The River People (The Making of America, Book 12)
Lee Davis Willoughby
THE RIVER PEOPLE [From the back cover] THESE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO DARED THE WILD RIVER
In the 1800's the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers were the great roadway that bore men and women westward In search of wealth, glory, a new life. The path was turbulent, dangerous, often deadly.
The people who traveled it were diverse: there were heroes, heroines, murderers and betrayers.
Among these were two young and lovely women. Georgia and Clarissa and two men of mystery. Eaton and Casey. Their private destinies were profoundly entwined with America's Westward thrust.
Twelfth In the bestselling series
THE WOMAN WITH HAIR LIKE THE SUN
Clarissa, whom the chief Gray Lion had called "woman with hair like the sun", lay inside the tipi crying. She knew that she was not destined to remain an Arikara squaw, but how could she forget the lovemaking of Gray Lion, the first she had known? How could she forget the thrusts, deep within her body, of this powerful bronze stranger? He had implanted a part of himself deep within her spirit and it would remain there forever.
A shaft of sunlight fell across her as Gray Lion came into the tipi and knelt beside her, placing his hand lightly on her knee as he spoke.
"Our women always hide to cry."
She knew then that it was time to go, that the white man Hawkins waiting outside would take her upriver. But what of Hawkins himself--did he represent a new, a greater danger?
The Making of America Series 
The Wilderness Seekers 
The Mountain Breed 
The Conestoga People 
The Forty-Niners 
Hearts Divided 
The Builders 
The Land Rushers 
The Wild and the Wayward 
The Texans 
The Alaskans 
The Golden Staters 
The River People 
Lee Davis Willoughby
A DELL/BRYANS BOOK
Published by
Dell Publishing Co., Inc.
1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza
New York, New York 10017
Copyright © 1981 by Greg Hunt
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.
Dell ® TM 681510, Dell Publishing Co., Inc.
ISBN: 0-440-07248-4
Printed in the United States of America
First printing--January 1981
NEW ORLEANS APRIL, 1876
Georgia St. Clair sat on the hard wooden bench, staring down the long line of vacant docks, wishing her father would hurry with his errand and come back for her. Before her the broad, murky- brown Mississippi River stretched away for miles, engorged with spring flood water, churning, turbulent and fascinating. The river was a striking contrast to the crisp, blue-green waters of the Gulf of Mexico, which Georgia and her father had just crossed by ship. The appearance of abandon and decay here along the New Orleans steamboat landing seemed strange, almost haunting, after just leaving the bustle of activity and commerce of the seaport docks.
Far down the landing scattered like survivors of some devastating disease that had swept through this area were the looming chimneys of some of the few remaining steamboats which still plied
this river. Her father was probably on one of them right now, Georgia thought, trying to find one to carry them upriver to St. Louis for a price they could afford. She wished now she had gone along with her father instead of choosing to stop here at this bench and wait. But after they had lugged their heavy packs and bundles all the way across the city from the ship, the seat had looked too inviting to pass up. Now she felt lonely and restless in this vacant, neglected place. It was almost like trying to relax in a graveyard.
From somewhere down the long row of abandoned cotton warehouses which flanked the landing area, a lone figure emerged. His footsteps were hesitant and irregular. He seemed to be headed nowhere in particular, and he did not notice Georgia in her place on the bench until he was within about ten feet of her. Then he only glanced up briefly, his eyes sweeping over her with fuzzy disinterest as his head nodded a vague greeting.
He was dressed in dingy duck trousers and a shirt of coarse cotton material. His unruly shock of greasy brown hair was stuffed under a knit sailor's cap which sat askew right on the top of his head. His face was bloated and flushed, and as he neared Georgia she could smell the odor of cheap whiskey which surrounded him like a fog.
He had almost passed Georgia by, as he staggered off in search of another bottle, when he stopped suddenly and looked back at her in bleary- eyed confusion. "You're a woman!" he announced, startled.
"So what about it?" Georgia challenged. "Haven't you ever seen one before?"
"I couldn't tell there for a while," the man said,
craning his neck forward to peer at her more closely. "What with them men's clothes you're wearin', a feller's gotta look pretty close 'fore he can make you out." 
"Go on with you, you danged old rummy," she snapped. "It's none of your nevermind what I decide to wear. My father's coming back for me soon and we're going to take a steamboat ride up this Mississippi River." 
"A steamboat? Hell, I work on a steamboat," the man announced proudly. "You an' me could take a boat ride together and have us a whale of a good time on the way up to Saint Looie." As he stood there, staring at her and calculating his chances, a leering grin slowly began to spread across his face. 
Despite his size and threatening nearness, Georgia was not afraid of this man. She knew how to deal with his kind when they stuck their heads in a bottle and started getting whiskey-wild ideas. As he took a step toward her, drawing quite near now, Georgia stood up quickly, her right hand disappearing behind her back. When her hand returned, it held a Bowie knife with a thick, threatening eight-inch blade. She held it with the point only inches away from the man's protruding belly. 
"You can have your fun if you're man enough to tangle with this first," she promised him in a low, steady voice. "But I'll wager it'll never happen." 
The grin on the man's face dissolved as he eyed the blade. Something about the calm, familiar way in which she had produced the knife left no doubt in his mind that she would readily follow through with the threat. It was more than he had bargained for when he stopped to proposition her. 
"No harm meant, little lady," he stammered, backing away to put a more comfortable distance between his navel and this unexpectedly dangerous young woman. "A man's gotta try or lie won't never know, will he?"
"I suppose that's so, but now you know about me, clear enough. So get along with you!" 
With a trace of an admiring smile returning to his face, the man touched his hat in a half salute and started away. Georgia returned the knife to its sheath in the small of her back and sat down on the bench, watching the man until he had rounded the corner of a building in the distance.
The incident was not particularly disturbing or unfamiliar to her. She had learned young how to defend herself, and if the drunk had made it necessary, she would not have hesitated to use the knife to protect herself from him. His would not have been the first flesh her blade had tasted.
But what was strangely bothersome to Georgia was the fact that he had almost passed her by completely without even realizing that she was a woman. That fact was more insulting to her than any of his suggestions.
It was no wonder, though, she thought, glancing down at the clothes she wore. Out in the mountains, in the gold camps and sleepy little Mexican towns where they had come from, she had been comfortable enough in her man's trousers and flannel shirt. In that kind of place these clothes were functional, and it was no unusual sight to see women dressed the same as the men they worked alongside. But here, suddenly, she was very aware of her shabby appearance. As she and her father had trudged through the city streets of New Or
leans, making their way from the dock where the clipper ship had landed to this place, she had seen the city ladies wearing their fine fancy dresses, carrying their little parasols and climbing in and out of carriages, and she had pulled her felt hat far down over her head and lowered her eyes, hoping that nobody would notice her. During the voyage from Mexico she had looked forward to reaching New Orleans and seeing the sights of the city, but this was something she had not foreseen. Now all she wanted to do was stay out of sight and continue the journey as soon as possible.
At last she saw her father far off down the landing walking toward her. When he reached her, she stood up and asked, "Did you find one, papa?"
William St. Clair held up two tickets and announced, "Passage for two on the Natchez Belle, leaving for St. Louis in the morning."
St. Clair was forty-five years old. His face was tanned and deeply etched by years of exposure to the sun and the elements, and his short frame was husky and powerful. His clothes were similar to Georgia's--simple, durable brown trousers and faded blue flannel shirt. His ancient felt hat was pushed far back on his head, and his face was aglow with excitement. He was pleased with the results of his excursion to the boats.
"It won't be long now, darling," he said cheerfully. "In the morning we'll be on our way upriver toward our fortune."
"Surely, papa," Georgia said quietly. "How much did you have to pay for the tickets?"
That question badly damaged William's high spirits. He hated to be reminded of practical matters when he was feeling good. "Forty-six dollars,"
he told her. "It was the best I could do. I went to all seven boats on the levee, but only three of them were leaving anytime soon, and none was cheaper than the Natchez Belle."
"But that's most of the money we have left! What are we going to do when we get to St. Louis? How will we pay for the trip on up to Montana Territory if we only have--how much?-- eight dollars?"
"We'll do our level best, daughter, and leave the rest to fortune," William advised her. It was one of his favorite sayings. Georgia had heard it hundreds of times over the years, but it did little to relieve her apprehension. "Come on, now. They said we could board right away. The boat will be ready to leave at dawn."
He bent down and began shouldering their packs and bundles of gear, and Georgia turned to help him. They had sold their pack animals and some of their gear in Matamoros, Mexico, before boarding the ship for New Orleans, but William had decided to keep a good part of their prospecting outfit, knowing it would be needed again when they reached their destination in the high plains country of the upper Rocky Mountains.
He first shouldered the huge bundle which contained their picks, shovels and simple cooking utensils, all rolled up and tied tightly within the folds of their large canvas tent. Then he helped Georgia heft the smaller pack which held their blankets, heavy wool coats and small store of food. Finally each one picked up a large carpet suitcase in one hand and a Winchester in the other. This gear was all they owned in the world.
William led the way down the dock, leaning
forward under the familiar weight of the burden he carried and launching into a detailed account of his negotiations for the steamboat tickets. Georgia fell in behind him, hefting her pack until its wide straps found their customary location on her shoulders. She was used to such toil. She had walked countless miles up and down mountains all over Mexico and the West straining under similar burdens. 
When they reached the Natchez Belle, William and Georgia paused at the foot of the gangplank and gazed up at the boat. William beamed at his daughter as if it were some newly acquired property of his own. The boat was a beautiful sight, scrubbed clean and gleaming white, as if she had just been launched on the river that day. 
The boat was three hundred feet long and had three main decks, each surrounded by a waist-high railing ornamented with intricate white woodwork. The small texas and pilothouse sat atop the upper deck, glass-walled, with a clear view in all directions. Toward the front of the boat the huge twin chimneys thrust up from the boilers on the main deck to tower nearly forty feet above the uppermost hurricane deck. On either side of the boat the massive paddle wheels arched up out of the water for more than twenty feet. 
A gang of about twenty-five hands, some on the dock and some on the main deck, were busy loading cargo. A mate was supervising the work with an imaginative flood of oaths and threats, and from the hurricane deck high above them another man was watching their efforts with calm attention.
When Georgia's eyes came to rest on that lean, 
dignified figure above, they remained there, studying and admiring him. From that angle he seemed extremely tall, with broad, straight shoulders atop a firm and well-proportioned body. In his immaculate blue and white uniform, he seemed the perfect complement to the magnificent picture the steamboat presented. From beneath his blue cap his features were sharp and handsome, and his gaze was steady and filled with authority. 
Even as Georgia watched him, his eyes turned in their direction and he called down to them, "Mr. St. Clair! You and your son please come aboard so you'll be clear of the workmen. The steward will show you to your cabins." 
Georgia felt as if the tall, handsome officer had somehow reached across the broad space between them and slapped her. Mixed feelings of anger and embarrassment churned within her, and as she tensed to reply sharply to the insult, William placed a restraining hand on her arm. 
"He's too far away," St. Clair said with quiet understanding. "He couldn't see you good." 
As the tears of frustration welled up in her eyes, Georgia ducked her head and said to her father, "Let's just get on the boat, papa, and find out where our place is." 
She followed her father up the gangplank, and as they moved toward the front of the boat, a black steward dressed in a spotless white uniform met them at the bottom of the main stairway. 
He was smiling pleasantly as he greeted them, but then surprise registered on his face as he looked closer at Georgia. "Lawdamercy!" he exclaimed. "It's a young missus under all that truck an' them man's clothes I" 
"Of course it is!" William snapped. "It's my daughter Georgia. What's the matter with you people that you can't tell a woman from a man?" 
"It's fine, papa. Really," Georgia told him. "I'll be cleaned up and changed soon enough." 
The steward looked thoroughly contrite. "I's truly sorry, missy," he said. "Sometimes my ol' jaws start flappin' 'fore I knows what I be sayin'. Let me help you with that truck you carryin'." He helped her ease the pack off her shoulders and then picked up her suitcase, leaving Georgia only the Winchester to bring along. He led them up the stairs to two adjoining cabins midway down the passenger deck. 
"My name's Thomas," the steward said as he helped them deposit their belongings in the cabins. "Jes' you need anything, you call out for ol' Thomas an' by 'n by I be here." 
"Thank you, Thomas," William said. As the steward headed off down the walkway, St. Clair stepped into his daughter's cabin and looked around. "Fancy, ain't they?" he said. "Mine's just the same as this." 
"It's an awful nice boat," Georgia agreed. "I believe these rooms are the finest I've seen since that time we stayed in that hotel in Denver. Remember that?" She was trying to regain some of the pleasure and excitement she had first felt when she saw the Natchez Belle, but it was hard now. Three times in the past half-hour she had been mistaken for a man, and all she really felt like doing at the moment was locking herself away in the small, comfortable cabin so she could be alone to salve her wounded pride. 
William seemed to sense her mood. "When I 
was here awhile ago," he said, "I just bought two tickets. I never got around to saying that the other one was for my daughter. He just didn't take a close enough look at you. That's all." 
"Never mind about it, papa," Georgia said. "I can understand it. When I dress like a man and work like a man, why shouldn't people think that's what I am?" 
William put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close to him. "I know I've led you down a rough trail, darlin,'" he said. "Don't think I don't lay awake nights faulting myself about the kind of life I've made for you. But that will all change once we get up to Montana and start working that gold claim there. Then you'll have it all--the fine clothes, the carriages and the big house in the city. And then the fellas will come swarming around to court you like bumblebees on a rose. Men like that fellow up there will have to stand in line outside your door." 
"It's fine. It really is," Georgia assured him with a smile, kissing his cheek. "I've never complained, have I? We've always been together in everything we've done and everyplace we've gone, and that's what counts to me the most." 
"I know you don't complain, and I love you for it, girl," William said. "But I want so much more for you! I want to see you strutting around in silks and satins like the queen herself, and I want to watch everybody turn their heads when you walk by and say, 'See that elegant lady there? That's Georgia St. Clair!'" 
"Oh, papa! You and your dreams," Georgia said, kissing him once again. "Here we are in our ragged denims with eight dollars left in the world, and 
you've got me sashaying around in silk gowns and stacking up broken hearts like cordwood. Let's just take each day as it happens to us, and if all that comes along sometime, that'll be fine. But if it don't, that'll be fine, too. We've not been so unhappy with our lives the way we've lived them so far, have we?" 
"No, darlin', we're not unhappy," St. Clair agreed. Then with a sharp smack on her rear end, he added, "But I want to see my little rock-chipping tomboy turn herself into a beautiful young woman again. You fix yourself up and put on that pretty blue dress you bought in Albuquerque last year. Then when you come out of this room, if any man calls you my son again, I'll damn him for a blind, addle-headed fool and put him out of his misery." 
When her father was gone, Georgia closed the cabin door and then turned to survey the small compartment that had been assigned to her. It was more elegant than anyplace she had been in a long time. There was a single bed, full and soft, with clean white sheets and a tassled bedspread of finely worked lace. Across the cabin was a small table and chair, and at the back was a small stand with a water pitcher and basin on it. The back of the door was covered by a luxurious, full-length mirror, the first Georgia had ever seen. In the corner behind the door sat a small, potbellied stove, cold and idle now because its services were not needed in this warm spring weather. 
Georgia removed her hat and unpinned her dark auburn hair, letting it fall down across her back and shoulders. Then she began to undress. She peeled off her ill-fitting work clothes and 
homemade underthings, tossing them casually in a corner, and then paused to survey herself critically in the mirror on the back of the door.
She was a woman! Here was the proof of it--a fine, soft, shapely body, though kept constantly buried beneath the layers of coarse work clothes. No man had ever seen her naked, but she sometimes dreamed of that thrilling moment in her future when she would stand this way before the man she loved, offering herself to him. Her body tingled even now at the thought of it.
The contrasts of her body were striking. The skin of her face and throat were darkly tanned. The color descended down her chest in a "V" to mark the front of her shirt, and her arms were equally brown up to the point where she kept her sleeves rolled up. Beyond that, her flesh was creamy and flawless. Her breasts with small, pinkish-brown nipples, were full, but not overly large, making any sort of undergarments unnecessary under the coarse material of her shirt. Hard work had not added the layers of muscle on her frame as it would with a man. It only made her body firm and supple. Her waist was slim and shapely and her legs were slender, straight and strong.
She washed her hair carefully, delighting in the fragrant soap she found beside the basin. Then she bathed her body, scrubbing hard to remove the layers of dirt that had accumulated since she had last found the opportunity to wash herself. When she was finished, her skin was rosy from the attentions of the washcloth and towel.
She laid her suitcase on the bed and opened it. Inside were her seldom-used best clothes, her two dresses and the unfamiliar lacy feminine 
undergarments. She had a positive dislike for the lands of things women wore under their dresses. After the unconfined freedom of movement of her work clothes, she felt bound and restricted in the laced- up corsets and slips. There were some things about being a lady, she thought as she put the underclothes on and pulled the laces breathlessly tight, for which she could definitely never yearn.
Finally she took out the blue dress her father had mentioned. Though she had bought it more than a year before, it was still almost new. She got it when she and her father came down out of the mountains laden with a relative treasure of nearly four hundred dollars in gold dust and decided to spend a few days in Albuquerque before moving on again. Since that time, she had worn it only a couple of times during brief visits to civilization.
She put on the dress, carefully fastening the many tiny buttons up the front to her throat and smoothing out the suitcase wrinkles as best she could. Finally she examined herself in the mirror with a critical eye, and she was reasonably satisfied with what she saw. The young woman there looked almost like a different person from the one who had come in this cabin forty-five minutes earlier. She was just finishing arranging her long, reddish brown hair into a reasonable approximation of the style she had seen on the women in the city when her father knocked on her door.
"Come in," she called out, stepping back away from the mirror as the door swung open. William St. Clair had also changed into his best finery, a brown wool suit and white shirt with starched collar.
"All, you look lovely, Georgia," he said, inspecting her with glowing approval. "Do you feel better now?" 
"It's been a long time since we both got all dressed up, hasn't it, papa? It's like a holiday or a party or something, both of us getting so fancied up like this." 
"Well, there will be a sort of a party for us to go to," William announced. "Thomas just told me that since there are so few passengers on board, the captain has invited all of us to take our meals with him. Now what do you think of that? Dinner at the captain's table!" 
"The captain?" Georgia repeated apprehensively. She remembered the stately figure standing above them on the upper deck, gazing down like an emperor. 
"It's an honor, you know," William said. "The steward said that usually passengers eat in a separate dining room from the captain and the pilots." 
"It's fine with me, I guess, just so long as they feed us somewhere," Georgia said, covering her nervousness with a joke, "and I don't have to clean up after." 
"No dirty pots for you, my dear," St. Clan- laughed. "It's the life of luxury for us all the way to St. Louis." 
"We're turning into a pair of regular uppercrusters, aren't we, papa?" Georgia chuckled. "Decked out like we were going to a funeral or a hanging, and headed to dinner with a steamboat captain. Before long, we'll be so high society we won't be able to stand ourselves anymore." 
They left the room and strolled around the deck, passing a few leisurely minutes until it was time to 
go in and eat. The crew had apparently finished loading the last of the cargo and had disappeared somewhere on the lower deck. As Georgia and her father walked along, she could occasionally hear snatches of the men's rowdy talk and laughter below them. It filled her mind with an odd, nostalgic remembrance of the way it was in the mining camps out West. Those places and those days seemed very far away at the moment. 
At the rear of the boat they paused, gazing westward at the bright orange sunset. The splashes of color from the setting sun reflected off the water, turning the normally muddy color of the river's surface into a brilliant, rippling show. A mile or more away, across the main channel of the Mississippi, Georgia noticed several V-shaped forms sticking up out of the water amidst a grove of inundated treetops. 
"What are those, papa?" she asked, pointing the objects out to her father. 
"It beats me," William said. "I can't see why anybody would want to build something like that out in the middle of the river for. If you tried to fish off one of them, you'd all the time be sliding down the side into the water." 
"They are rooftops of people's homes," a voice explained from behind them. Georgia and her father turned to see a man approaching them from the opposite side of the boat. "Excuse me," he said as he neared them. "I just happened to overhear your conversation. There's been heavy rains upriver this spring, and the river has risen nearly ten feet in the last two weeks. There are some places north of here where the river is fifty and sixty miles wide because of the flooding." 
"How awful!" Georgia exclaimed.
"Awful, true, but beautiful, too, in a strange sort of way," the man said thoughtfully. "It happens every two or three years, but when the water goes down, the people still come back to the same houses, and they scoop the mud out of their parlors, and life goes on. I have never quite decided in my mind whether it takes an exceptionally hardy breed of people to live along this great river, or just an abundance of hardheadedness."
He smiled a strange smile at Georgia, friendly and yet somehow unsettling in its intimacy. She felt a chill pass through her as his eyes made a brief and casual journey up and down her body.
He was a medium-sized man, about thirty-five or forty. He wore a dapper gray suit with a frilled shirt and buttoned vest. His face was interesting-- not quite handsome, but undeniably attractive. The look in his eyes was odd, somehow lewd and yet compelling. Georgia had the disconcerting feeling that somehow he was seeing and understanding more of her than he was supposed to.
"May I introduce myself?" he asked. "My name is Dwayne Naramore."
"I'm William St. Clair, and this is my daughter, Georgia," William said.
"It's a pleasure, ma'am," Naramore said, tipping his derby hat to Georgia and then shaking William's hand.
"You must spend a lot of time on steamboats, Mr. Naramore," Georgia said. "You seem to know so much about this Mississippi River."
"Better than my fair share, I suppose," Naramore conceded. "Since the war, the railroads have been bringing about the quick demise of the 
Mississippi steamboat traffic. Boats like this one, the Natchez Belle, they're already relics of the past, It's like seeing a corpse still up and walking around because nobody's told him he's dead yet. But I prefer the steamboats to the noisy iron horse, and I'll keep on riding them as long as there are any left to ride. There's something romantic and mysterious about the river that I love."
"What line are you in, Naramore?" William asked.
"Life has cast me in the role of salesman," he said, "much to my displeasure. I sell a line of ladies' unmentionables, and I must admit that my particular product is the only thing that makes this sort of work bearable to me."
Then he smiled that smile again, and Georgia felt an unexplainable flush come over her. She felt very uneasy around this man, but her father did not seem to experience any similar reaction. As the three of them began to stroll around the deck, William and Naramore were soon deep in conversation, and though Georgia took little part in the talk, she repeatedly felt the stranger's eyes on her, as if he was communicating in a separate and distinct way with her even as he talked with her father. And she did not particularly like the messages he was sending out. She was distinctly relieved when the steward found them and asked them to follow him to the captain's private dining room.
Four people were already seated at the rectangular dining table when the steward led the three new arrivals in. The room was not overly large. The dining table and a small service table to the side practically filled it up. But what it
lacked in size, it more than made up for with the lavish elegance of its outfitting and fixtures. The table, with place settings for ten people, was of richly finished hardwood, covered over with an intricate lace tablecloth. The chairs were upholstered with velvet cushions. Above the table a brass chandelier with six cut glass lamp globes brightly illuminated the room. As seemed to be the case with every other part of the boat, inside and out, the walls and ceilings were painted a dazzling white. All the fixtures in the room were of highly polished brass, and the walls were adorned with several oil paintings of various river scenes. The table was set with real china, linen napkins, and silver tableware and serving dishes. Georgia could scarcely contain a reverent sigh of awe as she entered the room.
Seated on the far side of the table was a middleaged couple, both portly and demure, and dressed in conservative blacks and browns. The man wore the white collar of a clergyman.
Next to them, toward the head of the table, sat a tall, lean man of stern countenance and ramrod straight posture. He appeared to be about sixty years old, but there was something about his austere comportment, his uncompromising gaze lodged firmly beneath his wooly, untamed eyebrows, that made him seem ageless, as if he had always looked and been like this, and by sheer strength of iron will would remain forever unchanged. He could have easily been born in a land where facial expression had been banned and bred out of the species.
At the head of the table sat the man Georgia
had seen on the upper deck as they were coming on board the boat, the captain of the Natchez Belle. Now, with his hat off and much closer to her, Georgia decided that he was easily as handsome as he had seemed from a distance. He was older than her, past thirty, she guessed, but his face still retained a certain boyish quality. It seemed to her a face capable of communicating warm friendliness or stem authority with equal ease. But at the moment, his expression was one of guarded worry and embarrassment. 
Naramore had apparently met everybody else earlier, so he performed the introductions for Georgia and her father. Turning first to the captain, he said, "Captain Eaton, may I present Miss Georgia St. Clair and her father, William St. Clair." 
The captain looked stricken, as if his worst fears had been finally confirmed. Rising from his chair, he was torn between the dual needs for greetings and apologies to Georgia. "Welcome to the Natchez Belle, Miss St. Clair," he said. "Your father and I met earlier, but he didn't make it clear that you ... I mean ... if I in any way--" 
William St. Clair laughed aloud at Eaton's difficulties. "Captain," he said, "you got her as hot as Lucifer's cat with what you said out there, but I think she's over it now." 
Georgia was surprised to find herself also laughing lightly about the incident. "I was angry," she admitted, 'Taut it was an understandable mistake. I'm very pleased to meet you, Captain Eaton." 
"At this moment, I don't see how I could possibly have been so wrong," Eaton assured her. 
Naramore went on to introduce the somber man 
next to the captain as Nehemiah Bedford, chief pilot of the boat, and then the Reverend and Mrs. Seymour Holmes. Both men rose to shake William's and Georgia's hands, and then the newcomers were seated and the meal began at last.
The food which the steward quietly served them was delicious. There were several courses in the seafood meal, each was prepared to perfection. As she ate, Georgia surreptitiously observed Mrs. Holmes across the table--what she did with her napkin and which of the several pieces of silverware she used to eat which food--and then did her best to handle herself the same way. 
Despite her careful efforts, though, Georgia did not feel as if she belonged among these people. She and her father were more used to a table crowded with rowdy miners and frontiersmen, laughing and talking and grabbing halfway across the table »for their food rather than having it conveniently brought to their left elbows. But this was something she had always thought she would like to experience, to be among gentle people in refined surroundings, and she was determined to 
27 
see her way through it with as much dignity and good manners as she could muster.
Midway through the meal, Naramore was the first to begin any serious exchange of conversation. "Captain Eaton," he said. "Mr. St. Clair tells me that he and his daughter are traveling all the way up the Missouri River to the northwest to claim a gold mine in Montana Territory."
"How interesting," Eaton said. "I guess you and your daughter plan on being quite wealthy very soon, then."
"I wouldn't complain if it happened," St. Clair said, "but it's really just a claim, not a mine, that we're going after, and we're not really sure it'll still be waiting for us when we get there. A first cousin of mine died up there and left the holding to me, but there's a lot of bamboozling goes on in places like that. It took a long time for word to reach us. The letter went down to Albuquerque, but we'd already pulled out before it arrived. A prospector friend of mine picked it up and carried it nigh onto four months before he ran into us down in the Sierra Madres in Mexico. Then it took us nearly two months to get from there to here. Old Sam's been planted nearly ten months now, and like as not we'll have to fight somebody for what's ours once we get there--if it's worth fighting for."
"It seems like a lot of risk and effort for such uncertain rewards," Eaton said. "Especially with a young woman along."
Georgia shot the captain a quick dark glance but said nothing. He seemed to have a real talent for saying just the right thing to make her blood rise.
"You hit the nail right smack on the head, captain," St. Clair chuckled past a mouthful of shrimp. "But if gold was an easy thing to get ahold of, it wouldn't be worth having, would it?"
"I suppose not."
"If things work out," Georgia's father went on, "I might have myself three women along on this thing instead of just one, and I guarantee that'll stir up a bunch of problems. Cousin Sam, he left a share of the claim to some kinfolks in England, too, and they might be coming over to meet us upriver. We don't know yet. But my girl Georgia knows this land of life and she can handle herself as good as most men. Things'll work themselves out all right. They always have before."
"I've often regretted that I was not called to witness among the red savages along the frontier," Holmes interjected from across the table. From the skeptical glance his wife gave him, it was plain that she did not share her husband's regrets.
"Somebody's got to do it, I suppose," St. Clair said. "But for sure it's a rough calling for the pastors that take it up. Out in the territories, I've seen them butchered like fresh game when they went into some of the encampments and started calling all the Indian gods and suchlike a bunch of malarky. The old medicine man, he'll see to that when he can. I remember this one time out in Nevada Territory--"
"Don't tell about that, papa," Georgia interrupted quickly. "Not at the table."
St. Clair glanced over at her and suddenly realized that she was right. Turning to Mrs. Holmes, he said, "Beg pardon, ma'am. I been forgetting I'm in polite company."
But the subject of martyrdom seemed to interest Holmes. "I can think of no greater honor," he said piously, "than for a man to lay down his life delivering the Lord's message." 
Georgia looked up at the preacher curiously, imagining how he would fare among the Indian tribes she had seen in the southwestern deserts. If he survived at all, their lean diet of dog meat and wild plants would trim a hundred or so pounds off his overweight frame in short order, and his broad idealism would probably be stripped to its bare bones pretty quickly, too. She had seen the occasional frontier missionaries who lived among the Indians, and she knew that pretty quickly they found themselves working harder for the physical survival of their charges than to save their souls for any future heaven. The Indians often had a hard time grasping the white man's concept of religion, and even when they did adopt Christianity, it was usually enmeshed with their own heritage of beliefs and legends until the end product was scarcely recognizable. 
"I agree with you, reverend," St. Clair said. "There's good things in this world that a man ought to be willing to die for, and religion's right up there at the top of the list. But the way I always saw it, living's better than dying, most times." 
"I have a friend who runs the Missouri River all the way up to Fort Benton," Captain Eaton said. "He says it's wild, exciting country up there. You probably know him, Mr. Bedford," he said, turning to the pilot beside him. "His name is Tommie Casey." 
"Aye, I know of him," Bedford confirmed. "A 
brash young hothead and a born troublemaker, but an able man at the wheel, so they say." 
"That's Tommie. No doubt about it," Eaton grinned. Georgia liked the captain better when he smiled. It seemed to her like an expression that should be seen more often on his face. 
"He was a cabin boy on my first command, back before the war some fifteen years ago," Eaton said. "And even then, when he was only twelve or thirteen, he'd fight the toughest rooster on board to defend that stubborn pride of his. But when the war began and the Mississippi boating dropped off to near nothing, he left to take up with the Missouri boatmen." 
That business about the rooster bothered Georgia. She had seen men entertain themselves with fights between a lot of different combinations of men and beasts, but this was a new one to her. "This man," she asked, "he fought with chickens on your steamboat? There doesn't seem to be much sport in that." 
She realized she had blundered when she heard Naramore snicker beside her, but the captain explained it to her patiently. "Those men you saw loading the cargo when you came on board, ma'am," he said, "are called 'roosters' in riverboat talk. It refers to the deck hands." 
Georgia nodded her understanding and decided that she had been better off when she took no part in the conversation at the table. 
When they had finished the meal, the steward served coffee and dessert, and then the men in the party, by apparent custom, moved to a small parlor adjacent to the captain's quarters. Georgia's father went with the men, as did Reverend Holmes, 
and Georgia found herself alone with the minister's wife.
When the door was closed and the two women were alone in the dining room, Mrs. Holmes leaned across the table with a confidential smile and said, "They have to slip off to have their drink and their smoke so as not to offend our frail feminine sensibilities. Isn't it ridiculous?"
"It doesn't make much sense to me," Georgia admitted. "I've seen a world of that land of goings on before, but I guess maybe because you're a preacher's wife and all--"
"Fiddlesticks, my dear," Mrs. Holmes laughed. "I'll wager Seymour will stick right in there with the rest of them, holding his snifter out for seconds and thirds." She was a short woman, rotund and motherly, but apparently not quite as sedate as a minister's wife might be expected to be. Georgia could not remember hearing her say half a dozen words during the meal, but now that they were alone, it looked as if she would prove to be good company.
At Mrs. Holmes's suggestion, they soon left the stuffy cabin, which had become quite hot when it was filled with people, and strolled down to enjoy the evening coolness on the deck toward the front of the boat.
"From the way your father speaks," Mrs. Holmes said, "y°u must have quite an adventuresome life, and a difficult one, too, no doubt."
"To hear him go on like he does," Georgia said, "I guess it must sound like we just race around from Indian raids to boom towns to bonanzas one after another, but most times, our life just seems pretty dull to me, and lonely too. Papa and me
are by ourselves most of the time, out in the mountains prospecting or working some placer claim we've found." 
"Have you always lived this way?" 
"It-seems like it, sometimes. Papa did a lot of prospecting when he was younger, but then when he got married, him and mama settled down before I was born. I can remember us living in this adobe house in the hills outside Monterey when I was a little girl. But papa couldn't hardly make a go of it raising cattle there, so when mama died, there wasn't much else to keep us rooted in that place. 
"That was 1860, about the time the word started spreading about the gold they were finding in Colorado. So pretty soon we just boarded up the house and left for Colorado. We stayed there for about a year, and then we drifted south down the Rockies to New Mexico, then across to Arizona and back to California, up to Nevada, then to Texas and down into Old Mexico. I don't remember what all... just anywhere they were supposed to be making finds. We've been in Old Mexico two or three times, and that's where we were when we heard about papa's cousin Sam and all." 
"What a life for a young girl," Mrs. Holmes exclaimed. 
"No worse than a lot of others, I suppose. And there's good parts, too. I'm twenty-three now, and it's like papa says. I can take care of myself most anywhere as good as any man. Of course there's been things I miss, like going to parties, and wearing nice clothes, and having some young fellow come over to visit on a Sunday afternoon. But I don't talk to papa about that kind of thing much. He'd feel too guilty about it." 
"Perhaps he should feel guilty," Mrs. Holmes suggested. "After all, what kind of future has he made for you, raising you up in the mountains and never giving you a permanent home? In Cairo where we live, most of the young women your age have been married for years and already have three or four children of their own. It's the way things should be." 
Georgia was a little impatient with Mrs. Holmes's open criticism of her father. "There's no law," she said, "that says some folks have to do things just exactly like other folks do them. Papa loves me a lot, and I love him, and that's as important as a lot of other things all put together. It's just that he's got this big dream, you see, and he can't get it out of his head that someday he'll find the Mother Lode. You can't fight against a dream like that when it gets fixed in a man's head--it's too grand. And I wouldn't fight it if I could. A lot of men I've seen, they don't have no dreams at all. They just plod along like a mule in harness until they get old and drop dead in the traces." 
Georgia's eyes were lit with a special fire, and she leaned forward as she talked in her eagerness to make Mrs. Holmes understand what it was all about between herself and her father. 
Finally the older woman smiled a calm smile and reached out to lay her hand across Georgia's. "You're right, my dear," she said. "I spoke out of turn. You shouldn't fight against a man's dreams, or a woman's either, not unless you want to destroy them." 
The Mississippi was quiet and still, as if the night had brought with it some magic drug to 
calm the troubled river. The water beyond the deck of the big white steamboat no longer seemed to be flowing by but to be resting now, and Georgia was content to sit motionless on the deck and relax with it.
Neither she nor Mrs. Holmes had said a word for some time. They were sharing the darkness, the quiet, the still spring breeze, and neither felt the need to interrupt the moment with talk.
From back behind them a splash of light spilled across the deck and a chorus of laughter and loud talk rolled forth as the steward came out the door of the captain's drawing room. Georgia recognized her father's voice exclaiming, "And not only that. He was so ugly that all the women in town used to--" And then the door closed and the revelry was sealed off from them again.
Mrs. Holmes glanced back toward the cabin, her expression mixing disapproval and amusement, and said, "That husband of mine. He'll suffer tomorrow, mind and body, for tonight's indulgences."
The preacher being part of the goings-on was a little surprising to Georgia. She had known few preachers in her life, but it seemed somehow to be a bit more serious sin for a man of the cloth to take a nip than it was for anyone else. But before she allowed her judgment of the man to become too harsh, she remembered her own reaction when Mrs. Holmes had criticized her father. She decided to keep quiet and let Mrs. Holmes talk about it if she wished.
"Now and then," Mrs. Holmes went on, "when I smell a trace of the demon on his breath, he tells me he's taken it for his kidneys, but I know he
really has a taste for it. If the good folks in the congregation back in Cairo could see him now, glass in hand, we'd be disgraced and run out of town within the hour." She paused, chuckling quietly to herself, and then went on. "But we aren't in Cairo, are we? We're in New Orleans among friends, and none will know of our sins but the Maker. Somehow, I think He won't judge Seymour as harshly as the good deacons back home might."
"Do you have any children, Mrs. Holmes?" Georgia asked.
"A son and a daughter. Both are gone from home now, married, and our son made a preacher like his father. We lost another son in the war."
I'm sorry.
"No, don't be, my dear. Many of the people I know lost all their men in that terrible war. Three and four sons from one family, and fathers and husbands and brothers! We were lucky. We only lost one son, and the other came home to us when it was over. But I guess it was the worst for the people here in the South. It's been eleven years now since the peace at Appomattox, but while we were here in New Orleans visiting my brother, the people still talked about the war like it had just ended last week. The people here lost everything --their men, their homes, their land, their pride. The wounds are still open."
"We were out west then," Georgia said. "Papa joined some militia for sixty days once in Colorado, but the government wouldn't send them any guns or pay, so after about a month they just all packed up and left. After that, he decided he wouldn't fight any more wars if he could help it."
The laughter rose again down the deck as
Thomas returned and entered the captain's rooms.
"I guess papa's spinning some of his yarns for them," Georgia smiled. "When his tongue gets- primed with a taste of bonded liquor, he's the grandest liar you ever heard. He can tell a tale about a twenty-foot-tall grizzly that ate up every man in a mining camp, and he'll describe the whole thing so perfectly that you're bound to think it really did happen."
"I'd love to hear it," Mrs. Holmes said. "But I suppose it's not told for a woman's ears."
"He gets pretty salty sometimes," Georgia confirmed.
"It's too bad. We miss a lot, having to conduct ourselves like ladies, don't we?"
"I don't miss much," Georgia said. "I guess that says a lot about how much of a lady I am."
They talked for a while longer, but finally Mrs. Holmes decided that the conclave in the captain's cabin was not going to break up anytime soon and that she might as well go to bed.
Georgia remained on the deck alone, wishing she felt at liberty to go in and join the men. Where they had come from, she would have been right in there among them, and never worried a whit about the kind of talk going on around her. But it was different here. She had on a dress, and men helped her with her chairs, and always let her pass through doorways first, and called her Miss. If she joined the men here, it would inhibit them and their fun. The role of a lady was a new one to her, and she was not finding it completely pleasurable.
At last she too returned to her cabin. When she first went in, the small compartment was stuffy and hot. She lit the lamp and left the door open
for a few minutes to let in some fresh air as she arranged her belongings. When she was finally ready to go to bed, she closed the door and locked it. Then she began to undress.
She had planned to sleep in the light cotton gown she used when she slept in the tent with her father, but in the moist heat of the cabin, it felt so good to be naked that she blew out the lamp and lay down on the bed without putting on the gown.
It felt strange to be in this windowless, womblike room, naked atop the soft, enveloping comfort of the mattress. She seldom had the chance to spend the night on a real bed, let alone in a room by herself, and she felt a little lonely, but also secure and unassailable. She could hide in here from the whole world, or admit anyone she wanted with her imagination.
As she drifted slowly toward sleep, her right hand lying unnoticed across one breast, she dreamed of turning the latch of the door for a certain man whose face always seemed to be concealed by the shadowy darkness of the night.
Captain Paul Eaton stood on the hurricane deck, facing into a warm misting rain blowing up from the southeast. A storm was brewing somewhere out over the Gulf, building up its bluster and courage for an assault on the city. 
He was glad they were leaving New Orleans, and not only because of the impending foul weather. Even now, in mid-April, southern Louisiana was getting hot and muggy. As the summer months approached, the humid heat would at times be almost unbearable, laden with salty moisture from the Gulf, and it was approaching the time for the thick, droning hordes of mosquitoes, which bred prolifically in the surrounding lowlands and marshes, to begin their annual maddening attack on the local population. 
In this area, it seemed like there was scarcely ever any spring. Close on the heels of the last 
39 
chilly winter rains came the waves of summer heat and discomfort. Farther north, on up past Memphis and toward St. Louis, it would still be cool and comfortable. 
Below him, out of sight somewhere on the main deck, Eaton could hear the harsh, angry voice of Mack Sellers, the first mate, demanding greater efforts from the crew stoking the fireboxes. The boilers would soon be growing white hot, heating the hundreds of gallons of water above them to the boiling point. 
Eaton glanced around and saw that Nehemiah Bedford had already taken his place in the pilothouse, flanked by his eager, respectful cub, Mark Tanner. Bedford was staring out over the bow of the boat, across the river now coal-black at this pre-dawn hour. Eaton knew he would not be welcome up there in the pilothouse right now. Once they had found the channel and were headed upriver, after Bedford had turned the wheel over to his cub for a while, he would tolerate the captain's presence and might even be inclined to engage in a bit of river talk with him, but now now, not while they were getting underway. 
In fact, at that moment, Eaton knew he was little more than excess freight anywhere he went on the boat. All hands were turned to, setting this complex piece of machinery in motion, doing then- jobs as they should be done and his orders or interference would not be welcomed in any quarter. He was the manager, the captain, the authority on the Natchez Belle, but once the boat was in motion, whichever of the two pilots stood at the wheel in the pilothouse above was undeniably the man in charge. It had been the law on the river 
for decades, even before the U.S. Congress, in its wisdom, had turned it into a paper law as well.
With a shrill hiss, excess steam began to escape from the safety valves of the boilers and bells began to ring on the main deck, transmitting Bedford's orders to the engineer. Eaton turned and saw the huge paddle wheels on the sides of the boat begin to move, straining to overcome the inertia of their ten-day rest here. As they began to find their strength, churning the water near them and throwing a spray far out in front of them, the boat began to ease backward slowly and smoothly.
As they backed, the boat drifted gently away from the wharf until they were at last clear of it. The bells rang again and the paddle wheels slowed, stopped for an instant, and then began to rotate in the opposite direction, pushing the boat forward in an arc and out into the river. Bedford brought the boat around in a tight circle to starboard, then straightened out and found the eddy water. It was this part of the river, midway between the swifter currents toward the middle and the dangerous shallows near the bank, that was the best for upriver travel.
Out before him now, Eaton could see little but the black surface of the river directly before the boat, and the vague, intangible form of the bank to the right. But he was not worried. He knew a different sort of vision guided the hands of the man up there behind the wheel. Bedford's mind was a permanent record of each bend and curve, each reef, shallow, snag and island along the twelve hundred twisting miles of river from New Orleans to St. Louis. He knew them like another man might know each curve, feature and 
imperfection on the face of his beloved. He knew the upstream and downstream channels, which were almost like two separate rivers, and his brain recorded irrevocably each of the countless changes which the powerful Mississippi was constantly making in her shape, depth and direction. Bedford could steer a steamboat through the tightest cutoff in the blackest of nights with a calm competence which might make a man suspicious that he was gifted with the strange, unnatural perception of a night creature. Actually, though, it was nothing more than what was expected of all steamboat pilots.
Bedford signaled with the bells for full power, and the boat surged forward, piercing the night with the thunder of engines and the sound of churning water. To the right the morning was just beginning to signal its grayish-red presence through the treetops on the bank fifty yards away.
Watching it all unfold before him like this, Eaton released a labored sigh and muttered to himself, "Damn, I love all this. I'll miss it." It seemed grossly unjust to him that once a man had grown addicted to the spectacle of a new day being born on the river, he should ever have that joy taken from him. But the telegraph message which marked the end of all this for him was in his coat pocket at that moment. It had arrived from the owners in St. Louis the day before. The Natchez Belle was losing them money.
"Am I allowed to come up here?" a hesitant female voice asked from behind Eaton. He turned and could just make out the shape of Georgia St. Clair approaching him from across the hurricane deck.
"Yes, of course," Eaton assured her. "You're welcome here." 
"The engines woke me," Georgia said. "But I'm glad. Its lovely out here in the morning." 
"It's the best time of day on the river," Eaton agreed. "There's something about watching a new day get its start that I never grow tired of." 
They stood gazing upriver for a moment, and then Georgia said. "I thought you'd be driving the boat. After all, you're the captain." 
"No, that's the pilot's job," Eaton told her. "Once we get underway, he's got all the work and most of the responsibility until we get where we're going. Then I go to work again." 
"I've never been on a steamboat before, as you've probably already guessed. There's a lot I don't know about it ... how to dress, how to act, who does what. . . and about things like roosters." 
"There are no set rules for who you have to be to ride on a steamboat," Eaton chuckled. "And nobody's going to demand that you know all about it. We're all in error one time or another." 
"Yes, I know," Georgia said quietly. 
Eaton gazed down at her silently for a moment, enjoying the way the growing dawn light highlighted the shape of her face, the texture of her skin, the slight, elusive smile which occasionally darted across her face. "I'm glad you came up here this morning," he said. "I was hoping to have a moment alone with you somewhere so I could tell you ... I mean, about what I said yesterday when you were coming on board ..." 
"Oh, I thought we had finished with all that," Georgia told him simply. 
"Still, if you'll permit me, I'd feel better if I 
could stumble through a complete apology." When Georgia remained silent, he continued. "For the record, I am deeply regretful that I mistook you for a young man, and I can assure you that at this moment, the evidence of your femininity is very apparent to me." 
Georgia had lowered her head slightly, listening to him, and now she looked back up at his face with that same half-smile. "If you feel better now, so do I," she said. 
"So now we can be friends?" 
"At least that," she told him lightly. As she turned, letting her gaze wander back to the river before them. Eaton's eyes remained on. Georgia for a moment longer. It puzzled him how this rough-edged young woman was so easily able to erode his composure and so effectively send him spinning away in confusion. 
She was pretty enough, in a simple, unpolished sort of way. The features of her face were finely formed and distinct, and the tan of her skin, the narrowness of her gaze, the sureness and ease of her movements, radiated the image of vigor and good health. She was unlike most of the women he knew in the towns and cities along the river, lacking the flirtatious fragility of them, seemingly devoid of all coyness and deceit. 
Perhaps that was all there was to it, he thought. She came from a different place, lived by different rules, and she just did not fit into his notion of how women should act, how they should be. But still there seemed to be something more to it than that, something elusive and troubling and exciting. 
"How long will it take us to get to St. Louis?" Georgia asked.
"About six days, if we don't have any breakdowns or delays."
"I almost wish it was longer," she said. "I like it here. Papa may be anxious to wrap his fingers around the handle of a pick again, but I think I can wait awhile for all that to start again. I'm happy here."
They made good time the first day, traveling over two hundred miles without mishap.
Time passed gently and uneventfully on the river. After their pre-dawn meeting on the hurricane deck, Eaton saw very little of Georgia except at meals. She spent most of her time with Mrs. Holmes in one of the cabins, quietly sewing or reading with the older woman.
The three male passengers, Naramore, St. Clair and Reverend Holmes, spent a good deal of time on the high bench in the rear of the pilothouse, listening to the ridiculous inventions of the second pilot, Les Tuggles. Tuggles loved to regale his unknowing audiences with imaginative fabrications about fifteen-foot catfish that could swallow a dinghy in a single gulp, and the ghosts of dead rivermen that rose out of the water on moonless nights to avenge themselves on their murderers.
The three passengers had quickly learned that the only enjoyment to be had in the pilothouse was when Tuggles was pulling his four-hour watches at the wheel. Nehemiah Bedford had little use for idle conversation or needless distractions during his watch, and he did much to suppress such 
nuisances with his stern silences and monosyllabic answers to the questions passengers asked. Bedford had one all-consuming interest--piloting the river--and he spared little time or attention for people who were foolish enough not to make the Mississippi their life-obsession as he did.
At supper, Eaton announced that they would pass Natchez at about midnight. He invited the passengers to stay up and see the lights of the city, but he told them that they were only stopping long enough to take a barge of wood in tow and unload it onto the steamboat deck.
Clarissa Manchester stopped on the edge of the broad train station platform and gazed up and down Main Street curiously. There was a lot of activity everywhere at this early afternoon hour along the riverfront of St. Charles, Missouri. 
Down at one end of the station, crews of sweating black men were busy muscling massive loads of freight off the boxcars of the train Clarissa had just arrived on, stacking it onto waiting handcarts and wagons. Nearby stood a husky bearded white man with a sheaf of invoices in one hand and a short fat cigar in the other, checking the freight and supervising the work of the crew with a continuous stream of colorful language which made Clarissa blush as she listened. 
She turned her head away and stared for a long while at the row of steamboats tied up along the sloping riverbank some distance away to her right. 
47 
They were rather ugly crafts, she thought, blunt- nosed and squat, not at all like the graceful sailing ship on which she had crossed the Atlantic Ocean from England. But still they looked good to her. They were the kind of boat, she presumed, which would carry her westward on the next leg of her journey, and she felt certain that they must provide more comfort to their passengers than the noisy, dirty train she had just finished riding.
Crowds of people, mostly men, were moving up and down the street in all directions, some already drunk despite the early hour, and others rushing along as if some great urgency dogged their steps.
A boy of about fifteen, a ragged, barefooted youth who had hopped up on the platform a moment before and accosted several of the recently arrived passengers, hurried over to Clarissa and reached for her worn carpet suitcase. "Carry your bag to the St. Charles House, ma'am? Best hotel in town!"
Clarissa gripped the handle of her suitcase firmly, wresting it away from the boy, and said, "I can care for my own luggage, thank you."
"No bedbugs," he insisted. "Not like a lot of these fleabags down here on the wharf. Three hot meals every day."
"No thank you, young man!"
The boy shrugged and rushed off to confront another new arrival who had just stepped out the doorway of the depot.
Clarissa was hesitant to leave the relatively safe haven of the train platform. For four days on the train she had eagerly looked forward to the time when she would reach St. Charles, but now that she had finally arrived, she was not quite sure
what she should do next. The whole place, with its drunks, its rushing crowds, its grubby urchins, was a little intimidating. 
It was a long way from England, she reflected, not only in miles but also in the atmosphere and the quality of the surroundings. She realized now that she should have made more precise arrangements for meeting the St. Clairs, but it was too late for regrets. Being here now, on the brink of a great adventure, she felt an odd, exciting mixture of anticipation and fear. Even now, after she had come this far, she was still not sure she had done the right thing by leaving home and traveling to America, but, she thought, if things here were not quite as she had expected or hoped, neither had they been that way back home. 
Two years before, as a young woman just out of finishing school with plenty of education and refinement but very little money or prospects, the life of a tutor on the massive estate of Lord Reginald Buxley outside London had seemed the perfect position. It not only gave her the chance to support herself while continuing to live in refined and cultured surroundings, but it also provided her with an escape from her widowed mother's life of decaying elegance in the house on Bradford Street. 
But the quiet happiness of elegant country living had not been Clarissa's to enjoy at Lord Buxley's mansion. The three children--Manfred, seven; Edith, nine; and Carter, fourteen--were all spoiled brats, pampered and indulged by an over- permissive mother who had years before taken to a reclusive life to avoid facing the reality of her husband's constant infidelities. 
Carter in particular had been a problem from the first. Because he attended a nearby private academy, Clarissa was not responsible for his tutoring as she was for the two younger children, but her duties did include overseeing his activities in the home as a substitute for the ineffective Lady Buxley. Young Carter, even at his age, was showing every sign of following closely in his father's roisterous footsteps, and though Clarissa had made it plain that she would not tolerate any advances to herself, she found it impossible to stop the young man's romps and rendezvous with the more permissive young female servants. 
Lord Buxley had been a problem, too, with his late-night drunken groping and his leering innuendoes, but at least he was gone nearly half the time "on business" in the city, and he spent the majority of his evenings in the country on drunken jaunts with his cronies in search of willing local wenches. 
She had lived almost as a person under siege within the ivy-covered walls of the ancient forty- room mansion, but she had learned a few rules early on which had insured her survival there. The heavy oak door of her room was always bolted at night, and she knew never to respond to any late-night rappings on the door unless they were followed by the reassuring, fatherly voice of Weems, the head butler. 
A sharp-edged wooden ruler kept constantly nearby sufficed to discourage the bold, snickering touches and pinches of young Carter, and a three- inch hatpin tucked in the waistband of her skirt was called into service to ward off the lord of the manor. 
Clarissa had been almost happy when the final 
split had come, even though it was an ugly scene. She could still clearly recall the livid expression on Lady Buxley's face that day when she had burst unexpectedly into the schoolroom while Clarissa was attempting to force some irregular French verbs down the unwilling throats of the two younger children. In language that would have done a dockside chippie proud, she had accused Clarissa of submitting to the most vile acts with her husband. Clarissa, outraged, had responded to the noblewoman's attack defiantly, pouring out all the anger and frustration which had been building up within her over the past year. 
Needless to say, she was on a train back to London that same day. But her joy at escaping the unpleasant life on the estate had begun to fade during the two-hour ride into the city. She realized suddenly that she had escaped from one sort of imprisonment only to face another. The circumstances of her leaving Lord Buxley's estate would make it nearly impossible for her to get another similar job, and her only other alternative was to return to live with her mother in the house on Bradford Street, a decidedly unattractive prospect. Clarissa loved her sixty-three-year-old mother, but she found it hard to tolerate her for more than a few days at a time. 
Since the death of Clarissa's father several years before, she had watched her mother slide slowly into a life of sheltered, tedious eccentricity. With her circle of friends, an odd assortment of old maids, widows and aging crones, Pearletta Manchester made the afternoon rounds of tea parties, exchanging worn-out gossip over orange pekoe and cakes. Her days and months and years slid 
slowly and uneventfully by her, and she could never fully comprehend this strange restlessness of her daughter's to get out, to experience new things, to escape Bradford Street. 
Clarissa had no choice but to return to her mother's home, and she had stayed there for more than eight months, living an odd, frustrating existence in seclusion with her books and samplers, while her mind dreamed almost constantly of escape and freedom. Then the letter had arrived, as if in answer to those dreams. 
It was from relatives Clarissa was scarcely aware she had, descendants of her father's ancestors who had gone to America generations before and who had all but completely lost touch with the English branch of the family. The author of the note was a William St. Clair, a relative by the remote connection of being Clarissa's paternal grandmother's grandnephew. The letter spoke in vague but exciting terms of family ownership of a gold mine somewhere in a remote region of the American wilderness that Clarissa and her mother had never heard of--someplace called Montana Territory. St. Clair himself did not seem to know much about the inherited property, except that it was there to be claimed and explored, and he had invited Clarissa and Pearletta to come and take their share. 
Despite the uncertain promises of the letter, it was enough for Clarissa. Her mother had no intention of leaving London and did not want Clarissa to go either, but the opportunity was too exciting for Clarissa to pass up. With a feeling that her life had suddenly been gripped by destiny, she plunged ahead with plans to leave. She sold books, 
jewelry and even a few personal items of furniture, in addition to decimating the small cash reserve she had saved from her job, and within two weeks she was on board a clipper ship bound for New York. 
But the joy of the trip was soon gone. The ocean crossing was miserable. She remained in bed most of the time with dysentery which left her weak and exhausted. And then, on her arrival in New York, she was promptly robbed within two hundred yards of the ship by a street urchin who snatched her handbag and went skittering down a side street. All Clarissa's money had been in that bag. 
Penniless and adrift in a strange city, Clarissa had been forced to sell everything in the two steamer trunks she had brought with her, had even parted with the trunks themselves, in order to raise enough money for a train ticket westward. And during that trip she was plagued with doubts. William St. Clair had said in his letter that he and his daughter would reach St. Charles to meet her about April 15, but that date had arrived before she even set foot off the ship from England, and the train trip ahead promised to be a long one. 
She had made it at last, though. She was here with seven of those curious American paper dollars rucked safely away in her stocking. Several thoughts, however, added to her feeling of apprehension. She was nearly a week late. What if they had not received her letter saying she was coming and had set off without her? St. Charles was a bigger place than she had expected. What if she could not find them in the melee and confusion which seemed to be the order of the day here? The money 
she had left would neither start her on her way back home nor buy her passage on a boat headed upriver, and there was nothing left to sell. The prospect of trying to earn some money in this wild place brought only the most dire thoughts to mind, and she refused to consider it even for a moment. 
Finally she roused herself out of the inertia caused by uncertainty and dread that seemed to anchor her to the station platform. She realized she had been hoping that some man would miraculously part from the crowd and identify himself to her as William St. Clair. But that was not going to happen. She was going to have to brave this strange settlement herself and find out on her own where her relatives were, or where they had gone. 
The local hotels seemed a likely place to start. She hesitated to begin along the riverfront, which did not seem any too safe for a lady, but she did know the name of one hotel in the town, the St. Charles House, so she decided to set that as her first objective. Grasping the handle of her suitcase firmly, she started down the steps of the train station and was swept into the movement in the street. 
By the time she had walked two blocks and started up a side street, she had already gotten a brief taste of life on the riverfront. One rather nice-looking man had stopped her to inquire if she was available for the night, and in another place when she found herself momentarily caught up in a jam of people, an anonymous hand had snaked through the crowd to give her a painful pinch in a very personal place. She was quite relieved to find the streets leading away from the 
riverfront much less crowded than Main Street had been. 
After stopping strangers a couple of times along the way to get directions, Clarissa finally found the St. Charles house in the center of town. The hotel scarcely lived up to the description the boy on the platform had given it. It was a weathered, two-story frame building down a narrow side street. Clarissa stopped outside and surveyed it cautiously for a moment, and since there did not seem to be the usual roaring crowd of celebrants inside, she decided it was safe to enter. 
