In the "fall" of 1846 I found myself in the city of New Orleans, filling
up one of those pauses that occur between the chapters of an eventful
life--doing nothing. I have said an _eventful_ life. In the retrospect
of ten years, I could not remember as many weeks spent in one place. I
had traversed the continent from north to south, and crossed it from sea
to sea. My foot had pressed the summits of the Andes, and climbed the
Cordilleras of the Sierra Madre. I had steamed it down the Mississippi,
and sculled it up the Orinoco. I had hunted buffaloes with the Pawnees
of the Platte, and ostriches upon the pampas of the Plata: to-day,
shivering in the hut of an Esquimaux--a month after, taking my _siesta_
in an aery couch under the gossamer frondage of the corozo palm. I had
eaten raw meat with the trappers of the Rocky Mountains, and roast
monkey among the Mosquito Indians; and much more, which might weary the
reader, and ought to have made the writer a wiser man. But, I fear, the
spirit of adventure--its thirst--is within me slakeless. I had just
returned from a "scurry" among the Comanches of Western Texas, and the
idea of "settling down" was as far from my mind as ever.
"What next? what next?" thought I. "Ha! the war with Mexico."
The war between the United States and that country had now fairly
commenced. My sword--a fine Toledo, taken from a Spanish officer at San
Jacinto--hung over the mantel, rusting ingloriously. Near it were my
pistols--a pair of Colt's revolvers--pointing at each other in sullen
muteness. A warlike ardour seized upon me, and clutching, not the
sword, but my pen, I wrote to the War Department for a commission; and,
summoning all my patience, awaited the answer.
But I waited in vain. Every bulletin from Washington exhibited its list
of new-made officers, but my name appeared not among them. In New
Orleans--that most patriotic of republican cities--epaulettes gleamed
upon every shoulder, whilst I, with the anguish of a Tantalus, was
compelled to look idly and enviously on. Despatches came in daily from
the seat of war, filled with newly-glorious names; and steamers from the
same quarter brought fresh batches of heroes--some legless, some
armless, and others with a bullet-hole through the cheek, and perhaps
the loss of a dozen teeth or so; but all thickly covered with laurels.
November came, but no commission. Impatience and ennui had fairly
mastered me. The time hung heavily upon my hands.
"How can I best pass the hour? I shall go to the French opera, and hear
Calve."
Such were my reflections as I sat one evening in my solitary chamber.
In obedience to this impulse, I repaired to the theatre; but the
bellicose strains of the opera, instead of soothing, only heightened my
warlike enthusiasm, and I walked homeward, abusing, as I went, the
president and the secretary-at-war, and the whole government--
legislative, judicial, and executive. "Republics _are_ ungrateful,"
soliloquised I, in a spiteful mood. "I have `surely put in strong
enough' for it; my political connections--besides, the government owes
me a favour--"
"Cl'ar out, ye niggers! What de yer want?"
This was a voice that reached me as I passed through the dark corner of
the Faubourg Treme. Then followed some exclamations in French; a
scuffle ensued, a pistol went off, and I heard the same voice again
calling out:
"Four till one! Injuns! Murder! Help, hyur!"
I ran up. It was very dark; but the glimmer of a distant lamp enabled
me to perceive a man out in the middle of the street, defending himself
against four others. He was a man of giant size, and flourished a
bright weapon, which I took to be a bowie-knife, while his assailants
struck at him on all sides with sticks and stilettoes. A small boy ran
back and forth upon the banquette, calling for help.
Supposing it to be some street quarrel, I endeavoured to separate the
parties by remonstrance. I rushed between them, holding out my cane;
but a sharp cut across the knuckles, which I had received from one of
the small men, together with his evident intention to follow it up,
robbed me of all zest for pacific meditation; and, keeping my eye upon
the one who had cut me, I drew a pistol (I could not otherwise defend
myself), and fired. The man fell dead in his tracks, without a groan.
His comrades, hearing me re-cock, took to their heels, and disappeared
up a neighbouring alley.
The whole scene did not occupy the time you have spent in reading this
relation of it. One minute I was plodding quietly homeward; the next, I
stood in the middle of the street; beside me a stranger of gigantic
proportions; at my feet a black mass of dead humanity, half doubled up
in the mud as it had fallen; on the banquette, the slight, shivering
form of a boy; while above and around were silence and darkness.
I was beginning to fancy the whole thing a dream, when the voice of the
man at my side dispelled this illusion.
"Mister," said he, placing his arms akimbo, and facing me, "if ye'll
tell me yur name, I ain't a-gwine to forgit it. No, Bob Linkin ain't
that sorter."
"What! Bob Lincoln? Bob Lincoln of the Peaks?"
In the voice I had recognised a celebrated mountain trapper, and an old
acquaintance, whom I had not met for several years.
"Why, Lord save us from Injuns! it ain't you, Cap'n Haller? May I be
dog-goned if it ain't! Whooray!--whoop! I knowed it warn't no
store-keeper fired that shot. Haroo! whar are yur, Jack?"
"Here I am," answered the boy, from the pavement.
"Kum hyur, then. Ye ain't badly skeert, air yur?"
"No," firmly responded the boy, crossing over.
"I tuk him from a scoundrelly Crow thet I overhauled on a fork of the
Yellerstone. He gin me a long pedigree, that is, afore I kilt the
skunk. He made out as how his people hed tuk the boy from the
Kimanches, who hed brought him from somewhar down the Grande. I know'd
it wur all bamboozle. The boy's white--American white. Who ever seed a
yeller-hided Mexikin with them eyes and ha'r? Jack, this hyur's Cap'n
Haller. If yur kin iver save his life by givin' yur own, yur must do
it, de ye hear?"
"I will," said the boy resolutely.
"Come, Lincoln," I interposed, "these conditions are not necessary. You
remember I was in your debt."
"Ain't worth mentioning Cap; let bygones be bygones!"
"But what brought you to New Orleans? or, more particularly, how came
you into this scrape?"
"Wal, Cap'n, bein' as the last question is the most partickler, I'll gin
yur the answer to it fust. I hed jest twelve dollars in my pouch, an' I
tuk a idee inter my head thet I mout as well double it. So I stepped
into a shanty whar they wur a-playin' craps. After bettin' a good
spell, I won somewhar about a hundred dollars. Not likin' the sign I
seed about, I tuk Jack and put out. Wal, jest as I was kummin' roun'
this hyur corner, four fellers--them ye seed--run out and jumped me,
like so many catamounts. I tuk them for the same chaps I hed seed
parley vooin' at the craps-table; an' tho't they wur only jokin', till
one of them gin me a sockdolloger over the head, an' fired a pistol. I
then drewed my bowie, an' the skrimmage begun; an' thet's all I know
about it, cap'n, more'n yurself.
"Let's see if it's all up with this'n," continued the hunter, stooping.
"I'deed, yes," he drawled out; "dead as a buck. Thunder! ye've gin it
him atween the eyes, plum. He _is_ one of the fellers, es my name's Bob
Linkin. I kud sw'ar to them mowstaches among a million."
At this moment a patrol of night gendarmes came up; and Lincoln, and
Jack, and myself were carried off to the calaboose, where we spent the
remainder of the night. In the morning we were brought before the
recorder; but I had taken the precaution to send for some friends, who
introduced me to his worship in a proper manner. As my story
corroborated Lincoln's, and his mine, and "Jack's" substantiated both;
and as the comrades of the dead Creole did not appear, and he himself
was identified by the police as a notorious robber, the recorder
dismissed the case as one of "justifiable homicide in self-defence"; and
the hunter and I were permitted to go our way without further
interruption.
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Note. Craps is a game of dice.