Fevre Dream by George R.R. Martin Read Free Book Online

barrels up the narrow loading planks, the mate cussing at them all the while. Across the river to Louisville, Marsh knew, other steamers were departing or loading up as well: the big, low-pressure
Jacob Strader
of the Cincinnati Mail Line, the swift
Southerner
of the Cincinnati & Louisville Packet Company, a half-dozen smaller boats. He watched to see if any of ’em went down the river, feeling awful good despite the heat and the swarms of mosquitoes that had risen from the river when the sun went down.
    The main deck was crammed with cargo fore and aft, filling most all the space not taken up by the boilers and furnaces and engines. She was carrying a hundred-fifty tons of bale leaf tobacco, thirty tons of bar iron, countless barrels of sugar and flour and brandy, crates of fancy furniture for some rich man in St. Louis, a couple blocks of salt, some bolts of silk and cotton, thirty barrels of nails, eighteen boxes of rifles, some books and papers and sundries. And lard. One dozen big barrels of the finest lard. But the lard wasn’t cargo, properly; Marsh had bought it himself and ordered it stowed on board.
    The main deck was crammed with passengers as well, men and women and children, thick as the river mosquitoes, swarming and milling amid the cargo. Near three hundred of ’em had crowded on, paying a dollar each for passage to St. Louis. Passage was all they got; they ate what food they brought on board with them, and the lucky ones found a place to sleep on the deck. They were mostly foreigners, Irish and Swedes and big Dutchmen all yelling at each other in languages Marsh didn’t know, drinking and cussing and slapping their kids. A few trappers and common laborers were down there as well, too poor for anything but deck passage at Marsh’s bargain rates.
    The cabin passengers had paid a full ten dollars, at least those who were going all the way to St. Louis. Almost all the cabins were full, even at that rate; the clerk told Marsh they had one hundred seventy-seven cabin passengers aboard, which Marsh figured had to be a good number, with all those sevens in it. The roster included a dozen planters, the head of a big St. Louis fur company, two bankers, a rich Britisher and his three daughters, and four nuns going to Iowa. They also had a preacher on board, but that was all right since they weren’t carrying no gray mare; it was well known among rivermen that having a preacher and a gray mare on board was an invitation to disaster.
    As for the crew, Marsh was right pleased with it. The two pilots, now, were nothing special, but they were only hired on temporary to take the steamer to St. Louis, since they were Ohio River pilots and the
Fevre Dream
was going to work the New Orleans trade. He had already written letters to St. Louis and New Orleans, and he had a couple of lightning lower Mississippi pilots waiting for them at the Planters’ House. The rest of the crew, though, were as good as any steamboatmen on any river anywhere, Marsh was sure. The engineer was Whitey Blake, a peppery little man whose fierce white whiskers always had grease stains in ’em from the engines. Whitey had been with Abner Marsh on the
Eli Reynolds,
and later on the
Elizabeth A.
and the
Sweet Fevre,
and there wasn’t no one understood a steam engine better than he did. Jonathon Jeffers, the clerk, had gold spectacles and slicked-back brown hair and fancy button gaiters, but he was a terror at ciphering and dickering, never forgot anything, struck a mean bargain and played a meaner game of chess. Jeffers had been in the line’s main office until Marsh had written him to come down to the
Fevre Dream
. He’d come right away; for all of his dandified appearance, Jeffers was a riverman through to his dark ciphering soul. He carried a gold-handled sword cane too. The cook was a free colored man named Toby Lanyard, who had been with Marsh fourteen years, ever since Marsh tasted his cooking down in Natchez, bought him, and gave him his