Wes realized he was being put in what would possibly be the safest place in the pilot house if shooting erupted, but he accepted that was the way it needed to be. Aaron was far more experienced in this sort of situation.
Aaron pointed to a lantern hanging from a hook in a corner of the pilot house. Despite the already dim light it cast, he said to the pilot, ‘I’m going to turn that down as much as possible. It will help keep us hidden.’
By the time dawn was bringing a faint rose-coloured light to the eastern horizon, Wes had developed cramp in his right leg, the result of crouching for so long in his hiding-place. He was about to say something to Aaron when he heard the scraping of feet on the ladder that led to the pilot-house from the deck outside.
His discomfiture forgotten immediately, Wes drew back the hammer on his Colt, the action sounding excessively loud in the confines of the pilot-house and he felt that his heart rate must have doubled.
It seemed an age before the pilot house door was thrown open and two of the men Wes had seen with Ira burst in. Both had guns in their hands and the first man pointed his gun at the pilot and said, calmly, ‘Don’t mind us, mister. Just carry on with what you’re paid to do and you’ll live to tell your grandchildren how you were pilot of the Missouri Belle when she was taken over by river pirates.’
The pilot had gone rigid with fear when the two men broke into the pilot house. Now, in a strangled voice, he asked, ‘What’s happening? What are you going to do?’
‘That needn’t trouble you. Just carry on and do what you always do. Take the boat in to the plantation landing up ahead and berth your boat nose in, no matter what you see there.’
‘Then what?’ the pilot asked, nervously.
‘That needn’t concern you,’ the river pirate, said, ‘Do as you’re told and in a couple of hours time you’ll be taking your boat upriver again, light of a little money – and perhaps a couple of casino girls, but otherwise nothing will have changed …’
‘… I don’t think so, friend. Drop that gun right where you stand. Just so much as a twitch and you’re dead!’
At Aaron’s words the man who had been talking to the pilot looked startled, but for a moment it seemed he might ignore the Marshal’s command.
Aaron was a split moment away from shooting him when, from the other side of the pilot-house, Wes said, ‘You heard him. Drop your guns – both of you – or you’re dead.’
The realization that two men had guns trained on them was enough. Two handguns dropped to the deck at almost the same moment.’
‘Now why did you have to say that, Wes?’ Aaron sounded disappointed, ‘I’d have preferred two dead river pirates, but I guess this will have to do.’
Emerging from his hiding-place, Aaron spoke to the two river pirates, ‘Both of you put your hands in the air and move closer together – over there, by the window.’
As both men shuffled across the pilot-house to follow Aaron’s orders, Wes scrambled from his hiding place beneath the table, wondering what the marshal intended to do. He was not kept in suspense for long.
Aaron walked up behind the two men and without warning raised his handgun and brought it crashing down on the side of one of the river pirate’s head. Before the man had hit the deck his companion had been dealt with in a similar fashion.
‘Do you have some rope in here?’ Aaron addressed the pilot.
‘Yes, sir,’ the nervous pilot spoke in respectful awe, ‘You’ll find some in the locker right by where you were hiding. If you need a knife, there’s one on the shelf just here.’
As Aaron moved off towards the locker, the pilot added, admiringly, ‘Jesus, mister! They never knew what hit ’em.’
Ignoring the pilot, Aaron located the rope and pulled it from the locker, saying to Wes, ‘You tie one and I’ll deal with the other. Stuff a gag in his mouth, too. We don’t want either of ’em shouting out to warn the others.’
Under instruction from Aaron, Wes bound and gagged his man, putting his arms behind his back, bending his knees and securing wrists to ankles. By the time he had done, Wes’s prisoner was conscious, but there had been no movement from the man Aaron had bound.
It was fully light outside now and the pilot asked, nervously, ‘The landing’s about a mile ahead, what do you want me to do?’
‘No more than you would normally,’ Aaron replied, ‘Go in bow first – but take it nice and easy. Ira’s men will have taken the captain prisoner and they’ll make him give the order to lower the gangplank. Keep the boat far enough offshore so that the gangplank is the only way they can board the Missouri Belle. It’s long and it’s narrow. Once they’re on it there’s nowhere for them to go. We just don’t want them jumping on board anywhere else.’
