The Scent of Betrayal (30 page)

‘I’ve been stuck in those for more’n two days before now, Ludlow. Going round and round in circles set to make a man dizzy. We were real lucky. The rain deadened the spin a touch, I reckon.’

The bad weather which persisted for two whole days had passed over, and the night sky was a carpet of bright stars. Smoke was pouring out of the chimney amidships, as one of their scratch crew prepared a meal using the stores Harry had sent aboard and some fish they’d caught over the side. Tucker was steering still, having set them to proceed at a quarter of their best pace. This eased the strain on the oarsmen and lessened the risk of serious damage from driftwood. He tried hard to stay in mid-channel. Every time they failed, and slid towards the shore, the whole boat was attacked by swarms of mosquitoes.

‘Is that the worst we have to face?’ Harry asked, wondering if there could be a section of the river as tough to get through as the one they’d just managed.

‘No,’ he replied, grinning. ‘The worst you have to face is when a log holes you so bad you’re sinking just at the spot that the alligators like to gather.’

‘I dare say you walk on them with the same equanimity that you showed on that log.’

‘Equanimity. That’s a mighty fine word, Ludlow.’

‘It’s certainly a better one than horseshit.’

‘That’s no error,’ said Pender.

Harry grinned at him, before addressing Tucker. ‘Have we made good time?’

‘Better than I expected when that storm broke.’

A burst of laughter came from the hutch.

‘The Frenchmen have performed well,’ said Harry. ‘Fighting the Mississippi has done them the power of good.’

‘Now that we’re past some of these little local obstacles, I was wondering if’n you were going to tell me what it is we’re chasing in such an all-fired hurry?’

‘Of course. There a party of twelve Royal Walloon Guards heading north on horseback. We’re after them.’

‘Why?’

‘They have something I want,’ Harry replied.

‘I’ll grant you don’t know me well, Ludlow. I’ll also own to the fact that our meeting each other could’ve been smoother …’

‘But?’ asked Harry, as he paused.

‘You’re going to have to trust me.’

‘Just being here means I do.’

‘No. Let me tell you about the Manchac Post. Used to be called Fort Bute and it stands right where the Iberville River joins the Mississippi. Built by the English after the Peace of Paris to command the only other route out of the interior that didn’t mean going through the delta. Goes right down the Amité River through Ponchartrain to a set of narrows that lead out into Lake Borgne.’

Tucker paused for a moment to let that information sink in. Harry was visualising a chart. He knew that Lake Borgne was a deep salt-water bay that led out into the numerous islands that filled the Chandeleur Sound, islands that provided a wealth of routes out into the Gulf of Mexico.

‘There’s an expression you would hear if you sat drinking in any riverside tavern often enough. It’s ‘doing a little Manchac’, and it means smuggling. Now the Dons don’t like that too much and so they stop quite a few boats that pass Manchac going upriver or down.’

‘I thought we were going to try and pass it at night?’

‘We are. But since that’s also the time that smugglers like to do the dirty the Dons are pretty wide awake.’

‘You mean we might not make it.’

‘Yes. But it also means I might have to tell a lie. That’s not something that bothers me none, but I prefer to do it when I know what the truth is. Kinda makes it easier, you know, especially since I’m carrying no cargo.’

‘All right,’ said Harry. ‘We’re after those Walloons because I think they’re carrying two hundred thousand dollars in gold and silver.’

Harry considered Tucker a hard man to shut up, but that statement kept him quiet for a good minute.

‘I’ll save you trying to work it out for yourself,’ he said, and explained, in detail, what he’d learned and what he hoped to achieve. ‘Do you know McGillivray?’

‘I know of him,’ Tucker replied.

‘Is what you hear good or bad?’

‘Depends who’s talking. For some folks the only good Indian is one that has gone to join the spirits. To others he’s a mite heroic. Rumour has it that George Washington, who hates to touch another, shook his hand.’

‘That not really what I was asking.’

