Perish from the Earth

by Jonathan F. Putnam

  “I’ll talk to my father—” I began, but before I could finish the sentence, there was a loud crack followed immediately by a thudding in the wall behind the captain’s desk.

  “What was that?” I exclaimed.

  Pound stared at me dumbfounded, his jowls sagging dully. He opened his mouth, but no sound emerged. In the meantime, I could hear muffled shouting coming through the walls from the salon. I stared into Washington’s eyes but saw only dark fabric; someone was pressed up against the painting on the other side, obscuring the view.

  I burst from the captain’s office and rushed toward the salon. Perhaps Captain Richard Pound did not know everything that transpired on his ship after all.

  CHAPTER 3

  The young planter Jones, brandishing a short-barreled pistol, swayed fifteen feet away from the gambler Devol. “I’ll ask you one more time,” Jones was shouting as I pushed through the doors at the other end of the salon. “Give me my money back, or I’ll shoot you between the eyes.”

  Devol was backed against the wall behind the bar stand, where a bloom of splinters above his right shoulder showed the resting place of Jones’s first shot. The gambler’s hands were raised in the air, yet his face showed only the faintest hint of concern.

  “You lost the money fair and square,” he said calmly.

  “You lie!” screamed the planter. He had shed his frockcoat, and his white shirt was disordered. His hair stood on end as if he had run his hands through it a hundred times. “You cheated me, and you know it.”

  There were, I now realized, several other men still in the salon, mostly ducking behind chairs along the edges of the room. The Artist was crouched behind his overturned easel. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a flash of brilliant red. The Actress was lying on her side, her features clenched with fear; the unshaven rogue was cowering on the floor behind her.

  “I cheated you?” asked Devol. His tone was incredulous but his eyes were darting around the room, gauging his next move. “I cheated you because I let you proceed with a throw you thought was crooked in your favor? That’s not cheating, son. That’s the monte.”

  Jones took a new wad from his pocket and, after several false starts, ripped its top off with his teeth. He started to pour it down the barrel of his pistol, but his hands were trembling so badly that much of the powder missed its target and drifted impotently toward the floor.

  “Jones!” I called out, advancing to the center of the room.

  The young planter swung around, nearly toppling over before steadying himself. “You’re the other one I’m looking for,” he said, gesturing angrily with his pistol.

  “Put down the piece, Jones.”

  “I’ve been cheated,” he insisted. He waved the pistol around wildly, and the men cowering on the edges of the salon shrank back farther. I heard the Actress suck in her breath. “As I sat in my cabin, drinking my last bottle of whiskey, I realized it was all a swindle.”

  “I urged you not to play. Anyone who does business with a bandit like him”—I gestured toward Devol—“does so at his own peril.”

  Jones was undeterred. He felt around in his pocket for a ball to ram down his barrel. At the same time, I heard the door to the salon open with a heave behind me, and several pairs of footsteps crossed the threshold.

  “Put down that gun at once,” bellowed Captain Pound.

  “This man’s a gambler, Captain,” cried Jones. “A goddamned no-good gambler.”

  “Impossible,” said Pound. “There’s no gamblers allowed on my ship.”

  “Every man here knows what happened,” Jones insisted, swaying as his hand holding the loaded gun flailed about. Devol’s best hope, I thought, was that Jones was too intoxicated to aim straight. “I’ve little doubt you do as well.”

  “It’s a serious charge, young man,” Pound said gravely, “but I always take the words of my cabin passengers seriously. If you insist, I shall convene a maritime court—right here, right now—to get to the bottom of it.”

  “There’s no need, Captain,” called out Devol. “Part of what he says is true, but only part. I did have a deck out earlier. But the game was level, and this man’s nothing but a sore loser.”

  “You admit you’re a gambler?” The captain squinted in disbelief.

  “An honest one,” Devol insisted. His head was bowed.

  “In that case, you would do perfectly right to shoot him,” the captain said, turning back to Jones. “But that little pop gun of yours isn’t strong enough to kill a horsefly. Look how badly your first shot missed. My man will bring you mine instead. I keep only the best of arms.”

