The journey had seemed long, but if compared to the bruising road travel, the horse-railroad and the boats were luxurious and allowed time and comfort to consider all that was being passed.
Riverbank changes, with isolated cabins transforming almost overnight into named towns, were astonishing enough, but the increasing size of opened fields with growing crops was more amazing.
Two years before, most farms produced barely enough to feed those living on them. Now there were cash crops to be sold at market. Matt suspected the farms along the river could feed Philadelphia—if the produce could be efficiently moved to markets.
That, of course, was what the new canals were doing. Harvested crops and salable goods were loaded onto barges that were towed to the railhead at Columbia. The loads were transferred to the railroad's horse-drawn iron-wheeled wagons that pulled them directly into the heart of the city.
Not much continued downriver to Baltimore, the way it once had. Young Matt could see the canal system as a wise, if expensive, investment by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
A mile to the south of the rivers' junction lay the small villages of Baskinsville and Petersburg. There, too, was his father's new headquarters.
Little Juniata Creek separated the communities with Baskinsville to the north and Petersburg to the south. Both villages were growing, and residents were blending the towns under the Petersburg name.
Water Street in the upper town, which big Matt claimed was too low and too close to the river, appeared to be sprouting buildings.
Front Street, the next road up the hill had become the main thoroughfare, and a higher-on-the- hill third road, although little more than a path, was being called High Street.
A local carter had met Matt's packet boat at the Juniata Ferry and transported him along a barely smoothed road nearly a mile to the beginnings of Petersburg.
The cart driver was a loquacious man, eager to talk, who knew about bare fist fighting. He spoke about it as if certain of his passenger's interest. Matt was not surprised. His summer training with China Smith had always been of interest to local men, and although uninvited, those with time to spare were want to drop by to watch and comment on the training.
Still, his training was just exercise. The Boss's Boy had fought no one, except a few untrained young men who simply wanted to fight—as young men sometimes did.
Matt had flattened his little-skilled opponents without difficulty, but those had not been the formal bouts that the driver preferred discussing.
The carter observed that some real fighters were developing along the rivers, and, in fact, someone like Mickey McFee, the Irish Hurricane who was taking on all comers, was a fist fighter to watch. Klubber Cole, the man said, believed McFee could be a champion.
Matt asked, and the man answered that China Smith had not expressed an opinion on Mickey McFee's potential, but many wished that Smith would come out of retirement and allow them to judge how McFee would handle himself against the once great fighter.
Matt smiled inwardly at that desire. If Mickey McFee could raise enough money, China would give him a bare fisted lesson that would end any speculations that he had big time potential.
Then Matt wondered if the time might be right for him to take up where he and McFee had left off four years before. Maybe he should whip McFee until the so-called professional knew who really was tough and who was not.
Matt judged that was idle imagining. Too many years had passed, and they were not young boys. A fight now would be brutal and damaging. Big Matt would never allow it, and Matt knew his father would be right. He was now part of the company, and fighting with a workman just for the hell of it was not the way to act.
Still? If McFee got too challenging or maybe a bit disrespectful . . . ?
The carter had dropped Matt and his traveling baggage short of the village square, and he had labored uphill to his father's new building on High Street. The door was open, but no one was waiting his arrival.
Matt supposed both his father and China were living at the new hotel on the square and might be there, but the log building that had been their office and sleeping quarters stood behind the new headquarters, and Matt dropped his bags at the foot of the cot he had always used.
In the office, papers lay openly on the two desks, so Matt expected that someone had merely stepped away and would shortly reappear.
That would be soon, he hoped. He was hungry but unsure of what eating arrangements big Matt would have made. Probably, they would still dine at Mrs. Black's restaurant less than a block away. Matt hoped so; the widow Black offered an excellent table. Mrs. Black cooked in an outside shelter, and the inside dining room boasted windows that were opened to help remove summer heat. A large cast iron stove that Matt had never seen working promised warmth and comfort during the bitter Pennsylvania winters.
Matt stepped onto the headquarters' narrow porch to study the handsome view of river and the burgeoning bustle of the town. Considering the new and permanent office building, Matt judged that his father's interests in the area had not diminished. He also suspected that the eastern operations would be left evermore often to Brascomb Miller.
The eastern Miller businesses were more settled, more staid, without the bustle and profit-risking of the western ventures. Brascomb far preferred that more predictable atmosphere and viewed his older brother's entrepreneurial western excursions as risky and more than a little demeaning to his vision of the dignity appropriate to Miller enterprises.
After completing his schooling, young Matt Miller's required winter with his uncle and the company accounts had been stretched into a second winter. Both seasons had provided endless sufferings amid paper and ink within the cavernous warehouse Brascomb preferred as an office.
The second winter of misery had resulted because of big Matt's dissatisfaction with his son's accumulated knowledge. The father decided that his boy had wasted the winter instead of learning, so he was returned to Brascomb's ministrations until he absorbed what a Miller had to know.
The Boss's Boy did not repeat his mistake. He buckled down and forced the book learning into his mind as hard as he could pack it. By May, Brascomb Miller had tired of young Matt's pointed correcting of insignificant minutia in his bookkeeping and had shipped the young man back to his father.