‘You want to know if he’s truthful?

‘I do!’ Harry replied emphatically. ‘Pender here thinks that he knows more than he’s saying.’

Tucker looked at Harry’s servant questioningly.

‘I reckoned, from the very first meeting, that he knew that this de Guerin has the bullion, that it was less than the guesswork he wanted us to think. That’s been made more so by the way he timed that note to the Captain.’

‘Pender wonders if once we have it he might try to take it off us.’

‘He damn sure can’t do it himself,’ said Tucker. ‘A party of
Indians strong enough to do what you intend, in the wrong place, would cause a whole neckful of hackles to rise. Folks would be calling for troops to protect them. Some people can’t see a Redskin and his squaw without imaginin’ a massacre.’

‘So, what do you think?’

‘When it comes to that kind of money, normal guessing won’t get you very far. And Indians ain’t like white folks. They work by their own code, not ours. But from what I know of McGillivray, he’s rich, he’s straight, and he aims to keep the peace.’

Lampin came out of the hutch bearing three bowls on a plank of wood. The smell reached them before the food, onions, garlic, and wine.

‘This is what fishermen eat at home,’ he said, laying the three steaming bowls before them. ‘We call it
caudière
.’

Harry dipped his spoon into the pinkish creamy stew. Lumps of fish came up to the surface. As he raised it to his lips he blew on it as a precaution, smelling the herbs and the tangy odour of cooked wine. It was delicious, filling and nourishing.

‘If we can have a time to fish each day, and the milk stays fresh, the pot will stay as full as the whiskey butt.’

Tucker had already sampled his, and when he spoke, a thin stream of the sauce trickled down his chin. ‘Not if I have my way.’

The following days, with better weather prevailing, saw little repetition of the events of the first 24 hours. The levee, which ran all the way to the Pointe Coupée on both banks, acted as a sort of elevated roadway connecting the various riverside settlements. Every time Tucker got close enough to the side he was engaged in a shouted conversation with anyone who was passing, with many a mutual acquaintance mentioned. News of a local nature was readily forthcoming, a list of births, deaths, and marriages appended. He in turn imparted news from New Orleans and the wider world, plus the reassurance, often required, that the Dons were sticking to the terms of the recently signed treaty with the United States.

‘Why if they live in Spanish territory, are they so concerned about that?’ asked Harry, having heard the question put for the tenth time.

‘The alternatives,’ Tucker replied, ‘like the possibility of a war. This area is just starting to recover from a failure of the indigo crop. Most have switched to cotton or sugar, which finds its market elsewhere. Trouble on the river spells ruin. And the further north we go, the more anxious people get.’

Tucker hove to south of Bayou Manchac well before dusk, and bade the Frenchmen replenish their pot, then once they’d eaten return to their oars. ‘Tell them to go easy, Ludlow,’ he said. ‘The Dons have guard boats out on the river, though they tend to look upriver rather than south to catch folks.’

‘If you think we won’t make it, pull for shore.’

‘Why?’

‘I have an invitation to go hunting with de Coburrabias.’

‘You don’t say,’ replied Tucker with a grin.

‘I’d rather not use it.’

‘For two hundred thousand Spanish dollars I can see why.’

‘The sky looks set to come to our aid,’ said Harry.

Tucker looked at the increasing cloud cover, which would go a long way to covering the moon. ‘If it thickens we’ll be safe, just as long as we don’t bump into anything.’

TUCKER
handed the sweep over to Harry then went forward to set the rowing pace. Fine adjustments were needed to find the right combination that produced progress with the minimum of noise.

‘We could muffle the oars,’ called Harry.

Tucker shook his head. Pender, right beside him, understood why. ‘Reckon he’d find that just too hard to explain away, your honour, that is, if we do get brought to. Then even your invite wouldn’t make them happy.’