In fact, there was nobody in the small, dim lobby of the hotel, which seemed to double as a dining room. She picked up a tin bell at the front desk and rang it vigorously, and in a moment a fat, aproned man came out of the back room, accompanied by an aroma of boiling meat and vegetables. 
"Yes, ma'am?" he asked, appraising her with a glance which swept from her face clear down to her ankles and then back up. What he saw made him smile broadly. 
"I was to meet two relatives here in St. Charles," Clarissa said. "Their names are William and Georgia St. Clair. Are they registered in this hotel as guests?" 
The man grinned at her speech and said, "English, ain't you? I know, 'cause we get a few Englishmen through here, long with the other foreigners like the Micks an' the Dutchies. You're the first lady Englishman I seen, though." 
"I see. Yes, I'm a 'lady Englishman'," Clarissa responded impatiently. "Now about my uncle and cousin..." 
"What was their names again? Sinclair?" "St. Clair. William and Georgia St. Clair." The fellow made a show of considering the names for a moment, then said, "St. Clair. Nope. Don't recollect no St. Clairs stayin' here lately. We got a riverboat captain stops in here sometimes on overnights name of Santeer, though." "No thank you. Only St. Clairs will do." She turned to leave, but the man called out after her, "How 'bout you, lady? You need a room? I got two empties, an' one was cleaned jus' this week. There's venison stew for supper tonight." 
"Thank you, but no," Clarissa called back as she left. 
But his invitation brought up a subject which she knew she would have to consider soon. She doubted that she would be lucky enough to find her uncle and cousin before dark, which meant that she would have to find a place to stay that night. With only seven dollars and a few odd coins left to last her an unknown length of time, she was going to have to be very economical about her sleeping and eating arrangements, but the thought of seeking a room and board in one of the cheap dives along the waterfront sent shivers of dread through her. Yet it might come to that, she realized, and if it did, she would just have to get through the experience as best she could. 
Over the next two hours, Clarissa checked a number of other hotels without success, and at last she began leaving her name and messages with the desk clerks in the hotels she visited. Finally, about dusk, she decided to abandon her search until the next day and to begin dealing with 
the problems of where she would eat and sleep. 
Despite her lack of success during the afternoon, Clarissa found St. Charles to be an interesting place, somehow more boisterously alive than the English countryside villages she was used to. There was danger here. Perils seemed to threaten from every shadow and around every corner, and yet the atmosphere of excitement and active forward motion was also in evidence all around. It was something she had felt ever since landing in America. People here were overflowing with enthusiasm and energy, working hard, seeking adventures, fortunes and new frontiers, and it struck Clarissa somehow as a world in which she belonged. It frightened her, and yet it also filled her with a feeling of exhilaration. 
Fur traders and explorers in the early eighteen hundreds had been the first white men to land their boats and make their camps along the south bank of the Missouri River at a place near its mouth where St. Charles eventually grew to be a town. At the time, the country to the west and northwest was a wilderness, inhabited only by Indians and virtually unexplored except by a few hardy types like Lewis and Clark, who probed its waterways seeking to learn something of the interior of the Great American Desert that President Thomas Jefferson had so judiciously bought near the turn of the century. 
The land had an irresistible lure about it--the grandeur and mystery of the wilderness--and the untapped treasure of furry pelts which drew the newcomers on in an ever-increasing flood. Each year brought fresh waves of adventurous young 
men and deeper exploration along the seemingly endless waterway that the Indians called the Missouri, the Big Muddy.
And, as would be a recurrent theme in Western development, close behind the trappers came the entrepreneurs and businessmen, the Chouteaus and Astors and Bridgers, to set up temporary dynasties of fur and trade. Next came the soldiers to protect the interests of the financiers and traders against savage tribes of native Americans, who doggedly clung to their belief that they had first claim to the land. And finally came the settlers, the farmers and shopkeepers and tradespeople, who would take the land that their forerunners had raped and left behind, and make it blossom, who would take the remote outposts the explorers had established and turn them into towns and cities.
St. Charles had seen it all. It had seen the fur trade sprout and blossom and finally die a lingering death when Europe no longer demanded beaver pelts for the top hats of its gentlemen. It had seen the waves of land-hungry settlers sweep across the wilderness to Missouri and Kansas and Iowa and Nebraska, seeking soil to own and plow and defend. It had seen the river, once the sole domain of the flatboat, keelboat and canoe, eventually conquered by the pounding, churning steamboats.
And now, at last, St. Charles was witnessing one of the last massive sweeps westward, this one to seek out the treasures in gold which were being stripped from the barren hills and streams of places called Wyoming, Montana and Dakota, which encompassed some of the wildest country
left within the boundaries of this hundred-year-old experiment in democracy and expansionism, this young country called America. It was a final assault on a final unknown.
Clarissa sat at a small back table in a Main Street hash house, reluctantly eating the plate of food which had been brought to her. She ate hesitantly, not because she was not hungry or that the food was not good, but more because she was having trouble identifying any of its ingredients. But still she did not ask the waitress what the meal contained--she was not really sure she wanted to know. 
All the tables in the room were packed with men, and none of them seemed to be having any trouble wolfing down great quantities of the only available dish. Maybe it was the drink, Clarissa thought. Most of the other diners in the place seemed to wash about every third bite down with another mug of beer. 
In general, most of the men were leaving her alone, which made her very happy. Occasionally 
60 
one would cast an appreciative sidelong glance in her direction, but none had come over to her table nor tried to start conversation. She was grateful for that, because she was very tired from her long pilgrimage around town and her spirits were beginning to drag. She was in no mood for any more stolen pinches or absurd propositions.
At last she decided she had eaten enough of the food to sustain her for a while longer and she laid her fork aside. Then, feeling like some sort of thief or beggar, she took the two remaining slices of bread the waitress had brought and surreptitiously slipped them into her bag. If she had seen somebody doing that in a restaurant back home, she would have found it incredible, but her circumstances had suddenly changed, and she realized that she had to adapt. The time might not be far off when that little bit of bread would taste very good.
At last she rose and went to the front of the restaurant, where a man was sitting by the door receiving money from his customers. As she was counting out the amount he asked for, she said, "I need a place close by where I might spend the night. Perhaps you could suggest one to me?"
The man looked up from his cash box with open curiosity, as if wondering what manner of insanity had inspired her decision to spend the night here at dockside.
"In truth, ma'am," he said, "there ain't no place here along Main Street that I could steer a lady like yourself to with a clear conscience. They ain't fit, not if you value your health an' safety. This ain't no place for you."
"I understand, sir," Clarissa said, "and I appreciate
your concern. But necessity requires it." She did not add that she had so little money that she was forced to seek the cheapest place she could find, but his slow nodding seemed to indicate that he understood.
"There's the Boatman's Rest, I s'pose," the man said uncertainly. "Most places here along the dock only got rows of cots for deck hands an' suchlike, but Bert McClary has a couple of private rooms upstairs over his place if you ain't too choosy 'bout who had them before you."
Clarissa found the Boatman's Rest without difficulty. It was a two-story wooden building directly across from the railroad station, and though she remembered it as a place that earlier in the day she had refused to enter even to inquire about her relatives, she now went in without hesitation, glad to be off the street again.
An elderly man slouched behind the desk, leaning back precariously in a wooden chair and cradling a pistol casually in his lap. He appeared to be asleep, but finally opened his eyes and looked up when Clarissa stopped in front of his desk and cleared her throat. His clothes were dirty and disheveled, and his brushy chin had obviously not been in contact with a razor for quite some time. His face, red, puffy and wrinkled, was the apparent victim of a hard, violent life. Even from several feet away Clarissa could smell the sweet, sickening odor of whiskey on his breath.
"Yuh?" he mumbled. "What you want here, girl?"
"I would like to hire a room."
This pronouncement was enough of a surprise to make the old man set his chair down on all
four feet and reexamine her. He seemed puzzled or confused about something. . 
"I need a place to sleep for the night," Clarissa told him. 
"Jus' sleep? That's all?" 
"Well, bath facilities would be nice, but I can do without them if they cost extra." 
"Only to sleep?" the man asked again. Clarissa could not figure out why he found such a simple thing so hard to understand. 
He was distracted for a moment as a man came staggering through the front door and over to the desk. Without pausing, the man dropped a twentyfive-cent piece on the desk and went back through a doorway to the rear of the building. While the door was open, Clarissa caught a glimpse of a large, unlit room filled with rows of beds crowded close together. 
"You do have private accommodations, don't you?" Clarissa asked. "I was told you had some private rooms here." 
"Yeah, yeah. We got private rooms upstairs, if you're sure that's what you want. Seventy-five cents a night. Pay in advance." 
Clarissa checked in her purse and was relieved to find that she still had seventy-five cents in change there. It would have been a problem finding the privacy to get some money from her stocking. As she paid the man, she said, "May I have my key and room number, please?" 
"Hell, lady," the man complained. "We ain't got no keys. Jus' find yourself an empty an' bolt the door inside. The stairs is outside 'round back. Be out by noon, an' don't steal nothin'." 
Clarissa picked up her bag and went back out 
into the street. The alley beside the building was pitch black, but she hurried down it blindly and finally found the stairs in back. By the dim light of a lamp in an upstairs window, she was able to work her way up the stairs and find the door at the top. Inside was a hallway about fifteen feet long with three doors on each side. The first door on the right was to the room that had the lamp in the window, so she left that one alone, moving instead to the first one on the left. She paused in front of the door, uncertain whether she should knock or just try the latch and see if the door would open. Then from inside she heard the titter of a woman's laughter and the quiet response of a male voice. She turned away quickly. 
The last door on the right side of the hall stood open a few inches. She went to it and shoved it open far enough to peer inside. The interior of the room was dark, but she could see that the bed inside was unoccupied. 
The inside of the room was only large enough to accommodate a single bed and a small table. Clarissa found matches and a lamp on the table, which she lit before returning to the door. With some effort, she shoved it completely closed, then slid the metal bolt into place to lock it. The room was filthy, with muddy tracks covering the floor and a thick layer of dust over every flat surface in the place. But to her relief, the sheets on the bed seemed fairly clean. 
Despite these surroundings, Clarissa felt relieved to at last be locked in any sort of private room with a bed. Tomorrow, she promised herself, she would not only continue her search for William and Georgia St. Clair, but she would also try to 
find a more decent place to stay in a better part of town. 
Ignoring the uncurtained window, which faced a brick wall ten feet away across an alley, she quickly changed into her nightgown and climbed onto the bed. She only had time for a few fuzzy, apprehensive thoughts about bedbugs before she was sound asleep. 
Sometime later in the night Clarissa awoke. The small room had become chilly, and she was cold in the light gown. Rather than use the filthy wool blanket she found stuffed down in a wad at the foot of the bed, she got up and got her cape from her suitcase to cover herself with. 
The cape was of heavy material, with a soft satin lining. It was one of her favorite garments, a present from her mother three Christmases ago, and she was glad she had decided not to sell it when she had parted with most of her belongings back in New York. As she lay there thinking about the few clothes she still had, she realized that none of them would be suited for the new life she was beginning here. None of her dresses would hold up to much hard work, and she suspected that there was considerable hard work involved in doing whatever it was one did to get gold out of the ground. It probably would not just be lying there on the ground, waiting for somebody to come along and pick it up. 
The clump of heavy boots out in the hall interrupted her thoughts. She shuddered and drew the cape tightly around herself as the footsteps paused a moment, then moved closer to the room where she was. The walls were so thin that she could 
clearly hear the man's drunken mumblings as he cursed some "dad-damned" something or other.
A cold chill swept over her as the man stopped outside the door and tried to open it. Her eyes were fixed in terror on the door, and suddenly she could not positively remember sliding the bolt into place to secure it. The man mumbled another "dad-damned" oath at the door, then with an "oof of effort slammed his shoulder against it, splintering the bolt free from its hold. The door swung open.
The man stood in the doorway a moment, swaying like a groggy bear as he tried to make out the details in the darkened room. He was big, tremendous it seemed to Clarissa at that moment, and she could smell his looming presence almost as clearly as she could see him.
"This room . . ." she tried to say. Her voice squeaked and broke with tension. "This room is occupied."
He made a noise that was something between a sigh and a growl of satisfaction as a great rush of air escaped his chest. "A woman," he said in a deep voice. "Good. How much?"
"You'll have to find yourself another room," Clarissa insisted, drawing up against the wall on the far side of the bed.
He stepped into the room and shoved the door closed behind him. Even as he started toward her, he was already starting to take off his shirt. "I got money," he said. "Don't worry none 'bout gettin' paid."
Terror swelled into a tight knot in Clarissa's throat. She was trembling uncontrollably, so afraid that she was able neither to speak nor scream. She
watched in dread fascination as his form moved in the darkness, pulling off shirt, boots, and finally trousers. "No! Please. No," she managed to rasp out past the constriction in her throat. "Leave me alone." 
"Let me look at you, gal," he said. His hands fumbled across the bed, found her, and began pulling her over toward him. The cape was wrenched from her grasp, and in another moment he had ripped the gown away. At last his bulk toppled onto the bed, partly on top of her. A scream tore loose from her throat. 
He cuffed her hard across the side of her face with his open hand and said angrily, "Cut that shit out, now, gal. I told you I got money, so you behave your damn self an' put out!" 
He was completely on top of her now, and though she struggled, she was powerless beneath the hairy, sweaty mass of his body. His great hands were engulfing her wrists, holding her arms away from her body, and in a moment his pelvis began to hunch and probe, bruising the soft, private flesh between her legs. 
"Oh please, somebody! Please help me!" Clarissa wailed helplessly. The world had suddenly become a swirling, black nightmare to her. This could not be happening. A moment before she had been lying quietly in bed, thinking about her future, and now suddenly this horrible man was on top of her. She was being raped! 
A wave of dizziness engulfed her, but she fought against it, realizing that she could not possibly permit herself to faint. With a great effort, she wrenched her hips sideways and succeeded in getting a leg between herself and that clammy, 
foreign member that had come so close to penetrating her. 
"Dammit, woman, lay still," the man growled, "or I'll box your damn ears again." His strength seemed phenomenal. In an instant he had succeeded in working one of his knees between the soft flesh of her thighs, parting her legs once more. 
She was exhausted from the effort and the terror. She paused for a moment, panting for breath under his oppressive weight, and he took that as a sign of submission. "That's better," he said. One hand released its grip on her wrist and probed down between their bodies, abusing one of her breasts for a moment before moving on down to assist himself in his clumsy efforts to enter her body. 
Suddenly, with humiliating resignation, Clarissa realized that she was powerless to stop him from doing whatever he wanted to her. This huge, noxious form on top of her was just too overwhelming, and for her to continue to fight him could only mean further injury and pain. With tears flowing down her face and thoughts of suicide entering uninvited into her mind, she resolved to prolong the inevitable no longer. 
She was so near unconsciousness that she was scarcely aware of the door opening until the man on top of her paused in his efforts, looked up and growled, "Git the hell outa here!" "I heard a woman calling for help in here," another man's voice said. "What are you doing to her?" 
"He's raping me! Please help me!" Clarissa shouted out suddenly, seeing a glimmer of hope in the appearance of the second man. 
Clarissa's attacker, now leaning away from her, cuffed her across the mouth with the back of his hand and said, "Shut up, bitch." Then, turning to the man in the doorway, he said, "And as for you, if you want to stay healthy, you'll shut that dad-damned door with yourself on the outside of it."
But instead of retreating from the threat, the second man stepped into the room. Clarissa's attacker moved to confront him, but he was too slow. There was a flash of movement from the newcomer, and then came a meaty "crack" in the vicinity of the big man's head. With a dull grunt, he toppled sideways off Clarissa and onto the floor. There he lay still.
Clarissa did not move for a moment, stunned, her breasts heaving as she labored for breath. It was over, and she was still alive, still intact. She moved a hand to her belly and then up across her breasts, wiping the man's stinking sweat from her skin. His odor hung in the air like a putrid gas, making her stomach churn with each fresh breath. But at least it was over.
Then she became aware of the stranger standing beside her bed. He was only a dark outline against the dim light which came in through the doorway, and she could sense more than see his eyes traveling over her naked body. She scrambled to find a corner of the sheet and pulled it over her exposed flesh.
"I guess I did the right thing, didn't I?" the stranger asked. "I mean, he wasn't just a customer that got a little carried away, was he?"
"He was raping me!" Clarissa told him angrily.
"Do you think I would ever give myself to an animal like that?"
"I don't know you, ma'am," the man answered calmly, "so I can't answer that question. I do know this is generally a good place to come to find a willing lady. I've got one down the hall in my room right now."
"I came here only to find a place to sleep for the night," Clarissa said. "Do I look like a whore to you?"
"It ain't always easy to judge who a woman is when she's got her clothes off," the man said lightly. He did not seem too concerned about what had just happened here. "But I'll admit," he went on, "that you're not the kind that a man's generally lucky enough to run into in a place like this. If you say you're no whore, that's fine with me. You're no whore."
At last Clarissa sat up on the bed, keeping the sheet wrapped around her body. The movement caused her pain. Her abused thighs and groin were throbbing dully, and her wrists felt chafed and bruised. She touched the corner of her mouth and felt a thick wetness there. "I must talk to the police," she said, reaching out for her clothes on the table. Her foot brushed against the still form below her and she drew it back as if from fire. "I want this man arrested and put in jail."
"Arrested?" the stranger chuckled.
"That is correct. Assault and rape are considered crimes even here, are they not?"
"Yes, ma'am, it's a fact," the stranger told her. "But you'll have a jolly time convincing the local judge that you came here to the Boatman's Rest only to sleep and that this pig attacked you." As his eyes dropped to the man on the floor for an instant, he drew back a foot and casually crashed
it into the soft part of his belly. "I'd suggest you just forget it. Did he, I mean, was he able to?"
"No! You stopped him first, thank heavens." She looked up, still unable to see her rescuer clearly in the nearly nonexistent light there. She could tell that he was a tall, broad-shouldered man, wearing trousers but no shirt. He still held the pistol in his right hand that he had used to knock the attacker out.
"Well, especially if he didn't make it, I'd advise you to just count yourself lucky and let it go. This kind of place doesn't see one hell of a lot of gentlemen, or real ladies either, and when a woman is foolish enough to come to places like this, well, she just has to take what comes her way." He turned to leave, but Clarissa stopped him with a question.
"What should I do now?" she asked in despair. "I can't just climb back into bed and pretend none of it ever happened. Look! This oaf is still here on the floor of my room!"
"Well, I'm not about to start lugging this buffalo around just to get him out of your way, if that's what you're getting at. I'm not even sure I want to stick around here at all. He's going to have one nasty headache when he comes to, and he'll be looking for the man that gave it to him." He paused for a moment, staring at Clarissa and thinking. Then finally he said to her, "You get dressed, and then come to my room down the hall. I'll leave the door open so you'll know which one. We'll figure something out."
"Dress in here? With him just lying there?"
"I don't care where you get dressed. Do it out in the hall if you want to, or come like you are."
"I'll do it here," Clarissa sighed. When the stranger had gone, she lit the lamp and turned the wick down low so the room was illuminated with a faint yellow glow. For a moment she just stood staring down at the big naked form which filled up at least half the floor space in the room. She could still feel the echoing traces of the terror he had caused, but she was angry now, too. For an instant she toyed with the irrational thought of doing something to him, of mutilating him in some way for revenge and as a lifelong reminder of the injustice he had done her. But she had no weapon, and the thought of having to touch him again, even with a hand or foot, was abhorrent to her.
A deep gash at the hairline on the left side of the man's face was sending a rivulet of blood across his temple and into his eyes. He was deathly still. Clarissa was not even sure he was still breathing, but she had no desire to get any closer to find out. She did not care whether he was alive or dead.
She unwrapped the sheet from around herself and draped it over the man's head and body. Then she stepped carefully over him and moved to the back of the room so that his back was to her. There she began to examine her body in the dim lamplight. The creamy flesh of her breasts was red from his abrasive fumblings, as was the soft, vulnerable skin of her inner thighs. Her wrists were red and chafed, and as she gingerly touched her face with her fingertips, she could tell that the swelling had already started in her lips and cheek. She would soon be a mess of bruises and swelling, and at the moment she would have gladly traded anything she owned for a long, hot bath.
She picked up her pile of clothes from the table and dressed hurriedly, then gathered up the remainder of her belongings and stuffed them into the suitcase. At last she blew out the lamp and left the room, closing the door behind her without a backward glance.
She saw light coming out of an open doorway down the hall and headed for it gratefully. No matter who or what this stranger might be, he had proved his integrity by saving her, and she felt with relief that at least for a while she could feel safe and protected in this man's company;
She paused at the doorway and knocked, and the man's voice invited her to enter. She started in, but then stopped at the doorway, confused and embarrassed by what she saw. The stranger was sitting on the edge of the bed, fully dressed now and pulling on his boots, but behind him lay a woman, naked and covered only from the waist down by a sheet. He had mentioned the woman to her, but she had forgotten.
"Excuse me," Clarissa mumbled. "I thought you said . . ."
"It's all right," the man told her with an amused smile. "Come on in. Lila doesn't care."
The woman looked up at Clarissa with a sleepy smile and said, "Close the door, honey. I don't want anybody else to see me and decide they want to do business. I'm trying to get some sleep if your hero here will quit bouncing around on the bed." Lila appeared to be a good ten years older than Clarissa, and though she was still attractive enough to practice her trade, the results of her hard life were beginning to show in the sag of her
breasts and the amount of rouge and powder it took to conceal the lines on her face.
"We'll be gone in a minute, babe," the man assured her with a smile. Clarissa noted that he was a handsome man in a sort of way. He wore his hair parted on top and slicked back, and his features were formed into a vague, cynical smile that looked like it was a permanent part of his appearance. His gaze was direct and piercing, holding a trace of what seemed to be perpetual mockery in it. A thin, carefully trimmed mustache adorned his upper lip.
He pulled on his second boot and then stood up. He looked Clarissa over in the improved light and said, "For a girl that just had hell beat out of her and was almost raped, you pulled yourself together pretty good, lady." Then, turning to the woman on the bed, he reached inside the jacket of his expensive black suit, took out his wallet and withdrew a couple of bills. "You take care of yourself, Lila, and don't spend all of this on booze," he told her, dropping the money on the table near her. "You're going to be a flabby old drunk before your time if you don't lay off that bottle."
"I have to be drunk before I can put up with bastards like you, Ben," Lila shot back at him, but her sleepy smile muted the harshness of her words. "See you next time, honey."
Ben picked up his gun belt from a chair beside the bed and strapped it on, then turned to Clarissa and said, "Let's go."
Carrying her suitcase, Clarissa followed him out of the building and down the stairs to the street.
She had no idea where he was taking her, but somehow the relief of going anywhere with somebody she felt safe with was enough for the moment. She had no idea what time it was. The street outside the Boatman's Rest was practically deserted now except for an occasional, leftover drunk.
As they started west along Main Street, the man said, "By the way, my name's Benjamin Hawkins. What's yours?"
"Clarissa Manchester."
"By your speech and the dubious place I found you in," Hawkins said, "it is obvious that you are not a longtime resident of St. Charles, Missouri."
"I just arrived today," Clarissa told him. "I have traveled all the way from England to meet relatives here."
"But you met our friend up there instead," Hawkins chuckled. "Welcome to the Gateway to the West."
"It could have been so much worse," Clarissa said. "In all the confusion, I don't believe I have even said thank you yet. I am extremely grateful for what you did to save me in there, Mr. Hawkins. I didn't think anyone was going to hear my calls for help."
"You know, Miss Manchester," Hawkins said, "it's funny, but I almost didn't come. A person hears a lot of strange things in a place like that, and generally you don't pay any attention to them."
"I can imagine," Clarissa said quietly. "But I'm glad you did respond this time. I had no idea how foolish it was of me to hire a room in such a place."
"Well, we'll be going to a little better place now," Hawkins assured her. "Maybe not any nicer than that, but a hell of a lot safer for the likes of you."
Georgia St. Clair lay beneath her soft cotton sheets, no longer wanting to sleep but still not in any hurry to get out of bed and get dressed. Though it was still quite dark in the small, windowless cabin, she knew she had stayed in bed late and missed breakfast. She did not care.
She was thinking about Paul Eaton and the fine time they were going to have together today. This was the beginning of their third day on the river, the day they were scheduled to reach Memphis, and the captain of the Natchez Belle had invited her to tour the city with him during the four-hour stop while cargo was being moved on and off the boat. In his stiff, formal way, he had made the surprising" invitation the evening before as they stood talking on the deck after dinner, and she had eagerly accepted ... perhaps too eagerly, she thought now. No matter how hard she tried, she
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seemed unable to show any grace or style when she was around the captain. There was something about him that just seemed to seize control of her.
At last she got out of bed and dressed. As she was leaving her cabin, she noticed that her father's door was open and went into his cabin to greet him.
"Good morning, darlin'," William said as he smiled up at her from his seat at the table. "You're becoming a regular lady of leisure, aren't you? Sleeping in 'til past nine in the morning. It wouldn't surprise me a whit if you've become absolutely worthless by the time we reach Montana."
"Good morning, papa," Georgia said, kissing him on the top of his head. "What are you reading there?"
"It's the Memphis newspaper. Someone rowed out from Greenville with them in the middle of the night last night. It says here there's fever in the city. Two hundred have died already and it's claiming more and more lives every day."
"How awful," Georgia said. "Those poor people. We know how terrible that can be, don't we? Remember that little mining camp that got the fever? Where was it?"
"Redwater Springs. Sure I remember. It's something a person's not ever likely to forget once he's seen it. I can still recall seeing grown men just keel over in the middle of the street, plumb out of their heads. Somebody might take them in somewhere and try to help, but in a few hours they'd still die. We were lucky there, honey. Mighty lucky."
"We sure were. It's a terrible thing."
"The captain announced at breakfast that we would still stop, but nobody will be allowed to leave the boat or come aboard while the cargo is being put ashore. The papers say that so far it hasn't spread much, but the army is putting a quarantine on the city until it's over."
As she stood reading the story over her father's shoulder, Georgia felt guilty about her own selfish thoughts. This fever epidemic would mean she and Eaton could not take their carriage ride in Memphis. It seemed unfair that it should hit at just this moment, thereby blocking an excursion she had been looking forward to so much. But she resolved to make no mention of the cancelled trip or the disappointment she felt. People were dying in the city, and that was real tragedy.
She left her father's cabin and started down the deck, hoping to find Thomas, the steward, and ask him for something to eat. When she didn't see him anywhere on deck, she went into the captain's dining room and crossed it to the small kitchen in back.
She found Thomas there, seated at a small table with his head in his hands. He looked up at her when she entered, his face filled with anguish.
" 'Scuse me, missy," he said, struggling to control his voice. "I be out soon to help you." The dark skin of his face was drawn, and his eyes were red and puffy.
"Thomas, what's wrong?" Georgia asked.
His glazed eyes drifted back down to the newspaper in front of him on the table and he said, "My whole family's in Memphis, missy, an' I
hear the captain say they's fever there. My wife an' babies, my mama an' brothers an' sisters . . . they all stays in Memphis."
"I'm so sorry, Thomas," Georgia told him. "Have you heard yet if they're all right?"
"No, ma'am," he said quietly. "I don't know."
"Can I do anything for you? Anything at all?"
Picking up the newspaper, he thrust it toward her and said, "Please, missy. The captain, he leave this paper on the table. Could you reads the names to me? I can't read, but it says there who died already."
"If you're sure it's what you want," Georgia said hesitantly.
"I gots to know."
She began at the head of the list which began in the first column of type. "Manfred Abbott, Cecily Abbott, one family; Margolis Abington, Nathan Adams, Arthur Adkinson, Gwendolyn Archer... 
"We's Wainwrights, Miss Georgia. All of us is Wainwrights since from the plantation days."
"All right, here are the W's, Thomas. Peter Wade, Alice Wade, Jackie Wade, Nina Wade, one family; Paul Waddell . . ." Georgia's voice caught in her throat as she saw the next names on the list and she was scarcely able to continue. "Junia Wainwright, Golden Wainwright, Thomas Lee Wainwright, one family--"
The steward's agonized wail echoed in the small room as he leaned forward and buried his head on his folded arms on the table. "Dear Lawd! Dear Lawd!" he sobbed. "Oh, Missy Georgia, my wife, my babies!"
Georgia was crying now too as she knelt beside
him, holding him tightly as her tears soaked into the white linen of his jacket. "I'm sorry, Thomas," she kept muttering. "I'm so sorry . . ."
"Well, if this isn't a pretty scene," Dwayne Naramore drawled from the doorway to the dining room. "I hear this screaming and hollering from outside there, and then I come in here and find you and this colored boy--"
"Shut up!" Georgia hissed at him, her voice venomous with fury. "Just shut up with all your filthy ideas."
"Now look here, girl," Naramore began. But he did not finish when she whirled on him and he saw the frenzy in her eyes.
"Get out of here!" she ordered him. "Don't say another word. Just go get the captain."
Naramore stared at her angrily for an instant, then turned and marched out of the room. Georgia turned her attention back to the mournful black man at the table, placing her hand lightly on his shoulder. She hurt for him dreadfully, but she could think of no words that could possibly ease the agony he was suffering.
His fingers fumbled clumsily with the crumpled newspaper in his hand, and when he looked up at Georgia, his eyes were half-crazed and filled with disbelief. "My Junia, an' Golden, an' Thomas Lee ..." he muttered dazedly.
A moment later Captain Eaton rushed through the doorway, followed closely by Reverend Holmes and several members of the crew. Georgia stepped out of the kitchen and met Eaton a few feet away. "It's his family in Memphis," she stammered. "It was in the paper. I read it to him. I just didn't know ..."
"The fever?" Eaton asked. 
"His wife and two sons . . . they're dead." 
"Okay, Georgia," Eaton said quietly. "I'll take care of him." 
"That's right, dear," Holmes told her. "You go on now. You've done your part. The captain and I will stay with him now." 
With one long glance back at the grief-stricken figure of the steward slumped over the table, Georgia moved out the door and down the deck toward her cabin. As she reached her door, she heard Naramore somewhere behind her calling her name, but she went in and locked the door without waiting for him. 
Georgia lay on her bed in the darkened cabin, staring at the narrow ribbon of sunlight which streamed across the bottom of her door. She knew it was early afternoon, but she still had no desire to leave her cabin. She had been out briefly at lunchtime but had eaten little. At the meal, the absence of Thomas had been conspicuous, almost like a separate, ghostly presence among them, and conversation around the table had been minimal. The meal was served by the captain's German cook. 
Later she had spent some time with her father, and Mrs. Holmes had come to sit with her for a while, but she still felt better when she was alone. 
She did not really understand the depression she felt. Where she had lived and grown up, death was no stranger. She had seen it come in a wide variety of forms, from bizarre to bloodthirsty, from sudden to lingering and agonizing. But there 
was something about the tragedy of the black steward's loss which seemed to touch her more deeply than any death since her own mother had died many years before. It seemed so unnecessary, so pointless a disaster for a kind, gentle man like Thomas. 
She had been on the steamboat long enough that she was becoming attuned to its noises and vibrations and could tell when something out of the ordinary was about to happen. When the steady, heartbeat drumming of the engines began to slow noticeably, she rose and went out on the deck. 
There, across a few hundred yards of water, the tall bluffs of Memphis loomed, lined across their tops by the downtown buildings of the city and at their base by the customary array of wharves, docks and boats. It was a pretty city, dignified by its towering location atop the tree-lined bluffs, and the image of it from the river gave no hint of the suffering going on there at that moment. 
As the vista of Memphis continued to slide toward them across the surface of the water, Georgia saw Thomas coming toward her down the walkway of the passenger deck. He had exchanged his steward's whites for a frayed brown suit, and he carried a small carpet bag in one hand. As he neared Georgia, he removed his brown derby from his head. 
"I be goin' home now to bury my dead, Miss Georgia," he said quietly. The uncontrollable hysteria was gone from him now, replaced by a quiet grief and acceptance of his loss. "I had to see you to say thanks 'fore I goes, though. Ain't many 
white women be so kind to the likes of me as you was. It really means somethin' to ol' Thomas. You's a special lady." 
"I wish I could have done more, Thomas, anything to make it hurt just a little bit less. Nobody could do that, though, I guess." 
"Jus' the Lawd, honey, an' Ol' Man Time. Them two makes everythin' pass, by 'n by." 
"Good luck, Thomas." 
"An' good luck to you too, Miss Georgia. I hopes you an' your daddy finds your gold mine somewheres up the line." 
The boat was just easing to the levee as Thomas moved past her and started down the main stairway. A couple of the hands leaped ashore and tied the boat to the landing while others, out of sight below Georgia, slid the long gangplank out. 
Captain Eaton walked with Thomas out to the end of the gangplank, then stopped there to shake his hand and bid him good-bye. Already Sellers was beginning to bark out his commands to the crew and the long arms of the boat's derrick were swinging into place to handle the cargo. With shuffling steps that held no joy at being on home soil, Thomas walked away from the boat and disappeared along the road leading into the city. When he was out of sight, Georgia shifted her gaze and watched as the first big bundle of cargo swung ashore. The riverfront here, as in New Orleans, was practically deserted, and nobody seemed to be around to receive the shipment of goods. 
Georgia watched for a few minutes, and was about to turn away and return to her cabin when 
another scene directly below her on the levee caught her attention.
Eaton had retreated back to midway of the gangplank and was holding an earnest conversation with a man standing at the end of it. The man was well-dressed and prosperous-looking. In one hand he held a crumpled sheaf of money which he would turn and gesture toward a young woman and child who stood about thirty feet away, watching the discussion anxiously. Georgia began to pay closer attention and could just make out what they were saying over the noise and talk of the men working nearby. 
"I'm telling you, sir, to back off," Eaton commanded.
"Make it triple the fare, then," the man pleaded. "I don't care how much it costs, captain! Just please, for the love of God, take us away from here!" He took a couple of tentative steps forward, as if about to start up the gangway toward Eaton, but then the captain suddenly produced a small revolver and pointed it at him.
"Please try to understand," Eaton said in a conciliatory tone as he kept the pistol leveled at the man. "I can't be responsible for risking the lives of my passengers and crew, nor will I take the chance that you might spread the fever to another city upriver." 
"We're not ill yet," the man insisted. "That's why I must get my wife and daughter out of here now . . . before the fever strikes them down. The army's stopped the trains, and they have the roads blocked. You're our only hope. You can't refuse me!"
"I can and I must. I have no other choice open to me. I'm deeply sorry."
The despair in the man's face tugged at Georgia's heart. He stood there for a moment staring down at his shoes, unable, apparently, to face his wife and daughter with his failure. Georgia wanted to call out, to plead with Eaton to take this one risk and let the man and his family aboard. But she knew that he was making the right decision, no matter how heartless it seemed at that moment
"You there," Eaton called out to the members of his crew who were nearby on the dock. "Get over there and stay away from this gentleman and his family. He's just leaving." The crew backed away silently and stood watching the man until he finally turned and started walking slowly away.
Georgia fled down the deck, not knowing where she was going but feeling compelled to escape the sight of such a tragedy. She raced up the stairway to the hurricane deck and went to the rail on the opposite side of the boat, facing out over the broad river toward Arkansas. In a moment her father came up beside her and gently put his arm around her shoulders.
"Oh, papa!" she sobbed. "It was just awful. There was this man--"
"I saw it," St. Clair told her. "But you know Captain Eaton did what he had to do. You remember how the fever was, how it spread like a prairie fire and showed no mercy to any soul."
"I remember, papa."
They stood there for a long time with their backs to the city. Georgia cried for a while, feeling
helpless and frustrated, but also very angry. It was all so unjust.
At last they turned when they heard footsteps mounting the stairway to one side of them. It was Captain Eaton. His face was somber and laden with guilt, and he still held the revolver, seemingly forgotten, in his hand. He stopped for an instant and gazed directly at Georgia with a look which seemed to plead for understanding and support. Georgia said nothing, feeling the conflicting emotions churning within her. She wanted to lash out at him for the heartless thing he had done, but she also felt compelled to reach out to him, too, and reassure him that he had had no other choice.
"We'll be getting underway soon," Eaton said at last. "I've decided not to take on any cargo here, so it won't take long to offload what we have. I'm sorry for the unpleasantness of what just happened down there." He climbed up to confer briefly with Bedford in the pilothouse, and when he came back down, he left the deck by another way so that he wouldn't have to pass Georgia and William St. Clair again.
Within half an hour the bells began to ring and the huge paddle wheels started to grind back into motion. Bedford backed the boat away from the levee, then turned and started upriver once more. When they were some distance away from the city, Georgia turned at last and took a final look back at Memphis. It was still beautiful, still majestic above its high bluffs at a bend in the Mississippi River, but Georgia knew that in years to come when she thought of Memphis, that lovely view would never be what came first to mind.
Georgia stood at the railing at the back of the steamboat, enjoying the cool breeze which swept in from the west like a gentle caress. Across the river, more than a mile away, the dim lights of some small town or settlement floated lazily by on the opposite bank, looking almost like a peaceful apparition in the darkness. The boat was dark too. Only the two running lights at the top of the chimneys signaled its presence in the water, along with the steady chugging of the engines, which had become such a customary sound that Georgia no longer even noticed it. 
Almost everyone else on the boat was asleep at this late hour. Only the pilot in his little shelter on the deck above, and the engine crew below on the main deck, were still at work to keep the steamboat gliding steadily upriver. Georgia had turned in two or three hours earlier when all the other 
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passengers did, but after lying in bed for a long time, unable to sleep, she had at last got up, dressed, and come out here on deck to enjoy the solitary night. 
She felt more at peace now. The events of the day had come too quickly, one close on the heels of another, and she had remained upset and disturbed throughout most of the evening. At dinner Captain Eaton had remained silent and pensive, as if in the midst of hostile company, and his mood had permeated the entire passenger deck. Soon after the meal was finished, the people had not divided into their customary groups to pass the evening but had gone their separate ways, seeking solitude. But that solemn, strange mood which Georgia had felt clutching at her ever since their arrival at Memphis was leaving now. She knew things would be better tomorrow. Hope for the future always overshadowed the unhappiness of the past. 
She was tired now. She knew she could fall asleep easily, but she still wanted to stay on the deck awhile longer. It was such a lovely place, almost like a peaceful refuge, separate and safe from the rest of the chaotic world. 
She felt disappointed when she heard a light footstep on the deck behind her and turned to see the dark form of a man approaching her. She did not know who it was until he spoke. 
"It's nice out tonight," Dwayne Naramore commented as he came to stand at the rail beside her. 
"I love it," Georgia said quietly. "I think I could grow as addicted to river life as the people who live and work on it every day." 
"I know how you feel," Naramore said. "It has an undeniably romantic quality. When I was a 
boy, I wanted to become a steamboat pilot or captain, just like every other boy in town. Unfortunately, my life took some considerably less adventuresome turns, but sometimes I still feel those same yearnings that I did at ten when I saw the steamboats pass on the river. I wonder what glorious occupations boys will use to fill that void when the mighty steamboats are no more?"
Georgia turned and smiled at him, although she knew he would not see it in the darkness. She was so at peace that even Naramore's appearance here could not ruin the mood. She was not angry with him anymore. Their conflict seemed to have happened long ago.
"Uh, Miss St. Clair, or Georgia, if you will permit me ..." Naramore began.
"Of course. Call me Georgia."
"Georgia, I'm deeply sorry about that little disagreement we had this morning. It's been worrying me all day, and I'd like to offer an apology for the rude remark I made."
As he edged slightly closer to her, she could smell a faint odor of liquor lingering about him. The possibility that he might be drunk made her cautious. "We were all upset," Georgia told him. "It's past now, so let's just forget it."
"I'm very glad you feel that way," Naramore said happily. "You're a beautiful young woman, a very attractive woman, and I've been hoping ever since I met you that first day for a chance to get better acquainted."
A frown came to Georgia's face as Naramore reached out and put his hand across hers on the railing. "It's such a short trip," she told him guardedly.
"There's hardly time for people to become close friends."
"Yes, I realize that," he told her. "That's why it seems so important to seize the moment."
"I don't know exactly what you're talking about, Mr. Naramore," Georgia said. An edge of coldness was creeping into her voice, but he did not seem to notice.
"I've been watching you, Georgia. I've seen you with the captain, and then today with that nigger boy. . ."
"Must you call him that?"
"With the steward, then. With Thomas. I saw a tender, compassionate woman. A passionate, loving one, too, I suspect." He drew her hand up to his mouth and kissed her fingers, but she immediately snatched her hand away from him.
"Stop that!" she snapped.
"Why?" he asked. "What's the matter with a lass?" He reached out and put his hands on her waist, but she kept her arms between them and would not allow him to pull her close.
"Nothing's wrong, not when I choose to give them," she said. "But I haven't chosen you. You just came out here and decided you'd take what you wanted." She regretted, briefly, that when she was wearing a dress, there was no convenient place to strap on a knife.
"You've got fire in your blood, Georgia," he whispered to her, still trying to pull her gently toward him. "I knew it as soon as I laid eyes on you. There's something special about you, something that I find most irresistible." His voice was getting husky and his breath was beginning to
quicken. With her hands on his chest, she could feel his hurried heartbeats, and his pull was becoming more insistent.
"You're starting to talk crazy now," Georgia said. She had not reached the point of panic yet, but the situation was beginning to worry her a bit. "I don't want to hear anymore of this. I'm just not interested."
"You were quick enough to wrap your arms around that negro," Naramore accused. "And you just about devour our captain with your eyes. I've seen it. I just want a share of your attentions, too. Is that so terrible?" They struggled briefly, and as he tried to kiss her, she turned her head to one side. As his lips found her throat, one arm circled tightly around her waist and the other hand began fumbling roughly over the front of her dress.
"Don't cry out," he cautioned. "You'll enjoy it if you'll just give me a chance. Come back to my cabin with me and I'll show you some of the pretty things I sell. You'll like them . . . very lacy, very feminine. And you can keep anything you'll wear for me." His hand found her breast and began caressing it hungrily.
With a hard shove, Georgia finally succeeded in escaping Naramore's entangling arms. "If I did call out," she told him, slightly breathless from the exertion, "you'd be a dead man inside of five minutes. My father would see to that. But I don't want to get him in all that trouble. I can take care of you without anybody's help, and I'd sooner sleep in a pen with the hogs than I would with you."
Naramore did not say anything for a moment, but she could feel his eyes burning through the
darkness at her. Then, as he started for her again, she brought her knee up suddenly and landed it squarely between his legs. With a startled moan Naramore doubled up, grabbing his crotch with both hands.
It was something Georgia did not like to do, but on rare occasions it was necessary, and as her father had taught her, it was the surest, most direct way to stop the advances of a persistent man. "I'm sorry," she told him almost gently. "Maybe the girls in this part of the country say no when they mean maybe, but it's not that way with me. Now please, just go away and let's forget about this. There's no need for more trouble."
With some difficulty, Naramore straightened up and looked at her. "You little whore!" he rasped angrily. "You nigger-loving slut!" With a surprising quickness born of anger, he grabbed her arm and began to twist it painfully. As he pulled her to him, for the first time Georgia considered calling out for help. Naramore was stronger than she was, and he was working himself into a fury.
Suddenly a silent form loomed out of the darkness. Hands grabbed Naramore by the coat collar and belt, yanking him violently away from Georgia. Then in another instant he was gone, hurled over the railing of the boat in one deft movement. Georgia was too stunned to speak.
"Are you all right, Miss St. Clair?" It was the voice of Nehemiah Bedford.
"Yes, yes, I'm fine," Georgia told him breathlessly. "But I'm not sure I would have stayed that way for much longer."
"I was just coming out of my cabin to go up and
take over my watch when I heard the commotion down here. Who was that man I just threw in the river? One of the crewmen?" 
"It was the drummer, Naramore," Georgia told him in amazement. 
"I see," Bedford said calmly. 
Georgia turned and gaze over the railing toward the black, depthless surface of the river. She could see no sign of Naramore, nor could she hear any calls for help from him. 
"Will he be all right out there?" she asked the pilot. "Will he be able to get out of the river?" 
"Perhaps," Bedford speculated. He had yet even to glance toward the water or show the slightest concern for the passenger he had just disposed of. "If he can swim, and if he isn't too drunk. The water is calm here and the currents are not too tricky for a good swimmer. I should think he could get to shore all right." 
Georgia still stood, gazing skeptically down toward the water. 
"You must excuse me, ma'am," Bedford said, touching the brim of his cap. "It's time for my watch. I will report this incident to the captain when I see him in the morning." 
"Thank you," Georgia managed to stammer out as the pilot walked away. 
She stayed on the dark deck awhile longer, confused about how she should feel or what she should do. It was so incredible. If the surprise of the pilot's sudden decisive action had not been enough of a shock, it was compounded by the fact that he seemed to have no inclination to stop the boat and look for Naramore. It might have been 
a normal part of his nightly routine to toss a man in the river before going on duty.
Georgia considered waking her father and telling him about the extraordinary thing that had just happened, but she had no real desire to go through a blow-by-blow description of it just then. Finally she just went back to her cabin and went to bed.
The next morning William St. Clair woke Georgia early, pounding on her door and calling out loudly to her. By the way he rushed into her room, grinning and chuckling, she knew he had already learned that the Natchez Belle was short one passenger that morning.
"Why didn't you wake me last night and tell me about it, girl?" he complained lightly. "You shouldn't have let me wait till this morning and hear it from somebody else. By damn, I would love to have been there and seen it with my own eyes. Ol' Naramore sailing over that railing and getting left behind in the river."
"Papa," Georgia teased him, "I hate to see you so worked up over my safety and honor."
"Oh, you know I worried about that, too, honey, but I long since quit wondering whether you could take care of yourself in the clinches. I'll wager a dip in the river isn't the only punishment he suffered when he set his cap for my girl's maidenhood."
Georgia dropped her eyes, blushing furiously, and shyly told him, "Well, he might be walking a little bowlegged if he's reached the bank by now."
St. Clair laughed out loud and slapped his leg
with enjoyment. "Damn him all to thunder," he laughed. "It ain't one bit more than he deserves. I wouldn't be too down at the mouth if I knew he went ahead and drowned his fool self in that blamed river."
"Oh no," Georgia protested. "I wouldn't want that. I hope he got out. It wasn't such an awful thing ... no worse than a lot of others have tried. I even feel a little sorry for him now."
St. Clair left the cabin while Georgia dressed, and then she joined him outside and they went to breakfast together. As they entered the dining room, everyone else at the table looked up at Georgia expectantly, wondering what mood she would be in. She made it a point to be bright and cheerful, smiling at everyone as she went to her place and sat down.
Her father, instead of sitting on her right as he had been doing, pulled out the chair on her left, next to the captain. "I guess I'll park myself here this morning," he said with a devilish grin. "It appears that nobody else will be showing up to lay claim to this seat." Georgia chuckled suddenly and a chorus of laughter broke out in the room, dissolving the tension around the table.
Les Tuggle was in the pilot's seat in the dining room this morning instead of Bedford. When he saw that the previous night's fracas was open for discussion, he told the others, "That Nehemiah Bedford is a stone-faced old deacon. You know he never said a thing about what he'd done when he came on watch last night? He just asked me a few questions about the river and then took the wheel, calm and cool as ever. It was his cub put the word out. He told the mate sometime during the watch,
and then the mate told me when I went back on." 
"It must have been a terribly upsetting thing, my dear," Mrs. Holmes said to Georgia. She seemed to be having trouble accepting the younger woman's casual attitude. 
"It was a shock all right," Georgia said. "I was starting to think I might have to split his skull or something before he would leave me alone. I hardly saw Mr. Bedford until he already had flung Mr. Naramore across the railing. It was a sight to behold." 
"Damn, I wish I'd seen that," St. Clair said. Then, with a glance at Mrs. Holmes, he added, "Excuse the language, ma'am, but, by thunder, it's the truth." 
"Is Mr. Bedford going to be in any trouble?" Georgia asked the captain, who had not entered in the conversation but was taking it all in with a look of amusement on his face. "I mean, will this cause him any problems with the authorities?" 
"Hardly," Eaton chuckled. "On the contrary, I should think this will make him one of the biggest heroes on the river when word gets out." 
"Yeah, picture that," Tuggle laughed. "Old stone-faced Bedford a hero, defender of American womanhood." 
"He's a hero in my book," Georgia said. "And when we finish here, I intend to go up there and tell him just that." 
When the meal was over, true to her vow, Georgia headed up the stairs to the hurricane deck and marched up the steep steps to the pilothouse. She had heard some talk that women were taboo in any pilothouse manned by the stern Bedford, but she entered without hesitation. Glancing back, 
she saw Tuggle and the cook slipping around conspicuously to try to witness the upcoming scene. 
The cub pilot, Mark Tanner, looked around with a start when Georgia entered the pilothouse, but Bedford himself only glanced back briefly at her, his face unreadable, before turning his gaze back to the river. 
"I trust you are well this morning, miss?" the pilot said. 
"Quite well, thank you, sir," Georgia said. "I came up here to tell you how grateful I am for what you did to help me last night. It might have been a problem if you had not showed up." 
"I gathered as much. The man was obviously intoxicated and beside himself with . . . well, he seemed quite beside himself." 
Without warning, Georgia impulsively went over and stood on tiptoe to kiss the pilot's cheek. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of Tuggle below them, peeking around a chimney and doubling up with laughter. 
Without acknowledging the kiss in any way, Bedford slid open the glass window in front of him and called down to his fellow pilot, "Mister Tuggle! May I remind you, sir, that your watch begins in two hours and thirteen minutes. I would like to suggest that your time might be better spent resting in your cabin, rather than creeping among the chimneys like a truant schoolboy." Tuggle's giggling countenance disappeared behind the chimney. 
Feeling suddenly uncomfortable and embarrassed, Georgia turned to leave. But as she reached the door, Bedford stopped her unexpectedly. "We are coming upon some particularly scenic country 
along the lower part of Missouri and Kentucky," the pilot said, "and the pilothouse is by far the best place on board to observe it. You may stay, this once, if you wish to do so." 
Receiving a conspiratorial wink from Bedford's cub with a smile, Georgia closed the door and took a seat on the bench at the rear of the pilothouse.
Paul Eaton sat at the desk in his cabin, finishing his log entry and going over some of the last paperwork which had to be completed by late the next day when they docked in St. Louis. They would reach Cairo, Illinois, early in the morning to put Reverend and Mrs. Holmes ashore, and would arrive at St. Louis in the afternoon. 
He knew the owners of the line were going to be upset with him because of the cargo he had left behind in Memphis. Lately several boats in the line had scarcely been making back the costs of their trips, and it was a serious thing to pass up any opportunity for added cargo and revenue. But once a boat was on the river, the captain was the ultimate authority on her, the undisputed decision-maker, and Eaton knew his decision not to risk bringing the fever on board by taking on the Memphis cargo was correct. They could find some 
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other way to ship it. The railroads would take it. They were taking just about everything else these days.
His mind drifted back to his earliest days on the river, back before the War between the States. Though he was only thirty-five now and the war had been only fifteen years ago, so much had happened that it seemed like several lifetimes had passed since then.
Those were the good days, the peak era for the steamboats, this form of travel and transportation which he so dearly loved. Back then the river had been the lifeline of the entire Midwest. There were hundreds of boats on the river, and the men who worked on those boats, from the most experienced pilot to the lowliest cabin boy, were the undisputed heroes of the times.
All of that changed abruptly when the war started. The river was closed suddenly to through- traffic from St. Louis to New Orleans, and trade dropped off to nothing. Countless steamboats had fallen into disuse, rotting as they lay tied to neglected docks, spiraling their owners into bankruptcy and their crews into unemployment.
But even then the exciting days were not over for many of the river men. Steamboats played a major role in the war up and down the Mississippi Valley, not only as transportation for troops and supplies, but as vital links in major campaigns and assaults. Eaton had become a captain on a wartime vessel, and even now the sounds of exploding cannon shells and the screams of dying men would sometimes echo in his dreams. He'd had two boats shot out from under him, and had actually gone down briefly with one of them as he struggled to
save an injured crewman from the twisted chaos of the sinking vessel. There had been plenty of narrow escapes, and enough excitement for even the most adventurous young spirit. 
But at last the tragic conflict had ended, and in Eaton's mind, the signing of the South's surrender at Appomattox had marked not only the end of the Confederacy, but also the end of the great riverboating era on the Mississippi River. During the war the North had gone railroad- crazy, slapping down tracks in all directions to rush troops and supplies to the scattered battlefields. After the war, those railroads were ready to carry the people and products which had once been the sole charge of steamboats. 
Now, in 1876, there were still a few steamboats on the river. There probably always would be a few, serving as scattered relics of bygone days. But instead of being the undisputed rulers of the waterway, they were now novelties. What river trade remained was more and more usurped by the squat, powerful tugboats shoving along their rows of efficient, unromantic barges. 
And now the boat Eaton had become most fond of in all his years on the river, his Natchez Belle, was to become the latest victim of progress. The owners had informed him of the change before he left New Orleans, but he had only told the pilots and mate so far. 
When they reached St. Louis, the Natchez Belle and cabins were to be stripped of all finery and would go into dry dock for "alterations." To Eaton, it was a polite word for cannibalism. Her decks and cabins were to be stripped of all finery and frills, and masses of heavy, ugly machinery would 
be mounted on the forward parts of the main deck. She was to become a workhorse and barracks boat for crews of army engineers whose job it was to contain the shifting banks of the great Mississippi and keep her channels clear.
Paul Eaton had been offered the captaincy of this "altered" vessel, but he had turned it down flatly. In his mind, it would no longer be the Natchez Belle. He vowed he would rather starve trying to raise potatoes on a rock farm in the Ozarks than take such a job. Tuggle had chosen to stay on with the Natchez Belle, and Eaton could not fault him for it. The boat would still require experienced pilots even in its new capacity, and Tuggle had a wife and family near St. Louis to support. But Bedford had chosen the same course as Eaton, and for much the same reasons. Now Bedford spoke occasionally in vague terms of retirement, but Eaton suspected that whatever kind of life the sober, unyielding pilot turned to, it would not be one of idleness and recollection. The only fitting end for such a man as Bedford was to die at the wheel of a boat he was piloting.
A light knock on his cabin door interrupted Eaton's thoughts. "Come on in," he called out.
The door opened and Georgia St. Clair came partway in. "Excuse me, captain," she said quietly.
"It's quite all right," he told her, rising hastily "Please come in."
Georgia stepped inside and closed the door behind her. "I hate to disturb you, but I left my hairbrush beside your bathtub. Can I get it?"
"Sure. Go ahead."
Earlier in the day, because they would be landing
tomorrow, Eaton had invited both Georgia and Mrs. Holmes to take advantage of a rare river luxury which his cabin afforded--his bathtub. Mrs. Holmes, a city woman, had taken the presence of the tub there almost for granted, though she had accepted the offer. But it had deeply amused Eaton to see the delight in Georgia's eyes at such an opportunity. She stayed in his cabin almost two and a half hours, and when she emerged, her skin was pink and healthy beneath her tan. She had practically been glowing with the pleasure of an "all-over tub bath," as she had called it, and Eaton wished he had thought to make the invitation earlier in the trip.
Georgia crossed the room and retrieved the brush from Eaton's adjoining bathroom, and then she stood in the doorway a moment, admiring the room's main fixture.
"I know I must sound like a complete bumpkin to you," she said with a small laugh, "but I'm hanged if I've ever seen anything so elegant as that tub you've got there. It's just so stylish, all gold and white, with those little feet sticking down like a baby mountain lion's paws. If I lived on this steamboat, I'd be taking baths in that tub five and six times a day, at least."
Eaton laughed and said, "You'd get withered like a prune if you did that."
"Maybe," Georgia said, turning and smiling brightly at him, "but I'd sure as thunder be the cleanest girl in a dozen states and all the territories."
They laughed together, and Eaton found that her arrival had put a sudden end to his bleak
mood. She started across the room as if to leave, but he did not want her to go yet.
"Would you stay and have some coffee with me?" he asked. "The cook just brought me a fresh pot.
"I'd like that," Georgia said, accepting the seat he offered her. "These rooms you live in are the nicest on the boat. They're finer than the rooms of any fancy hotel I've seen."
"When they built this boat," Eaton told her, "there was still a tradition of elegance and luxury which I'm afraid is becoming a thing of the past. The new boats are built for power, and the owners are more concerned with how much hard work they can handle." 
Georgia just nodded her head, knowing nothing about the particular nostalgia Eaton was now feeling during the last trip he would make on the Natchez Belle. He got a bottle from a shelf behind his desk and poured a dash of whiskey into his coffee, then offered it to Georgia.
"No thanks," she said. "Papa's the drinker in our family, and generally, when he gets started, he does enough for both of us."
Eaton lifted his cup and said, "Since this has liquor in it, I suppose it would be appropriate to toast something."
"Yes, let's do. How about to the Natchez Belle?"
"To the Natchez Belle, then. A fine and distinguished lady," Eaton said. They touched the lips of their cups and took a sip, then he said, "Now let's toast the prettiest woman aboard her."
Georgia blushed and asked, "Do you mean me?"
"Yes, of course I mean you, Georgia."
She laughed and said, "It's the kind of beauty
contest I'd expect to win. Only two women in the running and one of them a grandmother already."
The captain just looked at her with an amused grin on his face.
"What's the matter?" she finally asked.
"I was just debating whether to say more," he chuckled. "I was imagining, if my attentions didn't please you, how it would look for a captain to get thrown off the deck of his own steamboat."
