George Martin - Fevre Dream

Both boats were going at it hard now, and they were pretty well matched. Abner Marsh figured the Fevre Dream was more powerful but it wasn’t enough. She was heavily laden with freight and running low in the water and in the Southerner ’s wake to boot, so the waves kicked up over her head a bit and slowed her, while the Southerner skipped along easy as you please, with nothing aboard but passengers and nothing ahead but a clear river. Now, barring breakdowns or accidents, it was up to the pilots. Kitch was intent at the wheel, handling her easy, doing his damndest to pick up a few minutes at every chance. Behind him, Daly and the vagabond pilots were babbling away, full of advice on the river and its stage and how best to run it.

For more than an hour the Fevre Dream chased the Southerner, losing sight of her once or twice around bends, but edging closer each time as Kitch shaved it tight coming around. Once they got close enough so Marsh could make out the faces of the passengers leaning on the other boat’s aft railings, but then the Southerner kicked forward again and restored the distance between them. “Bet you they just changed pilots,” Kitch said, spitting a wad of tobacco juice into a nearby cuspidor. “See the way she perked up there?”

“I seen,” Marsh growled. “Now I want to see us perk up a mite too.”

Then they got their break. One moment the Southerner was holding steady in front of them, sweeping around a densely wooded bend. Then all of a sudden her whistle started to hooting, and she slowed, and trembled, and her side wheels started to back.

“Careful,” Daly said to Kitch. Kitch spat again and moved the wheel, carefullike, and the Fevre Dream nosed across the turbulent wake of the Southerner to go wide and starboard of her. When they were halfway round the bend, they saw the cause of the trouble; another big steamer, main deck all but buried beneath bales of tobacco, had run aground on a sandbar. Her mate and crew were out with spars and winches, trying to grasshopper her over. The Southerner had almost run right into ’em.

For a long few minutes the river was chaotic. The men on the bar were all shouting and waving, the Southerner backed like the devil, the Fevre Dream steamed toward clear water. Then the Southerner reversed her wheels again, and her head turned and it looked as though she was trying to cross right in front of the Fevre Dream. “Damn egg-suckin’ idyut,” Kitch said, and he swung the wheel a little more and told Whitey to ease up on the larboard. But he didn’t back, or try to stop her. The two big steamers edged toward each other, closer and closer. Marsh could hear passengers crying out in alarm down below, and there was a second or two when even he thought they were going to collide.

But then the Southerner eased off herself, and her pilot swung her bow downstream again, and the Fevre Dream nosed by her with feet to spare. Someone began to cheer below.

“Keep her goin’,” Marsh muttered, so low that no one could have heard him. The Southerner had her wheels kicking up spray and was hot after them, behind now, but not by much, running a bare boat’s length astern. All the damn passengers on the Fevre Dream rushed aft, of course, and all the crew had to rush forward, so the steamer shook to all the running footsteps.

The Southerner was gaining on them again. She was running to their larboard, parallel and just behind. Her bow came up to the Fevre Dream ’s stern now, and she was creeping up inch by inch. The sides of the two steamers were close enough so that passengers could have jumped from one to the other, if they’d had a mind to, though the Fevre Dream stood taller. “Damn,” said Marsh, when the other boat drew almost abreast of them. “Enough is enough. Kitch, call down and tell Whitey to use my lard.”

The pilot glanced his way, grinning ear to ear. “Lard, cap’n? Oh, I knew you was a sly one!” He barked a command down the speaking tube to the engine room.

The two steamers were running head to head. Marsh’s grip on his stick was all sweat. Down below, probably, the deckhands were arguing with some damn foreigners, who’d gone and perched on those lard barrels and had to be dislodged before the lard could be dragged off to the stokers. Marsh was burning with impatience, hot as his lard would be. Good lard was expensive, but it came in handy on a steamer. The cook could use it, and it burned damned hot, and that was what they needed now, a good hot head of high-pressure steam they couldn’t get from wood alone.

When the lard got chucked in, there was no doubt in the pilot house. Long high columns of white steam came a-hissing up out of the ’scape-pipes, and smoke rolled from the high chimneys, and the Fevre Dream snorted fire and shook just a mite, and then she was sparkling, chunkachunkachunka fast as a train wheel, the stroke pounding the deck. She went flying right on out ahead of the Southerner, and when she was safely clear of her Kitch eased her right in front of the other steamer’s bow, leaving them to ride her waves. All those worthless berthless pilots were chuckling and passing around smokes and yapping about what a heller of a boat this Fevre Dream was, while the Southerner receded behind them and Abner Marsh grinned like a fool.

They were a full ten minutes ahead of the Southerner when they put into Cairo, where the broad Ohio’s clear waters merged with the muddy Mississippi. By then Abner Marsh had almost forgot about that little incident with Joshua York.

Julian Plantation, Louisiana, July 1857

Sour Billy Tipton was out front, chucking his knife at the big dead tree that fronted the gravel path, when the riders approached. It was morning but already hot as hell, and Sour Billy was working himself up a good sweat and thinking of going down for a swim when he finished up his knife-throwing. Then he saw the riders emerge from the woods where the old road crooked around. He went over to the dead tree and pulled loose his knife and slid it back into its sheath behind his back, all thoughts of swimming forgotten.

The riders came on real slow, but bold as brass, riding straight up in broad daylight like they belonged here. They couldn’t be from these parts, Sour Billy figured; what neighbors they had all knew that Damon Julian didn’t like no one coming onto his land without his leave. When they were still too far away to make out good, he wondered if maybe they weren’t some of Montreuil’s Creole friends come to make trouble. If so, they were going to regret it.

Then he saw why they were riding so slow, and Sour Billy relaxed. Two niggers in chains were stumbling along behind the two men on horseback. He crossed his arms and leaned against the tree, waiting for them to reach him.

Sure enough, they reined up. One of the men on horseback looked at the house, with its peeling paint and half-rotted front steps, spat out a wad of tobacco juice, and turned to Sour Billy. “This the Julian plantation?” he said. He was a big red-faced man with a wart on his nose, dressed in smelly leathers and a slouchy felt hat.

“Sure is,” Sour Billy replied. But he was looking past the horseman and his companion, a lean pink-cheeked youth who was probably the other’s son. He went walking over to the two haggard-looking niggers, downcast and miserable in their chains, and Sour Billy smiled. “Why,” he said, “if it ain’t Lily and Sam. Never thought you two be dropping by again. Must be two years since you went and run off. Mister Julian will be real pleased to know that you come back.”

Sam, a big powerful-looking buck, raised his head and stared at Sour Billy, but there was no defiance in his eyes. Only fear. “We come on ’em up to Arkansas, my boy and me,” the red-faced man said. “Tried to claim they was free niggers, but they didn’t fool me for a minute, no sir.”