Ghost Knights Of New Orleans

by David Althouse

  At once I recalled the John St. Helen from Watie’s camp. I recollected a commanding presence built on charming demeanor, on eloquence with words, and on an expressive physical manner in which he carried himself. When my mind wandered back to the time I met St. Helen at Watie’s tent, I felt there seemed to be something more to the man, something I couldn’t identify.

  I asked myself several questions.

  What meaning could I ascribe to having first seen St. Helen in the Indian Territory and how could that same man be in New Orleans right now for the sole purpose of meeting with me?

  What did Loreta know about John St. Helen?

  What actions had St. Helen carried out that he now required one of the usual envelopes filled with checks, cash, and instructions for the future?

  It is a small world, I thought, but not so small that I should likely encounter the same mysterious man in two different worlds. Such could be explained as mere coincidence, but I had grown to understand there are seldom such genuine coincidences in this life. A common thread to all of this lurked in the shadows waiting to show itself, and I longed to see the phantom manifest.

  The appointed night arrived, and I made my way afoot to the vicinity of Camp and First. ’Twas an overcast night without a moon and the walk I made in the shadows proved quiet and uneventful. Still, as I came within sight of the appointed residence, I increasingly felt watched and followed. I grew leery that something lurked around every corner.

  Then, the source of my worry revealed itself.

  Shadow people.

  Scores of shadow people.

  I saw their vague outlines along the street near the home, along the immediate edges of the structure itself, on the roof, clinging to the outer walls. Then, suddenly, the words of Marie Laveau proved true, actually came to life, for she had mentioned that shadow people should accompany one of my upcoming visitors and her menacing words seemed to portend that I should beware the man upon whom they clung.

  Through the darkness, I strode to the appointed side door which lay concealed by shrubs and live oaks. I executed the appointed knock on the door, the door opened some few seconds afterward, and a man then unknown to me allowed me entrance. He led me to the base of a winding staircase, and we both commenced stepping upward. Once at the room of the esteemed guest, my host knocked gently on the door, and his taps were answered with, “Please come in.”

  My host opened the door only slightly ajar and then motioned me inside. After I had entered the room, the door closed behind me, and that is when I focused my attention on the man sitting at a desk to my left.

  I then beheld the same man I had met at Watie’s camp when last in Indian Territory.

  “John St. Helen, I presume, unless my eyes simply fool me into believing you are the same man I saw in Indian Territory long ago.”

  “Your eyes play no tricks, Broussard. I am that same man. The wheel has come full circle.”

  He gestured that I be seated.

  “I shan’t ask about the nature of your business back then, but our very meeting here tonight quite obviously acknowledges our mutual association with the K.G.C. which more than implies our affinity for the cause of southern independence.”

  “The cause of the K.G.C. lies buried beneath the now cold ashes of history. I know you are smart enough to know that. The cause for southern independence, however, lives on. For now, though, in the south, the sins of the father are to be laid upon the children.”

  “Who might you be, Mr. St. Helen?”

  “Just a man whose allegiances and loyalties gained him naught.”

  “Your living countenance belies that you are a man who has come to naught.”

  “I am a simple merchant, a trader.”

  “My late father was a simple trader—a merchant businessman here in New Orleans, yes, but a trader at his core. You, Mr. St. Helen, are no trader.”

  “It has been said that the world is but a stage on which every man plays a part. This is true, and my part has been a sad one. But, Mr. Broussard, I am, in fact, a trader.”

  “Where do you trade?”

  “In Granbury, Texas. I have a store there from which I sell those items most regularly in need by the people there—along with ample supplies of alcoholic spirits and tobacco not so much in need but very much in demand.”

  “Please describe your establishment.”

  “There is not much to describe. My store was built of notched logs, very much in the frontier style.”

  This perplexing man before me belonged most anywhere in the world performing any number of pursuits, but I could not fathom him in the location of Granbury, Texas pursuing retail trade out of a log cabin store.

  While acknowledging to myself that he likely did not falsify anything uttered to me up to that point, I strongly suspected he held back hefty amounts of contextual information.

  “Mr. St. Helen, I know that everything you have told me is true. Let us get on to matters at hand. I welcome you to the Crescent City.”

  The comfortable, easy smile St. Helen then formed intimated that he well understood the conflicts and contradictions I sensed when trying to place him in the world he described, and I suddenly realized that he had most certainly encountered this scenario many times before.

  “You yourself are a man of many façades, Broussard, and I enjoy our conversation very much. You can ask me anything you like, and I pledge truthfulness in return. I may hold back on directness. Please understand that to be direct and honest is not safe for me or possibly my acquaintances.”

  His understanding countenance and easy manner fused somehow to create a commanding presence that, complemented by an innate ability to recite words from the Great Bard at will, further took me aback. Perhaps his spoken lines mean little when read by the casual reader, but from the lips of St. Helen the words beautifully rendered the deepest emotion and meaning and garnered for him the undivided attention of anyone in his presence.

  “Mr. Broussard, it has taken me much of a wasted lifetime to arrive here, but I have learned to at least try and love all, trust few, and do wrong to none.”

