The Captain`s Vengeance

EPILOGUE

Miranda: O, wonder!

How many goodly creatures are there here!

How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world

That has such people in it!

– The Tempest, Act V, Scene 1

William Shakespeare

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Crack! went the Girandoni air-rifle, little louder than the dry snap of a twig on the forest floor, and the wily old torn turkey leaped as its tiny skull was shattered, wings flapping, breaking into a staggering run for a second or two before it realised it was dead and fell in a feathery heap.

'Waaw! 'Peyton Siler marvelled. 'An' at a hun'erd paces, too!'

'Damn if 'at don't beat all, Jim Hawk!' Georgie Prater cheered, as loud as he dared on the lawless Natchez Trace without drawing undue attention from a roving Chickasaw or Choctaw band, a pack of frontier outlaws, or down-on-their-luck and desperate travellers. 'Wisht I'd o' bought me one, too.'

Jim Hawk Ellison painfully rose to his feet from where he knelt, still stiff from his healing wound, one hand dug into the bark of the tulip poplar tree he'd used for cover at the end of his stalk. 'Damn' if it ain't a God-Hell wonder, at that, boys. There's gonna be a lot o' surprised squirrels in Campbell County once I get settled. Eat on squirrel an' dumplin's ev'ry goldarned night.'

'Dependin' on whether ya find a wife t'cook 'em for ya,' Siler said with a sly chuckle.

'Figger, with what I won off those two sailor boys in Natchez, I just might manage, Peyton.' Ellison gently laughed along. 'Georgie, I'd much admire did ya go fetch Mister Tom. Still got a hitch in my get-along.' And Georgia Prater dashed to do his bidding, though not without an Indian's caution to go silently and skirt the clearing roundabout near the trees, his Pennsylvania rifle at the ready.

'Leastways, somethin' good come outta Looziana,' Siler grunted. 'B'sides gettin' outta New Orleans with our skins still on, and a wind down our gullets.'

' 'Tis a filthy, damp country, Peyton,' Jim Hawk commented as he slung his air-rifle over his shoulder, a wary eye kept on the dark and thick woods even so, for an unwary man on the lonely Natchez Trace was as good as dead, and even a party as large as his could still be taken in ambush, did they ever let their guard down. None of them would lay in easy sleep 'til they reached tiny Nashville. 'At least we can say that we came all this way, saw it, and had us a little adventure. But I'd not give you five dollars for th' whole damn' place. Why Congress is hagglin' over sendin' an army down there t'take it, well… more power to 'em, but they've not had t'live in it like we did. They decide to try 'er on, I'll hoot an' holler loud as anybody else, an' pat 'em on the back as they march by, but… no thankee.'

New Orleans, Spanish Florida, and Louisiana would, Jim Hawk was certain, be American someday… but not anytime soon, as he reckoned it. President John Adams already had himself half a war, a quasi war with France, and he doubted if he'd be able to bring Congress round to his point of view before the coming elections. If Jefferson got in, he might manage it, but… soon as Jim Hawk was back in Nashville, he'd put his reports in the mails to Washington City, along with his letter of resignation, and head back to the Powell's Valley to make a new beginning; a secure, settled civilian life, after years of war and filibustering for richer men. He had 250 Spanish dollars in his saddlebags, and that was enough for a man to found a mountain empire! So something good had, in truth, come from Louisiana!

'You foolish, foolish girl!' Papa Hilaire de Guilleri fumed yet again. Since he and Maman Marie had rushed back to New Orleans, he'd whiplashed between bawling, drunken grief over the loss of his sons and his patrie, to jib-bering dread of exposure, trial, and garotting, to anger directed to her, the only living target for his icy wrath. 'What were you thinking, you…'

'To free Louisiana,' Charite numbly tried to explain once more, her voice meek and her hands primly folded in the lap of her soberly black mourning gown. 'For France, Papa, for-'

'Empty-headed, patriotic nonsense/' her elegantly tall and lean, distinguished father cruelly shot back. 'Fervent twaddle for things an ocean away, and nothing to do with us, I tell you! And if the Spanish ever learn of what you did, we're all ruined. You're… debile! You led your brothers into your-'

'Your sweet and gentle cousin, poor Jean-Marie, aussi,' Maman coldly fumed from the other side of her father's study, plying a fan as if to drive off summer heat. Charite didn't know which of them was crueller to her, her dashing beau ideal father or her elegantly gay and flighty mother, for Marie de Guilleri had been, still was, one of the most beauteous belles of her generation, the toast of the city and of the grandest Creole society. 'Rubio Monaster, who might have married one of your sisters had he lived, made the. finest match between us and the Bergrands,' she accused, daintily daubing at her dry nose with a laced silk handkerchief.

Their banker, Monsieur Maurepas, had summoned them and had spread a plausible lie to explain Charite's stumbling return to New Orleans in a nameless Acadian's pirogue and care. Maurepas's sorrowful tale had hardly been necessary, for a week or more at least, since New Orleans had been rocked by the fire that had levelled poor Monsieur Bistineau's old store and warehouse, and the simultaneous fire that had erupted aboard a newly arrived ship for sale, on the south bank of the river, and the way the used ship had lost all her mooring cables and had drifted onto the American emporium ship, burning her to the waterline as well! It had required the garrison turn out, the forts to be manned against any attempt to seize the port city. On top of that, only two of the three treasure schooners had come up the Mississippi, the third feared lost, and that caused even greater consternation.

Given the circumstances, the tragic murder of four of the town's most promising young gentlemen at the hands of the cut-throat runaway rebel slave St. John's evil band, while hunting and fishing on Lake Barataria, had almost gone un-noticed! Rumours had flown. Charite had escaped; been raped by the negres; had stopped off with an Acadian family due to slight unhealth and hadn't been with them… yet had almost lost her complete wits in grief. Quel dommage, n 'est-ce pas.^? It was well known that Charite had been the too-bold, outdoorsy, and de-sexed sort of girl, too outre, too modern, so…

'To think I nursed you at my breast, viper!' Maman Marie snapped. Her fan beat like a hummingbird's wings. 'Drinking, gambling, running the streets in men's clothing, associating with whores and rogues… and reeling home as drunk as a negre/'

'Maman…' Charite weakly beseeched, eyes grimaced in misery.

'Carrying weapons, playing at pirate like a… ' Maman accused. 'Whoring, most likely, too! Shameless, thoughtless, little… slut!'

'But, Maman!'

'You as good as murdered my fine sons yourself, whore! How I wish you had been the one taken from us instead!' Maman swore.

'I wish I was, I wanted to die, I… '

'Scheming as bold as a dragoon in public, where anyone might've heard you,' her father chimed in from the other side of the study, his worries of a different stripe. 'God knows how many other grand, distinguished young people you will end up dragging to the garotte if the Spanish ever learn the truth. How many parents will be blamed as well, though they knew nothing!'

'We will end up penniless at the least, idiot-child! Hounded from New Orleans and Louisiana,' her mother