Centennial (48 page)

The heavy steers waddled off, and for a long time Levi sat staring at the water, remembering those strange white faces that looked so different from the Jerseys and Holsteins to which he was accustomed.

Two days out of Cincinnati a beautiful thing happened. Elly saw it first. She was standing aft with Finnerty, looking idly at the wake left by his rudder, when she saw far to the rear, coming around a bend in the river, two stately luxury steamers moving side by side, and after watching them for a few minutes and noting their rapid approach, she said, “I declare, Mr. Finnerty, I think they’re racing.”

“Race!” he shouted, leaving his tiller to tend itself.. He ran back and forth along the flatboat, urging his six passengers to watch the exciting scene that was developing to the rear. They watched captivated as the two large steamers, filigreed like jewels, bore down upon them, and one of the women standing with Elly cried, “They’ll pass us very close!”

They would have to. Finnerty had his flatboat fairly well in the middle of the river, and whereas the two racing steamers could conceivably stay together and pass on one side, it was more likely that they would separate, each keeping as close to the middle of the river as possible.

“One on the left’s the
River Bel
l
e
out of Cincinnati,” Finnerty shouted. “Other one’s the
Duquesne
, a Pittsburgh boat. Anyone care to bet on the
River Belle
?” There was no response, so he made another proposal: “Anyone care to bet on the
Duquesne
?” Again there was no response, so he shouted in frustration, “For Christ’s sake, somebody bet. This is a race,” and Elly said, “I’ll bet a nickel on the
River Belle
,” but when she saw his face fall she quickly said, “All right. I’ll make it half a dollar,” and Levi winced at her carelessness with money.

An imaginary line was drawn between the flatboat and a tree on shore, and the other two men were to hold the wagers and serve as judges. Finnerty grew quite agitated as the splendid vessels approached, their decks quivering from the pounding of the engines, their tall smokestacks belching smoke. They seemed about equal, with each straining to the utmost, and as they neared, Finnerty shouted, “The best part is, sometimes they explode and you can make a lot of money picking up the bodies ... rescuing people, that is.”

It looked to Levi as if one or the other of these two beauties might explode before his eyes, so furious were the hammerings of the pistons, but with great speed they overtook the flatboat and expertly passed as close to it as possible, each seeking maximum advantage. None of the passengers aboard the graceful steamers could have been more excited than the seven people looking up from the flatboat, and the most delighted was Elly Zendt, for her
River Belle
crossed the imaginary finish line a good six feet ahead of the
Duquesne
. She expected Finnerty to be downcast at his loss, but he remained as delighted as he had been when she first called his attention to the race.

Levi’s indifference to the race turned to real concern when the two vessels passed, for the tumbling wakes of the two steamers converged right under the flatboat, tossing it like a cork and straining every timber and rope. For the first time he felt that his investment with a boat-builder as good as Finnerty had been justified.

Finnerty was undismayed by the danger. Balancing himself against the wildly tossing flatboat, he shouted, “Look at ’em go!” as the boats approached the bend that would carry them out of sight. Each of the flatboat passengers looked with longing and a sense of exaltation as the great white steamers, more graceful than swans, swept out of view.

Cairo was a miserable site, a small mud flat perched on a large mud flat, which reached out to rest upon a really stupendous mud flat. Here the Ohio emptied into the Mississippi, and someone had decided that this point of land would be ideal as a river port, and it was, except that each spring either the Ohio or the Mississippi came into flood, almost wiping Cairo out. Six years out of seven the little town faced inundation, and this year it looked as if it would be the Mississippi, which was rising ominously.

The residents of Cairo were preoccupied with the building of dikes to hold back the rivers, and the town resembled a fortress sunk below walls, with little attention paid to travelers. It was difficult even to find where the
Ozark Maid
, Captain Shaw, would be loading for the run to St. Louis, and at the height of the confusion Elly ran up to inform Levi that the two families who had shared the flatboat from Pittsburgh had run off without paying ... anyway, that’s what Finnerty claimed.

