The Captain`s Vengeance

year. Believe this, gentlemen, when I say that anything and everything is for sale in New Orleans. And the Cabildo, the Spanish Government House, could float on the bribes! A thoroughly corrupt people, are the Dons. Not that their ostensible subjects, the original French settlers, were a whit better. It'd be an easy thing to circumvent the Prize Court… Just sail your missing ship over to the south bank

opposite the town, circulate some flyers-assuming your customers can read, that is!-and open her as an emporium. Once your goods are gone, you sell off the sails and fittings, then the ship herself. The slaves, well… there are itinerant dealers, the caboteurs, who'd meet you at the Head of the Passes and buy them off you, plunk them into their barges, and flog them off in the backcountry, 'thout hide nor hair of them ever appearing where the authorities'd have to take notice.

'Governor-General Carondelet banned the import of slaves born in the Caribbean in '96,' Pollock said, with a rub at his nose and a jerk of his head, an 'ahem-ish' whinny, and a tug at his costly neck-stock. 'They're sposed to be inspected and certified as genuine Africans, at Havana mostly, but… 'Black Ivory' is 'Black Ivory,' what with planters expanding their holdings. They're switching over to cotton, rice, and sugarcane, and for that the landowners need thousands of slaves.'

'Er… how is it, Mister Pollock, that you, a British subject, come and go into the Spanish possessions so freely?. After all, we are at war with Spain,' Lewrie asked, puzzled.

'Bless me, Cap'm Lewrie.' Pollock chuckled over the rim of his wineglass, not without another of those 'ahem- twitch-whinnies.' 'Our firm damn' near keeps Spanish Florida and Louisiana a going business! Without us, they'd have no goods, no arms for their Indian allies, no comforts for themselves! Though merchants from Charleston or Savannah cut into us something frightful, we do manage to hold onto a profitable lion's share, so far. God's sake, sir… surely you don't think that Spanish merchants could do it! No, no, their goods have to come direct from Spain and are far too costly, and the bulk of American colonies neither make or export much of use to Louisiana or Florida.

'Dons rape, pillage, plunder, and exploit deuced well,' Pollock sneered, 'but they're utter failures at manufactury or trade. No high-nosed, haughty Spanish hidalgo 'd be caught dead dirtying his hands with low-born doings. Ranch, run plantations, government work, but never in commerce. 'My family rode weeth El Cid',' Pollock mock-declaimed in a Castilian lisp worthy of the royal court at Madrid, ' 'we drove ze Moor from Espana weeth our swords, we sail weeth Colombus, we conquered Meh-hee-co beside Cortes, sheenyor, how dare you shoog-yest…'!'

'So, their goods cost more than yours,' Lewrie supposed, 'and I expect they're overtaxed, too? So, you undercut, perhaps bribe?'

'But, of course,' Pollock admitted, preening. 'Frankly, were I king of Spain, I'd wash my hands of Louisiana and Florida, for they'll do no more with 'em than the Indians will. They're dead-broke-spiritually, morally, and financially-and haven't a hope of keeping them in the long run. No Spaniards emigrate there, but for government appointees and soldiers, and outside the port towns, there aren't two of 'em in every hundred square miles, but for priests or barefoot squatters. They simply won't change their climes to better themselves, as our good Anglo-Saxons will,' Pollock declared. 'So, sooner or later, they will lose 'em to the Americans. 'Til then, we at Panton, Leslie will stave off the inevitable. Therefore, the Dons need us,' Pollock said with a sly wink… and another twitch-whinny.

Once peace had come after the American Revolution, the Yankees had exploded westward, over the mountains, up rivers, game-trails, or warpaths. Long-hunters, then settlers, then traders to service them; surveyors, speculators, and schemers hadn't been far behind. Each new 'sovereign' state had veterans to reward with vast, vaguely bordered land tracts in lieu of pension monies, which soon became speculative stock-in-trade, some for as little as a farthing an acre!

