George Martin - Fevre Dream

Early in the afternoon, the Fevre Dream put into Paducah, which lay on the Kentucky side of the river, where the Tennessee emptied into the Ohio. It was their third stop on the run, but the first lengthy one. They’d put in briefly at Rossborough during the night, to drop off three passengers, and they’d taken on wood and a small amount of freight at Evansville while Marsh had been asleep. But they had to discharge twelve tons of bar iron at Paducah, as well as some flour and sugar and books, and there was supposed to be some forty or fifty tons of lumber waiting there to be loaded. Paducah was a big lumbering town, with log rafts all the time coming down the Tennessee, clogging up the river and getting in the way of the steamboats. Like most steamboatmen, Marsh didn’t have much use for rafters. Half the time they didn’t show no lights at night, and they got run over by some unlucky steamer, and then they had the gumption to cuss and yell and throw things.

Fortunately, there were no rafts about when they put into Paducah and tied up. Marsh took one look at the cargo waiting on the riverfront-which included several towering stacks of crates and some bales of tobacco-and decided that it would be easy to get some more freight onto the main deck. It would be a shame, he decided, to steam away from Paducah and leave all this custom to some other boat.

Already the Fevre Dream was secure to the wharf, and swarms of roustabouts were laying down planks and starting to unload. Hairy Mike moved out among them, yelling “Quick now, you ain’t no cabin passenger out for no stroll,” and “You drop that, boy, and I’m gone drop this here iron right longside you head,” and other such things. The stage came down with a whunk, and a few Paducah passengers began to disembark.

Marsh made up his mind. He went to the clerk’s office, where he found Jonathon Jeffers working over some bills of lading. “You got to do those now, Mister Jeffers?” he asked.

“Hardly, Cap’n Marsh,” Jeffers replied. He removed his spectacles and wiped them on a neckerchief. “These are for Cairo.”

“Good,” Marsh said. “Come on with me. Going to go ashore and find out who owns all that freight settin’ out there in the sun, and where it’s bound to. Figure it’s got to be going St. Louis way, some of it, and maybe we can make ourself some money.”

“Excellent,” Jeffers replied. He got off his stool, straightened his neat black coat, checked to make sure the big iron safe was locked, and picked up his sword cane. “I know a fine grog shop in Paducah,” he added as they left.

Marsh’s venture proved well worthwhile. They found the tobacco shipper easily enough, and took him to the grog shop, where Marsh persuaded him to consign his goods to the Fevre Dream and Jeffers dickered out a good price. It took some three hours, but Marsh was feeling damned pleased with the bit of work when he and Jeffers came strolling back to the riverfront and the Fevre Dream. Hairy Mike was lounging on the wharf, smoking a black cigar and talking with the mate from some other boat, when they returned. “That’s ours now,” Marsh told him, pointing out the tobacco with his stick. “Get your boys to load it quick, so we can get underway.”

Marsh leaned on the railing of the boiler deck, shaded and content, watching them scramble and tote the bales while Whitey got the steam up. He chanced to notice something else; a line of horse-drawn hotel omnibuses waiting on the road just off the steamboat landing. Marsh stared at them curiously for a moment, pulling at his whiskers, then went on up to the pilot house.

The pilot was having a slice of pie and a cup of coffee. “Mister Kitch,” Marsh told him, “don’t take her out until I tell you so.”

“Why’s that, Cap’n? She’s almost loaded, and the steam’s up.”

“Look out there,” Marsh said, lifting his stick. “Them omnibuses are bringing passengers to the landing, or waiting for ’em to arrive. Not our passengers, neither, and they don’t meet every little stern-wheeler that puts in. I got myself a hunch.”

A few moments later, his hunch was rewarded. Spewing steam and smoke and sparkling down the Ohio fast as the devil, a long classy side-wheeler came into sight. Marsh recognized her almost at once, even before he could read her name; the Southerner, of the Cincinnati amp; Louisville Packet Company. “I knew it!” he said. “She must have left Louisville a half-day after we did. She made better time, though.” He moved to the side window, brushed aside the fancy curtains that were shutting out the hot afternoon sun, and watched the other steamer pull in, tie up, and begin to discharge passengers. “She won’t take long,” Marsh said to his pilot. “No freight to load or unload, just passengers. You let her pull out first, you understand? Let her get down the river a bit, then you back out and go after her.”

The pilot finished his last forkful of pie and wiped a bit of meringue from the corner of his mouth with his napkin. “You want me to let the Southerner get ahead of us and then try to catch her? Cap’n, we’ll be breathin’ her steam all the way to Cairo. After that she’ll be out of sight.”

Abner Marsh clouded up like a thunderhead about to break. “What do you think you’re sayin’, Mister Kitch? I don’t want to lissen to no talk like that. If you ain’t pilot enough to do it, just say so, and I’ll kick Mister Daly out of bed and get him on up here to take the wheel.”

“That’s the Southerner, ”Kitch insisted.

“And this is the Fevre Dream, and don’t you forget it!” Marsh shouted. He turned and stormed from the cabin, scowling. Damn pilots all thought they were kings of the river. Of course they were, once the boat was on the river, but that didn’t give them no cause to go bellyaching about a little race and doubting his steamer.

His fury faded when he saw that the Southerner was taking on passengers already. He had been hoping for something like this from the minute he spied the Southerner over across the river back in Louisville, but he hadn’t dared hope too hard. If Fevre Dream could catch the Southerner, her reputation was halfway made, once folks along the river heard about it. The other steamer, and her sister boat the Northerner, were the pride of their line. They were special boats, built back in ’53 especially for speed. Smaller than the Fevre Dream, they were the only steamers Marsh knew of that didn’t carry freight, only passengers. He couldn’t see for a minute how they turned a profit, but that wasn’t important. What was important was how fast they were. The Northerner had set a new record for the Louisville-St. Louis run back in ’54. The Southerner broke it the following year, and still had the fastest time; one day and nineteen hours even. High up on her pilot house, she wore the gilded antlers that marked her as the fleetest steamer on the Ohio.

The more he considered the prospect of taking her on, the more excited Abner Marsh grew. All of a sudden it occurred to him that this was not something Joshua would care to miss, beauty sleep or no. Marsh stomped forward to York’s cabin, determined to roust him out. He rapped sharply on the door with the head of his walking stick.

No answer. Marsh rapped again, louder and more insistently. “Hallo in there!” he boomed. “Get yourself out of bed, Joshua, we’re goin’ to run us a race!”

Still no sound came from within York’s cabin. Marsh tried the door and found it locked. He rattled it, pounded on the walls, knocked on the shuttered window, shouted; all to no avail. “Damn you, York,” he said, “get yourself up or you’re goin’ to miss it.” Then he had an idea. He walked back near the pilot house. “Mister Kitch, sir,” he shouted up. Abner Marsh could shout with the best of them when he put his lungs into it good. Kitch popped his head out the door and looked down at him. “You blow that whistle,” Marsh told him, “and keep blowing it till I wave at you, you hear?”