The gloom, once the sun had gone, increased rapidly, and within half an hour complete darkness fell. Lights had begun to appear, pinpoints from candles in dwellings whose upper storeys looked over the levee. Tucker climbed onto the top of the deckhouse, which allowed him a better view. If it grew too dark those lights, and the silhouette of the embankment, were going to have to keep the boat on course. In the glim Harry saw his hand go up, and following it picked out the glow of a greater concentration of light on the horizon, which increased, turning to an orange arc, as they approached the Manchac Post. Coming round a long sweeping bend that had the river running west to east allowed them to see the actual source as, right ahead, the mass of torches lining the battlements came into view. Tucker, climbing down, steered them towards the northern shore.

‘We’d be better off on a clear night,’ he said.

Harry could see he was right. The cloud cover had increased, but it had also lowered, so that the lights from the elevated fortress bounced off it, extending the effect over the width of the river.

‘Trouble is, the fort is right on a sharp turn. They have a
picket on the opposite shore, with sharp eyes looking for fools trying to slip by. It’s a favourite trick of the smugglers to get downriver first, then come up all innocent before slipping into the Bayou Manchac.’

‘What do you suggest?’

Tucker rubbed his chin and cheek, fingering the last of the swellings from his fight with Harry.

‘The only question is this. Do they have enough light to see that this is my boat, and that by its draught, it’s empty?’

‘It would be very inconvenient if we were stopped, Tucker. The crew would require some explanation, but they might pass. But Pender and I would have to land, then fashion some method of escaping from de Coburrabias. That would take up valuable time. But I can’t judge the risk, only you can do that.’

‘Then it’s all hands to the oars, the middle of the channel at full pitch, and if they dip their flag to haul us to, we ignore them.’ Tucker laughed. ‘One Mississippi galley looks much like another, and lifting a finger to the Dons is mighty tempting.’

‘I agree.’

‘How are you at singing, Ludlow?’

‘Not good,’ replied Pender.

‘A ladle of whiskey all round, Pender,’ said Tucker. ‘Two, even. Every man to sing as loud as he can without giving up on the rowing. They think we Kentucky men are heathens who do little else but get blind drunk. Let’s prove to them that they are right.’

The flag at the mainstaff, which stood at the centre of the palisaded fort, jerked up and down several times before they fired a cannon. Being a signal gun it was not designed to do any damage, but it was soon followed by something more substantial, and a fountain of water sprang from the muddy waters of the orangetinged river. Harry was belting out a tuneless rendition of ‘Britons Strike Home’ while the Frenchmen left on deck waved their poles and sang, surprisingly, the Revolutionary ‘
Cà
Ira
.’ Tucker was staggering about on top of the deckhouse, looking at any moment
as if he might tip into the water, as he conducted the singing going on beneath him.

The single gun was followed by a salvo which pitched a hundred yards ahead, right in their projected path, a warning that should they enter that stretch of water they’d have to row through a second deadly discharge. The Dons would have every nuance of range worked out to the foot, firing from a fixed platform into an area in which they could practise at will.

‘You there,’ cried Tucker to the men with poles, who included Lampin and Couvruer, ‘get to the side and show them your arse!’

Translating that took several seconds, and occasioned a few shaking heads. But Tucker repeated his instructions more forcefully, physically demonstrating his intentions. The men laid aside their poles and lined the side of the boat. At a single command from Tucker they loosened their breeches. He did likewise, spinning round and whooping out an unintelligible insult. As he dropped them he bent right over, an action which was copied by the Frenchmen. Harry wondered what the officer on shore, who would have a glass on the galley for certain, would make of this row of pale white moons.

‘Better than carronades, I reckon,’ said Pender, heaving with laughter. Harry, as affected by whiskey as his servant, nevertheless waited to agree. He didn’t even smile till they’d passed through the patch of water still disturbed by that first salvo. By the time they were clear of further danger he’d joined in wholeheartedly with the humour that now pervaded the entire deck.