"Well, captain," she laughed, "the only choice a man ever has is either to play his cards and take his chances, or fold and leave the game to somebody else. Mr. Naramore called my hand and lost, but that doesn't mean it always has to end that way."
.Eaton studied her face for a moment, recognizing the invitation but still uncertain what to do about it. Then he slowly leaned over and gave her a light, brief kiss, barely grazing his lips against hers.
"See. There are winners sometimes, too," she said softly. "It's what makes the game worth playing. But I still might be tempted to pitch you overboard if I thought you couldn't kiss any better than that."
"I'll blame it on the table," Eaton said. "It's in the way."
Georgia gazed back at him a moment, smiling slightly, and then slowly rose to her feet. "How about now?" she asked. She took his hand in hers, drawing him to his feet and close to her.
The second kiss was warmer and longer, and as they clung together his strong arms engulfed her tightly, practically lifting her clear of the floor. Eaton could feel his heartbeat quicken as her firm
young body pressed against his. At last his arms relaxed a little and their lips parted.
"My word!" Georgia muttered lightly as she laid her head against Eaton's chest, holding him, molding her body tightly against his. The moment had left her breathless. "That was a kiss!"
"I've been wanting to do that," Eaton said, lightly kissing the top of her head, letting his fingers trace delicate patterns across her back. "But it didn't-seem fair to you somehow. We dock tomorrow in St. Louis. We can't ignore that fact."
"There's time," Georgia whispered. "There's now, there's tonight. If it's all we have, well. . .
Eaton took her by the shoulders and gently eased her a few inches away from him, looking deeply into her eyes. "I want you to know I'm not a frivolous man, a man like Naramore who takes his pleasure where he may in passing. I wouldn't have allowed any of this to happen if I didn't have a special feeling and attraction for you. Perhaps if the time and the place had been different. . . but it must stop here. We dock tomorrow. The trip ends there, and so does whatever has come to pass between us."
"It isn't that simple," Georgia said. "I couldn't end what I'm feeling for you right now if I wanted to. If I just stop now and walk out the door, will I be loose from it so easily?"
"I don't know, Georgia. I know at this moment I don't want you to walk out, but I know you should."
They kissed again, and it seemed to Eaton that he could feel Georgia grow weak and melt in his arms. She was right. They had unexpectedly set
something in motion here that would not be so casually stopped as it had been started. It would be a long time before either of them could be free of the memories of this moment.
"Is the trip to Montana something you absolutely must do?" he asked. "I wish you could stay." The words had come out of his mouth unexpectedly, but he did not regret saying them.
"Oh my!" Georgia said. The look in her eyes said that she wanted nothing more in the world at that instant than to tell him she would stay, but she did not say it. With a long sigh, she said, "It is something I have to do. I have to go with my father, at least this one last time. Everything my father's done, all these years, all the hard work and effort he's put out, have all been for me, and that's a great responsibility for me. I have to stand by him, at least until we find out what's waiting for us up there. Maybe after that ... I don't know. So many things could happen. I do truly wish it could be different. Please believe that."
"I believe you, Georgia," Eaton said, "and I understand."
There was a light tap on the outside door. "Captain?" It was Mark Tanner's voice. 
"Yes, what is it?" Eaton asked.
"Mr. Bedford said would you please come to the pilothouse at your convenience, sir," Mark said. "He wants to discuss a matter of business with you."
"Tell him I'll be along soon."
When the footsteps of the cub pilot faded down the deck, Eaton turned to another door in the compartment which led into the dining room and
opened it. "You can go out this way so you'll not be seen," he said. 
Before leaving, Georgia paused to give him one last kiss and asked, "Can I come back later? Maybe tonight sometime?" 
"I don't think it's a good idea," he told her. He was already trying to shut her out, to put away the sudden impulsive thoughts which had come so unexpectedly to his mind. It was not an easy job, for the feelings he was experiencing seemed to overpower all reason. 
"You can turn me away if you want," Georgia said, and then she was gone. 
Georgia sat in her cabin, still fully dressed despite the late hour. The noises from her father's cabin next door had long since ceased. He, along with practically everybody else on board, was probably asleep by now. But Georgia had not even considered going to bed herself. 
She was on the brink of a rash action, one which a day before she would not even have thought herself capable of. But a lot of things had changed that day. Since that first kiss from Eaton, her whole world seemed to have reordered itself. A mysterious, marvelous force had taken control of her, and now it was compelling her to take new, daring risks. 
She knew the chance was great that he would turn her away at the door when she went to him. He had practically said as much when they parted that afternoon. The possibility of such a rejection had kept her a prisoner in the cabin long past the time when it would have been safe to go to him. 
But finally she made herself rise to her feet and 
reach for the door. "You play your cards and you take your chances," she told herself quietly, remembering the words she had said to Eaton that afternoon. She had to go. She had to try.
She eased the door open and peered out cautiously. A couple of hundred feet away the bank of the river eased by, a faint movement of shadowy forest cover outlined against the nighttime sky. Making sure no one was on the deck, she stepped out and quietly closed the door behind her. On the deck below she could hear a couple of the crew members talking quietly, but they could not see her, and she kept her steps light so they would not hear her walking.
She eased down the deck to the door of the dining room, tried the knob and found it unlocked. Quickly and quietly she entered the room and closed the door behind her. On the far side of the room she saw a band of light under the door which led to Eaton's room.
She moved to the door and knocked lightly on it. For a moment there was no answer, and then the captain's voice asked quietly, "Who's there?"
"It's me," Georgia said.
She heard footsteps within, and then the door opened in front of her. Eaton was dressed casually in light tan trousers and a shirt of some silky material. Georgia realized that this was the first time she had seen him out of uniform, and she liked the effect these clothes created. Dressed as he was, he seemed not to be so stiffened with the burden of his authority. His eyes had a fluid quality about them, from tiredness, she guessed, and drinks from the bottle of wine she saw on the
table across the cabin. He smiled when he saw her.
"You should not have come," Eaton said softly as he stepped back to let her in.
"But you knew I would, didn't you?" Georgia asked. She turned to him and touched her hands lightly to the front of his shirt. The silky material was cool and soft to her fingertips.
"I waited for you," he confirmed. "I was thinking about what mad folly it is for us to meet like this, and about how disappointed I would be if you stayed in your cabin."
Georgia slipped her arms around him and held him, resting her head against his chest. Soft currents seemed to pass between them, like rivers joining.
"I had to come," she said. "It was like a power was driving me to come back here. I knew that if I stayed in my cabin tonight, it would-be something I would regret for the rest of my life. This may be our last chance to be together, and I want to enjoy it without having to worry about anything else in the world."
Eaton raised her head and kissed her lips softly. "I want that, too," he said. "My mind has been in a swirl all afternoon since you left. I've never felt anything so powerful, so compelling. I want you, Georgia, like I've never wanted any woman before . . . but I can't stop thinking about tomorrow."
Georgia looked up at him, her eyes soft and her face smiling intimately. "Papa says people spend too much time worrying over the tomorrows in their life," she said. "It doesn't leave them enough time to just enjoy their todays."
"But-"
"No buts. Please, Paul, just kiss me again."
The hunger in his kiss was so intense that it made her feel faint. His lips were alive with desire, and she had never before experienced anything like the feelings which began to rush through her like a mighty wave. She trembled as his strong hands began to investigate her body, stroking, exploring, sending out tingling shock waves of pleasure.
At last, as if in response to her unspoken plea, his hand found her breast and engulfed it in a warm, gentle touch. She threw her head back and closed her eyes as the pleasure of what he was doing to her began to radiate throughout her body, making her heart race and causing her breath to come in hurried sighs. His lips were measuring the length of her throat with kisses.
"There's no stopping now," he whispered, as if to himself. The words reached her ears like music, like a haunting melody she had waited her whole life to hear. She would die if he dared stop now.
His fingers went to work on the tiny buttons at her throat, fumbling with the urgency of their task. Finally she began to help him, peeling away garments one by one until she stood naked before him. Her mind was floating on a cloud of pleasure and desire.
"So lovely," Paul murmured, devouring her flesh with his eyes, his hands, his lips. He led her through a doorway to his bedroom and laid her gently across his bed. Then he just stood for a moment, gazing down at her. "I've never seen anything so lovely," he said. As his eyes wandered
her body, it seemed almost as if she could feel their caresses. 
"It's time for you to return the favor, Paul," she teased him, "unless all you want to do is look." Her own brazen lack of modesty surprised her, but she just felt too comfortable and excited to worry about it. 
"I've got more in mind than that," he smiled down at her as he began to unbutton his shirt. "A lot more." Georgia's flesh tingled with excitement as she watched his muscular body emerge from his clothes. As her need for him grew, it seemed as if it was taking him an eternity to finish. 
And then he was in the bed with her, their bodies close together, warm and aroused. His lips covered her face, her throat, and her breasts with hot, wet kisses and she could feel that he was ready for her. 
"Now, Paul," she whispered. "I can't wait. Love me now." He moved on top of her and her hands went down instinctively to guide him. Then as his body descended, she moved up to meet him, and a sudden stab of pain shot through her. A sharp cry escaped her lips. 
Paul stopped, leaning away from her slightly, his face concerned and surprised. "Good heavens! You're a virgin, aren't you?" 
"I was a moment ago," she told him huskily, "but not anymore. Don't stop. Please don't stop." Her desire was at a peak and his hesitation was driving her into a frenzy. She was afraid that if the feeling left her now, it might never return. 
"I just didn't know. It hadn't occurred to me." 
"It doesn't matter." With a sudden jerk, she 
thrust her pelvis up to meet him, ignoring the renewed flash of pain as she accepted him deep within her. 
At last their bodies began to move in unison, slowly and gently at first, but then with increased urgency as their movements drew them nearer and nearer to the pinnacle of their lovemaking. Georgia had not known exactly how it would end, only feeling instinctively that the wonderful sensations which gripped her body could not get much more intense before she passed out from them. 
The climax overtook her suddenly, making her feel as if some force had grabbed hold of her spirit and shook it, and she could not restrain a final sharp cry as the spasms of pleasure shuddered through her body. 
They lay close together in Eaton's bed, talking quietly, petting and kissing occasionally. Georgia felt pleasurably exhausted, her passions spent, luxuriating in the warm afterglow of their lovemaking. 
"I knew it would be good," she said softly, "but not that good. There's nothing else like that in the whole world, is there, Paul?" 
"When it happens at the right time between the right two people," Paul said, "it's a rare and remarkable thing." 
"It's odd," Georgia said with a quiet laugh. "I feel like I'm a different person now, like the world is bigger and broader and has so much more to offer. And I feel like I'm a woman now, too. I guess I never really was before." 
"You're a woman, Georgia. There's no denying that."
They were silent for a while, each thinking their own thoughts. Georgia raised up onto one elbow and gazed at Paul's face for a long time, studying it, memorizing each detail. Finally her fingers reached out and brushed a stray wisp of hair off his forehead.
"Paul?"
"Ummmh?"
"Are we in love?" 
"As near as I can tell," he told her, opening his eyes and giving her a quiet, comfortable smile, "I think we are."
"That's what I thought."
ST. CHARLES, MISSOURI -- MAY, 1876 
Georgia St. Clair was stooped by the fire, tending a skillet of frying catfish which she had caught that afternoon fishing from the bank of the Missouri River. In a second skillet beside the catfish, a batch of hushpuppies was just beginning to brown. She had used the last of their meal to cook the hushpuppies for supper, and there would be none left for breakfast, but her father had promised to bring some supplies back with him when he returned to camp from St. Charles that evening.
Despite the chill of the evening air, it was hot by the cooking fire. Georgia wiped away a trickle of sweat above her eye, and then her hand moved up to push a stray strand of hair out of her face. Her hair was a mess, as was the rest of her, and she was bored and tired and lonely and discouraged with all these days of waiting for somebody who
119
neither she nor her father was sure would ever show up. 
She was back in flannel shirts and trousers now. The dresses had been packed away again, and she would not even risk a guess at when she would have another chance to bring them out and get dressed up. Things were back the way they had been for so many years--sleeping in the tent, cooking out, scrounging most of their food from the land, living like nomads. 
But everything was not quite the same as it had been before. There was Paul Eaton now. The fact that he existed, that he was out there somewhere, changed everything else. 
The moments when she and her father were leaving the Natchez Belle several days ago at the pier in St. Louis had been tense. She was still reeling from the intimate hours she and Eaton had spent together in his cabin, and somehow the whole thing, the lovemaking and then the sudden parting, had an unreal quality about it. She was glad Paul had not shown up as they were packing their gear and leaving the boat. It would have been more than she could have handled just then. As it was, they got away unnoticed as the crew began to busy itself with the cargo. She never looked back. 
But now Paul Eaton hovered in her thoughts, a permanent resident of her mind. The memories were at times tender and other times so painful that she felt like bursting into tears. For the first couple of days, while they were making the twenty-mile walk from St. Louis to St. Charles, then pitching their tent and getting settled into camp, it had not been so bad because they were busy 
and there were other things to occupy her mind. But now the hours and days dragged by tediously, and she had entirely too much time to think and remember. William was gone into town for long hours each day, looking for odd jobs and looking for their relatives, and Georgia had little else to do but fish and cook and wait, and to relive in her mind some of the most precious memories she would ever have. 
She had gone back over those fleeting hours in Paul's cabin a dozen times, trying to recall each detail, the feeling of his hands on her body, her sensations as he gazed at her, the ecstasy she had felt as they lay together, consummating their love. She knew those memories might have to last for a long while, and she did not want to let a single one of them escape her. 
Things would be better, she thought, once they were on the move again. It was impossible to relax and be content with their lives as unsettled and uncertain as they were just then, but at least once they were headed west on the river, she thought she could begin to live more of her own life again, outside the thoughts and memories of Paul Eaton. 
She had not said anything to her father about it, but occasionally she thought that maybe they had been better off where they were before, out in the Mexican mountains, than where they were now, halfway to some inherited gold claim, broke and stalled down waiting for some distant relatives to show up from England so they could go on to Montana and find out what it was they owned, if anything. 
On the surface none of it made any sense anyway--to come hundreds of miles out of their way 
eastward to meet these two women that they were not even sure were coming, and then to turn right around and go back west to Montana. It would have been more logical to head straight north from where they were, following the Rockies most of the way, and then to take the Bozeman Trail along the Powder River on into Montana.
But she had not been able to convince her father of that. His two concerns were that, with the Sioux Indians rampaging up in that part of the country, their own trip would be a risky one at best, and it might be difficult for two newly arrived foreigners, and women at that, to make their way the full length of the Missouri River and then a couple of hundred miles overland to a remote mining camp.
But Georgia knew there was more to her father's thinking than he had discussed with her. He had other reasons for coming this far east and deciding to meet their British relatives in St. Charles. He was hoping that they would have some money with them, enough to pay for their steamboat fares up the river, and perhaps also enough to stake them once they reached the claim. This last week, ever since their arrival here, he had been picking up odd jobs in town, but the few dollars he earned hefting freight on the boats and sweeping out barrooms scarcely paid for the meager supplies ' they needed to survive. Right now they did not have enough money to carry them across the state, let alone across half a continent to Montana.
They had already sold everything they had of any value except their camping and prospecting equipment. It was not a very good way to launch an expedition across three thousand miles of river
to a mining frontier where everything would cost six times what it was worth. 
And yet it continued to amaze Georgia that through it all, facing such tremendous odds, William St. Clair's grand dreams of mineral treasures had never failed him. It was ironic, she thought, that after all those years of chasing bonanzas that never came and tromping around the mountains close on the heels of rumors of major strikes, her father's best chance had finally come, not from his own efforts, but through the death of a cousin he had met only a couple of times in his life. 
She knew that with some men, when gold fever got in their blood, it was a lifelong affliction. She had met prospectors who had been everywhere and done it all, from the first rush to California in '49 to the strikes in Nevada and Colorado and Mexico and Wyoming and Montana, and they were still as penniless, and as optimistic, as the day twenty-five and thirty years before when they had left their homes in Mississippi or Ohio or Georgia or Connecticut to seek their fortunes in the west. Most of them would probably die still broke, but still looking and still dreaming. It was a unique kind of tragedy, and she hated the thought that her father would end his days that way. 
Maybe, she thought, she could convince him to make Montana his last try. If that failed, maybe they could get a piece of land somewhere, perhaps within range of Paul Eaton's roamings, and settle down to build a new kind of life for themselves. 
But there was already talk of new strikes in Dakota Territory. She had seen the gleam in her father's eye when he had first heard about it: 
It would end for Georgia after this trip, though. 
She had never consciously made the decision, but she knew it was the way things had to be. She had tasted a tantalizing sample of another sort of life, and she would never be content to wander the mountains and mining camps again.
A noise in the darkness back toward the road caught her attention, and she listened for a moment before turning aside from the fire and picking up her rifle. It was a reflex precaution, and probably an unnecessary one here in the relatively safe countryside of eastern Missouri, but it was a habit not easily ignored. In the west, a person had to be ready for any eventuality, good or bad, when the unknown was approaching.
"It's me, darlin'," William St. Clair called out from the edge of the grove where their camp was located.
Georgia put the rifle down and went back to remove their supper from the fire. As her father came through the trees and reached the light of the fire, she said, "Hi, papa. Any luck today in finding them?"
William frowned and shook his head. The waiting was a strain on him too. "I had some work on the docks and missed the three o'clock train," he said. "There still wasn't no message in the express office. But I did get by the post office just before it closed and dropped the letter off." The previous night they had decided to leave a letter with general delivery in the St. Charles Post Office addressed to Pearletta and Clarissa Manchester. Then, if either of the women thought to check there, the letter would be waiting for them, telling them how to find this camp.
Georgia said nothing as she turned to get plates
and cups from a pack, but she thought the same thought she had every night when her father returned alone. Why had he not been more specific when he wrote his letter to England inviting the two Manchester women to come to America? A mere line or two mentioning any number of precise meeting places would have been enough. But William said he had underestimated the size of St. Charles. He had no idea it would be a bustling place of two or three thousand people or that it would be so difficult to find a new arrival there. It was frustrating to think that the women might actually be somewhere in St. Charles at that moment, or that they might have come and gone after being unable to locate her and her father. 
William deposited his canvas sack of provisions on the ground and came over to the fire to warm his hands. 
"I got meal and bacon and salt, and still had forty cents left over for the kitty," he said. "But I nearly had to fight the straw boss on the boat for my fair wages. He claimed 'cause I was such an old man, I didn't deserve full wages like the big bucks that work the docks regular." Georgia forked catfish and hushpuppies on a plate and handed it to him as he continued the yarn. "I allowed as how this was one old man that was going to bust his danged thick skull open with a quarter-split chunk of firewood if he didn't fork over the whole buck fifty in a right smart time." 
"So he forked?" Georgia asked. 
William paused for a brief frown, irritated at her habit of jumping ahead to the end of his stories before he was ready to get there. She just did it to needle him. "Well, sir. He puffed up like 
a spreading adder gone a'courting, and started blustering all over the deck like a split-toed jackass. He lambasted me for nigh onto five minutes, insulting me and all my ancestors back half a dozen generations. So finally I just strolled over, calm as you please, to that ten cord of wood we'd just stacked by the boilers. Then I started picking up this piece and that piece, sizing me up a likely stick to lay him out with."
As he paused to jam a steaming hushpuppy into his mouth, Georgia asked, "Did you whack him a good one, papa?"
"It's just what I'm getting to if you'll hold your horses, girl," William said. "Now by this time we was drawing quite a crowd, including a gang of deck hands that was eating this up like molasses on pone. Well, I hefted me a stick of wood about as big as your ankle and I says, 'Reckon this one'll do.' By then that mate was just about to decide I meant it, so he says, 'Draw your pay, grandpa, and ship your be-hind off my deck!'"
"So you drew and you shipped, huh?"
"I shore did."
Georgia knew this was not the last time she would hear the story of "William St. Clair And The Straw Boss" in the coming weeks and months. He stored this kind of incident up, broadening and embellishing it with each subsequent telling, until he got it just the way he wanted it and it became another colorful fixture in his permanent catalog of yarns. On the road from St. Louis, she had already heard him describe to a stranger "How Georgia Beat The Drummer Up And Threw Him In The River," relating details as if he had been there to witness the whole thing, and oblivious to
the fact that his daughter was right beside him and knew that most of what he said was nonsense. 
But that was just the way he was. He treasured his yarns like nuggets, and he had so.many that sometimes they could be in a camp for several weeks before every man, woman and donkey there had heard every single story in all its variations. 
After supper, Georgia gathered up the skillets and plates and carried them down to a nearby creek where she scrubbed them clean with sand and rinsed them out in the water. Then she returned to camp, where her father had settled in for another long evening of sitting around the fire. 
Clarissa woke to the sound of rough male voices cursing and shouting outside. It was frightening to her at first, and for an instant her mind flashed back to the terror she had felt in that dark hotel room when she heard those heavy male footsteps clump toward her door. But then she slowly began to realize where she was, seeing the crude fixtures of the room around her, feeling the lumpy corn husk mattress beneath her and the coarse blanket above, smelling the odors of wood smoke and grease in the tiny, secure riverboat cabin where Benjamin Hawkins had installed her after the nightmarish experiences of her first night in St Charles.
With the realization of where she was, she also began to realize that the boisterous male voices outside were no threat to her. They were the men who worked here in the repair yards where the
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steamboat she was staying on was docked. They were a rough lot. They fought like wild dogs, worked like galley slaves, ate like boar hogs, and smelled like oxen, but they left her alone. All the men working on this boat and the ones nearby knew she was under the personal protection of Hawkins, and that, apparently, was enough to provide her with complete safety in their midst. 
More than a week had passed since that first terrifying night in this town. During that time she had come no closer to finding her relatives, William and Georgia St. Clair, but at least she had been saved from the dismal fate of penniless destitution by Hawkins's consideration. He let her stay here in a spare cabin on the Maggie Dell, made sure her meals were provided by the boat's cook, and went with her into town almost every day to check the hotels, railway stations and incoming boats for any sign of the St. Clairs. 
Hawkins's connection with the Maggie Dell was not quite clear to Clarissa. He called himself the boat's hunter, explaining that once the steamboat was far upriver, provisions would be scarce and it was necessary to have a good hunter aboard to keep the passengers and crew fed. But he dressed in much more expensive suits than she would expect a mere hunter to be able to afford, and the two or three guns he constantly carried did not seem to be quite the type that a hunter would need. The sidearm was easy enough to understand, but even with her great ignorance about guns, Clarissa doubted that a running buffalo or elk could be brought down with the two-inch derringer he wore on a spring-loaded contraption along his right forearm. 
Despite all Hawkins's kindnesses, and despite the fact that he had yet to ask the slightest favor of her in return, Clarissa found herself frequently pondering his motives. For the first couple of days that she was here, every time Hawkins showed up at her cabin, she half expected him to at last demand payment for rescuing her and helping her with her problems, but it never happened. He remained a gentleman and made sure that everybody else around her did the same. 
Even with her suspicions, Clarissa had to admit that there was something mysteriously attractive about the man, too. He was quite unlike the men she had known back in England or any others she had met thus far here in America. Violence seemed to lurk just beneath the surface of his calm, confident exterior, and she had little doubt that the Colt revolver he constantly wore in a holster under his tailored broadcloth coat was something more than an adornment. He carried it like a tool. 
She had never seen Hawkins talk tough or threaten anybody. He had an easy laugh and his face was often spread with an amused, pleasant grin, but others around him seemed to know without being told that here was a man on whose good side it was wise to stay. 
Clarissa listened for a while to the shouts and cheers outside and knew the men were fighting. They fought all the time, it seemed, over everything imaginable. But more often than not, when the participants had battered each other into bloody exhaustion, they ended it all with laughs and handshakes and returned to whatever it was they had been doing. 
As the uproar began to die down, she rose and 
dressed. It was still quite early in the morning, probably no more than an hour past dawn, but Clarissa knew that very soon the clamor of the day's activities would begin again on the boat and that she might as well forget about sleeping any longer. 
She went to the galley for breakfast, and as she sat there eating the fried eggs and pork the cook prepared for her, the pounding and clanging began on the deck below. For the past few days the crew had been replacing the huge iron boiler on the main deck, an activity which at times set the boat to vibrating with a most remarkable clatter. 
After the meal, Clarissa made one quick walk around the deck looking for Hawkins, but he had already left the boat. He usually went into town with her, but she decided to go by herself today. She went down to the lower deck and walked across the gangway to the levee. Once she was on the bank, she turned down the rutted wagon road toward the main part of St. Charles. 
It had become her customary morning routine to make a check in several places in town where she thought her relatives might be staying or might have left a message for her. Following Main Street down to the central area of commerce, she first checked the railway depot and telegraph office, and then began to scan the boats along the levee, looking to see if there had been any new arrivals since the day before. One boat, the Midas Touch, had docked overnight and she went down to it and checked with the boat's clerk to see if William and Georgia St. Clair had booked passage for the upriver trip. 
Next she started up the hill toward the central 
part of town. A warm spring breeze was coursing down the river channel from the west, and Clarissa felt bright and cheerful this morning, better, she thought, than she had any right to feel considering her uncertain circumstances. She made a leisurely swing through town, checking in half a dozen hotels and inns along the route, and ended up at the new post office back down near the docks. 
The minute she entered the post office, she felt a surge of hope when she saw the wide grin spread across the face of the visored clerk behind the counter. He was a meek, mild kind of a man, but Clarissa had grown to like him because of the calm smile and pleasant greeting he always had waiting for her when she came in. He was waiting on another customer at the counter, but he stopped what he was doing when he spotted Clarissa. 
"Miss Manchester," he exclaimed with excitement as he produced a small envelope from the counter beside him, "a man brought a letter in for you late yesterday afternoon. I hope it's what you've been waiting for." 
Clarissa accepted the letter eagerly. It was addressed to "Pearletta or Clarissa Manchester, General Delivery, St. Charles, Missouri." 
"You say a man brought it by?" Clarissa asked. "Did he say anything? What did he look like?" 
"I'm afraid I didn't get a chance to speak to him, miss," the clerk said. "He left that with my assistant and I didn't even notice to whom it was addressed until he had already left. I'm sorry." 
Clarissa turned aside and quickly tore the envelope open. There was one page inside, covered with the swirling handwriting of a woman. It said: 
Dear relatives,
My father and I just got to St. Charles a few days ago. If you are here too, we can't find you. It took us longer to get here than we thought, and when we wrote you before in England, neither of us thought to make any exact plans about where to meet you if you came.
Now we don't know what to do. We've been camped along the river west of town, but my father says if we don't find you soon, we better go on to Montana and find the claim before all the summer mining season is gone.
If you get this letter soon, go out the Post Road west of town about two miles and you'll see our camp in a bunch of trees down near the river. If you come too late and we're gone, all I can advise is to get to Fort Benton however you can and ask around for us.
We should be there until spring no matter what, as the winter snows will keep us held there at least that long.
Godspeed and I hope we find you soon.
Georgia St. Clair
"It's them!" Clarissa told the clerk excitedly. "They've been here for days, and now I know where to find them."
"I'm happy for you, miss," the clerk told her. "Good luck."
Clarissa called back a hurried thank you as she raced out the door. She thought about going back to the boat and asking Hawkins to get a wagon to carry her out to the camp, but then decided to
just walk instead. If they were only two miles out of town, she could walk it as quickly as Hawkins could round up a horse and wagon. With resolute steps, she hurried across St. Charles and started westward on the Post Road. 
Georgia lay back across the grassy river bank, letting the morning sun warm her body as she dozed and daydreamed about Paul Eaton. Beside her, stuck in the soft dark soil, was her neglected fishing pole, its line hanging down over the ten- foot drop to the water and slanting away downstream as the current tugged at it. The fat night crawler she had stuck on the hook was long since gone, but she already had three nice catfish on her stringer and she was not concerned about catching any more. 
In her mind she was back with Paul on the deck of the Natchez Belle, watching the sun rise over the flatlands of Louisiana, just being with him, touching him, loving him. The memories were bittersweet. 
Georgia was startled by a voice calling out about a hundred yards behind her, back in the trees where their tent was pitched. As she turned her head back to see who it was, her hand reached out for the Winchester which lay on the ground beside her. She berated herself for being caught off-guard like that, letting someone approach the camp without her realizing it. They had been too long away from the wilderness--her instincts were getting rusty. That could be a dangerous failing when they reached Montana. 
But with her first glimpse of the young woman up by the tent, happiness flooded through her as 
she realized who it must be. She stood up and waved her arms as she called out, "Hello I I'm down here by the river." 
They met midway between the camp and the river, and the newcomer asked, "Are you Georgia St. Clair?" 
"Yes! Yes I am!" Georgia said happily. "And you must be Clarissa!" Though they were strangers, they embraced warmly, both feeling a flood of relief that at last they were united. 
"Where's your mother?" Georgia asked. "Did she stay in town somewhere?" 
"Mother stayed in England," Clarissa told her. "She wasn't inclined to make such a trip, so I came alone." 
"It's so good to see you, Clarissa," Georgia told her. "Papa and I have been fretting like a pair of old maids, not knowing whether to stay here awhile longer or go on and hope you could find us there. And we never even knew for sure that you were coming at all." 
"Didn't my letter reach you?" Clarissa asked. 
"No, but I'm not surprised. It's rare when any mail catches up to us. But you're here now, and that's what counts. Papa will bust his buttons when he finds out." 
"You can't imagine how happy I feel about finding you at last," Clarissa said. "The trip here has been, well, a unique experience, to say the least." 
"You had trouble?" 
"Yes, but there's no need to go into all that right now. In the meantime, I've met a man who has been watching out for me. He's a gentleman who seemed to know the look of a stranded waif 
when he saw one. I don't know how I should have survived the wait here without him."
As Clarissa spoke, Georgia studied her with interest and approval. Her proper British accent struck Georgia as unusual and melodic, and Georgia could easily see how many a man would rush to the aid of such a beautiful blond-haired young woman.
"Come help me with my fish," Georgia said, "and we can talk while I fix us some lunch. Papa is working in town, but we can go in later and find him."
At the river bank, Georgia picked up her rifle and handed it to Clarissa, asking her to carry it back to camp. Then she wound her fishing line around her pole and pulled her cord stringer up out of the water. As they started back, Georgia was amused by the way Clarissa handled the Winchester, holding it away from her with both hands as if it were an unclean thing.
When they reached the camp, Georgia began deftly gutting and skinning the fish as Clarissa told her of her daily checks in town, and about how she had received the letter that morning and came straight out here.
"I'm so relieved to find you at last," Clarissa repeated. "When I left England I knew the journey would be difficult, but if I had known the kinds of things I would actually encounter here on the frontier, I'm afraid I would never have had the courage to make the trip."
Georgia glanced up at her cousin, knowing that there was more behind Clarissa's words than she had yet chosen to tell. She hesitated to tell her that here in America, no matter how bad her experiences
may have already been, places like St. Charles were considered the civilized regions. A much wilder frontier awaited them upriver.
As if in response to Georgia's thoughts, Clarissa said, "I can see now that I was ill-prepared and totally ignorant of the way of life here. But now that I've arrived, I'm determined to see it through, no matter what the hardships."
"Like as not, you'll find plenty of situations to test that resolve," Georgia told her. "This town's tame as a kitten up aside the kinds of places we're likely to come across farther west of here. I grew up in the middle of that kind of place, so I forget sometimes how rough it can be for a woman who isn't used to it. But looking at it from your place ... I don't know ..."
"I'll learn what's necessary," Clarissa said firmly. "You and your father can teach me. I'll learn to fight and take care of myself, to use the tools and weapons of this region. I won't be a burden to you. I promise that."
"Oh, it's not that so much, Clarissa," Georgia assured her. "We're glad to have you with us. You're family, and you have a right to share in whatever we find up there. We want you along. I just wouldn't want to see anything awful happen to you."
"It's too late for that," Clarissa said mysteriously. "But as you can see, I made it through the experience." Again Georgia waited for an explanation, but her cousin did not offer one.
Clarissa dived into the simple meal of fried catfish, hushpuppies and coffee with an appetite which surprised Georgia. As they ate, they traded stories about their separate trips. Georgia gave a
lengthy description of the steamboat trip up the Mississippi River, but she made no mention of the captain of the boat or what had happened with him. It was something she was not quite ready to talk about to anybody. She felt that she, too, would have to keep a few secrets until they got to know each other better. 
After they ate, Georgia suggested that they walk back into town. She did not want her father to have to wait even a few unnecessary hours to learn that Clarissa had been found and that their journey could now continue. In addition, Clarissa had mentioned that she wanted to get her belongings from the Maggie Dell and to tell Ben Hawkins, her protector, the good news. 
They went looking for William along the river levee and soon found him among a crew of laborers who were hoisting a stack of heavy wooden crates on board a steamboat. As they walked down the levee toward the crew, William spotted them, dropped what he was doing, and rushed over to snatch Clarissa clear of the ground in a tremendous bear hug. 
"My darling cousin!" he exclaimed. "We've found you at last. Thank God!" 
"I thought it would never happen," Clarissa said, accepting his joyous hugs and kisses with laughter and obvious embarrassment 
"And where's your mother, girl?" William asked. "Didn't she come with you?" 
"No. She stayed home." 
"Well, at least you're here to lay claim to a part of the family fortune," William said. Then, turning to his daughter, he asked, "How did you find her, Georgia?" 
"She just came strolling into camp this morning," Georgia said. "She got the letter and came out to find us."
"Ah, it's a great day!" William exclaimed. "A glorious day!" He was practically dancing a jig on the levee in his excitement.
From the deck of the steamboat where William had been working, the mate called out angrily, "You there! Old man! Do you think you'll earn your wages by dancing around when there's work to be done? Get back to humping that freight."
William turned to him with a wide, rowdy grin and shouted, "My friend, you can take your freight and stick it where the sun don't shine. My family is together now and we're headed westward to make our fortunes." With that, he put an arm around each girl and started gaily up the levee toward town.
"Aren't you even going to get your pay for the morning's work, papa?" Georgia asked.
"Oh posh!"
"We need the money, papa," Georgia insisted, a little embarrassed to bare their financial problems so soon in front of Clarissa.
"I'll not go hat in hand begging 'please sir' to the likes of him," William scoffed. "And he wouldn't pay me anyway, since I quit like I did."
"You could have finished the day. It wouldn't have made any difference."
"No, my darlings. We've got things to do, grand plans to lay. We must be off on the river to Montana!"
Georgia let the subject rest after that. She knew this mood her father was in, and she knew there was no recourse for her but to join in and ride the
crest with him. He was giddy with excitement. His golden dreams were glimmering afresh, undimmed after all these years, and his heart was alive with the certainty of the treasures they would soon find. It was his life's-blood, and the sorest weakness of his soul.
"I want to get my things before we go back to your camp," Clarissa told William as they started west down Main Street. "And I want to see Mr. Hawkins and thank him for all he's done to help me while I was here. I'm sure he will be delighted that I've found both of you at last."
When they reached the repair yards, Georgia and William waited on the levee because the decks of the Maggie Dell were alive with busy workmen. Clarissa went to the cabin she had used and began to pack her things. She had not seen Hawkins when she came on board, but in a moment he appeared in the doorway of the cabin.
"I see you're getting ready to leave," he said with a frown as he watched her hurriedly stuffing her clothes into the suitcase.
"Oh, Ben, hello," Clarissa said. "Yes, I've found my cousins this morning and I'm going to stay with them in their camp outside town. I'm sure we'll be leaving soon on our journey up the river. Isn't it wonderful?"
"To chase your fabulous gold mine, I suppose?" Hawkins said with undigested scorn.
Clarissa looked around at him in confusion. "You've known all along my reason for coming here," she said. "We own a gold claim up there, and we're going to explore it and develop it."
"Yes, I've known it and regretted it all along, Clarissa. I just haven't mentioned it up to now
because I didn't think your chances of ever finding these people and going to Montana were very good. Don't you understand, woman? A gold claim means next to nothing in a place like that. I have a shoebox full of worthless shares in claims and mines all the way from Pike's Peak to the Pacific, and they're good for little more than stuffing a mattress with. 
"I've been to this Montana Territory that you're in such a hurry to get to. Much of it is nothing but stark, treeless prairie, or endless miles of rolling hills covered over with sage grass and buffalo chips. In the winter it can get down to thirty and forty below, with blizzards so blinding that you can get lost and freeze to death ten feet from the porch of your cabin, that is if you're lucky enough to have a cabin to winter in. There are savages up there that could make your tumble with that drunk the other day seem like a Fourth of July picnic. 
"And as for this gold you keep dreaming about, all the easy pickings were stripped away from the Montana gold fields years ago by the pan brigades and placer miners. It takes money to be a miner there now, because the gold that's left is deep down, imprisoned in the quartz rock. 
"Montana is no place for a woman like you, Clarissa. You don't know the first thing about survival." 
"I'll be with my relatives," Clarissa said defiantly, "and they know enough to get us through. They'll teach me." 
Hawkins turned and surveyed the two figures waiting on the levee with a long critical stare. "I've seen his type a thousand times before in a hundred 
gold camps," he said. "They spend their whole lives searching for the rainbow's gold while they pan the gullies for pocket change. And finally they end up in a gulch somewhere with a tomahawk stuck in the top of their skulls, or with a knife up their gullets out back of some sod-roofed backwoods whiskey mill. 
"And look at his daughter. In ten years, she'll look fifty years old, with skin like rawhide and a scarecrow's body. Chances are she'll never live to see her fortieth birthday. Do you want to end up like that, Clarissa?" 
As he talked, Hawkins stepped into the cabin and moved closer to her, but Clarissa kept her back turned and continued her packing, ignoring his nearness. "My course is set, Ben," she said without turning. "I'll be going with them." 
He reached out and put a hand on her shoulder, turning her around to face him. As they stood close together, studying each other's features, she thought she saw some of that hidden quality there which made him such a subtly threatening and dangerous man. "Stay with me, Clarissa," he said. It sounded more like a command than a request. "Let them go off on their fool's journey alone. I know how to get plenty of money, enough to keep you in silks and furs and luxuries without your having to travel to the edges of the world to get them." 
"Somehow I knew that eventually my time of reckoning would come for all your kindness," Clarissa said coldly. 
"There's no kindness in me, woman," Hawkins said with an edge of contempt beginning to creep into his voice. "I don't do anything without a selfish 
reason, and I didn't pull you out of that dockside cathouse and bring you here just to be noble and kind. I want you, Clarissa. I want you to be my woman." 
With some effort, she freed herself from his grasp and turned away. "I will not be your woman," she said firmly, "or anybody else's. I'm sorry. I am truly grateful to you for what you did for me, whatever your motives were. But I'll never be possessed by anyone, not if they save my honor, not even if they save my life." 
Hawkins just stared at her for a moment. She could feel his cold eyes burning into her, but she refused to look back at him. "Ever since that first night," he said, his voice sharp like the edge of a dagger, "when I saw you there on that bed, naked and bruised and afraid, but still more beautiful than any woman I had ever seen before . . ." 
"Please, Ben!" 
"I knew then that someday I would have you," he said. "I still don't know when or where, but I do know that when I want something bad enough, I go after it with everything I've got." 
Clarissa squeezed the sides of her suitcase together and fastened the catches. "Thank you for all your help, Mr. Hawkins," she said stiffly as she lifted the suitcase off the bed and turned to the door. "I'm leaving now, but perhaps someday we'll meet again." 
"You can bet your gold mine on it, my dear," he said quietly as she left the cabin. 
The campfire blazed brightly in the center of the small clearing, a warm, cheerful presence amidst the pitch-black night. Clarissa sat close to it, enjoying the warmth and feeling secure in its small island of light. She and Georgia had finished cleaning the supper things a while before and now sat side by side, sharing a blanket spread across their shoulders against the evening chill. On the other side of the fire William sat with his back against a tree, puffing occasionally on his pipe and filling the air around them with the rich aroma of burning tobacco.
They had visited all afternoon and on into the evening through supper, and now they were just about talked out. For the past few minutes nobody had spoken as they enjoyed the quiet stillness of the night. But at last William broke the spell. He
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tapped the bowl of his pipe against his boot, emptying it, and then scoured the inside briefly with a twig to get out the last remaining shreds of tobacco. Finally he took out his pouch and began to pack the pipe again.
"Gather 'round me, girls," he said. "It's time we had a pow-wow. We must lay some plans for our trip."
Clarissa and Georgia moved around the fire and settled down close to him, still sitting side by side so they could share the blanket.
As he examined the filled bowl critically and then stuck the stem of the pipe back in his mouth, he said, "I've heard the boatmen talking. They say the big ice jams upriver are gone now and that the river is rising from the spring rains. I've been checking with some of the boats that will be leaving over the next week, and I've learned that passage on the rudest of them will cost in the neighborhood of one hundred twenty-five dollars per person."
He paused and Georgia could see him watching Clarissa closely, waiting, she knew, for Clarissa to volunteer some information about her finances.
"Oh dear." Clarissa mumbled when she heard the sum.
William went on more hesitantly. "I don't mean to pry, Clarissa," he said. "But we're all in this venture together now and I need to know . . . that is, how much ..."
"As I told you earlier," Clarissa said, "I was robbed in New York shortly after my arrival. I had over fifty-five pounds then, about three hundred dollars, but all of that was taken. I'm afraid that
all I have now is about six dollars left from the money I got when I sold my clothes and things. It won't be much help, will it?" 
St. Clair could not prevent a look of disappointment from flashing across his face for an instant. 
"I told you not to count too heavily on it, papa," Georgia said softly. 
"We'll say no more about it, daughter," William told her sternly. 
Their exchange puzzled Clarissa for a moment, and then she realized what they were talking about. They had expected, or at least hoped, that she would have enough money with her to get them upriver to Montana. 
"I had planned on paying my share all the way," she said, her voice betraying a little of the hurt she felt. "I left home with enough, but..." 
"Pay no mind to it," William said, trying to cheer her up. "So now we know we're all as poor as the parson's cat, but at least we're together, and we'll find some way to get up there. Never doubt that for an instant." 
"That's right," Georgia confirmed. "Please don't ever think you were only welcome with us because of the money you might bring, Clarissa. We want you along. Maybe you can help me keep this old rooster out of the saloons and at work on the claim once we get there." 
"You just mind the women's work," St. Clair chided his daughter good-naturedly, "and leave the men's duties like drinking and hell-raising to me. Now, our first concern must be transportation and how we will pay for it. First we'll see how much we've got, and then tomorrow I'll go into 
town and see what arrangements might be made for that sum. Get the poke, Georgia."
As Georgia went into the tent to get their savings, Clarissa took all her remaining money out without being asked and turned it over to William. When he had all the money together, William counted it carefully and announced, "Eighteen dollars and twenty-six cents. I must admit it's not much for a three-thousand-mile boat ride."
"There's more, papa," Georgia announced quietly, reaching out and dropping her secret twenty- dollar gold piece on the pile. It was a leftover from better times, a coin she had kept hidden for more than two years, knowing that some day it would be desperately needed. "I've kept that for a long time for an emergency, and I guess this is close enough to one," she said.
"That's your money," William said quietly.
"There no such thing now. We have to share everything, papa," Georgia said insistently. "It's the only way."
"All right," he conceded reluctantly. "Now we have thirty-eight dollars."
"Maybe we could get some sort of work on a boat to earn our passage," Clarissa suggested. "I might not be very good at it, but I could clean and make beds on the boat, or wash dishes."
"There's not much call for female help on the riverboats, dear," William told her. "I'll try to find a berth for myself if I can, but generally the steamboats fill out their crews with younger men than me, and hardly ever any women." 
After a few more minutes of inconclusive talk, they decided to turn in for the night and hope
that the next day's prospects proved brighter. William relinquished his cot in the tent to Clarissa, electing to sleep out under the stars so the two women could have their privacy. 
Once they had gone to bed, Clarissa lay on her cot a long time, unable to sleep. She had somehow believed that once she found William and Georgia St. Clair, her problems would be ended and they would set out immediately on their trip. Now her life seemed as unsettled as before, but at least she could take comfort in the fact that she no longer had to face the uncertain future alone. 
When she heard Georgia stirring on her cot nearby, Clarissa whispered, "Are you still awake, Georgia?" 
"Yes," Georgia answered quietly. "I guess it's the excitement of the day that's keeping me awake." 
"I was just thinking that I might be able to get some money from Ben Hawkins," Clarissa speculated. 
"The man on the boat?" 
"Yes." 
Georgia was silent a moment, then she asked, "Is that a good idea?" 
"I don't know. He's a curious man. He might loan me all I needed without question, or he might demand . . ." She paused, considering what payment he might require of her if she went back to him now and made such a request. 
"You don't really like him very much, do you, Clarissa?" Georgia asked. 
"I didn't really think of him in exactly those terms," Clarissa tried to explain. "He got me out of a very difficult situation and treated me very 
kindly, but... I don't know. When I got ready to leave, all of a sudden there was something frightening about him. I can't explain." 
"How did you get yourself hooked up with him in the first place?" 
Clarissa was silent for a moment, and then she hesitantly began to recount the circumstances of her first meeting with Hawkins. When she finished, she told Georgia, "When he took me away from that place, I was so stunned that I didn't really care who he was or where he was taking me. I just knew he was a man who was capable of providing me with some safety for a while. But this afternoon when I went back on the Maggie Dell to get my things, he started talking strangely, telling me he wanted me to stay with him and be his woman. And he said he was a man who always got what he wanted, or something like that. It was almost like a threat of some sort, like I was doing him some sort of injustice by leaving with you and your father." 
"I can't believe you actually went to a place like that and tried to spend the night," Georgia said. "You would have been safer to go off in the woods somewhere and sleep on the ground. Didn't you guess what kind of man you'd run into there, and the sort of woman they'd take you for? Girl, there is a lot I can teach you about getting along here, and I think maybe I'd better get started in a big hurry." 
Clarissa woke in the morning to the sounds of her cousins stirring outside the tent, talking in hushed tones. She dressed quickly in the chilly 
dawn air and wrapped her cape around her shoulders before going outside.
"Good morning," William said cheerfully as he looked up from his place at the fireside and saw her. "The coffee's just boiled. Pour yourself a cup. It'll take the chill out of your bones."
Still half asleep, she accepted the tin cup Georgia offered and filled it from the bubbling pot over the fire. "One of the first things I must adjust to," she groaned, "is how early everybody is up and about here. On that boat, the crews went to work at sunrise pounding and banging away with their hammers, and I see it's the same here with you."
"A man's day was meant to begin when the sun rises," William expounded, "and to end with the last glow of light."
"Papa's gone philosophical on me in his old age," Georgia complained with a wink at Clarissa. "But you see, it's the way you learn to live in the wilds when you don't have lamps and things to light the night."
"I'll get used to it," Clarissa said. "I guess a girl doesn't need much beauty rest where we're going." She was puzzled at the sidelong glance Georgia threw at her.
"Good looks can cause more harm than good sometimes," Georgia said. "We'll talk more about that later on, after breakfast."
They ate dry flapjacks for breakfast, and soon after the meal was finished, St. Clair prepared to start for town. "Stay close to camp today," he advised. "If I find us some transportation, we might have to pack up and leave in a hurry."
"Okay, papa," Georgia said. "We'll have things ready when you get back."
As soon as they had cleaned up the plates and skillet from breakfast, Georgia went into the tent and began rummaging around. In a moment she called for Clarissa to join her.
As Clarissa pushed the tent flap back and stepped inside the tent, Georgia handed her a pair of trousers and a shirt. "Try these on," she said. "I think they might just about fit you."
Clarissa accepted the clothes but for an instant she just looked at them, hesitant about doing as she had been told.
"Trust me," Georgia said. "Your dresses are nice, but they'll only be in the way from here on. I know I don't look too great dressed like a man, but this kind of outfit is more comfortable and better suited for travel and hard work. And besides that, in the wild country, if a woman looks rugged, if she looks like she can take care of herself, she's got half the battle won in handling the men that might try to bother her. I'll teach you how to win the other half, too, soon enough."
Clarissa removed her dress and slip, but was hesitant about taking off any more of her delicate underclothes until Georgia said, "Don't worry. You'll get used to it. Comfort is more important now." At last Clarissa self-consciously stripped down to her light, silky drawers, and then hurriedly donned the man's shirt and trousers. The coarse material of the shirt felt strange and foreign against her skin, and it was an odd sensation to feel her breasts moving freely beneath the garment as she moved. She felt a little silly, like a little girl playing dress-up in her father's clothes instead of her mother's, but Georgia surveyed her with an approving glance.
"You'll still need boots and a hat," Georgia said, "but we can find those for you somewhere along the way. And we must do something about your hair. We'll have to either cut it off shorter or pin it up out of the way. I keep mine long, even though it's more trouble that way, but you can decide about yours."
The strange feeling continued as she followed Georgia out of the tent. From earliest childhood, her mother had taught her to care for every detail of her appearance meticulously, and it seemed as if now, in an instant, all those years of training and attention had been put behind her. But it was somehow a good feeling too, as if with a mere change of clothes she had become more hardy, more a part of this new land she was in. She had a silly temptation to rub a little dirt on her face and under her fingernails just to make the transformation complete.
She became suddenly apprehensive, however, as she watched Georgia and realized what her cousin had in mind for the next lesson in wilderness living. Georgia had picked up one of the rifles and was checking it over carefully. Finally she turned to Clarissa and said "It'll probably be a long time before you get very good with one of these things, but it won't hurt for you to learn now how to at least point it in the right direction and pull the trigger. Come on."
Carrying the rifle and a box of cartridges, Georgia started walking toward the river bank.
Clarissa lay on her cot in the tent, feeling exhausted but somehow satisfied with the experiences of the day. It had been a day of firsts for
her. Her bruised and battered shoulder was evidence of her first attempt at using a firearm. As Georgia had predicted, she had seldom come close to hitting anything she aimed at, but at least now the Winchester felt a little more familiar in her hands.
She had also caught her first fish that day, hauling a thrashing three-pound catfish out of the river with a pole Georgia had cut for her. Later she had cleaned and skinned the catch herself, following Georgia's instructions and somehow succeeding in splattering herself with blood and entrails from head to foot. But later, when they ate the fish for lunch, it seemed to taste better than any other she had eaten at the camp.
During the afternoon Georgia had given her lessons on how to use an axe to chop and split firewood, and how to break camp and load the packs so they would ride best on their shoulders.
Late in the afternoon as a final strange first accomplishment of the day, Clarissa had reluctantly answered nature's calling in the woods. After that, she felt prepared to face just about anything that might come along.
The day's activities had all been new and not completely enjoyable to her, but she was proud of the fact that no matter how awkwardly she had accomplished something or how distasteful it had seemed to her, she had not refused to try anything Georgia had required of her, and she had not complained.
Now Georgia was letting Clarissa rest as she busied herself getting supper. Dusk was approaching and Georgia was expecting her father to return to camp before dark. As the familiar sizzling
began at the fire outside, Clarissa realized that they would again be dining on fish and those curious little balls of meal and onions that Georgia fried up. The diet was becoming tedious, but she knew that to improve it they would have to spend some of their precious funds, which might delay their departure upriver.
Clarissa scarcely realized that she was drifting off to sleep, but she woke with a start when she heard William St. Clair's voice outside. As she sat up, her body felt drugged and stiff, but she rose to her feet and went out to see what the news was.
St. Clair laughed out loud when he saw her. "I see she's turned you into a tomboy just like herself," he chuckled. "Next thing, she'll have you picking fights and Indian wrestling in the dirt for sport."
Clarissa glanced down at her ill-fitting shirt and trousers with a grin. "If I'm going to play the part of a frontier woman, I guess I must dress for the role."
St. Clair had just arrived in camp and Georgia was also curious about what news he had. As she handed her father a cup of coffee, she asked, "Did you have any luck today, papa? Did you find us a boat?"
St. Clair paused a moment before answering, taking a sip from the steaming cup and then wincing as the coffee singed his tongue. An expression of concern came over his face.
"I found some possible transportation for us," he began slowly. "But I'm not really satisfied with the situation. I'm not sure it's the way we should
go."
"Well doggone, papa," Georgia said. "The worst
old tub of a steamboat would be fine if it got us there in one piece. We don't need to have the kind of luxury we had on the Natchez Belle." 
St. Clair turned to his daughter, shaking his head and still choosing his words with care. "Honey, I'm afraid none of the steamboats would consider taking us on, not even with me offering to give them all our money and promising to work on the deck to boot. The only man I found who was willing to make such a bargain was the owner of a keelboat." 
By the expression on Georgia's face, Clarissa could tell that that was not good news. "What sort of craft is that?" she asked her uncle. 
"It's a long wooden boat with no engine on it," St. Clair explained. "They're used to ferry the smaller loads, and there's not many left on the river anymore because they are so much slower than the steamboats." 
"But how do they get about? With oars? Would they row us all the way to Montana?" 
"The crew use long poles to push the boat upriver, and when the bank is clear, sometimes the men go ashore and tow it with ropes. Occasionally when the wind is right, they hoist a sail. It's slow and awkward and dangerous." 
"And it would work you to death, papa," Georgia added. "You couldn't handle that kind of hard labor day after day all the way upriver. We can't even consider it." 
"I don't like the prospect either, but we have to consider it, daughter," William said, "because it's all we've got to consider. But the work is not what troubles me the most. I'd get through that somehow. It's the owner that worries me. His name 
is Simon Bindigo and I could see from the first that he's nothing but a rogue, a drunken rounder of the worst sort. I'm not so sure we could trust him to keep up his part of the bargain."
"He'd keep it," Georgia threatened, "or get a slug in his gut in payment for his treachery."
"Besides the captain," St. Clair told his daughter patiently, "there's seven hearties in his crew, all stout as buffaloes from muscling that boat upriver. They might be a little too much for even you to handle, and besides, we have Clarissa to think about. I trust you haven't yet been able to teach her all the tricks of self-defense that you've learned over a lifetime."
The situation sounded dangerous and frightening to Clarissa, but she put up a brave front because she did not want to let her presence be the deciding factor in whether they went on that boat. "Please," she told them, "make the same decision that you would if I was not here. If you start letting my lack of knowledge and experience begin to influence things, there'll be no end to it. Right now I'm just tagging along, and I'll have to do my best to learn along the way."
"These men might educate you a little more quickly than you bargained for," William said gently.
"I'm willing to face that possibility," Clarissa said with more courage than she felt, "if you and Georgia are. If this is our only hope for going on, it seems to me that we have to take it, whatever the risks."
St. Clair eyed his cousin skeptically for a moment, and then slowly a grin began to spread across his face. Finally he said, "It's in the blood,
I guess, in spite of the generations that separate us."
"What's that?" Clarissa asked.
"That little trace of adventurous insanity. It could spell the death of us all, you know. That captain down there, he's one of the old time Canuck voyageurs left over from the fur-trapping days in Canada and the northwest. I know his type. They know no law but their own in the wilderness. They respect only force and violence, and when they sense weakness, they take what they want."
"Then we'll just have to be strong, papa," Georgia declared. "When do we leave?"
With a resigned shake of his head, half in regret and half in admiration for these two women with him, he said, "We'll have to break camp right after we eat and go straight to the river. They shove off at first light."
Despite her brave words, Clarissa felt a renewed surge of apprehension when she saw the boat that they were boarding. It was dwarfed by the several large steamboats docked nearby and was in a shameful state of disrepair.
The keelboat was forty feet long and ten feet wide. Most of its deck was taken up by a long, low cabin, with only small open spaces left at the bow and stern, and a foot-wide walkway along each side. It sat low in the water, laden with an amazing quantity of cargo, and the lapping surface of the river was only inches below the lowest portion of the deck.
The three passengers stood on the levee for a while, staring at their transportation in bleak silence. The prospect of making a three-thousand- mile journey on this boat was less than thrilling.
"Hello, the boat," William called out at last.
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"May we come aboard?" There was no answer. He called out again, louder this time, but still with the same result. 
"There's no one here," Georgia said. 
"They must be off enjoying their last night in town," William said. 
"So what do we do?" Georgia asked. "Just stand here in the mud and wait for them to come back?" 
"Simon Bindigo, the owner, told me we could set up a shelter for ourselves on the bow," William said. "There's no room for passengers in the cabin, but we can stretch a canvas and be comfortable enough." 
"If you say so," Georgia said skeptically. "We can sleep with our feet in the water and tie a fishing line on our toes to catch breakfast." 
St. Clair looked down at his daughter sadly. "If there was any way I could have done better for you two girls--" he began. 
"I'm sorry, papa," Georgia apologized. "We'll make do fine. You know I always have to do a little griping before I can settle down in a new place." 
"Sure," Clarissa agreed. "We'll be right up front where we can see all the lovely sights of the river." 
They stepped aboard cautiously, noting how the boat tipped and rocked as each new bit of weight was added to its load. "Maybe we can get you two settled in before Bindigo and his crew get back," William said. "They're likely to all be drunk and, well, maybe it would be better for them to get their first look at you in the morning." 
Working with quiet competence, William and Georgia unrolled their tent and used it like a tarpaulin to form their lean-to. They lashed one edge 
to the front portion of the cabin's flat roof, then stretched it taut and tied it to the low walls which came together at the front of the boat. When they finished, they had a sloping shelter with about four feet of head space at its highest point, and enough room underneath for the three of them to sleep and stow their gear.
Checking the last of the knots for tightness, William looked over their work and nodded his approval.
"It'll do, I think," he said. "Now you girls stretch out and get some rest. I think I'll wait up for Bindigo to get back. I need to give him some money and to, ah, reach some further understandings with him." Trying to appear casual, he pulled one of the rifles from under the shelter and laid it out on the roof of the cabin.
