Excerpt #5

Chase found his brother Rubin waiting outside Mason Baxter's riverfront saloon.

"How'd your meeting with the commodore go?" the slighter, darker man asked him, rocking a little on his feet.

"Interesting," Chase answered, giving nothing away.

"You hear anything about our berths?" It was going to be Rue's first season as a licensed pilot, and he was even more fidgety than usual.

"No," Chase answered, looking out across nearly thirty yards of cobblestone paving to where the bronze-green river lapped at toes of the levee.

The Mississippi was arguably the longest and the most important waterway on the continent, and more than half a hundred steamers of all sizes and configurations were tied up and bobbing in the stiff spring current. Men swarmed over the boats, finishing up a bit painting and polishing, hoisting cargo nets and scurrying up gangways, loading goods for the first run of the new shipping season.

Chase nodded in satisfaction at their industry. Like every pilot who'd been drydocked all winter, he wanted to get underway.

"The assignments won't be posted 'til mid-day tomorrow," he said for Rue's sake. "So there's no sense getting all wrought up about which boat you'll be on. You'll do fine."

At Chase's reassurance Rue seemed to settle some, though not a minute later his brother nudged him with his elbow. "You ever see anything so pretty?" Rue all but purred.

Chase turned to where a brand new stern-wheeler was swinging across the current to tuck into an empty slip between two veteran steamers.

"Bright as new penny she is," Rue continued never taking his eyes off the boat.

"Yes."

"Graceful as swifts winging at twilight. Just imagine how that sweetheart would respond under your hand."

Chase could imagine. Every riverman dreamed about piloting a riverboat as sleek and fast as this one, dreamed about easing her into an upstream crossing and feeling her skim across the current. Dreamed about standing tall in the wheelhouse and surveying the world from bank to bank.

He slid a glance in Rue's direction and read those same aspirations in his brother's eyes.

Then Chase recognized the Gold Star emblem entwined with the wrought iron cross-braces that stabilized the steamer's two towering chimneys. Even before he read the name emblazoned in dark blue and gold across the front of the pilot house, he knew what ship this was.

It was the Andromeda.

Regret caught him hard. His stomach dropped. His chest ached in a way that must be somewhat akin to a broken heart. If he'd agreed to marry the commodore's daughter, this steamer—this magnificent steamer—would have been his.

Chase jammed his hands into his trouser pockets and muttered a string of curses under his breath. Had he been a fool to refuse Rossiter's offer? Had he been a bigger one to allow Ann Rossiter to decide his fate?

Standing toe to toe with him in the parlor, she'd seemed so confident, so sure she knew what was best for her and her child. She seemed so sure she knew what was best for all of them.

But when he'd come out of the townhouse and seen her waiting in the window for an indication of how things had gone with her father, she hadn't seemed all that certain. She'd looked scared, hollow-eyed—and unbearably fragile.

The same clutch of concern he'd experienced earlier nipped his belly. What was it about the expression in Ann Rossiter's eyes that made him feel as if he had abandoned her?

Chase scowled and shoved the impression away. He'd done exactly what she asked him to do. That was the end of it.

He sauntered down the levee toward where the Andromeda was tying up. The boat seemed to be everything the commodore had promised. Her hull was sleek and black, narrow enough to slice through the current like a blade. Her decks rose in perfectly proportioned tiers, their graceful promenades inviting passengers to linger and enjoy the river breeze. Each post and railing was adorned with brass or paint or some doodad or another. A prim fringe of carpenter's lace dripped from the lip of the pilot house roof giving the place a hint of refinement.

Rue trailed Chase. "Have you heard who gets command of her?"

"Command the Andromeda?" Chase echoed. For a split second he was tempted to tell Rue about Ann Rossiter and her father's extraordinary offer. Instead he shrugged the inquiry away.

"Well, whoever it is," Rue's voice was tinged with awe, "he's one lucky bastard!"

"Oh, hell," a voice drawled from directly behind where the two of them were standing. "It's just another damned steamer."

"There's nothing so special about them Gold Star tubs," someone else put in, "even if their crews do like us to claim there is."

Annoyance spiked up Chase's back. Beside him Rue bristled in disagreement.

"I'd as soon pilot a barber's basin as one of them."

Chase and Rue both swung around to where Philo McKee, John Rogers, and Big Teddy Peterson stood amidst the gaggle of businessmen, passengers, and roustabouts who'd gathered to gawk at the handsome new steamer. All three were pilots for the Anchor Line and were well known along the St. Louis riverfront as men who spent their off hours looking for trouble.

Chase figured a little trouble was just the thing to damper his disappointment.

Rue fell right in with his line of thinking. "I'd say the Andromeda is about as well set up as any boat I've ever seen!" he challenged. "I'd be willing bet she could outrun any tub the Anchor Line cared to put up against her!"

