The Western Adventures of Cade McCall Box Set Read online

  “Hmm, I don’t think I’ve ever known a Chantal,” Cade said.

  “Then that makes me feel very special,” Chantal replied with a broad smile.

  “This doesn’t look much like a blacksmith shop,” he said.

  “It began as such, under the hero, Jean Lafitte.”

  “Hero? The only thing I have read about him is that he was a pirate.”

  “Oui, but he also saved New Orleans from the British.”

  “I thought Andrew Jackson did that.”

  “They did it together. Would you like a table, Monsieur?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “Come, I will find one for you,” she offered.

  There was something about Chantal that Cade found very arousing. He knew that was by design, after all, she was dressed to be provocative. In addition to her appearance, there was a scent about her, a sweet-smelling floral base perfume, enhanced by a note of her own femininity.

  As he followed Chantal through the shadows of the bar, he began to feel a sense of excitation. Cade had never slept with a woman. He was too young before his relationship with Melinda got serious, he didn’t want to cheat on her, and the opportunity had never presented itself since. But any idea of “saving himself” for Melinda was no longer a consideration.

  “The son of a bitch should be keel hauled, if you ask me,” a man at one of the tables said, speaking loudly enough for Cade to hear.

  “They don’t keel haul people anymore, Jimmy,” another said. “I think there’s a law or somethin’ ag’in it.”

  “Yeah, I know, but back in my day, by God, if we had run across someone like Barkley, we would ‘a keel hauled him in a minute.”

  “Carl Barkley is the second mate. Second mates aren’t keel hauled.”

  “Then the son of a bitch should ‘a been tossed overboard,” Jimmy said. “I’ll tell you this. As long as that bastard is second mate on the Fremad, I’d sail on a garbage scow before I’d set foot on her deck again.”

  The conversation penetrated Cade’s awareness only because he passed close by the table.

  “You may sit here, Monsieur. I will get your beer.”

  “Thank you.”

  It appeared that animated discussions were taking place all over the room, but the table Chantal had selected was too far from the others for him to follow any of the conversations.

  Cade set the satchel on the floor between his feet and waited until the woman returned.

  “Here is your beer, Monsieur.”

  “Why do you keep calling me Monsieur?”

  “Because I don’t know your name.”

  “My name is Cade. Tell me, Chantal, why did you put me so far away from everyone? I’m lonesome over here.”

  “Oh, but you won’t be lonely, Monsieur Cade. I’ll be with you,” Chantal said, as she coquettishly lowered her head and looked at him through half shaded eyes. “You do want my company, do you not?”

  “Of course I do,” Cade replied.

  The woman smiled, then leaned forward, her movement displaying the mounds of her full breasts almost to the nipples.

  “I think you like Chantal, oui?”

  “Oui, I like Chantal.”

  “There is a room upstairs we can use,” Chantal said. “But I am not cheap.”

  Cade was light headed, and in addition to his obvious physical arousal, he felt his stomach rising to his throat.

  “How much?” he asked, his voice so husky he almost didn’t recognize it.

  “Five dollars.”

  Ordinarily, five dollars would be an exorbitant amount of money. But he had much more than five dollars, and he didn’t want to pass up the opportunity to be with a woman. And Chantal was not just any woman; she was an exceptionally beautiful, and sexually arousing woman.

  “Let’s go,” he said, standing so quickly that he almost knocked the chair over.

  For just a second, Chantal’s eyes reflected some surprise over him acquiescing so easily to the price she had quoted. But the surprise was quickly replaced with her sensual invitation to an erotic interlude, “Oh my, has it been a long time, honey?”

  “You have no idea.”

  Half an hour later, Chantal stood naked, her skin shining gold in the candlelight. Cade lay in bed with his hands laced behind his head, watching the beautiful creature as she was getting dressed.

  “You must get up and get dressed, Monsieur Cade,” Chantal said. “There are other girls who use this room as well.”