“Well,” Levi said philosophically, “at least we can sell the boat and get something back,” but when the time came to do so, the timber men of Cairo pointed to a score of rafts tied up along the muddy waterfront.

“We got more’n we can use in a year,” they grumbled, and they offered Levi ten dollars for his. He was not disposed to accept, and the men showed no disappointment. “We’re doin’ you a favor, takin’ it off’n your hands,” one of the men said. “Course, you could fit a keel onto it for another thirty and hire ten strong men to pole you upriver to St. Louis. Take about three months.”

Levi laughed and said, “Sold for ten dollars,” and when the deal was consummated, the men confided, “Finnerty does this all the time. He knows the most we ever pay is ten dollars.” When Levi shook his head in consternation, one of the men added, “Wager you the ten that Finnerty told you the other passengers skipped without payin’. He always does that, too.”

Levi looked about the waterfront for Finnerty, but he was gone, shipped aboard a steamer back to Pittsburgh. “I’ve got to admit he built a good boat,” Levi muttered grudgingly as they led the horses to the
Ozark Maid
. “Knew how to handle it, too.”

At eight o’clock in the morning of May 1, 1844, the Negro in the prow of the
Ozark Maid
curled a rope to the shore at St. Louis, where a waiting Negro caught it, passing the end through a large ring embedded in the levee. As soon as possible, Levi leaped from his boat to the one ahead, and from it, to the steamboat and thence to the shore. Leaving the job of unloading the horses to Elly, he dashed along the levee, asking everyone, “Where’s the
Robert Q. Fell
?”

Toward the northern end of the mile-long line of steamboats, and well beyond the range of the trim packets that made regular trips to places like Keokuk and Hannibal, waited a filthy, low-slung, two-deck, stem-paddle steamer with a very shallow draft for clearing mud flats. Twenty years ago it had been built for travel up the Missouri River,, and two decades of heavy work on that swift and muddy stream had banged it about.

Few men would willingly embark upon such a leaky craft, except that no other was available for the long trip north, so as various steamers from Mississippi ports docked, other travelers like Zendt ran to the waiting vessel to buy passage. They were met at the stern by a small thin man, Captain Frake, who held a megaphone to his lips: “If you want passage up the Missouri, get your gear aboard by twelve noon, because sure as hell, that’s when we sail.”

“I have a Conestoga and six horses,” Zendt shouted across the dirty water.

“We’ll have gangplanks over the side at fifteen minutes to twelve,” Frake replied. “But, son, you better get her aboard pronto, because at twelve sharp we sail, team or no team.”

“How much?” Zendt shouted.

“How far?” Frake asked.

“Blacksnake Hills.”

“Any kinfolk?”

“Wife.”

Captain Frake calculated how much this traveler could afford to pay, and replied through his megaphone, “Wagon and horses, thirty-two dollars. Two people, twenty-one dollars. You’ll find no better.”

“Agreed,” Zendt called, whereupon Captain Frake ordered a Negro to lower a gangplank to the levee, and Levi climbed aboard, delivering the fifty-three dollars. “Receipt?” he asked. The dour little captain extended a hand, saying, “My word’s my bond. Get your gear aboard.”

Zendt had three hours to get his wagon ashore and deliver it to the
Robert Q. Fell
. Breathless, he dashed back to the
Ozark Maid
, finding to his dismay that whereas the steamboat itself was neatly tied up, the trailing flatboats were not close to any spot from which they could be unloaded. Later in the day they would be detached and poled to other spots.

“The wagon!” Levi began shouting from shore. “We have to have that wagon by eleven.”

“Nothing I can do,” Elly called back. Until the men started seriously to shift the flatboats, she was helpless.

“Hey there!” Levi shouted to disinterested men aboard the
Ozark Maid
, “how do I get my wagon?”

“They’ll unload it,” the man said carelessly, waving his arm in no particular direction.

Back and forth Zendt ran, a short-legged Dutchman in a flat-brimmed hat, trying to urge rivermen to work faster than their custom. Ten o’clock came and nothing happened. Eleven o’clock approached and the flatboat was still well offshore. He became desperate and ran the long distance back to the
Robert Q. Fell
, where Captain Frake shouted through his megaphone, “It’s not my concern. This here boat sails at twelve sharp, and you better be aboard.”