  Pound pulled a heavy, long-barreled black gun from the pocket of his coat and started to hand it to Hector. I saw that the gambler’s slave had entered the room behind the two men; her face was etched with worry.

  “Stop!” shouted Jones, looking warily between the captain and Hector, his gun at the ready. “Place it on that table over there and back away.”

  “It’s loaded and primed,” said the captain, complying. “All ready to be fired.”

  Keeping his gun trained on us, the young planter walked over and picked up the captain’s heavy piece. He squinted down the barrel, then held the gun next to his ear and shook it, listening for confirmation the ball was already rammed down. Nodding with satisfaction, he turned back to Devol. The gambler had been watching with a look of fierce concentration. To the last, he was calculating the odds.

  Jones extended his right arm, his new weapon pointing directly at Devol’s heart.

  “Any last words?”

  Devol allowed himself a small smile. “No doubt I will have some. But you’ll never hear them.”

  “May you rot in Hell!” screamed Jones. He pulled the trigger.

  Click.

  Devol’s smile remained undisturbed.

  Jones stared at the useless gun in horror, and he pulled the trigger again and then again. He started to reach for his own gun, but before he could, Hector—shouting out, “Santiago!” as a great war cry—had taken a running leap and tackled the planter. Both guns flew out of his grasp and skittered away. The two men grappled with each other, but it was no contest, and the Spanish giant had soon subdued Jones.

  “I demand my money,” shouted Jones as he struggled helplessly from beneath Hector. “Otherwise, you’ll pay for this. All of you will. I know you’re all in it together.”

  “Take him to his cabin, Hector, and tie him down,” Pound said calmly. “The man’s lost his sense along with his sobriety. For his own sake, I hope he regains them both by the time we dock at Alton in the morning.”

  Hector rose to his feet, Jones wrapped in his arms like a small child being carried off to bed. Meanwhile, Devol took a few steps forward to grasp Pound’s arm. The two men exchanged weary grins. There wasn’t much either of them hadn’t seen in lives lived up and down the river, I guessed.

  Jones had stopped struggling now, but he continued to cry out at the top of his voice as Hector lumbered with him from the room. “I know the truth!” the planter insisted. “You’ll pay for what you’ve done!”

  CHAPTER 4

  The following evening, I entered the public room of the Franklin House in Alton to find that my supper companion had already arrived. He was still dressed for court in his shiny black frockcoat and bow tie, and he was deeply engaged in a thick law book propped open on the table in front of him. At his side rested a tall black stovepipe hat.

  “Lincoln!” I called out.

  My friend put down his book and smiled. “You condescend to join me after all, Speed. I was beginning to think you hadn’t made the journey.”

  We gripped each other’s hands, and I clambered onto the bench opposite him. It had been several weeks since we’d last been together. I had been attending to the business of my general store in Springfield and then traveling to St. Louis to rendezvous with the War Eagle. Meanwhile, Lincoln had been riding the rude roads of southwestern Illinois.

  “So how’s life been
on the circuit?” I asked.

  Lincoln gave a lopsided grin. It lit up his whole face: high-peaked forehead, wide-set gray eyes, lantern jaws. “In a word—damp,” he said. “The fall showers couldn’t have come at a worse time.”

  The circuit was a kind of traveling legal circus. Several times a year, during breaks in the court calendar in Springfield, a group of lawyers would pack their saddlebags and, with a judge in tow, ride an irregular, winding path—a circuit—through the outlying towns and villages that lacked a regular court. At each stop, the lawyers would set up temporary offices, usually under a stout old tree on the village green, and persons of the community having legal issues would come to consult. The judge would erect a rump courtroom, and civil trials would be conducted, wills probated, and criminals tried and punished. Then, after three or four days in any one place, the whole group would pack up and move off together to the next stop.

  “Have the rains come during your travel days?” I asked.