John Rogers braced his hands on his hips and spat. "So you think this new packet's fast enough to give the Anchor Line steamers a run for their money, do you, Hardesty?"

Chase barged into the argument. "You put Rue or me in the wheelhouse and let Cal Watkins handle the boilers, and we'd show you a race. You'd be chasing our wake all the way to Alton."

"Hell, I admit that new scow can probably maneuver from one sandbar to the next—" Big Teddy gave a snort of disgust. "—but none of the Gold Star boats has a chance of showing stern water to an Anchor Line packet."

"The hell you say!" Rue shouted and punched Big Teddy square in nose.

Chase instantly raised his fists. This wasn't the first riverfront brawl his brother had started, and he was purely looking forward to joining in. He got his guard up just in time to keep John Rogers from taking off his head.

With his ears buzzing from Rogers's blow, Chase staggered back a step. He'd only just regained his balance when Philo McKee blindsided him.

Twisting and grunting with the effort, Chase heaved the red-headed giant backwards. McKee staggered and caught his heels on a coil of rope. He tumbled, howling curses as he went down.

Chase had no more than a moment to stand grinning over McKee before John Rogers came at him again. He scrambled for footing on the uneven stones, and prodded Rogers with his left. The other man feinted right. Chase saw his opening and smashed an uppercut through Rogers's guard.

Rogers went down like a pile of bricks.

Chase danced back a step, shockwaves shimmying up his arm.

More than a dozen men had jumped into the fray. Businessmen grappled with roustabouts. Passengers battered each other with their valises. The waterfront taverns spewed drunkards into the midst of the brawl. More men pelted up the levee from where the Illinois ferry was docking.

Philo McKee plowed into Chase again. The two of them went down, thumping and flailing.

McKee grazed Chase's cheekbone with one beefy fist, then landed a bruiser that all but buckled his ribs. Gasping and rabid, Chase fought for breath. He hammered his knuckles into the other man's face.

McKee's nose began to bleed, smearing both of them with red. They kept on punching.

The brawlers roved between the buildings and the waterline moaning and growling like mongrel dogs. Many of them had been idle all winter and were spoiling for a fight. Everyone else just seemed to catch the spirit. They were a punching, gouging, mass of men thoroughly enjoying themselves, until three sharp, shrill blasts of a policeman's whistle sliced through the babble.

Chase pushed back on his haunches from where he'd pinned McKee. McKee stopped thrashing beneath him. The men around them lifted their heads.

Two policemen came running down Wharf Street. Several more burst out of one of the old stone warehouses that hemmed the waterfront. A paddy wagon with more police rumbled around the corner at Market Street.

The fight broke up as if by magic. With a few last shoves, the brawlers scattered.

Chase stumbled to his feet. He grabbed Rue by the collar and dragged the smaller man up the levee. They ducked behind a head-high pallet of barrels and struggled to catch their breath.

Chase braced his hands on his knees, panting. "Someday that damn Creole temper of yours is going to get both of us killed," he gasped. His side throbbed as if he'd been kicked by a mule.

Rue swiped blood from his split lip and grinned. "I can't help that my mama was a high-spirited octoroon and yours was some prissy white lady."

In truth Chase didn't know who his real mother was, or his real father, either. When he was about three, Enoch Hardesty had found him huddled in the ash-filled firebox of a burned out cabin. As far as he knew there'd been no sign of his folks. Not a soul for ten miles around knew the family who'd built the cabin, much less whether they had kin to look after the half-starved toddler.

Because he hadn't known what else to do, Enoch had brought Chase home to Lydia. They'd had a baby of their own not long before, and Enoch figured it was as easy for Lydia to raise up two children as it was one.

There in the woodlot on the edge of the Missouri River, Lydia had proved him right. Over the years she'd taken in or giving birth to fourteen children. Her easy manner and generous heart had made the Hardestys one of the largest, loudest, most unruly families on the river. A family who teased and scrapped, and would lay down their lives for each other.

Chase had made Rue his personal responsibility twenty-four years before when an slave escaping north had stumbled up to the Hardesty's cabin and given birth to a baby boy practically on their doorstep. So when a burly young policeman came poking around behind the skid of barrels, Chase just figured he'd be looking after his brother in jail tonight.

"Now then," the soft-spoken Irish police sergeant wanted to know, "why exactly are you fellows standing over here when a brawl involving half the city went on not twenty yards away?"

Chase had no idea where his hat had gone but he did his best to smooth down his hair. He was preparing to swear they'd been innocent bystanders to the fight that had already filled one paddy wagon and was rapidly loading a second, when Rue spoke up.

