We packed our gear in the morning, and we booked our passage north, and as much as I liked that wonderful, colorful town, I was ready to hit for the high country again.  I wanted to see the wide plains with the mountains in the purple haze yonder, and I wanted to feel a good horse under me and ride out where the long wind bends the grass.

First I had to talk to a priest - a Judas Priest.  And he was nowhere in sight, nor to be found wherever I looked.  He'd quit his hotel job.  They spoke well of him, although they looked at me strangely when I asked after him, and they commented that he was an odd one.

"What do you mean - odd?" Orrin asked.

The man just shrugged and would say nothing, but I wasn't going to leave it at that, so I caught up with another porter I'd seen around and I took out a couple of silver dollars, tossed them and ketched them.

When I asked my question he looked at me and at those dollars.  "He took to you, mister.  He done tol' me so.  He thought there was a charm on you.  He thought you walked well with the spirits, mister.  He said you follered the right, and the evil would never come to you."

"Where will I find him?"

"lf'n he wishes to be found, he'll find you.  Don't you look, mister.  He's voodoo, he is.  Pow'ful strong voodoo."

Well, no matter what he was, I wanted to talk with him.  The slave who had gone west with Pierre Bontemps had been named Angus Priest, and I had a hunch there was more than one reason behind the help Judas had provided.

We saw nothing of Andre Baston, nor of the others.  I had an urge to go hunting Hippo Swan, but I fought it down.  We'd promised Barres we'd leave and take the ache from his thoughts, so we done it, but I left not thinking kindly of Hippo.

The river was a busy place them days.  We took a stateroom called the Texas, the highest point on a river-boat except the pilothouse.  It was said along the river that Shreve, for whom Shreveport was named, had named cabins for the various states, and ever after they were called staterooms.

Now I've no knowledge of the language or anything.  I'm a fair hand with a rope and a horse, with some know-how about cattle and reading sign, but words kind of interest me, and many a time I've covered miles out yonder where there's nothing but grass and sky, just figuring on how words came to be.  Like Dixie Land.  For a time they issued a ten-dollar note down there in New Orleans that had a ten on one side and a dix - French for ten - on the other.  Folks began calling them dixies, and the word somehow got to mean the place they were used - Dixie Land.

At the last minute the Tinker showed up and wanted to go along with us, so the three of us headed north for the Arkansas.  The Tinker showed for dinner in a perfectly tailored black suit, looking almighty elegant like some foreign prince, which among his own folks be probably was.

We set up to table, hungry as all get-out.  We were giving study to the card on which they'd printed what grub was available when a soft voice said, "Something from the bar, gentlemen?"  It was Judas Priest.

"I have been wanting to talk to you," I said.