The man looked at him like he was crazy, and maybe he was.
Abner Marsh took himself down to the main deck, to see what he could do. Cat Grove and the head engineer, Doc Turney, had already taken charge. The deck was awash with heat. The furnace was roaring and crackling, and gouts of flame were licking up and sometimes out every time the firemen tossed in fresh wood. Grove had all his stokers down there, sweating and feeding that red-orange maw, and coating the beech and pine knots with lard before they tossed them in. Grove was carrying a pail of whiskey with a big copper ladle, and he went around to each man in turn, so they could drink with only the briefest of pauses. Sweat ran down his bare chest in a steady stream, and like his stokers, his face was red from the terrible heat. It was hard to see how they could stand it, but the furnace was fed steadily.
Doc Turney was watching the pressure gauges on the boiler. Marsh went over and looked, too. Pressure was creeping higher and higher. The engineer looked at him. “Ain’t had pressure up this high in the four years I been on her,” he shouted. You had to shout to be heard above the sizzle and cough of the furnace, the hiss of the steam, the pounding of the engine. Marsh put out a hand tentatively, pulled it back quickly. The boiler was too hot to touch. “What’ll I do about the safety cock, Cap’n?” asked Turney.
“Knock it back,” Marsh shouted. “We need steam, Mister.”
Turney frowned and did like he was told. Marsh watched the gauge; the needle rose steadily. The steam was practically shrieking through the pipes, but it was having its effect: the engine was shuddering and thumping like it was going to shake itself to pieces, and the wheel was turning, spinning faster than it had done in years, whapwhapwhapwhapwhap, spinning so the spray fanned out behind it and the whole boat vibrated, pushing like it had never pushed before.
The second engineer and the strikers were dancing around the engines, oiling and greasing, keeping the stroke smooth. They looked like little black monkeys drenched in tar. They moved as quick as monkeys too. They had to. It wasn’t easy to grease up moving parts while they were moving, especially at the rate the Reynolds’ old ratchedy engine was moving now.
“FASTER!” Grove roared. “Faster with that lard!” A big red-haired fireman staggered away from the mouth of the furnace, dizzy with the heat. He dropped to his knees, but another stoker took his place at once, and Grove moved to the fallen man and poured a ladle of whiskey over his head. The man looked up, wet and blinking, and opened his mouth, and the mate ladled some more alcohol down his gut. In a minute he was up again, smearing lard on pine knots.
The engineer grimaced and opened the ’scape-pipes, sending scalding-hot steam whistling up into the night and dropping the boiler pressure a mite. Then it began to build again. Solder was running and melting on some of the pipes, but men were standing ready to patch up any that split open. Marsh was soaked with sweat from the damp heat of the steam and the dry wash of the furnace’s fury. Everywhere around him folks were running, shouting, passing wood and lard, feeding the furnace, tending the boiler and the engines. The stroke and the wheel made a terrible noise, the furnace flames drenched them all in shifting red light. It was a sweltering inferno, a hell of noise and activity and smoke and steam and danger. The steamer was shaking and coughing and trembling like a man about to collapse and die. But she moved, and down here there was nothing Abner Marsh could say or do to make her move faster.
He went out onto the forecastle gratefully, away from the awful heat, his jacket and shirt and pants as damp as if he’d just crawled out of the river. The wind moved around him, and Marsh felt wonderfully cold for a moment. Away ahead he saw an island dividing the river, and a light beyond that, on the western bank. They were moving toward it fast. “Damn,” Marsh said. “Must be doing twenty miles an hour. Hell, maybe we’re doing thirty.” He said it loudly, almost shouting it, as if the thunder of his voice would make it true. The Eli Reynolds was an eight-mile-an-hour boat on a good day. Of course, now she had the current behind her.
Marsh thundered up the staircase, through the main cabin, and up onto the hurricane deck to get a look behind them. The tops of the short, stubby chimneys were throwing sparks everywhere and trailing fire, and as he watched steam came boiling up from the ’scape-pipes again as Doc Turney vented just enough to keep the damned boiler from blowing all of them to hell. The deck was unsteady underneath Marsh’s feet, like the skin of something alive. The stern wheel was turning so fast that it was throwing up a goddamn wall of water, like a waterfall upside down.