"We just now came out of the tavern for a smoke, sir." He flashed the policeman his most ingenuous smile and produced several slightly mangled cheroots from the inside pocket of his jacket. "Would you care to join us?"

The officer looked the two of them up and down.

Chase had no doubt the man could see their skinned knuckles and mud-spattered clothes. He figured they were as good as hauled off to the police office on Chestnut Street until the sergeant extended his hand for one of the cigars.

"Don't mind if I do have one of your smokes," he said.

Chase hastily pulled a pressed-tin matchsafe from his trouser pocket and lit the cigars.

"You boys have any idea what touched off this brawl?" the officer asked them, appreciatively blowing out a long, smooth ribbon of tobacco smoke.

"No idea in the world," Rue assured him.

"And you don't know any of the fellows involved?"

Just then Big Teddy Peterson turned from where he was being prodded into the police van and shook his fist at them.

"I've never seen any of those ruffians in my life," Chase lied earnestly.

The sergeant raised his eyebrows, then took another pull on his cheroot. "Got that lot loaded?" he called to where two of his colleagues were closing the back doors of the paddy wagon.

"You got more brawlers to take to the clink?" a fresh-faced young patrolman called back.

Chase held his breath as the sergeant looked them up and down again.

"Nah," he finally answered, grinning around the butt of his cigar. "I think we've made all the arrests we're going to. Besides, we need to get that bunch back to the station."

Chase and Rue thanked the policeman, then stood watching the paddy wagon roll south on Wharf Street.

They were just congratulating each other on their narrow escape when the passengers from the Andromeda began to disembark. Chase recognized three of the men as officers of Boatman's Bank. He knew two others from his occasional visits to the Carondolet Shipyards. The captains of several of the Gold Star steamers followed them down the landing stage and nodded at Chase and Rue as they passed by.

Then Boothe Rossiter stepped into view at the top of the gangway. Chase's stomach curdled at the sight of him.

From his slick, dark macassared hair to his shiny black boots, Boothe was buffed and polished until be gleamed. He was trim and broad-shouldered and handsome enough to be an actor in one of the shows that played at the Varieties Theatre. He was also the laziest, most mean-spirited and arrogant son-of-a-bitch Chase had ever had the misfortune to be partnered with.

"Surely Commodore Rossiter knows better than to give the command of the Andromeda to him," Rue muttered under his breath. "He'll break that darlin's back sure as we're standing here."

But then, Boothe was James Rossiter's son, the heir- apparent to the packet line. It made sense that he'd be promoted from pilot to captain and given the most desirable posting.

Chase just didn't have to like it.

Rossiter must have know how he felt, because once he'd given instructions to Jake Skirlin, who seemed to be acting as the Andromeda's clerk, Boothe sauntered down the gangway toward where Chase and Rue were standing. If he noticed they were more than a little battered and their clothes were in disarray, he chose to make no mention of it.

"Admiring my new command, Hardesty?" he asked, smiling to show teeth so white he must spend his evenings polishing them.

"It's a beautiful steamer, Rossiter." Chase almost choked saying the words, but the steamboat itself was graceful and powerful and obviously of the latest design. "You sure you're the man to captain her?"

"I'm the one who took her out today," Boothe observed. "Who else do you think should get the appointment? You?"

That was closer to the truth than Rossiter knew.

"Why shouldn't he get it?" Rue spoke up. "He's twice the steersman anyone else is. If any pilot deserves to be promoted, it's Chase."

"Standing up for your master, are you, cub?" Boothe sneered.

Chase saw the color come up in his brother's face, but Rue had already started one brawl today, and taking on Commodore Rossiter's son just didn't seem smart. If he crossed the Andromeda's new captain, Rue could lose his hard-won berth with the packet line.

Chase shrugged philosophically. "What people get and what they deserve don't always coincide."

Boothe Rossiter let it go at that. Instead he inclined his head toward the Andromeda. "You want to have a look at her?"

Chase knew he was letting himself in for a big dose of envy and a bigger one of regret if he took Rossiter up on his offer. But he'd just defended the Andromeda with his fists, and even if the steamer wasn't his, that gave him a proprietary interest.

"Sure," he answered.

Boothe gestured them aboard and led them across what seemed like half and acre of satiny wooden planking to the front of the main deck. A battery of five boilers, nearly twenty-four feet long and more that three feet in diameter, lay horizontal to the hull. They were an impressive sight.

"The boilers and engines were built by James Rees and Sons, in Pittsburgh," Rossiter told them. "According to the engineers, they'll use less wood and produce more steam than earlier models."

Chase had read about the new designs and was impressed by the iron sheathing above the firebox, the improved mud scupper, and the redesigned safety valves.

Boothe showed them through the open cargo area and stalls amidships to the back of the steamer where the engines lay. Big cylinders with their long, brass reciprocating rods were connected to the central shaft of the paddle wheel.

