Lacey and Fitz turned the corner of Grand and Slaughter, heading for the livery stables to pick up their horses. They were hurrying to make the rendezvous with Johannsen’s man in St. Charles after having been told that the fastest way to approach the smaller settlement was on horseback. The ferry did not stop there, and they would have had to ride back upriver for two days to reach the town. They kept their rooms at the Hotel, uncertain if they would be coming back. Lacey had hired a third horse for Crispin, not knowing if they would have to make a run for it. Neither man spoke on the journey, dark thoughts predominant in their minds over what was waiting. Both men were armed and ready for hell-fire.
The Sheriff and I came out for noon meal but this time, we went back to Miss Caitlin’s café. I got to watch Mr. Harris blush and stammer as the pretty owner greeted us with a smile.
She must have been baking, she wore a floury apron and her hands were coated in white powder. She offered me a cookie, shaped like a little man. He had raisins for eyes and white frosting for a smile, black buttons down his belly. I bit his head off and the flavor made me remember cookies like that from earlier in my life.
“Gingerbread,” I smiled, delighted. I ate his arms off, and then his legs and finally, I devoured his trunk. She brought a plate out for us loaded with more gingerbread men and a glass of milk for me. He got a cup of coffee.
They talked for a long time and I got bored. Stood up and hung out by the door for a while. When Mr. Harris didn’t notice or say anything, I slipped out of the café to wander down the street. I stayed close to the buildings, only a few feet from the café and our hotel. If I stayed on the sidewalk, I thought I’d stay safe.
There were so many fancy emporiums and boutiques popping up overnight. I liked the smell of the one called Parfums, it smelled better than a handful of roses and lilacs. I wished I could remember my mother, I had a vague idea that she had smelled like that.
The next store front was a Hardware and Mercantile. In the glass window, I spotted pocket knives, a bugle, pots made of cast iron and wooden toys carved like trains, horses and buggies, tin soldiers painted in the red coats of King George’s soldiers. There were horse-drawn cannons, too pulled by fat-legged horses painted red, brown and black.
I pressed my face against the glass and left smudges. Trying to wipe them off with my sleeve didn’t work so well and only brought the store owner outside to yell at me. It made me run off the sidewalk into the street where I ran down a side alley. I didn’t stop running until I couldn’t hear the man yelling anymore.
I looked around. Brick buildings had given way to raw lumber-built shacks and even a few tents with stoves. Men in work clothes entered and didn’t come out. There weren’t any horses around, but the place smelled awful. It smelled like hogs and blood.
I slipped around to the back end of the shacks and there were acres of wooden pens with hundreds of hogs and pigs milling about. The corrals were churned to mud and other stuff– and it smelled worse than an outhouse.
Huge barns with open sides stretched to the river. Large vats were steaming in the dank river air. I saw bloody things hanging from hooks inside the barns and as I watched, two men shot a hog apiece in the head. They slit its throat and dragged the carcasses toward the steaming cauldrons.
I had found the pork slaughter houses and it was disgusting. A man with bloody hands and wearing a blood-stained apron grabbed me by the arm. I shrieked and twisted but no one heard me over the squealing cries of the terrified swine. I was dragged into the slaughter house, kicking and biting as I thought that I would be next.
The man who held me was tall, with dark yellow hair and brown eyes that were rimmed in red. One eye wandered away from the good one. He had a scar on his chin and one of his ears was mashed into a flower shape.
“This ain’t no place for a young’un to wander around,” he said. “Where’s your pa?”
“Let me go!” I yelled. I kicked him in the knees. His response was to lift me by my shirt collar and dangle me off the ground.
Another butcher joined him and stared at me. He spoke with an accent I had heard before, French, like the brothers from French Canada.
“What you got, Danny?” he asked.
“Lost brat. Wandering around the pens.”
“He look familiar,” the Frenchie mused. “Ain’t he look like that picture in the paper? There’s a reward for finding him, I tink.”
“No. A reward if anyone knows who he is and where he come from. A large reward–five hundred dollars.”
“The paper’s wrong,” I said desperately. “I already know who I am. My name is Crispin and you’re in big trouble if you don’t let me go. My friend is a Sheriff.”
He thumped me on the head, and I saw stars. When I could see again, I was tied hand and feet hanging on one of the hooks in the slaughter house. I couldn’t move, and the rope tied around my chest used to hang me from the steel hook was tight enough to make breathing hard. I cried, I wiggled, threatened, pleaded and even begged but both men ignored me. The butcher tied an old handkerchief around my head and through my mouth so that all I could get out were muffled grunts. The taller man sent the other out to get someone named Flat Iron.