“What about my money?”

“You paid your money, and I offer you accommodation in return. It’s here waitin’, but you better move yourself and get that team aboard.”

Levi ran back to the flatboat and in desperation shouted at Elly, “Do something!”

“What can I do?” she asked pathetically.

The precious hour passed, the one worth fifty-three dollars to the Zendts, and the flatboat remained stationary. With a burst of speed, Zendt dashed back to the
Robert Q. Fell
and pleaded, “Captain Frake, wait just a few minutes! We’re comin’.”

The captain looked up and down the levee, then back at his steamboat innards and called, “We’ll hold her a couple of minutes.” With a sense of salvation, Levi ran back to the flatboats and saw with joy that the one containing his team was being shifted. “I offered them two dollars,” Elly called ashore.

“Great idea!” Levi shouted back. He had demanded that she do something, and she had done it. “How long to unload?” he yelled. Elly consulted with the men and replied, “About an hour.”

“Oh, my God!” Levi groaned, and back he ran to the
Robert Q. Fell
. “It’ll take fifty more minutes,” he called up to the captain.

“Can’t wait more than thirty,” Captain Frake replied, so back Levi galloped to where the flatboat was pulling in to shore. The men operating the craft had no intention of working at extra speed, but they had no objection if Levi and Elly routed out the gangplanks, fastened them in position, led four of the horses ashore, harnessed the other two to the wagon and slowly edged it off the scow.

No sooner did the iron wheels touch cobblestone than Elly backed the other four horses into position, where Levi harnessed them. With Elly walking behind, he whipped up the team, leading his six handsome grays along the levee.

“Fine team you have there,” a man called. “Care to sell?” Levi did not even reply. His eyes were fixed on the smokestacks of the
Robert Q. Fell
. He became so nervous that he whipped the six heavy horses into a trot, but they had gone only a short distance when a man accompanied by a policeman flagged them down.

“I’m Curtis Wainwright,” the man told Levi. “I fancy good horseflesh and I’d be interested in that team of six.”

“Not for sale,” Levi said in great agitation.

“You’re headed for Oregon?”

“Yes. Get out of the way.”

“Wait a minute, mister,” the policeman said. “Mr. Wainwright wants to speak with you.”

“My boat! It’s leaving without me.”

“Which boat?” the policeman asked.

“
Robert Q. Fell
.”

The two men laughed, and Wainwright said, “I think you can rest assured that your boat will wait.”

Levi saw that he was trapped, so he turned to Elly and said, “Run ahead and tell them we’re comin’.” The policeman tried good-naturedly to intercept her, but she was off and running, and when she got to the steamboat and Levi saw that she was engaging its captain in conversation, he felt relieved.

“Point is,” Mr. Wainwright explained, “you really shouldn’t take a fine team like that onto the prairies. What you need for Oregon is not horses but oxen. Now, I’ll give you two hundred dollars each for those grays, and I’ll sell you six oxen for sixty dollars ... total. You’ll reach Oregon a rich man.”

“These are my horses,” Levi said, and without further argument he drove the team along the levee to where Captain Frake’s men had lowered gangplanks up which the wagon trundled. As soon as it was aboard, the planks were hoisted and thrown back in a pile.

“You can go now!” Levi called up to the captain, but nothing happened. Two o’clock came, and three and four, and still nothing happened. At five a two-wheeled carriage pulled onto the levee and out of it stepped an army officer in blue uniform with rows of brightly polished buttons. He was about thirty, handsome, with a clipped mustache and an easy manner.

“Halloo, Captain Frake?” he called.

One of the deckhands routed out the captain, who appeared on the upper deck with his megaphone. “Captain Mercy, how are you?”

“There’s a dance tonight, Captain Frake. You won’t be leaving, will you?”

“We’re leavin’ at twelve sharp tomorrow,” Frake replied.

“Good!” the captain called back, and with that he climbed into his carriage, wheeled the horses about and disappeared.