Janet Quin-Harkin Page 5

  “Pair of tens,” exclaimed a young, freckle-faced man across the table from Gabe.

  “Sorry about that, pair of queens,” Gabe said and drew the pile of money toward him.

  Libby stepped back from the window as if burned. Of course, it all made sense now, the fact that he had been walking through a bad part of town late at night, that he was known to the riverboat captain who always had a cabin available for him. She still could hardly believe what she had just seen. She had seen Gabe’s hand as he held his cards up toward the window, and she could have sworn that one of his cards was not a queen. The queen had come with lightning speed, from his sleeve, when all eyes were turned to the young man and his tens. Libby turned and stalked away. She went through to the dining table and seated herself deliberately between an elderly colonel and a large woman going to visit her married daughter in Illinois. When Gabe came in later, she noticed his eyes scanning the room and she concentrated on her food, pretending she had not seen him.

  After dinner she refused the colonel’s invitation to join him for coffee and hurried back to her own cabin. She sat, trying to read, while the children fell asleep and the sounds of laughter and piano playing echoed out across the black waters, and she pushed all thoughts of Gabriel Foster from her mind. She resolved to stay well away from him for the rest of the voyage.

  But next morning, as she came around the corner of the deck, Gabe stepped out in front of her.

  “Your hunger got the better of you last night, or did you decide that that doddering old fool was less of a temptation than I?” he asked.

  Fighting to control her temper, she took a deep breath. “I think that you and I have very Little in common, Mr. Foster, and see no point in furthering our relationship.”

  His eyebrows shot up with obvious surprise. “Might I inquire if I have said or done something that has offended you, ma’am?”

  “What you have done would offend any person of sensibility and morals, Mr. Foster,” she said.

  “Please explain yourself, madam,” he said. “It was my understanding that I have treated you with the very soul of politeness and decorum.”

  “I have no complaints about the way you have treated me, Mr. Foster. It’s your treatment of others I cannot condone.”

  “Meaning what?” he demanded.

  “I think you might have told me that you are a gambler.”

  He looked amused and relieved. “I make my living at what I do best,” he said. “By my quick hands and my quick wits and my knowledge of human greed.”

  “There are many professions where you could use those skills and remain honorable,” she said.

  “Are not all men gamblers to a certain extent, Mrs. Hugh Grenville?” he asked. “Your father, the fine Boston businessman, has he never taken a gamble in his business dealings? And your husband—are not the gold fields the greatest gamble man has ever undertaken?”

  “That’s different,” Libby snapped.

  “In what way?”

  “In my world it is not considered acceptable to cheat at cards,” she said bluntly.

  “You call it cheating because I do it better than most.”

  “I saw you,” she said, looking at him without blinking. “I saw you bring the queen from your sleeve.”

  “Really?” he asked. He still looked amused. “Then you have quicker eyes than most. Would you swear to the fact that I brought a card from my sleeve? You actually saw me extract it?”

  Libby considered it. She had seen the slightest of movements, but. . . . “You had a queen and a five,” she said. “Then you had two queens.”

  His smile broadened. “One thing you must learn, if you intend to travel into the West,” he said, “is that it is not etiquette to look over a man’s shoulder while he is playing cards. Men have been gunned down for less.”

  She looked at him in amazement. “You are not even repentant,” she exclaimed. “You admit your guilt.”

  Gabe sighed. “You know little of human nature, Mrs. Hugh Grenville,” he said. “The young fool was driven by greed, much farther than he should have gone. He’d won enough—I’d let him win enough, but he was convinced he could clean me out, that he was smarter than me. I had to show him I was the smarter. They never know when to quit, you see. That’s how I make my money—I trade on greed. Is that so wrong?”

  “It is to me,” she said.

  “Then we must beg to differ,” Gabe said. “You will find, I think, that this is not Boston, Libby. In this world there is precious little honor, few men you can trust, and no guarantee that life will not finish tomorrow with a bullet in the back.”

  “Then if I were you, I would rather be the one spark of honor in a dark world,” Libby said. “If I feared death at any moment, I would rather be prepared to meet my maker.”

  “I do not fear death,” Gabe said, “and I am as ready to face my maker as any man that I know.”

  “I don’t think there are any card parlors up in heaven,” she said dryly.

  “No? Then it will be a very dull place,” Gabe said. “Besides, I think I like warmth. Perpetual fires sound rather more appealing.”

  “You are incorrigible.”

  “And you, Mrs. Hugh Grenville, are quite delightful,” he said, laughing. “I hope I can persuade you to like me better.”

  “Fortunately you will not get the chance, Mr. Foster. After this voyage we will never see each other again,” she replied and stalked past him to her cabin.

  For the rest of her time on board, Libby stayed in her cabin or sought out the company of the other women passengers, suffering through long and boring accounts of their troubles with servants and dressmakers and their varied illnesses, rather than risk coming face to face with Mr. Gabriel Foster again. When they docked in St. Louis she hurried the children ashore and made her way along the levee to find the first ship going up the Missouri to Independence.