Spain had one idea where her borders of Florida, and the edges of the Louisiana they had purchased from the French, lay; the Yankees had quite another-or simply didn't give a tinker's damn for them. Spain claimed the inland Indians were 'allies and clients' whose territories expanded Spain's claims as far east as the Hiwassee River in the Tennessee Valley, and along the Tennessee (or Tanasi) River.

The industrious Jonathons, though, befuddled the tribes with a host of trade goods better than anything the Spanish could offer, with an ocean of rum and whiskey. They 'rented' grants the size of Ireland for the 'loan' of a musket, a stack of blankets, a cookpot, a good horse and saddle! And it was months, or years, before the rare, roaming Spanish soldier or official might stumble upon the unofficial invasion, then hie back to the coast to complain about the entire towns that had sprung up since their last visit.

Georgia, Virginia, and North and South Carolina had sent out a host of land agents to form development companies that issued speculative shares of dubious claim and value on these same tracts, when not arguing among each other as to who owned exactly what! The Yazoo Company, Muscle Shoals Company, Cumberland Company… Georgia alone had carved out a Bourbon ' County ' the size of France and had threatened war on the Spanish possessions, on Spain herself, if not certified.

North of Spanish claims, the new state of Kentucky had come into existence in 1792, then the closer and more-threatening state of Tennessee

in 1796, which resulted in fresh hordes of hard-handed, cussedly independent-minded Americans coming to the eastern bank of the Great River, the Mississippi itself, down the Yazoo River to Natchez, down the Alabama into Florida almost in sight of Mobile, to Baton Rouge or Manchac inside Spanish Louisiana, down near New Orleans!

Pollock, thankfully, had the proper maps handy for his spiel.

Indeed, New Orleans was becoming the main entrepot for Yankee frontier goods, rafted or barged down for shipment back East on American merchant ships, which was much quicker than over- mountain, upriver trade to the original Thirteen Colonies. Spanish and French companies either died or got co- opted; went broke or grew obscenely rich from the influx-which, unfortunately, filled New Orleans with 'chaw- baccy' Yankee merchants, and Louisiana with unwanted land-grabbers.

Spitefully, the Spanish had banned American traffic on the river, in New Orleans, but that had been a failure, and the ban had been lifted the year before, in '98. Nothing seemed to avail.

'The Dons don't know what to do.' Pollock let out a snicker, which, accompanied by a twitch-ahem-whinny, looked positively ghastly on him. 'At least with American goods, a lot of money changes hands. And goods off Yankee ships that come upriver for cargoes are first-rate and cheap, so they can't really complain too much. My company thrives on wilderness goods, as well, I must avow.'

'Your Indian trade, though… with the Spanish,' Lewrie asked.

'Well, the old Indian trade is not as profitable as it was,' Mr. Pollock replied with a wry smile, just as perfectly offputting. 'The American trade makes up for it. They've no money in the backcountry, but both they and the Indians have hides, furs, whisky, and tobacco to barter with. And, so far from East Coast manufacturies, and so hard it is to get finished goods westward in carts, small waggons, or mule-back… the small, poled flatboats, well… here Panton, Leslie is, with British goods at decent prices, heh heh heh!'

Gawd, he sets me teeth on edge when he laughs like that! Lewrie thought with a cringe; Was I a Yankee or Indian, he did that just once, I'd run like hell… or scalp him!

'So, sooner or later the Americans overwhelm Louisiana and the Floridas, you expect, sir?' Lewrie asked.

'Indeed, Captain Lewrie,' Pollock gravely agreed. 'There's a good chance all this trade, ours and the Americans through New Orleans, is drawing even more settlers than do the empty lands! I'd give them no more than five or six years before the Yankee Doodles just up and take the place, and have done. Either the United States acting as an organised polity, or the frontier states acting on their own.'

'Indeed!' Capt. Nicely harrumphed in surprise.

' Kentucky and Tennessee, their settlers below the boundaries, are so isolated from the rest of the States, they might as well still answer to London, sirs.' Pollock chuckled. 'Physically and politically too, d'ye see… ahem. The backwoods have little in common with those 'civilised' sorts 'cross the