The Assassins

by F. M. Parker

  THE ASSASSINS

  by F. M. PARKER

  Cajun Vengeance

  The time is 1847, and the place is turbulent New Orleans during the staging of American forces for the invasion of Mexico. Timothy Wollfolk traveling to New Orleans to claim a huge inheritance, is shot and thought dead and thrown into the flooding Mississippi River by mysterious marauders. Lew Fannin, ex-Texas Ranger, believing Wollfolk has perished, slays the man’s murderers and assumes his identity. Two violent strands of dramatic conflict are set into motion.

  Wollfolk is saved by a professional killer who agrees to wreak vengeance on the man who has taken Wollfolk’s name and fortune. Meanwhile Fannin discovers that his masquerade has led him into a morass of menace while defending his stolen holdings against a quartet of cutthroats. And he finds unexpected challenge of a different sort when he meets the exquisite octoroon woman which is also part of the Wollfolk legacy, and who stirs his senses while laying siege to his heart.

  Against the background of troops moving to war in Mexico, and a scourge of yellow fever decimating the city, Wollfolk and Fannin must decide if they are enemies of allies. As both are caught in a noose of terror drawn ever tighter by those bent on destroying the Wollfolk dynasty. Their decision, and the shattering showdown it leads to, are charged with pulse-raising suspense and action.

  For fans of historical adventure, as well as relish great story telling, this gripping tale of honor and revenge offers a fresh reason why F. M. Parker’s stirring novels are so widely acclaimed.

  About the Author

  F. M. PARKER has worked as a sheepherder, lumberman, sailor, geologist, and as a manager of wild horses, buffalo, and livestock grazing. For several years he was the manager of five million acres of public domain land in eastern Oregon.

  His highly acclaimed novels include Skinner, Coldiron, The Searcher, Shadow of the Wolf, The Shanghaiers, The Highbinders, The Far Battleground, The Shadow Man, and The Slavers.

  "SUPERBLY WRITTEN AND DETAILED... PARKER BRINGS THE WEST TO LIFE."

  Publishers Weekly

  "ABSORBING...SWIFTLY PACED, FILLED WITH ACTION!"

  Library Journal

  "PARKER ALWAYS PRESENTS A LIVELY, CLOSELY PLOTTED STORY."

  Bookmarks

  "REFRESHING, COMBINES A GOOD STORY WITH FIRST-HAND KNOWLEDGE."

  University of Arizona Library

  "RICH, REWARDING... DESERVES A WIDE GENERAL READERSHIP."

  Booklist

  Also by F.M. Parker

  Novels

  The Highwayman

  Wife Stealer

  Winter Woman

  The Assassins

  Girl in Falling Snow

  The Predators

  The Far Battleground

  Coldiron – Judge and Executioner

  Coldiron - Shadow of the Wolf

  Coldiron - The Shanghaiers

  Coldiron - To Kill an Enemy

  The Searcher

  The Seeker

  The Highbinders

  The Shadow Man

  The Slavers

  Nighthawk

  Skinner

  Soldiers of Conquest

  Screenplays

  Women for Zion

  Firefly Catcher

  Prologue: The Making of the River

  The drifting snow of the white ice desert of the great glacier was less hospitable than the drifting sands of the hottest desert.

  For tens of thousands of years the water of the oceans had been sucked up by the winds of the world and flung as snow onto the breast of the continent. The snow turned to ice, more than two million cubic miles of it smothering the land. The level of the oceans dropped two hundred feet.

  Piled nearly two miles thick in its central dome, the ice became plastic under its own crushing weight. Mobile now, the ice flowed outward to cover two-thirds of the land surface, and extended far out into the Arctic and Atlantic oceans. The glacier drowned mountains six thousand feet tall and obliterated two mighty rivers, one flowing east and another north, and beheaded a third river that went off to the south. Even the strong rock crust of the planet was depressed two thousand feet.