  In her diary she wrote: May 30,1949.1 have learned a valuable lesson. From now on I take nothing at face value. When I meet the next Mr. Gabe Foster, I will be ready for him!

  CHAPTER 5

  THE NEXT SHIP was very different from the Mississippi Belle. Up to this point the journey had presented relatively few of the hardships and dangers which had been rumored in the drawing rooms of New England. Libby’s safe arrival in St. Louis almost convinced her that the end was in sight. Soon she would set off on the wagon train to California and find Hugh and live happily ever after. Her introduction to the steamer Amelia made her realize that maybe the real journey was just now beginning.

  On the dockside a frightened mule had broken free from its owner and was braying loudly while it kicked out at the stacked piles of freight around it. From the lower deck of the ship came the bawl of oxen, the braying of mules, and the shouted curses of the deckhands. Wagons piled high with barrels and boxes were waiting to be loaded and men pushed past Libby and the children as if they too were pieces of freight. The men were loaded down with guns and knives and they shouldered their way past each other up the crowded gangplank. Libby clutched her two bags and her children more firmly.

  “Stay close to me, darlings. It’s now or never,” she said and joined the human tide flowing up onto the ship.

  “I don’t want to go onto that ship. I don’t like it,” Bliss screamed, bursting into tears and wrapping herself around Libby’s legs.

  “We’re going to find Papa. Don’t you want to see Papa?” Libby coaxed, trying to release the little hands that clutched at her.

  “I want to go home. I want to go back to Grand-mama,” Bliss screamed.

  “Come on, Mama will carry you,” Libby said, picking up the screaming child. Bliss fought and kicked. “Put me down. I want to go home,” she yelled. “I don’t like it here.” Libby tried to hold the two bags in her other hand while she fought to control Bliss.

  “That’s enough, Bliss,” she said severely. “You have to behave. Young ladies do not have temper tantrums in public.”

  “I don’t care. I don
’t care,” Bliss screamed, kicking more wildly.

  Libby inched her way toward the crowded gangway. Men with bundles and trunks surged past her, hardly giving her a look, not one offering to help. She stumbled onto the deck, almost falling over the piles of boxes and sacks which were threatening to cover the entire surface. Eden hit her shin on a tin box and started to cry. Libby looked around for a steward and, finally seeing a man in uniform, she called to him.

  “Can you take me to a cabin please. This disturbance is very upsetting for the children and they would tell me nothing when I bought my tickets.”

  The uniformed man looked at her with interest. “I don’t think you’d want a cabin, lady,” he said bluntly.

  “Why on earth not? The journey takes a week doesn’t it?”

  “We’re sleeping ‘em eight to a cabin right now,” he said, “and the other other seven would be men.”

  “Then what am I to do?” Libby asked.

  “If I was you, lady, I’d find myself a little patch of deck out of the way and stay there,” the man said. “And if I’d got any belongings, I’d sit on ‘em. These guys aren’t fussy about what they help themselves to.”

  “You aren’t suggesting I sit outside on a deck for seven days?” Libby demanded angrily. “You want me to expose two little children to the night air?”

  “If you want my advice, it would be to stay home, leastways until all this craziness is over,” the man said. “Every ship for the past couple of months has been overloaded. I reckon half the states must be on their way to California by now.”

  “I can’t stay home, since my home is in New England,” Libby said shortly, “and I too am joining my husband in California.”

  “Then the sooner you toughen up those little ones by sleeping them in the open air, the better,” the man said, “because that journey over the plains is awful hard on those who aren’t in tiptop shape. They say there’s a grave for every mile of the trip already.”

  “Thank you for your advice,” Libby said coldly. “Come children, we’d better find ourselves a place to sit on deck before every inch is taken.”

  From below an ox started bellowing, the noise echoing alarmingly in the iron hold of the ship. Bliss wrapped her arms around her mother’s neck, nearly strangling her. “I don’t want to ride on this ship. I want to go home,” she screamed. “This is a nasty ship, Mama.”

  “We must be brave. It won’t be for long,” Libby soothed. “Look, we can make ourselves a Little house under that lifeboat.”

  She hurried them across the deck and spread out her cloak for them in the narrow space under one of the two lifeboats the ship carried. The girls immediately thought this was fun and happily played house with the two little dolls she had brought along for them.

  All day long men and cargo kept on coming aboard the ship until there was not a spare inch of space on any deck. When the Amelia cast off, toward evening, she left behind a crowd of would-be travellers who yelled and cursed, waving their fists in anger as the boat drew away from its dock with much grinding and thrashing of its paddle wheels.

  Libby and the girls sat without moving under the lifeboat until darkness fell and the Amelia dropped anchor for the night.

  “I’m hungry, Mama, when’s supper?” Bliss demanded, having quite forgotten her fears about the ship.

  “We’ll go and explore, if you like,” Libby said, climbing out stiffly from their hiding place and extending her hands to them. “I expect our bags will be safe enough.” When Libby took the girls below, she was glad that she had taken the seaman’s advice to stay on deck. The smell of unwashed bodies, mingled with strong liquor and smoke coming from the public rooms was almost unbearable after such a short time on the river, and loud, drunken singing echoed out across the peaceful water.

