[Mark Twain Mysteries 01] - Death on the Mississippi

by Peter J. Heck

  “Nothing I couldn’t cure by changing clothes, Captain. Your boy took them to be cleaned and ironed for me, so I’m sure they’ll be as good as new.”

  “Good, good. Can I offer you a little something to get the blood flowing again? You’ll pardon me if I don’t join you, as I’ve got a full day of work ahead of me. But I can have anything you’d like brought up from the bar.”

  “Thank you, sir, a cup of hot tea would go nicely. I think it’s a bit early for anything stronger.”

  The captain nodded. “That’s easy enough to do—in fact, I will join you in that. Sam, what can I get for you?” Mr. Clemens ordered coffee, and the texas tender—the same servant who had brought me my clean clothes—was dispatched to fetch our drinks.

  Captain Fowler motioned us to a pair of comfortable-looking, albeit well broken in, chairs. Mr. Clemens and I had hardly settled ourselves into them when we heard the sound of raised voices, followed by a loud knock on the forward door of the cabin. “What on earth . . . ,” the captain began, but before he could finish, the door burst open and Slippery Ed McPhee marched in, followed by a visibly agitated Chief Clerk Snipes.

  “I’m sorry, Cap’n—” said Snipes, but McPhee cut him off.

  “Cap’n Mike, I want to know why this damn backstabbing ingrate of a clerk thinks he can throw paying customers off the boat without a chance to say a word for theirself. I paid for my ticket in cash money, and I got as much right to ride as the next man. ’Sides, it wasn’t any of my doing that Billy and Al pushed that young feller in the drink. Sam, I’m glad to see you and your boy here—maybe the bunch of us can settle this without no more nonsense from the likes of this dressed-up monkey.”

  The captain stood up to his full height and stared McPhee directly in the eye. “Ed McPhee, I’ll ask you to be more respectful of Mr. Snipes, if you want any consideration from me. You might think about apologizing to Mr. Cabot here, while you’re at it—it was your two roughnecks threw him overboard, and they didn’t give him no kind of show.”

  “Hold on, now, Cap’n Mike, it weren’t nothing to get upset about—nothing but high spirits,” said McPhee, only a little chastened. “Those boys may horse around sometimes, but it’s all in good nature. You used to be a hell-raiser yourself, Sam; you can understand what I mean. I sure hope your Mr. Cabot didn’t take it wrong.”

  “Mr. McPhee, they gave me very little choice what way to take it,” I said, not at all satisfied with the fellow’s notion of an apology.

  “Ed, that won’t wash,” said Mr. Clemens with a serious expression. “I’ve been in my share of trouble, and so has Mike Fowler, and I suspect even Cabot here has raised a little hell when he didn’t think anybody was looking. But it sounds to me as if your boys came looking for trouble, and went after the first easy target they spotted, a fellow who was minding his own business—which just happened to be my business, too. That doesn’t fall under my idea of good fun and good nature.”

  “That’s right, Cap’n,” chimed in Chief Snipes. “I was right there, and saw it all. This young gentleman didn’t say one cross word; he was looking to walk away, and that big fellow went and pushed him straight overboard. Cap’n, we’ve got a boatful of high-class folks, some of ’em all the way from New York and Boston. Those Throckmortons would be like boar hogs in a lady’s parlor. It’d be just like ’em to go pouring drinks down ladies’ dresses, or knocking gentlemen’s hats off for a lark. We’d never get another fancy trip like this, once the quality went back east and told what kind of tomfoolery went on.”

  The captain took his hat off and mopped his bald head with a bright red handkerchief, a troubled look on his face. “Mr. Snipes has a point, Ed,” he finally said. “This trip may be my last good chance to keep my boat running. It’s too important to let it get ruined by a couple of backwoods rowdies who think it’s fun to aggravate their betters. I may not know a whole lot about what the genteel folks from back east like, but I’m pretty sure that throwing innocent folks overboard ain’t to their taste—or mine, neither, Ed McPhee.”