And behind them came the Fevre Dream, half-dark, smoke and fire from her tall dark stacks rising halfway to the moon. She looked about twenty yards closer than when Marsh had gone downstairs.
Captain Yoerger stepped up beside Marsh. “We can’t outrace her,” he said in his weary gray tones.
“We need more steam! More heat!”
“The paddle can’t turn any faster, Cap’n Marsh. If Doc sneezes at the wrong time, that boiler is goin’ to blow and kill us all. Engine is seven years old, it’s goin’ to shake itself to pieces. The lard is running low, too. When it’s gone we’ll be firing her with just wood. This is an old lady, Cap’n. You got her dancing like it was her wedding night, but she can’t take much more of it.”
“Damn,” Marsh said. He looked back past their paddle. The Fevre Dream came on and on. “Damn,” he repeated. Yoerger was right, he knew. Marsh glanced ahead. They were steaming up on the island. The river, and the main channel, curved away to the east. The western fork was a cutoff, but a minor one. Even at this distance Marsh could see how it narrowed, how the trees leaned over the banks extending their black gnarled figures. He walked back to the pilot house and entered. “Take the cutoff,” he told the pilot.
The pilot glanced back half in shock. On the river, the pilot decided such things. The captain maybe made casual suggestions, but he didn’t give orders. “No, sir,” the pilot replied, less furiously than an older man might have. “Look at the banks, Cap’n Marsh. The river is falling. I know that cutoff, and it ain’t passable this time of year, if I take her in there we’ll be setting on this boat till the spring floods.”
“Maybe that’s so,” Marsh said, “but if we can’t get through, there ain’t no way in hell the Fevre Dream can. She’ll have to go around. We’ll lose her. Right now, losing her is more important than any damn snags or bars we might run into, you hear?”
The pilot frowned. “You got no call to be telling me how to run this river, Cap’n. I got my reputation. I never wrecked no boat yet and I don’t aim to start tonight. We’ll stay on the river.”
Abner Marsh felt himself turning red. He looked back. The Fevre Dream was maybe three hundred feet behind them, and coming up quick. “You damn fool,” Marsh said. “This is the most important race ever been run on this river, and I got a fool for a pilot. They’d have us already if Mister Framm was at her wheel, or if they had a mate who knew how to run her. They’re probably firing her with cottonwood.” He jabbed his stick back at the Fevre Dream. “But look, even slow as she’s goin’, she’ll have us damn soon now, unless we out-pilot her. You hear me? Take that damn cutoff!”
“I could report you to the association,” the pilot said stiffly.
“I could chuck you over the side,” Abner Marsh replied. He moved forward threateningly.
“Send out a yawl, Cap’n,” the pilot suggested. “We’ll take soundings and see how she’s running in there.”
Abner Marsh snorted in disgust. “Out of the goddamn way,” he said, shoving the pilot aside roughly. The man stumbled and fell. Marsh seized the wheel and turned it hard to the starboard, and the Eli Reynolds swung her head in answer. The pilot cussed and fumed. Marsh ignored him and concentrated on steering until the steamer had crossed the island’s high, muddy point, pounding down the crooked western bank. He glanced back over his shoulder just long enough to see the Fevre Dream—a bare two hundred feet behind now—slow and stop and begin to back furiously. When he looked again, a moment later,
she was starting to veer off toward the eastern river bend. Then there was no more time for looking, as the Eli Reynolds hit something, hard, a big log by the sound of it. The impact jarred Marsh’s teeth together so hard he almost bit off his tongue, and he had to hang on the wheel grimly to keep his feet. The pilot, who’d just gotten up, went down again and groaned. The steamboat’s speed sent her climbing over the obstacle, and Marsh saw it briefly; a huge, black, half-submerged tree. A horrible racket ensued, a deafening clattering and thumping, and the boat trembled like some mad giant had gotten hold of her and started to shake, and then there was a violent wrench and the awful sound of wood smashing to splinters as the stern wheel came hammering down on the log.
“Damnation!” the pilot swore, climbing to his feet again. “Give me the wheel!”