Clarissa was surprised at how easily she settled down to rest in these new surroundings. With the side flaps down to block out the mosquitoes and the evening chill, the small shelter was quite cozy, and the gentle lapping of the water against the sides of the rolling boat made a pleasant sound. She fell asleep quickly, with the happy thought in mind that at dawn, they would be underway at last.
The billiard cue coursed neatly through the plate glass window like a- javelin, leaving the large pane of glass crashing in ruin behind it. It passed within inches of Paul Eaton, at about chest height. His head whipped around to follow the progress of the wooden projectile, and he saw it strike the flank of a carriage horse passing in the street beside him. The horse panicked at the assault, reared in its traces and raced headlong down the street, flushing pedestrians before it like frightened quail.
Eaton had not even recovered enough to continue down the sidewalk when a body came sailing out of the opening where the window had been, did a complete flip backward, and landed facedown at the captain's feet. The man raised his head slowly and seemed to study Eaton's boots intently for a moment, then with a low moan he lowered his head slowly back down to the sidewalk,
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as if deciding that this was as good a place as any to end his days. 
Eaton was not overly surprised to see the battered, grinning head of Tommie Casey thrust itself out of the hole in the window and glance down at the unconscious man. It was exactly the kind of havoc Eaton could easily imagine Casey creating. 
"It looks like he's decided to let you win this round, Tommie," Eaton said. 
"And a wise decision it was, too," Casey said, twisting his head oddly to the side to get a look with his right eye at who was -speaking to him. His left eye was puffy and blue-black, nearly swollen shut. When he recognized Eaton an even wider grin lit up his lean, handsome Irish features and he exclaimed, "Paul Eaton! You old snag-jumper! How in the world are you, my friend?" 
Casey came outside, they shook hands vigorously and Eaton said, "I'm doing better than this fellow here, I'll warrant. I see you haven't done much toward mending your ways since I last saw you." 
"Ah, Paul, it's a definite curse on my head," Casey said, chuckling even as he complained. "It seems sometimes as if the world is filled up with men bent on trying my patience to its limits and forcing me into regrettable acts of violence. Take this fellow, for instance. When he suggested a sporting wager on a game of billiards, he unhappily neglected to tell me that he made his living at the game. Dishonesty is something I just can't abide in a man. It always ends up costing him." 
A small crowd had started to gather, both inside 
and outside the building, and Eaton noted one small, flustered man in particular who seemed to be examining the shattered glass with the obvious despair of ownership. But if this was his property, Eaton thought, he should be resigned to the inevitability of incidents such as this. This was the Southern Hotel, the favorite gathering place of boatmen in St. Louis for the past thirty years. 
Casey turned to the small, middle-aged gentleman with a look of complete remorse and said, "Mr. Baxter, sir. I humbly apologize for this unfortunate scene, and I assure you that full restitution will be made by the guilty party." With that, he leaped through the window opening, rolled his opponent over on his back, and drew the man's wallet out of the breast pocket of his suit. 
"What would you say is the value of the glass?" Casey asked. "Fifty dollars? A hundred? I'll not have you lose a cent in this matter, sir." 
"With installation," the small man said hesitantly, "a hundred dollars should cover it." 
Casey, with a stage wink, counted out a hundred dollars from the man's wallet, handed it to the manager, and replaced the wallet where he had found it. 
That business concluded, Casey turned to Eaton and said, "Now, Paul, it's time for two old friends to tip a bottle in celebration of their reunion. Come, let's storm the bar inside and seize ourselves a draft." 
Eaton followed his friend inside, shaking his head and chuckling. He was the same old Casey, two-thirds blarney and bullshit, with a healthy dose of likeability thrown in for good measure. When they had their bottle of whiskey--Irish, of 
course--and had found seats at a back table with two glasses between them, Casey said, "Tell me, Paul, are you still making the milk runs down to New Orleans in that fancy floating cathouse of yours? When are you going to get enough of it and come over to the Big Muddy where all the real boatmen are working now?"
"Listen to me, you loud-mouthed, insubordinate, whiskey-swilling Irish pup," Eaton said quietly. Without feeling any malice or anger, he knew that this sort of talk was all that could put a stopper in Casey's gushing braggadocio. "Don't forget that I was the first man to show you the difference between a pisspot and a paddle wheel when you hit the river fifteen years ago. If you'll remember, I put a knot on your head the size of a lemon the first hour you were on my boat, and I could do it still, even if you have become a big-shot pilot on that Montana sewer they call the Missouri River."
"Ah, captain," Casey exclaimed with obvious enjoyment. "You haven't changed a whit, for all your declining years and the calm, uneventful life you lead in the tamer regions." They chugged back a drink together and then Casey went on in a quieter vein. "But seriously, Paul," he said. "I've been in St. Louis a week, and I've been hearing some disturbing rumors about the Natchez Belle."
"I'm afraid what you've been hearing is the truth, Tommie," Eaton told him. "They've drydocked her. She'll be stripped and reoutfitted for duty with the army engineers."
"It's truly a shame," Casey said. He seemed as sad as if they were talking of the death of a mutual friend. "Have they offered you the command of her when the cannibals get done?"
"They offered," Eaton said, "but I turned it down. It's a job for some fat-bellied rummy who doesn't want to work for a living. I'm a captain, and I'll stay one or I'll have no part of the river at all." 
They downed another drink apiece, each ruminating on the disappointing shifts of fortune on the Mississippi. At last Eaton broached a subject which was on both their minds. "You mentioned my coming to the Missouri in jest a moment ago," he said. 
"Aye, Paul, I did that," Casey said. 
"Was it only in jest, Tommie? What is the state of affairs on your waters? Are there berths to be found?" 
Casey's face lit in a wide grin for the first time since the discussion of the fate of the Natchez Belle had started. "I know of a certain vacancy," he beamed. 
He had been hesitant to broach the subject seriously without encouragement, and Eaton knew why. Eaton had been the first captain to start young Casey out on the river, and now, despite Eaton's unfortunate situation, Casey felt it would be presumptuous and insulting of him to seriously suggest that Eaton could not find a captaincy to his liking without any help. 
But times had changed, no longer permitting a man such unyielding quirks of pride--not if he wanted to work--and Eaton was not above accepting such help from a friend. 
"Tell me about it, Tommie," he said. 
It was all the cue Casey needed. "I pilot for a small line now," he said, "the Missouri Northwest. We had three boats on the water last sea
son, but one sits now in twenty feet of water off the first bad reef above Liberty. The plans were to start the other two, the Dakota Star and Rich- lands Folly, out this week, but we've run afoul of a problem. Old Lem Gables, the captain of the Folly, landed himself in jail last week for bigamy. It seems his wife here in St. Louis found out that two years ago when Lem wintered in the Dakota Country, he took himself a Sioux woman up there to warm his cold winter nights. And fool that he is, he not only bedded the squaw, but wedded her too, all legal and proper before the post chaplain. So now we've got six hundred tons of army munitions and trade goods loaded, and no captain to take the Folly upriver." 
"Is she the boat you pilot?" 
"I steer the Star under Mr. Peter Mumple," Casey said. "But the two boats will travel together as much as possible. It's proved safer." 
"How so?" 
"The list is long," Casey said. "Put yourself in mind of the way it must have been thirty and forty years ago on the Mississippi. Then add swifter water, shallower channels, red Indians, and bands of renegades and cutthroats waiting at every slow bend. Then you'll get a pretty good idea." 
"It sounds like a life that was cut and fit especially for you, Casey," Paul chuckled. 
"Aye, it is that," Casey said. "I love it more than life itself, but now there's treachery afoot, too, and I've never had any fondness for that kind of goings-on." 
"What kind of treachery?" 
"It's close to an all-out river war, Paul. The boat I mentioned that's on the bottom, it went 
down at night when its bow rammed headlong into a shifting reef above Liberty. Forty-one were lost in that wreck, and it was no act of God or pilot error that put the Maria Seneca underwater. I had passed that same spot earlier the same night, and I marked the channel with a company buoy which the Seneca was to pick up on her way through. But when I went back to the wreck, my buoy had been moved. Only one boat passed that spot between the Star and the Seneca." 
"Another boat moved a buoy?" Eaton exclaimed. "It's a hard thing to believe, Tommie." 
"Not if you know the boat, the Maggie Dell, and her hard-nosed cutthroat of a captain, Charlie Fink," Casey told him bitterly. "I'll speak plainly now, Paul. We need a man of your kind badly on the Folly, but I'd be no friend if I told you it was going to be an easy trip. Fink and the line he works for have vowed to drown every boat in our fleet because we're threatening the monopoly they hold upriver. When we start out a few days from now, we're likely to be involved not only in a race to the territories, but in an out-and-out shooting war the whole length of the Missouri." 
"You paint such an attractive picture," Eaton grinned. "I don't see how I could turn down the job." 
"Many a wise man would," Casey conceded. 
"Maybe I've grown too wise and too comfortable on my milk runs, as you call them," Eaton said. "Losing the Belle could be one of the best things that ever happened to me. Maybe there's something better waiting for me here on your Big Muddy river." Thoughts of Georgia St. Clair which had been hovering in the recesses of his mind 
came suddenly forward. He realized that the challenges of new waters and new hazards were not the only reason for his sudden excitement about moving from the Mississippi to the Missouri. Accepting this command would at least head him in the same direction Georgia had gone. 
"So you'll take the Folly, then?" 
"If your owner will have me." They downed another drink to seal the bargain. 
Then Casey said, "And now we just need one more man to round out the crew of your new command. We need to find ourselves a pilot who would walk through the gates of hell and spit in old Lucifer's eye before he'd let another boat best him on the river." 
Eaton smiled, shot down another burning slug of the whiskey and said, "Tommie, my friend, I know of such a pilot." 
After leaving the Southern Hotel, Eaton and Casey had first gone to the boarding house where Nehemiah Bedford kept a modest room for layovers in the city, and presented their proposition to him. Bedford heard them out without comment, then laid his pipe and Bible aside and donned his hat and coat to go along with them to meet the owner of the Missouri Northwest Line. 
The small office, located in a decaying building in a run-down section of St. Louis, showed all the signs of being the working place of a man who cared more for function than he did for appearance. The desk and shelves were stacked with an orderless array of maps, charts, books, government regulations, letters and assorted clutter. The furniture in the room, from the worn desk to the split
ting leather couches and menacing wooden chairs, all had a second-hand look about them.
It was obviously not the headquarters of one of the major shipping barons of the Missouri River.
But none of that mattered much to Paul Eaton, because he had taken an immediate liking to the man who sat behind the desk.
Jacob Fairwell had the look of an oldtime river man about him. His gaze was direct and penetrating, as if he needed no more than a glance to measure the worth of any man he met, and he seemed to approve of Eaton and Bedford from the first handshake. He knew competent captains and pilots when he saw them, and there was never any talk of whether or not he would hire them. He got right down to the specifics of what his boats would encounter in the weeks ahead.
"There's no need to tell you men," Fairwell said, "that we're in a profession that is seeing its last great days right now. These damn infernal railroads are spreading west like the plague, and every time they reach another point farther along the Missouri River, it means another chunk of water cut off from the trade of people like us. In another twenty years, they'll be able to lock our kind up in museums, like George Washington's wig."
Eaton and Bedford both nodded their silent agreement. It was not the first time either of them had heard these prophecies, and they well knew that such a day was coming.
"But there's still trade on the northern waters," Fairwell went on, "if we can get our hands on a piece of it. The army campaigns against the Sioux and the other tribes in the high plains have brought
a new surge of business for the steamboats, and I mean to be right in there fighting for a share until the last rails cut off the last fort at the headwaters and the railroad bridges have the river so chopped up that a man can't go five miles in a rowboat without having to duck his head half a dozen times." 
The company owner paused to take a gulp from the cup of coffee on his desk, as if to douse the seething hatred for the railroads which burned inside him. 
"But there's those up there who think we shouldn't get a share," Fairwell said bitterly. "In particular, I mean Mr. Benton Powell and his Sioux City Line. They're the biggest thing on the river now, and they've been working for the last five years to get a corner on all the remaining trade. They might do it this season unless we can get our boats up to Fort Benton to stop them. 
"This spring I brought all three of my boats down to St. Charles for new outfitting and cargo, and Powell sent two of his down for the same reasons. Now the count's even, two and two, as Casey has probably already told you. 
"General Phil Sheridan is running the army's show upriver now, and he's put the word out that he wants tough, dependable boats and crews to keep the supply lines open to his forts and troops. He doesn't care what line they run for. This run upriver will be our test. If our boats get through to Fort Benton first, we get a big piece of the pie, probably all we can handle for the next two or three years. If not, the Sioux City Line takes it all, and I might as well bring my two boats back 
down here and start running Sunday tours off the Independence levee." 
"It reminds me of the old days," Eaton said quietly. "Back during the war." 
"You're right," Fairwell said. "If you ran the Mississippi during the war, you already have a taste of what you can expect up there. Charlie Fink is the captain of the lead Sioux City boat, the Maggie Dell, and he is a man with the conscience of a diamondback rattler." 
"I keep hearing about this man Fink," Eaton said. "Who is he? Where did he come from?" 
"Legend has it he's the bastard son of Mike Fink by an outcast Osage squaw in a Fort Leavenworth whorehouse. Back in the fur-trapping and keelboat days, his daddy was practically a legend on the Missouri, and eventually he crowned himself with the title of King of the River. Charlie grew up knowing every whiskey den and whorehouse on the lower river, watching his daddy and his friends get drunk and shoot coins off each other's head. They say he was there the day Mike blew his best friend Bob McBride's brains out in a shooting contest, and that he laughed as hard as anybody at the mistake. Charlie must have been all of ten years old then. Since he's grown up, he's been involved in every underhanded deal he could get in the middle of, and three years ago Benton Powell hired him to help encourage his competitors to give up and leave the upper river trade to the Sioux City Line. 
"And now, just to hedge their bet against us, they've hired another scoundrel named Ben Hawkins to help Fink out on this trip. Hawkins is a 
former gambler, Indian scout and bandit, and one of the most ruthless killers ever to set foot on a steamboat." 
"Aye, sir," Casey said. "But we've got Luther Kelly in our camp, and I'd risk my money on him against any two weasels like Hawkins." 
"Yellowstone Kelly's a good man,".Fairwell admitted. "I just hope he's good enough. There won't be any trick too low or too bloody for Fink and Hawkins to pull. We know that from the Maria Seneca wreck. That's why I've accepted you, Mr. Bedford, even though you don't know the river you'll be piloting. Fink has already tried some shenannigans that could have meant more disaster. Last week I hired a Missouri pilot for the Folly, and two days later Casey spotted him tipping a glass with Fink in a riverfront tavern." 
"Yes, but he won't be making the run for anybody this season," Casey chuckled. "Not unless he can turn the wheel with his elbows. He met with a disaster of his own just a short time later when we discussed his treachery in an alley near there." 
"It's not customary for a pilot to go out on new waters and take the wheel on his first run," Bedford said, "but I think the task can be handled if your other pilot is worth his salt." 
"He's the best on the river," Fairwell said. "George Kimball has been with me five years and he knows the Missouri like a mama knows her baby's bottom." 
"He's a top notch pilot," Casey confirmed, grinning, "though some might argue about his being the best." 
"Under the circumstances," Farewell said, "you can take more of the daylight watches, Mr. Bedford, and George can brief you on the worst stretches ahead."
"Yes," Casey added, "and old George has kept a detailed log of the river from end to end. Usually he guards it like his own daughter's sweet virginity, but he might be persuaded to let you borrow it on occasion."
"Well then, gentlemen," Eaton said at last, "it looks like we've got ourselves a contract."
"If you and Mr. Bedford accept the command," Fairwell agreed, "then the bargain's struck. And may God go with you all."
"We'll need His help, all right," Casey said. "We know for sure the devil's booked passage with old Charlie Fink."
The small keelboat made slow progress. During the first week, they averaged no more than twenty or thirty miles a day, and each time one of the large, churning steamboats passed them by, Georgia could see her father glance up from his labors and watch it forlornly. 
For the two women, the trip was leisurely. The days were filled with idle hours to gaze at the sights of the river which floated by them in a constant panorama. This section of the Missouri flowed through alternating sections of towering limestone bluffs and broad, picturesque valleys. It was mainly an agricultural region. The westward migrating farmers had chopped the fertile valleys into lush checkerboards of crop and pastureland, all of which were decked with varying shades of spring greenery. 
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To Georgia, it seemed that the people who lived in this region must have the most peaceful life imaginable. She loved the sight of their small neat cottages, the big substantial barns, the docile grazing livestock and the rich green cropland. She knew it had not all begun that way; that years of toil had gone into the making of these farms, but at least when these people worked hard, it was on their own land, building their own futures. They had roots. They had a home place where they could stop and live out their days. 
But her enjoyment of the Missouri countryside was tempered by the constant presence of her father, toiling with the rest of the crew, propelling the boat forward with the thrusts of their long poles or laboring along the bank like oxen, harnessed to the long ropes used to tow the boat forward against the current. 
The back-breaking work was taking its toll on William St. Clair, as was the realization that at this pace, most of the summer would be used up just reaching Montana. Once they arrived, they would have time for little more than arranging shelter before the brutal winter arrived. 
Before they had progressed even two hundred miles along the twisting waterway, Georgia and Clarissa had already started discussing the possibility that perhaps they should stop at some city along the way--Independence, perhaps, or Nebraska City or Omaha--and work for a while until they could afford to go by .some speedier and less strenuous form of transportation. But St. Clair would have no part of such suggestions. He could not tolerate the idea of any delays, insisting that even 
at the keelboat's slow pace, it was better than sitting in one place and not making any progress at all.
So they moved on, coursing up the river at their snail's pace during the daylight hours, and tying up to the bank at night to eat and rest. They cooked most of their meals on land, eating fish and the occasional game that the captain could spot and kill along the bank. But St. Clair insisted that he and the two women do their sleeping under their small canvas shelter on the deck of the boat. He was suspicious that if they pitched their tent and slept on the bank at night, they might wake up some morning and find the boat and the rest of their belongings gone, stolen by the untrustworthy Simon Bindigo.
An uneasy truce existed between the two women and the crew of the boat, including its drunken, leering rogue of a captain. Almost every night the crew had roisterous drinking bouts around the roaring campfires they built, and on the third night out, while William was away in the woods for a few minutes, Georgia had put a deep, four-inch-long gash along the forearm of one of the men, who had staggered back aboard the boat seeking to force his attentions on her and Clarissa. Since that incident there had been no more attempts, but the thought was obviously still in the minds of the men. It goaded them to have two young women aboard the boat but to be unable to take advantage of the situation.
Georgia had made one friend among the crew, a husky youth whom the rest of the men referred to merely as Plowboy. He was different from the rest, almost a misfit in this bunch. Occasionally,
when the rest of the men were gathering around the campfire, passing their jugs and swapping lies about the women they had known and the deeds they had done, Plowboy would come onto the boat and pass the evening hours talking quietly with St. Clair and the two women. 
He was a farmboy from the central part of Missouri, but as he put it, his family of twelve had "farmed more rocks than anything else." He had left home two years earlier, at fifteen, to take up a new life on the river, and had been working various laborer jobs such as this one ever since. Though he had not yet divulged his plans to Bindigo, he privately told his new friends that when the boat reached its northernmost point on the river, he was going to leave this job and see what new opportunities he could find there. 
Both Georgia and Clarissa developed a quick liking for the big strapping youth with his hulking shoulders, his simple dreams, and his gentle, plodding ways. There seemed to be no malice in his make-up, and they soon began to feel as comfortable around him as they did with St. Clair. It helped to add one more ally to the group of people who could be trusted on the boat. 
None of the three passengers considered listing Simon Bindigo among the trustworthy. Clarissa in particular found that his leering stares and chuckling innuendoes carried poorly hidden messages which made her shudder. Though the boat owner was considerably older, in size and manner he reminded her strikingly of the big, clumsy drunk who had come so close to raping her in St. Charles. She responded with chilly meekness to his clumsy attempts at conversation, and she avoided him 
whenever she could, though that was often difficult on the small craft. The women had learned that whenever they wanted privacy in their leanto, they had to hang a blanket over the front of the cabin. Bindigo, the only man on board who usually slept in there, had used his knife to pare a notch between the planks so he could peer through the cabin wall at them. 
On their ninth day on the river, Bindigo announced that they would make a half-day stop in Glasgow. He had cargo to unload there and he needed to buy provisions. Clarissa decided that it might be a good time to round out her wilderness wardrobe. Carrying one of her dresses and her cape for barter, she and Georgia went into town and finally succeeded in trading them for a heavy secondhand coat and a pair of boy's work boots which fit her fairly well. 
It had been a humiliating experience for Clarissa. The shopkeeper in the small general store they visited, sizing up their rag-tag appearance with one quick glance, had refused to believe the dress and cape belonged to Clarissa, and eventually he had accused them of stealing the garments and threatened to call in the local constable. Finally Georgia worked things out by explaining that they had found the clothes in a suitcase along the side of the road near St. Charles. Her explanation seemed to satisfy the man, and at last the bargain was made. 
As they started back down the street toward the boat, Clarissa, now wearing the heavy boots and carrying the coat, was still furious about the shopkeeper's suggestions. And yet she knew it was easy to understand how he might find it hard to believe 
that a person who looked like her, was dressed like her and even smelled like her could own a fine, pretty dress like that. 
But it was a problem, she thought wryly, that she might not have to worry about much longer. She only had two dresses left of the many she had brought with her from London, and it was likely that those too would soon have to be offered up as trade goods for necessities. Things just seemed to be getting worse and worse, with the glimmer of that Montana gold never growing any brighter. 
As they passed one of the last buildings on the main street of Glasgow, Clarissa glanced at her reflection in the front glass, and then stopped for a closer look. It took her a moment to recognize the woman she saw there. The past several days had worked tremendous changes in her, none of which pleased her at all. Her body and the clothes she wore were filthy. Her hair, once so carefully washed, brushed and arranged, now hung in ropy disarray. Though they were around water all the time, the presence of the crew made it practically impossible to take a bath in the river. 
Watching her cousin and noting the dismay that registered on her face, Georgia said, "I know, Clarissa. We're both a mess." 
"It's disgraceful," Clarissa mourned. "I feel like a street urchin. Tell me, do you ever get used to being dirty and smelly all the time?" 
"I'll tell you what we'll do," Georgia promised. "The next time we stop for the night at a good place on the river, we'll take a rifle and then walk out of sight of the boat. Then we'll take turns taking a bath and washing our clothes, one on guard and one in the water. If that old walrus 
Bindigo or any of his men try to slip around and get a peek, we'll sling a shot or two at them. How's that?" 
"We must do something," Clarissa exclaimed. "I just can't tolerate myself in this condition, wilderness or not" 
They had tied up for the night at the edge of a broad, flat sand bar beneath a towering cliff of layered red and yellow sandstone. The afternoon had been a particularly difficult one, as the craft passed upstream against several miles of swift currents and narrow channels. The crew, including William, had labored away mightily, poling the boat when they could, but more often scrambling along the brushy bank, leaning forward against the constant drag of the long tow rope. 
When they reached the head of the stretch of swift water it was not yet sunset, but Bindigo decided to stop, knowing his crew was used up for the day and needed rest before pushing on. The minute the boat tied up, St. Clair made his way to the lean-to on the bow and collapsed in exhaustion. Georgia and Clarissa watched him silently, feeling helpless and frustrated as he numbly pulled off his soggy boots and passed out on his bedroll. 
They had talked between themselves about what this work was doing to William, and Georgia was convinced that an end would have to be put to it soon, no matter what the consequences. At this rate, she knew her father would be more dead than alive by the time they reached the upper end of the river. 
In camp that night the crew roasted a quarter of a deer Bindigo had killed the day before. Once 
William was asleep, the two women ventured ashore among the men to get a portion of the roasted meat, but they stayed close to Plowboy all the while and returned to the boat as quickly as possible to eat their meal. They heard a few disturbing rumblings among the men as they waded back to the boat and mounted its deck. Bindigo and his men were beginning to resent the fact that Clarissa and Georgia remained aloof and apart from them. The women could sense that each day the hostility toward them was growing worse. Only Plowboy remained friendly. 
Darkness was approaching by the time the two women finished eating. Georgia put some of the venison aside, saving it for William in case he woke later and decided to eat. And all the while, both she and Clarissa kept a cautious eye on the cluster of men sitting around the bonfire fifty yards away. As usual, as soon as the men finished their evening meal, the whiskey jugs appeared and started making the rounds from man to man. 
By full darkness, an uneasy feeling was beginning to creep over the two women. They did not talk about it, but both felt it. There was a strangeness in the air, a foreboding of some kind that was hard to identify. In the moonless blackness of the night, the figures and shadows of the eight men around the fire began to take on an almost supernatural quality, like the larger-than-life ghosts of some long-forgotten, primitive tribe returning tonight to go through a slow, swaggering ritual to an ancient intoxicating god. 
An hour or more passed, and the women saw a figure part from the group and start toward the boat. As the man approached, they realized it was 
Plowboy. He seldom drank as much as the others, and it was not unusual for him to return to the boat to go to sleep earlier than the rest of the men. The morning would find the remainder of the crew scattered out in various places on the boat and around the camp, sprawling where they had passed out from drink and exhaustion. Often even Bindigo himself did not make it back to his bed in the cabin before unconsciousness overtook him.
At last Georgia and Clarissa ended their unspoken vigil, spreading their bed rolls and deciding to go to sleep. Their feelings of uneasiness persisted, even though there had been no outward signs of trouble, and before lying down, Georgia checked the loads in both rifles and laid them within easy reach of herself and Clarissa.
Clarissa lay awake a long time, almost fighting against sleep, but at last, as she heard Georgia's breathing settle into a slow, regular patter, she too began to relax. The night was no different than any other they had spent on this boat, she told herself. Everything was alright.
Clarissa awoke in terror as a knee descended on her stomach and a hand clamped over her mouth, bruising her cheeks with a viselike grip. She tried to scream, but the sound was muffled in the greasy palm of her captor. As she. scrambled and twisted to reach for the rifle which had been beside her, the knee bore down harder on her, forcing the air out of her body, and a second hand gathered both her wrists and held them tightly together.
The canvas roof had been torn free of its anchorage and lay over them now like a shroud. There was activity all around her, wrestling, cursing, and the coarse, crude laughter of men. The boat was rocking and swaying like a cradle in a flood, but nobody seemed to notice.
From somewhere toward the rear of the boat, the gravelly voice of Bindigo cut through the night. "Don't forget, boys! The little blond heifer
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is mine. You can do what you want with the redheaded hussy, but mind that Arkansas toothpick she carries." 
"Somebody get this damn canvas off us," the man who held Clarissa barked out. Clarissa recognized the voice as that of a crewman the others called Taters. "I can't see shit under here. I ain't even sure which one I got." 
As the canvas was peeled back, Clarissa got a clearer picture of the chaotic scene around her. At the very front of the boat, two men were holding the arms of the struggling William St. Clair, and a third moved in quickly, smashing his fists into St. Clair's face several times and quickly dispatching him into unconsciousness, Nearby, another man held Georgia. She was scratching and fighting like a wildcat, but her efforts were ineffective because her captor stood behind her with his forearm looped tightly around her throat, stretching her head backward. 
Directly above where Clarissa lay pinned on the deck, Bindigo stood on the edge of the cabin roof, laughing uproariously like a pirate chieftain. In a moment he pointed down at Clarissa and ordered, "Pass that little yellow-haired whore up to me. I'll learn her quick enough about being' so high-toned and uppity around us simple workin' men." Hands took hold of Clarissa, and as she struggled vainly, she was passed up into the waiting grasp of Bindigo. 
From the rear of the boat, Plowboy appeared suddenly. He grabbed Bindigo's arm, trying to loosen his hold on Clarissa, and shouted, "No, captain! You can't do this to them!" 
"Shut up, kid," Bindigo growled. "Go on back there an' make 'em let you have a turn at the other one." 
"I won't let you do this," Plowboy insisted, jerking violently on Bindigo's arm and almost freeing Clarissa. 
"You damn pup!" Bindigo shouted. He backhanded the young man across the face with a crack that split the night like a pistol shot. Plowboy sailed off the rocking boat and into the water. Clarissa glimpsed his head passing beneath the water as she was dragged again toward the entrance of the cabin. 
Georgia fought with all her strength, kicking and scratching and clawing like a madwoman against the overwhelming odds of the six crewmen. She was vaguely aware that her father had been beaten senseless and would not be able to help her. She was on her own, and although she knew the odds were hopeless, she was determined to fight to the very end, to make this the most hard-won rape any of these horrible men had ever been part of. She thrashed and howled and cursed and kicked, even amid the hail of slaps and punches the men were raining down on her, even as her clothes were torn away and her body slammed to the deck. 
The first overanxious man who dropped his pants and started toward her positioned himself perfectly for an agonizing kick between his legs. He doubled up and staggered away, eventually falling off the edge of the deck in his blind anguish. The others ignored his plight as they continued their frantic efforts to subdue her. 
186 Lee Claws Willoughby 
Despite her wild struggles, the men were getting the better of her. But during the activity another part of Georgia's mind realized that a strange thing was happening. The sky was beginning to turn above her face, and the looming cliffs to the left were beginning gently to slide away. 
Then with a man holding each of her arms and legs, Georgia stopped bucking and tossing at last, realizing that she was only adding to the enjoyment of the man on top of her. 
Clarissa fought valiantly against Bindigo as he struggled to force her through the doorway of the cabin. She braced her arms and legs against the doorsill, and no amount of grunting exertion by Bindigo could force her forward. 
At last he grabbed her by the hair, yanked her head back painfully and twisted her around toward him. He cuffed her twice, once backhanded, and then again with a bone-jarring, open-palmed slap across the other side of her face. Grabbing her right arm tightly, he twisted until she had turned again and was bent over forward. Then he shoved her through the doorway. 
As they wrestled toward his cot in the darkness, Bindigo grabbed the front of her shirt with one hand and tore is open. With her free hand she clawed out at his face, missing his eyes but leaving a long row of bloody stripes down the side of his cheek. 
Bindigo struck her then with his fist, clipping her jaw with a blow that sent her head swirling away toward blackness. As Clarissa's body went limp and sagged backward onto the cot, her mind fought to retain consciousness, struggling against 
the overwhelming nothingness which she knew would spell her ruin.
She was vaguely aware of her clothes being yanked clumsily open, of the hulking form of Bindigo looming above her in the darkness, panting and cursing as he struggled to get out of his clothes. But she no longer had the power to order her body to rebel. She felt as if her limbs had been drained of all their strength, all their ability to resist and fight back gone. His hot, sweaty body hovered over her for an instant, then began to descend.
A voice penetrated the nightmare. It sounded distant, like a cry deep within a tunnel, but the words were distinct. "Captain! We're adrift!"
Clarissa's mind took hold of the words, trying to focus on them and examine them, trying to comprehend why they had given her sudden relief from the hairy burden which had been on top of her.
As her mind floated on the frontiers of reality, she knew, suddenly, that she was alone, that she was safe from whatever horrible thing had been about to happen. She did not worry about the chorus of panicky shouts that were going on above her. They were too far away. They had nothing to do with her.
The keelboat was adrift. The fury of the fight on its decks had finally uprooted the stake driven into the bank as an anchorage, and now the boat was suddenly and inescapably caught in the same swift currents which the crew had fought so hard that afternoon to overcome. That fact brought Georgia's instant release as it registered in the
minds of her attackers and they sprang to try to do something, anything, to save the boat and their own lives. 
The boat spiraled wildly into the midst of the dreaded white water in the middle of the river, at one moment turning crossways of the current and threatening to capsize, only to spin again and shoot backward down the river with ever increasing speed. 
Georgia did not try to get up, but she did turn sideways and reach out for something to hold onto, finally grasping at a piece of rope which seemed to be anchored firmly on its other end. She saw one man fall overboard and slip beneath the surface of the river as the deck of the boat lurched from beneath his stumbling feet. 
The remnants of the crew were scrambling all over the surface of the boat, some struggling merely to hold on while others wrestled with their long poles, trying to find a purchase and somehow stop the careening flight of the craft. Above their shouts a new sound began to emerge from the night--the distant, steady drumbeat of a steamboat engine. 
Naked and stiff, feeling as if every inch of her body had been pounded with a mallet, Georgia began to scramble around on the deck to find her father. Her mind flashed for a second to Clarissa, but she remembered glimpsing her cousin being hauled atop the cabin and she knew it was beyond her ability to help her. The best she could do was locate her father and try to do something for him. 
The pounding noise of the approaching steamboat seemed to grow louder with each passing second, and suddenly the deep bass roar of its 
steam whistle pierced the night. Georgia fumbled beneath the tangled canvas of their former shelter and touched his arm. She grabbed it and pulled with all her might, panting and crying in her struggle to free her father from the snarl of canvas, ropes and gear. By the time she had him in the clear, the steamboat was so close that she could hear the shouted warnings from the deck hands aboard it.
With a violent shove, she rolled her father's limp body overboard and then quickly threw herself into the water after him. The frigid water hit her bare flesh like a slap, but she scrambled to loop an arm under her father's chin and began to swim frantically away from the keelboat.
She had gone no more than ten feet toward the bank when the steamboat suddenly loomed out of the darkness. The smaller craft slid smoothly into the path of the massive paddle wheel, and with a sudden din of splintering wood and screaming men, the wide paddle blades began their grinding march down the length of the keelboat. Only wreckage, refuse, and one small portion of battered cabin emerged from its rear.
Nearing exhaustion, but clear now from the looming danger, Georgia rested for a moment and let the current carry her and her father along. Upriver the steamboat churned on, never pausing, never swerving from its chosen course until it had passed from sight and the sound of its engines had faded in the distance.
Georgia and William finally escaped the threatening currents more than a mile downstream from the site of the accident. William recovered a little in the water, but by the time they finally found a footing and struggled to the bank, he was half- drowned and scarcely able to stand without his daughter's help. When they reached dry land, he fell to the earth in a coughing, gagging convulsion which quickly turned to vomiting, but when it subsided, he seemed to feel better. Georgia did her best to help him, though her naked body was trembling uncontrollably. The long exposure to the icy river waters had chilled her to the core, but she was more concerned at the moment with her father than she was with herself. 
William, lying on his side and laboring over each breath, opened his eyes at last and asked, "What 
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happened? I remember all the men around us ... and then somebody hitting me ..."
"They jumped us, papa," Georgia told him. "They wanted me and Clarissa, but then the boat pulled loose and floated down in front of a steamboat."
"Where's your clothes, girl?" St. Clair exclaimed suddenly. "What have they done to you?"
"Gone, papa," Georgia said, submitting to tears at last. "Everything's gone. The boat, the men, Clarissa. They're all gone."
"Clarissa's gone?"
"They took her away, up to the front of the boat, and then ... I don't know. When the steamboat was right on top of us, I pushed you in the water and started swimming. They're all dead, I guess. Clarissa's dead. There wasn't anything left of the boat after it went under that paddle wheel." She lay beside her father, clinging tightly to him for warmth and comfort.
"Help me get my shirt off," St. Clair said. "You need something to cover your nakedness, girl."
"You're cold, papa," Georgia protested. "You need your shirt."
"You need it worse," St. Clair insisted. He unbuttoned the shirt and took it off, and Georgia accepted it without argument, grateful for the scant warmth it provided.
"If we go back upriver," Georgia said, "we can find the fire they built. The coals should still be alive, and there might even be a little bit of food lying around somewhere. Do you think you can walk?"
"I'll be alright," he assured her, struggling to his feet.
They started upriver, walking along the broad sand bars at times and other times having to fight their way through the tangles of brush along the bank. As they were crossing a wide bar in a tight bend in the river, they spotted a dark shape on the light sand a few feet ahead of them.
At first they thought it might be a piece of wreckage from the keelboat, but when they were within about ten feet of it, St. Clair stopped his daughter with a hand on her arm. He said, "Wait, girl. Let me have a look first."
Georgia paused while her father went on up to the form on the sand ahead. In a moment, he said, "It's a body, but it's not Clarissa. It's hard to tell who it might have been. It hasn't got a ... there's no head here."
Georgia moved on up beside her father and took a look. The body was battered and twisted, headless and missing most of one arm, but she could tell by the bulk of it that it was too large to be the remains of her missing cousin. She stared at the corpse a moment in horrified fascination, and then muttered quietly, "We have to take his clothes, papa. We need them."
St. Clair drew a long breath and said, "Okay. I'll do it."
"No. It s alright. I'll help."
They wrestled the body up clear of the water and then began the gruesome task of undressing it. Georgia tried to blot from her mind the horror of the scene, thinking only of the practical side of the situation. Half an hour before, this man had probably been one of those who were raping her. Now, in death, at least he was doing her some good.
When they had the clothes off, St. Clair took them down to the water and scrubbed them vigorously with sand, then turned them inside out and repeated the process before finally turning them over to his daughter. He seemed more horrified than she at the thought of her wearing them. 
As he stood. with his back turned while his daughter dressed, St. Clair said, "If I thought any of those pigs were still alive, I'd spend the rest of my life hunting them down." 
"They were all on the deck trying to stop the boat when it ran in front of the steamboat," Georgia said. "I don't see how anyone could have lived through that." 
"Not even Clarissa," William added morosely. "I feel almost like I killed her with my own hands." 
"The only thing you did, papa, was the very best you could for us," Georgia insisted. "It's over now. She's gone, and there's nothing we can do about it. But we can go on. We still have Montana."
It was a longer walk than they had expected back to where the boat had been tied, but they finally reached it at about dawn. As they emerged from the brush and started down the bank toward the wide sand bar, they spotted what seemed to be another body washed up onto the edge of it. Without being told, Georgia paused while her father went ahead to take a look. 
After a minute he turned and came back to her. "It's that nice kid, Plowboy," he told her quietly. "Looks like he must have drowned." 
"Poor Plowboy," Georgia said, beginning to cry softly. "He wasn't one of them, Papa. He didn't do anything. It's not fair for him to be dead, too." 
With his arm around his daughter's shoulder, St. Clair said, "You go over and see about the fire. I'll get him up out of the water, and later on I'll see about burying him." 
Georgia turned away and started up the sand bar toward where the fire had been. As she got closer, she was surprised to see smoke still rising from the fire which the crew had built hours earlier. It should have burned itself out by this time. But what was even more startling was the dark form that lay curled up on the far side of it. Someone had come along and built the fire back up after the boat had gone. 
Then she remembered the man she had kicked overboard during the fight. In all that had happened since, she had completely forgotten about him, but now the memory of him, looming over her with his pants down around his knees, came back to her clearly. Disgust and a cold hatred rose in her as she stared across the sand at the still form. 
She just stood where she was, still at least fifty feet from the fire, until her father finished his task and came up to her. "What's the matter?" he asked. 
She pointed to the man and then quietly told St. Clair about the crewman she had kicked overboard. His features grew sharp with fury as he stared over toward the fire, listening to her words. 
When she was finished, he looked down at her. She could see the tears brimming in his eyes, but his jaw was set and his face was flushed crimson. She knew the look. He was holding a torrential rage within himself at that instant. His gaze wandered past her toward the thick brush and trees on the bank beyond at the base of the cliffs. 
"Georgia," he said, his voice husky and low. 
"You go over there and wait, and don't look back down here. I don't want you to see this."
She started to argue, but did not. She knew he had to do it. There was no law which could deal adequately with that man over there for what he had done, not in her father's mind at least. He would have to pay now for the collective crimes of his dead comrades. It was the harsh code of the frontier that they had lived with for all these years; for both of them, justice did not always need a court and jury.
Georgia turned and went over into the trees, and when she returned a few minutes later, her father was feeding sticks into the dying fire. The crewman from the keelboat was gone, but two long furrows in the sand leading toward the water told the story of his fate.
The small chunk of mangled cabin felt like a dark, wet tomb. Clarissa could scarcely believe the suddenness with which the keelboat had been violently ripped apart. It was as if the hand of an angry god had reached down and crushed the small craft in punishment for the evil which was taking place above and below its decks.
She vaguely remembered lying on the cot, Bindigo's battered victim, and then in the next instant the terrifying grinding destruction had begun. After that came the sudden plunge below the surface of the water. She had been tossed and pummeled around the small enclosure like a piece of flotsam, choking on the sudden rush of water which surrounded her.
And then the precious air returned. She had gulped in great mouthfuls of the wonderful stuff
as she scrambled to keep from sliding out the gaping end of the cabin and back into the water. Now she lay within the sloping shell, clinging tenuously to the frame of the doorway, still too battered and stunned to move. Everything had happened so fast that she could scarcely comprehend it all. 
Slowly her mind began to recall the details of the past few minutes and to piece them together. The crew had attacked them. That memory emerged quite vividly. William and Georgia had been kept on top while she was dragged inside by Bindigo. She remembered fighting him, scratching his face with her fingernails, and she remembered him hitting her hard across the face. After that the memories got fuzzier, more muddled and mixed up. 
Bindigo had left her alone because . . . because somebody outside had shouted at him that . . . that the boat was adrift. Next came the wreck. With the boat floating freely down the swiftly flowing river, she reasoned it must have either struck some rocks or snags in the water, or run into another boat. 
Now she was cold. She was thoroughly soaked and she realized that her clothes were only half on her body. She shifted around until her foot found a board to brace against, and then she risked removing one hand from its grip on the door jamb. With that free hand, she drew her trousers back up to her waist and fastened one button in front to hold them together. Then she pulled the torn sides of the shirt across her breasts and held them there. That felt a little better, though it did little 
to relieve the clammy chill which enveloped her. 
She had to do something, but she had no idea what. Swim to the bank? She had never been a good swimmer, and she was not sure she had the strength left to fight the river's currents. Get a better foothold and stay where she was? That idea did not seem too sensible either. Nobody would see her to save her, and she was terrified that the piece of cabin might begin to roll, or that it would strike some obstacle in the water and jar her out the open end below. 
Finally she decided that if she could manage it, she would climb up through the doorway and have a look around. Up there at least she could see any danger that was coming her way and be in the clear to leap into the water if necessary. The piece of wreckage rocked and swayed precariously as she groped her way up through the doorway, but she finally succeeded in getting through the opening and onto the top. 
Darkness and silence enveloped the river all around her. She realized that she must have plummeted all the way back down the rapid stretch of water they had toiled up the day before, because now she was floating on a calmer stretch of water. The river was broader here, too. The distant banks on each side seemed miles away, and she gave up all thought of trying to swim to safety. Her strength would never hold out to go that far. Georgia might be able to make it, but she was in a lot better shape than Clarissa had ever been in. 
Georgia! William! Where were they now? Were they even still alive? The last time she had seen them they had still been on the deck of the keel
boat. But then she had been dragged away, and after that . . . There was no possible way of even guessing what had happened to them after that. 
Despite where she was, despite the cold and the dozens of aches and discomforts all over her body, despite the threatening roll and pitch of her improvised raft, Clarissa began to feel a most demanding exhaustion taking her over. Curling up in the trough formed by a piece of the cabin wall and an undestroyed portion of the deck, she submitted to the heaviness of her eyelids and fell asleep. 
Even on the first day out, Paul Eaton began to take the wheel of the Richland's Folly along some of the deeper, straighter portions of the river just to get the feel of the boat he was now captain of and the river which was his new home. It was strictly against the law, but the pilot on duty was inclined to be agreeable and to bend the rules this one time. Nehemiah Bedford owed a lot to his friend, Paul Eaton, and he was not a man to take such debts lightly.
The Folly had been a godsend for both men. Steamboating on the Mississippi was about ready to take its place in the history books, and on the rare occasions when a captain's or pilot's job did open up, there was always a crowd of desperate diehards left over from the old days who were ready to beg, cheat, fight or kill for the chance to get back on the river again.
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But on the Missouri it was a different story. The steamboat trade was still alive and in reasonably good health here, and everything was fresh and different about it. Great sections of the upper river were still wild and untamed, shallower and more treacherous than the Mississippi had been for nearly two decades. If the army engineers had not completely succeeded in taming the great Mississippi, they had pulled quite a few of her sharpest teeth. Many of her most dangerous and exciting channels had been stabilized and deepened, and there was even talk of placing marker lights at all the bad spots along her entire length. It was all for safety's sake, of course, which was good, but such measures also somehow seemed to drain away the pride and expertise it took to be a good river man. 
Not so on the Missouri. It still took men of skill, courage and keen-eyed judgment to get the boats through on her. There was still a challenge there for a man who wanted to pass his days doing something more exciting than leaning back with his feet propped up on a rail. 
Two months earlier, before he had learned of the fate of the Natchez Belle, Eaton would have gladly fought any man who held forth that the Missouri River was in any way superior to the Mississippi. That was not so now. These broad, muddy, churning waters were his new home, and he felt as happy here as he ever had in the best days of the past. 
Far out ahead, Eaton spotted the massive bulk of an uprooted tree's root system as the boat plowed through the water. The tree seemed to be at least fifty feet long and the swift current was 
directing it toward the bow of the Folly like a well-aimed torpedo. Eaton steered a tight turn to port, then straightened out again once they were clear of the path of the tree.
He was amazed at the responsiveness of the boat. In design and maneuverability, it was completely different from a Mississippi steamer.
In the early days of steamboating on this river, many a good Mississippi packet had gone to the bottom of the Missouri before boats such as the one Eaton was on now evolved. Different river conditions demanded a different sort of boat to stay afloat and make it to the headwaters of the Missouri.
The Missouri steamers were generally smaller, broader of beam, and drew much less water than the Mississippi boats. Fully loaded, the Folly drew only about thirty-four inches of water, while the Natchez Belle had drawn seven feet or more. And instead of having the paddle wheels on each side, the Folly had one wheel in the stern for propulsion.
During an inspection tour of the boat when he assumed command, Eaton had noted that the Folly was also a much cruder craft than the ones which generally plied the Mississippi. The engines, though powerful, were powered by crackerbox boilers which he heard were prone to devastating explosions, and the hull of the craft was rather flimsy in construction. During his tour, he examined one cabin and noted that the mattress -on the bed was stuffed with corn shucks.
But one of the most remarkable differences was the spar assembly on the front of the boat. He had yet to see the process used, but his second pilot, George Kimball, had explained it in detail. 
Apparently during the frequent times when the water was too shallow and the boat grounded out on sand bars and reefs, the spars were driven down into the river bed ahead of the boat, and then used like crutches to pull the craft forward. They called it grasshoppering and it seemed to be quite a necessary process on the Missouri.
Despite all the newness and unfamiliarity of this river and this boat, Eaton still felt elated to be here. And adding to the joy was the thought that once he reached Fort Benton, he would have a few days to try to find out what had been the fate of Georgia and William St. Clair.
The past week had been so filled with preparations for the trip that he had had little time to consider the beautiful young woman who had entered his life, and then left it again, so suddenly, but he knew within himself that she was part of the reason he was here now. The thought that his path now lay in the same direction as hers was the icing on this new cake, and finding this job reinforced his belief that fate had more plans for him and Georgia St. Clair.
As the water began to grow more turbulent and the obstacles ahead more difficult, Eaton turned the wheel over to Bedford again. All the time Eaton had been at the wheel, Bedford had been sitting silently in the back of the pilothouse, intently studying the log kept by Kimball. Bedford took the wheel as calmly and confidently as if he had been piloting these waters for his entire career. In his head were all the pages of notes Kimball had taken down, a detailed map of the river as it had been weeks before when Kimball had last passed through the coming stretch, and it never
occurred to Paul Eaton to worry about how well Bedford would handle the staggering task he faced.
It was close to midnight and Eaton was in bed. He had awakened a few minutes earlier when he noticed a change in the pitch and vibration of the engines, but he had not risen and dressed because he knew they were to make a scheduled stop at a wood lot about sixty miles east of Independence. Kimball was at the wheel and the mate would supervise the loading of the wood with no problem.
He lay awake as they moved in toward shore and lodged against the bank, and then drifted back off to sleep as the mate began to bark out his orders to the crew which would begin bringing the wood on board.
But Eaton was asleep only a few minutes when a knock on his cabin door woke him again. He sleepily pulled on his trousers and then went over to answer the knock. It was Rich Meddler, the young man who had hired on as boat's clerk.
"Captain, there's some people down there at the wood lot," Meddler told him. "They want to come aboard."
"Well, sell them a ticket," Eaton frowned, irritated at being disturbed with such a trivial thing. "You know we have a light passenger list and plenty of room."
"They don't have any money, sir. They look terrible. They said something about a wreck and being stranded near here."
"We don't give free rides, Mr. Meddler," Eaton said. "You know that. Surely there must be a town close by where they can get help."
"There's Waverly on up ahead of us," the clerk 
said uncertainly. "And Miami is some miles back. But, sir, if you would just . . . They look pretty bad, sir, like they've really been through it."
With a long sigh, Eaton said, "Okay, I'll come down and talk to them. Tell them I'll be along in a minute."
As the clerk went out, Eaton sat down on the side of his bed to pull on his socks and boots. His ill temper was increasing, not so much because his sleep had been interrupted as because somebody was trying to wangle a free ride on his boat. It would be different if they were farther upriver, where forts and towns were many miles apart. But there was no shortage of communities here in the state of Missouri. These people, he guessed, were probably just some local loafers spinning a sad tale to catch an easy lift on up the line.
He left his cabin and stopped outside the door a moment to look around. The crew had hung lanterns at various places around the wood lot and on the lower deck of the boat, and they were stretched out in a long line pitching the sticks of firewood from man to man.
To one side he saw the two people who must be wanting to come on board the boat. They were slouched on a broken crate near the gangway, and though he could not see them clearly in the dim light, he could tell that they were shabbily dressed.
Eaton moved down to the lower deck, and the line of the crewmen on the gangplank stopped their work for a moment to let him pass. He approached the pair from the side and began his refusal even before they turned to face him. "I'm sorry, gentlemen," he said, "but company policy prohibits us from taking on non-paying passengers
except during the most severe emergencies. You'll have to find some other way to get where you're going."
The man on the right appeared to have been half asleep, but he sat up when Eaton spoke and began an explanation. "We got wrecked off the keelboat we were riding," he said.
Then he paused suddenly and just stared at Eaton a moment. Finally he muttered, "Well, I'll be damned!" The person with him was staring, too, but had not yet spoken.
It was then that Eaton recognized the faces of William and Georgia St. Clair in the flickering lamplight.
Georgia's eyes were fixed on the captain like one might stare at a ray of sunlight after days of darkness. She silently formed his name with her lips, but no sound came out. She seemed dazed, almost unable to believe what she saw.
"By jingo!" St. Clair exclaimed, leaping to his feet and grabbing Eaton's hand eagerly. "You're a sight to behold way out here in the middle of nowhere, Captain Eaton."
"I can't believe it," Georgia said almost reverently, rising to her feet at last. She seemed weak.
"I had no idea!" Eaton exclaimed. "When the clerk said there was somebody down here wanting a ride, I thought it was just a couple of freeloaders. But then to come down here and find you two . .."
"Well, sir, I'll tell you," St. Clair said. "Freeloaders is a word that probably pretty well describes us right now. We've come onto some of the most danged miserable luck you ever saw since we left your boat in St. Louis."
"We lost our cousin Clarissa in the wreck, as
well as everything else we own," Georgia said quietly. "It was horrible." 
Eaton could clearly see that they had been through some rough experiences in the last few days. Georgia's shoulders were sagging in exhaustion, and her face looked drawn and haunted. The clothes she wore were tattered and several sizes too big for her slim frame, and the grim look in her eye communicated how bad their experiences had been better than any words possibly could have. But he still could not ever remember being so glad to see anybody in his life. The temptation to take her in his arms right there in front of her father and the whole crew, and to reassure her that he would make things better for her from then on, was almost irresistible. 
The boat's clerk had moved up within a few feet of them and was witnessing their conversation with astonishment. Eaton turned to him and began barking out orders. "Go wake the cook," he said, "and get him to fix a meal for these people. The best we've got on board. And tell the steward to get the two cabins next to mine ready for guests. Hop to it, Mr. Meddler." 
As the clerk ran off toward the gangplank, Eaton came along behind William and Georgia. He led them to the small, simple sitting room alongside his cabin and poured a generous shot of whiskey into a glass for William. 
William sampled the drink, smacking his lips in appreciation, and grinned over at Eaton. "You know, you couldn't have been a more unexpected sight, or a more welcome one, if you'd been old Gabriel himself strolling across the bank there." 
"I wasn't quite prepared to meet you two again under these circumstances either," Eaton told them. "I figured that by now, with a two-week head start, you would have been hundreds of miles upriver."
"Well, sir," St. Clair told him, "our finances demanded that we take a keelboat, and keelboats aren't quite as fast as steamboats. And we learned that when the two meet on the river on a dark night, the keelboats come out the loser in the contest."
"It's a fact," Eaton nodded with understanding. It was no rare occurrence for a steamboat to run over some smaller craft in the darkness. It was just a part of river life.
As the two men talked, Georgia said very little, but her eyes stayed fixed on Eaton as if she had gone into a trance over his sudden appearance. The few looks they exchanged were warm and full of longing.
In a few minutes the cook came into the cabin, bringing two scorched steaks, fried potatoes and a pitcher of murky water.
"I'm afraid the accommodations are not quite as elegant here on the Folly," Eaton apologized, but William and Georgia, did not seem to notice. They began to eat as if it had been days since they last saw food--and in fact, he thought, it might have been.
As Georgia picked up her glass of brownish, cloudy water and looked at it a moment before drinking, Eaton laughed and told her, "They say it's better for the health than an elixir."
"I don't mind it," George assured him. "It's just
that this is the first time I've had water in a glass where I could look at it. We've been drinking this same water for days." 
As they ate, William began to fill in some of the details of their keelboat ride, describing the disreputable Simon Bindigo and the hard work involved in the upriver journey, but Eaton soon began to realize that there was equally as much that St. Clair was leaving unsaid. He never completely explained how they had come to be adrift on the river in the middle of the night or how the crew had so utterly lost control of the keelboat. 
"The worst part was losing Clarissa, though," Georgia said. "I still can't believe that she's gone so soon after we finally found her." Big tears rolled down her cheeks as she talked about her cousin. 
"She was a fine girl," William said quietly. "It was almost like having two daughters with me. I just wish old Bindigo was still alive and around these parts so I could have the joy of killing him again." 
"Maybe she didn't die," Eaton said. 
"Maybe," William said skeptically. "But from what Georgia said, Bindigo's boat hit that paddlewheel square on. We never did see a sign that anybody came out of it alive. It would have got us, too, but Georgia pitched me in the river and started pulling me toward the bank." 
Eaton was finding the tale increasingly hard to understand. There were too many gaps. The exchange was littered with question marks, but Eaton resisted asking any of the questions which were piling up in his mind. He could see that the ordeal had been long and traumatic for them, and 
he knew they would tell him more about it later if they wanted him to know. 
And he could also see that both of them were about to collapse from exhaustion. After they finished eating, Eaton called for the steward and had him show William and Georgia to the cabins which had been prepared for them. 
It was dawn on the river. Now, near the end of his four-hour watch as pilot on the Dakota Star, Tommie Casey was tired, not so much from watching for and avoiding the hazards of the Missouri as from being alert for traps and surprises from Charlie Fink or other agents of their rival company, the Sioux City Line. He did not know when or where they would come, but he was certain of one thing--they would come. Fink was dedicated to making sure that neither of the Missouri Northwestern boats made it through to Fort Benton. 
During the week when final preparations were being made for this journey, Casey had sensed a sort of excitement developing in the river port cities of St. Louis and St. Charles over this rivalry. River people loved nothing more than a good race, and the longer and more bitter fought the better. Everybody had been talking about it as well as 
210 
coming down to the levee to size up the boats and the men who manned them. In sporting circles, the odds were running three to five against the Star and the Folly, partly because the Folly was heading out with a captain and a pilot who did not know the Missouri, and partly because Captain Fink had a widespread reputation for treachery and tenacity in a conflict.
But Casey wondered how many people actually knew how serious the situation could get. The crews of all the rival boats were armed to the teeth. Not only was each equipped with the standard brass cannon on its bow, but unusual amounts of other hand guns and munitions had been stockpiled in preparation for the inevitable violence.
What worried Casey most at the moment was that Fink on his Maggie Dell, and his companion boat, the Golden Eagle, were somewhere up ahead of them. It was not so much the half-day lead they had--that could easily be overcome by superior piloting and an ounce or two of luck somewhere along the route. It was more the fact that, by being in the lead, Fink was in a position to lay any number of traps and ambushes along the way.
Casey had done a little spying on his own before the trip began, and he had found out that neither of the Sioux City boats had booked any passengers, nor were they carrying any more cargo than what they had contracted to deliver to the government post on the northern part of the river. They were traveling as light as possible, with no passengers or other outsiders to question any odd and deceptive actions of their captain's anywhere along the route.
In Casey's mind, Benjamin Hawkins was the
most awesome and dangerous weapon in Fink's arsenal. His deadly skill with a gun and a knife were widely known, and he was generally reputed to be a man who more than earned the high prices he demanded from his employers. It was said that he, along with perhaps no more than a dozen other white men on the high plains, had the confidence and respect of the many scattered Indian tribes along the Missouri and its tributaries. 
But in the matter of Hawkins, Casey had hedged his bet. Yellowstone Kelly would board the Star in Yankton, and as Casey had reassured his employer in St. Louis, Kelly had no equal in the northwestern area. If the Indians had respect for Hawkins, Kelly was a man they held in awe. 