  “Then we find ourselves on the same page, Mr. St. Helen.”

  “Call me John.”

  16

  An Interview With John

  As I looked about the room, I quickly ascertained that Mr. St. Helen’s movements appeared limited to its confines. Everything he might need to get through the day lay before him, a fact giving him no reason to leave the chamber.

  “John, I have to ask, are you confined to this room? I sense you are.”

  “You discern much, perhaps too much I’m afraid, but yes, my instructions are to remain cloistered between these four walls until departure time a few nights from tonight.”

  “I understand you will not make the trip back to Texas over land.”

  “That is true. I shall board a boat for Galveston. There I shall remain at a K.G.C. enclave on Avenue M for a time and from there up to Granbury.”

  “Would you like to leave here for better environs, for fine dining and glasses of your favorite beverages?”

  “I’m afraid we both must follow directives. If I am to receive instructions for the future and the needed resources you have in that envelope, then we must follow orders faithfully.”

  “You forget two matters of great importance.”

  “And those are?”

  “Firstly, I, Drouet Broussard, possess the envelope you mentioned and you have to be in my company when I actually disperse to you its contents. Secondly, we are both grown men, and I shall handle anyone who might stand between us and the Pickwick Club on this night.”

  “Many years have elapsed since my last visit there.”

  “Ah, so you have been there before and must well understand why you cannot leave the Crescent City without visiting that most esteemed haunt off limits to all but a select few. Let us depart at once. You shall be my guest, and we will be most faithfully discreet on our outing. Whose guest might you have been before
?”

  At that, St. Helen smiled as if he owned a great secret.

  “Perhaps I shall tell you in due time.”

  “Then enough talk. Let us depart these premises at once.”

  Once outside, we garnered a carriage and began making our way to the Vieux Carre. That night, our steed pulled us along streets most lonesome, through alleyways darkest with shadows, filling the blackness with gentle clip-clops along brick and cobblestone until we arrived at our destination.

  Once inside, we found ourselves surrounded by only a handful of members. Several of the members looked at St. Helen with great interest, some as if enchanted by his appearance and movements, others as if they had seen him before, and one or two as if they had seen a ghost. St. Helen seemed aware of the attention, but simply brushed it off with a wry smile and followed me to a corner table out of sight of the onlookers.

  St. Helen ordered a whiskey and water and me my beloved Sazerac. When the drinks arrived at our table, St. Helen raised his glass.

  “To quote a good friend of mine, ‘I drink to the general joy of the whole table.’ So, Broussard, how did you find your way into our illustrious dark society?”

  “By way of my late father, one of the founding members, who probably joined more out of allegiance to personal friends, and specifically, to New Orleans society, in general, than for any other reason.”

  “Interesting. You said your father worked as a merchant and trader, yes? Then, I take it he never had reason to own slaves?”

  “Correct.”

  “And so you joined because your father asked you to?”

  “I joined because one of Father’s close friends asked me to.”

  “Who was that?”

  “General Albert Pike.”

  “Well, I will be damned. The picture comes into full view for me now. Your father seems to have enjoyed a select group of personal friends.”

  “True. I can rattle off more impressive names than that. But Pike deserves credit, or blame depending on one’s view, for plucking me from New Orleans and into action first in Indian Territory on behalf of General Watie—in whose presence I saw you when last there—and then eventually into the service of the cabal that joins us here tonight.”

  “Somehow I get the feeling that you haven’t been entirely happy in its service.”

  “Honestly, as I think back on it more and more, the young Broussard who joined the society some years ago did so believing it stood mainly for southern independence more than anything else, and you and I both know that is not true. Might I ask what was your business with Watie when I saw you in his camp at the close of the war?”

  “You found me in Watie’s camp undercover, and I am afraid that is all I can say about it.”

  The longer I conversed with St. Helen, the more I believed him somebody more than he presented, but we had barely imbibed a single glass of spirits between the both of us, and I, at that point, allowed that his business remained his own.

  St. Helen intimated that he had once harbored now regretful feelings toward the black race and therein lay his reason for joining The Circle many years before.

  “I once looked upon Africans as a race belonging in perpetual subjugation to white overlords, but I now know I stood wrongheaded in those days. But you can certainly see why I joined a society completely dedicated to the cause of slavery’s expansion to our country’s western territories and states, to Mexico and throughout the Caribbean.”

  I sat quietly and listened thoughtfully to his words, as I, too, had gone through changes in belief as to the validity of the causes championed by the K.G.C.

  We passed away the hours speaking of the war, of Reconstruction in New Orleans and throughout the rest of the South, and of the future. The spirits flowed freely, and I gathered that St. Helen valued the conversation and atmosphere as highly as I did and that a certain amount of camaraderie and trust had been established between us.

  “The war is long over and the dark society as you call it loses power and influence with each passing day, and so I ask you John St. Helen, who are you?”