Chase nodded recognizing several improvements that had been made to the engine's design. "Very impressive," he observed.

"Now let me show you the rest."

With rising enthusiasm Boothe led them up the grand double staircase from where the engines and boilers lay on the main deck to the boiler deck above with its salon and cabins.

Chase was immediately struck by the grace of the wide promenades and, as they entered, the beauty of the salon. A line of brass and glass chandeliers ran down the center of the room. Gleaming mahogany chairs and tables clustered beneath them on bright, flower-patterned carpets. The gilt-trimmed doors that led to the first class cabins, were each numbered with a hand-painted china plaque.

Chase had never been a man who coveted things, but he wanted this. He longed to enjoy this beauty and opulence every day, to have something so unique and lovely under his command.

"It's all very grand," Rue mumbled begrudgingly.

Rossiter grinned. "Wait 'til you see the pilot house."

Pausing to glance into one or two of the well-appointed state rooms and the spotless galleys, the three of them climbed past the Texas deck where the crew and captain had their accommodations, to the most vital ten square feet on any steamer.

No expense had been spared in the furnishing of the wheelhouse. The lazy bench that ran across the back of the cabin was upholstered in deep-maroon leather. In the left front corner a squat, potbellied stove radiated heat, while the pilot's private water cooler sat on the right.

But what drew Chase immediately was the huge semi-circular wheel that rose through the floorboards. Set well forward in the alcove created by the side windows and the cabin's open front, the steersman would enjoy a commanding view of the river.

Chase stepped up before the chest-high wheel and curled his hands around the dark, burnished wood. As he did, a sensation he could never remember having radiated from the wheel into the palms of his hands. Warmth penetrated flesh and bone bring with it a welcome so intense that his chest tightened and his eyes burned.

He wrapped his hands around the broad curve of the wheel absorbing purpose and resolution and serenity through the very whorls of his fingertips. The Andromeda was more than wood and paint and machinery. It was more than graceful galleries, gleaming chandeliers, and opulent cabins. It was the single place in the world where Chase belonged.

"Quite a boat, isn't she, Hardesty?"

Boothe Rossiter's words shattered Chase's haze of wonder. He blinked the wheelhouse into focus around him, and with that clarity came the truth. No matter how right all this felt, the Andromeda wasn't his.

It belonged to Boothe Rossiter.

Chase would never stand with his feet braced on this deck and guide the Andromeda up the treacherous Missouri. He'd never ease her safely past the sawyers and sandbars that could fool a less proficient pilot. Nor would he ever duplicate this sense of rightness with any other vessel.

Knowing that didn't change a thing.

Chase couldn't think of any way to answer that wouldn't reveal his envy of Boothe Rossiter's new command. He simply nodded and relinquished his hold on the steamer's wheel, feeling as if he'd yielded up some part of himself.

Rue stepped up to take his place. The younger man clasped his hands around the wheel, then turned back grinning. "Oh, yes! She's wondrously fine!"

Though Chase saw the delight in his brother's face, there was none of the wonder or intensity. None of the magic. The Andromeda had spoken only to him.

"I can't wait to get her out on a clear stretch of river," Boothe enthused, his voice rising. "We'll tie down those damn safety valves, feed her fatwood, and just see what kind of speed those boilers can give us."

Chase compressed his lips. Rossiter spoke with the kind of reckless arrogance that killed a hundred steamers a year. With the kind of willful disregard for safety that littered the river with wrecks and cost scores of passengers their lives.

And all at once, Chase knew he couldn't stand idly by and let this irresponsible bastard destroy the Andromeda. She was his, by God! She was his destiny.

And all he had to do to claim the steamer was go back to James Rossiter and tell him he was willing to marry his daughter.

The idea of confronting Ann Rossiter and telling her what he'd done made his palms sweat. She'd be convinced he was betraying her—and he probably was.

When he had a chance to talk to her, he'd have to be prepared to make concessions, to offer whatever assurances she needed so he could have his way. So he could have the Andromeda. He'd promise her a house with a garden where her child could play in the fresh air and sunshine. He'd offer her money for passage back to Philadelphia. He'd promise her anything so he could claim the Andromeda and make it his own.

By the time Boothe had escorted Rue and him back to the landing stage, Chase had made up his mind. He muttered his thanks, then set off up the levee.

Rue caught him as he turned up Locust Street. "Where the devil are you going in such a hurry?"

Chase heard the steel in his own voice when he gave his answer. "I'm going to see a man about a riverboat."

Click here for excerpt #1
Click here for excerpt #2
Click here for excerpt #3
Click here for excerpt #4
Click here for excerpt #6
Click here for excerpt #7
Click here for excerpt #8