Casey felt the weight of the responsibility he carried. He knew without ever having heard it said that Jack Fairwell was counting on him to get the company boats through. Paul Eaton was a good man, but this was all new to him, and Peter Mumple, captain of the Star, though he was a good enough captain in other ways, was not geared for river warfare. He managed a steamboat well, but he just did not have much eagerness for a fight. Though Casey was only a pilot, it was the unspoken understanding that when trouble started, he was the leader of the expedition. 
He was not sure how far back Paul Eaton and the Folly were, but he guessed it was no more than eight or ten miles. When they had left St. Charles the previous day, Casey had deliberately surged ahead a few miles to scout the waters for his more vulnerable companion. If need be, the two boats could communicate along the first half of the river by telegraph from the various port 
cities and towns, and if any serious problems developed, Casey had agreed to hold up for the few hours it would take Eaton to catch up. For the time being, though, he was content for them to proceed some miles apart. 
Casey spotted the floating hunk of wreckage at least two miles ahead on a broad calm stretch of water. Normally he would have just steered to one side or the other and let it float by. But in this particular spot, the best channel was no more than twenty yards wide, and this hunk of wreckage was coursing right down the middle of it. After a moment's deliberation, Casey called down to the mate and ordered a crew out to load the small brass cannon on the bow. Chances were that this object ahead was exactly what it appeared to be, a piece of some wrecked boat which had met its end in the long stretch of turbulent water a few miles ahead. But under these circumstances, he did not want to take any chances. If need be, he would order the crew to blow it out of the water for safety's sake. 
Though the dawn was growing, daylight had not fully arrived, and Casey watched the object bobbing straight toward the hull of the Star with growing apprehension. Below him the gun crew was tracking it as best they could with the cannon, alert for his signal to fire. When he saw the first hint of movement on the wreckage, he almost gave the command to fire, but his instincts told him to hold off. 
Captain Mumple had come up onto the hurricane deck directly below the pilothouse when the order had gone out to load the big gun, and an instant later he too saw the movement on the 
wreckage. He turned his head and looked back up at Casey nervously, but it was obvious that he was leaving the final decision to the pilot. 
Then suddenly the top half of a body raised up on the obstacle ahead and the person's arms began to wave frantically, as if just that moment noticing the steamboat bearing down. With a violent turn that knocked half the crew off their feet, Casey cut the wheel sharply to starboard at the last instant and rang down for the engines to stop. The piece of wreckage struck the Star's side hull a glancing blow, then rolled sideways, pitching whoever had been on top of it into the water. 
A head bobbed up a moment later, clear of the wreckage but still being tugged by the swift current along the boat's port side. A moment later a crewman leaped into the water and swam to the survivor as others grabbed ropes and threw them across the path of the swimmers. It took them a couple of minutes to get both people safely aboard, but when that was accomplished, Casey signaled for power and steered out into the middle of the channel again. 
Some time later Captain Mumple came up to the pilothouse with news about the person they had rescued from the water. He had a broad smile plastered across his slightly fleshy face as he said, "By Jove, Casey! It's a woman that they fished out of the river. A lovely young lady, but wet as a mud turtle and half-drowned. Can you believe that?" 
"A woman?" Casey exclaimed. "I wonder how she got herself in a fix like that?" 
"She was half out of her head, but she kept saying something about a keelboat. They must 
have cracked up in the rapids, or crossed up with a steamboat." 
"I'd guess the latter from the condition of that hunk of wreck she was riding on. It's a wonder she lived through such a thing." 
"But she did, alright," Mumple said, "and I guess she came out of it without even a broken bone. There's a doctor among the passengers who's down tending to her now." Mumple paused a moment, then said, "And you know what's more? She's English. Speaks very proper, she does, like an honest-to-goodness lady." 
Casey frowned at that. He had very little use for Englishmen in any form. Though he was a native born American, his parents were immigrants from Ireland and he had been weaned on a tradition of dislike for anything British. 
"Well, lady or no," he chuckled finally, "I'll wager that dip in the Missouri took the starch from her bloomers." 
"Aye, it would if she'd been wearing any," Mumple agreed. "But what clothes she wore were men's clothes. Dressed like a gutter rat, she was. When they were first fishing her out, the men didn't know what they had, but once they got a look at how pretty she was, I thought there would be a fight to see who would get to carry her to a cabin." 
"It's all very strange," Casey said. "I bet she'll have a tale to tell when she recovers." 
"It will be interesting to hear her story," the captain said. 
An hour later Joe Brannigan, the second pilot, came up to relieve Casey at the wheel. He was all 
full of talk about the young woman they had pulled from the river, but Casey was too tired to stay around and hear much of it. He remained in the pilothouse only long enough to caution Brannigan to be on guard for any of Charlie Fink's tricks, and then he headed down toward his cabin.
But when he reached his quarters and was about to go in, he heard the captain's voice coming from an open cabin doorway a few doors down. That cabin had been empty when they started out, so he guessed it must be where they brought the woman. He went down to the doorway and knocked on the sill before sticking his head inside.
When Mumple turned and saw him, he said, "Ah, here's the man I was telling you about, Miss Manchester. Tommie Casey."
The young woman lay on the bed with a blanket pulled up to her chin and tucked in tightly around her. She looked bedraggled and as if she had been beaten. Her blond hair was in a tangled mess about her head, and the left side of her chin and cheek were covered with an ugly, swelling bruise. Despite her condition at the moment, Casey could tell that she was a beauty, and the way the heavy blanket rose and fell accentuating the curves of her body did not escape his notice.
Casey recognized the tall, whiskered and bespectacled man who sat beside her on the bed as the doctor.
"The captain tells me you decided at the last minute not to use your artillery on me," the woman said. Her voice was weak and tired, but it still somehow seemed to contain a trace of superiority which irritated Casey. "I believe I should be grateful to you for that favor."
"Consider the matter however you wish," Casey said, suddenly conscious of the trace of Irish brogue in his speech. "It's true you had a closer call than you might have realized, because I did in fact almost give the command to fire. I assure you, though, that my only concern was for the safety of this boat and the welfare of its passengers."
"I see. Well, thank you, Mr. Casey."
It struck Casey as odd that while her words indicated gratitude, her tone seemed to hint at antagonism and reproach.
Finally the doctor interrupted the curious exchange. "Gentlemen," he said, "I would like to examine Miss Manchester's leg one last time to make sure there is no fracture, and I suspect that she would prefer that be done in private."
"Of course," Mumple agreed. "Casey and I will get out of the way."
"I hope to see you up and around soon," Casey told her stiffly as he and the captain left the cabin.
They paused on the deck outside Casey's doorway and the captain said, "Quite a catch, I'd say. I bet she's a real looker when she hasn't just been doused and throttled."
"Perhaps," Casey conceded, "but these proper British folk, they wean their young on prune juice and contempt. Give me a plump, jolly Irish lass any day, and you can keep all the shapely Britishers you fish out of the river."
"No thank you, sir," Mumple chuckled. "I'll not end up like our friend Lem Gables, with too many women and no liberty to enjoy any of them. I'll stick with my one wife. She may not be in her prime any longer, but at least she has a hot meal
and a warm bed waiting when the trip is over. It's the kind of thing a man my age really starts looking forward to." 
Laughing, Casey turned to his cabin to get some rest before his next watch began in four hours. 
For the first time since she had been hauled out of the river onto the deck of the Dakota Star, Clarissa found herself alone in the cabin she had been brought to. Before leaving, the doctor had offered her a sedative to help her rest, but she had refused, knowing that after the ordeal she had been through, she would have no trouble sleeping. 
But for a few minutes she lay awake on purpose, thinking about all that had happened in the last eighteen or so hours. She was still heartsick about the separation from William and Georgia, and tense with worry about what fate might have befallen them. She had gone over the last few minutes on the keelboat again and again in her mind, searching for any positive support for her hopes that they were still alive, but there was no concrete remembrance to hang onto. 
During those brief, turbulent moments before the collision everything had been so sudden and violent that for all she knew, her relatives might even have been killed before the wreck. But, she thought cynically, the crew probably would not have destroyed Georgia that quickly. The use they had in mind for her was obvious, and they would have made sure to keep her alive for that. 
The captain of this boat, Peter Mumple, had promised her he would instruct his pilots and crew to keep an eye out for any signs of her relatives as the boat moved on upriver, but she realized that 
there was only a thin thread of a chance that anything would ever be seen or heard from them again. 
Clarissa liked Mumple. She felt secure being in his and the doctor's care. It was not quite that way with the young Irishman who had come to the cabin later. There was something cocky and antagonistic about him that stirred an instant dislike in her. It angered her somehow to think that he had ordered the boat's big gun brought to bear on her even as she struggled to cling to the twisted hunk of keelboat cabin. Then when he came down to see her in person, he seemed not to feel the slightest remorse that he had almost ordered the cannon fired. 
She refused to let her mind focus on the specifics of how desperate her present situation was. If she thought she had had problems before, they could not compare to her present condition. All of her past seemed almost like a dream now--England, finding William and Georgia St. Clair, starting out upriver with them, the horrible experiences on the keelboat--it seemed almost as if the whole thing was a tragic tale of loss and degradation that she had read in a book. 
But they were all pieces of her life, things she would have to think about and deal with . . . but not until tomorrow. 
The captain's dining room was cramped and hot. Eight people were crowded around a table which was hardly big enough to seat half that many, and the small windows and open door on one side of the room scarcely let in enough fresh air for breathing. 
Seated at the table were Mumple and the young pilot, Tommie Casey, Doctor Doddsworth and his wife, and two plump, plain young women who were headed north to Yankton to fulfill marriage contracts to men they had never met. Rounding out the complement were Clarissa Manchester and the captain's cook, who unceremoniously took a seat at the table after making sure that all the food was brought in. 
Despite the heat and the uncomfortable closeness, the passengers who were gathered there with Captain Mumple still considered it a privilege to 
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be invited to dine with the captain. Clarissa had taken a couple of previous meals with the rest of the boat's twenty passengers, and she knew that no matter how rude these surroundings might seem, the others did not have it even this good. 
Clarissa was feeling much better this evening, after resting nearly a full day and night in the small cabin. The doctor's wife had come around earlier in the day to lend her a dress to replace her tattered work clothes, and so she felt reasonably respectable when she responded to Mumple's invitation to dinner. The large bruise on the side of her face was the only obvious reminder of the ordeal she had been through. 
As Mumple carved the roast beef and began passing the plates around the table, family style, he said, "For any of you who are interested, we will be stopping at Independence for half a day tomorrow. We'll be taking on wood and cargo there, and it will be a chance for those who want to leave the boat for a while to stretch their legs." 
As he spoke, Mumple gave Clarissa a curious glance which was difficult for her to interpret. Finally, when he went on, his remarks were directed at her. "This might also be a chance for you to try and find out something about your uncle and cousin, Miss Manchester," he said. 
"I'll certainly check with the authorities there," she said. "Surely the boat which ran us down will have reported the accident, and they might have some report about survivors." 
"They may have reported it," Casey said, 'Taut I wouldn't count too heavily on that. Such things cause, uh, legal complications, and I know of at least two boats ahead of ours who wouldn't care 
to be delayed by reports of accidents." He paused a moment, then added, "But at any rate, I do hope you find your people. It would be difficult to be stranded in an out-of-the-way place like Independence with no allies and no funds." 
Clarissa paused from her meal, staring across the table at Casey with a frown as his meaning slowly became clear to her. 
"If they aren't there," she said, "I wouldn't want to stay." Her gaze drifted over to the captain, but he had his head down and seemed to be suddenly intent on stirring the gravy into his mashed potatoes. But if Mumple was hesitant to come right out and tell her that she would have to leave the boat at Independence, Casey seemed to have no such reservations. 
"That would be unfortunate," he told her, "to be stuck in some place you didn't want to be. But perhaps you might find some help somewhere, from a church maybe. Or maybe you can find a job until you earn enough money to go back where you came from." 
Clarissa could feel her temper rising at this brash young man's words. She could not quite understand why, but he seemed to be deliberately trying to antagonize her, and he was being successful. The other diners were beginning to act embarrassed about the conversation, but Casey did not seem to care. 
"Mister Casey," Clarissa said, her voice even with carefully controlled anger, "my objective when I boarded that keelboat in St. Charles was to reach Fort Benton in the Montana Territory, and despite all that has happened since that time, I still intend to go there." 
"Well, I wish you Godspeed, ma'am," Casey said with a grin. 
Clarissa let the subject die after that, resolving to discuss it later with the captain. It was obvious that if the matter was left up to Casey, he would not permit her to stay on board another instant after they docked in Independence, but Mumple seemed to have no taste for evicting her from the Dakota Star, and he was, after all, the captain of the boat. She felt sure something could be worked out. 
During the remainder of the meal, Clarissa ate in silence and took no more part in the conversation around the table. It was hard for her to understand what had brought about this hostility between herself and the young Irishman, but it was definitely there. He had irritated her, it seemed, from the first instant she saw him, and his dislike for her seemed to have been born almost as quickly. She realized that for her own sake, she should ignore her feelings and try to win him over with friendliness and charm, but pride stood in her way. 
After the meal, as the diners were leaving the dining room, Clarissa watched which way the captain headed and started after him, but when she saw him mount the stairway toward the hurricane deck, she decided not to follow him. She wanted to catch him alone, away from Casey and all the other crewmen, before she made her appeal for a ride up the river. 
Finally, toward dark, Clarissa saw Mumple come back down the stairs and head toward his cabin. She hurried along behind him and caught up with him near his cabin door. 
"Captain Mumple," she said, "may I have a word with you, sir? In private?" 
Mumple looked rattled, but still invited her into his cabin and closed the door. After they were both seated, the captain said, "I have an idea why you have come to me, Miss Manchester. And as uncomfortable as the situation is for me, I'm afraid my answer must be no." 
"Then I must get off at the Independence landing?" Clarissa asked. "There are no other options?" 
"I'm afraid not," Mumple told her. "If this were my boat, the situation might be different, but it's not. How could I tell the twenty-odd other passengers on this vessel that you will get to ride free, while the rest of them have had to pay one hundred and seventy-five dollars each in fares? It wouldn't be fair to anybody." 
"I could work," she volunteered. "I'd do any kind of menial chore without complaint if it meant I could stay on the Dakota Star. I must get to Montana this summer. I've come too far to turn back." 
"It might be a disguised blessing to be turned around at this point by circumstances," Mumple counseled her. "It seems to me your journey was launched under an unlucky star." 
"I will not go back," Clarissa said quietly but intently. "It's true I've had nothing but disasters since I began this journey, but there's something inside me that's driving me on, and I can't change that. Hundreds and thousands of other people have faced incredible obstacles and still completed this same trip upriver, and I can't see any reason why I shouldn't do the same. Please let me work out my fare, captain. Please." 
"I feel pretty heartless having to say it," Multiple told her, "but you put me in a very difficult position. My answer is no. A firm no. If I had a job you could handle, I would gladly let you take it, but I do not." 
Clarissa nodded her silent understanding and fought not to let him see how near she was to tears of despair. She had been sure she could convince him to let her stay on the boat, but it was obvious that she had been wrong. She mumbled a brief goodnight and rose to go, leaving the silent captain staring after her as she went out the door. 
Clarissa woke the next morning to the familiar sound of a boat's mate cursing and goading his crew to work. The engines were silent at the moment and the boat was still. She knew they had reached the Independence levee. 
She got up and began to put on the borrowed dress she had been wearing, then stopped and took it off again, realizing that she would have to return it before she left the boat. But at least she had taken a needle and thread to her other clothes and now they were wearable again. 
When she was dressed again in her shirt and trousers, she went out on the deck outside her cabin and paused a moment to watch the activity on the levee near the boat. Several four-foothigh stacks of wood were lined up at the water's edge in sixteen-foot-long piles, and the crew had just started loading the first of them. At another place, several men were working at three wagons which had been stopped at the water's edge, unloading crates from them and preparing to load them on the boat. 
Independence was nowhere in sight. There was only one small wooden building farther up the bank above the high water line, but it appeared to be no more than some sort of small office. A well-worn wagon road rose up the gentle incline of the bank and then disappeared over the crest of a hill. Staring at it, Clarissa was hoping that the town was just beyond that hill, but she knew that it was more likely to be miles away. The river was a capricious roadway, shifting and changing the location of her channel constantly, leaving some towns high and dry miles from where the water flowed and completely inundating other settlements within a matter of hours or minutes.
Clarissa saw a movement to her left and turned to see the doctor's wife, Mary Doddsworth, approaching.
"I'm glad I caught you before you left," Mrs. Doddsworth said.
"I was going to find you and bring your dress back," Clarissa told her. "Thank you for letting me use it while I was here."
"I wish I could let you keep it, my dear," Mrs. Doddsworth said, "but I could only bring three dresses with me. That's scarcely enough to get me through the winter. But I do have this for you," she added. She reached out and pressed five folded paper dollars into Clarissa's hand.
Clarissa looked down at the money and said, "Thank you, but I couldn't-"
"Be sensible and don't let a little pride stand in the way of taking something you need so badly," the doctor's wife told her. "I'd feel much better knowing you have at least a few dollars to live and eat on. Please keep it."
Clarissa debated the matter a moment, then put the money in her pocket and gave the other woman a hug of appreciation. "Thank you," she said. "If we ever meet again--"
"Consider it a debt, but not to me and my husband. Someday if you meet a stranger who needs some help as bad as you do now, just remember to give them what you can."
With tears glistening in her eyes over Mary Doddsworth's generosity, Clarissa turned and started down the stairs toward the main deck. She stayed out of the crew's way as best she could as she crossed the deck to the gangway. But there she stopped.
At the other end of the long plank stood Tommie Casey. With his right hand he had hold of the shirt collar of a man slightly smaller than himself.
Ignoring Clarissa, Casey looked toward the upper decks and called out, "Captain! Captain Mumple! A word with you, sir!"
The second man was scarcely into his twenties, a thin, scruffy-looking young man who Clarissa believed had something to do with the operation of the steamboat. After Casey called out for the captain, the young man turned to him and said in a half-whine, "I ain't done nothing to give you call to treat me thisaway, Mr. Casey."
"If you claim that, Pat Bennett," Casey growled, "then you're a lying scoundrel as well as a thief. Just shut up and you can do your explaining to the captain."
"Well, hell, Casey . . ." Bennett began.
With his grip on the young man's shirt, Casey shook him angrily and said, "I told you to shut
that lying mouth. I warn you, I have no patience with a thieving bastard like you." 
In a moment the voice of Captain Mumple spoke up from the deck above Clarissa. She could not see him, but she could tell he was almost directly above her. "Yes, Casey? What is it?" 
Giving Bennett another shake for good measure, Casey said, "I've caught our boat's clerk here taking a payback from the man who runs this wood lot." 
"I just overpaid him," Bennett tried to explain to the captain. "He was giving me some back." 
"He's a lying son of a bitch," Casey told Mumple vehemently. "A little while ago I walked up to the top of that hill yonder to see if I could spot any other boats on the river. On my way back down, I saw Bennett here and the wood hawk sneak around to the back side of that shack up there. So I eased through the bushes until I could see what they were doing. I saw the money change hands." 
"What did we pay for the wood?" Mumple asked. 
Casey reached in his shirt pocket and produced a receipt. "Too much," he said, waving the paper in front of him. "Six seventy-five a cord, and I checked the wood myself. Half of it is green willow and elm. Even cured red oak shouldn't cost that much." 
"It is high," Mumple agreed. 
"It's what he demanded, captain," Bennett insisted. "You've told me to lay in a goodly supply of wood and this was all he had." 
"Could you be mistaken, Casey?" the captain asked. 
"I'll show you how wrong I am," Casey said. 
He turned and started grappling at Bennett's clothes, but then suddenly the young man twisted free and started running away up the road. Casey snatched up a stick of firewood and threw it at him. The piece of wood caught Bennett in the back of his knees and tumbled him forward into the dust. In an instant two husky crewmen reached him and snatched him to his feet. 
"Strip that weasel down," Casey ordered. Laughing uproariously, several of the crewmen gathered around Bennett and began tearing his clothing off. When they had him down to his ragged underwear, Casey said, "Now check his drawers." 
The crewmen grappled with Bennett a moment longer, then one of them reached up and waved several crumpled greenbacks in the air. "He's got maybe eight or nine dollars stashed down here," the man laughed out. 
"It's proof enough," Mumple conceded from above. "Please handle this matter, Mr. Casey." Clarissa could hear the captain's footsteps moving off on the deck above. 
Casey turned to the men who were still holding the guilty clerk and said, "Well, lads, we've got ourselves a thief and a liar here. What shall we do with him?" 
"Throw him in the river," one man shouted out. 
"Tar and feather the bastard," another suggested. Other proposed punishments ranged from bizarre to sadistic and fatal. 
"We can't let him take up much of our time," Casey said. "Let's just hang him up in a tree and let his partner up there worry about him after we leave." 
One of the men raced to the boat for a rope 
while another climbed up a nearby tree. Soon they had the rope over a limb about thirty feet off the ground. Within a minute, Bennett was swinging upside down at least fifteen feet off the ground. When the rope was tied, Casey called up to the man in the tree, "Now cut off the loose end." 
"No!" Bennett wailed. "Can't nobody let me down if you do that!" 
"You'll get down fast enough when they cut you loose," Casey laughed. 
The crewman cut the rope close to the knot, then came down from the tree. For a couple of minutes the whole crew just around on the ground, laughing and shouting taunts at Bennett as he slowly began to swing in the breeze. His response was a mixture of curses and pleas for mercy. 
"Alright, men," the mate shouted at last. "You've had your fun, so get back to work now." In a moment the men were back at work on the wood pile, ignoring the continued pleas from the clerk. 
Clarissa had watched the whole incident with growing disbelief. She could understand their anger at Bennett for stealing the money, but this seemed like an excessive punishment for the theft of only a few dollars. But there was nothing she could do. Finally she crossed the gangplank and started up the road toward town. She was hoping to get away without catching the attention of anybody. 
She had gone about a hundred yards up the road when Casey called after her. "Miss Manchester. Wait." She stopped and turned to see him hurrying along after her. 
When the pilot neared her, he said, "The captain asked me to stop you." 
"What on earth for?" Clarissa asked. "I haven't taken anything."
"He just had a question he wanted me to ask you," the pilot told her. "Can you handle numbers at all, miss?"
"Yes, of course I can," Clarissa told him.
With a chuckle and a wry grin back over his shoulder, he explained. "We have a sudden vacancy in the crew, and Captain Mumple has instructed me to offer you the job."
"His job?" Clarissa exclaimed, pointing up to Bennett.
"Yes, ma'am," Casey said. "Mr. Bennett no longer seems to be able to handle his duties aboard the Dakota Star."
When they came in sight of the Dakota Star, Nehemiah Bedford sent the cabin boy down to call Paul Eaton to the pilothouse. When Eaton arrived there, the Star was just passing out of sight around the first long, sweeping bend a few miles above Independence.
As Eaton brought the spyglass up to his eye to catch a last glimpse of their companion boat, he asked the pilot, "Did they make any sort of sign or signal to us, Mr. Bedford?"
"No sir," Bedford told him. "I had thought they might pause and wait for us to come up, but they did not. Maybe they didn't see us."
"I'll wager Casey saw us alright," Eaton said. "There's just no reason for them to slow down and wait for us. It's better with him out ahead a few miles and I guess he's working to regain his lead again."
232
In a minute George Kimball also mounted the ladder and came through the doorway into the pilothouse. "The boy told me we had the Star in sight," he said.
"She just now rounded the far bend," Eaton confirmed.
"Good," Kimball said. "Watch the bars for a red flag on a stick, Mr. Bedford. They might have left some sort of message behind for us to retrieve."
"Aye, they did pause at the near side of the bend yonder," Bedford confirmed. "I thought they might have grounded out for a minute and then gained momentum and pulled free."
"The channel there is deep and sure," Kimball told him. "If Casey held tight to the bar and slowed down, it was likely to send a runner out to stick a message in the sand."
Within a few minutes, as they neared the place where they had last seen the Dakota Star, Kimball's prediction was confirmed. Almost at the same instant, the three men spotted a stake in the sand with a red flag tied to its top. When they got closer, they could also see the white envelope on the stick.
When they neared the bar, Bedford cut in tight to the starboard side and cut power while Eaton called down to the mate to send a crewman out to retrieve the message. When the man had picked it up, Bedford cut back to port to gain the main channel again. Eaton was proud of the way Bedford had handled the maneuver. He had shaved the bank tight enough that the Folly's hull barely grazed the sand bar, but there had never been the slightest suspicion that they would run aground. After less than four hundred miles of
travel, he was already handling the shallow-hulled steamboat as if he had been born to the job. 
A minute later the crewman arrived at the pilothouse with the message. In it, Casey warned that one of the rival Sioux City boats, the Golden Eagle, had tied up in the mouth of a stream outside Blue Springs almost out of sight of the main channel. "Be advised," the note cautioned, "that we now have one of Fink's boats ahead of us and one behind. Something is likely afoot, although I can't predict what. If necessary, put in at Fort Leavenworth and wire ahead to us at St. Joseph." 
Eaton read the letter aloud to his two pilots, puzzling over the last paragraph. It read, "We were forced to break in a new clerk at Independence Landing because our former man became all tied up with lofty personal matters." 
"I wonder what in the hell he's talking about there?" Eaton pondered. 
"I may have an explanation," Bedford told him with a rare half-smile of amusement. "As we passed Independence some time past down, I saw a curious sight. There was a man swinging by his feet from a tree at least ten or fifteen feet above the ground. Even as we went by, somebody cut him down and he dropped like an anchor." 
Kimball laughed suddenly at the tale. "That has Casey's mark on it," he told them. "He said before we left St. Charles that he didn't trust the clerk they had hired and that he was going to keep an eye on him. I guess he found what he was looking for." 
"It sounds like Casey, alright," Eaton laughed. "Did the man seem hurt?" 
"That kind of fall couldn't do a man much good," 
Bedford said, "but he was trying to get up soon after he hit the ground." 
"Aye, Casey prefers the dramatic over the crueler forms of punishment on the river," Kimball explained. "The man was lucky if all he scored was a couple of broken arms from the business. I've seen other captains and pilots keelhaul their thieves and rebels, or leave them on the bank without food or weapons to wait for the hostiles to come and deal with them. There's even talk that one captain some years back had seven of his men skinned alive for planning an insurrection among the crew." 
"It's a harsh deed if it did happen," Eaton frowned. 
"Yes, sir," Kimball agreed. "It is that. But many times upriver, the law on the Missouri is what the steamboat captain makes it to be." 
Eaton stayed in the pilothouse for the next hour as they steamed by Westport Landing, the mouth of the Kansas River, and finally the burgeoning town of Kansas City. Finally, a few miles above Kansas City, another boat pulled into sight a few miles behind on the river. Kimball, who had begun his watch by then, soon confirmed that it was the Golden Eagle. 
Eaton had invited William and Georgia St. Clair and a few other passengers to take their noon meal with him, but at lunch time he sent down his regrets and had his food brought up to him instead. 
After lunch, Bedford returned to the pilothouse, this time accompanied by William St. Clair, but instead of going below to rest as he normally would have done, Kimball turned the wheel over to Bedford and then remained in the pilothouse. He 
and Eaton took turns studying the Golden Eagle through the spyglass. It was scarcely a mile behind them now. 
"There's a, nervousness in the air down below, captain," St. Clair said from his seat on the bench. "Everybody seems to feel like there's big doings afoot, but nobody can quite figure out what." 
"That well may be," Eaton responded vaguely, passing the spyglass over to Kimball for a moment. He was not too interested in discussing the matter and starting a lot of wild rumors on the boat, but the passengers had obviously felt the growing tension among the boat's leaders and crew. "I'll let you know soon enough if there is trouble so you can go down and see to Georgia, but there's no use getting alarmed too quickly. Right now we just want to keep an eye on that boat back there to see if they're up to anything." 
"Captain, have you noticed what's so strange about the Eagle?" Kimball asked, the spyglass still up to his eye. "There are no passengers. The decks are empty except for crewmen." 
"I saw that," Eaton told him. "And look at the main deck. There's very little cargo in sight. She's hardly shipping enough to pay for the fuel she'll use on the trip." 
"I have a bad feeling about this," Kimball warned. "I know that boat. She's hardly a match for the Star with Casey at the wheel, but with full tonnage, she's about an even match for our Folly. Now, though, with her decks almost clear, she'll draw four or five inches less than we do, and she can lead or follow us at her leisure." 
"Okay. For now we'll just watch her and see what she might be up to. I don't want to arm the 
crew or prime the gun until we're sure we have some trouble to face." 
"There's no use spreading a serious scare among the passengers until we're sure," Kimball agreed. 
The Golden Eagle soon drew up to within about a quarter mile of the Folly, and then began to hold that constant distance, seemingly content to trail after the Folly through the long afternoon. Eaton decided to steam by Fort Leavenworth without stopping to send a message ahead to Casey. There was nothing anybody on the Star could do anyway, and Eaton did not want to lose the time. They passed St. Joseph in late afternoon, and again Eaton decided not to stop. 
Close to dusk, Eaton finally decided to take a break to eat a quick meal, but no sooner had he settled down to eat in his cabin, than Kimball sent word for him to return to the pilothouse. 
As soon as he came in the door, the pilot looked around at him with a serious scowl on his face. "They're making their run, captain," he said, "and they couldn't have picked a worse place for it." 
Eaton looked around and confirmed that the Golden Eagle was steadily closing up the distance which separated them. 
"The Magellan Cutoff is coming up about three miles ahead," Kimball explained. "It's one of the trickiest pieces of water here on the lower river. At high water, it's passable and it cuts nearly twelve miles off the distance from going on around the main channel. But now, with the spring floodwater's on past, it'll be touch and go with the load we carry." 
"Will you run it, Mr. Kimball?" Eaton asked. He knew it would be presumptuous for him to even 
hint that he should make the decision. The choice, and probably all of their fates as well, had to rest only in Kimball's hands. 
"If the entrance is clear and the water looks good, we'll try it," Kimball said. "But I don't have to decide for another couple of miles. Sometimes the snags are bad in, the chute, and I've seen the upper end completely dammed over with uprooted trees and brush. If we get up in the chute and find it blocked, we'll be in a helluva fix." 
As the daylight faded, the Golden Eagle drew abreast of Eaton's boat and began to pass her by. Though the two steamboats at one time were within one hundred feet of one another, no greetings were exchanged. A short time earlier, Eaton had ordered the crew to arm themselves and stay out of sight on the main deck, but no shots were fired. 
When the Eagle had pulled about one hundred yards ahead of the Folly, it again unexplainably slowed and started maintaining a consistent lead. 
"This reeks like a polecat's bung," Kimball said tensely from his place at the wheel. "They're setting us up." Despite the pilot's suspicions, however, Eaton saw that he was maintaining a steady course in the wake of the Golden Eagle. Kimball had decided not to let the other boat force him out of taking the shorter route through the Magellan Cutoff. 
Through the fading daylight, Eaton had already spotted the entrance to the cutoff about half a mile ahead. It was hardly wider than three steamboats abreast, and in the growing darkness, it was impossible for him to tell anything about the depth of the water. The tree-lined banks on both sides had 
taken on the appearance of a dark, foreboding jungle.
As the Golden Eagle moved between the two long, submerged sand bars which funneled into the cutoff, Kimball finally slowed the engines of the Folly and let the other boat gain a longer lead. The distance between the two boats had broadened to about one hundred and fifty yards when Kimball hissed in a quiet, urgent tone, "Here it comes. Right at the mouth."
For no apparent reason, the Golden Eagle suddenly lost power and cut sharply to starboard. It took Eaton a minute to realize what the strategy was going to be.
"Engines astern!" Kimball shouted down the speaking tube to the engine crew on the main deck. "Full power! Get us the hell back down the river!"
Despite the pilot's rapid action, they had already surged twenty or thirty yards forward, and the Golden Eagle, now broadside of the current, was sweeping back downstream toward the Folly.
"We'll ram her broadside before we can get out of the way!" Eaton exclaimed.
"That's what they want us to think," Kimball said, "so we'll decide to turn aside and run aground on the sand bars. My guess is she's building up a full head of steam to jump the bar just before we collide. They're counting on their shallow draft to carry them across where we couldn't possibly make it. We'll hold steady with our engines astern and wait them out."
Eaton kept quiet. It was the pilot's duel, and all he could do was wait out the tense moments as the distance between the two steamboats rapidly
narrowed. They were no more than fifty yards apart now. 
"I'm right," Kimball mumbled almost to himself. "I know I'm right. Look at those roosters on the deck. They've been steadily stoking that firebox ever since she swung around. They must have one helluva head of steam built up in their boilers by now. She'll jump that sand bar like a jackrabbit." 
But suddenly the fires of hell seemed to erupt from the lower decks of the Golden Eagle. Her pilot had waited too long to expend the masses of energy stored up below, and the pressure finally became too much for the boilers. 
The jolt of the explosion rolled over the Folly like an earthquake, shattering all the glass in the pilothouse and nearly knocking Kimball and Eaton off their feet. Ahead of them, the Golden Eagle was ripped in two as portions of the exploding boiler tore skyward through the decks of the boat. The pilothouse sailed more than fifty feet into the air, as if yanked aloft by some unseen power, and then fell back to earth out of sight in the trees to the left of the river. 
"Astern! Astern!" Kimball screamed frantically down the speaking tube, but the boat had already been moving backward, away from the cutoff, at full power. Eaton glanced over and was amazed to see that the pilot's face had completely disappeared beneath a mass of cuts and gashes made by shards of the broken glass in front of him. Blood was streaming down his face and dripping off his chin onto his shirt front, but his hand remained steady on the wheel, holding them on their backward course. 
Ahead, the Golden Eagle was in two separate 
pieces now, one sinking rapidly in the center of the channel and the other shoved up half out of the water on the sand bar. The scalding clouds of escaping steam were just beginning to dissolve, and flames had practically engulfed what portions of the boat still remained above the water's surface. A few agonized survivors were scrambling to get clear of the inferno. 
"Take the wheel, captain," Kimball said after a moment. "I can't see." 
Eaton leaped to comply, and held the Folly on a steady backward course away from the chaos. He knew that his face was chewed up, too, but he had been farther away from the glass and had not been injured as seriously as Kimball. They were already clear of the danger, and above the boom of their own engines, the only sounds that could now be heard were the crackling of flames and the screams of the wounded and dying up ahead. 
In another moment, Bedford had arrived to take control of the boat. "Get us completely clear of the danger," Eaton ordered him, "and then tie up along the bar. We're going to have to do what we can for the survivors." 
When they were clear of the parallel sand bars, Bedford cut the reverse power, then eased the boat forward until it lodged gently against one of the bars. Immediately the crew members sprang to secure the anchorage and to send rescuers to the wreckage of the Golden Eagle. Eaton took hold of George Kimball's arm and began leading him down the ladder from the pilothouse and toward the staircase to the lower deck. 
Several passengers, including Georgia and her father, were waiting at the bottom of the stairs. 
When Eaton saw the girl, he told her, "Georgia, take Mr. Kimball to my cabin and take care of his injuries. You'll find medical supplies."
"All right, Paul," Georgia said, taking hold of Kimball's arm. "But you're hurt, too. Your face is bleeding."
"It's not bad," he told her. "I'll be along when I can, but I've got to get this crew organized first. We might be able to save the lives of some of those men up there if we can take care of them quickly enough." Leaving the pilot in Georgia's care, he turned and started down to the lower deck to find the mate.
It was a long, sleepless night of bloody work for the crew and the passengers of the Richlands Folly as they worked in the aftermath of the boiler explosion. Searching with lanterns, they checked the sand bars and nearby woods, finally locating eight survivors. Most of them were horribly scalded and mutilated. The remains of eleven others were laid out on the deck of the boat and covered with blankets.
More than two hours after the explosion, the searchers finally found the place where the pilothouse from the Golden Eagle had come to rest. They gathered up the fragmented remains of the captain and pilot on litters and brought them back to the Folly to rest alongside the bodies of their luckless crew.
About midnight Paul Eaton called a conference on the hurricane deck, summoning Bedford as well as the boat's engineer and mate to hear the decision he had reached about what they should do next. All the men were exhausted, but Eaton 
himself looked particularly ravaged by the ordeal. Some time earlier in the evening, he had finally taken the time to let Georgia tend to the wounds on his face. Now he had three bandages over the worst of his cuts and the remainder were painted bright orange with disinfectant.
Without any preliminaries, Eaton told his crew, "I've decided to turn around and head back to St. Joseph."
The brow of Milt Cravett, the engineer, knit up with a frown and he said, "Old man Fairwell won't like that worth a damn, not with the race we're in and all. The Golden Eagle might be out of the picture now, but that bastard Fink and his Maggie Dell are still up ahead. They'll probably gain a full day on us because of this stop, and if we go back to St. Joseph, that'll put us more than two days behind."
"I realize that," Eaton said, "and I regret it. But St. Joseph is the nearest town where we will be sure of finding medical attention."
"Let the sons of bitches sweat it out to Nebraska City," grumbled Pop Matson, the mate. "Hell, most of them will die anyway. What difference does it make with their kind if it's on our deck or in an infirmary bed somewhere?"
Eaton nodded his head solemnly, understanding Matson's bitterness and letting him have his say. Then he went on. "Men, I've just come from my cabin where Miss St. Clair is taking care of George Kimball. She says it doesn't look so good for him. There's glass in both his eyes, and he's lost more blood than a man's supposed to. This trip back to St. Joseph might cost us a contract and all our jobs, but it'll mean Kimball will get to a doctor
hours sooner, and right now that's all I care about."
Hearing that news, the others all nodded their agreement with Eaton.
"He saved this boat and all of us on it awhile ago," the captain went on. "If he had turned aside and run the Folly aground like I thought he should, the Golden Eagle would have drifted right down our throats before it went up. And even after the boat blew and George was cut to pieces, he still ran this craft the way it should be run. We owe him our lives, and we owe him a good run back to St. Joseph.
"Mr. Matson, I want every hand turned out, unless they're hurt, to help the engine crew, and Mr. Cravett, I want those engines pounding like thunder. We may not set any speed records from St. Charles to Fort Benton, but by George I want to set a new one from the Magellan Cutoff to St. Joseph. Any questions?"
When nobody spoke up, Eaton said, "All right, then, hop to it. When we get to St. Joseph, I'll wire Casey and Fairwell that we've fallen behind and why. You may go on upriver under a new skipper after that, but right this minute, I don't give a damn."
When the meeting was over, Eaton returned to his cabin to check on George Kimball. Georgia was sleeping lightly in a chair by the bed, but she roused when Paul came into the room.
"How's he doing?" Eaton asked.
"I gave him some laudanum," she said quietly, "and he's sleeping now. But Paul, I'm really worried. The last time I dressed his eyes, they were cloudy-like. You know? Like a cow's eyes when it's gone blind. I could see a couple of tiny pieces
of glass in them, but I was afraid to try to get them out." 
As they moved into the outer room of Eaton's quarters and closed the door to the room where Kimball was, Eaton told her, "You've done a good job, Georgia. Nobody on board could have done better. We're headed back down to St. Joseph now, and he'll have a doctor's care in a few hours. All we can do is keep him comfortable until then." 
"I just, feel so sorry for him, though," Georgia said. "He never complained once, but I could tell the land of pain he was going through." 
Eaton put his arms around her and pulled her to him. He kissed her softly, then said, "It's the risks of the job, honey. We live a chancey life here on the river, and all of us know that injury and death are just a natural part of it." 
Georgia gave him a faint smile and said, "I know, Paul. I'm just tired, that's all." 
"Well, go on back to your cabin and get some rest. I'll stay here with George a while, and then I'll send the steward in to watch after him." 
"No, I want to stay," she insisted. "I want to stay here with Mr. Kimball, and with you, in case either of you needs anything. Please." 
"Okay," Eaton told her. "I'm going to lie down for a few minutes, but if I doze off, don't let me sleep for more than half an hour. I need to be up and about in case there's any more problems." He pulled off his boots and shirt and threw himself down on the couch in the front room. 
In a moment Georgia came over and sat on the edge of the couch. "Roll over," she told him, "and I'll give you a rubdown. I always give papa one when he needs to relax." 
Eaton turned on his stomach and Georgia's strong fingers went to work, kneading and massaging the taut muscles of his neck and back. In moments she saw his eyes close and a contented smile came to his face. She continued her attentions long after she was sure he had gone to sleep, but her massaging eventually turned to caresses across the smooth, hard flesh of his back.
Finally she leaned down and lightly kissed his cheek, then whispered, "I love you," into his unhearing ear. She rose and turned the lamp in the room down to a faint glow, then returned to the chair beside George Kimball's bed.
GOLDEN EAGLE EXPLODED NEAR US IN MAGELLAN CUTOFF STOP KIMBALL BLINDED STOP HELD UP IN ST JOSEPH HALF DAY BUT NOW PROCEEDING AGAIN STOP SEND FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS TO NEBRASKA CITY STOP EATON
Tommie Casey stood in the telegraph office at the Omaha depot cursing under his breath as he reread Paul Eaton's message.
The telegram was tantalizingly brief, but Casey could pretty well fill in the gaps with his own imagination. The Sioux City boats had finally sprung their first trap, but it had apparently backfired on them. Instead of stopping Eaton as they had undoubtedly intended, one of their own boats was out of the race now. But that still left Charlie
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Fink in the lead, and even alone, he was a formidable opponent.
In twelve days on the river, Casey had yet to catch the first glimpse of the Maggie Dell, but he knew they were there, biding their time and waiting for the right opportunity to fabricate a disaster for one of the Missouri Northwest steamers. Fink would undoubtedly already have heard of the loss of the Golden Eagle, but Casey guessed that that would only strengthen the resolve of the captain of the Maggie Dell. Plenty of trouble still awaited them upriver.
And what compounded his problems was that now the space between his boat and Eaton's had broadened to about one hundred ten miles, nearly two days of uninterrupted travel on this part of the river. He considered the situation a minute more, then got a blank telegraph slip from the operator.
CAPTAIN PAUL EATON NEBRASKA CITY STOP WILL MAINTAIN PRESET LEAD FOR NOW STOP FINK STILL AHEAD STOP PROCEED WITH ALL POSSIBLE HASTE STOP WILL COMMUNICATE WITH YOU AGAIN AS NEED ARISES STOP SORRY ABOUT KIMBALL STOP GOOD MAN STOP CASEY.
The country continued to change as they proceeded upriver. The looming bluffs and lush farmland of Missouri and Iowa were gradually left behind. The woods and trees became more scarce, as did the firewood which they provided, and the surrounding countryside transformed into rolling hills which stretched away endlessly on both sides of the waterway like swelling seas. 
The river changed, too. It got broader and shallower, in some places so shallow that it was seemingly impassible to anything but the smallest of flatboats and mackinaws. Grasshoppering became an almost daily chore as more and more often the steamboats ground to a sudden halt on sand bars and reefs and had to be dragged forward by the long spars and nigger engines on the bow. Some days thirty and forty miles was considered good 
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progress, and the hundred and hundred-and-fifty- mile days of the lower river were long forgotten. 
Clarissa was adjusting to her new life aboard the Dakota Star, and she liked the work and responsibility of her job as boat's clerk. She found that she even enjoyed going ashore and bartering with the operators of the various wood lots to secure the best per-cord price for their firewood. She developed a positive talent for combining just the right amounts of feminine charm and intimidation to induce the wood hawks to sell to her at a lower price than they normally would. She worked long hours every day keeping track of the boat's stores of food and supplies and planning what purchases needed to be made at the next stopping point. 
The pilot, Tommie Casey, remained her constant rival aboard the Star, however, and in her first two weeks of being around him, she began to deduce that her two major crimes seemed to amount to being a woman doing what was customarily a man's job, and being British. He delighted in her slightest mistakes, pointing them out to all around who would listen, and derided her unmercifully any time her lack of knowledge about steamboat operation and procedure surfaced. 
But Clarissa had quickly learned to stand up to him, to answer his taunts and derisions in kind. As the days passed and she realized that she was doing her job well and holding her own, a new sort of confidence developed in her. The conflicts between her and Casey began to seem less like life-and-death battles and more like a harsh game they played. 
And she had one ally who was uninfluenced by 
anything negative Casey had to say about her-- Captain Mumple. The middle-aged captain guided and directed her like a patient father, carefully tutoring her in her duties, overlooking her mistakes and constantly encouraging her with reassurances that she was doing a good job. 
As they drew toward the end of the stretch of water which separated Iowa and Nebraska, quickly approaching the wilder regions of Dakota Territory, the talk of the crew began to focus on the new member of the crew they would meet there. 
Clarissa had never even heard of Yellowstone Kelly before, but to the people of this region he seemed to be a legend. They talked about him almost as if he were some sort of Moses, the only man who could lead them through whatever dangers lay ahead. And even before they reached Yankton, Clarissa found herself anticipating his coming in a similar way. Just the thought of having Yellowstone Kelly on board inspired confidence that they would make it through all right. 
At the southwest tip of Dakota, the river took a sharp turn westward. On the same day that they left the states and entered the territories, Clarissa saw her first Indian. 
She had come up on the hurricane deck searching for the captain when she spotted the man about a hundred yards away on the bank. He was a rather short man, but powerfully built, with skin the color of well-oiled buckskin. He wore only a breechcloth around his waist and had a number of necklaces hanging around his neck. His thick, dark hair hung down past his shoulders, and the back of his head was adorned with three white feathers, 
which stuck straight up in the air. For a time, he stood motionless, watching the steamboat course slowly by him, stoic and expressionless. 
Clarissa was entranced by the sight of him. There was something awesome and noble about the man that impressed her deeply. Finally she raised her' arm and waved, calling out a "Hello" across the water. Though he did not return the greeting, her action did seem to set him in motion. Casually he lifted the rifle which he had been holding by the barrel at his side and brought it to his shoulder. 
Suddenly a pair of hands grabbed Clarissa from behind and slammed her to the deck just as the rifle's report sounded across the water. With a thud of splintering wood, the bullet tore through the base of the pilothouse near her. 
"Damn fool woman," Casey exclaimed. He had dropped to the deck beside her and was holding her down with an arm across her back. "You want to get your ignorant self killed hollering at an Indian like that?" 
From above them in the pilothouse two shots sounded out, and an instant later someone else began shooting from the main deck below. The Indian turned and disappeared behind the hummock on which he had been standing. 
"We have to watch you like a child," Casey grumbled as he finally released Clarissa and got to his feet. "Waving at redskins like a damn missionary!"
"I didn't know," Clarissa told him angrily. "I just thought he would wave back. I didn't know he would start shooting at me." 
"That's my point exactly," Casey snapped. "You 
don't know anything. Not a damn thing!" Before she could "respond, he started away toward the pilothouse.
Clarissa stood glaring at his back for a moment, wanting to defend herself but seeing clearly that she had been in the wrong. And what was even more infuriating was that after just saving her life, Casey had not even left her an opportunity to express her gratitude. He could truly be an aggravating man. She turned to the stairs and started down, then met Captain Mumple coming up.
"Anybody hurt up there?" he asked.
"No," Clarissa told him. "I did a dumb thing, I guess. I waved at that Indian on the bank."
"That wasn't very wise," Mumple agreed. "You never know how these Indians are going to react. It used to be they always wanted us to stop and trade with them, or at least give them a drink of whiskey, but in the last few years, they've gotten meaner and more unpredictable. It's no unusual thing for them to lay up on the bank and take potshots at passing boats. They think the white men are stealing all the land from them, and I guess they're right."
"Well, I'll know better next time," Clarissa assured him. "But while you're here, I wanted to talk to you about the firewood, captain. You told me that sometime soon you would fill me in on all the stops where we can begin to stockpile a supply of fuel."
"It's a good idea," Mumple said. "Come down to my office and I'll show you on the map where our usual wood lot stops are." They started away, but then the captain turned and looked back up
toward the pilothouse where Casey was standing. "Mr. Casey," he called out. "Come Below when you can. We're going to talk about the wood situation."
When all three were gathered at the map in the captain's office, Mumple began pointing out to Clarissa all the points where they had stopped to buy wood in the past. "Firewood begins to be a worse and worse problem as we move on upriver," he explained. "There are fewer wooded areas to be found except along the creek banks and rivers, and fewer people to cut supplies for the steamboats. Most of the wood we do get our hands on is soft cottonwood, too. It burns poorly and produces much less heat than the good oak and hickory we've been buying, but it's about all there is to be found. From here on out, we should start buying all we can and storing it anywhere that's open on the main deck." 
"I think we'll soon find that we've got another problem concerning our firewood, too," Casey added. "From what I can tell, the Maggie Dell is holding steady about a half day ahead of us. I believe Charlie Fink will start trying to cut us off from all the wood supplies he can, buying up more than he needs just to keep us from getting our hands on it." 
"You're probably right, Tommie," Mumple agreed. "It's a problem we're going to have to take into consideration. Perhaps Mr. Kelly can help us deal with it when he joins up with us in Yankton. 
"Yeah, Yellowstone will know how to handle it," Casey said. "He knows most of these old mountain men who run the wood lots. At one time or an
other, he's probably saved most of their scalps from the hostiles."
"But as for your duties, Clarissa," the captain said, "from here on we need to buy every stick of wood at every lot we find. No matter what the cost."
"But we'll still be trying to get the best price we can," Casey cautioned. "If you have any trouble with the bartering, let one of us men know about it and we'll give you a hand."
"I think I've been doing alright on my own so far," Clarissa said shortly. "The captain hasn't complained about the prices I've arranged."
"That's true, Clarissa," Mumple said in a conciliatory tone. "You barter like old Shylock himself."
"But we both know it'll soon be a different type of man she'll be dealing with," Casey argued. "A couple of swishes of her skirt and a flash of ankle won't cut the mustard with hard-crusted old grizzly wrestlers like Liver-Eating Johnson."
"Mister Casey," Clarissa said. "I assure you that if I run into any difficulties I will not hesitate to bring your many masculine talents to bear on the problem. And henceforth I will do my best not to flaunt myself like a trollop for the sake of the Dakota Star."
Casey's patronizing grin only served to fuel her anger, but the captain put an end to the argument.
"You two bicker like a couple of children," he complained. "I'm getting a little tired of it. There is no doubt that we have an unusual situation here, but both of you are going to have to learn to live with it. Is that clear?"
"I just wish there was some way we could settle
our differences the way two men would," Casey said. 
"For the first time since I have been aboard this vessel," Clarissa said coldly, "I find myself in complete agreement with you." 
Dakota star limped into Yankton under partial power on June 4, crippled by a boiler accident and no longer able to operate under full power for fear of an explosion. The mishap had occurred two days earlier', when a large pipe ruptured, badly scalding two deck hands and completely disabling the steamboat. Temporary repairs had been made to enable them to crawl on to the port.
Though the accident and the delays it caused did not make Mumple and Casey very easy to be near, Clarissa welcomed the layover as a chance to get off the boat for a while in a town of some size. With the captain's permission, Clarissa had drawn an advance on her forty-dollar-per-month salary, and she and Mary Doddsworth were eagerly planning a shopping trip into town.
Yankton's fortune had been made a few years earlier when it was reached by a spur line of the
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Union Pacific railroad. Despite the arrival of the steel rails and the ensuing rush of settlers eager to open up new lands for farming and development, Yankton remained a wide-open place, acknowledged even by its inhabitants as still very much a rough and tumble frontier town. 
When the Dakota Star nosed in against the Yankton levee, most of the passengers and crew were on deck to watch. Clarissa was there with the rest, and she immediately spotted the man she felt sure must be Yellowstone Kelly. 
He was a man of medium height and build, dressed casually in high-topped leather boots, tan trousers, jacket and wide-brimmed white hat. His dark hair was thick, rolling down to the top of his shoulders, and he wore a thick mustache. He was a handsome man, hardly more than thirty years old, with a smooth, tan complexion and intense, wizened eyes. In one hand he held a rifle, and in the other he held the reins of a short, lean pony which stood beside him. 
"Kelly, you old Sioux Chaser," Casey bellowed out from the pilothouse. "How in the hell are you?" 
A fleeting smile crossed the hunter's face and he acknowledged the greeting with a wave of his rifle. 
"Come aboard," Casey called down. "I'll be down to meet you in the captain's quarters in a little while." 
As the crew was sliding the long gangplank to the bank, Kelly dropped the reins of his horse to the ground. To Clarissa, it looked as if he turned aside a moment and spoke quietly to the animal. When he walked away, the horse stayed where it was. 
Clarissa was eager to meet this famous scout, trapper and river boat defender, but she knew she would not be welcome in the captain's quarters just then. They would have a lot of man-talk to do, and Casey would certainly not want any women around, especially her, to inhibit them.
In a moment Mary Doddsworth came to her side and said, "Well, are you ready to explore Yankton, Clarissa?"
"Yes," Clarissa said. "I can't wait to start plundering through the first dress shop we come to. I know you're tired of having to share your whole wardrobe with another woman."
By late afternoon the two women were back aboard the Dakota Star, pleased with their tour of the town but glad now to be back at the boat and out of the melee and confusion in town. As Mary Doddsworth went off to find her husband, Clarissa hurried to her cabin to try on one of the dresses she had bought. Two of the three dresses were simple, functional frocks which she could work in, but the third was something much more special.
Once upon a time, in what seemed like another life back in England, the buying of clothes had been no special thrill, but now, after parting with all the fine clothes she had brought and spending so much time in men's garb, these new clothes held a special significance for her. She was determined that while they were stopped in Yankton, at least once she would do her level best to make herself as attractive and feminine as she once was most of the time.
In her small cabin, she bathed herself carefully and put on the best dress. It was a yellow and white print which bared most of her shoulders and
dropped to a daringly low neckline in front, edged with fine lace around the bodice. The skirts were long and full, lined with a soft satin material, and as a final extravagance in town, she had spent her last few dollars on three lacy white petticoats to wear underneath. 
Without the proper combs and curlers, she had still carefully arranged her blond hair on top of her head in a close approximation of the style she used to wear it in at home. As a last touch, she moistened her throat and wrists from the tiny bottle of perfume she had purchased. It was delightful to feel pretty and soft and feminine again. 
As she stood gazing at herself with approval in the small mirror in the cabin, she suddenly realized how different she was from the girl who had stepped onto that sailing ship in England a couple of months before. She never would have owned a dress like this then. It was too daring, and she knew her mother would have cringed to see such an expanse of breast and cleavage available for male inspection. 
But there was some sort of excitement connected with wearing it now. She was not exactly flaunting her body, but she knew she was openly calling attention to herself in a way she would never have thought of doing before. It made her happy to think that soon men would be surveying her and thinking how pretty and attractive she was. A woman needed that occasionally, no matter where she was or what sort of difficult life she was leading. 
When she was fully prepared, Clarissa left her cabin and strolled down the deck. As she passed the open doorway of the captain's dining room, she noticed Mumple inside and stopped off there. 
The captain was giving final instructions for what was obviously a special dinner that evening, but when he saw Clarissa, he stopped in midsentence and just gazed at her for an instant. 
"You look lovely, Clarissa," Mumple exclaimed with a broad smile. "I'll tell you the truth. It's very few boats on this or any other river that could boast a clerk to match the one we have here on the Star." 
"Thank you, captain," Clarissa said, and smiled. "It's vain, I suppose, but I just couldn't resist showing off my new dress to somebody." 
"You couldn't have picked a better time," the captain said. "I'd be pleased if you would act as hostess at our dinner tonight. I've invited a few of the local stuffed shirts out, and I can't think of anybody who would make a better impression than you, the way you look just now." 
Though no part of the Dakota Star had been designed with formal entertainment in mind, the cook and steward did their best to make the evening an elegant affair. They had scoured the town for the best provisions available, and had ended up with a very respectable buffet of beef, pork, venison and fish, as well as a variety of hard-to-get fresh fruits and vegetables. To round the menu out, Casey had somehow come up with a case of good French wine. The buffet was set up in the captain's dining room but the passengers and guests ate anywhere they could find a comfortable place around the upper two decks of the boat. 
Not completely by accident, Clarissa soon found herself in the vicinity of where Yellowstone Kelly and a group of several other men had chosen to 
settle on the hurricane deck. Clarissa had finally been introduced to the scout about half an hour earlier, but the encounter had left her disappointed and confused. Instead of being impressed and attracted by her pretty clothes and good looks as she had hoped, he seemed intimidated by them and had ended the superficial exchange of talk with her as quickly as possible. 
Both of the boat's pilots and the captain were in the group gathered around Kelly on the upper deck, and Clarissa's presence was scarcely noticed as the others listened closely to Kelly's discussion of the recent developments in the Indian campaigns farther to the west. 
"It's a fine plan if it works," Kelly was saying in his smooth, easy manner. Clarissa had previously noted that his speech was proper and hinted at a good education, which was hardly consistent with what she had expected to hear from a rugged frontiersman and Indian fighter of his standing. As he spoke, he sketched an imaginary map with his finger on the deck in front of him. 
"General Terry plans to bring three forces together from different directions and bottle the Sioux up in the middle so they'll be forced to fight. General Crook will move northwest up the old Bozeman Trail over in Wyoming, and at the same time, Colonel Gibbon will be going south with his infantry along the Bighorn River. Colonel Custer's Seventh Cavalry left Fort Abraham Lincoln a few days ago and will be going due west up the Yellowstone and finally up the Bighorn. 