  “I will,” Cade said. “I just want to watch you for a moment longer.”

  Chantal smiled, then as she moved, she stubbed her foot on something. “Oh, what is this?” she asked picking up Cade’s satchel.

  “Here, I’ll take that!” Cade said, getting up quickly to reach for it.

  “My, you seem most anxious. What have you got in here, Monsieur?”

  “Nothing,” Cade said, snatching it quickly. “Just some clothes.”

  “They must be very nice for you to be so concerned.”

  “There is nothing special about them. I just don’t want to take a chance on losing them, is all.”

  Cade reached for his clothes, and because he could dress more quickly than Chantal, he was ready to go before she was.

  “Monsieur Cade,” Chantal said, in a soft and sultry voice. “You are so sweet, and so . . . manly,” she added, suggestively. “If you will come see me again tomorrow, for just a few dollars more I will make the arrangements so we can have the room all night. You would like that, no?”

  “I would like that yes!” Cade replied, enthusiastically.

  He checked into a hotel on the corner of St. Louis and Chartres streets. As he lay in bed that night he considered the possibility of living in New Orleans. For more reasons than one, he needed to be away from Tennessee, and New Orleans seemed the perfect solution. Chantal was an additional incentive to that idea.

  He knew what she was, and there was obviously no thought of a romantic attachment. On the other hand, why couldn’t he maintain a friendship with her? It would be nice to know that there would always be someone there for him when he felt the need for a relationship that had neither restrictions nor boundaries.

  To stay in New Orleans, however, he would need a job. He had enough money to support himself for some time, but he didn’t want to depend on it, and he didn’t want anyone to know that he had it. Tomorrow, he would look for work.

  It was mid-afternoon of the next day, and Cade had practically exhausted all his options for finding a job. He had very little to offer any employer; he was experienced in only two fields: farming, and the army. He had left both the farm and the army behind him, and had no wish to revisit either occupation.

  During the day he had applied for work in half a dozen bars, at a freight office, as an apprentice blacksmith, even as a policeman. His military experience might have gotten him on as a policeman, but there were no openings there.

  Then he happened to pass the cotton exchange. Why not try here? He certainly knew cotton.

  “What do you look for, in appraising cotton?” his job interviewer had asked him.

  “Color, fiber length, uniformity, fiber firmness, and fiber strength,” Cade replied.

  The interviewer smiled and nodded. “Mr. McCall, come in Monday. You have a job.”

  10

  “YOU ARE SURE he will come tonight?”

  “Oui, Monsieur Lundy, he will come tonight.”

  “What is he like? Is he strong enough?”

  “Qui. He is young and, very strong.”

  “What does he look like?” Lundy asked. “How will I recognize him?”

  “He is a very handsome man.”

  “Handsome? How the hell am I supposed to know what a handsome man looks like? You need to give me more than that.”

  “He has auburn hair,” Chantal said. “Oh, and there is a scar here, a purple scar, shaped so.” With her finger, she traced a hook above her right eye.

  “All right, I’ll wait here u
ntil he comes in tonight.”

  “I will get my twenty dollars then?” Chantal asked.

  “After I am paid,” Lundy replied.

  When Cade walked into the bar that evening there was an extra spring in his step. He had a job; there was no reason he would have to leave New Orleans.

  “Monsieur Cade, you did come back!” Chantal said, greeting him happily.

  “I told you I would.”

  “Do you want to go to the room right away?”

  “Yeah, but I’d like a drink first. I’ve got some good news to tell you.”

  “Good news?”

  “Yes, I have a job, Chantal. I’m going to stay in New Orleans. That means I’ll be able to visit you anytime I want.”

  “Oh, Cade I . . .”

  “Oh, don’t get me wrong, I know how it is going to be. I know that I’m going to have to pay for the visits, but don’t you see, I’ll have a job, which means I’ll be here. And I’ll have the money to afford the visits.”

  “That is great news,” Chantal said. “The news is so good that I think we should celebrate not here, but in the room with a whole bottle of Champagne.”

