year old girl, even if she
ain’t no virgin. I’m only makin’ the offer ‘cause I like her and I
figure you’ll set her free.”

“If you want her freed, why
don’t you just set her free?”

“Can’t afford to,” the
tavern keeper said with a shrug. “Costs two thousand dollars on top
of what I got invested in her already. Even if I got me a
fifty-percent discount from my friend Josiah Meddling, that’d be
just plumb bad business.”

“It costs money to free a
slave?”

“O’ course it does. You
gotta have emancipation papers and such. Then there’s the fees the
courthouse charges.”

“How does one go about
freeing a slave?”

“Well first off, you gotta
be able to prove that the slave can support his or her own
self.”

“That I can do easily by
providing her employment.”

“Well then, you just take
her ownership papers to the slave market and have a trader sign a
grant of emancipation. If you see Josiah Meddling and tell him
you’re President Jefferson’s surveyor, he’ll give you a discount.
He’s a right good American.”

Yank was watching Marina.
“Three hundred dollars you say?”

“That’s a firm price. I
won’t go a penny lower. But I’ll talk to Josiah Meddling and see if
he’ll give you a better discount. Bet I could get him to do it for
a thousand instead of two.”

“Very well,” Yank said after
a moment. “Can you direct me to the Banque de la
Louisiane?”

The tavern keeper pointed.
“They’re moving to a new building on Royal Street.”

“Will you take a bank draft
or do you insist on coin?”

“You’d never make it back
here alive with that much coin. I’ll go with you right now so as we
can get the ownership papers notarized.”

Yank was again watching
Marina who was now dealing cards. “Not right now, if you please.
Not quite yet. I need a few moments to think.”

“Somethin’
wrong?”

“No.”

“Havin’ second thoughts?”
the tavern keeper pressed.

Yank shook his head, but not
convincingly.

“You worried that she’ll run
away?”

Yank looked at him. “No, not
exactly. I was thinking that spending an amount equal to the price
of a small ship to buy a woman might be difficult to explain in my
report.”

“Don’t see why. Just get
Marina to write a letter explainin’ the whole thing and include
that with your report. She writes better’n most
lawyers.”

“What if she doesn’t
agree?”

“To write a
letter?”

“To be my – slave. That is,
until I can grant her freedom.”

“Oh hell, she don’t got a
choice in that, does she.”

“Still…”

“Hold on.” The tavern keeper
whistled. “Marina,” he shouted.

She turned to look at him,
gave up her cards and walked to the bar. “That was a winning hand I
just folded.” She glanced at Yank but looked away
quickly.

“This gentleman is wantin’ a
guide to help him survey the south western piece of the Louisiana
Purchase.”

“I know,” she replied. “Did
you somehow miss the action over there a few minutes
ago?”

“Listen to me now, Marina.
This here’s important.”

“I’m listening,
Joseph.”

“I told him you’d do for
Harvey’s job,” the tavern keeper continued, “and I made him a fair
price. He’s worried that you’ll run off after he buys
you.”

“No, no,” Yank protested to
the woman. “That’s not it at all. I just find it highly unusual. I
mean – I would set you free and you could – that is… If you wanted…
I mean…”

“My name is Marina Cortés,”
she said excitedly in perfect French. “I would be happy to
accompany you on your expedition and even happier to be free.
Happier than you can imagine. You can depend upon my gratitude and
loyalty in every way.”

Yank was so struck by her
manners and her aristocratic, Parisian accent that all he managed
in reply was to mutter his name.

She looked at the bartender.
“Is this some kind of cruel joke?” she accused in
English.

“No it ain’t.” He shook his
head. “I swear.”

“Then what’s the matter with
him?”

“You was speakin’ French.
Maybe he don’t speak French.”

“I speak French,” Yank
said.

“And?” she asked.

Yank looked at the
bartender. “And we’re going to the bank now, I suppose.”

August 19, 1804

New Orleans, Louisiana
Territory

The New Orleans slave market
was an enormous enterprise that made Yank Van Buskirk decidedly
uncomfortable. Row upon row of buildings crowded the narrow street,
each with its own slave pens and exercise yards. At the end of the
street, inside a traffic circle, the main auction yards and holding
pens dominated the view.

“I don’t know why this is
necessary, Miss Cortés,” Yank complained. “No one would ever
suspect that you might be a slave.”

Yank and Marina were in the
street in front of the establishment of Josiah Meddling. Business
was being undertaken on the front porch with slaves lined up for a
prospective buyer’s inspection.

“Anyone who knows New
Orleans knows what I am,” she replied in French. “Shall we go
in?”

“Where did you learn
French?” he asked, trying to delay their entry to the slaver’s
establishment a bit longer.

“At the Ursuline
Convent.”

“You were in a
convent?”

“No. The Ursuline Nuns from
France have established a school for girls and an orphanage here.
They also offer free classes to African slaves and Native American
girls. Joseph, the tavern owner, sent me to them because I spoke no
French when he bought me.”