"If a big battle shapes up in the area," Kelly speculated, his finger still tracing the features of 
the terrain, "I'd say it will probably come right in about here, somewhere in the neighborhood of the Little Bighorn River." "It sounds like a fine plan," one of the visitors from Yankton said. He was a tall, skinny man with broad grin and politician's manners. "We've rd some fine reports about Colonel George Custer. Folks in these parts have only the utmost respect for him, and I'll wager he'll have his Seventh right there in the thick of it when the looting starts." Kelly glanced up at the speaker with an appraising glance and said, "Sir, if you're open to hearing the truth as I see it, I'll tell you my opinion. Colonel Custer is a popinjay, a glory-seeking fop and a dangerously faulty tactician. General Terry sent me a message that he wanted me to lead Custer into the Bighorn country. I told him I wouldn't lead Custer to a dogfight, nor would I so readily accompany him to the grave when he met the Sioux."
The man who had supported Custer started to speak up again in the colonel's defense, but a cold glance from Kelly shut him up.
"I rode right through the heart of that country not too long ago," Kelly went on, talking to the whole group again. "The winds are heavy with the talk of war. The Sioux and other tribes are desperate to hold back this migration of white men, and they see now that their only hope to do it is to slaughter every soldier and settler who sets foot on their assigned lands. There's talk of alliances out there between tribes that have been at war with each other for hundreds of years."
"Yes, but surely all those thousands of soldiers will make quick work of a few ragged plains tribes easily enough," the Custer man ventured.
"War chiefs like Crazy Horse and a few others lead what I think are probably the best mounted fighting men in the world, bar none," Kelly stated with conviction. "In my day, I've fought again them and alongside them, and there are no brave, more cunning or resilient warriors to be found anywhere. The white man may have the railroads, steamboats, cannons and an endless supply of men and equipment, but the Sioux have one factor on their side which will insure that it will still be a hard won conquest."
"What's that, Kelly?" Casey asked quietly.
"They're fighting to survive," Kelly said with an unmistakable trace of sadness in his voice. "You fight that kind of fight sometime and see how tough you get."
Clarissa listened for a while longer, but the talk soon turned to business affairs on the upper river and other matters about which she was not interested. She wandered down to the passenger deck and got herself another glass of the wine and began to mingle with the other passengers. She realized that the wine was beginning to make her lightheaded. It was her fourth or fifth glass--she had forgotten which--and that was a signal that it was affecting her.
But instead of making her cheerful and gay as wine usually did, it began to make her nervous about the crowds of people on the decks and impatient with their empty chatter. Something had gone wrong about the evening. The good mood which she had been in when she was fixing herself
up that afternoon was gone, and now she just felt vaguely disappointed about nothing in particular, and somehow lonely even in the midst of all these people. Finally she went back up on the hurricane deck by the back stairs and sought the solitude of a deserted spot near the rear of the pilothouse. She stood for a while enjoying the cooling northwest breeze, and finally she impulsively unpinned her elaborate hair-do and let it fall down behind her to blow lightly in the wind. It felt good to be alone here for a while, away from everything and everybody else.
She heard footsteps behind her and turned to see Casey rounding a comer of the pilothouse, headed toward the ladder. In the darkness, he did not notice her immediately, but then she spoke up. "Good evening, Mr. Casey," she said.
"Oh, hello," Casey said. "What are you doing out here by yourself?"
"Your wine was too good," she told him lightly. "I just came up to let my head clear a minute."
"Well, I'm sorry to disturb you. I was just headed up to get my pipe. I think I left it up there."
"You didn't disturb me," Clarissa said.
Casey paused, one hand and one foot on the ladder, staring over at her a moment. "I've been meaning to tell you," he said, seeming a little embarrassed and awkward. "I think you look very pretty tonight. It's quite a change from the ragamuffin we hauled out of the river down below Independence."
"It's a little surprising hearing a compliment come from you," Clarissa told him, "but I thank you all the same."
Casey only smiled and started to climb the ladder
again, but she stopped him once more." "Tommie?" she said softly.
He turned his head, curious about her tone of voice and her rare use of his first name. "Please come here a minute," she asked.
He moved closer to her until they could see each other's faces clearly.
"Must we fight all the time?" she asked. "Is there something that says it has to be that way between us?"
Casey chuckled softly at the question and said, "I don't know of any such rule."
"I can't really understand how we got started out at such cross-currents," Clarissa told him. "It just seems like who we are and what our backgrounds might be shouldn't make so much difference. I get tired of all these ill feelings and sometimes. I'd much rather just be friends. Do you think we could manage that?"
Casey stood looking at her for a moment, a slight, pleasant smile on his face. "The way you look at this instant," he said, "so fresh and lovely in your pretty yellow dress, any man would have to be a fool to say no to a question like that and no fools came out of my daddy's house on Dexter Street."
Impulsively Clarissa put her arms around his neck and gently eased his head down to hers, it was a long, warm kiss which ended when she opened her eyes slightly and realized that he was watching her.
"You kiss with your eyes open?" she asked.
Casey laughed and said, "Sure. Why not?"
"It feels funny, that's all," she said. "It's 
uncomfortable to think that somebody's watching me when I'm kissing him."
Casey just laughed again and mumbled an insincere, "Sorry."
"And it doesn't really seem like all this laughing and kissing go together either," Clarissa told him, reddening, suddenly feeling embarrassed about the whole thing. "It makes me wonder what's so amusing about the way I kiss."
"You're the one who's acting strange," Casey told her. That old familiar edge of impatience was beginning to ease back into his voice. "You're the one who kissed me, lady. Not the other way around."
"I just felt like doing it, and I believed you would like it. A minute ago you were acting so nice and all. I mean, you really didn't mind my kissing you, did you?".
"Of course not. I liked it, but that was before I knew all those rules went along with it. No laughing, No looking. I swear, you Britishers have some strange ways of going about things. A healthy Irish lass would just go ahead and kiss a man without worrying if his tie was straight and his hair slicked back."
"Oh, what's the use?" Clarissa said, turning away from him suddenly. "I saw from the first moment we met that you have the sensitivities of a turnip, and it was ridiculous of me to think that you could ever change that, or that I could!"
"Well excuse me all to hell and back," Casey said angrily. "It's just that when the lofty folk stoop to pay a little attention to us commoners, we get all aflutter and don't know how to behave ourselves, according to the rules."
Furious, Clarissa spun to rush away from him, but the toe of her shoe caught in the hem of her petticoat and she measured herself out on deck. As she rolled over and looked up at Casey, he was sputtering to hold his laughter in.
Dangerously close to tears of humiliation and rage, Clarissa said, "If you laugh at me now, Tommie Casey!" But he had already started away, anxious to get out of sight before he burst.
The clerk's office aboard the Dakota Star was scarcely bigger than an average closet. A small desk and chair consumed more than two thirds of its area, and no more than three people could crowd into it comfortably. But Clarissa was proud of the place because it was her office, and because within its confines she was a necessary and worthwhile part of the operation of the steamboat.
She had come here today more to be alone than to work. Her books were up to date and there was very little she would have to do until they stopped again for wood or supplies.
The last few days had been vaguely uncomfortable for her. The feuding with Casey continued, and she had found that her only relief was to stay away from him as much as possible, which was not always easy on a steamboat.
Clarissa was surprised and disappointed when
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they left Yankton and she found that Yellowstone Kelly did not stay aboard the boat. She had hoped to make friends with him and to learn more about the fascinating life he led. His presence, she had thought, would give her some relief from the tedium of daily routine, and she had planned in her mind the various things she would do to make a favorable impression on him and become his friend.
But a half day before the Star had left Yankton, Clarissa had spotted Kelly riding north on his horse. When she finally found the opportunity to casually question Captain Mumple about this, he had told her that Kelly's duties would probably keep him away from the boat most of the time. He would be almost constantly ahead of them, hunting, scouting the river ahead, checking out the Indian situation and keeping an eye on Charlie Fink and the Maggie Dell. Kelly's job was to be their eyes and ears along the stretches of river which lay ahead. Specific rendezvous had been set up at forts, towns and other points along the river, and Kelly would check back with them at those places. If necessary, the scout could also communicate with their companion boat, the Richland's Folly, which had come up to within a day of the Star due to the Star's long layover in Yankton.
As Clarissa sat there in her office daydreaming and wondering how she would pass the day, the cabin boy came to her office and told her the captain wanted to see her. She left the office, locking the door behind her, and started down the deck to Mumple's office. When she went in, she found Casey already there with the captain.
"Thanks for coming, Clarissa," Mumple said. "Casey and I were just discussing the wood situation up ahead at Scalper Nickerson's wood lot, and I thought you should be here to listen too."
"As near as I can figure," Casey said, "the Maggie Dell is only a few miles ahead of us now. I thought those two days we lost in Yankton would have put us quite a ways behind, but they broke down too and had to put in at Fort Randall for repairs. We might even have a chance to catch up and pass them at Fort Sully, but for the time being, I'd just as soon let them keep the lead they've got."
"I agree with you, Tommie," Mumple said. "If we were to overtake Fink now, then he would be in a good position to pull something on your friend Paul Eaton and the Folly. Captain Eaton and that pilot he's got, Bedford, are doing an amazing job considering what they've been up against, but we'll still be wise to run interference for them as long as possible."
"But what about this problem with the wood lot?" Clarissa asked.
"Oh yes, the wood lot," Mumple said. Pointing to the map, his finger came to rest on a horseshoe bend near Fort Thompson about ten miles ahead of where they were. "Here's the rub. By the time we reach Fort Thompson, the Maggie Dell will already be well into the bend. It's shallow water and slow-going the whole fourteen miles around, but over here, on the far side of the bend, lies the prize, Scalper Nickerson's wood yard. It's one of the last sources of fuel for quite a few miles of river, and old Scalper knows he's got a good thing going."
"And the way things are now," Clarissa 
surmised, "the Maggie Dell will reach it before us buy all the wood."
"That's absolutely right," Casey said. "And if that happens, before we get too much farther upriver we'll have to stop and cut our own fuel, haul a lot of deadfall and debris out of the river and use it in the fireboxes. Either possibility will waste time we can't afford to lose."
Clarissa studied the map a moment, then pointed at the narrow peninsula of land which lay within the middle of the long river bend. "How far is it straight across here?" she asked. "It doesn't look to be more than two or three miles at most."
"That's about right," Mumple agreed.
"Then it seems to me," Clarissa said, "that a person walking straight across from Fort Thompson might beat Captain Fink to the lot and have the wood bought before he even got there."
Casey and Mumple exchanged troubled glances, and finally Casey said, "We've handled it that way in the past. Sometimes the wood comes dearly, as much as nine or ten dollars a cord, but it's worth the price." He paused a moment, then added, "And that was when we had male clerks who could handle the journey."
Clarissa felt her face flush at the jab, but she responded quickly, "I see no reason to change the procedure."
"Clarissa, girl," Mumple said quietly, "this is no casual undertaking. It's not a thing you have to do just to prove to me or Casey or anybody else that you do your job as well as any man. It looks to be a short distance on the map here, but the doesn't tell the whole story. There are any number
of perils to be met out there, and you are, after all your objections, still a woman."
"If it is a part of my job, captain," Clarissa protested, "then I should be the one to go. Even though I am only a mere woman, I've done all of the duties of your clerk up until now, and I want to keep on doing them. But of course, the final decision rests with you."
The captain's and Casey's eyes met again and Casey said at last, "I never seen the like of this woman for pure-out ornery stubbornness. I guess we could send along a couple of crewmen to guard her and the money if she's so dead set on doing it."
"We could do that," Mumple agreed reluctantly. "If we put them ashore before dawn, nobody would see them start out, and they could reach the Scalper's by eight or nine in the morning. But are you sure you want to do this, Clarissa? Are you absolutely certain?"
"I'm sure, captain," she told him.
They reached Fort Thompson near dusk, but paused there only long enough to leave a message for the Richland's Folly, then steamed on about five more miles upriver before stopping for the night. They could not make much progress after dark, but occasionally Casey would risk running a few miles along the less treacherous stretches of water. Their plan hinged on being in the proper place to put Clarissa and her escort ashore in the darkness of the early morning hours.
At the place Casey chose, the river was flanked on its western side by high, eroded clay banks. The country beyond was stark and rolling, supporting only the tenacious sage grass and a few spotty
clumps of thick brush. After receiving a few final instructions about the lay of the land to the west. Clarissa and her two guards stepped ashore an scrambled up the steep bank in the darkness.
Clarissa was pleased with the captain's choice of the two men who would accompany her. One was named Sparky Bird, an engineer's assistant. A couple of times she had seen Sparky potshooting from the deck of the Star and she knew he was a crack shot with a rifle.
The second man was known simply as Brule. He was a towering giant with a homely, dull face and seemingly limitless strength, but he was a gentle man, too, and he had always treated Clarissa with a respect which verged on reverence.
She and both men carried rifles and small packs of food, and in addition, Clarissa had the funds to pay Scalper Nickerson for the wood wrapped in a piece of canvas and tied around her waist beneath her loose-fitting shirt.
Though dawn was still two or three hours off, they had no trouble navigating by the stars across the broad, open terrain in the dark morning hours. Sparky led them out at a lively pace which caused Clarissa to have to jog occasionally to keep up, but she did not complain or ask him to slow down. Speed was essential here, and she was determined that they should make the trip across this finger of land as quickly as the three of them could do. If they failed to get there in time to buy the wood she wanted it to be because Casey's estimation of the Maggie Dells lead was wrong, not because she had dallied during the crossing.
At about the midway point, they paused atop one of the highest hills they had come to and
looked back in the direction they had come. A short distance upriver from where they had come ashore, they spotted the distant running lights of the Dakota Star atop its tall twin chimneys.
"They shore ain't makin' very good time so far," Sparky commented. "Looks to me like we've gone farther than they have already."
"They musta hit a bar in the dark an' had to start grasshopperin' already," Brule said. "There's three or four bad ones in that bend, an' it's a good place to find snags to run up on, too."
"At this rate," Sparky said, "it'll take them on into the afternoon to get on 'round yonder. An' there we'll be, lyin' up on the bank like lords, drinkin' ol' Scalper's whiskey up for him."
"Well, if it takes the Star a long time to get around the bend," Clarissa said, "it'll take the Maggie Dell just as long, and that's in our favor. I'll buy your whiskey myself if we get there in time to buy that wood first."
"Miss Manchester," Sparky told her with a broad smile, "you got yourself a bargain there, ma'am." He turned and stepped out at an even livelier pace, and the other two fell in behind him again.
After another forty-five minutes of vigorous walking, they topped a small rise and spotted Nickerson's wood yard about half a mile ahead. In the growing light of dawn, Clarissa could clearly make out the woodcutter's small, rude cabin, as well as the several cords of wood he had cut and stacked in convenient places near the river's edge. The area immediately surrounding the cabin, as well as the river bank for several hundred yards in both directions, was littered with the stumps of trees, but farther away up and down the river bank
were the thick groves of cottonwood trees which Nickerson cut to make his living.
As they hurried across the remaining space and drew near Nickerson's cabin, they saw that he was not alone there. Gathered around a small fire about twenty feet from his front stoop were two white men and five Indians, all smoking pipes and cigars and holding metal cups of coffee. They all looked up at the new arrivals, but none seemed any too pleased by it.
Clarissa decided to let Sparky break the ice since he already knew the wood hawk.
"Hey Scalper," Sparky said. "How you been keepin', old timer?" His tone was friendly enough, but Clarissa noticed that he held the rifle with both hands, not quite threatening the men at the fire but still ready.
"Things been tolerable, Sparky. Just tolerable," one of the white men answered up. He was a filthy grizzled old man with wrinkled, leathery skin and a ragged mop of graying hair which looked as if it had been carelessly cropped off with a knife blade. He did not seem particularly surprised by the arrival overland, but he was making a careful appraisal of Clarissa's presence in the group.
"I see you got it sawed up an' waitin' for us down there," Sparky said. He had stopped a few feet away from the group, and Clarissa was to one side and slightly behind him. Brule had moved a short distance to the other side and was watching the men ahead of them closely.
When Nickerson didn't answer, Sparky asked, "What kind of outrageous price you tryin' to steal from folks for your wood this season?"
Nickerson took a swig of coffee and swirled
it around in his mouth like a wine taster before swallowing it down. Then he put his pipe in his teeth, puffed it back to life and drew his lungs full of smoke. "'Pears I done sold it all already," he said. "Temple here jus' bought every damn stick I got for the Maggie Dell." The man he indicated was squatting to his left. He was a lean, slouching character with a big, shapeless hat pulled far down over his face. Ever since their arrival, he had been eyeing them with a silent, suspicious sneer.
"Maybe you didn't get as good a price as you could have for your wood, Mr. Nickerson," Clarissa said, finally stepping up beside Sparky and entering the conversation.
"That just might be, missy," Nickerson reflected. "Seems like no matter what a man does, he's always takin' some kind of risks."
"My name is Clarissa Manchester," she told him, "and I work as clerk aboard the Dakota Star. I'm prepared to make you a counteroffer for your wood."
Nickerson reappraised her with a more intent glance then, and the crooked grin which contorted his features indicated that he found that information somehow amusing. "Sure 'nough?" he asked. "You clerk for Peter Mumple?" He glanced over at Sparky, as if for a confirmation.
"Missouri Northwest sure must be gettin' hard up," the man called Temple mumbled into his coffee cup. Then he raised his head slowly, looked Clarissa square in the eye and added, "Hirin' cunts to keep their books."
Clarissa saw both her companions tense up at the remark, but she hurried on to prevent a fight from starting. "If you'll give me a chance to discuss
this with you in private, Mr. Nickerson, I'll beat any price this courteous gentleman here has offered.".
"Talk don't cost nothin'," Nickerson allowed rising to his feet. "Come on in the cabin if you think you an' me need some privacy." As Clarissa followed the wood hawk toward the cabin, Temple tracked their progress with a dour, threatening stare. Sparky and Brule went with her as far as the doorway, then stopped outside. Nickerson slid the door closed and then turned to light a crude lamp on a table in the center of the room.
"Okay, missy," he said, advancing unnecessarily close. "What you got to pay me with that's better'n what Temple out there offered?" He seemed about to make a grab for her, but she brought up the barrel of her rifle and pointed it straight at his belly.
"I'm sure we're talking about a cash-and-carry business here," she told him. "The Dakota Star doesn't carry any kind of trade goods, and neither do I."
The wood cutter glanced down at the rifle barrel, obviously not very worried about her implied threat, then looked back up at her and said, "Shit, I thought maybe that's why they sent you over."
"Sorry," Clarissa told him. "Now here's what the price is--whatever that man Temple offered, plus fifty cents a cord. You can't lose with that kind of bargain."
"Me'n Frank done shook on the deal," Nickerson told her. Now that he saw that he was not going to get any special favors, he seemed much less interested in bartering for the wood. "An' besides that, I don't plan to face up to Charlie Fink with
no news that I sold my woodpile out from under him."
"How do you feel about facing up to Tommie Casey with the same news?" Clarissa asked. It irritated her to have to fall back on Casey's influence even in this manner.
"I'd druther," Nickerson admitted frankly. "Casey, he might beat hell out of me if he got mad enough, but Charlie Fink'd just as soon gut a man out as he would look at him. No, ma'am, it wouldn't be the same a'tall."
Clarissa pondered the situation a moment, then finally said, "Well, how's this, then? You sell half your supply to the Maggie Dell at the price you agreed on, and I'll buy the other half for fifty cents more. What could be fairer than that? And I'll have those two men outside stand with you to make sure that Charlie Fink doesn't lay a hand on you."
Nickerson was suddenly uncomfortable with the position he was in. He obviously would like to get his hands on the extra money, but he was not sure he could get away with keeping back half of his wood. "Me'n Temple done shook for the whole lot already," he said hesitantly.
"And you're a man that never broke a promise in his life, I suppose?"
"No ma'am," Nickerson assured her with an attempt at piety, "always tried to play it straight, I have." Then his eyes took on a look of cunning and the grin returned to his face. " 'Course it might be different if there was jus' some kind of booty to sweeten the pot. I might could figger something out then. A man gets plumb lonely with the kind
of life I lead an' never seem' no womanfolk 'cept these dirty squaw women."
"You can just put that out of your mind, Mr. Nickerson," Clarissa said calmly but sternly. "I'm not here to help you deal with your loneliness. I just want to buy your wood for the Dakota Star."
Just then the door opened and Sparky stepped inside. He looked worried. "I think we got problems out here, ma'am," he said quietly, still looking out the open door. "Them Indians out there--I make them out to be Arikaras, an' I don't trust them. Just after you come in here, that Temple fellow an' them Injuns kinda walked a little ways off an' parleyed a while, an' I saw him give them somethin'. Then they come back to the fire an' squatted back down. They're up to somethin'."
"Hell, Sparky," Nickerson scoffed. "They're probably just talkin' 'bout this here yella-haired woman. Them's pet Injuns out there. I've even kept their women before. They jus' come down here askin' to cut wood so they could earn themselves some whiskey money."
"I still don't like it," Sparky warned. "You old rogue you, if you let them do anything to this here woman, I'll gut you like a boar hog and stake you out in the sun for buzzard bait."
"They ain't done no harm," Nickerson repeated.
"Okay, then, old man," Sparky said. "You come out with me an' tell them to behave their damn selves while we're here. I'm keepin' the muzzle of this here Henry rifle pointed at your gut, an' if I don't like what you're sayin', I'm gonna cut you down."
"Dammit, Sparky," Nickerson complained as he
started out, "you're touchy as a tail-shot jackass."
"Just you mind what I said. I mean it."
As the two men walked outside, Clarissa stepped to the doorway and stood nervously watching. She could sense the tension in the air as they neared the fire, and when they stopped, Temple and the five Indians rose slowly and cautiously to their feet. Brule had taken up a position about midway between the fire and the cabin, his rifle ready.
Sparky quietly hissed something to the wood man which Clarissa could not make out, and then Nickerson spoke up, talking in a guttural Indian tongue. The five Indians listened to him without expression. Temple had eased around until he had one Indian partially between himself and Sparky's rifle.
Nickerson continued his lecture a moment, apparently doing as he had been instructed, cautioning the Indians to keep the peace. But as the tension increased in the clearing, Clarissa began to sense that forces were at work here which were beyond the mere power of words to halt. The threat of violence hung above the heads of the nine men like a foreboding storm cloud.
From where she stood, Clarissa was the first to spot the pistol in Temple's hand. Even as she screamed out a warning, Temple raised the gun up to shoulder height and fired. Sparky's head whipped back as the bullet smashed into his forehead, but almost at the same instant, his rifle discharged. Scalper Nickerson, howling out his surprise and pain, grabbed at his side where the bullet
had cut into him and fell lengthways across the fire. Nobody made any attempt to help him as he rolled to the side, thrashing around in agony with his shirt front ablaze.
By then the whole clearing had erupted into a chaos of gunfire. Brule, down on one knee with his rifle to his shoulder, was levering out a steady stream of shots. The first of his rounds cut down the Indian in front of Temple, but he didn't even pause as the Indian fell away. He had Temple in his sights. Two shots slammed into the Maggie Dell agent's midsection, flinging him back flat on the ground.
But in another instant, Brule went down too, bleeding from half a dozen wounds from the Indian rifles. Then suddenly it was over. The clearing was filled with the acrid smell of gunsmoke, and the stillness which enveloped the area served almost as a punctuation to the flurry of violence which had taken place there.
The fight had lasted no more than ten seconds.
Clarissa felt her knees buckle and her eyes roll. As the blackness engulfed her, she reached out for the door jamb to support herself, but it was no use.
Clarissa came to as one of the Indians was tying her across the back of a horse. She thrashed around for a moment in terror, but he already had her hands and feet tied together with a rope stretched beneath the horse's belly. All her efforts did no good.
He was a short man with shoulder-length, greasy black hair and flat, ugly features. He wore only a ragged pair of cavalry trousers, and his heavy odor hung thickly in the air around them. He laughed coarsely at her struggles, then cuffed her in the side of the head and mumbled something in his language, which she took for an order to be still.
Clarissa soon became aware of the crackle and pop of flames, and by craning her head awkwardly to the side, she could look over at the cabin, which was already burning furiously. Down near the river's edge, two more Indians were putting the
283
torch to the cords of wood that were stacked up and waiting for the steamboats. By the way the flames crept steadily down the long line of wood, she guessed that they must have doused it with something to make it burn faster. 
Two bodies were within her range of vision. One was Temple, the man from the Maggie Dell who had set this tragedy in motion. He was lying on his side, curled up like a sleeping child. 
But the body of the wood hawk, Scalper Nickerson, presented a much more grim sight. His exposed chest was charred and grisly from the burning of his shirt, and the remains of the garment were still smouldering at his sides. The wound, high up on his left side, where Sparky's bullet had torn out of his chest was clearly visible, and there was also a thumb-sized bloody wound in the side of his face. The Indians had apparently finished him off after the fight was over. 
When the Indian in front of her finished his work, Clarissa's body was stretched tightly and uncomfortably across the horse's back. She dreaded the pain of being carried away like this, but that was obviously what they had in mind for her. 
Then, some distance away to the north, hope blared out for her in the form of a long blast from a steamboat whistle. Clarissa strained her neck to see, but the boat was still out of sight around a distant bend. Surely, she thought, they would let her go now, with a boatload of white men so close at hand. The boat was the Maggie Dell, but at the moment she didn't care what boat it was just so their arrival here would stop her abduction by these savages. 
But the steamboat whistle only made the Indians 
work faster. They rushed around the clearing, gathering up the last of their booty from the area. One of them stooped beside Temple's body and began rifling through his pockets. He tossed a handful of paper money aside without interest, but kept a pocket watch, knife and pipe, which he stuffed down into a pouch on his belt. Finally he unstrapped Temple's gunbelt, stuck the revolver down into the holster and slung the belt over his shoulder. 
Then the Indians leaped on the backs of their horses and started away at a gallop, leading the animal Clarissa was tied across and another which bore the body of their fallen comrade. The pain from the ropes around Clarissa's wrists, and the pounding of the horse's back into her stomach, was agonizing, but the Indians ignored her screams and cries of pain. They rode through the band of trees along the river and then topped a barren rise beyond just as the steamboat poured out another long blast from its whistle. Clarissa's hopes turned to despair. 
By early afternoon, after several hours of steady riding, Clarissa floated on a wave of delirium, only occasionally drifting into consciousness. Her body and mind were numb. Pain no longer registered as a specific reality, but more as a dark, overpowering force which held her totally within its grasp. Her pleas and cries had long since faded to occasional moans and sobs. 
When they stopped at last near sunset, she was only aware of it in terms of a cessation of the agony. One of the Indians loosened the ropes and allowed her to slip roughly to the ground, leaving her where she landed as he led the horse away. She 
lay still, crying in gratitude for the rest, and welcomed the blackness again into her mind. 
When Clarissa came to at last, the world had taken on definition and clarity again. They were down in a deep draw of some kind. It was dark and she was cold. A fire blazed a few feet away, but when she tried to sit up and go over to it, sharp stabs of pain shot through her midsection like searing flames. 
Three of the Indians were sitting around the fire, talking quietly among themselves and gnawing on some kind of food. When one of them noticed her move, he pointed it out to the others and they seemed to start discussing her, laughing occasionally in a guttural tone. Finally one of them reached up to the spit across the flames and pulled loose a hunk of meat which he pitched over in her direction. The piece of food lay in the dirt about a foot from her face and she studied it a moment with distaste, nauseated by its odor. 
With some effort, she rose slowly to a sitting position and muttered, "Water. Please, I'm thirsty." The Indians stared at her, not understanding, until she made the motion of tipping a glass to her mouth. Then one of them grunted and pointed to a pile of weapons and gear which they had unloaded near the horses. Clarissa saw a canteen on top of the pile. 
Getting to the canteen ten feet away seemed a more difficult task than the entire three-mile walk she had made with Sparky and Brule that morning, but she finally got to her hands and knees and crawled to it on limbs which seemed to be made of limp rubber. The canteen had "u.s. army" stenciled across its canvas cover. 
She drank ravenously, and the water had an immediate reviving effect on her. Her head began to clear, and it seemed almost like she could feel the strength and control returning to her limbs and body. After she drank her fill, she poured some of the water on her bleeding wrists to rinse off the dirt and sand, then blotted them dry on her shirt. 
The Indians were still watching her and talking as she got to her feet and walked slowly back to the place where she had laid. She picked up the piece of meat they had thrown at her and examined it. It was layered with dirt, so she went back to the canteen and rinsed it off, then tried a bite. The outside was scorched and gritty, and the meat inside was stringy and nearly raw, but it still tasted good. She wolfed it down quickly, then walked over toward the fire and asked, "Can I have some more?" She pointed toward what appeared to be the carcass of-a large bird which was skewered across the top of the dancing flames. One of the Indians nodded and said something in his own tongue. 
She reached for a knife to cut herself a piece, but as her fingers touched the hilt of the weapon, the Indian nearest her caught her across the face with a backhand slap which sprawled her in the dirt. In an instant he was holding the knife himself, brandishing it in her direction and growling out a rebuke which needed no translation for Clarissa. When he was finished, he stuck the knife in the ground, tore off another piece of meat with his fingers and threw it at her. Crying softly, Clarissa carried the food a few feet away from the fire and sat down to eat it. 
After a while the fourth Indian came down the draw and stooped by the fire. He had apparently been out scouting the area, because as he talked to the others, he kept pointing in various directions around their campsite. Clarissa stayed off to one side, cold and uncomfortable but afraid to go over to the fire and risk more punishment.
The newcomer ate his fill of meat. Then pipes appeared and the four Indians spent a long time around the fire smoking and talking. By the way they occasionally glanced over in her direction, often laughing, Clarissa guessed that she was figuring prominently in their conversation.
Thoughts of what they might have planned for her filled her with terror. Rape, of course, was the most likely possibility, but she had heard horrifying stories of the many other atrocities which the plains Indians sometimes committed on their white captives. And the likelihood of escape or rescue seemed very remote.
The first boat to reach Nickerson's wood yard would undoubtedly have been the Maggie Dell, but they would have no way of knowing that a white woman had been captured by the Indians there. And even if her former ally, Benjamin Hawkins, was on the boat at the time, he could not know that Clarissa had been there shortly before and now lay somewhere out on the plains nearby, the battered victim of four renegade Arikara warriors.
When the Dakota Star reached the wood yard, they would probably blame the killings on the crew of the Maggie Dell. If anything, they would assume that Clarissa had either been killed and disposed of there, or carried off by Charlie Fink
and his crew. It did not seem likely that a rescue attempt would be launched by either boat. 
At die moment, escape seemed impossible. Stumbling around these hills on foot was out of the question, and even if she could get her hands on one of the horses, she had no doubt that the horsemanship of these men was far superior to hers and that she would soon be recaptured. 
All that left her little choice except to go with them and do what she was told to do, and to hope that whatever they had in store for her would not be more than she could bear. 
As the evening grew colder, she finally risked getting a blanket from the pile of gear, curled up on the ground near the camp and tried to sleep. But with the hard ground, the many aches and hurts throughout her body, and the fear which flowed through her like an infection, she could only rest fitfully. 
She awoke an indeterminate time later with one of the Indians nudging her roughly in the ribs with his moccasined foot. As he spoke, she sat up, then rose to her feet. It was still nighttime, but the moon had risen, and over on the far side of the dying embers of the fire, the other members of the band were loading the horses to leave. She saw that they had already tied the wrapped body of their dead comrade across the back of one horse. 
They had strapped a bundle of goods, but no guns, on the back of the horse Clarissa had been tied onto before, and now, in hopes that she would not be tied across it again, she carried her blanket over and threw it across the horse's back as she saw the braves doing. None of them paid her any attention during these preparations, and she was 
greatly relieved when they permitted her to catch up the animal's reins and mount astride as they were doing. It would still not be very comfortable riding with no saddle between her and the sharp backbone of the horse, but it was better than the way she had ridden thus far. 
Though they were still obviously cautious about pursuit, the pace the leader set was a fairly easy one. As the sun rose, Clarissa realized that they were traveling in a steady northwesterly direction. She had no way of knowing how far they were from the Missouri, but it was a small comfort to her to know that they were going in the same general direction as the river flowed through this part of the Dakotas. She knew enough about this area to know that there were a few towns scattered along the waterway, as well as forts, occasional ranches and some mines, and her chances of escape remained much better as long as they stayed in this part of the territory. If the Indians turned west, they would soon leave all signs of civilization, as well as all of her hopes, behind. 
About midmorning they reached a broad, shallow river which Clarissa guessed, from her study of the maps on the Dakota Star, must be the Cheyenne. They crossed it without difficulty, then resumed their straight northwesterly course. They were obviously carrying their captive and the spoils of their battle to some specific place. 
After the sun had peaked and started down the western sky, they came in sight of the Indian camp. It was a small encampment of no more than a dozen tipis scattered along the bank of a narrow creek in the center of a broad valley. 
Interest in their arrival grew as the people in 
the camp, mostly squaws and children, realized the braves had brought a captive back with them. The children were the first to reach them, racing out to meet the band more than a quarter mile from camp and then trotting back alongside the horses, staring at the yellow-haired prisoner in amazement.
When they rode into the circle of tipis, some of the women took charge of the body of the slain brave and carried him away, while others devoted their attention to Clarissa. As one of them grabbed her by the arm and hauled her roughly down from the horse's back, the others gathered in a tight circle around her, chattering rapidly as they touched and tugged at her clothes, body and hair. As Clarissa protested, slapping at hands and trying to get away from them, it seemed to become a hilarious game to them to punch and pinch and abuse her. As their tormenting grew more rough and persistent, they began to pull at her hair and clothes, and to flail her with thin switches. Clarissa grew more frantic to escape them, but no matter what direction she turned, they were all around her, only seeming to be encouraged by her desperation.
The men who had brought her in paid no attention to the women's sport, but finally a tall man stepped out from the entrance of a tipi and spoke two or three words. Immediately the harassment stopped and the women and youngsters stepped back to make a path between Clarissa and the Indian.
By the deference which was shown him, Clarissa knew he must be the leader of this band. He was taller than the rest of his tribesmen, with a stern,
sharp-featured face which could have been carved from the virgin stone of the surrounding hills. He wore only moccasins, a breechcloth with beaded front and back panels, and an elaborate headdress of feathers and bone. His bronze skin was stretched taut across a supple, well-muscled body, and his calm movements had a certain grace and flow about them. 
As the remainder of the people stood silently by, the man gazed for a long moment at Clarissa, as if analyzing her carefully before coming to any decision about her. One of Clarissa's captors came to his side and began explaining something proudly. At last, when he pointed at Clarissa and then at the chief, his meaning became clear. The chief nodded his head solemnly, pointed a finger at Clarissa, and uttered one word in his deep, clear voice. 
Immediately several of the women grabbed hold of her and began tearing her clothes away. She fought back for a moment until she realized it was useless, and then she submitted to the indignity passively. When at last she stood naked in the center of the gathered tribe, the leader approached her. He walked slowly in a complete circle around her, surveying her as a man might a fine horse, occasionally touching a shoulder, an arm or a breast. Clarissa bore it all with her head bowed and her eyes lowered. 
Finally when he stopped directly in front of her she looked up at him, trying to fight back her tears and face him defiantly. She could read nothing in his expressionless gaze. 
"I am Gray Lion, war chief of the Ankara Nation," he said in very good English. It surprised 
Clarissa to hear words in her own language. "You have been given to me as a slave by my brothers who captured you, and I approve the gift."
Turning aside to the Indians who brought Clarissa in, he said a couple of sentences in the Indian tongue which brought smiles to their faces. They were proud that they had pleased their leader.
"What will you do with me?" Clarissa asked at last, angered at the fear which showed in her voice.
"Own you," the chief said simply. The words were chilling, and yet, as Clarissa stared back into his eyes, she was somehow not as terrified as she had been a moment before. There was something in the calm, steady gaze of this man which she found almost reassuring.
"My lodge is there," Gray Lion told her, turning his head and indicating the tipi he had come out of a few minutes before. "Go inside and wait."
Clarissa walked past him and entered the tipi, glad at last to be away from the vicious squaws and away from the gaze of the tribe.
The circular structure was made of buffalo hides that had been sewn together and stretched over a frame of long poles. In the center of the open area was a small, dying fire, and along one side lay a pallet of skins and blankets. Toward the back of the tipi were a couple of bundles of what seemed to be robes and clothes, and across the top of them lay a rifle.
She gazed at the weapon a long while, wondering at the significance of being left alone so near it. It seemed like a test of some kind, but the longer she looked at it, the less value the gun seemed to have to her. If she picked it up, whom would she shoot? Herself? No, it had not come to
that yet. Gray Lion? At the moment, he was the only person in the camp, man or woman, who did not absolutely terrify her. It was frustrating to be so near the weapon and to realize that it had absolutely no value in helping her out of this dilemma. Anything she did with the rifle would only make things worse and would not bring about her eventual escape. 
Finally she crossed to the pallet and picked up one of the blankets. Wrapping it around her body, she fashioned a makeshift dress for herself. At least she would not sit around naked like a docile slave waiting for the master to come. 
She sat on the ground along one side of the tipi for a long time, waiting for something to happen and trying not to think about how desperate her situation was. From the sounds which came in through the hide walls of the shelter, she could tell that the men had gathered not far away outside to talk. Farther away she could hear the voices of the women and children. From the chants and ritualistic wails, she decided that some sort of formal mourning for the slain brave must have begun. 
Clarissa did not try to go out or even peek through the tipi flaps and see what was going on. She felt safer inside than she had at any moment since her capture, and she was afraid to defy the orders of Gray Lion. For the first time, as she thought of the chief, she felt a glimmer of hope that her experiences here with the Indians would not necessarily end in humiliation and torture. Though he had said very little to her, there was something about Gray Lion that seemed almost sympathetic to her plight. She reasoned that if she must fall under the power of anybody here, he 
seemed much preferable to any of the other violent calloused men who had taken her prisoner.
After dark, a squaw came into the tipi and gave her a garment. It was a simple dress made of soft buckskin, but Clarissa accepted it gratefully and began putting it on as the squaw quietly went out. Despite the difference in her height and that of most of the short Indian women, the dress fit her fairly well. It was obviously old, but that served only to make it more pliant and comfortable.
She was alone again for a long time, but finally the same squaw came back in with a bowl of food for her. It was some sort of thick, mealy gruel with a few chunks of meat mixed in it. Clarissa began eating without hesitation. She had not eaten anything since the night before, and though the mixture smelled and tasted slightly rancid, it ended the growling in her empty stomach.
After dark, Clarissa settled down on the pallet and covered up with the blanket. Though summer had fully arrived here on the high plains, the nighttime temperatures dropped surprisingly.
Outside the members of the tribe were continuing their ritualistic chants and songs, still apparently in honor of their slain member. It was an odd litany filled with a curious, stoic sorrow which communicated itself to Clarissa despite the barrier of language. Eventually the quiet, singsongy voices of the Indians lulled her to sleep.
She had no idea how long she had been asleep when the tent flap parted and the tall form of Gray Lion stopped in the entrance, his broad form vaguely silhouetted by the flickering remnants of the campfire behind him. Clarissa watched him for a moment, then began to get up from the
sleeping place. It was his bed and she had no desire to wait there for him to come and share it with her.
"Are you afraid?" he asked quietly.
"Not so much now," Clarissa admitted. "When they killed my friends two days ago and carried me off, I was almost out of my head with fear. I was sure they would torture me and kill me. But now, here with you . . . You aren't going to hurt me, are you?" No.
"Will you let me go back?"
"No." He crossed the tipi to the pallet, and once the flaps of the tent were closed, the interior was completely dark. "You cannot go back. It is a matter of honor."
"Never?" Clarissa asked. The tears were gathering in her eyes, but she struggled to control her voice. "You mean you're going to keep me here forever?"
"My people no longer speak of forever," he told her calmly. "The white man, with his horse soldiers and his empty treaties and his endless greed--he has taken forever away from us. We know only the honors of the past, and the fight to live today. You are a prize from an honorable coup at the white woodcutter's lodge, and a gift to me as chief. It would shame my braves if I released you now."
"I don't know anything about this talk of coups," Clarissa said, "nor what you mean when you speak of honor. I didn't see any honor in what your men did back there. It was an ugly deed in my eyes. I saw two good men killed who didn't deserve to die, and your men had a part in it." She could tell by Gray Lion's voice that he had settled down
on the pallet, but she remained standing to one side. 
"I sent my men to kill the man called Nickerson and all the white men in his camp," he said. "He took an Arikara squaw for his woman during the cold times, and then this spring, when he found she was with child and no longer useful to him, he killed her. It was a matter of honor to us that he should die for this thing." 
"I didn't know that," Clarissa said quietly. "He deserved what he got then. But what about my friends? They did nothing to your tribe, but your men killed them, too." 
Gray Lion sat silently in the dark for a moment. Clarissa waited. Finally the Indian said, "I will talk of this no more. I have tried to make you understand, but you will not. So be it. It is time for sleep now, and you will lie with me, as the law decrees for a prize of battle." 
"No," Clarissa told him. "I won't do that." 
She could feel the power of his will like an actual presence reaching out for her through the darkness. Though she had protested, she knew she had no choice, and surprisingly, she felt neither fear nor regret for what was about to happen to her. 
"You will lie with me," he repeated. 
Silently she moved to join him on the pallet 
After only three days in the Indian camp, life began to take on a pattern and routine for Clarissa. To her surprise, it was not wholly unpleasant. She soon found that she occupied a unique position among this small band of Ankara Indians. After the first night, the same braves who had hauled her away from the wood lot like a side of meat no longer laughed in their conversations about her, and the squaws who had beaten and harassed her on her first day now treated her with limited acceptance and respect.
She knew all this had come about because she had found favor in Gray Lion's eyes. Such was the position this man had among his tribesmen that anything that was his was held in almost religious respect.
As the days passed, she discovered a few 
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interesting facts about this tall, mysterious man who combined such an interesting mixture of authority and gentleness. He had learned English as a youth from missionaries who had lived with the tribe for a time years before, during much better days for the Arikaras. Since that time, wars, hunger and diseases brought in by the white men had taken a devastating toll on the tribe. Now their numbers were only a fraction of what they had once been.
Gray Lion was actually a war chief over a much larger number of Indians than the few who lived in the small camp where Clarissa was held. But in recent years, the Arikaras had taken to splitting up into smaller wandering bands to hunt the dwindling numbers of buffalo still to be found in Dakota Territory. The whole tribe only gathered at specified rendezvous points during times of war, festival or council. Then Gray Lion presided as one of the major chieftains of the tribe.
Clarissa's first night with him had been, at the worst, uncomfortable. The gentleness with which he had claimed her belied the firmness with which he ruled the tribe, and he seemed to have been sensitively aware of the poor treatment her body had suffered over the previous few days. The act had seemed more a ritual than anything else, a claiming of what was rightfully his by the law he lived by.
But as the end of the second day approached, Clarissa found herself almost anticipating what would follow the arrival of the nighttime hours. She waited in the tipi for him, not brazen enough to undress and slip between the blankets before his arrival, but ready to submit to him when he
arrived. The irony of the situation did not escape her notice. Here she was, prisoner of a hostile Indian band, still perhaps in danger of losing her life, living as a slave of the chief with no rights or privileges, yet eagerly awaiting the arrival of the man who would commit what should rightfully be called a rape of her body. None of it made any sense to her--she only knew what she felt.
When Gray Lion came that night, they said very little. On his order, she removed the buckskin dress and went to him, a willing conquest. His lovemaking had a slow, ritualistic quality, as if it too was an act controlled by the ancient dictates of tribal law. He seemed to sense that it was all new and unfamiliar to her, and he tutored her in the thrilling discoveries with gentle care. Later, as she lay in his arms, drifting toward sleep, she felt only the sensations of warmth and contentment.
But the mystical qualities of their nighttime acts had a confusing effect on her daylight thoughts of escape and rescue. The whole sequence of events in this strange place had an unreal quality, as if they were some unlikely combination of nightmare and fantasy. As a result, her whole inner self began to change in an indefinable way and to form a new mold. She did not know yet what shape the final product would take, but she did realize that whatever happened, she would emerge from this period an entirely different person.
Because of this confusing mixture of captivity and joy, her feelings were chaotic when, on the afternoon of the third day, she saw a lone horseman riding up the long valley toward the encampment. She knew by the way he was dressed, by the way he sat the horse, and by the loaded pack
animal which he led behind him, that he was a white man. 
Her instinctive reaction was to run and hide in Gray Lion's tipi until this intruder had gone on, but reason followed quickly on the heels of that feeling, and she knew she must make her presence here in this camp known to the new arrival as quickly as possible. Here was her chance to leave, and she knew she must take it. 
But as the stranger rode closer to camp, Gray Lion ordered her to go inside, out of sight, and to stay there until the stranger was gone. Silently she complied with his order. 
From inside the tipi, she could hear the excited talk of the women and children as the man got closer. Eight of the eleven braves in the camp had ridden out before dawn on some unknown mission ordered by Gray Lion, but three still remained, enough to deal with this man in any way necessary. 
When the man got within the circle of the tipis, he greeted the chief in the Indian tongue, and even hearing him speak the unfamiliar language, Clarissa immediately recognized his voice. 
Gray Lion returned the greeting in his customary calm manner, honoring the visitor by speaking in English. "Friend Hawkins," the chief said, "you do honor to our camp with your visit. You are welcome." 
Clarissa wanted to rush out of the tipi and announce her presence to Benjamin Hawkins, but something held her back. He must somehow have learned she was here and have come looking for her, but she was not sure of what she wanted to do she realized that this would bring shame on Gray Lion, and if that happened, it could possibly cause 
both her own and Hawkins's sudden death. But she did move near the flap of the tent so she could hear everything which was being said outside. 
"I come bearing a warning to my brother, Gray Lion, and his Arikara people," Hawkins said formally. "A warning of pony soldiers two days' ride to the south." His manner of speaking seemed stilted and ridiculous, but Clarissa realized it must be some sort of etiquette of the plains. 
"Why should the Arikara fear the pony soldiers?" Gray Lion asked cautiously. "We are at peace with the white man. We have marked the paper with the White Feather as a bond of peace between honorable men." 
"There is talk at Fort Thompson of the killing of three white men," Hawkins said, "at a wood lot on the river east of the fort." 
That confused Clarissa. She had seen four white men shot down five days ago, not three. Cautiously she moved the tent flap aside a little and peered out. She saw that Hawkins had squatted at the edge of the fire with the chief and the two warriors who remained in camp. 
"There is talk," Hawkins continued, "that a white woman with hair the color of the sun was carried away by the warriors who did this thing." He paused a moment to give the chief a chance to comment, but Gray Lion said nothing. "One man was shot at the wood lot but did not die," Hawkins said. "He told me it was Arikara fighting men who did this thing." 
No more English was spoken for a moment as Gray Lion turned aside to explain the conversation to his two braves. Clarissa recognized both of 
them as members of the band at Nickerson's wood lot.
Finally the chief turned back to Hawkins and asked calmly, "Have you come to take revenge on the men who did this thing, my brother?"
Though he seemed suddenly in danger, Hawkins too remained calm. "I have come to tell the great chief of the Arikara that the deed is known," he said, "and that the horse soldiers seek revenge." As he spoke, he was rolling a cigarette. When it was finished, he offered the pouch first to Gray Lion, and then to the two braves beside him. Though the chief waved it off, the Indian beside him took the bag of tobacco and stuck it inside his shirt without hesitation. "And I have come," Hawkins added at last, "to buy the woman from Gray Lion." He turned his head and indicated the laden pack horse which stood near his mount.
The announcement jolted through Clarissa like a charge of lightning. He did know she was here!
For an instant the chief and the hunter seemed locked in an eye-to-eye stand-off. Tension hung thick about them, and Clarissa almost expected to see another fight erupt before her eyes.
But Gray Lion finally spoke up and broke the impasse. "Such a woman with hair like the sun would be worth a great price," he said. The bargaining for her life had begun.
"Perhaps," Hawkins said slyly, "and perhaps such a prize might only bring grief and death to the people who held her. Forty horse soldiers left Fort Thompson three days ago, and the great Gray Lion knows that the white man fights just as valiantly for his women as do the Arikaras. I brought
what I have here, blankets and food and iron tools, only out of respect for you, my brother, because I know that to give up such a woman without a price would bring you shame." 
"You know our needs as well as I, Hawkins," Gray Lion told him. It seemed as if the veneer of patience on his words was wearing thin. "We need guns and bullets, not blankets and tins of beans." 
"There are guns," Hawkins told him cautiously. "I have broken our law in bringing them, but the woman is worth much to me. I will have her any way I can." His pronouncement sent a sudden chill through Clarissa. Those were almost the same words, spoken in practically the same ruthless tone, that he had said to her weeks before on the deck of the Maggie Dell in St. Charles. 
In a moment Hawkins and the Indians went off to the pack horse to examine the trade goods, and Clarissa could no longer hear what they were saying. She crossed the steamy interior of the tipi and sat down on the pallet where she and Gray Lion had shared their nights together. 
She knew she should be elated at this moment. Even as she waited there, her freedom was being negotiated, and soon she would be back among white people again, but instead of happiness, she found herself crying quietly. Something strange and unexplainable had happened to her here, and she knew that when she left now, a small part of her would stay behind. 
And yet, even as the big tears rolled down her cheek to stain the tan of her buckskin dress a darker brown, another part of her mind was telling her that what she felt now was all ridiculous, romantic nonsense. She was no Ankara squaw 
who allowed herself to be claimed and possessed by an aboriginal chieftain. She had been kidnapped by Indians and raped by their chief--nothing more. If there had been anything special here, would Gray Lion even now be accepting a price in guns and trade goods in exchange for her? She knew she could not answer that question because she had no understanding of all that had gone on around her and within her in the past few days. It defied reason. 
She lay down on the pallet, letting her fingers probe past the blankets to the buffalo robe beneath, feeling the texture of the coarse hair of the hide and recalling with an inner emotion the feelings which had swept through her physically and mentally when she lay here with Gray Lion on top of her, probing her body with his loins and her spirit with his tenderness. How could a woman reason away something like that, or dismiss it from her memory as something better forgotten? With his thrusts deep within her body, the first she had known in her life, this powerful bronze stranger had implanted a part of himself deep within her spirit, and it would remain there forever. 
A shaft of sunlight fell across her as Gray Lion parted the entrance flaps and came into the tipi. He saw her lying there and knew immediately that she had been crying. He came over and knelt beside her, placing his hand lightly on her leg as he spoke. "Our women always hide to cry," he said softly. "They feel it is a shame for their man to see 
it 
"There are worse shames than having someone see your tears," Clarissa told him. 
"You heard our words. You know you must go with the man Hawkins," the chief said. 
"I know," she told him bitterly. "You traded for me, but I guess that's just what happens with slaves and other livestock, isn't it?" 
For a moment he did not speak, but she could see the hurt and the yearning struggling to find expression on his features. 
"I'm a chief," he said at last. "My first thought must be for my people and what best serves them. Only then can I care for my own needs. To keep the woman with the golden hair would bring the soldiers here, and many of my people would die because of it ... perhaps even all of them. A great chief would not do such a thing, no matter how great his need or the yearnings of his heart. We must leave this place soon and join others of our brothers to plan for a great holy war, and you have no place in such affairs. You must go. Do you understand?" 
Clarissa could not find her voice to respond, but she nodded her head. 
Gray Lion put his hand to the side of her head, threading his fingers back into her hair, and took a final look at her. Then he rose and left the tipi. As soon as she was able, Clarissa also rose and went out. 
Benjamin Hawkins left most of the goods that had been on his pack horse at the Arikara camp, then outfitted the horse for Clarissa to ride. They started out in late afternoon, with Hawkins setting a hurried pace northeast, telling her that they had a lot of miles to cover to catch up with the Maggie Dell.
It felt odd to be back under the protection of Hawkins now, so many miles and weeks from St. Charles. She knew she should be grateful to him for traveling so far and risking so much to rescue her from the Indians, but all the old doubts and suspicions returned to her almost immediately. His last words as she was leaving the Maggie Dell kept coming back to her. "I knew that someday I would have you . . . and when I want something bad enough, I go after it with everything I've got."
The memory of that moment planted a cold
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dread within her, and she soon began to wonder if any of her problems had ended, or if she had just exchanged one serious dilemma for another. She feared that perhaps even worse days might be ahead for her.
They talked very little during their first few hours of riding. Hawkins looked exhausted, and she could imagine the long hours of riding he must have done to locate her and the small isolated camp in the midst of this vast wilderness. He looked a lot different than he had back in St. Charles. His hair was at least two inches longer now, and he had allowed his beard to grow until it covered his face. The expensive suits were gone now too, exchanged for well-worn buckskin shirt and britches, and on his feet he wore moccasins and laced-up leggings similar to those she had seen on the Ankara braves.
Clarissa was curious about why Hawkins kept checking their back trail, as if expecting pursuit. His bargain with Gray Lion had seemed final enough, and she wondered if Hawkins was suspicious that the Indians might follow them and try to take her back. But if that had been in their minds, she thought, they could have more easily killed the hunter in their camp, and then kept her and the trade goods too. But without explanation, every few miles Hawkins stopped atop various hilltops they came to and spent a few minutes surveying the broad expanses of territory behind them.
When night came, Hawkins pushed on into the darkness for a while. When they did finally stop, he made a cold camp without even a small fire for
cooking or warmth. During their meal of tinned beans and dried beef, Clarissa decided to find out more about what had been going on since her capture by the Indians. 
"You know, Ben," she said, "I couldn't believe what I was seeing when you came riding into that Indian camp way out there in the middle of nowhere." She paused and looked over at him. He was watching her closely, but in the darkness it was impossible to tell what expression was on his face. "When they killed all those men and carried me off, I was never so terrified in my life. I was sure that they would kill me in some horrible way and that nobody would ever know what happened to me." 
"They were stupid," Hawkins told her quietly as he gnawed a bite of ropy jerky off and began chewing on it. "When you kill a man, you make sure he's dead before you leave him behind. If Gray Lion had been leading that raid, he would have gone around and made sure that every man there was dead, and then nobody would have been able to trace where they had taken you. Frank Temple was gut shot low on the left side, but he didn't die. He played possum on them because he knew it was his only chance to pull through the scrap alive. When we pulled in at the lot, he had bled plenty, but he still had enough life left in him to tell us what had happened." 
"The Indians didn't shoot him," Clarissa said. "Brule did. It was that man Temple who started the whole mess in the first place." 
"Temple told us it was all your fault," Hawkins told her wryly. "He said none of it would have 
ever happened if you hadn't showed up there and tried to buy that wood out from under him after he'd already made a bargain with Nickerson." 
"It was just business," Clarissa said defensively. But she did not want to argue the point. She was more interested in what had happened after the Indians took her away. "But how in the world did you know it was me that the Indians captured?" she asked. 
"It wasn't very hard to figure out," he told her. "I knew you were on the Dakota Star, and I knew the Star wasn't that far behind the Maggie Dell. That trick you used of crossing overland to beat us to the wood lot isn't exactly new, you know. Everybody does it all the time. Hell, that's how Temple got there, too. And then when he told us that a good-looking woman with blond hair had been there from the Star, I knew right off it was you. After that, it was just a matter of locating the camp where the Arikaras took you. That's what took the most time and figuring." 
After that, they were both quiet for a moment. She had almost gone on to ask the next logical question, which was why he had gone to so much trouble to find her, but she was getting the uneasy feeling that she already knew the answer. 
Finally Hawkins spoke again, and his voice and words seemed to have some sort of odd undercurrent lurking just beneath their surface. "There was one thing I didn't expect, though," he said. "I didn't expect you to get used to Injuns and Injun life so quickly. The way it looked to me, you and Gray Lion were getting on just fine." 
"He wasn't unkind to me," Clarissa said guardedly.
"And vice versa, huh?" he added.
"I don't know exactly what you mean by that, Mr. Hawkins. I was a captive of a band of wild Indians and I was convinced they were going to torture me and kill me. I was glad to fall into the hands of a man who took away that fear, even if he did call me his slave and his property. He treated me kindly, and I was grateful to him for that."
"I bet you were."
It seemed to Clarissa as if Hawkins had his mind set on showing her the great burden of shame she should be carrying around now. She should have killed herself, she supposed, rather than submit to Gray Lion.
"Look," she said finally, "if you've got something to ask, why don't you just come out with it. Did he take me to his bed? Is that what you want to know? Surely you haven't been around Indians all these years without knowing precisely what they do to the white women they capture. But if you think I should go through the rest of my life feeling soiled and shamed because of it, I'm sorry. I just refuse to do that. It wasn't so horrible that I should let it ruin the rest of my Me."
She paused, letting her rebuke hang in the air between them. At that moment, she hated Hawkins intensely. She wished there was some way she could strike out at him as harshly as he had tried to do with her. "I almost liked it," she blurted out finally. "What do you think of that? What kind of woman does that make me?"
Hawkins chuckled suddenly, a dry laugh which struck Clarissa like a slap. "It's a hell of a funny situation when you think about it," he said. "Here's
the proper young aristocrat, so puffed up and righteous about her virginal body and her sacred honor, and then when she finally gets a taste of real life from a redskin buck, all of a sudden she's not even sure she wants to get rescued. Scratch a lady, and chances are you'll find a whore underneath just itching to get out." 
Clarissa sat in the darkness, seething silently, all the more angered because of the great amount of truth in what he had said. 
"It wouldn't have been like that for long, you know," Hawkins went on. "He would have gotten tired of you quick enough, and then he would probably have swapped you off for a horse or a gun, or else just turned you over to his warriors to have their fun with. You know, woman, sometimes you act so empty-headed, it makes me start to wonder why I bother with you at all." 
"Then don't bother with me," Clarissa snapped. "Just get me back to the Dakota Star, and I'll get an advance on my wages to pay you back for the blankets and guns you gave Gray Lion." 