  “It’s not so much the rain falling from the skies that’s bothered us as the swollen streams. We’ve had a devil of a time trying to ford them in our carriage. And we’ve spent more than a few nights sleeping on damp straw beds. There are few accommodations as nice as this one to be found on the circuit.”

  I followed Lincoln’s gaze around the brightly lit public room. The Franklin House was a three-story brick edifice that had been erected the prior year, on a slope opposite the steamboat landing, to take advantage of Alton’s prime location on the Mississippi between the mouths of the Missouri and Illinois Rivers. It had already gained a reputation as one of the finest hotels along the great river. “Rooms: Twenty-Five Cents A Night,” proclaimed a sign hanging above the entrance.

  “Any news from Springfield?” asked Lincoln.

  “I’ve been enjoying having our bed to myself,” I replied. Lincoln and I shared one of the two double beds in the narrow room atop my general store, A. Y. Ellis & Co. “Though Hurst and Herndon stage a competition each night for who can snore in a more ridiculous fashion.”

  Lincoln nodded with recognition. Neither Hurst nor Herndon was a drunkard; that was about the only kind thing to be said of them as room-mates.

  “Mind if we join you?” came a voice from above.

  I looked up and saw Stephen Logan and David Prickett, two other circuit-riding lawyers from Springfield. Each of them had shed his frockcoat and was dressed in his white shirt with rolled up sleeves. Over Prickett’s shoulder I saw the florid face and bulging eyes of Judge Jesse B. Thomas Jr. Lincoln waved the three men onto the benches beside us. Kemp, the red-faced proprietor of the Franklin House, threw another log into the blazing hearth. As he passed by our table, Lincoln grabbed him by the lapels and ordered drinks for the group.

  “Have you told Speed about Carlinville yet?” Logan asked Lincoln.

  “Or rather, not-Carlinville,” added Prickett.

  The three newcomers laughed heartily. I looked to Lincoln for an explanation.

  “I was driving the carriage late one evening,” he began, his gray eyes twinkling, “while these three vagrants and Edwards were asleep in the back. Well, we got to a crossroads, and I wasn’t sure which way was Carlinville.”

  “You couldn’t wake them and ask for directions?” I asked.

  “Not if he didn’t want to be held in contempt of court the next morning,” growled Judge Thomas. He lit a cigar and jammed it into the corner of his mouth.

  “Anyway,” continued Lincoln, “I had fair confidence Carlinville was to the west, so I turned the horses right, and sure enough, we got to town an hour later, and I parked us under a big old maple tree and curled up on the driver’s bench to get a few hours’ sleep myself. Next thing I know, it’s light out and the judge here is shaking me awake.”

  “Only—”

  Lincoln smiled mournfully. “It turned out we were parked on the village green at Carrolton. Not Carlinville.”

  “By the time we got to Carlinville, we nearly faced a riot,” said Prickett. “All the men waiting there for justice were about to take matters into their own hands.”

  The innkeeper Kemp returned with our drinks. He handed glasses of amber-colored ale to all of us except Lincoln, to whom he gave a bottle of soda water. As Kemp moved down to the other end of the long common table, he conversed with several men who had been aboard the War Eagle the prior night. I saw that one of them was the portrait artist, who was balancing a sketch pad on his lap as he sipped Kemp’s brew.

  “Not that Carrolton was a complete loss,” said Logan.

  “That’s true,” Lincoln added. “A fellow passing on the Carrolton green recognized the judge, and he shouted at us to stay put and dashed off. Thirty seconds later, he returned dragging along another fellow by the scruff of his neck. Turns out the first fellow was a tavern keeper, and the second one was a customer who’d passed him a bad note a few weeks back. Judge Thomas made the tavern keeper’s wife cook us all breakfast, and he considered their case on the spot.”

  “All of us except Lincoln,” said Thomas, spitting out his cigar with glee. “I ruled there was no breakfast for him, since he’d gotten us lost.” Lincoln joined his fellow circuit travelers in hearty laughter.

  “Why were you driving to begin with?” I asked Lincoln. “Logan must know the roads better. All of these fellows, actually. Surely they’ve been at the circuit many more times than you.”