  “Champagne? I’ve never tasted champagne before.”

  “You will like it,” Chantal promised.

  Chantal walked over to the bar, spoke to the bartender, then returned to the table holding a green bottle.

  “Come,” she said, leading him toward the steps that climbed to the second floor. They went into the same room they had used the night before.

  “And we don’t have to leave?” Cade asked.

  “I have it for as long as I want it,” Chantal replied. She poured the champagne into two glasses, handed one glass to Cade, took the other and held it out.

  Cade touched his glass to hers, and they both drank. There was a sparking sensation in his mouth, which, while strange wasn’t unpleasant. They followed the first glass with a second, and then a third.

  Very soon after he started drinking the third glass, Cade felt a lightness in his head, a lightness that seemed to suffuse his arms and legs, all the way out to his fingers and toes.

  “What?” he said. “What’s happening to me?” Cade asked the question very slowly, barely able to enunciate the words.

  “Go to sleep now,” Chantal said, smiling at him.

  Cade stared down into his glass but saw nothing but the final few swallows of his drink. “I . . .” he started, but whatever he had in mind to say went unstated.

  The world went black.

  Chantal put her hand on his neck to feel for his pulse. She was glad to see the pulse was strong. She was never sure how someone would react to the chloral hydrate in the knock out drops. There was always the chance that the dose could be fatal, and though no one she had ever used the drops on had died, she had heard stories of just such a thing happening.

  She started toward the door to notify Lundy, but as she did she saw the small, brown leather satchel that he always carried. Opening it, she looked inside and saw that it contained, as he had told her, clothes. She was about to toss it aside when she saw a twenty dollar bill. With a smile she reached for it and when she did, she felt two more. Then she grew curious and dumped all the contents out onto the bed. There, with the clothes, she saw more money than she had ever seen in her life.

  “Mon Dieu!”

  Half an hour later Lundy drove a buckboard down to the docks, where he was met by a big bull of a man with broad shoulders and strong arms. He had a sloping forehead, prominent eyebrow ridge, deep, dark eyes that darted about, a pug nose, and a lower lip that protruded from his mouth.

  “How many do you have?” the big man asked.

  “Three.”

  “Any of ‘em sailors?”

  “One is, for sure. He’s Portuguese, a fella by the name of Bento Hernandez. He come in a couple of weeks ago on a French ship, the Aigle de mer.”

  “Yeah, I know that ship,” the big man said. “What about the other two?”

  “They’ve got strong backs, what else do you need?”

  “You’re right, I don’t need anything else. All right, hold on for a bit until I can get someone to help me bring ‘em aboard, then I’ll pay you.”

  Awareness came to Cade, slowly. He was lying down, not on the ground, nor the floor, nor even a bed. He seemed to be lying on a suspended stretch of canvas. The room was moving, first going up where it seemed to hang suspended for a long moment, then a precipitous drop, the bottom of the drop augmented by a roll to the left and the right.

  He was having trouble breathing, then he realized that the room was filled with smoke. At first he thought he might be in a building that was on fire, but then he heard some loud laughter, and realized that it was tobacco smoke.

  He opened his eyes and saw that he was in a dimly lit place, uncomfortably close with the tobacco smoke, and filled with men, all of whom seemed to be dressed like the sailors he had seen at the bar.

  He could hear the creak and strain of wood, and thought, though he wasn’t sure, that he could hear the sound of water rushing by, just on the other side of the wooden wall he was lying against.

  “Stumpy, you lucky son of a bitch! How did you draw that ace? I know damn well I put it way down in the deck just so’s you couldn’t draw it,” someone said, and the little room was filled with laughter.

  Cade sat up, and almost fell out, first because the strip of canvas he was lying on wasn’t anchored, and also because his head was spinning. He felt a very bad taste in his mouth, and his head hurt.

  “Where the hell am I?” he asked.

  “The last one is awake,” someone said.