"No chance," Hawkins said matter-of-factly. "I swapped for you fair and square, and I'm going to get my money's worth in my own way, just like the big chief back there did." 
Clarissa was silent. She had known this was coming, but now that the words had actually been said, she did not quite know how to deal with it. 
When she made no answer, Hawkins continued. "I never made any secret of what I wanted from you. I told you weeks ago that I planned to have you, and now I will. As for what happened back there with Gray Lion, I don't really give a damn. 
It just got you primed and ready for my purposes, but soon enough you'll be thinking the same way about me that you did about Gray Lion. You won't want it to stop."
"I doubt that," she told him coldly. "You disgust me too much for that to ever happen."
"I guess we'll just have to see, then."
Starting before dawn, they pushed on the next morning at the same steady pace. The monotony of the rolling, grass covered hills was only occasionally broken by a few tree-lined creeks and streams, and Hawkins was apparently avoiding all settlements, forts and other islands of civilization.
His caution about pursuit continued, as did Clarissa's curiosity about it. Finally at noontime she decided to find out what he was so worried about.
"You act like you think Gray Lion still might come along to get me back," she said. "Do you think he really would go to all that trouble when he could just as easily have killed you back there and never let me go?"
"It's not that," Hawkins said. "Somebody else got on your trail back at the wood yard a few hours after I picked it up. A squad of soldiers I ran into out west of Fort Pierre said they had met up with Yellowstone Kelly and that he was on the lookout for you."
The mention of Kelly's name and what he was doing filled Clarissa with a new feeling of hope. If he was searching for her too, surely her final rescue was only a matter of time.
"If he catches up to us," Hawkins said matter-of-factly, "I'll have to kill him."
"Or he you," Clarissa pointed out.
"That's always a possibility," Hawkins replied calmly.
Toward dusk Clarissa began to catch occasional glimpses of the river far in the distance, and in spite of her predicament, it was somehow a reassuring sight, like locating an old friend after a long separation.
About a mile from the river, before darkness was quite complete, Hawkins spotted a herd of deer grazing in the distance and left Clarissa out of sight while he went ahead to kill some fresh meat. As a precaution, he tied up her hands and feet, and then took her horse with him as he headed away on a roundabout route to approach the herd. Within a short time, she heard two faraway shots, spaced a few seconds apart, and a few minutes later, he came back for her. The gutted and bleeding carcass of a large buck was tied across the rump of each horse.
"I've been out near five days," he said, "and they'll be needing some fresh meat on the Maggie Dell when we hook up with her again."
After freeing her, they rode on down to the river, and Hawkins gathered up a pile of deadfall from a grove of trees along the bank for a large bonfire near the water's edge. But instead of staying near the fire, he led her upstream a couple of hundred yards and made another cold camp back within a thick grove.
As he broke out more food for their supper, he said, "I'll be moving around the area quite a Dit until the boat gets here. It may be an hour from now, or it may be a day. I'll make a deal with you.
I won't tie you up again if you'll promise not to try to escape."
"Those are two wonderful choices," Clarissa told him.
"It's all you've got, so take your pick."
"I promise," Clarissa told him reluctantly. "I might as well. I wouldn't know where to go if I escaped anyway." As she unrolled blankets to make a bed for herself, Hawkins took his rifle and crept off through the brush.
The distant thunder of a steamboat's engines woke her sometime later that night. She sat up on her pallet for a moment and listened, then rose and walked down to the water's edge. Downstream she could see the shadowy form of Hawkins building up the bonfire. When he had it blazing brightly again, he came back to her.
"Gather everything up while I get the horses," he said. "If that's the Maggie Dell, she'll put in down by the fire to pick us up."
In a few minutes they left the camp and led the horses down near the fire, then waited several yards away, back in the trees, until the boat approached.
Clarissa began to consider what she should do if it was not the Maggie Dell. Hawkins obviously had in mind to wait out of sight until he was sure, but Clarissa decided that if it was the Dakota Star, or any other steamboat besides the Maggie Dell, she should try to make a run for it. The water was not deep here, and she thought that with any kind of head start, she might be able to get into the river and call attention to herself before Hawkins could catch her and drag her back. It was a 
desperate gamble. He might shoot her down if she tried it, but it was all the chance she had and she was determined to try.
In a few minutes the approaching boat came into view downriver, a vague dark shape on the water's surface. From the first instant, Clarissa could tell it was not the Dakota Star. The running lights atop its chimneys were too high, and the bulk of it seemed too big. With a sinking feeling, she remembered hearing that the Maggie Dell was a somewhat larger boat than the Star.
As the boat drew to within a couple of hundred yards from where they were, a voice pealed out over the river. "Hawkins? That you over there, Hawkins?"
Leading the horses with one hand and pulling Clarissa along with the other, Hawkins left the trees and started down toward the water.
"It's me," he shouted out to the boat. "Hold up and take us aboard."
As the boat approached the sand bar, it veered gradually toward the bank and finally halted in the water about fifteen feet out. In a minute the long gangplank slid out and rested on the sand.
"Somebody come over here and take these horses," Hawkins said. A couple of crew members scrambled down the plank and took over the reins while Hawkins led Clarissa onto the boat.
"Where in the consarned, ever-lovin' holy hell you been, Hawkins?" a man growled at them a moment after they stepped onto the main deck. "I been lookin' to pick you up for two days now, an' we're so low on staples we're down to eatin' corn cakes an' blackstrap molasses."
"Okay, just take it easy, Charlie," Hawkins said.
"I got two deer slung across the horses out there, so you'll have fresh venison on your breakfast plate."
This man, Clarissa realized,, must be the notorious Charlie Fink, the arch rival that Captain Mumple and Tommie Casey seemed to consider almost the devil incarnate. But he was not at all as she would have imagined such an infamous man to be. He was short, squat almost, and well into the portly spread of his late middle-aged years. His face was pie-shaped and unimpressive, ringed with unruly graying hair on top and a wiry beard on the bottom. A corncob pipe projected out of the corner of his jaw like a permanent accessory to his face. His mouth was wide and drawn, with thin lips pulled back to expose his teeth almost like a snarl. His nose was bulbous and veined and his eyes were set wide apart and small. Clarissa wondered if it was all the stories she had heard about him, or something about what she saw now, that made her sense dangerous and sinister forces lurking within him.
"This is the woman you went looking for?" Fink asked, looking Clarissa over skeptically. She knew she must look pretty ragged in her stained buckskin dress after so many days out in the wilderness. She felt grimy and bedraggled, but she still felt insulted by the implication behind Fink's remark.
"The very one," Hawkins said. "Wait 'til I get her cleaned up a bit, and then see if you don't think she was worth the trip."
"Hell," Fink complained. "One damn woman's just the same as the next. I coulda got you all the poontang you need outside any of these army forts without you havin' to go traipsin' all over the plains
to find yourself some. I'm payin' you to stick with this boat, to put meat in my men's bellies and to fight when I say fight."
"Go to hell, Fink," Hawkins growled out. "You know I do as I damn well please, and if you don't like it, you can put me and this woman here right back ashore and be done with us."
"Dammit all to hell, Ben, you know I can't do that. That scoundrel Casey's not more than five miles behind us now, an' he gains a little bit every day. You know I need you."
"Then shut up all your bellyaching, old man. We hadn't made one trip upriver that you haven't got your money's worth and then some out of me, so I don't want to hear anymore about it." Then, taking hold of Clarissa's wrist and starting away, he added, "I'm going to get me some rest, and you can have the cabin boy call me at first light."
As he crossed the main deck and started up the stairs toward the passenger deck, Clarissa held back, trying to loosen his grip on her wrist. He held her tight and continued to pull her along.
"I don't know quite what you think you're doing," she said, "but I'm not going to follow along after you like a dog."
As they reached the head of the stairs, Hawkins suddenly whirled on her and slapped her hard across the side of her face with his open palm. The blow knocked her off balance and she would have tumbled backwards down the stairs if he had not kept his grip on her wrist.
"I don't need any more trouble from you either, woman," he growled out. "I've just rode better than four days and a hundred and twenty miles getting you here, and now there's nobody on this
boat that's going to stop me from doing anything I want to you or with you. You'll follow me, like a dog or anything else I say."
Clarissa was stunned but still defiant. "I'll scream so loud I'll wake up every passenger on this boat," she told him. "You won't get anything without a fight."
"Hell, woman. Charlie didn't book any passengers on this trip. All that's on board is his crew, and believe me, none of them better say a damn word about what I do. They know better."
He hauled her down the deck and into one of the cabins midway down, then locked the door behind him. Clarissa moved to the back of the tiny chamber and stood in a corner, holding her arms up tightly against her chest in an instinctive defensive gesture. She was growing more afraid of him now, but she was still unwilling to prove his domination over her by beginning to cry.
"You're nothing but a disgusting animal," she said quietly, her voice filled with malice. "I used to have some respect for you, but that's all gone now. You're nothing but a loathsome creature."
"Get out of that dress," Hawkins ordered evenly,
Clarissa waited, tense and still, as he advanced on her. Then the trembling began. It started first in her hands and arms, and spread slowly throughout her body as the fear of him coursed through her veins like venom. As he stopped only inches from her, a plea shaped itself in her mind, but she refused to utter it.
When Hawkins reached out at last, she winced, expecting more abuse, but remarkably, his touch was gentle as he laid his hand alongside her face, probing with his fingers back into her hair. It was
identical to the touch Gray Lion had given her when they parted. 
"I don't want to hurt you," he said. It could have been a threat, but it did not sound like one. "It could be good for both of us. That would be the easy way, the preferable way." His voice was quiet, almost gentle, and filled with more human feeling and expression than she had thought him capable of. "It's your choice to make." 
"I just don't want to be hurt anymore," Clarissa said pleadingly. She felt angry and frustrated as she realized that tears were gathering in her eyes and beginning to course their way down her cheeks, but she was too tired now to hold them back any longer. "I don't know whether to give in, or fight, or kill myself or try to kill you ... I just know I'm tired of being humiliated and hurt and traded for and hauled around all over the country. I'm tired of fighting against everybody I meet, and of losing every fight. I just want some peace . . . please, Ben!" 
"I want something, too," Hawkins told her. "But I'll make it easy for you. I know how." 
She did not resist as he slowly took her arms and lowered them to her sides. His lips were warm and moist on her neck and his hands were gentle in their explorations. It wasn't at all as she had always pictured rape to be. It was something she could easily bear, she decided. And when he was finished, she knew she could rest. 
Clarissa sat on the edge of the shuck mattress, watching as Ben arranged his things into the saddlebags. He never carried much on these trips, just boxes of spare ammunition for his rifle and revolver, a spare knife, hatchet, a little food, a waterproof tin of matches and a few medical supplies. He traveled light because he was never gone from the boat for long.
"I guess I'll be gone about three days this time," he told her. "I plan to kill some game and cache it at the mouth of the Cannonball, then go on up above Fort Rice and check on Thunderhead's wood yard. I'll wait there until the boat catches up.
Clarissa was silent. She was experiencing an odd assortment of feelings as she watched him pack up and heard him telling her how long he would be gone. In the ten days she had been aboard the
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Maggie Dell, Hawkins had gone off four times, but mostly it was just on short scouting expeditions or hunting trips, and only twice had he been away overnight. 
"Charlie's not making a stop at Fort Rice," Hawkins went on, casting a long appraising glance in her direction. "And I'll be back on board before you reach Fort Abraham Lincoln. The only other thing there is along this stretch is a lot of open spaces and a lot of roaming bands of Indians." She knew it was a warning to her not to try any more escapes. Twice she had tried to get away, and twice he had brought her back and beaten her for the effort. 
"I don't like it when you're away," she said. She spoke in a monotone, communicating neither affection nor hostility. "Everybody acts strangely toward me, giving me these looks, and saying things and laughing just after I've passed by. It scares me." 
"Don't worry," Hawkins reassured her, putting the last of his gear in the saddle bags and closing the flap. "Every man on this boat knows if he lays a finger on you, he's a dead son-of-a-bitch. Nobody's going to bother you." 
"Okay, Ben," she said. She knew what he said was true. Only an absolute fool would try anything with her when the threat of vengeance from Hawkins would be the final payment. 
When he had gone, she sat down on the bed and stared for a long time out the open doorway across the distant rolling hills to the west. She could hear the activity below on the main deck as the gangplank was pushed to the bank to let Hawkins off. She caught a glimpse of him as he 
rode up a slight incline, then reigned his horse around to the left to skirt a steep bluff.
She hated him, but she was sorry to see him go. That's the way it had been for several days now, ever since the last time she had run away and he had brought her back. Once back in the cabin, he had beaten her until she screamed and pleaded for an end to the pain, and when he had finally stopped, she had experienced an almost perverse gratitude to him.
Since then she had done little more than exist, remaining docile and subservient, meeting his needs and demands as they arose, mindlessly doing' as she was told with the memory of those pounding fists still vivid in her mind. She despised herself now almost as much as she did Hawkins, and for the first time, thoughts of death had begun to enter her mind. This was a kind of hell that she could never before even imagine existed. But it did ... and she was in it.
As the thud of the engines increased, the boat eased away from the bank and started upriver again. Clarissa rose to close and lock the cabin door, imprisoning herself. She would not go out again, not until she had to eat, or until late at night when the decks were empty and she could be alone.
She could tell by the movement that the Maggie Dell was in trouble again. It had been a difficult day, with scarcely more than five miles of progress since they had left their night mooring. Three times that morning, once around noon, and then several times during the afternoon the crew had been forced to put the spars and capstan engines
to work, grasshoppering over the countless bars and reefs which blocked their way. 
But when they ran aground this time it was a different sort of feeling, and Clarissa knew somehow that the problem was more serious. It felt as if something had grabbed hold of the stern of the steamboat and wrenched it sideways. Then the grating of rending wood had vibrated down the length of the boat. 
Clarissa rose from the bed and went out onto the deck outside the cabin. Up above on the hurricane deck she could hear Charlie Fink launching into one of his screaming, cursing tirades. It was almost as familiar a sound aboard the Maggie Dell as the roar of the engines or the thrashing of the paddle wheel. 
Not wanting to stray too far from the cabin, especially with Captain Fink on the rampage, Clarissa walked a few feet toward the stern and leaned far out over the railing so she could look toward the back of the boat. The problem was easy to spot. A large stump at least three feet in diameter and six feet long was completely tangled in the blades of the paddle wheel. Several of the blades were smashed, and the lower roots of the stump were caught in the piston and gears which turned the wheel. 
Above her Clarissa could hear Fink alternately screaming a stream of frantic orders to the crew and lambasting the careless pilot at the wheel who had let this catastrophe occur. She watched for a while as the crewmen tied the boat off against the push of the current and then went to work with axes and hatchets to clear away the tangle of stump and debris. 
Finally she returned to her cabin, wanting to be safely out of sight in case the captain found some reason to come onto the passenger deck and pass her way.
The crew worked past sunset and on into the night by lamplight, hacking away at the stump and the broken paddle blades as two men kept a steady pressure on the stump with a lever. Occasionally Clarissa stepped onto the deck and noted how little progress they were making. It was going to be a long, tedious job. They might be as much as a full day in this place before the damage was cleared away and the repairs were made.
Sometime past midnight, the captain grudgingly let the crew knock off for the night. Fink had maintained an aura of tension by constantly screaming at the crew and berating them as they worked. Once he had tried to pitch in and help, but a few minutes after he snatched up an axe and went to work with the crew, he had carelessly chopped off three fingers from the hand of a luckless crewman. After that, he was content to watch and command.
As the crew settled down, exhausted, on the lower deck to rest, the steamboat quickly became quiet. Clarissa waited for a while in the darkened cabin, then finally went out on the deck for some fresh air. The river was dark and still tonight, and its waters seemed inviting. Without pondering whether it would be to escape or to die, she thought for a while about what a relief it would be to just throw off her clothes and jump overboard. She felt almost as if the dark Missouri was calling to her, luring her to become one with it.
Nervously her fingers began to worry with the
leather ties at the throat of her buckskin dress, never quite pulling enough to loosen them, but unable to leave them alone and abandon the idea. The water seemed to promise peace, an end to the turmoil and abuse and fear which had become her routine over the past few days.
Hawkins was not really such a bad master, not when she did what he wanted and obeyed him without question. A couple of times she had actually found herself being swept away by the attentions of his body to hers. But she fought off any such signs of enjoyment, recognizing them as danger signals. She would not allow herself to grow to love the chains. If that happened, all was finished for her. Rather than allow such degradation, she knew she must kill him. But not yet. The proper time and the opportunity had not arisen.
She sensed the movement behind her a split second before a hand clamped tightly over her mouth and a strong arm engulfed her waist. Weak with fear, she did not even have a chance to think about fighting back before she was dragged down the deck a few feet and through the open doorway to her cabin. As her abductor held her head firmly against his shoulder with his hand across her face, he reached out with his other hand and eased the door closed.
"Clarissa! Don't cry out! It's Casey!" he whispered to her. Then he released her.
Clarissa turned, speechless with the shock of his sudden appearance. She fell into his arms, still weak with the residue of fear which had rushed through her system a moment before and the surprise which quickly followed.
"It's all right, girl," he told her softly. "I've come to take you away."
"Oh Casey! Casey!" she whispered, her tearful face pressed against the fabric of his shirt and her arms clinging desperately to him. She felt that moment as if the only safety and security anywhere in the world were right there in his arms.
"It's alright, Clarissa," he repeated, his hand stroking the back of her head in reassurance. "You have to get yourself together now in a big hurry. We've got to get off this boat, and I mean right away."
"I'm ready," she said, but as she turned, her knees went soft and she almost went down. Casey caught her and held her up with an arm around her waist.
"Come on now, girl," he said, his voice a little sharp. He eased the door open and peered both ways down the deck cautiously, then turned back to Clarissa and said, "Follow right behind me and do everything I do. If I stop, you stop, and if I go, you go. And no talking until we get into the water. Okay?"
"Go ahead," she told him.
He led her around to midway down the opposite side of the deck, facing the bank. Directly below them a tool house and mechanic's workshop had been built out flush with the edge of the deck, and a ladder nailed to its outside wall led down to the water. It was the only place on the boat where they could descend from the passenger deck to the water without being seen by the crew on the main deck.
Casey stepped across the railing first and climbed
down the ladder to the water, then turned and helped Clarissa descend. Though the water was only about waist deep there, it was cold and the push of the current was strong. Casey paused there to give her some more hurried instructions. 
"If we walk straight in to shore, they'll be able to see us from the hurricane deck and the pilothouse," he whispered. "We'll have to float downstream with the current. Then we'll just look like debris in the water. Do you feel strong enough to swim by yourself?" 
"I don't know." 
"Okay, come on." They walked carefully in the water along the length of the boat, bent over so their heads would not be seen by the men sleeping on the main deck. When they reached the rear end of the boat, where they were sheltered by the looming shape of the mangled paddle wheel, Casey said, "Loop your arms around my neck and just try to float. Don't do anything else. Don't try to swim and don't panic or we'll both drown." 
She put her arms around his neck and he leaned forward with only the side of his face out of the water. He did not try to swim, but just floated until the current eventually caught hold of them and began to ease them away from the boat. It seemed to take an eternity to make any progress, and Clarissa was afraid that the weight of her body was going to hold Casey under too long and drown him, but she followed his orders. She could feel his body, limp and relaxed, beneath hers, and occasionally she could feel him turn his head to the side to draw in a breath of fresh air. 
Finally the current began to get swifter and Clarissa lost the occasional reassuring touch of 
the river bed beneath her feet. Once they both went under water for an instant, and she could feel the panic rush through her, but she fought it back and remained still. 
"Hang on, darlin'," Casey sputtered when he could get his head back above the surface. "We're doing fine." 
After what seemed like half the night, Casey began to swim, pulling them toward the bank with strong strokes. When his feet touched bottom, he stood up and took hold of Clarissa to help her keep her footing as they walked on out of the water. As they stepped up onto dry land, Clarissa looked back and saw that they had come more than two hundred yards downstream from the Maggie Dell. 
"How about that?" Casey said happily as he brushed his soggy hair out of his face. His face had that same cocksure Irish grin that she remembered so well, but now it delighted her instead of making her angry. She couldn't get enough of looking at him. "We made it," he went on, "with nary a soul even knowing you're gone." 
"We made it," Clarissa exclaimed, hugging Casey's neck impulsively and smiling for the first time in quite some time. "Oh Tommie, I love you! You're the bravest man I ever met." 
"Maybe just the most reckless," Casey grinned at her, obviously enjoying the attention and the praise. "But we've still got a thing or two to do before we're through here." 
"Where's the Dakota Star?" Clarissa asked, suddenly feeling excited by the prospect of being back aboard the steamboat. 
"She's about three miles downriver," Casey said. 
"Kelly and I came on ahead to get you, and Captain Mumple plans to bring the boat on up about daybreak to pick us up."
"He's around here too?" Clarissa exclaimed. "Yellowstone Kelly is here?"
"All the time," Casey said. "He was watching the boat from the bank the whole time we were getting off it, and he had old Sweetness ready to shoot down any man who tried to stop us. Now that we're off safe, he's probably headed back to the place where we left the horses and our captive. 
"It's all so confusing," Clarissa told him. "I still don't see how you found out what happened to me and knew where I was."
"It wasn't easy, I'll grant you that," Casey chuckled. "You've covered a lot of miles since we put you ashore back at Fort Thompson."
He began explaining to her the sequence of events which had led to this night's rescue. After the fight at Nickerson's wood yard, Kelly had started searching for her a few hours after Benjamin Hawkins. For two or three days, he had stayed close on Hawkins' heels, but Hawkins was the one who first found the Axikara camp where Clarissa was a prisoner, and when Kelly finally located Chief Gray Lion and his band, Clarissa was already gone.
After that Kelly headed straight back to the river, knowing that Hawkins would head for the Maggie Dell. He had finally joined up with the Dakota Star several miles above Fort Sully. Then there was little the Star's crew could do but try to catch up with the Maggie Dell if they could.
Then, earlier this same day, Kelly had been
scouting ahead of the Star when he spotted the Maggie Dell crippled on the sand bar with a stump jammed in the middle of her paddle wheel. He reported the event back to the Star, and Casey realized that it might be a good opportunity to make a try at freeing Clarissa. 
They steamed up to within a few miles of the Maggie Dell, and then about dark, he and Kelly had started out on horseback to cover the remaining distance. But when they located Fink's boat, they still had to wait several hours because of the long hours the crew was putting in on repairs. 
"Our best piece of luck came," Casey said, "when the crew knocked off for the night and one of the Maggie Dell's men decided to come ashore for a while. Up until then we had no idea where you were, but once we got our hands on that fellow, we persuaded him that for reasons of health, he should tell us where you were being kept. You pretty well know what happened from there." 
"It's remarkable," Clarissa said. "I can hardly believe I'm off that cursed boat. I had given up hope of ever getting away and back to the Dakota Star." 
"Did they treat you bad, girl?" Casey asked quietly. 
"When I tried to escape," she said, "Ben Hawkins kept coming after me, and when he'd take me back onto the boat ..." Her voice broke and she was unable to form the words to tell him how miserable she had been as Hawkins's prisoner. "I thought it would be alright when he got me away from the Indians, but it was worse here. He ... he..." 
"Don't feel like you have to talk about it," Casey 
told her. "You don't have to explain anything of what went on to anybody. We're just glad to have you back, and I promise you we'll try to keep a little better track of you from here on in."
Clarissa gazed at him, scarcely able to make out his features in the darkness. But it was almost like being with a different man than she had known, a kind, understanding man not at all like the Tommie Casey she remembered. But she knew that most of the changes had gone on in her, not him. She was different, but how different and in what way she had yet to figure out.
Finally, rising to his feet, Casey said, "Come, Clarissa. We have things yet to do before we're safe again aboard the Dakota Star."
He led her through the thick trees until they reached the place where Yellowstone Kelly was guarding the captured crewman from the Maggie Dell. The scout greeted her happily, but there was still an odd sort of reserve about the way he treated her.
"Mr. Kelly," Clarissa said, "Casey told me all the trouble and danger you've gone through on my account, and I'm sincerely grateful."
"Well, ma'am," Kelly told her quietly, "women are a scarcity here on the frontier, especially ones like you, and they're generally not something men let themselves be parted from without a fight. And besides that, old Ben Hawkins and I have been cutting each other's trails for several years, and it's always a pleasure to cross him up whenever I can. By the way, where is Hawkins?"
"He went out on a hunting trip this morning," Clarissa told him. "He said he'd be gone about three days."
With a dry laugh, Kelly said, "I'd give a new saddle to see his face when he finds out what's happened. It sure won't be very peaceful on the Maggie Dell for a while after that." 
"I wouldn't want to be there," Clarissa said quietly. 
They rested for a while. Then Casey rose again and prepared to leave. 
"Are we going back to the Dakota Star now?" Clarissa asked, starting to rise. 
"No, I'm going out alone this time," Casey told her. "I have to scout the river and work out a navigational problem. What with the Maggie Dell blocking the main channel and not likely to be moving for a while, I have to see if there's some way for us to get by her without passing too close to her decks. I'm not anxious for a running gun battle if we try to slide along right next to her." Then, turning to Kelly, he said, "Toward dawn, you can go back down around that first wide bend and flag down the Star to pick you up. But don't let this scoundrel go until I'm back aboard our boat. I don't want him running back to Charlie Fink and telling him all we've been up to tonight." 
"I don't think we'll have to worry about him," Kelly said, glancing down at the bound and gagged prisoner. "We had ourselves a long talk while you were gone, and our friend Horace Bixter here just wouldn't even think of doing anything to cause us any problems. Isn't that right, Horace?" The prisoner nodded his agreement enthusiastically. 
As Casey moved off into the darkness, Clarissa settled back down to await the welcome time when she could return to the steamboat which had become her home. 
Georgia awoke feeling warm and comfortable and content. It was still dark outside, quiet and still as the boat lay tied against the bank near the mouth of the Grand River in the central part of Dakota Territory.
These last few weeks here aboard the Richards Folly had been some of the best in her life. Despite all the changes created by men who wanted to stop their upriver progress, and the natural perils thrust in their way by the Missouri River itself, just being with Paul Eaton during the long voyage had come as if in fulfillment of an unspoken prayer.
Down on the lower part of the river, when they had launched out on the keelboat, she had expected nothing but hardship and tedium during the long trip. Then, after the attack by Simon Bindigo and his men, she began to doubt that they would ever
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make it upriver at all. It seemed at the time as if their whole world had come tumbling down around them, that when the keelboat had been crushed beneath the paddle blades of that steamboat not only Clarissa and their belongings had been lost, but also all their hopes and plans for the future. Only the urgent need to help her father had kept her going.
They had been thoroughly exhausted and disheartened when they stopped at the wood lot below Independence, and thoughts of the future were filled only with the bleakest possibilities. But the remarkable appearance of Paul Eaton had turnd their whole world around. She could remember with striking clarity the moment when he had walked up to them and spoke. It was like finally seeing the sky clear and the sun emerge after a terrifying storm.
Georgia rolled to the side, pressing the entire length of her body against that of Paul Eaton beside her. Even that simple contact sent chills of pleasure through her. The touch of her bare breast against his chest was arousing, and as she lapped one of her long, slender legs across his and gently caressed his chest, it seemed as if their bodies had discovered a way of communicating which was separate and distinct from any spoken language. She wanted to wake him, wanted him to return slowly from sleep with her against him like this, warm and hungry and waiting.
She could feel him stir and stretch, and then he lifted one of his arms and lay it around her shoulders, stroking her arm lightly with his fingertips.
"You're not leaving, are you?" he asked quietly, his voice still throaty with sleepiness.
"Not yet," she said. "We still have a little while."
"Good." That simple pronouncement, that affirmation of the pleasure he felt at being with her, was thrilling to Georgia. It seemed as if during their occasional hours here together in his cabin, their every word and action took on a magical quality which was completely beyond her powers to understand or express.
But their times together always ended too quickly, and they happened all too seldom.
"My father's coming back today, isn't he?" she asked.
"I think he should be back today," Paul confirmed.
"It was wonderful of you to give him the hunter's job, Paul. He hasn't been this happy in years. If you had just let us ride upriver and never asked us to do any work in return, he would have felt terrible, like it was some kind of charity."
"Well, Casey told me I would have to hire myself a hunter upriver somewhere, and your father was a good choice. He does a fine job, and he's helped Mr. Bedford countless times by scouting the waters ahead. The fresh meat he brings in every couple of days doesn't hurt either."
"Papa always was a dandy shot," Georgia confirmed. "The only thing is, I worry about the Indians sometimes. We never had much trouble getting along with the Indians out in the southwest. We just traded with them and treated them with respect, and usually they just let us go our way in peace. But these Indians up here seem angrier."
"From this talk at the forts, there's trouble in the wind without doubt. But your father can take care of such things. He knows how to get along out there."
"He does," she agreed. "But I still worry. That's a woman's right. I guess if he got killed out there doing what he's doing, he would be satisfied enough. I've heard him say it's not so much when man died, but what he died for and how well he did it that counted more."
"Men in my line generally agree with that way of looking at things," Paul said. "When a man sets foot on a riverboat, he can pretty well figure that someday the river will decide his time is up and claim him, one way or another. But most will tell you they don't fear that day near as much as the thought that when their time comes, they won't go out with style and the respect of the others around them."
"You men are so prideful sometimes," Georgia said lightly. "It's funny, you know, that while women spend most of our time hoping and praying that nobody dies, you men are just worried about how well you'll do it." She snuggled more tightly against him, starting a trail of nips and kisses which led up his neck, across his face to his mouth.
After one long, warm kiss, Paul said, "Georgia?"
"Yes, Paul?"
"I love you," he told her simply.
"Me too, Paul."
"I just wanted you to hear it and know it without any doubts. Sometimes a man has a hard time saying that--because he's not really sure, or else because he's sure but he's afraid to put it into real
words. But I do love you. I have ever since that first night on the Natchez Belle, and it keeps getting stronger and better all the time."
"I know. After that time, I didn't think it could get any better between us, but it has. I just wish we could tell everybody. I wish we could go out on the deck and tell my father, and Mr. Bedford and the whole crew, the whole world, how wonderful it is for us."
"We will, girl. In time, we'll let everybody know."
They had decided that since Georgia was still determined to go off seeking the gold claim with her father, it would be best to keep their mutual love hidden from William St. Clair, rather than have him carry the guilt of knowing that he was taking his daughter away from the man she loved. But the subject of their parting at Fort Benton was still the source of disharmony between them. Nothing else about their future could be certain since that separation hung between them like a heavy veil.
More than once Eaton had mentioned marriage to her. He had asked her to stay with him and live as his wife on board whatever boat he found to captain. But her answer had always been the same. As much as she longed to be with him and to live the life he envisioned for them, she knew she had to press on with her father this final time. To abandon William now would be to spend a lifetime wondering what difference it might have made if she had stood by him and helped him go after this last bonanza.
During the voyage, William had sensed that there was some romantic involvement between his
daughter and Eaton, and he was proud of it. But when he continued to tease her like he might a fourteen-year-old with a schoolgirl crush, Georgia realized that her father had no comprehension of the depth and permanence of hers and Paul's affections. How could he know that they were deeply in love, and that they were lovers, when they were so careful to shield it from him?
So they had held their rendezvous in the bed in the captain's cabin only a few times since Eaton had taken them aboard the Folly, and then only when William was away from the boat. But that infrequency only served to make their lovemaking more enjoyable. Each time they had come together, both of them had been eager and hungry to be in one another's arms again.
"You'll have to go soon," Paul said at last. Both of them knew that before long, the mate would begin rousing the crew to prepare the boat for another long day.
"Give me something to remember until next time," Georgia whispered. Her exploring fingers completed the meaning behind her request. She found him willing and ready.
Georgia had spent most of the morning up on the hurricane deck and was the first to spot her father. He was waiting on a hilltop about a quarter mile ahead, sitting astride his horse and silhouetted against the bright Dakota sky like a monument to a plainsman. It was an imprudent thing for him to do, she knew. Atop that hill and outlined as he was, he would be an easy target for any enemy within range of a rifle shot. But she had to chuckle to herself, because she knew he
was doing it merely for the dramatic effect it presented. She and the others on the boat were supposed to see him up there and think how striking and heroic he looked. 
As the Folly neared his vantage point, St. Clair rode down the hill and stopped his horse on the bank near the water. As they drew closer, Georgia could see the dark bulk of his fresh kill laying on the ground beside his horse. He was doing a good job hunting and scouting for the steamboat and she was truly proud of him. 
As Nehemiah Bedford eased the steamboat in toward where her father was, Georgia descended the flights of stairs to the main deck. When they had stopped, the crew slid the gangplank out and St. Clair came aboard, leading his horse up the narrow walkway carefully. Some of the crewmen went ashore to bring the fresh game onto the boat. 
William St. Clair looked exhausted, but he greeted his daughter with a tight hug and a kiss. 
"Did everything go alright, papa?" Georgia asked. 
"I guess so," William said guardedly. He was not laughing and joking as he usually did when he returned, and she could tell he had something serious on his mind. "Where's the captain?" he asked. "I need to talk to him straightaways." 
"He was in the pilothouse awhile ago," Georgia said. "I guess he's still there." 
St. Clair took his rifle and pack from the back of his horse and then turned the reins of the animal over to a crewman. As he started across the deck, headed toward the upper decks, Georgia followed. Curious about her father's odd mood and the news he must be carrying, she stayed with him all the 
way up to the hurricane deck and on into the pilothouse. 
Bedford was already involved in steering the steamboat back into the main channel, so he scarcely paused to cast a glance and a nod back in William's direction, but Captain Eaton greeted his hunter with a handshake. 
"How was it, William?" Eaton asked. "Any trouble out there?" 
"None at all," William said. "But I saw something a short distance upriver that I thought you should know about as soon as possible." 
Eaton's face took on a look of concern and the stern pilot turned again to give William a longer,' more intent look. 
"I had been a little piece inland, trailing a herd of deer I spotted up in that direction," St. Clair said, "and when I made my kill, I cut back northeast to pick up the river again. I raised it at a place where the water splits off into three sections and skirts around two long thin islands covered over with scrub brush and weeds." 
"Could you spot it on the chart?" Eaton asked, pulling a map from a wall rack and spreading it on the bench at the rear of the pilothouse. 
They both studied it a moment, and then St. Clair put his finger on a point. "Right about here," he said. 
"It's labeled MacArthur Islands, Mr. Bedford," Eaton told the pilot. Bedford nodded his head without turning. 
"Anyway," William went on, "the channel to the far right looked broader and deeper than the other two. It seemed like the obvious choice for a steamboat. But it was the damnedest thing. There was 
another steamboat tied off right at the head of the right-hand channel."
"What's so strange about that?" Eaton asked.
"Well, sir, you know how most steamboats either ease up alongside a bank or else pull in nose first when they have to? Well, this one hadn't done neither of them things. It was backed in against the bank with its paddlewheel tied off to the trees and its nose sticking out in the river. Unless I'm bad wrong, that ain't customary practice, is it?"
Eaton frowned and looked puzzled. "It is unusual," he agreed. "Mr. Bedford?"
"I can't figure why they would do that," Bedford said. "Not unless they had suffered damage to the stern and had pulled up that way to haul the boat partway up out of the water."
"At first," St. Clair said, "I was going to ride right down and have a chat with them. I thought maybe during the course of the talk, I could find out what in the hell inspired them to tie off that way. But when I got closer and saw the name on her side, I headed right back around and got out of sight in the trees. It was the boat you've been talking about, the Maggie Dell. Big as life."
There was a moment of quiet in the pilothouse. None of them had even seen the Maggie Dell since St. Charles, but during the entire trip upriver from Missouri, they had lived with the realization that she was up ahead, a threat waiting to fulfill itself. Up until now Casey had kept them reasonably well appraised of the Maggie Dell's whereabouts, but as they progressed farther along, communication had become more difficult and there had been no recent message telling them that Charlie Fink's
boat was now between the two Missouri Northwest steamboats.
"Did they seem to be working on her?" Bedford asked at last. "Did she look disabled or was there much activity in any particular place aboard her?"
"I hardly saw a soul," St. Clair said. "There were a few men on the bank, but they were mostly just lounging around, fishing and suchlike. The boat just laid there like a snake on a hot rock."
"Have you studied George Kimball's log for that area, Mr. Bedford?" Eaton asked. The log of the river which Kimball had allowed them to carry along when they left him behind in St. Joseph had been an invaluable aid on numerous occasions.
"Aye, sir, I know the place," Bedford confirmed. "His notes say the right channel is the one to stay in. The others are shallow and risky and no boats have attempted them in years."
"But the Maggie Dell sits at the head of the right channel," Eaton repeated to himself, pursing his lips in contemplation. "It could be innocent enough, or it could be the place they've chosen to make their play."
"We'll see when we get there, I suppose," Bedford said calmly.
The tension among the crew of the Richlands Folly was only increased by the slow progress they made that day toward the almost certain danger ahead. Grasshoppering was frequently necessary, and during each grounding delay, Paul Eaton paced the pilothouse and hurricane deck nervously. He had hoped to raise the MacArthur Islands while the light was still good, so that they would
have time to make it through whatever ambush might await them there before dark. But each time they skidded to a halt on another shallow sand bar, his hopes became dimmer.
Finally, past five in the afternoon, William St. Clair mounted the stairs and came over to Eaton. St. Clair had been busy most of the day helping the mate arm the crew and male passengers, and organizing the rag-tag militia for a possible defense of the steamboat. They had built barricades along both sides of the main deck which the men could hide behind and fire from if that became necessary, and during the afternoon several of the crewmen had brought some heavy sections of boiler plate up to the pilothouse to build a crude protection for the pilot.
They were just rounding a long bend in the river, and Eaton had been staring forward toward the rougher water a mile or two ahead.
"That's the place I told you about, captain," St. Clair said, pointing to two bands of greenery which, at that distance, appeared almost to grow right up out of the middle of the water. To the right were the familiar cottonwood groves, and the bank to the left, unstable and subject to constant erosion, was a twenty-foot-high wall of crumbling soil.
Together the two men went up to the pilothouse to join Bedford and discuss the situation with him. The light was still good, but the sun had nearly passed below the western horizon and the captain knew that at most, they had no more than an hour of daylight left.
"Have you sighted the enemy yet, Mr. Bedford?"
Eaton asked. He realized suddenly that he had lapsed back into the terminology of his war days on the Mississippi. But it was understandable enough, he figured. The tension and the hazards here were comparable to that time. There was an enemy out there, waiting to waylay them and destroy them if possible. 
"Not yet, sir," Bedford mumbled. 
"Maybe they've moved on," Eaton ventured. 
"They'd be hard to spot at this distance," St. Clair offered. "They were back in a tight place against the bank. You probably won't know for sure whether they're there or not until you're on up, almost into the channel." 
"Have you decided yet which direction to choose?" Eaton asked. It was rightfully a pilot's choice and he was not going to venture an opinion unless it was sought. 
"As I see it, captain," Bedford said thoughtfully, "if we try either the left or center channel and ground out, we'll be completely at their mercy. There won't be time for sparring even a short distance before they come down on us like a pack of wolves. So I propose to face them head on to the right. If it's shooting they want, we should be able to match them gun for gun in the contest. What do you say, sir?" 
"Your plan seems as sound as any other," Eaton told him. "Let's do it." 
In a few minutes Bedford signaled for a reduction in power as he began to ease the boat to starboard and head for the channel. His obvious intention was to ease the boat upriver cautiously, feeling his way forward rather than trying to make 
it in one great burst of speed. Eaton only hoped that the light would last long enough for them to make the head of the channel before dark.
They had just passed the tip of the first island when they finally spotted the Maggie Dell. She had been back along the bank as St. Clair said, but was now nosing forward slowly and seemed to be maneuvering into a position to start back down the channel directly at the Folly.
Then with a sinking feeling, Eaton spotted Charlie Fink's trump card. A curious breastwork, hard to comprehend at first, had been attached to the Maggie Dell's bow at the water line. Then it hit him, just as Bedford began shouting commands down to the engineer to reverse engines.
Fink had turned the front of his boat into a battering ram designed to rip through the hull of the Folly on impact. If the two boats collided, the Maggie Dell would probably also suffer some damage, but the Folly would surely go to the bottom.
With a jolt, the Folly stopped its forward progress, and a moment later the paddlewheel at the stern began to reverse its motion and start them backward down the river. But the Maggie Dell was already picking up momentum, bearing down on them at an alarming rate.
An explosion rang out from the front of the Maggie Dell, and an instant later the three-inch ball from its brass cannon demolished a section of railing along the hurricane deck below the Folly's pilothouse.
"Tell them to fire the field piece," Eaton shouted down the speaking tube to the engineer, "and continue to fire at will."
A moment later the Folly's small brass cannon boomed out and a portion of the Maggie Dell's front stairway erupted into a shower of splintered wood and mangled timber. Though he had given the order to continue to fire, he knew there would not be time for much of a cannon duel to develop. The Maggie Dell was bearing down on them too quickly.
Then suddenly Bedford said, "Grab hold of something, men." As Eaton and St. Clair braced themselves, the pilot wrenched the wheel sharply around several turns, pitching the stern of the steamboat sharply to the side and slowing it as the bow swept around to catch up. From somewhere below, above the din of the engines and the rush of the paddle blades, somebody shouted frantically, "Man overboard!" But there was no time to worry about the life of one man. If Bedford did not come up with some remarkable feat of piloting, they would all be in the water soon.
For a moment, Eaton thought they might be caught by the cross currents and swept out of control downstream, but Bedford's iron grip on the wheel held and the paddlewheel continued to churn behind them, pulling them crossways in the river and out of the careening course of the Maggie Dell. The Maggie Dell's pilot just could not bring his boat around quickly enough to follow his quarry and ram it.
The cannon on the front of the Folly roared out again and the ball smashed into a jumble of men and cargo on the main deck of the Maggie Dell, but it narrowly missed the steamboat's boilers, which could have put a quick end to the battle. As the two boats passed by at their closest point, a
flurry of gunfire rose and fell from both their decks.
Eaton saw a couple of men go down aboard the Maggie Dell and he supposed that he had probably also lost some hands in the exchange. But the worst of the danger was past for the moment. As the Maggie Dell moved on down river, obviously needing a wider place to turn around, it suddenly occurred to the captain that the time it took for their opponent to make his turn might give them time enough to pull back into the channel and go up it.
Bedford obviously had the same realization at the same time, because he immediately called down to reverse the engines and start the boat forward again, this time under full power. Eaton started down to the lower decks to check on the wounded, with St. Clair close behind him.
"By thunder, we made it!" St. Clair exclaimed happily. "We'll be a mile upriver before they can come around and start after us again."
"It looks like Mr. Bedford just plain outmaneuvered them," Eaton agreed. "I think we might actually be in the clear now for a while."
Even as he voiced his optimism, they were both knocked off their feet as the boat suddenly lurched sideways in the water. Before they could stand up again, the Folly was struck two more crashing blows on its port side.
"Logs," Bedford called down from the open window of the pilothouse. "The center channel's full of them!" As Eaton glanced up, he saw that the pilothouse was already tilted several degrees to the port side. The Folly was going down, and quickly.
"We've got to clear the decks," Eaton shouted to
St. Clair. "When that water hits the boilers, they're likely to blow the whole boat to splinters. You cover the passenger deck and tell everybody just to grab something that floats and jump." 
As St. Clair staggered hurriedly off across the sloping deck, Eaton took an instant to glance down at the water on the port side. Three logs about a foot in diameter and thirty feet long had been driven into the side of the boat like javelins. Each had been trimmed of all its branches and chopped to a point on either end to gain maximum speed in the water. While everybody on the boat was gazing downriver at the Maggie Dell and thinking how clever they had been in eluding Charlie Fink; somebody upriver had apparently cut these logs loose at just the right instant. They were Fink's hole cards, and they had done their job well. 
Eaton turned and started toward the stairs, then paused at the last minute and turned back to the pilothouse. "Abandon the boat, Mr. Bedford," he shouted. 
"Not yet. If I can bring her about and hang those logs up on the tip of the island," Bedford called down to him, "I can keep her up a little longer and give you another couple of minutes to get the decks clear." 
Eaton started to argue, hating to see his friend remain a moment longer in such a perilous spot, but then he turned away, knowing the pilot was right. Even that little bit of time could mean the difference in saving more lives. 
Down below, the water was already littered with swimmers trying to get away from the sinking steamboat as quickly as possible. Most seemed 
to be making good progress toward shore, but some were being caught up in the river's swift currents and swept away downstream. As Eaton reached the main deck, he saw that most of the crew had already jumped overboard, but he found the engineer and mate still at their stations, awaiting orders with tense determination.
"You've done all you can," Eaton told them. "Hit the water, men."
The mate complied with the order readily, but the engineer moved to the railing on the downriver side, then turned and gave Eaton a concerned glance. "Captain?" he said. He didn't have to voice his question. It was written plainly on his face.
"I'm coming as soon as I'm sure everybody's off," Eaton told him. The boat was listing so much now that the engineer had difficulty climbing over the rail and jumping into the water. On the upriver side, the lapping water was already beginning to crawl across the deck. Eaton moved to the engineer's station by the speaking tube, thinking that Bedford might have some final lifesaving orders.
A moment later, William St. Clair came bounding down the stairs and worked his way over to Eaton. "The passenger deck is clear," he said.
"Georgia?" Eaton asked.
"She wanted to come looking for you, so I had to throw her overboard myself."
"You're next," the captain said. "I'll be along in a second." As St. Clair went to the railing and jumped into the river, Eaton called up the speaking tube, "Get out, Mr. Bedford! The boat's clear! Get out!"
Eaton started toward the bow of the boat, 
deciding that was the best place from which to jump, but just then the boat began to roll sideways. His feet went out from under him and he slid across the sloping deck and into the water on the upriver side. Glancing back, he saw that the water was only inches from the firebox and boilers. He sucked in a great gulp of air and plunged down, letting the current carry him beneath the hull of the steamboat and on down the river.
He felt as if his lungs would burst before he finally passed completely beneath the wreckage and surfaced for a breath on the other side. But he only paused on the top long enough to suck in one fresh breath before diving again. He knew the boat must blow any second now, and he wanted to be under water when it did. .
He felt the concussion of the explosion as much as heard it. It felt as if his whole body had suddenly been slammed from above and the breath was pounded out of him. He needed air desperately, but when he looked up, the surface of the river was on fire above him. He swam on a few more feet and then shot to the top, gagging and coughing as he gasped for air.
Behind him, in the inferno of the blazing wreckage, there was scarcely anything that was recognizable as being any part of a steamboat. The water's surface was littered with burning debris and shredded portions of the boat. After a moment, he turned and started swimming toward the bank.
The survivors gathered along the south bank of the river a couple of hundred yards below where the Richland's Folly went down, a soggy, bedraggled assortment of exhausted and half-drowned
passengers and crewmen. Somehow somebody had succeeded in getting a fire started, and in a little while the night was lit with half a dozen small fires, each surrounded by several men and women.
Eaton and his mate organized a few of the crewmen into search parties which started downstream, scouring the banks and sand bars for other survivors, but as they began straggling back after more than an hour, they brought back pitifully few others with them. The captain could not yet get an accurate count of how many people from his boat had lived and how many had died, but he knew the death toll would be staggering. There had been fifty-six people on board the boat, and now there were scarcely thirty gathered around the fires.
The Maggie Dell had gone about a mile back down the river to wait for the worst of the fires from the sinking Richland's Folly to burn out, and then, in a blatantly cruel maneuver, had steamed back upriver quite near the bank where the people from the Folly were huddled. They had seemed to realize that few if any weapons would have been salvaged from the wreck, so they felt safe in coming within jeering distance of their victims. Eaton and the others had sat in despondent silence as the steam whistle aboard the Maggie Dell slashed the night with three long, echoing blasts. Then the boat cut to starboard to pass up into the right channel around the MacArthur Islands and eventually passed from sight and hearing.
Paul Eaton was not too surprised to hear that Nehemiah Bedford had not survived the wreck. He had listened silently as one of the passengers, one of the first to reach the bank, described how Bedford had remained in the pilothouse to the last,
still trying to keep the boat afloat just an instant longer. 
But Eaton's grief for his friend was tempered by an overwhelming respect for the man. He knew that if Bedford could have picked the manner and circumstances of his death, his choice would not have been all that different. The tradition that most pilots imposed upon themselves--when disaster struck, they were willing to offer themselves as sacrifices so that others on the boat might live. 
And in a way, Eaton thought, men such as Bedford were fortunate in that they could be assured that their deaths had value and meaning. The sinking of the Richland's Folly would be a tale that would be told and retold many times up and down the river, and always the name of Nehemiah Bedford would figure prominently. 
About an hour after the wreck, one of the search parties came back leading the horse which William St. Clair used on his scouting and hunting trips. Remarkably, somebody on the main deck of the boat had thought to release the horse and force it to jump into the water. Eaton immediately located William St. Clair and dispatched him on a journey north to Fort Abraham Lincoln, which was about twenty-five miles north. He realized that Fort Rice was closer, being only about fifteen miles south of them, but he didn't want to go backwards anymore. He hoped that St. Clair might be able to catch up with Tommie Casey and the Dakota Star somewhere near Fort Lincoln, and that the Star could come back and pick up the battered survivors of the Folly. 
Sometime past midnight, after all the search parties were back and the wounded had been 
made as comfortable as possible, Eaton finally took the time to lie down near one of the fires to rest for a while. In a few minutes, Georgia came over and lay down beside him, resting her head on his shoulder and curling up against him. She had spent most of the time since the wreck with several other women, caring for the wounded.
It was a comfort to Eaton to have her here beside him like this, and suddenly he didn't care who saw it or what they thought.
"Are you alright?" he asked her quietly.
"Um hum," she said. "I'm just tired, but it's nice to be here like this with you. It seems like so long since we've been together."
"It's been a hell of a night, hasn't it?"
"It sure has. But I felt better once I knew you were off the boat safely. I was afraid you might have some silly notion about going down with your command."
"That kind of thing isn't always necessarily silly," Paul told her. "Sometime's it's a noble thing, like it was with Nehemiah Bedford."
"I'm sorry, Paul. You're right. I'm just so tired, and so relieved that you made it off safe, that I wasn't thinking about anything else. But I am sorry about Mr. Bedford. He was a very brave man, wasn't he?"
"He was," Paul agreed. "But it was a quiet kind of bravery, the kind that you scarcely ever think about until it's time for it to come to the surface. I'm proud that he was my friend, and I'm proud of the way he died."
"I'll miss him, too," Georgia said quietly from beside him. "But what will we do now? What's going to happen to us?"
"Your father will bring us help," Paul said. "If we had no injured with us, we could just start walking and be at a fort or town within a day or so. But some of these people are too hurt to move, and I've decided it would be better not to split up. We'll just have to wait here until help reaches us."
Paul lay awake long after he knew that Georgia had fallen asleep beside him. He had many things on his mind, and a variety of emotions kept mixing up inside him, fighting for his attention. Foremost was the bitter hatred he was beginning to feel for Charlie Fink, the cause of this disaster and all these deaths. Once they reached civilization, it would be a difficult task to prove that Fink had had anything to do with the sinking of the Richland's Folly. The Maggie Dell, after all, had been several hundred yards downstream when the logs struck the Folly.
But in Eaton's mind, the responsibility lay squarely on Fink's shoulders, and he knew it was a debt he was compelled to pay. Charlie Fink was a doomed man.
FORT RICE, DAKOTA TERRITORY JULY, 1876 
The Dakota Star lay tied off at the levee near Fort Rice while Casey and Captain Mumple went ashore to arrange for materials to repair the boat's rudder. Downriver, about a day after the daring rescue of Clarissa, the boat's rudder had been shattered on a submerged snag and they had limped on into Fort Rice after makeshift repairs. But now permanent repairs were necessary before they could press on. 
Clarissa had passed up the opportunity for a trip into Fort Rice and the nearby settlement town. Since returning to the Dakota Star, she felt an almost addictive sense of security aboard her decks, and now she seldom ventured onto land. She had an obsessive awareness that Benjamin Hawkins was still out there, lurking, plotting and waiting for the opportunity to get her back. She seemed to see him deep within the shadows of every grove they 
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passed, and her imagination turned every distant, long figure into his. 
The logical part of her mind told her that these imaginings were ridiculous. It was actually possible, she realized, that Hawkins did not even know yet that she had been taken from the Maggie Dell. Fink's boat was still somewhere downriver from them, and if Hawkins had traveled according to the plan he had laid out to her, he would now be waiting upriver at the Thunderhead wood lot for the Maggie Dell to catch up to him. 
But to Clarissa, Hawkins's acumen in the wilderness had an almost limitless, mystical quality--he seemed to know everything that was going on all the time. When she was being held by the small band of Arikaras, Hawkins had come to the precise place where she was and had started bartering for possession of her even before Gray Lion had acknowledged her presence in the camp. And again, during her second escape attempt, he had trailed her through the inky night, come right to the place she was hiding, and took her back. 
At the thought of what Hawkins was capable of, a thread of terror still bound her, even now that she was safe aboard the Dakota Star. She knew that if he took her away again, the horror of it would drive her to some rash action. A return to the Me she had lived as Hawkins's concubine was unthinkable. 
Clarissa was sitting high up on the hurricane deck, surveying the activity on the levee below her. Some of the cargo they had brought upriver was being unloaded here. Much of it seemed to be x trade goods and supplies for the local Indians- blankets, food stuffs and clothing. A few Indians 
were in evidence around the area, dirty hungry people who seemed to wander around aimlessly, heading nowhere in particular and in no special hurry to get there. Once in a while some would pause and survey the massive steamboat, mixing awe and hatred in their glances. To them, this boat was a huge symbol of the white man's shove westward, of the steady encroachment and conquest of the red man's age old homeland. 
She saw the two horsemen while they were still far down the river bank, but paid them little attention at first. Then as they neared, she realized that one of them was their hunter, Yellowstone Kelly. There was something distinctive about the way he sat casually erect in the saddle, carrying his rifle, Old Sweetness, across his lap instead of in the boot as most men did. 
Then her eyes strayed to the man with Kelly. She could see very little of his face under his full beard and the pulled-down brim of his floppy felt hat. But something about him looked familiar. The shape of his short, husky frame, the sideways cock of his head, the openness of his grin as he talked with Kelly, all struck a familiar chord in her. And then it hit her. He reminded her very much of her uncle, who had been lost in the keelboat wreck downriver. 
The two men rode right up to the gangplank of the Star before stepping down from their horses. Clarissa continued to stare intently at the second man, feeling the hope and excitement grow in spite of herself. Finally she got up and went to the rail for a closer look. 
At that instant, the man's eyes roved up the tiered decks and came to rest at last on her. There 
was an instant of disbelief, and then his mouth fell open and his eyes widened. His lips moved silently for a moment, and then he shouted out suddenly, "Clarissa! Is it really you?"
As the surprised Kelly watched, William St. Clair threw aside the reins of his horse and raced up the gangplank of the boat, nearly falling overboard in his urgency. Immediately Clarissa went rushing down to meet him. They met on the stairs at the passenger deck, locking their arms around one another, hugging and kissing and crying with joy.
Clarissa was almost breathless from the excitement. "I thought you were dead," she exclaimed. "Is Georgia alive too? Where is she now?"
"Georgia's downriver apiece," William said. "She's all right, but we've had a crash and lost a lot of people."
"Oh my Lord," Clarissa whispered, burying her face against William's shoulder and sobbing uncontrollably. She was barely able to control the trembling of her body. It was like suddenly finding herself returning to a home she thought she would never see again. It was one of the best feelings in the world.
In a minute, Clarissa looked up and saw Kelly striding up the stairs. "Looks to me like you two know each other," he grinned.
"She's my cousin!" St. Clair exclaimed. "We were separated in a keelboat wreck downriver. Me and my daughter thought she was killed, and she thought we were dead too, I guess. It's almost too good to be true."
"But how did you end up here with Mr. Kelly?"
Clarissa asked, still trying to fathom the strange events which had led to this sudden reunion.
"Ever since Missouri," St. Clair told her, "we been on the Richland's Folly, the companion boat to this one you're on. But it was sunk two days ago by that scurvy Charlie Fink and his bunch of rogues. I came to get some help for the survivors."
Clarissa frowned at the mention of Fink's name, but she did not mention her own recent experiences with the Maggie Dell. There would be time to tell about that later.
"I was riding up from where the wreck happened when I ran into Yellowstone here. He was riding back looking for the Folly."
"I hate to interrupt you, Will," Kelly said, "but we need to find the captain and Casey."
"You're right," St. Clair said. "I promised to send a relief boat back as soon as I reached Fort Rice. We've got wounded back there that need medical attention in the worst way."
"I'll go with you," Clarissa said. "Maybe they'll let me ride back and help." She followed the two men as they went back down the stairs and started across the gangplank toward the bank.
Captain Mumple chartered the Little Piper to go back down and pick up the survivors of the Richland's Folly. It was a tiny, light-drafted stem- wheeler which was normally used to ferry contingents of soldiers and supplies for short distances in the vicinity of Fort Rice. The little boat had only one deck, with a small pilothouse sitting atop its roof, but it was large enough to carry the thirty survivors of the Folly back the short distance to the fort.
Clarissa was bubbling with excitement by the time she boarded the Little Piper, along with St. Clair, Casey and Kelly, for the trip down. Earlier she had been worried because she realized that they would have to pass the Maggie Dell during the brief run, but shortly before their departure, Fink's boat had steamed past Fort Rice without stopping. 