“Gladly,” Abner Marsh said, stepping out of the way. The Eli Reynolds had left the dead tree behind and was steaming madly down the shallow cutoff, shuddering as she ploughed through one sand bar after another. Each one slowed her, and the pilot slowed her even more, ringing the engine room bells like a wild man. “Full stop!” he called. “Full stop on the paddle!” The wheel turned a couple last leisurely licks and groaned to a halt, and two long tall plumes of white steam hissed as they came venting up from the ’scape-pipes. The Eli Reynolds lost her head and began to wobble a bit, and the steering wheel spun freely in the pilot’s grip. “We’ve lost the rudder,” he said, as the steamer bit into still another bar.
This one stopped her.
This time Abner Marsh did bite his tongue, as he stumbled forward into the wheel. Someone down below was screaming, he heard as he got back up and spit out a mouthful of blood. It hurt like hell. Fortunately he hadn’t bitten it clean off.
“Damnation!” the pilot said. “Look. Just look.”
Not only had the Eli Reynolds lost her rudder, but half of her paddle wheel as well. It was still attached to the steamer, but it hung crookedly, and half of the wooden buckets were shattered or missing. The boat vented steam once again, groaned, and settled into the mud, listing a bit to starboard.
“I told you we couldn’t run this cutoff,” the pilot said. “I told you. This time of year it’s nothin’ but sand and snags. This ain’t my doing and I won’t have nobody sayin’ it was!”
“Shut your fool mouth,” said Abner Marsh. He was looking back aft, where the river itself was still barely visible through the trees. The river looked empty. Maybe the Fevre Dream had gone on. Maybe. “How long to round that bend?” Marsh asked the pilot.
“Damnation, why the hell do you care? We ain’t goin’ nowhere till spring. You’re goin’ to need a new rudder and a new wheel both, and a good rise to get her off this bar.”
“The bend,” Marsh insisted. “How long around the bend?”
The pilot sputtered. “Thirty minutes, maybe twenty if she’s sparklin’ like she was, but why’s it matter? I tell you—”
Abner Marsh threw open the door of the pilot house and roared for Captain Yoerger. He had to roar three times, and it took a good five minutes before Yoerger put in an appearance. “Sorry, Cap’n,” the old man said, “I was down on the main deck. Irish Tommy and Big Johanssen got scalded pretty bad.” He saw the ruins of the paddle and stopped. “My poor ol’ gal,” he murmured in a crestfallen tone.
“Some pipe bust?” Marsh asked.
“A lot of pipes,” Yoerger admitted, tearing his gaze away from the battered paddle wheel. “Steam all over the place, might have been worse if Doc hadn’t opened the ’scape-pipes quick and kept ’em open. That hit we took tore everything loose.”
Marsh sagged. That was the final blow. Now even if they could winch themselves off the bar, rig up a new rudder, and somehow back clear of the cutoff on half a paddle, moving that damned tree somehow to get past it—none of which would be easy—they also had busted-up steampipes and maybe boiler damage to contend with. He cussed loud and long.
“Cap’n,” said Yoerger, “we won’t be able to hunt ’em down now, like you planned, but least we’re safe. The Fevre Dream will steam round that bend and figure we’re long gone and they’ll go down river after us.”
“No,” said Marsh. “Cap’n, I want you to rig up stretchers for them that’s burned, and start off through the woods.” He pointed with his stick. The riverbank was ten feet away through shallow water. “Get to a town. Got to be one near.”
“Two miles past the foot of this island,” the pilot put in.
Marsh nodded at him. “Good. You take ’em there, then. I want all of you to go, and go quick.” He remembered that glint of gold as Jeffers’s spectacles tumbled off him, that terrible little flash. Not again, Abner Marsh thought, not again on account of him. “Find a doctor to patch them up. You’ll be safe, I reckon. They want me, not you.”
“You aren’t comin’?” asked Yoerger.
“I got my gun,” said Abner Marsh. “And I got myself a feeling. I’m waitin’.”
“Come with us.”
“If I run, they’ll follow. If they get me, you’re safe. That’s how I figure it, anyway.”
“If they don’t come—”
“Then I come trudging after you at first light,” Marsh said. He stamped his walking stick impatiently. “I’m still cap’n here, ain’t I? Quit jawin’ with me, and do like I say. I want all of you off my steamer, you hear?”
“Cap’n Marsh,” Yoerger said, “at least let Cat and me he’p you.”
“No. Git.”
“Cap’n—”
“GO!” shouted Marsh, red-faced. “GO!”