  “I can see I’m outnumbered,” said McPhee. “I bought a ticket on this cruise in good faith, thinking I was dealing with honorable men, or old friends at the very least, instead of a reneging chief clerk who takes a man’s money and then turns him away. All I wanted was to take one last steamboat ride before my time is up. But I’m not just traveling for pleasure, gentlemen. As it happens, I’m bound for Baton Rouge, to visit my ailing mother—she wrote a letter begging to see her boy one last time, and I could tell from her handwriting that it would be the last time.”

  “If you’re in such a hurry to see her, why not take the train?” asked the captain.

  “Because I love this river, Mike—you know how it gets in your blood. When I heard you was going to be running this trip, and that good old Sam was going to be on board to lecture, I thought it would be a fine chance to travel with some of the old-timers again—share a few laughs, yes, and shed a tear as well, thinking of them what’s gone on ahead of us to their reward. It won’t be long before we join them, gentlemen.”

  “The sooner the better, you rascal,” growled Mr. Clemens.

  McPhee looked at my employer with a hurt expression on his face. “Why, Sam, what’s the matter? I’d almost think you didn’t want me on this trip.”

  “Slippery Ed McPhee, it’d be a damn sight easier to put up with you if you weren’t trying to sell me this sanctimonious hogwash. I’ll grant that even you must have had a mother. I’ll even grant, for the sake of argument, that she might still be alive and ailing, and—far-fetched as the idea is—that she might want your face to be the last thing she saw before she died. But the notion of you shedding a tear over anything other than lost money gives new meaning to the word ‘incredible.’ Maybe you could sell that story to some half-wit who didn’t know you from thirty years back, but I wouldn’t buy it if you printed it on dollar bills and offered them for a nickel a handful.”

  Captain Fowler cleared his throat. “Easy now, Sam. Let’s try not to let old feelings get in the way of common sense. Mr. Snipes, will you please start from the beginning and tell me what’s happened and what you’ve done about it?”

  “Well, like I said, Cap’n, I seen those two Throckmorton boys push young Mr. Cabot off the dock, and so the railroad porter and me went and fished him out. Meanwhile, this other passenger, Major Demayne, waled on those ruffians like a teamster with his stick—it did my heart good to see it, Cap’n.”

  “I wish I’d been there to see it,” said Mr. Clemens, before the captain silenced him with a look and motioned for Mr. Snipes to continue.

  “Well, I sent Mr. Cabot on board to his cabin to dry off, and had the porter load his luggage, and tried to get back to my business. Next thing I know, Slippery Ed comes stomping over to me and wants to know how come I let one of my passengers beat up on his boys. Well, that was one too many for me. I told him I’d see him and his boys in the hottest corner of Hell before I ever let ’em set foot on the Horace Greeley. And that’s when he came storming up here and started with you.”

  “Where was McPhee when the ruckus started?” asked the captain.

  “Well, I can’t rightly say,” said Snipes. “I didn’t see him until afterwards, when he started ragging me about his boys.”

  “Mr. Cabot, did you see Mr. McPhee before the trouble started?”

  After a moment’s reflection, I said, “No, sir. I didn’t see him until just now, when he came into your cabin.”

  “What about you, Sam? Did you see any of this?”

  “I was still at the train station, trying to make a telephone call. I didn’t know anything about it until I got down to the dock and Charlie Snipes told me what had happened. But damn it all, Mike, what difference does it make? If Slippery Ed brought a dog on board, and it bit one of your passengers, would you care whether McPhee was there when it happened?”

  “The passenger might not see much difference, Sam, but I would. That’s my job. It makes a differen
ce whether the owner sicced it on ’em, or whether they was poking at it and pulling on its tail, or whether it just went hunting for somebody convenient to bite, and took a nip without so much as barking at ’em. What about it, Mr. Snipes? Did those Throckmorton boys start things on their own, or did Mr. Cabot do anything to get ’em mad?”

  “It was all their doing, Cap’n. Mr. Cabot would have walked away from it, if they’d given him the chance. I didn’t hear him say one word you couldn’t say in Sunday school.”

  “They told me he sassed them,” said McPhee vehemently. “I don’t have nothing against the boy, but it ain’t natural for a man to hold still when somebody makes fun of him—I don’t care how pretty he talks and dresses. I’ll vouch for Al and Billy; they may be a little rough, but they’re not mean. We paid our way, and we’ve got a right to ride. I’ll promise you they won’t bother nobody else, Mike. You know me—I wouldn’t tell you something and then not do it.”