The light little boat made good progress, running with the currents and gliding over many bars and reefs which would have become barriers to the larger boats. It took them only two hours to reach the scene of the disaster.
At the head of the MacArthur Islands, St. Clair began to describe to the others how Fink had laid the trap for them, plummeting down toward them at the last minute with the destructive rams fixed on the front of the boat. As he told of the logs which were launched to crash into the side of the Folly, Clarissa could see Casey's eyes narrow with hatred and determination.
"It went down less than five minutes after that," St. Clair said. "With them holes ripped in her side, it was amazing that she stayed up that long, but old Nehemiah Bedford, he pulled some kind of magic out of his hat to keep her up that long. In my mind, they ought to put up some kind of monument to that man here for all the lives he saved."
"I'm going to put a monument up Charlie Fink's backside the next time we get close enough for me to get my hands on him," Casey vowed. "Stiff competition for business is one thing, but this man Fink has tipped clear off the edge of reason. From here on in, it's no holds barred, all out war."
"Well, you might have to stand in line for a chance to wring that feller's neck for him," St. Clair said. "Me and a couple of others have already decided it's a job we'd like to take on too." 
Two days of waiting had taken their toll on the surviving passengers and crew of the Richlands Folly, but as the Little Piper eased into the bank, a cheer went up from the makeshift camp they had established a few hundred yards downriver from the islands. 
Casey was the first off the boat, and Paul Eaton was standing there on the bank to meet him. As they shook hands, Eaton said, "Well, Tommie, I have to admit that when you warned me it might get rough, you sure knew what you were talking about. I guess William's already filled you in on what they pulled on us." 
"He told me," Casey said seriously. "I guess it was partly our fault for ever letting that rascal get between you and us. I knew the kinds of things he was capable of, but I just couldn't stand to miss the chance of passing him by when I had it, and Captain Mumple felt the same way." 
"Well, if you'd waited, it could have just as easily been the Dakota Star he sank instead of the Folly," Eaton said. "But what concerns me more now is getting these injured people to a doctor somewhere. We've already lost two men since I sent William out, one from a gunshot and another that was hit in the head with a piece of iron when the boilers blew, and I've got a couple more that might not last the day." 
"Let's get them on the boat and get going, then," Casey said. "It should only take about four more 
hours to raise the fort on this little clattertrap the captain hired."
As the survivors began to pour onto the tiny boat carrying the wounded with them, Clarissa watched as Georgia came across the gangplank, carrying one end of a litter which bore a wounded man. She looked tired and emotionally drained as she trudged up the narrow, cleated board onto the each step carefully, as if she was so exhausted that the mere act of walking required concentration. As soon as the man was safely resting on the deck, Clarissa went over to her cousin.
When she spoke, Georgia had her back turned and had yet to notice Clarissa's presence. "It looks to me like you make as good a nurse as you do a gold miner," Clarissa told her.
Georgia turned her head, puzzled by the strange comment, and when her eyes rested on Clarissa, it was a moment before recognition could thread its way through her exhausted mind. Then finally she whispered, "Clarissa?" It was a question voiced almost with disbelief, as if for an instant she believed she was being confronted by an apparition.
"It's me!" Clarissa confirmed. "I'm alive!"
Bursting into tears, Georgia threw her arms around her cousin's neck. "Clarissa! Oh, my God! You are alive! I can't believe it," she crooned. "After all this time and all these miles, I just gave up hoping."
"So had I," Clarissa told her. "But it's real. It's true. You and me and your father, we're all back together again, and I know we won't be parted this time like we were before."
Within a few minutes, they had loaded all the people from the Richlands Folly onto the cramped
deck of the Little Piper and were ready to head upstream. As the boat pulled into the channel where all the trouble had started two days before, Paul Eaton came quietly to Georgia's side and put his arm around her waist.
Clarissa was surprised by the sudden display of closeness between this man and her cousin, but she sensed that for a while they needed to be alone together, that there was something very private they needed to share.
Several other steamboats were pulled up to the levee when the Dakota Star reached Fort Lincoln on July 6th. It was a new, sprawling military outpost, a regional logistical center for the massive military campaigns which were going on farther to the west. Fort Lincoln was also headquarters of the Seventh Cavalry, commanded by Colonel George Armstrong Custer. Across the river to the east lay the young, thriving town of Bismarck. 
Casey was at the wheel to nose the steamboat in among the others in late afternoon, and Paul Eaton, now little more than an observer and passenger aboard the boat, was there keeping him company. Almost as soon as they stopped, Casey noticed an assortment of strange black shrouds draping the deck of a neighboring boat. 
"Look at that, Paul," he said. "The Far West is 
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draped with black crepe like they were in mourning. I wonder what's going on?" 
"They must have met tragedy of some sort," Paul said. "Maybe they lost their captain." 
Casey turned to his friend and gave him a dark, serious look. "I hope that's not what it is," he said. "The last I heard, the Far West was captained and piloted by Grant Marsh." 
Eaton glanced back at his friend, but said nothing. Captain Grant Marsh had been a legendary overman for over two decades on the Missouri. His reputation was so widespread that even on the Mississippi River, it was considered a crowning compliment to a man if he found his skills or daring equated with those of Marsh. Eaton knew that Casey held Marsh in special respect. He had learned piloting under him more than ten years before, and he had been given his first job as a full-fledged pilot on Marsh's sterling recommendation.
As the crewmen leaped ashore from the main deck and began tying off the Dakota Star, Casey hastily rang down "finished with engines." Then he immediately left the pilothouse and went down to the hurricane deck with Eaton close behind. They met with Captain Mumple and Yellowstone Kelly on the passenger deck, and Casey invited them to go with him to meet Grant Marsh. 
The decks of the Far West were in an eerie state of disarray. Long streamers of black cloth and crepe had been strung along the railings of all three decks. Much of the main deck had been covered over with a layer of prairie grass about a foot thick, which was in turn covered over with a heavy canvas. 
"Look there," Casey said, pointing to one spot on the canvas which was covered with a pool of dried blood nearly two feet in diameter. "It looks like Captain Marsh has been carrying wounded." 
"I have a bad feeling about this," Kelly told the others grimly. They were all staring in open curiosity at the evidence around them that many injured men had just been removed from this deck. "If I remember right, the Far West was under contract to carry government troops out into Sioux Country. The last I heard, Custer was using it as his flagship and floating headquarters." 
A man met them as they started across the vacant deck toward the stairs. His face was lined with tiredness, etched beneath layers of dirt and grime which identified him as a member of the boat's engine crew. He eyed the four strangers dourly and asked, "You men need something here?" 
"We came to see Captain Marsh if he still skippers this boat," Casey told him. "I used to be his cub way back when, and we're old friends." 
"He won't want to see you," the man told them bluntly. "He won't want to see nobody." He turned and started away as if the subject was settled, but Casey stopped him. 
"Let me get this straight now," Casey said. "Captain Marsh has hired you to decide who he'll see and who he won't. Is that the way it is?" 
The man turned to Casey and said in a hostile tone, "Looka here, mister. I just ain't in no mood to take nothin' off of you. We've had us a sight of troubles lately--a world of troubles." 
Casey turned slightly sideways and shifted his weight back on his right foot. He was getting ready to sling the first punch. Stepping forward, Captain 
Mumple said in a more conciliatory tone, "Please just go tell Captain Marsh that Tommie Casey is here. If he says he would rather not see anybody right now, we'll be glad to go away and come back another time. Alright?" 
The man gave them a tired shrug and said, "Wait here." Then he started up the stairs toward the passenger deck. In a couple of minutes, he came back and told them, "Come on. His cabin is right up here." 
Captain Grant Marsh stared across the room at the rich hardwood paneling of his cabin, seeming to forget momentarily that he was not alone there. He was a man in late middle-age, with broad straight shoulders and a barrel chest. He wore a thick mustache above his wide, straight mouth, and his stern features molded together to present a face filled with character, intelligence and determination.
He had been speaking a moment before, but had paused suddenly, as if the chain of events he was relating were nearly impossible to sort out and explain so recently after they had occurred. And yet he also seemed to have a compulsion to talk about them. Casey and the others waited silently and patiently for the momentary reverie to end. 
"We started out from here just about a month ago," he went on at last. "We were loaded down with supplies and a compliment of riflemen for guards, but I was still drawing only about thirty inches of water under the Far West. I had picked her specifically for this job from all the boats in our Coulson Line because I knew she would best be able to handle the shallows and swift water of 
the Yellowstone. You remember how it was up there on that trip we made together years ago, Tommie." 
"Aye, sir," Casey said quietly. "I remember it well." It was nerve-racking to him that Marsh had chosen this roundabout way to lead into the events upriver, but he rationalized that perhaps because they had been so tragic and disturbing, it was necessary to approach them slowly. 
"Custer had left more than three weeks before me," Marsh said. "He was traveling overland with the entire Seventh Cavalry. I had an anxious feeling about the expedition even then, because the troop was over a third raw recruits who had scarcely even had enough time in the service to get their new boots dusty. But I tell you, there was such a feeling of excitement and glory in the air that no amount of foreboding could dampen it. Even I caught a minor case of it. Everybody seemed to sense that grand deeds were shaping up out there, and that we would all be in the thick of it--to share the laurels, we thought. 
"Up the Yellowstone, near the mouth of the Powder River, we rendezvoused with Custer and resupplied him and his men. General Terry was there with me, and later Colonel Gibbon also arrived and they had a big strategy session right here in this cabin where we're sitting. 
"Custer was supposed to wait to the east and cut off Crazy Horse's path of retreat after Crook and Gibbon had already engaged him, but I guess nobody ever really expected George to do anything so sensible. He wasn't the type to stick to any plan that gave him a lesser share of the glory 
than it did somebody else. By the supplies he drew, it was easy to see that he planned to stay on the move and to chase after the action wherever it led him. 
"That was about the twenty-first of June, and even then, after all the scouting that had been done in the area, nobody had yet realized that Crazy Horse had put together what was probably one of the biggest alliances of Sioux ever seen in this area. Various reports after the main battle had him leading anywhere from two thousand to twentyfive hundred warriors, which meant he easily outnumbered any one of the three army forces which was converging on him. 
"Custer led the Seventh out on the morning of the twenty-second, and a little later, following orders, we moved the Far West on upstream. We went up the Yellowstone to the mouth of the Big Horn, and then crawled our way up the Big Horn to the mouth of the Little Big Horn. I'll tell you, men, by then you could have cut the tension on our decks with a knife. We were so close that sometimes we could see the smoke from the Sioux campfires to the south, and every time any men had to go ashore, they scattered and fired at every blowing bush or swaying branch. 
"We waited there for three days with no news, and then finally one of the scouts who had gone out with Custer, a Crow named Curley, came riding back to the boat and just collapsed at my feet. We couldn't hardly talk to him, but we were starting to get a bad feeling from what little we could get out of him with sign language and pictures. He drew a circle on a piece of paper, and 
put all the soldiers on the inside and the Sioux on the outside. He kept thumping his chest and going, 'Poof! Poof!' 
"Then a little before dawn the next morning a white scout named Muggins Taylor came back with the whole story. He said when they reached the vicinity of the Little Big Horn, Custer just threw away his orders and started out on a plan of his own. He divided the Seventh into three columns and struck out leading five companies himself. They were the ones that caught the brunt of the Sioux attack, and Crazy Horse and his bunch wiped them out to a man." 
He paused there, letting the impact of his statement soak into his listeners, again taking on that glassy-eyed distant gaze. The others were in a quiet state of shock at the final news of the defeat. 
"Custer died too?" Yellowstone Kelly asked at last. 
"Him and every man in the five companies he led," Marsh said. "Major Reno managed to pull the rest of the Seventh together, but they had a running fight, some of it hand-to-hand, for more than a day and a half. Even he lost a full third of his men, but finally he managed to make it back to the Far West a couple of days later with fifty-two wounded. We padded the decks and laid them out like cord wood, with only one doctor left alive to tend the whole lot of them. 
"Then General Terry sent word that I was to get back here to Fort Lincoln to get the wounded cared for and send word to Washington about the slaughter. I put the Far West in mid-channel and cut the stops loose. We made it back here in a little over two days." 
"Two days!" Casey exclaimed. "Why, man, that must be something over six hundred miles!" 
"Right at seven hundred," Marsh confirmed. "There were several times there I was sure we wouldn't make it through, but we got back to the telegraph over in Bismarck in fifty-four hours." 
Casey just shook his head in awe, and Eaton whistled softly under his breath. 
"You know, Tommie," Marsh went on. "I've seen a lot of things in my twenty-something years on this river. I've seen boats sink like rocks and blow up like rockets. I've seen men die, dozens, probably hundreds of them, in just about every way a man can think of. But this has to be the worst of all. Pretty soon the whole nation will be reeling from the shock of it, and God help the red man from here on out." 
"It's gonna get bloody," Kelly agreed quietly. 
Summer was reaching its full stride on the upper Missouri. The days were hot and long, usually filled with relentless hours of scorching sunlight. The few occasional storms which assaulted the land struck with awesome suddenness and fury, then fled like bandits, leaving the earth to steam and reel in their wake. 
Clarissa, Georgia and William St. Clair spent many hours together, getting reacquainted, exchanging stories of their separate adventures on the river, and exulting in the realization that they were all alive and together again. When the two women were alone, Georgia also began to talk to Clarissa about Paul Eaton, opening up the secrets of her heart about her love for him and the painful dilemma she faced when they reached Fort Benton. 
For Clarissa, it took a much longer time to begin to talk about the trying days she had spent in the 
376 
Indian camp with Gray Lion, and later with Benjamin Hawkins aboard the Maggie Dell. For some odd reason, there seemed now to be some sort of shame attached to what had happened to her. Though she could not have prevented any of it, short of killing herself before letting it happen, she still felt a strange guilt which ate at her conscience like a sickness. She felt soiled and dirty, as if she were somehow no longer fit for the attentions of a decent, loving man. 
But Georgia, with her background on the frontier, had seen such situations before, and during hers and Clarissa's many long talks, she did her best to reassure her cousin that someday all the guilt and shame would pass. She had been assaulted and abused, but not ruined. Eventually it would be alright again, and the tragic things which had happened to her would become nothing more than unhappy memories. 
Among the men who ran the boat, Captain Mumple, Tommie Casey, Paul Eaton and Joe Brannigan, the tension continued to mount with each passing day. While the Dakota Star was in port at Fort Rice making repairs and picking up their straggling comrades, the Maggie Dell had steamed by them under full power. They had never caught sight of Charlie Fink's boat since that day. 
With each passing military outpost, Fort Stevenson, Fort Berthold and Fort Union, the cargo aboard the Dakota Star continued to dwindle, making the steamboat lighter and faster, but Casey was still concerned that with the lead Fink had, they might never have a chance of catching him with any final bursts of speed. Breakdowns aboard 
the Maggie Dell and delays from natural barriers in the river were always possibilities, but the Dakota Star faced the same hazards and catastrophes. 
They had passed beyond the far western reaches of the telegraph and railroad lines now, making any rapid communication with civilization impossible. There would be no more wires sent back to Jacob Fairwell in St. Louis advising him of their progress. He would have to wait, perhaps as much as a month, to find out if his boat had made it through first, or if his lifetime investment of money and effort would be lost to his vicious rivals.
Their progress was almost due west now, into the heart of Montana and toward the distant, towering Rocky Mountains. And as the mouth of each high plains tributary was left behind, the Missouri River became narrower, shallower and and more treacherous. This was the place where the Missouri steamers and the men who piloted them met their greatest challenges. There was no longer any margin for error or miscalculation. .Either a man steered his boat exactly right up the treacherous rapids and channels the first time every time, or he left another ruptured hull to rot and rust on the banks and shoals of the merciless waterway.
Goldbug Island, Caesar's Promontory, Prosperity Rock, St. Matthew's Bend . . . the charts and geography of the Missouri were littered with lasting reminders of the boats which had become the river's victims and casualties. Tommie Casey had steered these upper waters many times during his years as a pilot, but each time he entered them, he was as sharply aware of the dangers as he had
been that first time when he had been in the pilothouse alone with the safety of an entire boat and crew in his hands. A man could never know when the river might decide that his time of disaster, and perhaps death, had come, but he could be cautious and watchful, doing his best to insure that the blame for a disaster did not fall on him. 
It was a still, hot night with only an occasional teasing breeze to stir the thick, moist air. They had tied off at the base of a series of barren, rolling hills just above the mouth of the Wolf River. The day had been rough for everybody aboard the Dakota Star. Much of the daylight hours had been spent battling the Dauphin Rapids, one of the most treacherous stretches of water in Montana. 
But now there was a definite sense of relief aboard the boat. With the rapids safely behind them, there was an air of being near the home stretch of the journey. With luck, they would be tied up at the levee at Fort Benton in three days. 
Casey was leaning on the rail at the rear portion of the hurricane deck, gazing out across the river in pensive solitude. 
It was possible, he thought, that the Maggie Dell was tied off at Fort Benton this very moment. For two days they had met no other boats on the river which could enlighten them about their rival boat's whereabouts. And if the Maggie Dell had already completed the trip, then it was all over for him, as well as for Jack Fairwell, Captain Mumple, Paul Eaton and all the rest. The Missouri Northwest Line, left with only one boat and no contract with the government, would collapse into bankruptcy. 
And yet to Casey, the possibility of being put out of a job was not nearly so distasteful as the knowledge that all of Charlie Fink's treachery and brutality in behalf of the Sioux City Line had finally paid off. It would be a gross injustice if such a thing happened. It stirred an anger in Casey's heart which he knew would be impossible to contain. 
Still, if the Maggie Dell had lost its long lead and was now held up not too far ahead of them, it would create a whole new set of problems and dangers for the people aboard the Dakota Star. Faced with the possibility that he might not be able to outrace the Star to Fort Benton, Fink would undoubtedly hold up and plan some final ambush or assault to take his rivals out of the race. Either way, the possibilities were dour. 
Captain Mumple had sent Yellowstone Kelly and William St. Clair out the day before to scout ahead and try to locate the Maggie Dell. They had not reported back yet, but that was understandable enough. This was rough, dangerous country, loaded with roving bands of hostiles, and any white men who ventured off the boats and out into it had better be constantly cautious and on guard if he hoped to stay alive. Travel for the two scouts would be a slow process, mostly at night, and there was no way of knowing how far they would have to go upriver to locate Fink. 
"Hey, you've got my spot," a voice said from behind Casey, distracting him from his solitary thoughts. He turned and saw Clarissa standing in the shadows about fifteen feet away. 
"There's room and quiet enough for two here," he told her. "I'll share it with you." 
Clarissa came over to the rail and stopped beside Casey. He smiled as he saw the slight evening breeze stirring through her long blond hair. Her face was a series of warm highlights and shadows from the full moonlight. She seemed to be coming around now, finally pulling herself out of the deep traumas caused by her experiences downriver. But he thought he saw a different woman emerging than the one he had known before, a quieter, more thoughtful person, less prone to bursts of stubborn pride and anger. 
"It seems odd to be so near the end now, after all the incredible things that have happened on this trip," Clarissa said. 
"It might not be as nearly finished as we think," Casey said. "We haven't reached Fort Benton yet. Practically anything can still happen." 
"Are all our chances gone now to win the race, Tommie?" Clarissa asked. He was surprised by the emotion in her voice, as if winning the race and securing the contract was as important to her as it was to him and the captain. "Have those awful men actually beaten us after all?" 
"Maybe," he said quietly. "It's hard to tell. But in my mind, it won't be over until we get there and finally see the Maggie Dell tied up ahead of us. Until then, I'm still going to give it every ounce of concentration and effort. The river's wild and untamed up here. It's hard on men and it's hard on boats, and there's still a chance that something could happen to the Maggie Dell and that we could reach Fort Benton first." 
"I wish that would happen," Clarissa said quietly and intently. "I wish we could just do that one 
thing to them after all ... after everything that's happened." 
They stood quite close together, and Casey could catch a faint trace of perfume carried by the breeze to him. When he finally reached out and put his arm around her waist, it seemed a very natural expression of what he was feeling at that moment. Without hesitation, Clarissa leaned her head over and rested it lightly against his shoulder. 
"Remember when we were up here last?" Clarissa asked. "Standing almost in this same spot?" 
"How well I do," Casey chuckled lightly. "The famous night of the ill-fated kiss." 
"I was feeling so fancy and seductive that night," she said, laughing along with him. "When I caught my foot and fell flat on my face, you can't imagine how humiliated I felt. I was so mad I could have easily picked up something and broken it over your head, but I think I was really more upset with myself." 
"It was funny," Casey had to say, wondering if even now she might become angry again. But she did not. 
"It was," she said. Then after a moment, she added, "But do you know what? So much has happened since that night, that it seems now almost like it was somebody else in that new dress, with all those manners and high-toned ways. And you seem different, too. I'm so glad we don't fight anymore." 
"So am I," Casey said. 
She turned to him and looked up at his face. There was a hint of a faint smile on her face, but she also seemed hesitant and nervous about some
thing. "I wish ..." she began, but she did not finish her thought. 
"That we could try that kiss again?" Casey prompted. 
"That's what I was thinking," she told him hesitantly. "But after what's happened to me ... I never told you about the men that had me and the things they did, but I'm sure you know it anyway. I keep thinking that maybe after all that, you wouldn't ever want to ... that there couldn't ever be anything between us." 
"How do you want it, girl?" 
"What?" 
"How do you want it?" Casey repeated, grinning. "With my eyes open or closed?" 
"I just want it," she told him softly. "Tommie, I need some holding real badly right now." 
He put his arms around her and pulled her tightly to him, finally lowering his lips to hers for a long, tender kiss. When it was over, she put her head against his chest and breathed a deep sigh which communicated more than words. 
"All those things you were talking about a minute ago," Casey said quietly to her. "They have made a difference to me, but probably not in the way you think. The minute I heard you had been taken off by those Arikaras, the only thought I had was to go looking for you myself. I just wanted to forget about everything else--the boat, the contract, the race, everything--and try to find you. The only thing that kept me from doing it was that there was a better man than me around to handle the job. Yellowstone Kelly. 
"Then when we heard that Hawkins had you, I 
knew why, but it just made me hate him. You couldn't do anything about it. I admire the way you survived everything and came back to pull your life together so completely." 
"It was a hard job," Clarissa admitted. "I felt like he had ruined me, somehow, like I would never be the same after what he did to me." 
"You probably won't be, Clarissa," Casey told her. "But maybe the changes in you are not so terrible as you think. It's given you a kind of strength deep inside that I never saw in you before. Now that you know you could face that and get through it, you must realize that you could take on just about anything." 
"Then why do I feel so vulnerable and afraid right now, even in your arms?" she asked. 
"About what? What are you afraid of?" 
"That's the strange part. I don't know. Just things. I think maybe I'm afraid of getting there, of leaving this boat and all the people who seem almost like family. I love the life here, but I never realized it until I started thinking about reaching Fort Benton." 
"We'll see what happens," Casey told her quietly. "No step's sure until it's made." 
They stood, arm in arm, on the deck for a few minutes longer, but finally Casey said quietly to her, "It's time I turned in. I've got first watch tomorrow and there's some rough waters ahead. I'll need to be on my toes in the morning." 
Clarissa said nothing, but she was reluctant to let him leave. 
"You can come with me if you want," Casey told her. "I'd like that very much." 
"So would I," Clarissa told Mm. "But I think I'm not ready for that yet. Please, just give me a little more time."
"As much as you need, girl. But I want you to know that I care for you. Carry that with you and maybe it will help you sometimes."
"It will help all the time."
Casey left after a parting kiss, but Clarissa stayed on the deck a few minutes longer, thinking about what had just happened.
She had never given much serious thought to the subject of love. She recognized it as a reality and had seen it working in the lives of the people around her. She had no doubt that the love between Georgia and Paul was real and lasting. And she had always accepted the fact that some day she too would meet a man and fall in love with him.
But now that it had finally happened to her, it still came as an incredible surprise. Who would have ever believed that she would fall for a man who had done his best to get her off the boat for a month ago, she had scarcely been able to tolerate for more than ten minutes at a time?
But she had, and it was marvelous.
At last she decided that she too should go down to her cabin and try to rest. It would not be easy, not with all the tumultuous happenings in her life and all the conflicting emotions churning within her, but it sometimes seemed that not a single step in her life had been easy since she began this trip, and she was getting used to it.
As she crossed the hurricane deck to the top of
the stairs, she met Captain Mumple coming up. 
"Ah, Clarissa, my dear," he greeted her. "Still up I see." 
"Yes," she told him. "It's such a nice night that it seems a shame to spend it indoors." 
"I know what you mean. I was about to settle down myself, and then I decided to take one last check of the decks." 
"Well, I'll leave it in your hands, sir," Clarissa said. 
She turned away and had taken a couple of steps when she heard a strange sound behind her. It was a dull, thudding noise, combined with a soft "uuh" of air leaving the captain's chest. She turned back curiously and looked at Mumple. 
He was standing unsteadily with both hands gripping the railing in front of him, and it seemed as if his body was slowly settling straight down. His head was bowed, staring at what Clarissa suddenly realized was an arrow thrust straight out of the center of his chest. As she watched, his limbs went limber and he began to crumple onto the deck. 
"Captain!" she screamed out. She reached to help him, but his fall was too sudden for her to prevent. He landed flat on his back, with his arms splayed out to his side. His mouth was open and his sightless eyes stared up at the sky in a final expression of shock and bewilderment. 
Before Clarissa even had a moment to react to the sudden death of the captain, the bank along which the Dakota Star was tied exploded with a terrifying eruption of gunfire and a hail of deadly arrows. She dropped flat on the deck instinctively and turned to look at the hillside which flanked 
the edge of the river. Dozens of shadowy forms were creeping over its crest like phantoms and starting down toward the boat.
"Attack! Attack!" somebody yelled out from below. That would be one of the men posted on night watch. Within a moment a few rounds were being returned at the attackers from the lower deck of the boat, but they were no match for the heavy fire coming from the bank.
Clarissa was in utter panic. She had no idea what to do or where to go. It was obvious that the captain was beyond her help, and finally she remembered the rifle she had seen in a rack along the wall of the pilothouse. Cautiously she crawled across the deck and then sprang up the ladder into the pilothouse. Even as she ducked in the doorway, she heard a couple of shots thunk into the boilerplate which lined the lower half of the small enclosure.
She found the rifle, then returned to the door way and cautiously peered out toward the bank. From this height, she had a much better view of what was going on below. As many as thirty or forty men lined the side of the hill and the water's edge, pumping shots at the now awakening Dakota Star. Occasionally a blazing arrow would fly through the air to the deck of the boat, and a few of the attackers were already in the water, trying to get onto the boat. Most of them were being cut down by the increasing gunfire from the crew, but a few seemed to be making it. The air was filled with howling war whoops, the screams of dying men and the constant staccato of guns. Fires from the arrows were catching hold in a couple of places below Clarissa on the hurricane deck. She
raised her rifle and fired a couple of shots in the direction of the bank without much hope of hitting anything. 
Then suddenly the ten-foot distance between the boat and the bank began to widen. Clarissa realized that somebody had cut the rope which bound them to the land and made them vulnerable to the attackers. But the relief she felt as they began to float away from the bank and the deadly guns of the men there was quickly followed by panic as she remembered that nobody was on the upper deck or in the pilothouse to steer the boat. The firebox was cold and the engines were dead. The boat would careen backwards down the river toward certain danger before anybody could come up and take control. 
Then she spotted a form at the top of the stairs. It was Joe Brannigan, second pilot of the Star. He paused an instant to snap off a few shots toward the bank before dashing on over to the pilothouse. 
At last, she thought, somebody would be able to take the wheel and steer them away from this crisis. "Joe! Thank God!" Clarissa gasped as soon as she saw his head appear above the threshhold. 
But just as Brannigan glanced up at her, a bullet slammed into his body from behind. His features contorted into an expression of agony, his grip loosened on the rail beside the ladder and he fell backward several feet to the hurricane deck. 
Clarissa sprang to the doorway in terror and gazed down at the wounded form below. "Please don't be dead, Joel" she pleaded. "You have to be alright!" 
Brannigan stirred slowly, looked around, and 
finally turned his head up toward Clarissa. "The rocks," he said urgently in a voice husky with pain. "We'll break up on the rocks below." 
"Can you get up, Joe? I'll help you." 
"I can't move my legs. I'd never make it. You have to take the wheel." 
"I can't. I don't know what to do," she wailed. It was unthinkable that she could take hold of the wheel and do anything except increase the chances of a disaster. 
"Swing the wheel hard right," Brannigan told her. "That'll pull the stern around and get us out into deeper water. You must, Clarissa! There's not much time." 
She turned hesitantly and approached the four- foot wheel which steered the huge steamboat. It seemed a sacrilege to even touch it, but at last she took hold of one of the pins around its rim and gave it a tentative tug to the right. 
"Hard right, woman!" Brannigan shouted hoarsely up to her. "Hurry!" 
Outside she could see that the bank was more than fifteen feet away now and the current had already moved them more than twenty yards downriver from where the attack had started. With sudden determination, she gripped the wheel and began spinning it quickly to the right. The rear of the boat began to respond immediately, swinging out toward the middle of the river and deeper, safer water. 
She held the wheel steady, and within a couple of minutes they were crossways of the strongest part of the current. "Left now," Brannigan called up to her. His voice was getting more unsteady, 
but she could hear him better because they had left the worst of the gunfire behind. "Hard left until we come around straight."
She followed his instructions, and again the boat responded. It was a heady feeling to see the bow of the boat come around and begin to straighten out in the water with its nose pointed in the direction they were floating.
Clarissa was so intent on her steering that she did not notice Casey enter the pilothouse until he reached around her and took a firm grip on the wheel. "You've done a fine job, girl. You got us
' out of a helluva fix there, but I'll take her now."
"Oh, Tommie," Clarissa exclaimed with a great sigh of relief. "I'm so glad you're here. Did you see the captain, and Joe?" It was a ridiculous question. He would have had to pass right by both of them to get here to the pilothouse.
"I saw them," Casey said soberly. "You can go down and help Joe now. There'll be plenty of wounded to take care of before this night is done. Those Indians caught us off guard good and proper this time."
Ahead, Clarissa saw the reassuring sight of columns of smoke beginning to stream up out of the chimneys. Soon the engines would be working and the boat would be under control again. A few of the crewmen had also come up onto the hurricane deck to fight the two small fires which were trying to gain a foothold in the wooden planks of the deck.
Clarissa realized that she must have been daydreaming, reveling in the sudden relief she felt, when Casey told her, "Hop to it, woman. There's work to be done and wounded to be cared for."
His tone was almost snappish, but she responded to his orders quickly, realizing that he was right. Joe Brannigan needed her help. 
The pilot was very close to unconsciousness now. The bullet had come at an angle, entering the middle of his lower back and exiting from his side. Both his legs were twisted awkwardly beneath him arid apparently broken, and he lay in a large pool of his own blood. After examining him briefly, Clarissa got two of the crewmen who had been fighting a fire on the hurricane deck a moment before and had them help her carry him to the stairs. 
The lower decks of the boat looked like a battlefield. The bodies of the dead and wounded lay everywhere. On the passenger deck, Clarissa found that Eaton had already commandeered the passenger dining room as an improvised infirmary and was supervising the carrying of all the wounded there. The two men who brought Brannigan down deposited him on one of the long dining tables, and Clarissa immediately began to tear away his shirt and examine the bullet wound. The pilot had finally passed out from the pain and the loss of blood. 
Within a few minutes Casey had the boat completely under control, but Clarissa paid little attention to anything happening outside the jammed dining room. She did notice, however, when the boat eased in toward the shore again and the engines slowed. 
Casey spotted the tiny signal fire, laid out in Yellowstone Kelly's customary triangle pattern, about a mile above the site of the attack. He felt nervous pulling the boat in against the bank to 
pick them up, but he felt sure Kelly would not have made the signal if he was not sure that the raiding band of Indians had gone. 
When Kelly and St. Clair were safely on board the boat, they came directly to the pilothouse to report to Casey. Both looked worn by the long journey they had just completed. 
"Sorry, Tommie," Kelly told him. "We tried to get to you in time to warn you about the attack, but Hawkins had too much lead on us when we finally found out about it." 
"Hawkins?" Casey asked with a frown. "What part did he play in all of this?" 
"He was behind it all," Kelly said. "He gave them whiskey and guns to come up here, and then he promised them they could sack the boat when they captured it. It was all his doing." 
"When we got here, the fight was already started," St. Clair put in. "There was too many of them Crows out there for us to do much to stop them, but it'll take them half the night to round up the horses we scattered. That's what gave us the time to come upriver and signal you." 
"So it was Hawkins behind all this," Casey said grimly. "Hawkins killed Captain Mumple." 
"The captain's dead?" Kelly asked. 
"Right from the start of it. He caught an arrow square in the chest." 
"Well, damn!" the scout said. "I was hoping to cheer him up some with the other news we bring." 
"What's that?" the pilot asked. 
"We saw the Maggie Dell late yesterday afternoon. She's only a few miles upriver, and she was tied off to the bank during daylight hours." 
He didn't have to interpret the significance of that for the pilot. Casey knew that if the Maggie Dell was wasting daylight along the bank, there had to be serious problems aboard the boat. 
Through the long hours of darkness, while the passengers and crew on the lower decks raced to save as many lives as possible, Tommie Casey held the boat in mid-river and only ventured to ease forward at a cautious snail's pace. The young pilot knew that with Hawkins and his band of renegade Crow still somewhere in the area, it was no longer safe to tie up anywhere along the bank. Yet to venture forward up the river in the darkness was toying with a different kind of suicide. His only alternative was to keep the power down and to feel his way forward like a blind man exploring an unfamiliar place. 
Toward dawn, Paul Eaton finally left the lower decks and went up to talk to his friend in the pilothouse. When he got there, he took a seat on the bench in back and sat for a moment staring grimly out over the broad waters. 
394 
"Pretty bad down there, huh?" Casey asked. 
"By our last count," Eaton said, "eleven wounded and nine dead. We found six dead Indians that Kelly said were Crow. There was one Indian alive at first, but the crew fixed that quick enough." He paused and shook his head tiredly, as if it was all beyond his comprehension. "What's going on here, Casey?" he asked at last. "Is anything worth all this fighting and killing, even a fat contract and the survival of a packet line?" 
"I don't have a ready answer to that one, Paul," Casey told him quietly. "You know, when we started out in St. Charles, I knew there was fighting ahead. I've been fighting all my life, and I wasn't afraid of a little more of the same. I guess you might even say I was looking forward to it. But it's starting to make me mighty sick, and it's putting more hatred in my heart than anything I've ever known before. I swear, I'd give my life for five minutes with my fingers around the neck of Charlie Fink and Ben Hawkins." 
"So would I, Casey, so would I," Eaton told him. 
They were quiet a moment, then Casey said, "The command of the Star's yours now, Paul, if you'll take it. There's nobody left to handle the job but you." 
"She's your boat, Tommie," Eaton protested. "The job is rightfully yours." 
"Not with me being the only functioning pilot left," Casey said. "This one job is all I can handle and then some. No. It has to be you." 
"So be it, then," Eaton said quietly. His acceptance had the grim note of a man accepting a commission in the midst of a battlefield. 
For two long days, suffering abounded on the decks of the Dakota Star. This far upriver, there were no convenient stops where injured people could be taken for medical attention. For the eleven wounded survivors of the Indian attack on the boat, there was no relief available short of the final objective of their journey, Fort Benton.
For those who died during the attack, the remoteness of the area meant isolated burial on the barren plains of north central Montana. At a stop the morning after the attack, graves had been dug and hurried tribute paid to the dead men. Casey had given the eulogy, paying special tribute to his friend and leader, Captain Peter Mumple.
After that, the efforts of every man on the boat had been redoubled in a last desperate effort to catch up with the Maggie Dell. The mood aboard the Dakota Star was ugly now, filled with talk of brutal retribution, and Eaton and Casey had little difficulty in getting the maximum efforts from the crew of the boat.
On the morning of the third day after the attack, Eaton was up at three-thirty to rouse the engineer and crew. He and Casey went down on the main deck and sat on the bundles of cargo, eating a breakfast of meat and bread with the crew.
As Eaton looked around at them, he felt a surge of pride at the efforts these men had put out for him. Nearly half of their number had been put out of action during the fight, and he was, after all, a stranger replacing a man they had held in very high regard. And yet the men had given their utmost, working late each night and doing the work usually handled by almost twice their number. Even now, with no more than six or seven
hours of sleep over the past two days, he could still see the determination etched on their faces beneath the expressions of grim exhaustion. They were ready to face anything which might come and eager for the chance to strike back at the Maggie Dell. 
"Will we make it in today, Mr. Casey?" one of the men finally asked, voicing a question which was on all their minds. 
"I figure we're between eighteen and twenty miles below Fort Benton," Casey told him thoughtfully. "We've covered that much distance many a day, even here on the upper river, but you know, too, that there's been some days we've scarcely covered half that distance. All we can do is try." 
"Aye, we'll be doing that, sir, right along," the man reassured him. 
"And what of Charlie Fink?" another man asked. 
"We're net certain," Casey said. "According to Kelly, we've come up pretty close behind Fink. That's why I've risked running so long after dark these last two nights hoping to close up the distance between us even more. 
"With a murderous bastard like Fink, it's never possible to predict exactly what's going on, but I'm beginning to hope that maybe there's mechanical troubles aboard the Maggie Dell that's keeping her slowed down. If so, we still have a chance." 
That news cheered the exhausted men more than several hours of sleep could have. If they knew there was even a remote chance of catching Fink, most of them would work until they dropped. 
"But don't forget, men," Eaton cautioned, "if we do come up to the Maggie Dell, we're likely to have a fight on our hands that will make the other 
night's affair look like a prayer meeting. We have to be on our guard every moment." 
"We're ready to fight," one of the men said soberly. "Hell, now we want to fight. Every man here lost friends the other night to those murdering bastards, and if we don't settle it here, we'll do it once we reach Fort Benton." 
Eaton nodded his head, knowing all hell would erupt in Fort Benton. Even he had plans for what he must do when they got there, if he had not already taken care of it before their arrival. 
The fireboxes were hot and the pressure was rising by the time the first threads of daylight illuminated the river enough for them to get underway. In his frequent trips to the main deck and the pilothouse, Eaton saw that the engineers were taking extraordinary risks with steam pressure, and that Casey was running shallower and tighter in against the reefs and banks than he normally would have in order to take advantage of every yard of calm water he could locate. 
At noon they caught sight of the Maggie Dell at Dead Nestor's Bend, scarcely eleven miles from Fort Benton. A cheer went up among the crew of the Dakota Star. Eaton, who was in the pilothouse at the time, took a moment to study the other boat through the spyglass and to discuss the situation with Casey before going below to make sure everything was squared away for any eventuality. 
His first stop was in the makeshift infirmary in the passenger dining room. Clarissa and Georgia were both there, as well as a couple of other women and some of the male passengers. He told them of the situation and of the likelihood of danger, then instructed the men to arm themselves 
and take up preset fighting positions. He preferred that most of the fighting be done by the crew, but with the crew down to seventeen men to cover all the decks, man the brass cannon and run the steamboat, the firepower of the male passengers would also be useful. The men who rode the boat were hardy, frontier types, and they had never hesitated to do their share of fighting. 
Next he checked on the main deck to insure that the mate and engineer had assigned each man to a specific job in case of emergency. The engineer and a couple of helpers could keep the fireboxes stoked and the boat running, and all the rest of the crew had assigned positions to take when the shooting started. He had not only designated two men to fire the cannon on the front of the main deck, but had also chosen a back-up crew in case either or both of the first two men were killed. That cannon had to be their equalizer against the superior number of men on Charlie Fink's boat. 
After the ineffective cannon duel he had held with Fink some weeks earlier when the Folly was destroyed, Paul Eaton had been giving some serious thought to how the effectiveness of the small field piece could be increased. Finally he had come up with an idea borrowed from reading about European military campaigns. 
Two days before, shortly after taking command of the Star, he had set the engineer to making a special load for the cannon. First he had two of the small cannonballs drilled. Then the engineer tapped two heavy iron rings into the holes. Next he had a ten-foot length of heavy chain fixed to the rings, attaching the two balls together. When fired, he hoped the two balls and chain would have 
a bola-type effect, slinging themselves in an erratic pattern and mowing down everything in their path. Either that, or they would cause the cannon to explode. 
When Eaton was sure that everything was as ready as possible on the lower decks, he returned to the pilothouse. 
"Are we gaining any on them, Tommie?" he asked anxiously. 
"Aye, we're crawling up on their tail ends slow but steady," Casey grinned. "I've been watching the Maggie Dell and I can't tell for sure yet, but I think she must have mechanical problems as we suspected before. See how she runs with her rear end cocked a few degrees to the side? She's losing power because her paddlewheel is working against the rudder, and my bet is the pilot's having to fight the wheel every minute to keep her straight in the water." 
"Engine problems?" Eaton suggested. "Maybe her starboard engine is underpowered and can't keep up with the port engine." 
"Either that, or some problems with the connecting rod on the starboard side. But whatever it is, it's working in our favor. If nothing goes wrong, we could pass her in two or three hours." 
"And then all hell breaks loose," Eaton added grimly. 
"It won't be a good feeling exposing our rear to Charlie's cannon," Casey admitted. 
Some time later Clarissa brought a simple lunch to the pilothouse. The cook was on guard on the main deck and the passengers on board had taken over the job of feeding themselves and the crew. They were in the midst of a straight stretch of 
water, and Casey turned the wheel over to Clarissa temporarily as he stood beside her and ate his meal. 
"A woman steering a steamboat," Eaton chuckled "If Nehemiah Bedford could see this, he'd rise up out of his river grave to condemn it." 
"All I can say," Casey responded, "is that if it was not within the powers of a woman to steer a sternwheeler, we'd all be in bad shape right now, and the Star would be in pieces on the bottom of the Missouri. Don't forget, it was this woman's hand on the wheel that kept us off those rocks three days ago." 
"I love it," Clarissa admitted. "There's a sense of power and accomplishment connected with standing here, controlling all this power with just two hands. I don't see why a woman couldn't be as good a steamboat pilot as a man." 
"There's been one or two," Eaton admitted. 
"And pretty good ones, too, if what I've heard is right," Casey added. 
They had come up to within about half a mile of the Maggie Dell and had her in sight most of the time now, except in the tightest of bends. When they were finished eating, Casey took over the wheel and Eaton returned to his study of the other boat through the spyglass. 
"I can't see very many people on her decks," he said. "Most of the times there's just a few men on the main deck and a couple more in the pilothouse."
"They've probably done the same as we have," Casey suggested. "Most of their crew is probably out of sight waiting for the shooting to start." 
"Do you have any idea where we could pass without drawing too close?" Eaton asked. 
"I was thinking about Brindle's Reef," Casey said. "It's about five miles ahead, and most of the time, the channels on both sides of the reef are clear and passable. All we'd have to do is see which way they decide to go, and then head up the other way. It might work, or it might not, but it beats just drawing up side by side and shooting it out."
"Whatever you think, Casey," Eaton told him.
By three in the afternoon they had closed the distance between the two steamboats to about three hundred yards, and Casey maintained that gap for a while, not yet ready to steam past the Maggie Dell. But the time for waiting was almost gone. If the Brindle Reef plan did not work, they would just have to pour on the speed and face the consequences. Fort Benton was scarcely five miles ahead now.
Then suddenly the sniping began. The first shot crashed into the pilothouse, breaking out both the front and back glasses. Nobody had seen where it came from, but Eaton snatched up his rifle and snapped off a couple of shots to vent his frustration. Several shots were hurled back and forth for a moment, but then the firing died down as quickly as it had begun.
Eaton stood staring out the front of the pilothouse for so long that his features seemed turned to stone. At last Casey asked, "What is it, Paul? What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong, Casey," Eaton told him. "I've just had enough of this. We've taken all we're going to take. Call down for more steam and draw up on her stern. Close it up to about seventy-five
Casey turned and gave Eaton a curious look, but made no comment for a moment. He did not call any instructions down to the engine room. 
"Am I master of this boat, Mr. Casey?" Eaton asked. His voice was like the cold metal of an anvil, heavy with the authority of his office. 
"Aye, sir, you are that, Mr. Eaton," Casey said with a cool edge of reserve in his voice. 
"Then mind my order. I'm going to put an end- to this trouble once and for all. We set out on this journey with the best of intentions, wanting nothing more than to do our jobs as best we could. But for three thousand miles we've been ambushed and attacked unmercifully. We've seen our boats go down, and we've buried our friends, and never once have we given any thought to doing more than defending ourselves. That's over. The time has come to strike back. Close it up. The Maggie Dell is going to the bottom." 
Casey stared at his friend thoughtfully for a moment, and then a grin spread slowly across his face. He turned to the speaking tube and shouted, "By thunder, give it all you've got down there! It's time to give old Charlie Fink a swift kick in the ass!" 
Eaton left the pilothouse immediately and went to the main deck, where the cannon crew waited. His instructions were simple and direct. "When we get within range," he said, "fire that damn thing." 
Grinning, the two men at the cannon sprang to ready the small brass gun. 
As the space between the two boats began to close, the shooting started from behind the barricades aboard the Maggie Dell, but the men on the 
Dakota Star returned it willingly. They were on the attack at last, and it felt good. 
Eaton stayed on the main deck, kneeling behind a thick barrier of stacked wood and raising up to shoot occasionally at the boat ahead. He knew that at that distance, it would be difficult to hit any of the hidden men on the Maggie Dell, but it still felt good to just be firing his weapon at them. 
At last one of the men at the cannon turned behind the thick boilerplate shield they had put up near the gun and said, "Captain? What do you think?" 
"Can you hit her from here?" 
"Like pissing in a barrel, sir," the man said. 
"Do it," Eaton told him. 
He had told the men of the danger that his special load would not work, so they had used a long fuse to give them time to turn and run away from the cannon after it was lit. 
Though Eaton knew the danger, he had to watch what happened. Cautiously he raised the top of his head and peered over the stack of wood. 
As close as he was, the blast of the small cannon was deafening. Then, almost as if in slow motion, the jumble of balls and chain rushed forth from its mouth. As it arched through the air, the chain straightened and the two balls began working against each other, spiraling and twisting through the air like a whirlwind. It tore into the paddle wheel of the Maggie Dell like a buzz saw, snapping the wide blades like kindling and turning the paddle wheel into a twisted wreck. With a squeal of racking metal and jammed engines, the big wheel shuddered to a halt. 
"Reload!" Eaton ordered. "The next round goes 
broadside into her boilers." Then, without waiting for an answer, he went to the speaking tube and shouted up to Casey, "Come up to within twenty yards of her port side and hold."
As the Maggie Dell began to lose momentum and stall in the water, the Dakota Star swung to the left and began drawing up alongside her. When they came up to within shouting distance, Eaton went to the hurricane deck and paused behind a corner of the pilothouse.
"Charlie Fink!" he shouted. "You have three minutes to clear your decks before we sink the Maggie Dell.
There was a moment of silence, and then a voice shouted back over the water. "Go to hell!" A couple of shots rang out from the upper deck of the Maggie Dell and thunked harmlessly into the wood near where Eaton stood.
"Three minutes," Eaton repeated. Already he could see crewmen aboard the Maggie Dell scrambling to the far side of the boat and jumping overboard. One man ran to the bow of the boat and began trying to turn the cannon around to train it on the Dakota Star, but shots from the Star's deck brought him down.
Within a couple of minutes the water was littered with crewmen from the Maggie Dell. Eaton climbed up to the pilothouse where Casey was crouched down behind the boilerplate around the walls, trying to protect himself while still keeping the boat on course.
"Paul, I never saw any damn thing like that load you had them fix up," Casey said. "Where in the world did you get the idea for a contraption like that?"
"I heard one time about the French using them in Europe," Eaton told him. "I didn't know whether it would work in our gun or not, but I knew we needed an extra edge somewhere against the kind of tactics Fink uses. Now we're going to make sure it's a long time before the Maggie Dell is used as a warboat against anybody else." 
As he spoke, the Dakota Star was pulling alongside the stalling Maggie Dell. Casey kept an even distance of about twenty yards between the two boats, gripping the wheel tensely and watching as their bow slid even with the midsection of the other boat. Finally Eaton went to the speaking tube and called down the order to fire. 
In an instant, the Star's small cannon roared out again and a ball of flame erupted from the ruptured firebox of the disabled and unmanned Maggie Dell. Somebody had apparently thought to release the steam pressure on the boat's boilers because they did not blow up, but Eaton could see that with no power and a quickly spreading fire wreaking havoc on its decks, it would not be long before the dreaded Maggie Dell would end up a burned-out hulk on some reef or bank not far downriver. 
Then, remarkably, a rifle began to bark out again from somewhere on the upper deck of the Maggie Dell. The shooting was so unexpected that Casey was nipped in the shoulder and knocked to the floor of the pilothouse before either he or Eaton could drop down below the protection of the boilerplate. 
Eaton grabbed a rifle and cautiously peered over the top of the boilerplate. A few more shots rang out from the boat, this time aimed in the 
vicinity of the men who had fired the cannon. Then Eaton spotted the man, standing recklessly in the doorway of the Maggie Dell's pilothouse, shouting obscenities as he continued to level out a series of shots. He had never seen Charlie Fink before, but he knew immediately that this man was he.
Carefully he raised the barrel of the rifle and rested the sights on the middle of the man's chest, then pulled the trigger. Fink staggered back as if he had been struck with a fist, then seemed for a moment to still try to step forward and raise his weapon again. But instead, he toppled forward, falling out of the pilothouse and crashing to the hurricane deck below. Eaton put his sights on the still figure twenty yards away and pulled the trigger again and again. He wanted to take no chance that Charlie Fink would live to destroy another boat or another good man.
Nobody had promised them that the clouds would part and the sun would shine through perpetually when they reached Fort Benton, Montana. Nobody had said that their problems would be miraculously solved and their separate dreams would be fulfilled. Nobody had even assured them that they would make it to that remote frontier outpost alive and whole. But throughout the difficult, summer- long journey, somehow that feeling had blossomed and grown in all the minds of the people aboard the Dakota Star.
The reality of their arrival at Fort Benton, however, was something different. It was a time of partings, a time of nostalgia, and a time when friends and lovers began to miss one another even before they had gone their separate ways.
Two days after reaching Fort Benton, Captain
408
Eaton invited his close friends for a final dinner together in his small cabin. Everybody gathered there was strangely quiet, pensively remembering those who had come so far, but had not completed the journey. In separate toasts, they honored the memory of George Kimball, Nehemiah Bedford, and Captain Peter Mumple. 
After the meal, Georgia and Clarissa excused themselves and went out to walk the deck together. They sought out the familiar isolation of the hurricane deck, where they strolled along and talked quietly together. 
"It seems so odd," Clarissa said, "that I will be staying here on the boat when you think I should be going, and you will be going when I think you should stay." 
"It's hard to make much sense out of it, but we both have to do what we think is best," Georgia said. "I'll make a deal with you, though. I won't try to convince you to go with us, if you won't try to talk me into staying." 
"I wouldn't try to change your mind," Clarissa assured her. "If Paul Eaton couldn't get that job done, then what chance would I have? But I do want you to know why I decided to stay here on the Star after coming all this way to do something eke." 
"It's Tommie Casey, isn't it?" 
"Yes, partly," Clarissa agreed. "But there's a lot more to it than that. I think I would probably stay even if we were not in love. When I left England to come here, I had no idea what I would find, but I just knew I had to get out in the world and discover where my place in it was. I've learned a lot 
and I've changed a lot, and I think I know better now than I ever have before what I'm capable of and what my limitations are.
"If I went with you and your father out into the mountains, I'd always be a burden to you. You've grown up in that life and know how to meet every challenge that comes along, but I don't and probably never will. But I have learned that I love this life on the river, and I have a chance to do something now that I know I would be good at. Tommie has offered to let me apprentice under him and learn to be a river pilot. Before, I was tagging along, hanging onto the shirttails of your and your father's dream, but now I've got one of my own and I won't let it slip away from me."
"I know you're right," Georgia conceded, "but it's just such a stretch of the imagination that it's hard to get it to soak into my head. I mean, when I remember how green and helpless you were when we met down in Missouri, it's hard for me to imagine you picking such a future for yourself. You can do it, though, and I know you'll be good at it. You've got the right stuff in you."
"I'm going to miss you and your father terribly," Clarissa said, "but it's not like we'll be parting forever. I'll be on the boat with Paul Eaton, and as long as I'm somewhere around him, I know that I'll be seeing you again. You'll be back."
"I'll be back all right," Georgia agreed. "This season or the next, we'll see each other again. No matter what we find out there, I'll be back to claim my man. You can be sure of that."
Clarissa soon left her cousin and returned to her cabin, knowing that Eaton would be looking for
Georgia before too long so they could have some time together now, on the last night before they parted. 
The day had been a tiring one and she was ready to sleep. For the past two days, the local authorities and military commanders had been inquiring into the violent occurrences between the warring riverboats for nearly the past two months. All of them had been questioned repeatedly, and detailed depositions had been taken, but in the end, no action had been taken against any of the people aboard the Dakota Star. Charlie Fink's reputation was well known even here, and in private a couple of the top military men had expressed their relief and satisfaction that he was dead. 
And earlier that afternoon, after the inquiries were completed, Paul Eaton had come away from the garrison near Fort Benton with the new government shipping contract in his hand. 
When Clarissa reached her cabin midway down the deserted passenger deck, the door was slightly ajar. She was puzzled about it a moment, then decided that the steward had probably opened it to let the room cool before she came back and went to bed. She went inside and walked to the table to light the lamp, then turned toward the back of the cabin to begin undressing. 
"Don't scream," Benjamin Hawkins said in a quiet, threatening tone from the rear of the cabin. He was dressed in his buckskins, seemingly even more ragged and dirty than when she had seen him last. His beard was longer too, and it appeared from the lines on his face and his haggard expression that he had been through some rough times 
recently. A grimy, blood-soaked bandage was wrapped around his left forearm just above the wrist.
Clarissa just stared at him a moment, not moving or speaking. Discovering him here had been a shock, but she was surprised to find that the old gut-rending, weakening fear no longer rushed through her as it once had when he was near.
"How did you get in here?" she asked finally. Her voice was calm and low.
"I watched the boat this afternoon until I found out which cabin was yours," he said, "and then after dark, I just walked on board. There was nobody at all on the main deck. The whole crew is probably off in town on a bender."
Clarissa just nodded her head at the explanation.
"I'm taking you," Hawkins told her, "and you won't get away again. I assure you of that."
"No, Ben."
"You don't have any choice in the matter, woman. You're going with me. Now that Charlie's dead and the Maggie Dell is gone, I've decided to head south, maybe down toward Denver and on into Texas. It's some country I haven't seen for a while. But I just had this one last piece of business to take care of first. I had to come back and get you."
"No. You're not taking me anywhere."
His temper was rising gradually, almost imperceptibly, but it no longer frightened her as it once had. "If you say that one more time," he warned, "I'll make you regret it. You know I know how to do that."
"You can beat me up or do whatever you want, but I'm not going with you. The only power you ever had over me was fear, and I've taken that hold away from you. You can't force me to do anything anymore. All you can do is hurt me or kill me, but I'd prefer that now to being your slave again."
Hawkins came toward her, and she expected the abuse to begin, but instead he moved to the cabin door and peered outside. "If you want to take anything, you'd better get it together now. But you can't take much. We'll be traveling light for a long time. And if you make any commotion, you're only going to get some more of your friends killed."
Clarissa could see that he had not paid attention to anything she had said. It was up to her to take some action, and she was ready. While his back was turned, she reached under the pillow on her bed and drew out the heavy knife she had started keeping there, then held it out of sight in the folds of her skirt.
When Hawkins turned back to her, his face held that curious expression of near-tenderness which had puzzled her so many times before. It was as if all his life he had had to live by his wiles and guns and fists, but there was still some reserve of compassion and longing which strained to escape his spirit and express itself.
"I want you, Clarissa. I need you with me, and you're going," he told her easily. "All my life I've had to take what I wanted from somebody else that didn't want to give it. I hoped it would be different with you, that you could just give on your own without me having to force you. Just once I
wanted that from a woman . . . but damn-you, you wouldn't have it that way . . . nice and easy and comfortable." His hand had risen to caress her throat, but as his anger grew, his fingers began to tighten around the soft flesh of her neck.
"You were so different, so unlike the whores and tramps I've always known. It was a simple thing I wanted from you, and in return I could have made it so good for you ... so good. But you're just too damned good for me, aren't you? You couldn't settle for the likes of me. You had to make me take, just like I've always done. But I know how. When I decide I want something, nobody can stop me. I get what I want."
Clarissa listened, looking up at his face and pitying him' suddenly as she drew the blade from the folds of her skirt. It was razor sharp and slid through the buckskin shirt and into his chest with amazing ease.
"Not this time," she said. "Finally you get what you deserve instead."
His eyes glazed over slowly and his mouth fell open. Then, as his grip on her throat slowly relaxed, his head lolled to the side and he fell away from her.
Much later, Clarissa wept in Tommie Casey's arms. She had killed a man--truly in defense of her person and her freedom--but nonetheless it was a deed of violence totally alien to what she'd thought of as her true nature.
"I can't believe that it wasn't some sort of nightmare," she sobbed.
"Now, darlin'," said Casey, gently stroking the
bright hair, "Time has a way of healing these things."
And as she drew closer in the circle of his arms, both of them knew that the healing had already begun.