Читать книгу The Comancheros - Paul Iselin Wellman - Страница 5

Weapons, cards, and women. They were the three focuses of Paul Regret’s life. He had been measurably successful with all three of them, and though all three had somewhat stained his reputation, he thought little of that in the lightheaded way of young men.

Through the fog he rode, his face still and thoughtful. It was a face which had the gambler’s trick of icy control at the card table, and yet could relax into charm and warmth, with reckless black eyes and a flashing white smile under his narrow mustache. And he had an engaging way about him, so that men usually, and women almost always, excused whatever he did. But there would be, he realized, no excuse for him this time.

As he trotted his horse into the town, the fog began to lift so that he could see the streets and buildings. All his life he had lived here: his ancestors had come to New Orleans with Bienville, and once had possessed some wealth, although the family fortunes were reduced now until he, the last of the line, was forced to the cards and the dice for a living. Still, he had managed not too badly in the gay, reckless, gaming life of young men of fashion, to whom wine, profligacy, and the ladies were all that mattered.

With keenest regret, as he rode along, he noted favorite resorts like the Café Rouge, Victor’s, the old Opera, and the Salle St. Philippe, where he practiced with weapons, since he must be quitting them all. For he was realistic with himself. Judge Beaubien and the whole De Rieux family were now his deadly enemies. The police and courts were at their command. And while he thought sadly that New Orleans was of all cities the most pleasant in which to live, he must leave it at least for a time, until things changed.

It seemed particularly hard to him, for the practice of dueling was strongly rooted in New Orleans in spite of the law against it. The very presence of that statute, indeed, only served to add a sort of glamour to the other fascinations of the deadly game, and the numbers of famous maîtres d’armes—men like Baudoin, Thimecourt, and L’Allouette, all making their living by teaching the trade of death—were an advertisement of the desuetude of the prohibition.

Yet he knew how even a moribund law can be revived and made murderously effective in the hands of those with the will and power to do so. Prosecuted with the De Rieux money, facing Judge Beaubien in his own court, he could expect only a quick, short journey to the gallows.