Fevre Dream Page 0,16

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 & 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, well 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