Wilderness Double Edition 22 by David Robbins

Author:David Robbins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: action hero, the rockies, piccadilly publishing, hawken rifle, david l robbins, best western ebook, wilderness series, early american mountainmen, early frontier days usa
Publisher: Piccadilly

Two

Started by the French, later ceded to the Spanish, and now under American control thanks to Thomas Jefferson’s master stroke, the Louisiana Purchase, New Orleans was the fastest-growing city in the United States. With a population of more than one hundred thousand, the port was a cosmopolitan mix of many nationalities and cultures, a thriving beehive of avarice and promise.

Its coffers swelled in large part thanks to two industries. Shipping, primarily cotton, was the city’s financial mainstay. More than two thousand steamboats plied the Mississippi River and its tributaries, bearing cotton as well as trade goods, and a two-legged commodity: People flocked to New Orleans from all over. Tourism, the second mainstay, was booming, due to the city’s justly deserved reputation for culture and opulence.

Less talked about, at least in polite society, was another of its reputations – that of decadence. It was whispered that in New Orleans, “Anything goes!”, and it was literally true. Anything anyone could think of, any vice, any desire, any passion, was there for the taking – for a price.

The streets bordering the docks were lined with taverns and bars, flophouses and clip joints. Gaudy houses of ill repute were more numerous than the cats on the city’s wharves.

It was through this very section of the city that Zachary King briskly made his way, grim and determined. He had shut the incident with the Creole and the footpads from his mind seconds after it was over. For him, a child of the mountains and the plains, a man who had fought Blackfeet and Sioux and battled a giant grizzly to the death, the fight was a small event, worthy of little note. Especially when he had something much more important on his mind.

Zach was hunting a certain establishment. He had a name, and knew the street, but not the exact street number. Around him swirled a surging stream of humanity: a polyglot mix of French and Spanish extraction, Americans born and bred, and immigrants from Germany, Italy and elsewhere. Choctaw Indians were conspicuous by their dress and aloofness. Many blacks were also in evidence, and many of them free, not slaves.

There were far too many of all kinds for Zach’s liking. He had been raised in the wilderness where a man could ride for days, even weeks, without seeing another soul, and he much preferred the solitude to having so many strangers brushing his elbows. Give him the vast open spaces, the mountains and the plains, any day. This made his skin crawl. It was akin to being overrun by fleas, the sensation he felt, only worse.

Suddenly someone bumped into him, jarring him, and Zach’s hand automatically dropped to his bowie. But it was only a white-haired old man who smiled and said, “My utmost apologies, young sir. I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going.”

“Be careful,” Zach said gruffly, and stalked on, but he had only taken a few long strides when he thought to slip a hand up under his shirt and ensure his poke was tied in place.

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