Yoerger blanched and took the startled pilot by the arm and drew him out of the pilot house. When they had hurried down, Abner Marsh glanced back at the river once more—still nothing—and then went downstairs to his cabin. He took the rifle from the wall, checked it and loaded it, and slid the box of custom shells into the pocket of his white coat. Armed, Marsh returned to the hurricane deck, and fixed up his chair where he could keep an eye on the river. If they were smart, Abner Marsh figured, they’d know how low the river stage was. They’d know that maybe the Eli Reynolds could run this cutoff and maybe she couldn’t, but even at best she’d have to steam through slowly, sounding all the way. They’d know, once they came round the bend, that they’d beaten her. And if they knew that, they wouldn’t steam downriver at all. They’d hold the Fevre Dream near the foot of the cutoff, waiting for the Reynolds. And meanwhile, the men—or night folks—that they’d let off near the head of the island would be crawling through the cutoff in a yawl, just in case the Reynolds stopped or got hung up. That was what Abner Marsh would have done, anyway.
The little stretch of river he could see was still empty. He felt a bit chilly, waiting. Any moment now he expected to see the yawl come round that stand of trees, full of silent dark figures with faces pale and smirking in the moonlight. He checked his gun again, and wished Yoerger would hurry.
Yoerger and Grove and the rest of the crew of the Eli Reynolds had been gone fifteen minutes, with still nothing moving on the river.
There were lots of noises in the night. The water gurgling around the wreck of his steamer, the wind rattling the trees together, animals off in the woods. Marsh rose, finger on the trigger of his rifle, and scanned upstream warily. There was nothing to see, nothing but silty river water washing across sandbars, gnarled roots, the fallen black corpse of the tree that had smashed up his steamer’s paddle. He saw driftwood moving, and nothing else. “Maybe they ain’t so smart,” he muttered under his breath.
From the corner of his eye, Marsh glimpsed something pale on the island across the stream. He spun toward it, raising his gun to his shoulder, but there was nothing there, just black dense woods and thick river mud. Twenty yards of shallow water lay between him and the dark, silent island. Abner Marsh was breathing hard. What if they don’t bring the yawl down the cutoff, he thought. What if they land it and come on foot?
The Eli Reynolds creaked beneath him, and Marsh grew more uneasy. Just settling, he
told himself, she’s aground and settling into the sand. But another part of him was whispering, whispering that maybe that creak was a footstep, that maybe they’d stole up on him while he was watching the river. Maybe they were on the boat already. Maybe Damon Julian was coming up the staircase even now, gliding through the main cabin—he knew how quiet Julian could walk—and searching the cabins, moving toward the stair that would lead him up here, up to the hurricane deck.
Marsh turned his chair so he faced the top of the stair, just in case a pale white face should suddenly heave into view. His hands were sweating where they held the rifle, making the stock all slippery. He wiped them on his pants leg.
The sound of soft whispering came drifting up the stairwell.
They were down there, Marsh thought, down there plotting how to get at him. He was trapped up here, alone. Not that being alone mattered. He’d had help before and it hadn’t made no difference to them. Marsh rose and moved to the top of the stair, looking down into darkness streaked by wan moonlight. He gripped the gun hard, blinked, waited for something to show itself. He waited for the longest time, listening to those vague whispers, his heart thumping away like the Reynolds’ old tired engine. They wanted him to hear them, Abner Marsh thought. They wanted him to be afraid. They’d come sneaking up on his steamer like haunts, so fleet and silent he hadn’t seen them, and now they were trying to put the fear on him. “I know you’re down there,” he shouted. “Come on up. I got something for you, Julian.” He hefted the gun.
Silence.
“Damn you,” Marsh yelled.
Something moved at the foot of the stairs, a darting figure, pale and quick. Marsh jerked the gun up to fire, but it was gone before he could even begin to take aim. He swore and took two steps down the stairs, then stopped. This was what they wanted him to do, he thought. They were trying to lure him down there, to the promenade and the darkened cabins and the dim dusty saloon with the moonlight washing through its dirty skylight. Up here on the hurricane deck, he could hold them off. They couldn’t get to him easy up here; he could see them sliding up the stairs, climbing the sides, whatever. But down there, he’d be at their mercy.