‘I can see something that might just throw your plans offline,’ Wes said, at the same time pointing to where a boat lay off the river bank with half-a-dozen men on board, making a pretence of fishing.
‘Oh hell!’ Aaron ejaculated, ‘I was hoping they’d have all their men onshore. Those in that boat have only to bump against the side of the Missouri Belle and they can step on board and be behind our own men. You and me will have to deal with them, Wes, using rifles.’
Wes nodded his acceptance of the situation. Sensing his uncertainty, Aaron said, ‘I know you’ve never had to kill a man, Wes, but detach yourself from thinking about it – and do it right now. When things start happening men are going to die. If we don’t make sure it’s them, it will be us – that means you, me, and the men with Schuster. I won’t go into what will happen to Lola and the women and girls on board. Keep what I’ve said firmly in mind. When the time comes, don’t think about anything – just shoot! More men have died from thinking than from recklessness or stupidity.’
‘I’ll be all right.’
Wes spoke with far more confidence than he was feeling, but he knew that Aaron was speaking from experience. He would try not to let the US Marshal down.
The ‘fishermen’ in the small boat made no move until the riverboat began nosing in to the bank and the stage plank was being lowered – then it seemed to Wes that everything happened at once.
As the end of the narrow gangway landed heavily on the river bank an alarming number of armed men broke from the cover of the nearby trees and ran towards the steamboat. At the same time the men on board the fishing boat threw their rods into the Mississippi River and rowed in excited disorder towards the Missouri Belle, making for a spot just forward of the paddle-wheel, where the vessel was lowest in the water.
As they drew closer, some of the occupants exchanged their oars for rifles and began firing indiscriminately at anyone they saw moving on board the riverboat.
Aaron had left the pilot house and was kneeling by the guard rail, overlooking the river. As the first ‘fisherman’ set foot on the Missouri Belle, he was knocked backwards by a shot fired from Aaron’s rifle – and so too was a second of the river pirates.
Meanwhile, as Wes was leaving the pilot-house, one of the men in the small boat fired a shot which smashed a window close to his head.
No longer wrestling with his conscience about shooting at a fellow man, Wes fired and knocked the pirate out of the boat and into the river. He and Aaron’s shots both hit the fourth man – and the fifth.
The sixth and last river pirate in the boat fired off a last desperate shot which, judging from the shouts which came from the deck below where Wes and Aaron were firing, had hit one of the Missouri Belle’s defenders. With his last shot before needing to re-load, Wes eliminated the threat posed from this particular would-be robber.
By now, firing had erupted from a dozen separate vantage points on board the Missouri Belle. Most came from men who had been briefed by Schuster and were aimed at the pirates attempting to board the riverboat via the stage plank, but their colleagues travelling with Ira Gottland had shown their hand now and a number of small but desperate gun battles were being fought on board the steamboat.
The pirates attempting to board the
Missouri Belle via the stage plank quickly realized they had not only lost the element of surprise, but were walking into a well-planned ambush. With more than half their number already killed or wounded, the survivors turned tail and tried to escape.
Only a very small number were successful. By the time the remaining survivors disappeared among the trees and all shooting had ceased, more than three-quarters of their number had become casualties. The battle was over – and more river pirates had been killed than had surrendered.
Soon, the bodies of the dead pirates were laid out on the main deck with the wounded prisoners seated behind them, watched over by Aaron’s triumphant ‘private army’.
The men defending the Missouri Belle had suffered only a single fatality. Sadly, this was ex-Confederate Captain Harrison Schuster, killed by the very last shot fired from the ‘fishing-boat’ in the brief but furious battle.
Checking the dead, wounded and captured river pirates, Aaron quickly discovered that Ira Gottland was not among their number and when Aaron asked if anyone had seen him, one of the wounded defenders said that after being shot, he had seen Gottland jump from the Missouri Belle into the river.
