Home to Texas: Recollections of a Texas Badman - Part 6

You've heard, I s'pose, how New Orleans
Is famed for wealth and beauty,
There's girls of ev'ry hue it seems,
From snowy white to sooty;

By Lewis Henry (1819-1904) artist; Arnz and Company, Lithographer [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

I damn near shot the italian bout a dozen times on the boat to new orleans. I was tolt he lost his previous escort by bein disagreeable. hed cuss at you for no damn good reason. but he was payin so I settled for chunkin him in the ocean onct we got there and he already payed me.

I was good in my behavior in new orleans, maybe not like in the path of the lord, but I only had to kill two jackasses, one that tried to rob me, and the other I ended usin my knife on. I am surpised that I won that fight, cause a you know that you dont fight as good with a weapon you aint had a lot of practice on. it was just I was watchin a coupla of these damn wharve rats carve each other, and for some reason I had my hand on the knife, when some other damn dock rat took exception to me for some reason I never did figger. didnt help that I was drunker then I usually allow. I guess the rat was drunker then me, and he missed what I took to be a good open shot on me. I figgered he coulda gutted me but good as slow as I was haulin the toothpick out. he slipped out on the mess on the ground, and I kicked him good with my boot. he didnt keep ahold of his knife, so I leaned down to finish him off. them other fellas was still cuttin on each other when I left.

new orelans is one of them towns a man could stay drunk for a long time. they had the best whorehouses I ever seen. they even had a blue book to guide you along to the best ones.I never got to spend much time there before. I was ridin to the War the first time, and ridin from the War the second time, and ridin fast both times.

damn near every day some fools went after each other with knives. with the way that whiskey and money flowed into that town, and with all the pretty whores working there, I never saw no good reason for those jackasses to go at each other so. I was perfectly happy to reconnoter all them places Id missed the first two trips.

By Artist not credited [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

those octaroon girls was the prettiest. carlita,yvette,claudia,sacha,claire, the names of those girls still sends a shiver into my pants. I noticed then and there that halfbreeds often were better lookin or worst lookin then normal folks, and mostly better. that got me to thinkin bout John and marias brats, and that was a herd of good lookin brats. I thought too hard on the question, and thought what my and Heart-Catchers brats woulda looked like. I never could stand to be sad too long, so I went to the whorehouse for a week.

there was the octaroons, nigger girls, gueras, creoles, and some halfbreed choctaw, mexican girls bein infrequent to find. one whorehouse was sposed to have chinese girls, but never had any them times I went to go try em out. they was sposed to be slanted in more places then their eyes, but I bet that was bullshit. there was a chinese girl from the filipinas, that a spanaird had left in town, but she looked and felt mexican to me. mexican and pretty. there was french girls, italians, some german girls, spanish, and a arab princess. I spent the money for the princess once, but it wernt no better, and surely no worse, then any other women. she did have some downright pretty eyes. I guess I spected more from a princess, like special haram training. i went through the italians money too damn fast.

I figgered I needed a job, but what Id do, I didnt know. I knew I wasnt messin with stock, or smithin. liftin boxes on the docks l knew would be borin without tryin it. bein the law sounded interestin, but you gotta figger it was mostly ridin herd on drunks stead of cows. I passed on that too. gamblin was out for me, as I was no good at it. bounty huntin sounded good, but I expected that Id walk up to find my own picture up on some sherriffs jailhouse one day. robbin the bank crossed my mind again, but then Id have to leave the whorehouses behind. I finally got the idea to open my own whorehouse. I would go round up some mexican girls in Texas, and herd em up to new orleans. now thats the kind of ranchin I could live with.

then I figgered that was a bad idea. I never got along with a woman for more then two weeks, whore or not. then they start wantin things I dont rightly understand. I figgered one of my whores would shoot me in a month if I did that. thinkin back to Heart-Catcher, Im glad I never learned enuf Comanche sos she could start arguin with me. she probably woulda cut my nuts off.

I coulda tried to learn the piano, but I had to laff when that thought crossed my mind. learnin to butcher might keep me in beefsteak and porkribs, but Id smell bloody when visitin the whores. I started askin around bout what folks made, and was surprised at how little folk made. between the goddammed yankee gold, and the money the folks had give me when I was the ranch, I never figgered that people didnt make and spend that kind of money the way I had.

somebody mentioned buffalo hunting, and I wondered why, what with cowboys runnin plenty of longhorn up to the railheads, until they also mentioned you cold get three dollars a hide. three dollars for a hide carried in a cart beat the hell outta ten for a cow you had to drive. besides, with three dollars, you could buy a lot of baths, and more baths with whores in em when you was done washin the buff blood off. sos I signed up with a crew that was just startin up. none of em had been to the plains before, but thats what I was there for.

See page for author [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

there was John MacMillen, another Scots-Irish from alabama. we called him mick, or irishman, to piss him off. He had been a sharpshooter with the 13th Alabama, and at Gettysburg, too. he was tired of bein a sharecropper ans was seekin a buff fortune. there was Abraham Lincoln Lewis, a fair husky nigger who had been a carter, butcher, and blacksmith. he hated smithin as much as me, and his favorite part about emanicipation was that he didnt have to smith no more, that and he got to name hiiself after the goddammed yankee president. we called him Big Abe. there was Skinny John, another nigger, bout starved lookin. he werent so lookin foward to buffalo huntin as to gettin the hell outta Dixie before he got hung for something he didnt do. hed had a muy bad master that bout whipped the shit out of him. when the war got to bama, he ran off to the goddammed yankees. they made him a laborer, and whipped him themselves. I figgered that if Ida been him, Id hate white people as much as I hate goddammed yankees. there was a young buck, the last son of a river master up in a mansion that figgered his son was goin to europe for schoolin, when the lad was plannin on makin and spendin a lot of money on his own. this was Pierre Dufoox, who was the same age as me when I went off to war. the last one was Domingo, an italian butcher and ships cook whod jumped ship after falling in love with a whore. she tolt him shed wait for him to get enuff money to get married. I dont mean shed quit whoring, just not marry nobody else.

this was just a good a crew as my old troop in the War, and better then some of the various bands of Rangers Id served with. we killed a lot a buff, ate a lot of buffalo steak, and fought the Comache and other indians for a good two years, and every man of them saved my life at least once.

as we was ridin out of new orleans, a voodoo woman stepped in front of my horse. she wernt what youd call pretty, but she had a womans body, and she had the raven hair and the black eyes I like. she got my fever up just lookin at her. she took aholt of my bridle, and give me a hell of wicked grin. she tolt me I wouldnt die, but that my killlin days were near to over. I laffed at her, and tolt her I was gonna get rich killin buff. she looked scornful, and tolt me my mankillin days was about done with. then she tolt me Id be her sisters slave. I was laffin at her guff and I tried to pull her up on the horse with me. I had decided what she needed was my handprint on her behind, and a good roll would set her talkin nonsense right. I turned away and hollered at the boys to hold a sec, and then the voodoo woman was gone like a deer at a start. never did see her leave.

I always said new orleans was a hell of a city.

John Stevens:

There is not much to remark on. I have already said that Wallace had no regard for what folks consider common decency. I don't think he even understood what they meant about it.