  Captain Fowler looked from McPhee to Snipes and back again, frowning. Finally, he shook his head and gave his verdict. “Ed, I’ve got to stick by Mr. Snipes’s story. He’s my chief clerk, and he’s got no axe to grind that I can tell. Those two Throckmorton boys are trouble if I ever saw it, and the last thing I want on this trip is that kind of trouble. I want them off my boat. Mr. Snipes, you’ll give them full refunds for their tickets; if they’ve got any luggage on board, give them twenty minutes to unload it. After that, there’ll be the devil to pay if I spot either one of them on board the Horace Greeley anywhere between here and New Orleans.

  “But nobody’s ever going to say Mike Fowler didn’t treat them fair and square, Ed, and I don’t see how you had any part in this scuffle today. If you want to stay on board, it’s all the same with me. I’ve got no grudges against you, which is saying something, considering how long we’ve known each other.”

  “Damn it, Mike, those boys were supposed to help me take care of some important business downriver. How the hell are we going to get things done if I’m on board and they’re on shore?”

  Captain Fowler looked at McPhee with a disinterested expression. “There’s other riverboats, Ed. There’s trains the whole way down the river—they’re cheaper than this cruise, and faster. There’s horses for sale, and rafts, and rowboats, and canoes. For all I care, they can walk to New Orleans. But if those no-good Throckmorton boys set foot on the deck of my boat, I’ll make them wish they’d been tarred and feathered. And that’s the last I want to hear about it.”

  McPhee opened his mouth, thought better of it, and turned and left the cabin, nearly colliding with the texas tender, who had arrived with our drinks. “Give him back his money, if he wants it,” said the captain to Mr. Snipes. “And if those durn Throckmortons are still on the boat in twenty minutes’ time, throw ’em off—get the whole crew to do it, if you have to.”

  Snipes nodded, a thin-lipped smile on his face. “After this nonsense here, it’ll be a pure pleasure, Cap’n. I’ll see to it directly.”

  “The river’s all changed, Sam,” said Captain Fowler. After McPhee and the chief clerk had left, we’d settled back to enjoy our hot drinks, and the conversation had turned to more pleasant subjects—if not without a tinge of melancholy.

  “I know it well,” said Mr. Clemens. “I saw it happening back in ’82. I’d have bet you ten dollars that nobody’d ever make a steamboat man wear a uniform, but look at you, Mike—you could pass for regular navy. And there’s not a tenth of the traffic there was in my day. I’m surprised—and more than surprised, I’m really pleased—to see you making a go of it.”

  The captain smiled. “No more pleased than I am, Sam. I can’t say it’s been easy. The times when everybody and his brother was riding the boats—and bringing along their dogs and horses, too—those times aren’t never coming back. The little fellows got hurt the worst. The railroads took most of their business, and the big steamboat companies took some more, and the towboats took the rest. An independent owner like me can’t hardly get enough traffic to pay for firing up the boilers, and I can’t see how it’s ever going to get any better. I’ve spent my whole life running a steamboat, and it’s made me sick to see the business dying.

  “I figured out a while ago that the only way to fight the railroads is to draw a crowd that ain’t in a hurry to get someplace, and give ’em something they can’t get on the trains. So when that Henry Rogers came along offering me more money than I’ve seen in ten years to take you downriver on a literary excursion, with loads of history and culture and other such things to cater to the eastern crowd, that was like manna from heaven. If I can make a go of this, I may still have a chance to finish out my days on the river.”

  “I’d like to see that, Mike. There was a time that was all I ever wanted—until I found out that writing was even better than working. Still, there’s a lot to be said for sitting on the deck of a boat and watching the riverbank go by. You’ve got the old boat looking good, too.”

  “Thank you, Sam. She never was all that fancy, and it’d been too long since she had a fresh coat of paint. I’ve hauled some mighty strange cargoes over the years, trying to make ends meet—everything from lumber to livestock—and she got beat up pretty bad. But your Mr. Rogers made sure I had enough money to spruce her up so’s the rich folks wouldn’t turn up their noses at her. I sure hope this trip pays back all he put into it.”