  One of the men walked over to him. “You’ve been out a long, long time. They must’ve given you one hell of dose,” he said.

  “Dose of what?”

  “Whatever it is they give the fellas that get shanghaied.”

  “Shanghaied?”

  “Yeah, we was about to sail with a short crew, but you ‘n two others was brung aboard.”

  By now Cade was fully conscious and aware of his surroundings. He saw a lighted lantern hanging from the overhead, swinging back and forth in conjunction with a most definite roll. He was not only on board a ship, the ship was at sea.

  “I’ll be damn!” he said. “I’m on a ship!”

  “That ye be, mate, that ye be,” the sailor who had come over to speak to him said. The sailor had gray hair and beard, and was obviously older than all the others . . . some of whom couldn’t have been more than seventeen or eighteen years old. “You’re on board the Fremad.”

  Cade remembered seeing the Fremad when he left the Mary Kate. He also seemed to remember this being the ship that was being talked about by the sailors in the bar.

  “The name is Burke, Josiah Burke. But most just call me Pops. What’s your name?”

  “Mc . . .” Cade started to give his real name, then thought better of it. “Copley,” he said. “Pogue Copley.” He didn’t want to give his real name, and he thought that by combining the names of two of his friends, both of whom were now dead, he would be able to remember his alias more easily.

  “It’s good to know how to call you. When the contractor brought you three aboard, he didn’t bother giving us any names.”

  “Who is this contractor?”

  “He is the one who shanghaied us,” another sailor said, speaking with an accent. This man was short and wiry, with a face that could best be described as weathered. It was really rather difficult for Cade to determine how old he might be.

  “So, you are one of the three Pops is talking about? You came on board at the same time I did?”

  “Sim. Yes. My name is Bento Hernandez.”

  “Are you Spanish?”

  The wiry man made a spitting motion to denote his displeasure at the suggestion. “Nao. I hate the Spanish. I am Portuguese.”

  Cade looked at Pops. “You said there were three of us who were shanghaied. Who is the third?”

  “Nobody knows, he ain’t gi
ve us his name,” Pops said.

  “He ain’t said nothin’ a’ tall,” another put in. “He ain’t done nothin’ but lie there in his fart sack, cryin’.” Smiling, he extended his hand toward Cade. “The name is Stumpy. Stumpy Jones.”

  “Hey, Copley, what’s the last thing you remember?” Pops asked.

  Cade started to say being in a room with a woman, but he altered his response. “Having a drink in a bar with a very pretty woman.”

  “Uh, huh. And do you remember the name of the bar?”

  “Yeah, it was the Lafitte Blacksmith Bar.”

  Pops nodded. “Aye, that’s a seaman’s bar. Most of the time when they snatch somebody up, they take ‘em from a seaman’s bar.”

  “But that’s kidnapping,” Cade said. “You can’t just grab someone and force them to so something against their will. How’s that any different from slavery?”

  “Slaves didn’t get paid,” Pops said. “You’ll be makin’ fifteen dollars a month, but you won’t get none of it ‘till the ship gets back. Sometimes that works out good though, ‘cause once you’re back on the beach, you can wind up with as much as a hunnert ‘n fifty, maybe even two hunnert dollars to spend.”

  “Yeah,” Stumpy added with a chuckle. “That’s how come there’s so many drunken sailors. They been at sea for a long time, ‘n when they come back they got money and a big thirst.”

  “More often than not, by the time they’ve drunk up all their money, they’re ready to come back to sea,” Pops said. “’N a lot of them’s that ain’t ready, come back anyway, just the way you ‘n Hernandez and the other fella done. You get shanghaied.”

  “Most sailors more or less expect it,” Stumpy said. “Hell, if they didn’t want to come back to sea, they wouldn’t hang out in any of the port bars.”

  “You two talk like this is a normal way of doing business,” Cade said.

  “Yeah, you might say that it is,” Pops said. “I’ve been shanghaied a couple of times myself.”