‘If only Drake had known that’s all it took to frighten a Spaniard! By God, we’d own Madrid.’

The following day saw them meandering through the bends of a relatively untroubled river. Flat country had been replaced by deep forest. At one bend they came across an area of woodland that looked like some angry giant had attacked it. Trees were uprooted whole, many lying along the shoreline. The tornado had ripped a path a mile wide through the forest, flattening everything in its
path, including the levee, as it followed its twisted course. Teams of Negroes were working to repair the dykes, singing low mournful dirges as they toiled indifferently at a task that would have to be completed before the autumn rains. Coming round the arc of the river bend brought them to the place where the twister had crossed the wide watercourse, to continue on its destructive path. It was here that Tucker showed his skill with the rifle.

‘Any feller can shoot a squirrel, Ludlow. The trick is to scare the livin’ daylights out of it while leaving it whole.’ He pointed at a set of trees full of the creatures, and took careful aim with his weapon. ‘Come on now, Practical, you just bark at that there critter so he jumps ten feet.’

The gun went off with a loud roar, a streak of flame gushing out of the barrel. Harry had a glass on the squirrel. He saw it do just as Tucker demanded. At a hundred yards on a less than perfect platform, the riverboatman removed a strip of bark from right under the animal’s belly. By any standards, it was a tremendous shot.

‘Can you do it again?’

‘Later. We’re getting close to a couple of settlements.’

Baton Rouge, a small town of about a hundred houses, was, like the Manchac Post, passed during the night, this time in silence. The following day saw them approaching the middle channel of the twin islands that lay below Pointe Coupée. Tucker explained that the outer channels were safer, indeed sluggish in comparison to the one he’d chosen, but the settlements there were large enough to contain either Spaniards, or, working for them, officials of French or American origin, any one of whom had the right to call them to question. With no idea of what news had preceded them upriver, it was safer to assume the worst, even if it did entail greater effort.

The channel was like a tidal race, with the river forced to increase its velocity by the narrowness of the bottleneck. Water moving at that pace precluded sandbanks, but there were rocks,
with boiling foam around their base to warn of their presence. They, of course, were easy to avoid. But it took all of Tucker’s river knowledge to spot the flow of brown water over submerged obstacles, and all of the strength of everyone aboard, above and below decks, to avoid them. Those put to poling had a busy time, being commanded to work one side of the boat then the other. When they finally cleared the narrows, the oarsmen collapsed where they sat. Everyone on deck, including Harry, Pender, and Tucker, fell back against the low bulwarks, stretching to ease their aching limbs.

In continuing fine weather their progress was good. Occasional whirlpools or excessive drifting debris would slow them. But compared to men on horses, needing constant stops for remounts, rest, and feeding, they were racing along. They opened the mouth of the Red River after fifteen days, a watercourse that tinged the brown Mississippi with its rouge sediment. Harry, by this time, was on the lookout for some sign of a message from McGillivray. The first major Indian trading stop, around the settlement called Concordia, lay between Natchez and the Red River. De Guerin had, according to the Creek chieftain, crossed in that direction three weeks before. It was a natural place for the Walloons to secure fresh horses and since they must by now be beyond Fort Rosalie, the last Spanish outpost, there was every chance that they’d cross the river into the Mississippi Territory. The guess that they would head away from the river was just that. If they didn’t, he could get ahead of them easily in Tucker’s galley. But at some stage, pursuing people tied to the land, he knew that he too would need to engage in mounted pursuit.

It was three more days before contact was made, time which dragged heavily. It was easy for Harry, in moments of introspection, to see what he was doing as a waste of time, a mere indulgence by a man who found it hard to sit still. The Frenchmen wavered from optimism to pessimism on an hourly basis, their mood swings easily calibrated by the way they looked at, or spoke, to Harry, at its worst manifesting itself as a low, continuous grumble of
indistinct complaints. Pender was his usual rocklike self at such times, even though he didn’t trust McGillivray at all. Tucker, who rose day by day in Harry’s estimation, was inclined to agree.

