to hand or smoking their cob pipes. Lights still burned in the cabin windows of a dozen or more boats. The Missouri packet Wyandotte was lit and building steam. They spied a man standing high up on the texas deck of one big side-wheel packet, looking down at them curiously. Abner Marsh led York past him, past the procession of darkened, silent steamers, their tall chimneys etched against the stars like a row of blackened trees with strange flowers on their tops.
Finally he stopped before a great ornate side-wheeler, freight piled high on her main deck, her stage raised against unwanted intruders as she nuzzled against her weathered old wharfboat Even in the dimness of the half-moon the splendor of her was clear. No steamer on the levee was quite so big and proud.
"Yes?" Joshua York said quietly, respectfully. That might have decided it right there, Marsh thought later-the respect in his voice.
"That's the Eclipse" Marsh said. "See, her name is on the wheel-house, there." He jabbed with his stick. "Can you read it?"
"Quite well. I have excellent night vision. This is a special boat, then?"
"Hell yes, she's special. She's the Eclipse. Every goddamned man and boy on this river knows her. Old now-she was built back in '52, five years ago. But she's still grand. Cost $375,000, so they say, and worth all of it. There ain't never been a bigger, fancier, more for-mid-a-bul boat than this one right here. I've studied her, taken passage on her. I know." Marsh pointed. "She measures 365 feet by 40, and her grand saloon is 330 feet long, and you never seen nothin' like it. Got a gold statue of Henry Clay at one end, and Andy Jackson at the other, the two of 'em glaring at each other the whole damn way. More crystal and silver and colored glass than the Planters' House ever dreamed of, oil paintings, food like you ain't never tasted, and mirrors-such mirrors. And all that's nothin' to her speed.
"Down below on the main deck she carries 15 boilers. Got an 11-foot stroke, I tell you, and there ain't a boat on any river can run with her when Cap'n Sturgeon gets up her steam. She's done eighteen miles an hour upstream, easy. Back in '53, she set the record from New Orleans to Louisville. I know her time by heart. Four days, nine hours, thirty minutes, and she beat the goddamned A. L. Shotwell by fifty minutes, fast as the Shotwell is." Marsh rounded to face York. "I hoped my Lady Liz would take the Eclipse some day, beat her time or race her head to head, but she never could of done it, I know that now. I was just foolin' myself. I didn't have the money it takes to build a boat that can take the Eclipse.
"You give me that money, Mister York, and you've got yourself a partner. There's your answer, sir. You want half of Fevre River Packets, and a partner who runs things quiet and don't ask you no questions 'bout your business? Fine. Then you give me the money to build a steamboat like that."
Joshua York stared at the big side-wheeler, serene and silent in the darkness, floating easily on the water, ready for all challengers. He turned to Abner Marsh with a smile on his lips and a dim flame in his dark eyes. "Done," was all he said. And he extended his hand.
Marsh broke into a crooked, snaggle-toothed grin, wrapped York's slim white hand within his own meaty paw, and squeezed. "Done, then," he said loudly, and he brought all his massive strength to bear, squeezing and crushing, as he always did in business, to test the will and the courage of the men he dealt with. He squeezed until he saw the pain in their eyes.
But York's eyes stayed clear, and his own hand clenched hard around Marsh's with a strength that was surprising. Tighter and tighter it squeezed, and the muscles beneath that pale flesh coiled and corded like springs of iron, and Marsh swallowed hard and tried not to cry out.
York released his hand. "Come," he said, clapping Marsh solidly across the shoulders and staggering him a bit. "We have plans to make."
Chapter Two
New Orleans, May 1857
SOUR Billy Tipton arrived at the French Exchange just after ten, and watched them auction four casks of wine, seven crates of dry goods, and a shipment of furniture before they brought in the slaves. He stood silently,