“See here, charlatan. And don’t think of taking a swipe at me with that fancy stump. I don’t like your kind. Gambling is only allowed when it’s honest and aboveboard.”
With that the steward reached out and seized a wad of the notes that still remained on the table.
“Is that your commission for overseeing the play?” St. Ives jibed.
“That’s the price a cheater pays.”
“He didn’t cheat,” Lloyd piped up behind the man. “I was watching.”
The steward withdrew his finger from St. Ives’s chest and whirled around.
“What are you?” he demanded, noticing the boy for the first time. “His hired monkey? A poker table is no place for young’uns. Get along with you! Or I’ll throw you to the bilge rats, you little shit.”
“I don’t know if the captain would be pleased to know you’re taking that money,” Lloyd returned without moving. “He might want some of it himself.”
A spark of anger and resentment flared across the steward’s face, mingled with a flush of surprise that someone so young could be both so astute and so matter-of-fact. But the boat’s whistle blew just then and some other passengers waltzed by, so that he became flustered and chucked the money back on the table and stomped out.
“Well, Monkey,” St. Ives said, grinning. “What a good team we make, eh? Here. Here’s your share. Rightfully earned and, from the look of you, rather needed.”
St. Ives swiped the notes the steward had returned to the table and stuffed them into the boy’s eager hands.
“If you are the savant you appear to be, who knows what we could achieve?” the gambler mused. “As partners.”
“Equal partners?” Lloyd inquired. “That’s the only kind of partnership I think works.”
“Right you are.” St. Ives smiled. “There’s wisdom in you, too.”
And so their little conspiracy began.
There was a sign in the dining saloon that St. Ives enjoyed. It read, IF YOU NEED TO CARRY LARGE SUMS OF MONEY, WEAR A MONEY BELT. AVOID GAMES OF CHANCE ON RIVERBOATS. Thanks to the gambler, Lloyd made a new friend and had something to look forward to other than reading his uncle’s letter yet again. He also made some much needed money. His parents were glad to have a little privacy, as their intimate life had suffered in recent times, and so let the boy wander the boat at will. Lloyd, meanwhile, was careful to keep the banknotes he accumulated for helping St. Ives hidden from his parents.
The Sitturds’ stateroom was in a sorry state, six feet square with crimson moth-eaten curtains, a narrow slat bed, and a mothball-scented dresser, but it was considerably more luxurious than the bales and boxes the deck passengers were forced to share with animals ranging from horses to chickens, all sheltering among the walls of crates they arranged, and all scrambling for space as cargo and passengers came and went and the manure was scooped.
A blasted and recently repaired boiler (which had scalded a billy goat and one of the crew members) required continuous adjustments and seemed to inhale fuel, so that there were regular and lengthy interruptions to the journey to allow for wooding parties to scour the shoreline. One of the passengers, who volunteered to assist with such an expedition in order to reduce his fare, was stricken with heart failure and had to be buried in a tea chest, while another was bitten by a snake. Then a cow leaped off the deck and tried to swim home to the Illinois side, only to have the bucktoothed lad whose family owned it make the mistake of trying to swim after it. Neither the hefty milk cow nor the overbite boy was seen again.
The fine packet boats operating between St. Paul and New Orleans were famous for their excellent cuisine. This was not one of those. Salt pork, mutton, and boiled potatoes and beans were the usual fare, although wine, stout, porter, and brandy could be found in abundance. Like stage drivers, steamboat captains tried to make the most of the daylight, pulling in toward shore when darkness fell. Dead trees, snags, and sandbars, not to mention smaller craft without illumination, posed a constant threat to travel at night, although most captains would run at reduced steam if the moon or starlight allowed. The crew was a blind barrel mix of Irish, German, blacks, and those St. Ives referred to as “pure muddy.” Fleets of rafts, with their cook shanties puffing out greasy odors of fried fish, could be seen en route to