‘You’ve got to see things from where he’s lookin’, Ludlow,’ he said, waving his arms towards the east bank of the river. ‘That was all tribal land twenty years ago. Still is, I suppose, except it’s awash with Americans and filling up by the year as more an’ more settlers arrive. The thing he cares about most is hanging on to what the Creek nation have left.’

Being from Kentucky himself, Tucker knew everything there was to tell about frontier politics, as well as the reasons behind such things as the Whiskey Rebellion and the continuing threats of secession.

‘It all comes down to money, or the lack of it, since there’s practically none west of the Cumberland Gap. In a land where rye is the staple it’s also the currency. It has to be transported west by horse, and sells for around forty cents a bushel. Now that makes profits hard to come by. The same animal that can carry four bushels of rye can carry two eight-gallon kegs of whiskey, and that will sell at fifty cents a gallon. Trouble is, the Federals wanted to slap an excise on it, which to frontiersmen, quite a few of whom supported King George twenty years ago, is not to be borne. When the revenue men arrived, they were roughly handled, and I know of one who was tarred and feathered.’

‘So what’s the solution?’ asked Harry. ‘All governments need money.’

‘More prosperity. That’s why Pinckney’s Treaty was so vital. If the frontier prospers they won’t mind paying a little. This boat of mine carries bushels by the hundred, and before de Carondelet stripped out Louisiana, I could get paid in hard money. Twenty-five years’ navigation and rights of deposit aren’t enough, but it’ll do to start. It might provide enough time to wean the folks upriver onto another means of earning a crust. Anyway, as long as they can use the river to get their produce out, and sell it at a proper rate, then it’s a fair bet they’ll stay loyal.’

‘And McGillivray?’

‘Will be happy to see the Spanish stay in control of the lower Mississippi. That means no more settlers to him.’

‘And this gold and silver?’

‘That’s larded with all manner of possibilities, some of which won’t even have occurred to either you or Pender.’

Pender hesitated for just a second. But his curiosity got the better of him. ‘For instance?’

Tucker seemed distracted, looking over Pender’s shoulder as though what he was saying mattered little.

‘You take that bullion, which those Walloons won’t give up without a fight. McGillivray takes it back off you and returns it to de Carondelet with you and your Frenchmen in chains. Suddenly the Governor, who doesn’t really trust him, changes his tune, and all is sunny and sweet in the Creek nation.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Nope. You say you reckon it’s going to New York as a bribe. What if the Creeks decide to take it off you to use it for the same purpose?’

‘McGillivray claims to be a rich man. Surely he could do that anyway?’

‘Certainly he’s rich, Ludlow, but not in specie. The Spaniards pay him in kind and any money he does get goes to buying trade goods from American agents. He has land and trading concessions that are worth a fortune. But unless he realises those assets he has little actual money to distribute. So that precious metal could come in very handy. It would buy them just as much influence as it would de Carondelet.’

‘It would harm his case while anyone who knew of its provenance was still alive. That would mean not only disposing of us, but of the Spaniards as well.’

‘Kinda chills the blood,’ said Tucker.

He pulled himself to his feet and pointed to the canoe heading out from the bank of the river, its prow aimed right amidships. Harry and Pender stood up as well. Those Frenchmen not rowing
lined the side, watching silently as the Indians manoeuvred the flimsy craft with practised ease. It was alongside within minutes. Harry leant over the side, meaning to speak. But he was obliged to take an oilskin pouch from one outstretched hand, with the canoe turning away as soon as it was delivered.

‘Does that have a superscription on it?’ asked Tucker.

Harry opened the pouch, took out a letter, and held it out, so that the Kentuckian could see his name written in large capital letters on the cover.

‘How in hell’s name did they know this was the right boat?’

‘I don’t think we’ve been out of their sight since we set out,’ said Pender, his eyes still fixed on the retreating canoe.