  Millennium after millennium passed as the glacier held the continent captive. Powerful winds blew constantly off the huge ice field, stirring raging blizzards in summer as well as winter. The beheaded south-flowing river was often frozen solid to its rocky bottom.

  The shifting balance of heat and cold on the earth tilted to the warm side. The quantity of ice flowing to the periphery of the glacier became equal to that which was melting. The glacier halted its advance and stood and did battle with the sun for thousands of years.

  The glacier lost the battle and surrendered to the sun. In six thousand years the front of the ice retreated five hundred miles.

  A multitude of streams of water rushed away from the seventeen hundred miles of melting glacier terminus, spreading like a tangled skein of blue-green silk through rock and sand moraines. The giant rivers that had been overrun by the ice flowed strongly again. They fought one another for mastery of the broad continental watershed.

  Once an arm of thick ice blocked the east river for eight thousand years and created a gigantic lake. To the west large depressions were uncovered by the retreating glacier. Ice melt poured into the deep cavities to form a series of mighty lakes.

  The land surface began to rebound from the depressed level to which the glacier had crushed it. The bottoms of the lakes rose. At times the high walls of the lakes would be breached and a flood of unimaginable quantity spilled out. Most of the water poured into the river flowing south, and it became the greatest river on the earth.

  The braided network of the upper reaches of the south river finally coalesced downstream into one tremendous channel several miles wide and hundreds of feet deep. The channel ran brim full of swift water straining to return to the sea.

  For long distances behind the retreating glacier the land lay barren and abandoned by all plants and animals. Choking dust storms raged, swirling away carrying the fine loess two miles into the air and many hundreds of miles beyond its source. The sun was obscured for months. In the darkness, massive sand dunes fifty feet tall and miles long were birthed.

  The south river cared nothing about the darkness, but hurried onward, pulled relentlessly by the implacable gravity of the planet. It dumped its titanic load of sand and silt into the Gulf of Mexico. A delta of massive proportions grew swiftly, now below sea level, now above.

  The lusty river full of tumbling, churning water refused to be held to one channel and frequently shifted its huge meandering body into new courses. It flung its mouth from side to side, sometimes tens of miles apart in a day, and spewed out its load of continental debris first here and then there. Often the delta expanded thousands of feet in a year, until it was scores of miles wide and extending ten times that far into the gulf. The river changed the very size and shape of the continent.

  The glacier died. The river shrank. Yet it was still a great stream, and near its mouth was a half-mile wide and two hundred and fifty feet deep. For ten thousand years the river flowed thus.

  Natural levees formed on the banks of the river. Each time the stream poured over its banks, the current slowed at the margin of the channel and dropped its load of fine silt. An embankment, a levee, was built. The river in normal flow was confined within these impervious banks of clay. Outside the levees and lying below the level of the river was a region of extensive swamps and lakes, a labyrinth of water and land.

  At times deep crevasses broke the levees, and the river plunged through, flooding the land for miles and holding it in a watery prison for weeks. The land animals drowned.

  Then one year white man found the river. He traveled its length and named it Mississippi from the name
the Indians gave it, misi-great and sipi-water. In his foolhardy, reckless way, the white man began to build a town in the mud flats that lay twice the height of a tall man below the level of the river. Only a fragile levee protected the town, called New Orleans, from the gargantuan destructive powers of the river.

  Often the river rampaged through the town, for the presence of the white man did not prevent the levees from failing.

  Have you ever been in New Orleans? If not, you’d better go.

  It’s a nation of a queer place; day and night a show!

  Frenchmen, Spaniards, West Indians, Creoles, Mustees,

  Yankees, Kentuckians, Tennesseans, lawyers and trustees,

  Negroes in purple and fine linen, and slaves in rags and chains,

  Ships, arks, steamboats, robbers, pirates, alligators,

  Assassins, gamblers, drunkards, and cotton speculators;

  Sailors, soldiers, pretty girls and ugly fortune-tellers;

  Pimps, imps, shrimps, and all sorts of dirty fellow;

  A progeny of all colors—an infernal motley crew;

  Yellow fever in February—muddy streets all year;

  Many things to hope for, and a devilish sight to fear!