  “Remember when I said I love all, trust few, and do wrong to none? Well, the ‘trust few’ part I take most serious of all, and I wager you feel the same when asked to divulge the details of your activities down through the years, especially of those activities on behalf of The Circle. So, let me ask you, Drouet Broussard, who are you and what brings you to this place and time with me here tonight? Let me hear what you have to say and then maybe you might become one of the aforementioned few. Your secrets are safe with me.”

  I contemplated his request and gave it serious consideration for a few minutes before deciding to lay it before him in no uncertain terms.

  My reasons for doing so were four-fold.

  First, the K.G.C. found itself closer to irrelevance with each passing day, and I feared the society’s ever-shrinking tentacles in equally diminishing measure. Angering anyone in the cabal dense enough to continue clinging to its original cause in the aftermath of the war concerned me not.

  Secondly, if St. Helen ever decided to recount my story to authorities, he could offer no certain proof to back up the allegation, and he would certainly place himself at risk for incriminating himself.

  Thirdly, if my account helped to glean from St. Helen his back story then all the better.

  And, lastly, my instincts told me I could trust St. Helen completely.

  “St. Helen, your answer acknowledges you hide something, but you have been as honest with me as you feel you can be, and I don’t believe you have lied to me even once. I now lay before you the unvarnished truth as to my activities on behalf of the K.G.C. You may decide for yourself as to the truthfulness of the narrative.

  “I told you how I came to join the society, how it transpired out of certain friendships and society connections of my father. I explained how Pike first recruited me to work with the Confederate Indians of Indian Territory, and I did so as a scout and spy. Pike had heard of my accomplishments at the Louisiana State Seminary of Learning and Military Academy under the direction of Major William Tecumseh Sherman and knew my talents would benefit the cause.

  “Prior to that, Pike had personally enlisted the various tribes in eastern Indian Territory into service on behalf of the Confederacy, and therefore I felt an obligation to assist them in any way possible. Pike felt I could help in the field and also keep him abreast of activities on a regular schedule.

  “During the war, the intelligence I had gathered proved pivotal in tracking Yankee wagon train and riverboat movements in that region, and when the time came to attack and seize said vehicles, I pulled my weight with the rest of General Watie’s riflemen in bringing these strikes to a successful conclusion.

  “Watie’s example of bold, quick strikes rubbed off on me after several such raids, and I later assisted the James Gang with a raid upon the safes of the Adams Express Company aboard the Ohio and Mississippi railway near Cincinnati, Ohio—an action ordered by the K.G.C. and not by the Confederacy.”

  With that, St. Helen, now smiling, almost gleeful, broke in.

  “I heard about that raid! News of it spread around the entire country, especially in the North! You mean to tell me you were part of that assault, you and the famous Jesse and Frank James?”

  “This accounting contains the unvarnished truth, as I promised.”

  “The country still wonders who carried out that robbery and here I sit with one of the members of that merry band.”

  St. Helen’s wry smile indicated his belief. He leaned forward in his chair with his chin resting in the palm of his left hand.

  “I have to hear more. Pray, continue.”

  “If you enjoy the story of that heist, then you will love the recounting of the one that happened before that. After the battle of Pea Ridge in Arkansas, Pike sent word that I meet him at a secluded cabin near Caddo Gap in the Ouachita Mountains of the southwestern section of that state.

  “Upon arrival and while in Pike�
�s company, I took the oath and joined the Knights of the Golden Circle. I then agreed to rob a building here in New Orleans that had served as home to the United States Mint before the war and for a short time as home to the Confederate Mint after the war commenced and the Confederate government had taken control of the premises.”

  St. Helen, a look of amazement upon his face, stopped me short.

  “When did you do this and how did you it?”

  “Like Watie, I chose the bold path. I learned that in heists, just as in espionage, one should be so bold as to make one’s movements seem natural.”

  St. Helen, still sporting the same wry smile of belief, chin still resting upon his palm, broke in again.

  “I hear certain actors on the stage employ the same device. Please, continue.”

  “So, on or about late April, 1862, with Yankee warships moving upriver in the direction of New Orleans, with throngs of fear-ridden citizens scurrying about like many thousands of ants fresh out of a toppled anthill, I, along with an able accomplice, robbed the mint building on Esplanade Avenue in the pouring rain. I add that nature seemed to be in agreement with our activities that night, as the weather provided a much-needed layer of concealment and distraction.

  “With my accomplice waiting in the wagon, I made multiple trips in and out of the building carrying bags, bullion, and bricks taken from behind a false wall in a closet where it had been planted sometime before by a K.G.C. operative working in the building when it served as the United States Mint.

  “The K.G.C. had long known of the stash put there by its operative and the society charged me with getting it out, and I did. These details are fairly the beginning and end of it.”

  St. Helen leaned back in his chair seemingly satisfied with what he had just heard.

  “Just two questions, Broussard. First, who was your accomplice? Second, where is the booty now?”

  “You’ll understand that I cannot divulge the name of my willing and capable associate that day. As to the location of the takings, I can only say that it is located in proximity of the Crescent City and that you will be partly paid from that handsome pile before you leave for Galveston.”