This summer had begun auspiciously, and Matt had been sent east with money in his pocket and directions to discover all that he could about the suddenly developing but little understood steam railroads.
Matt's travels had taken him to the coal fields between the Schuylkill and the Susquehanna Rivers. He had examined the massive stationary steam engines being used to move coal, and he had seen similar engines put on wheels to haul railcar loads longer distances. He believed he understood almost everything about the transporting of coal that big Matt would want to know. Now he was back, ready to tell what he had learned . . . and darned if that wasn't Mickey McFee and other men marching toward him along High Street.
Mickey McFee! The man showed up everywhere. Well, Matt shrugged the muscles of his shoulders, McFee had better watch his smart Irish mouth—and it wouldn't be a draw like the last time.
If McFee was looking for a fight, and unless he had changed he would be, the Boss's Boy would help him swallow some teeth.
The men came on, marching home from a day's labor, Matt assumed. As he watched, a slender, better-dressed man came uphill, probably from the hotel, and joined the group. Matt recognized him as the company's western clerk and bookkeeper.
There was distant talk and head bobbing among the workers, and Matt was pleased to see that the bookish clerk was accepted and included. There had been talk that a delicate man like the clerk might be resented and unmercifully taunted, but it appeared that the studious young man had found his place.
Matt sought the clerk's name and finally came up with it—Lukey Bates. Bates had attended a new academy in Bloomfield and could do bookkeeping. The Boss's Boy was pleased to find him still employed, as he gr
eatly feared such tasks would otherwise fall upon his shoulders.
John McFee said, "That's young Matt up there on the porch."
Mickey said, "I see him, Pa."
"I know you saw him, Mickey. You all of a sudden began rolling your shoulders and tucking your chin against your chest." The father looked closer at his son. "Now you're sticking your chin out as if you were daring somebody to take a punch at it."
"I'm just letting him know that I'm ready any time he is, Pa. He hasn't been doing all of that box training with China just for show. One of these days he'll come at me." Mickey grinned, "And I can't hardly wait, Pa. I've been planning to paste him good since we were little kids."
John McFee frowned at his pugnacious son. "I've heard you speak well of young Matt, boy. Now you are practically picking a fight with him."
Mickey sounded a little confused. "Oh, Matt's all right, Pa, but he thinks he can lick me. I'm just ready to straighten him out a little."
One of the men said, "You could whip him one-handed, Mickey."
"Who'd he ever fight?" another chimed in agreement.
John McFee brought the group to a halt. He included everybody but directed his words to his son.
"Now, you look here, Mickey. Young Matt is our boss. We are Miller Men, and you keep that in mind. The Boss's Boy don't own the company, but he will someday. Young Matt is your boss, and that is how you will address him. There'll be no smirking or strutting, Mickey. You are not children anymore, and if Big Matt found you pounding on his son he would send you down the road, and you know what that would mean."
Mickey McFee knew. He would be hanging around the edges, trying to pick up work anywhere he could get it. There would be no Saturday night dollars placed in his hand, and he would most likely not be allowed to stay in the rooms that the family rented from the Miller companies.
Work of any kind was hard to come by, and strong and willing workers often got paid with chickens, slabs of hog meat, or quarts of some kind of grain because there was just not enough money to go around. His irregular boxing matches could not provide serious income. A man needed a regular job that paid every week—especially during the winter when work slowed.
With John and Mickey fully employed by big Matt Miller at seventy cents a day each, six days a week, and only ten or twelve hours a day—usually, the McFees were doing better than most. Mickey's mother and sister kept their house and added to the family income by sewing and patching clothing, but if either Mickey or his father lost their jobs, living would change from decent to very tight. Being a Miller Man meant reasonably steady employment, and any worker would be a fool to let it slip away.
John started them forward again, but he said, "When you speak to Young Matt, you address him as Boss or Mister Miller. Do you understand that, Mickey?"
"I can do that, Pa, but if he wants a fight, I'm the guy he will call out."
"I doubt he will do any calling out, son. Young Matt is an educated young man on his way to being boss of big companies."
The father smiled a little. "I expect he's heard more than a little about The Irish Hurricane, and I expect he'll be hesitant about trying his luck."
Mickey said, "If he's as smart as you think he is, Pa, the Boss's Boy will be real careful about raising his mitts to a professional like me."
A companion was certain. "You could hammer him without working up a sweat, Mickey."
Men chimed in to agree with the speaker, and John again warned them. "You'd best all forget the fight talk, or you're likely to say something that could be taken wrong and be looking for work."
McFee added sincerity. "I could imagine big Matt putting a few of you to work with the Germans over on Sherman's creek."
A man muttered, "I ain't workin' with no Germans."
The senior McFee was unsympathetic. "Oh you'd work with Germans or beside those African slaves that come through now and then, O'Leary. If you get laid off, your wife and those stair-step kids you've got will get hungry mighty quick."
O'Leary spoke softly because they were nearing the headquarters building. "You've made powerful points, John, but the biggest you ain't mentioned. The fact is that, if I ever got let-go because of my own doin', my Maggie would beat me with our ax handle all the way down to Harrisburg—and then back again to make sure I got the message."
