“You’re here as a trader then?”
“I came up on the Black Hawk today.”
“And the cotton you’re after was stored?”
“In Rachal’s Warehouse, I believe it’s called.”
“Bill, we captured that cotton last week.”
“Oh I know about that — I saw it; we passed the barge coming up. But condemnation rests with a court, and fact of the matter, the battle hasn’t started till a court calls the case in New Orleans.” “Springfield.”
“... Springfield?”
“Illinois. That cotton’s headed for Cairo.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that.”
“Bill, if you buy titles, you’re sunk.”
“You mean, on-the-bottom sunk?”
“I mean, in-the-mud sunk. We’re both sunk.”
“But tell me: Have any receipts been signed?”
“No, Bill, none.”
“If any had been, would you know it?”
“Detail from this ship made the capture — I wasn’t in command, but was there, and if receipts had been signed, I’d know it.”
But one of the boys he’d introduced me to, who was in earshot as we talked on the bow, said something, and Sandy corrected himself: “Oh that’s right, I forgot. One of our officers, Lieutenant Powell, could have signed something; of that we can’t be sure. He did shore duty evenings, up at the Ice House Hotel, hearing civilian complaints — and got plugged by a skulker one night as he stepped out of the hotel to come back to the ship.”
“Why doesn’t Cresap talk to Ball?”
That was the boy who had interrupted, and Sandy said: “That’s right, Ball would know. He’s on that duty now, and has all Powell’s notes.”
“Can I see him?”
“He’s asleep, but he’ll be at the hotel tonight.”
“Then — I’ll talk to him there.”
“Now, Bill, let’s get back.”
“... Back? To what?”
“The twenty-five thousand dollars.”
I was in the unfortunate position, I discovered, that he’d swallowed my whole yarn. He took the twenty-five thousand dollars very seriously, feeling he was to blame, not only for our needing it but, still worse, for our not having it. So for an hour I had to fence, while he asked all kinds of questions about who my “parties” were. Finally, when I admitted I had no idea, he looked so utterly baffled I had to do something, quick. I slipped off a bill from the roll I had in my pocket, tore it in two with my fingertips, then came up with one half and said: “All I know is, they’re to present me with identification, the matching half of this. Until they do, I don’t know them from Adam, and can’t even guess who they are. And maybe, from your account of the seizure, or capture as you call it, they won’t even show at all.” It satisfied him, but I went back to my flat more shaken than before, if such a thing was possible. I was no nearer the answer to my riddle, but quite a lot nearer the poorhouse. I had supposed, when I tore the bill, that I was wrecking a twenty, but saw when I looked it was fifty. Perhaps, I told myself, it would be just as good as new if pasted together again, but as I fingered and folded and eyed it, it was one more silly thing in a dreary, complete fiasco.
I’d done better than I knew.
Chapter 17
Whatever I had or hadn’t found out, I still had to eat, so around 6:30 I walked up to the hotel. It was jammed, and I didn’t get a seat until the third or fourth table. But I bought my ticket, and then saw Dan come in and beckon to the newspapermen. When they’d gathered around him, he gave them the latest: the Army was moving up, being now in Natchitoches — “Nackitosh,” he called it; the Navy was having some trouble from low water on the falls, the stretch of rapid water just above the town, but several boats were up, and no serious delay had been caused. In other words, everything was moving according to schedule. But when he’d finished with them and dropped into a chair beside me, he had nothing to say and seemed in a sour humor. I said: “Why all the gloom if the sun is shining so bright?” He said: “It is, in a pig’s eye,” and then, mysterious: “You want to see something, Bill? Meet me out back.”
So I did, slipping out past the desk in under the stairs, through a door between the dining room and a big lounge with a stove in it. In a moment, there he was, in among the hotel’s steam boiler, gas tank, and cistern, pointing. I looked; in the gathering dark, the sky back of town was pink. He said: “That glow is cotton they’re burning out there — from some plantation gin on the Opelousas Road. They’ve been doing it, I’m told, every night since the Navy crossed them. We hear they hate our guts.”
“Yes, but since when did they love us?”
“They were all ready to think things over.”
“You’re hipped on that hoodoo, Dan.”
“I’m telling you, it’s going to dog us.”
“The cotton’s gone — it’s on its way to Cairo for condemnation in Springfield. The rest is a new deal.”
“We haven’t heard the end.”
When I didn’t respond he got sore, and circled the tailor shop at one side to return to the headquarters boat without going back through the hotel. I went in and at last got a place for dinner, which wasn’t too bad: corned beef, cabbage, potato, rice pudding with rum sauce, and real coffee — the first sign of a change when the Union comes to town. When I went out into the lobby again, Ball was back of the stagecoach desk, a grizzled, seamy two-striper who looked like an old river pilot, which is probably what he was. He was talking to a woman about her son who’d been captured, but spotted me and called me over, telling her to wait. He shook hands, saying: “Mr. Cresap, Sandy Gregg said you’d come — I know you by his description.”
“I’m easy described,” I said, waving the stick.
“He never mentioned it. He spoke only about your beauty — and that torn fifty-dollar bill you have. Could I see it just once, Mr. Cresap?”
I got one half of it out, and when he loved it as though it was alive I realized I had a pass, by just a crazy accident, to a lodge I’d never heard of. He said: “It’s the old smuggler’s talisman, and my, how that carries me back. Mr. Cresap, before annexation, and the tariff changes of Forty-six, everything was protected — from jumping jacks to sewing machines — and the smuggling that went on, especially here in the South, had to be seen to be believed. Jefferson, Texas, was the Lone-Star port of entry, and Shreveport of course was ours. We had, and still have, the long, narrow steamers, and what they took through the bayous — Twelve-Mile Bayou to Lake Caddo, and Big Bayou to Red River — ran into the millions, sir. And with every dummy manifest, I’d be given this same bill — a fifty torn once, to match a piece I had in my wallet. Well, when you show me this I know you have real friends, and I may as well tell you the truth — or they will. So: Our orders, here in the Navy, are to receipt for loyal cotton, whether captured or not. But which Red River cotton is loyal? As we hear, there’s none. It’s all been impressed, we’ve been told, by the Confederate bureau at Shreveport, for export — you know how they do? Haul to Texas, then ship through Mexico?”
I said I knew about it, and he went on: “So much for what we heard. There’s also the element of confusion. Did Sandy speak of the stencil?”
“... Stencil? I don’t think so.”
“When we capture a bale we stencil it USN to keep things straight. And the boys — no order was given, it was strictly a fo’c’sle idea — they put an extra stencil on, CSA — all perfectly honest, since it meant Cotton Stealing Association, U.S. Navy. But a court could easy conclude it meant Confederate States of America. Well now, couldn’t it? But why, you may ask, couldn’t a court open its mouth and inquire what the stencil meant? All right, since you ask, I’ll say. Under the law of prize, if the prize bears any marks, ‘sufficient to its adjudification’ — that’s what he said, adjudification — that closes the case, no more evidence can be heard. So the court can’t inquire, the law don’t permit it! So you, Mr. Cresap, are sitting in the soup, so far as cotton’s concerned that was stored in Rachal’s Warehouse, and that’s offered you for sale. Am I making the point clear?”