  Gold and silver bullion—United States bank notes,

  Horse-racers, cock-fighters, and beggars without coats,

  Snapping-turtles, sugar, sugar-houses, water snakes,

  Molasses, flour, whiskey, tobacco, corn and johnny-cakes,

  Beef, cattle, hogs, pork, turkeys, Kentucky rifles,

  Lumber, boards, apples, cottons, and many other trifles.

  Butter, cheese, onions, wild beasts in wooden cages,

  Barbers, waiters, draymen, with the highest sort of wages.

  Colonel James R. Creecy

  1

  Vieux Carre, Old Square, New Orleans, June 3, 1847

  The door of the Gator’s Den, a free blacks’ gaming parlor, opened, and the yellow rays of gaslight spilled out into the dark night. The mutter of men at craps and cards drifted out the opening and reached Lezin Morissot, who was in the deep shadows of the carriageway of the deserted house a block away.

  A large black man stepped from the Gator’s Den and stood on the brick sidewalk. Someone shoved the door closed behind him and night fell again upon Dauphine Street.

  Morissot watched the man take a deep breath of the slow, damp wind coming off the Mississippi River, and glance both ways along the street. Even in the frail light, the hulking form of Verret was recognizable. He turned to the right and leisurely strode off.

  Morissot moved back a step into the deeper darkness of the carriageway and leaned against the brick wall. He calmly planned his strategy for killing. Now and then he peered out at Verret, faintly silhouetted in the night. The man came steadily on.

  Morissot had stealthily followed Verret from early evening and into the night, until the man had finally ceased rambling about the Vieux Carre and settled down to play cards in the Gator’s Den. Morissot had entered the gambling place himself and played cards for an hour at a table near Verret. Over his cards, he had studied the man. It was nearly morning now, and the man would be heading but one place, home and bed.

  Reaching into the pocket of his jacket, Morissot removed a garrote. He uncoiled the steel wire and took the wooden handles, one attached to each end, into his hands. When Verret felt the wire around his neck, there would be no escape. Morissot the assassin liked the silent, deadly weapon.

  He glanced up at the dark sky. A thick overcast, hanging close to the earth, crept off to the south. It was a good night for Verret to disappear.

  For a moment, Morissot wondered about Verret. He knew him only as one of the many black crew bosses on the docks. Why did someone want him dead? But then Morissot let the question slide away. He was being paid a handsome sum to see that the man vanished. That was the simple beginning and end of it. Still, at some primal level he felt that the man’s death would in some unknown manner mean danger to him.

  Morissot’s senses began to sharpen, to expand, as they always did when he took a killing weapon into his hands and prepared to strike his victim. His keen eyes checked the fronts and the wrought-iron balconies of the two-story houses lining the street and set flush against the sidewalk. He smelled the house slop, garbage, and human excrement in the drainage ditch in the center of the dirt street. A bat dived out o f the blackness and darted in close to inspect him. He heard the whisper of its leathery wings stroking the air as it veered upward and away. Verret’s footfalls sounded on the sidewalk.

  Two Spanish sailors with three sheets in the wind came staggering out of a cross street that led from the nearby red-light district with its brothels and saloons. They began to sing in loud, off-key obscenities, their voices echoing along the canyon of Dauphine Street. They lurched together and, supporting each other, crossed Dauphine and disappeared down a side street in the direction of the docks. The drunken voices faded away.

  Verret had halted and turned to stare at the sailors.

  Now he faced about and continued on toward Morissot. He seemed more alert.

  Morissot cast one last look both directions. The street lay abandoned in the late hour of the night. But the day was only minutes below the horizon, and soon a throng of people would pour out of the houses. The killing must be accomplished quickly.

  The assassin spread the handles of the garrote to widen the wire bop. He stepped to the edge of the carriageway darkness near the street and pressed tightly against the brick wall.

  The burly form of Verret passed in the night. He was humming a low tune to himself.