  “I don’t think we’ll try and get dinner in there,” Libby whispered to the girls. “I’ll see if a steward can bring us up some sandwiches instead.”

  When she found a steward and gave him this request, he laughed at her.

  “This ain’t New York, lady,” he said. “Meals is served in the dining room and you get what comes out of the pot!”

  “But I can’t take my daughters in there,” she exclaimed, indicating the rowdy, smoke-filled interior.

  The steward looked with more compassion. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said. “I expect there’s some bread I can get my hands on, and maybe some cold meat.”

  Libby thanked him as he hurried off.

  She kept her daughters close to her side as she crept along the passageways and back onto the deck again. After that, the first night passed not too unpleasantly.

  In the morning they stopped at a small settlement along the river and had a chance to go ashore. The girls ran up and down the wooded bank while Libby managed to buy a loaf of fresh bread, six hard-boiled eggs, and some dried apples. She felt relieved that she no longer had to worry about taking the children into the public rooms on the boat to feed them and she enjoyed a good cup of coffee before the bell rang to get everyone back on board. The Missouri was a prettier river with more varied scenery than its bigger sister. In places, the banks rose to steep yellow cliffs and then fell to peaceful wooded coves. The sandbars were also covered with trees and once Eden spotted two deer having a drink. She called out to her mother and instantly every man on the deck grabbed a rifle and began shooting. The deer bounded away in fright and Eden started to cry.

  “They are horrid men, Mama. They shot at the baby deer.”

  “Out here it’s different, precious one,” Libby said, hugging the sobbing child. “Here they must shoot for food. Where we are going there will be no butcher shops.”

  By the middle of the next night Libby discovered that the voyage was not going to be a peaceful one. She woke from fitful sleep, curled as tightly as humanly possible under the lifeboat, to feel boots run past, vibrating the deck close to her face. Farther down the deck loud groans were followed by the sound of more boots passing. There were murmurs of “doctor” and “dying.” In the morning three of the passengers were now covered with their blankets.

  “What happened?” Libby asked, assuming the men had gotten into a fight.

  “It’s cholera,” a small, frightened-faced man hissed as he passed her. “The cholera’s come aboard.”

  Libby hugged the children close to her. “We’ll eat and drink nothing more on this ship,” she said, “and we’ll not come out from this lifeboat until we can go ashore.”

  At first light the wrapped corpses were carried ashore for a hasty burial in a sandy bank beside the river. Libby leaned on the railing, staring down at the incongruous scene. Willows and cottonwoods spread shade over a grassy clearing. Swallows skimmed low over the swiftly moving water and a pair of mallards paddled along the edge, under the trailing strands of willow leaves. It was the sort of scene for lovers and dreamers and summer picnics and yet there were now men with shovels piling up mounds of sand as they hastily dug a grave.

  “At least they’ve got themselves a pretty burial place,” a man behind her commented, “better than in the heathen lands out West.”

  Libby watched the men now shovelling sand back into the holes. It doesn’t matter where you’re buried, she thought. Dead is dead.

  News of cholera on board had the effect of instantly quieting the noisy men. There was no singing and laughing that night, just the groans and screams of more dying men. In the morning there were four more bodies to be buried. Libby hurried ashore too and was almost tempted to take the girls off the boat to wait for a safer one. A farmer’s wife was hanging out washing nearby and came over to see what was going on, on the riverbank.

  “More poor devils not even getting a decent Christian burial,” she commented to Libby, folding her arms across her broad chest.

  “It seems to be happening all the time on this boat,” Libby said. “I’m beginning to think I should wait for another boat to come along, for my children’s sake.”

  “They’re all the s
ame these days,” the farmer’s wife said, shaking her head. “There’s cholera raging up and down the whole river. Nobody’s safe anymore. Too many dirty strangers, packed in like sardines,” she added tersely. “I wish they’d go west and have done with it and leave us poor settlers in peace.”

  Then she went back to her washing, leaving Libby alone on the bank not really sure what to do for the best. She managed to buy some fresh bread and milk from a trader. She washed the children thoroughly before they boarded again and kept them as far away from the other passengers as she could.

  When they were only one day out of Independence, the steamer ran aground on a sandbar which jutted out from the shore. The captain had gangways lowered and ordered all the passengers to disembark to make the ship lighter. Ropes were dropped from the upper deck and men passengers joined the crew in trying to pull the ship free. As one sweating team did not succeed, other men stepped in to take their place and by late afternoon they had succeeded in refloating the Amelia. Not wanting to risk it happening again with the water level so low, the captain made them all walk a mile or so up the riverbank until the water was deeper and they could reboard. The mile walk along a leafy path relieved a little of Libby’s anxiety. Only one more night and they could escape from the stinking pigpen the ship had become. She looked forward to the plains now as clean and breezy and free of disease. Before they got back on board, they passed another farm and the farmer’s wife gave the children a drink of milk and a big peach each.