A passenger who had not been involved in the fighting declared that he had seen a man clinging to the side of the fishing-boat as it drifted away downriver, adding, ‘Might that have been the man you’re looking for?’
‘It almost certainly was,’ Aaron replied, furiously. ‘Damn! I particularly wanted him … the action sharpened my brain and I remembered where I had heard his name. He was in the Union army, but he never held a commission. He was a sergeant and with two privates was charged with raping a Southern girl when they raided a farm looking for food. The papers on the case came to me but he was never charged because his unit was involved in some very heavy fighting and immediately afterwards he deserted. Rumour has it that he then joined the Rebel army.’
‘But wouldn’t he have changed his name, in case he came across someone who had known him then?’ Wes, queried.
‘There is no reason why he should,’ Aaron replied, ‘With all that was going on at the time he wouldn’t have expected the report to have ever reached me. Besides, the war has been over for a long time – and the company he’s keeping now wouldn’t care what he’d done in the past.’
Despite the escape of Gottland and the tragic death of Harrison Schuster, Aaron expressed satisfaction with the outcome of the thwarted raid on the Missouri Belle.
‘It will put the gang out of action for a very long time,’ he said to Wes, ‘In fact, I’ll be very surprised if we are ever troubled by river pirates on the Mississippi again.’
‘I’m sure you’re right,’ Wes agreed, ‘But I’m disappointed that Gottland wasn’t among those accounted for.’
‘That troubles me too, Wes, but don’t take it to heart, I’ll have a wanted notice put out for him – with a large reward. He’ll be picked up, sooner or later.’
‘I hope you’re right, Aaron, but I don’t believe you’ve heard the last of him.’
CHAPTER 6
Later that same day the Missouri Belle berthed at the Mississippi town of Vicksburg. Of great strategic importance during the Civil War, there was still a United States army garrison here and in response to the urgent sounding of the riverboat’s steam whistle and bell it was not long before the commanding officer and a detachment of troops arrived to take charge of Aaron’s prisoners and carry away the bodies of their companions.
When he learned of the desperate fight that had taken place downriver from his headquarters, Colonel Van Kleef, the officer in charge of the garrison, sent off a detail with orders to hunt down any surviving river pirates but, as Aaron told Wes, they would find no one. He had already learned that most of the river pirates had fought as Confederate ‘irregulars’ in the late war.
It was a term that described men who would have been outlaws even in more peaceful times. War had served to hone their skills in the art of evading capture. Heading north and west, they would vanish in the uncharted forests and uplands of neighbouring Arkansas.
When the last of the prisoners had been taken away, Aaron asked Colonel Van Kleef if there was an undertaker in the town who could provide a suitable coffin for the late Captain Schuster.
Startled, the colonel asked, ‘Are you talking of Captain Harrison Schuster, son of old Silas Schuster who was a Kentucky Senator before choosing the wrong side when the war began?’
‘I know very little about Captain Schuster’s background, except that he was a Confederate officer, and that his family were considerable landowners in Kentucky,’ Aaron replied.
‘They still are,’ said the colonel. ‘The old Senator suffered as much as anyone during the war, losing two of his sons, who fought on opposing sides, and all his slaves too, but he’s tough and is pulling things together again. If there’s any justice he’ll be made the next Governor of Kentucky. He’s a good man, despite his wartime affiliations. I’ve met him a couple of times when he’s passed up and down the river and I admire the man. He will be absolutely devastated by the death of yet another son. It leaves him with just one now, although I believe he has a number of daughters.’
‘Harrison Schuster was a good man too,’ Aaron declared. ‘His help was invaluable in wiping out the river pirates.’
‘Then I suggest that a letter from you to President Grant, referring to the part he played would be a practical memorial for such a man,’ Colonel Van Kleef said. ‘Silas Schuster would dearly love to become a political animal once more in Kentucky – and the United States would regain the services of an honest man … a man who is quite the opposite of a Senator who will be accompanying you with his son on the Missouri Belle upriver as far as Memphis. Senator Connolly of Louisiana uses his office for the benefit only of … Senator Connolly. He’s been in Vicksburg visiting his brother, who happens to be my administrative officer.’
