Читать книгу The Iron Mistress - Paul Iselin Wellman - Страница 15

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An hour passed. Audubon found a shady place, where he sat and talked with Nez Coupé. Bowie remained standing in the sun.

He became aware of a pair of loafers sitting on a coil of rope and watching the unloading with the peculiar enjoyment of loafers the world over at the observation of any kind of labor being done by others. In the manner, likewise, of all loafers, they made free with their comments.

“Wall, now,” said one, a tall bearded fellow in brown homespun, “if that ain’t the likeliest lot of niggers!”

“Not bad. No—I’d say purty fair,” agreed his companion, a fat bald man in a greasy nankeen shirt and leather breeches. It was obvious that they were river boatmen, and equally obvious that neither had ever owned so much as a single slave: yet they discussed the gang on the wharf in a large and expert manner, as elsewhere they might have discussed the fine points of a herd of cattle or horses.

“Nineteen,” said the brown beard. “Matched an’ in good shape. They’d fotch eight hundred dollars a head at a vendue.”

“A thousand’s more like it,” amended the bald one. “No—I’d say twenty thousand wouldn’t be no banter for the lot.”

“I dunno.” The brown beard had a wiseacre’s air. “Them looks like brute niggers, now. Right out of the Congo, I bet. None too well broke. Look at that rascal in the shed—troublemaker if I ever seed one.”

He referred to the nearer of the two slaves piling casks. Bowie glanced over. In contrast to the others, this man seized each burden and hoisted it to its place with a kind of savage energy. Yet he was weary: and something more. Through rents in his tattered shirt, Bowie saw ugly weals on the polished ebony body, and the shirt was stained with blood scarcely dry.

The slave had been flogged, no later than this morning, and severely: the kind of flogging that would have prostrated most men. Yet with a lacerated back he worked as none of the others worked, as if driven by some inner frenzy. Alone of them all he wore iron leg shackles, which confined him to short hobbling steps: and toward him, more often than to any of the others, the overseer turned his expressionless grim mask.

Bowie’s face showed no change. Slavery was accepted, and this man was another man’s property. But, contrary to the opinion of the loafers, the slave in the shed was no brute from the Congo.

Bowie knew him. Quite well. And from a happier time.

The loafers’ conversation took a new turn. “I know whar a gang like them kin be bought for no more’n a dollar a pound,” said the bald one. “Prime hands, all of ’em.”

“Aw, now! Whar?”

“Mebbe I ain’t sayin’.” These creatures loved to be mysterious.

“Huh! Ain’t no sech place. That’s why.”

The next remark fully caught Bowie’s attention.

“Mebbe,” craftily said he of the fatness and the baldness, “bein’ from Arkansaw, ye ain’t never heard of the Lafittes?”

“Hell, everybody knows about them pirates!”

“Some says they’re pirates: some says they ain’t. Mebbe they done a little piratin’—mebbe they done a little smugglin’. Ain’t for me to say.” Baldy closed an eye in an indescribable effort to look sly. “But some mighty high-toned gents right hyar in Noo Orl’ns was glad to be sociable with ’em at one time. An’ when ole Andy Jackson was fixin’ to scrimmage with the British down the perninsular, he warn’t too proud to have the Lafittes on his side.”

“Andy Jackson didn’t need no pirates to lick them Britishers!”

“Think not? Some’d argy that p’int with ye. An’ I’m thinkin’ Ole Hickory’d be one of ’em. Anyway, the Lafittes is gone now. Some place called Galvez-town, down the Texas coast.” The bald head became confidential. “Know who Dominique You is?”

“That ole sot? Shore. Everybody knows him.”

“Ole sot mebbe. But Cap’n Dominique was oncet the terror of the Gulf. I reckon he does h’ist enough licker to float him these days. But I ask ye, does he go around in rags? Not him. He eats an’ drinks at the very best places, drives a team of blooded bays, an’ keeps a fancy quadroon gal.”

Brown beard nodded. “That’s true. Never thought o’ that.”

“I bet ole Dominique could tell plenty, if he took a notion——”

“Looky. There’s Parisot comin’.”

Both loafers rose uneasily from their rope coil. “Reckon we better drift. He don’t fancy folks hangin’ around his dock.”

They slouched away around the corner of the warehouse.