There were understanding chuckles from his companions who were turning their attentions to young Matt Miller looking down on them from his two-step high wooden porch.
John McFee tipped his ragged cap and said, "Glad to see you back, Mister Miller."
Matt said, "It's good to be back, Mister McFee."
The Boss's Boy sounded respectful of the older man, and the workers noted it.
Matt turned his eyes to the younger McFee, and Mickey thought a slight smile touched the corner of the Boss's Boy's mouth. Challenging? McFee could not be sure.
Matt said only, "Mickey?" But there was questioning in the word. Challenging? McFee could not tell.
His father's warning fresh in his mind, Mickey said, "Boss," and added a big Irish grin that could be seen as pleasure or . . . about anything anyone chose to read into it.
The other men touched their caps, and the group moved on. Mickey McFee felt the Boss's Boy's eyes on his back, and he could not resist hunching his shoulders and throwing a few quick and short hooks at an imaginary opponent.
O'Leary said, "We'll miss you around here, Mickey."
Fearing he might actually have gone too far, Mickey said, "Aw, I didn't mean anything, and young Matt'll know it."
His father said, "You're on your own when you meddle with the powerful people, Mickey. The Boss's Boy never did take any foolishness from you, and I doubt he will now. Maybe you will have to learn the hard way, and don't expect any of us to try bailing you out if big Matt shows you the road."
Mickey McFee snorted at the improbability of being canned—for nothing, after all, but inwardly he cringed and resolved to keep his mouth closed and his hands open and at his sides—assuming he still had a job to worry about.
Damn, throwing those air-hooks had been dumb, but . . . if he got away with it this time, he would not falter again. God, why did he do such stupid things, anyway?
Young Matt Miller watched the workers move by. He saw Mickey McFee's swagger and judged the competence of the swift and hard thrown hooks.
The Boss's Boy found himself grinning. The cocky Irishman had not changed, and he had not forgotten. Matt found his own fists bunched and tapping together at his waist. Maybe . . . but Lukey Bates had stepped up onto the porch, and Matt got his mind back on what was important.
Chapter 5
Big Matt and China Smith sat across the desk, and Lukey Bates pulled a high stool close so that he could see little Matt's sketches without stretching. The Boss's Boy found the arrangement interesting. He was used to facing off opposite China and his father, but Bates was new to the conferences.
Lukey had placed his stool so that he peered over little Matt's shoulder—so that he could read right side up, or did the clerk see himself as a Boss's Boy supporter?
Matt inwardly smiled at his measuring and evaluating. He had picked up the habit from his too many months with Brascomb Miller who saw everything as him or them. Still, if not carried too far, judging and evaluating was important to a man of business—which Matt intended to be.
Big Matt had sat them down and said, "So tell me about the steam engines, Matt."
Young Matt began with the mining of coal itself because, unless that was understood, the locomotive engines would not be appreciated. He quickly sketched river routes, a few villages, and the coal mining areas.
"They dig coal two ways, Pa. If the coal is near the surface, they scrape away the worthless dirt or rock and break the coal loose by blasting or simply pick and shovel work. If the coal veins are deep, they tunnel, leaving the surface untouched.
"Next, they move the coal to a crusher and grading mill that smashes big coal into smaller lumps and filters a
ll of the coal through wood and metal screens so that they end up with different size piles. Some coal is best for big furnaces and other sizes are more suitable for use in ordinary stoves.
"Before coal is shipped, it is washed using big leather hoses that dump stream water stored behind earth and wood dams. A lot of slate passes through the graders, and gangs of boys are hired to toss out what is not wanted. Coal is sold by the ton, and buyers do not like paying for a lot of dirt that won't burn."
Matt paused to gather his thoughts, and his father said, "We see the result of that washing every time we look at the river. The mines wash the coal, and all of the filth, including a million tons of coal grit, floats down the creeks and finally into the Susquehanna. I expect you noticed on your way here."
Matt had noticed. In places, the river was almost black, and there were bars of sand-sized coal appearing here and there.
China put in. "Wait till you see the coal shallows filling up just north of here. The bottom over near Liverpool is rough stone. The coal hits, slides off and settles. The river is black with it."
Matt was awed. "My lordy, those mines are a hundred miles away. It must be really foul above Shamokin and . . ." A thought came to him.
"Pa, is that coal worth anything? It ought to be easy digging, if it will burn, and all."
Big Matt and China exchanged glances with raised eyebrows.
The boss said, "Now that is something to consider, Matt, and I'm surprised that we hadn't even thought about it."
He scratched his clean-shaven jaw thoughtfully, and China Smith asked, "You notice any coal bars forming south of here, Matt?"
"More than a few, China, but I didn't think about them, except to notice how dirty the river had become."
China's disgust showed. "Yeah, fish are dying, and you don't jump in the Susquehanna to get clean anymore."
The older Miller was more interested in the value of the river's coal, but his words seemed to veer from the subject.
"Did you know that there is iron in the ground just a little way up the Juniata, Matt?"
The Boss's Boy Page 4