  Morissot sprang from his hiding place and in behind the man. He raised the garrote and brought it down swiftly over the man’s head. Jerked it savagely tight. With a mighty heave, Morissot yanked Verret into the carriageway.

  Verret’s hands flew up to tear away the choking band around his neck. His fingers dug at the wire embedded in his flesh. Abruptly he stopped the futile effort. He whirled to catch his attacker.

  Morissot, his muscles bulging as he tightened the garrote ever tighter, spun with Verret, staying clear of the larger man’s hands.

  Verret tried again and again to break free, lunging left, right, plunging ahead to suddenly pivot, desperately grabbing for the man at his back. Morissot moved with him, always just out of reach. The two men spun in a silent macabre dance of death in the murk-filled carriageway.

  Few men were Verret’s equal in strength. But the garrote had cut deeply into the tendons and veins of his neck. Stars began to explode in his brain. He had but one last chance to live. He hurled himself toward the ground. There he could roll and catch his assailant.

  Morissot, with the knowledge gained from many killings, did not try to stop the fall of the big man. He stepped away from Verret and pulled to the side, changing the man’s downward momentum into a swing to the side. Verret’s head crashed into the brick wall of the carriageway with a thud.

  Morissot rode the man down to the ground. His knees landed with crushing force in the center of the strangling man’s back. In the darkness, Morissot held the garrote tightly, and he sawed it hard from side to side to cut off the last bit of air to the lungs and stop the final drop of blood flowing through the large jugular vein.

  For a full three minutes, Morissot held the choking garrote. Then he released the handles and unwound the wire from Verret’s neck. He stowed the weapon away in a pocket and rolled the man to his back. Stooping, he caught an arm and with ease hoisted the big body to his shoulder.

  Silently Morissot passed along the short carriageway to the enclosed courtyard at the rear of the vacant house. He called softly out ahead through the darkness to his horse. The beast must not become alarmed at the smell of death and the corpse across his shoulder and make a racket.

  The overcast of the sky parted and bright moonlight speared down, bathing the courtyard in bright light. Morissot froze and stood motionless, the corpse of Verret dangling. If someone should step out onto the balco
ny of the house across the street, Morissot would be completely visible.

  The speeding clouds healed the momentary tear in the overcast. The sky and moon vanished and night poured black and dense into the courtyard.

  Morissot went on. Verret’s limp body was placed in the rear of the light wagon that was hitched to the horse. Morissot spread a blanket over the still form and then laid his fisherman’s poles, lines, and net on top of everything.

  He stepped up into the wagon and spoke to the horse. The animal tossed its head once with a jangle of bridle metal and went out the carriageway, pulling the vehicle into the street.

  Morissot began to whistle in a soft tone, the tune Verret had been humming just before he died.

  * * *

  The wagon with its grisly load reached the border of the Vieux Carre. As Morissot guided the horse across the broad thoroughfare of Canal Street, three black stevedores heading for the wharves on the Mississippi River came into sight. Morissot recognized them in the rising dawn.

  “ ’Mornin’, Lezin. Going fishing mighty early, ain’t you?” called one of the men.

  “Can’t even see to bait a hook yet,” added a second man.

  “I’ve found the fish favor a man who’s there just at daybreak,” Lezin said. He did not slow. The three were a nosy, talkative lot.

  “How about givin’ us a ride to the river?” asked the first man.

  “Walkin’s good for you,” Lezin replied shortly. He lifted the reins and slapped them down on the horse’s back.

  “Lezin Morissot, you’re a nigger with a mean streak in you,” the first man called.

  Lezin ignored the fellow. The men knew him as a river fisherman. They must never learn more than that.

  He entered Baronne Street of the Garden District. The homes of the rich white Americans lay on his left. In ten minutes he had skirted around those big fine houses and come to an area of cultivated fields separated by bayous full of stale black water. Another ten minutes and he halted the wagon in a grove of giant cypress and sycamore trees on the bank of the Mississippi.