Gene Wolfe - Pirate Freedom

"Oh, yes."

"Then we can go with a different bunch, and if Lesage sees you, I'll get you away from him. How long has it been since he saw you last?"

Valentin shrugged. "A year, perhaps. Two."

"It sounds to me like your time might be up already. Did you have all that hair on your face back then?"

He shook his head.

"Fine. You don't shave it off, just trim it up. You give them a new name, and if somebody says you're the guy who ran away from Lesage, you say he's lying to get you into trouble, and you saw him murder another man while you were living out here. Valentin, this is all kindergarten stuff-my father taught me this stuff when I was a little kid."

"They will not take me unless I have a musket. One must have a musket to hunt."

That was when I understood why Capt. Burt had given me a musket in the first place. I thought about it, then I said, "Okay, here's what we'll do. I'll go alone. There's muskets for sale on Tortuga?"

"I suppose. I have not been there."

"There have to be. The buccaneers' guns must wear out and break like anything else. I don't like getting drunk, and there's probably not one sow there I'd want to screw. So I'll buy a musket for you when I get more gunpowder and bullets for me."

I got a new idea. "I'll buy scissors and a comb, too, and a little mirror. Maybe some clothes. I'll leave all that stuff in the cave with the meat we smoked. The next time you go there, you'll find it. Then you and me will be goodfellas again like now."

"I would be able to go home…"

"Right! Save some money instead of blowing it on Tortuga. Then you'll be able to book passage back, or maybe we could find you a ship going back to France that needs a hand." It took more talking than that, really, but I finally got him to liking the idea.

If you get this far you will be wondering about Lesage by now, and believe me, I was wondering ten times as much. I tried to get a description of his Lesage out of Valentin, and he said strong, shorter than me but taller than he was, big nose, mean face. It could have been a hundred guys. My Lesage had been a pirate, his had been a hunter, and I had the notion that Lesage was a pretty common name in France. So I did not know, and the only thing I could do was keep on wondering if they were the same man.

After that we found a buccaneer camp, and I walked in alone. I thought I was going to get a load of questions and had my answers all worked out, mostly lies. They were not big on questions, though. When I said I had been left on shore by a ship, I thought they would ask why the captain did not want me anymore. They did not. They asked whether I had hunted before. I said I had killed two pigs, a cow, and a bull while I was looking for somebody, and smoked some of the meat. (I showed them some.) That was that. I was not French, and they must have known it, but I had been talking with Valentin for two or three weeks by then, and some of them spoke pretty bad French, too. There were five hunters, a pack of dogs, and a couple servants. The servants kept fires burning to keep off the mosquitoes while the rest of us slept.

Next day we went hunting. I got a good, clear shot at a bull and missed. At the end of the day, we had a calf, two cows, and a bull, none of them mine. We cleaned the carcasses and carried them back to camp, where the servants skinned them about as fast as I can write it, and started cutting up the meat to smoke.

I asked whether we were not going to save some for dinner, and the man I asked spat at my feet. His name was Gagne. He missed them and I think he meant to, but I did not like it. After that, one named Melind explained to me that by the Custom of the Coast no one could eat unless the hunting party killed at least as many animals as there were men in it. I just about ate some of the smoked meat I had brought with me that night when everybody else was asleep, but I did not.

We got six the next day, none of them mine. When we were back in camp and the servants were cooking for us, Gagne asked to see my dagger. I drew it and handed it to him. He looked at it in an admiring way and asked for the sheath. When I gave him that, too, he stuck my dagger back into it and put it in his belt.

When I asked him to return it he just cursed me, so I knocked him down, kicked him a couple of times, and took it back.

About the time I did that, the others grabbed me and told me we had to fight, Gagne and me. Melind explained that it would be a fair fight, which it was, with muskets.

Here is what we did. Melind paced off twenty paces for us just outside camp. We stood there, twenty paces apart, and fired our muskets into the air so we would each have a fresh load to fight with. After that we reloaded, pouring powder down the muzzle, ramming a ball, priming the pan, and so forth. Gagne was a lot faster than I was, and stood with the butt of his musket on the ground and the barrel in one hand while I finished. Melind made me stand like that, too.

"Now I'll count to three," Melind told us in French. "At the count of three, you're free to fire. If you both miss, you can reload and fire again if you choose. When one draws blood the combat is over."

It meant I had to win with my first shot, because I had seen that Gagne could reload a lot faster. I figured he would be a lot faster to aim and shoot, too. So here is what I planned. I would shoot first, very fast, drop my musket, and run. It was almost dark, everybody was tired, and I figured I would have a good chance of getting away. I would get my musket back when they were asleep if I could. If I could not, I would live in the rain forest like Valentin until something else turned up.

Melind cleared his throat. I was not looking at him. Neither was Gagne. We were looking at each other.

"Un." It seemed to take forever. "Deux." I was ready-so was he. I could see the hate in his eyes even twenty paces away. I knew what I was going to do.

"Trois!"

I jerked my musket up, pointed it at Gagne, and shot. My musket jumped up and back, but for some crazy reason I held on.

For a second or two, I lost Gagne in the smoke. When I saw him again, he was bent over. He had dropped his musket, and all I could do was stare at it. I was the one who was supposed to do that.

Melind went over to him and squatted down beside him. After a minute or two he stood up, told us Gagne was dead, and said we ought to eat now and get some sleep. Gagne was the first man I ever killed, and I prayed for him that night.

The next morning he was still there when we went out to hunt. I downed a bull with one shot that day although Joire had to shoot it again, in the head and up close, to finish it. By the time we got back to camp, the servants had done something with Gagne's body. I never did know what.

After that I hunted with the buccaneers for a couple of months. I made some good shots and missed some easy ones-if you are a hunter, you will know how that is. By the time we went to Tortuga, I was pretty good friends with all four of them.

It was a shantytown there, huts made out of whatever they could cut down roofed with palm fronds. You could buy just about anything, and that included white servants like Valentin had been and black slaves. People told me that the slaves got better treatment, usually. That was because you had the slave for life. If you bought a white servant for three years, and he died after two years and eleven months, why should you care? Look at all you had saved on his food! I watched some auctions, thinking that if there was a big price difference between Tortuga and Jamaica somebody could turn a quick buck. Prices were a little cheaper, maybe, but pretty much the same.

I bought a musket for Valentin, too, with a musket bag. And a pair of pants and a shirt. We wore leather, mostly, but I figured Valentin would not want to look like he'd been on the island a long time, so this was better. I wanted to get him a copper powder flask like mine, but they only had horns. The big end had a plug in it that you pulled out to fill it, and the little end had a little one you pulled out to pour the powder in the gun. That was what all the other buccaneers had. The bad thing about those horns is that you have to guess at the right amount or use a separate measure for the powder.