Ralestone Luck | Page 9

part of the stone in these walls was brought straight from Europe,
just as they later brought the paving blocks for the streets of New Orleans. When he had
done--and the place was five years a-building because of Indian troubles and other
disturbances--he settled down to live in feudal state. Some of his former seamen rallied
around him as a guard, and he imported blacks from the islands to work his indigo fields.
"The family continued to prosper through both French and Spanish domination until the
time of American rule."
"Now for Uncle Rick." Ricky settled herself with a wriggle. "This is even more exciting
than Pirate Dick."
"In the year 1788, the time of the great fire which destroyed over half of New Orleans,

twin boys were born at Pirate's Haven. They came into their heritage early, for their
parents died of yellow fever when the twins were still small children.
"Those were restless times. New Orleans was full of refugees. From Haiti, where the
revolting blacks were holding a reign of terror, and from France, where to be a noble was
to be a dead one, came hundreds. Even members of the royal house, the Duc d'Orleans
and his brother, the Duc de Montpensier, came for a space in 1798.
"The city had always been more or less lawless and intolerant of control. Like the New
Englanders of the eighteenth century, many respected merchants were also smugglers."
"And pirates," suggested Val.
"The king of smugglers was Jean Lafitte. His forge--where his slaves shaped the
wrought-iron which was one of the wonders of the city--was a fashionable meeting-place
for the young bloods. He was the height of wit and fashion--daring openly to placard the
walls of the town with his notices of smugglers' sales.
"And Roderick Ralestone, the younger of the twins, became one of Lafitte's men. In spite
of the remonstrances of his brother Richard, young Rick withdrew to Barataria with
Dominque You and the rest of the outlawed captains.
"In the winter of 1814 matters came to a head. Richard wanted to marry an American girl,
the daughter of one of Governor Claiborne's friends. Her father told him very pointedly
that since the owners of Pirate's Haven seemed to be indulging in law breaking, such a
marriage was out of the question. Aroused, Richard made a secret inspection of certain
underground storehouses which had been built by his pirate great-grandfather and
discovered that Rick had put them in use again for the very same purpose for which they
had been first intended--the storing of loot.
"He waited there for his brother, determined to have it decided once and for all. They
quarreled bitterly. Both were young, both had bad tempers, and each saw his side as the
right of the matter--"
"Regular Ralestones, weren't they?" commented Val slyly.
"Undoubtedly," agreed Rupert. "Well, at last Richard started for the house, his brother in
pursuit.
"Then they fought, here in this very hall. And not with words this time, but with the
rapiers Richard had brought back from France. A slave named Falesse, who had been the
twins' childhood nurse, was the only witness to the end of that duel. Richard lay face
down across the hearth-stone as she came screaming down the stairs."
Ricky was studying the gray stone.
"By rights," Val agreed with her unspoken thought, "there ought to be a stain there.
Unfortunately for romance, there isn't."

"Rick was standing by the door," Rupert continued. "When Falesse reached his brother,
he laughed unsteadily and half raised his sword in a duelist's salute. Then he was gone.
But there were two swords on the floor. And that niche was empty.
"When he fled into the night storm with his brother's blood staining his hands, Rick
Ralestone took the Luck of his house with him.
"After almost a year of invalidism, Richard recovered. He never married his American
beauty. But in 1819 he took a wife, a young Creole lady widowed by the Battle of New
Orleans. Of Rick nothing was heard again, although his brother searched diligently for
more than thirty years."
"How," Val grinned at his brother, "did Richard explain the little matter of the ghost
which is supposed to walk at night?"
"I don't know. But when the Civil War broke out, Richard's son Miles was the master of
Pirate's Haven. The once-great fortune of the family had shrunk. Business losses in the
city, floods, a disaster at sea, had emptied the family purse--"
"The Luck getting in its dirty work by remote control," supplied the irrepressible Val.
"Perhaps. Young Miles had married in his teens, and the call to the Confederate colors
brought both his twin sons under arms as well as their father.
"Miles, the father, fell in the First Battle of Bull Run. But