  “First rule of the circuit,” Logan responded before Lincoln could. “Junior man drives at night.”

  “Edwards and I are tied on age,” Lincoln added with a rueful nod. “Both of us of twenty-eight years.” Ninian Edwards, the son and namesake of Illinois’s founding governor, was the other Springfield lawyer who’d set off for the circuit with Lincoln three weeks prior. “But he was attorney general years ago, while I myself have only been admitted to the bar earlier this year. So the fellows determined early on that I had junior-man status.” He gave a mock bow. “An honor for which I am most grateful.”

  Logan smirked.

  “Where is Edwards tonight, anyway?” I asked as Kemp arrived with another round of drinks.

  The men looked at one another with knowing grins.

  “You know the story of the resourceful bosun from the Royal Navy who’s got a different woman waiting for him in each port?” asked Prickett.

  I nodded.

  “That sailor’s got nothing on our dear Ninian. He’s got two women to visit in most villages on the circuit, near as we can tell.”

  The circuit riders laughed riotously and clinked their glasses together to toast Edwards’s prowess.

  “How about your travels, Speed?” asked Lincoln. “Did you sort out the matter of your father’s steamship and the delinquent captain?” My face must have fallen, because he hastened to add, “Or perhaps this isn’t the occasion to fill me in.”

  “I didn’t solve the problem,” I said, “but I think I understand its dimensions. More work to be done—but then, a son’s obligations to his father are never finished, are they?”

  Kemp arrived at that moment with a platter heaping with fish and fowl. I spent the meal brooding about my conversation with Captain Pound while the circuit riders took turns telling tall tales about their adventures on the circuit. I was pretty sure Pound wasn’t telling me the truth—at least not the whole truth—but I thought it would be difficult to uncover his lie. If only I had a way to speak with someone who could tell me what was really going on with the War Eagle and its finances, I thought, but Pound had seemed awfully confident in the loyalty of his crew.

  As we pushed back our benches from the table an hour later, having finished every last bite of Mrs. Kemp’s huckleberry pie, Logan turned to Lincoln and asked, “Fancy a nighttime walk to see the Piasa Bird?”

  “The what?”

  “It’s a painting high up on the cliffs just outside of town. Some kind of storm bird or thunderbird. The Red Men fire arrows at it as they float down the river, to keep it from flying away with their young. I
gnorant devils. I think the moon should be sufficient tonight to let us see it.”

  “This isn’t another trick played on the new fellow, is it?” asked Lincoln.

  “You have my word,” Logan said, hand over his heart in mock seriousness. “It’s quite a sight. Coming along, Speed? You’ve been quiet all evening. You look like you could use a diversion.”

  The booming town of Alton sprawled beside the busy steamboat wharf at the base of a series of steep ravines that rose sharply to perpendicular cliffs. Ten years ago, it had consisted of a ferry landing and a single general store; ten years from now, many local promoters believed, it would surpass its across-the-river neighbor St. Louis as the leading city of the Mississippi River valley.

  Lincoln, Logan, and I headed away from the steamboat landing along an uneven path that hugged the riverbank. A cold wind blew in our faces from across the river, and I held my frockcoat closed against the chill.

  “Is tomorrow your last day in Alton?” I asked.

  Lincoln shook his head. “We’ve got three more before we ride off to Edwardsville. It was supposed to be only three days total in Alton, but when we arrived, there was quite a docket waiting for us, so the judge extended it by another two and took the days out of Edwardsville’s allotment.”

  “Better to be busy than idle.”

  “I suppose. First up on tomorrow’s docket is a collections case involving a local miller. Me against Logan here. Again.” Lincoln chuckled. “The players get a little stale on the circuit, I’m learning. Not much variety.”

  “I’ve bested you six times of nine thus far at Alton,” said Logan pridefully.

  “Not that anyone’s tallying the score,” Lincoln returned with a grin.

  On the cliff top ahead of us, tall white walls suddenly loomed, a ghostly apparition in the light of the three-quarter moon. “What’s that?” I asked.