As though suddenly aware that he was talking to a man who was likely to have friends in Washington, Colonel Van Kleef reverted to the conversation the two men had been having when he had suddenly launched the verbal attack on the reputation of the Louisiana Senator.
‘… but that’s all by the way. I’ll have the undertaker come along to see you right away. I will also telegraph to the officer in charge of the small garrison at Cairo, upriver at the junction with the Ohio River, to say you have Harrison Schuster’s body on board. That will probably be the best place for you to have it unloaded and the army will arrange for it to be carried to the family home near Mayfield with all due ceremony.’
‘I’m much obliged,’ said Aaron, grasping the other man’s hand, ‘… and I’ll write that letter to the President.’
When the Missouri Belle left Vicksburg behind, the men who had taken part in the fight against the river pirates were treated as heroes – and none more so than Aaron, who shrugged off the adulation.
Replying to Wes, who had commented on Aaron’s popularity after one female passenger had come to their table in the dining saloon with effusive words of praise, Aaron said, ‘If you haven’t learned it already, you’ll come to realize folk are fickle, Wes. Today’s hero is just as likely to be tomorrow’s scapegoat. It’s best to ignore both praise and scorn and be true to the things you believe in. When it comes right down to it, you’re the one who’s got to live with yourself.’
‘That’s the sort of thing my pa would say to me,’ Wes said. ‘He was very much his own man too.’
‘Is he still alive?’ Aaron asked. Apart from Wes’s early disclosure that his father had been a gamekeeper, he had said very little about his family.
Wes shook his head, ‘Neither pa, nor my ma. When she caught pneumonia and died, he went to stay with his sister in a small fishing village just as cholera arrived there. They were both buried with little more than a month between them.’
‘Is that why you left to come to America?’
Wes shrugged, ‘Partly, but it wasn’t the only reason. The mines had fallen on hard times and th
ere was nothing to keep me in Cornwall. A brother of ma’s, who I’d once worked with, and who is my only close relative now, had come out here to a place called Harmony, in Missouri, and written to say there was no shortage of work for a good Cornish miner. I thought I’d give it a try.’
‘There are easier ways to earn a living than burrowing underground like some varmint,’ Aaron said.
Wes laughed, ‘Such as going around looking for men like river pirates and getting shot at? You call that an easy occupation?’
‘I’d say more men are killed underground in the mines than in enforcing the law, Wes.’
‘That’s only because there are a lot more miners than marshals,’ Wes pointed out. ‘A careful miner might live to a good age.’
Aaron shrugged, ‘Only if the men he works with are just as careful. You might say it’s not too different for a lawman – but we won’t argue about it. If ever you change your mind I’ll be happy to take you on as a deputy.’
‘Where will I find you?’ Wes asked, ‘Will you be going back up north now you’ve dealt with the river pirates?’
Aaron shook his head, ‘That was just a sideshow, something I was asked to look at as I was passing this way. I’m on my way to the Territories. There’s a shortage of law out that way, with few local sheriffs or town marshals to get on top of it.’
‘And that’s supposed to be safer than mining?’ Wes said, quizzically. ‘No thanks, Aaron, I’ll stick with what I know best.’
As more and more people drew up chairs to the table and engaged the US Marshal in conversation, Wes made his excuses and left the crowded and noisy saloon. Making his way outside, he paused for a few moments, breathing in the warm but fresher air than that in the smoke-filled room he had just left. Then he headed towards the front of the vessel, where the long wooden gangway that had been the scene of so much bloodshed, stretched out at an angle of forty-five degrees, beyond the blunt bow of the steamboat.
It was dark now but from a wing of the pilot house perched atop the vessel’s superstructure, the beam from a powerful acetylene lantern probed the sluggish and muddy waters as the river pilot expertly negotiated the twists and turns of the mighty waterway artery that carried life and commerce to and from the young heart of America.
No Less Than the Journey Page 4