  “I’ll do my damnedest to make it a success,” said Mr. Clemens. “I owe it to Henry Rogers, I owe it to you—and most of all I owe it to my dear Livy and the girls. How I wish I could be with them! But I have a job to do here on the river first, and you can be sure I’ll put my whole heart into it.”

  “I never knew you to do any other way,” said Captain Fowler. “Between the two of us, we’ll get this old boat down to New Orleans in one piece, and swagger up Canal Street to Monkey Wrench Corner, just like old times.”

  Mr. Clemens gave a hearty laugh. “That’s the grandest plan I’ve heard all year, Mike. And we’ll cap it off with the best meal in the French Quarter, and show them what a pair of old boys off the river can still do.”

  9

  Our meeting with Captain Fowler at an end, Mr. Clemens decided to take me (with the captain’s permission) on an impromptu tour of the Horace Greeley. We began by climbing up to the pilothouse, set high atop the texas.

  Somewhat to my surprise, the pilothouse was empty. Mr. Clemens pushed open the door and looked around. “I didn’t think there’d be anybody here. The pilot’s probably still on shore somewhere; in my day, we didn’t use to board until just before casting off. Nothing really to do until then.”

  “That’s too bad,” I said. “We’ll have to come back when the pilot’s on duty.”

  “Oh, we will,” said Mr. Clemens. “I hope to spend as much time as possible up here once we’re under weigh. But now’s a perfect chance for me to size things up without somebody taking the notion that I’m snooping around on his territory. Some pilots can get mighty touchy, and that’s even more likely when the person snooping around is an old-time pilot. So here’s my opportunity to poke around without raising any hackles.”

  I looked at the unfamiliar array of equipment. There was a brass-bound wheel, in a blond wood I thought might be oak; an array of cords with bright brass handles hanging from the ceiling; an odd-shaped wooden tube, tapered like the bell of some musical instrument, rising from the floor; and various other levers and pulleys connected to I knew not what. “Do you know what all these things are?”

  “Most of them. The important equipment’s pretty much the same as when I was a pilot,” he said. “The wheel does what you’d expect it to; this tube lets the pilot talk directly to the engine room—actually, I saw that for the first time on my last trip downriver, when I was finishing that Mississippi book. This pull-rope stops the engines, this one calls the captain, and this one blows the whistle”—he pointed in one direction, then the other—“this one tells the crew to set the alligator nets, and this one summons the bart
ender when the pilot’s thirsty.”

  “Alligator nets? Are we really likely to encounter alligators?”

  “Not so much in the upper river these days,” he said, with a curious expression. “But we’re going all the way to New Orleans, so Captain Fowler had them put on special, right after I told Henry Rogers this was the boat he should charter. Down below Vicksburg, the alligators get so thick that you can hardly get through sometimes. They used to try to dredge them out, but it just didn’t work. So when the pilot spots an alligator reef—and it takes a good pilot to spot one from any distance—he signals the crew, and they raise the nets so the alligators can’t come on deck. Just as well—a couple of hungry alligators can carry off a passenger before you can say ‘boo.’ Of course, they don’t often get as high up as the texas—they aren’t built for climbing. That’s why the captain’s cabin is always up there.”

  “My goodness, I never heard of such a thing. Is it very dangerous?” I had seen stuffed alligators and crocodiles in the Yale museum, and did not fancy having those long jaws clamped on my leg.

  “Not if you’ve got an experienced pilot and good strong nets. The most danger is right at dusk, when the pilot might not see the gators in time to set the nets. But I’m sure Mike Fowler has hired somebody who knows that part of the river. It wouldn’t do to run with the nets up all night long—if the gators see they’ve got you worried, they’ll follow you, and jump on board when you least expect it. You’ve got to put on a brave face to keep the alligators at bay.”

  “Well, I certainly hope we don’t meet with any,” I said. The talk of alligators reminded me of my recent run-in with one of their namesakes. “Speaking of dangerous creatures, I was certainly pleased when the captain acted so decisively to eject the Throckmorton brothers. Those two would have made the trip far less pleasurable.”