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to Framm's river yarns, sharing private talks with Simon or Jean Ardant; each night a thousand Joshua Yorks walked the Fevre Dream's carpeted deck, each as alive and grand as all the others. His friends cast reflections too.

That ought to have been enough, but Marsh's slow, suspicious mind was still disquieted. It wasn't until Donaldsonville that he hit on a plan to stop his fretting. He went into town with a canteen, and filled it up with holy water from a Papist church near to the river. Then he took aside the boy who waited their end of the table, and gave him fifty cents. "You fill Cap'n York's water glass from this tonight, you hear?" Marsh told him. "I'm playin' him a joke."

During supper the waiter kept looking at York expectantly, waiting for the joke to get funny. He was disappointed. Joshua drank down the holy water easy as you please. "Well, damn," Marsh muttered to himself afterwards. "That sure ought to settle it."

But it didn't, and that night Ahner Marsh excused himself from the grand saloon to do some thinking. He'd been sitting up on the texas porch for a couple of hours, alone, his chair leaned hack and his feet up on the railing, when he heard the rustle of skirts on the stairway.

Valerie drifted over and stood close beside him, smiling down. "Good evening, Captain Marsh," she said.

Abner Marsh's chair thumped back to the deck as he pulled his boots off the rail, scowling. "Passengers ain't supposed to be up on the texas," he said, trying to hide his annoyance.

"It was so warm down below. I thought it might be cooler up here."

"Well, that's true," Marsh replied uncertainly. He didn't know quite what to say next. The truth was, women had always made him feel uncomfortable. They had no place in a steamboatman's world, and Marsh had never quite known how to deal with them. Beautiful women made him even more ill at ease, and Valerie was as disconcerting as any fancy New Orleans matron.

She stood with one slender hand curled lightly around a carved post, looking off over the water toward Donaldsonville. "We'll reach New Orleans tomorrow, won't we?" she asked.

Marsh stood up, figuring it probably wasn't polite to be sitting down with Valerie standing. "Yes, ma'am," he said. "We ain't but a few hours upriver, and I mean to steam in sparklin', so it won't take hardly no time at all."

"I see." She turned suddenly, and her pale, shapely face was very serious as she fixed him with her huge purple eyes. "Joshua says you are the true master of the Fevre Dream. In some curious way, he has much respect for you. He will listen to you."

"We're partners," Marsh said.

"If your partner were in danger, would you come to his aid?"

Abner Marsh scowled, thinking of the vampire stories Joshua had told him, conscious of how pale and beautiful Valerie looked in the starlight, how deep her eyes were. "Joshua knows he can come to me if he's got trouble," Marsh said. "A man who wouldn't help his partner ain't no kind of a man at all."

"Words," Valerie said scornfully, tossing back her thick black hair. The wind was in it, and it moved about her face as she spoke. "Joshua York is a great man, a strong man. A king. He deserves a better partner than you, Captain Marsh."

Abner Marsh felt the blood rushing to his face. "What the hell you talkin' about?" he demanded.

She smiled slyly. "You broke into his cabin," she said.

Marsh was suddenly furious. "He told you that?" he said. "Goddamn him anyhow, we had it out over that. It ain't none of your nevermind, neither."

"It is," she said. "Joshua is in great danger. He is bold, reckless. He must have help. I want to help him, but you, Captain Marsh, you only give him words."

"I don't have one goddamned idea what you're talkin' about, woman," Marsh said. "What kind of help does Joshua need? I offered to help him with these damned vam-with some troubles he got, but he didn't want to hear none of it."

Valerie's face softened suddenly. "Would you really help him?" she asked.

"He's my goddamned partner."

"Then turn your steamer, Captain Marsh. Take us away from here, take us to Natchez, to St. Louis, I don't care. But not to New Orleans. We must not go to New Orleans tomorrow."

Abner Marsh snorted. "Why the hell not?" he demanded. When Valerie looked away instead of answering, he went