'I'll go to New Orleans, Tell,' Orrin told me, 'and I'll check what records I can find. When you come along down I'll try to have a starting place.'
The three of us set down with ma to talk over pa's last days at home to find some clue to just where he was going. The Rockies are a wide and wonderful bunch of mountains, but they aren't just one range. There are hundreds of them, so where in the high-up hills do you begin to hunt for a man?
Do you start hunting sign in the Black Hills or the Big Belts? The Absarokas, Sawatch, or Sangre de Cristos? Do you search the Greenhorns, the Big Horns, Wind Rivers, San Juans, La Platas, the Needles, Mogollons, Lintas, Crazy Mountains, or Salish? The Abajos, Henrys, Peloncillos, the Chiricahuas, or the Snake Range?
Do you cross the Black Rock Desert or the Painted? Do you search down in Hell's Canyon? On the Green or the Popo Agie?
Where do you hunt for one man where armies might be lost?
New Orleans was a far piece from the fur-trapped streams where the beaver build, but it was there the trail should begin, for it was there pa headed when he rode away from the Cumberland Hills of Tennessee.
Cities made me uneasy. A body couldn't blaze a trail in a city, and folks weren't out and out what they seemed. Usually, they made it a point to show one face while hiding another.
Orrin was city-wise. He could read city-sign the way I'd track a mustang horse across a flat-rock mesa. Of course, Orrin was also a fair hand at tracking and nigh as good in a shootout as me or Tyrel. Orrin had started early to reading law, packing a copy of Blackstone in his saddlebags and reading whenever there was time. He was also an upstanding, handsome man, and when he started to talk even the rocks and trees had to listen. We Sacketts were English and Welsh mostly, but Orrin must have taken after the Welsh, who have the gift of speaking with a song in their words.
New Orleans wasn't no new place to me, like I said. We Sacketts, along with other hill folks from Kentucky or Tennessee, been floating rafts of logs downstream for a coon's age, but the places I knew best weren't likely to be on Orrin's callin' list. Come to think of it most of those places were joints where I'd gone to roust out our shanty boys to get them started home. Places like Billy Phillip's 101 Ranch, Lulu White's Mahogany Hall, the Five Dollar House, and the Frenchman's. Or maybe Murphy's Dance House on Gallatin Street.
You had to be a man with the bark on to even go into those places. I never paid 'em much mind, but when you went downriver with a shanty-boat crew you wound up in some mighty rough places. I usually had to lead the fight that got them out, and those fights aren't for the delicate. It was fist, skull, an' batter 'em down, and you stayed on your feet or you got tromped.
The Saint Charles Hotel was a mighty fine place, the like of which I'd not seen before. In my dusty black suit and boots I didn't shape up to the kind of folks they quartered there.
The clerk had his barn slicked down like he'd been licked to be swallered, and he looked at me like I was something a dog dragged up on the porch. 'Yes?' he said.
'I am hunting Orrin Sackett,' I said. 'He's bedded down here.'
The clerk took down a big register and checked the list. 'Oh, yes! Mr. Sackett.
But he is no longer with us. He's been gone--let's see--he left on the twentieth, sir. He's been gone two days.'
Now that just didn't set right. Orrin had said positive that he would meet me at the Saint Charles today. So if he was gone, he'd be back.
'You sure? He was to meet me here.'
'I am sorry, sir. Mr. Sackett checked out and left no forwarding address.'
'He took his duffle, his bags, an' like that?'
'Of course, he--' This gent held up suddenly like he'd thought of something.
'When I think of it, he did leave his saddle here and a rifle, I believe.'
Now I was worried. No Sackett goes off anywhere without a saddle and a Winchester. It just didn't stand to reason Orrin would.
'I guess you better let me have a room,' I said. 'The same room he had if it's available.'
He hesitated, evidently not sure if I could stand the traffic, but I took out my poke and shook him out a couple of double eagles. 'You set that by,' I said, 'an' when she's et up, you give me a whistle.
'Whilst you're about it, send up a tailor. I got to order some Sunday-go-to-meetin' clothes.'
That room was most elegant. Had a big flowered bowl and pitcher, and there was a bathroom right down the hall. I set my gear down and took a quick look around.
The room had been cleaned so there'd be nothing of Orrin's left, but I knew Orrin real well and had an idea where to look.
Under a corner of the rug, pasted there neat as could be, were two gold pieces.
That was a trait of Orrin's--it was getaway money in case he got robbed or whatever. Now I knew for sure something was wrong, wrong as all get-out. If he had reason to leave his saddle and rifle, Orrin would never leave without his getaway money.
Right then I set down and went to figuring. Gettin' yourself robbed, knocked on the head, or killed in New Orleans in these 1870s was about the easiest thing a body could do, but Orrin was no pilgrim. He'd been where the bear walks an' the buzzard roosts, and he was uncommon shrewd in the ways of men.
About then I pulled up and set my saddle. Orrin was knowing in the ways of men, but his record was no good when it come to reading sign on women. Tyrel or me, we were more suspicious, maybe because women hadn't paid us so much mind as they had Orrin. He had takin' ways, and kind of expected women to like him, which they usually did. More than that, he was a downright friendly man, and if Orrin was in trouble you can bet there was a woman somewhere around. Of course, you can say that of most men.
After the tailor had come to measure me for a couple of suits, I talked to the boy who showed him up to the room. 'This here room,' I said, 'was occupied until a couple of days ago by a handsome big man with a nice smile. You recall him?'
'I do.'
'Now, I am his brother, so you can talk free. Did he have him a woman around?'
'He did not. He was in his room very little. I remember him, suh. He was most thoughtful, suh.'
'Did you see him with anyone else? I've got to find him.' I put a silver dollar in his hand. 'You ask around. Come to me as soon as you hear tell of him and I'll have another of those for you.'
Disappearing is one of the least easy things to do if a body has any recognizable way of living. We all set patterns, and if we break them somebody is sure to notice, although it may be somebody we don't even know.
Orrin was a man easy to notice and easy to remember. He never made it a point to be nice to folks ... he just was. It was him. He was polite to everyone, a man folks talked to mighty easy, a man with a pleasant way about him who would sooner avoid trouble than have it. He could put you off guard and turn a conversation from trouble into casual talk better than anybody I ever knew.
At the same time he was strong, as strong as me, I expect, and I never took hold of anything that it didn't move. He was a fine boxer, a better than average Cornish-style wrestler, and a dead shot with either hand. Peaceful man though he was, I never knew anybody to take more pleasure in a plain or fancy knockdown and drag-out brawl. In spite of his easy-going ways, if you shaped up to tear down his meathouse you'd bought yourself a packet of trouble.
So I just idled about, listening and talking to a few folks about my brother, but nobody recalled anything helpful. People around the Saint Charles remembered him and so did a boy at the corner who sold newspapers, a man down the street at a secondhand book store, and a girl who served him coffee a couple of times in a restaurant down the street a few blocks. An old Negro who drove a carriage for hire told me about him going there.
It was a small place under a wrought-iron balcony. There was a table near a wide window looking out on the street. Now I'm a coffee-drinking man and always kind of had an urge for the coffee they brew down Louisiana way, so I took a table by the window and a right pretty girl with dark hair and dark eyes brought me coffee. Right off I asked about Orrin.
'Oh, yes! I remember him very well, but he has not been in lately. Not for two or three days.'
'Did he come here often?'
'He surely did. And he always sat right where you're sitting. He said he liked to watch people walking along the street.'
'Was he always alone?'
