by Paul Boor
Nearly two months had passed since Schuyler left Saint Louis southbound for Galveston to construct an icehouse like the one he’d studied. When he departed Saint Louis, the once-wayward son had held a bankroll big enough to choke a horse, and he’d not been heard from since.
Nicolas settled in his chair and tried to put Schuyler out of mind. Since there’d be no delivery in New Orleans, he and Adam would make Galveston Island in two days. He’d see his son’s progress for himself soon enough.
Adam refused to take his eyes off the muddy water. “I never saw my Gertie look so bad,” he said. “And I been thinking.” He straightened and faced Van Horne. “With the little lady’s illness and all,” he said, “I’m thinking I’ll quit this business come summer.”
Nicolas gave a start. Adam. His man.
“Sure, Adam. Sure.”
“I figure I’ll take Gertie to Indian Lake. Not as high as Saranac, but the cabin’s snug and they ain’t logged it out yet. Deer’s thick as blackflies, too.”
Nicolas went quiet and stared at the dark swirl of the Mississippi. Adam was right—the river was no Adirondack lake. It smelled of moldy laundry, or worse. A winter’s worth of dross and flotsam bobbed on a skin of foamy scum. Broad islands of brush and upended trees that the captain called “snags” floated by.
The Jilted Lady lurched sideways to the current; in his wheelhouse Captain Rossbacher swung the wheel to correct their course and keep their distance from the dangerous snags. Nicolas opened his ledger and spent the rest of the afternoon tallying the greenbacks and gold eagles they’d collected from Saint Louis and stashed in the ship’s safe. When he looked up, the sharpest oxbows of the river had fallen behind. The river widened, slowed, and filled with ever-larger snags. Nicolas had a mental image of icebergs, with their vast bulk lurking beneath the surface.
When evening fell, the two deckhands climbed topside to light the ship’s lanterns. In all his time on this river Nicolas had never seen a more motley pair than this couple of grimy, half-drunk river rats.
“You boys playin’ ya some poque tonight?” the slighter deckhand asked.
Adam nodded. “Prob’ly.”
“Count me in,” the broad-shouldered, heftier deckhand said. This fellow, who went by Black Pete, was a mixed breed of some sort, his skin darkened to a chocolaty brown by years of ground-in soot. For three nights Nicolas had watched him lose big to Adam. Black Pete was good-natured enough, but as Adam put it, he was “one helluva glutton for punishment” when it came to cards. “A born loser.”
“Where’s that gamblin’ man we took on board?” Black Pete asked. “I’d like to take me some winnings from that hombre tonight.”
The “gamblin’ man” Pete spoke of was an unscheduled passenger Captain Rossbacher had taken on somewhere early in their journey. A silent type in a seersucker suit and frilly shirt, he’d been sighted only rarely. According to Rossbacher, the gent claimed to be a river gambler, but he hadn’t come topside to gamble and hadn’t spoken a word to Nicolas or anyone else.
Shortly after nightfall Black Pete produced a deck of cards from the pocket of his dingy jacket. “Go below and see if that gamblin’ man’s comin’ out tonight,” he told his fellow deckhand. Pete pulled a stool across from Adam at a small table he’d set on deck next to the mast. Nicolas settled into his rattan chair near the rail and covered himself with a wool blanket.
Heavy cloud cover obscured the stars and moon. The engine of the Jilted Lady growled. Her paddles beat a tattoo. Flame and ash belched from the ship’s stack into the pitch-blackness. The rock of the Jilted Lady and the monotony of the game of poque nearby—the cards dealt and redealt, coins tossed out and pulled in—all combined to lull Nicolas to sleep.
Sometime deep in the night the ship shuddered and Nicolas’s coverlet fell away. His rattan chair creaked. He cracked an eye. Something was in the air.
In the lantern light, Nicolas saw Black Pete at the table, along with Adam and a broad-shouldered gent in a dandified suit—the gamblin’ man. The pile of bills and gold eagles in front of Adam closely matched the winnings of the gambler. It had been a long night of cards, and the stakes were high.
Pete had his elbows on the table, a half-empty bottle of corn liquor nearby. His forehead wrinkled. “Reckon I’m all out,” he said, throwing down his cards. “Ah, hell, it’s my turn to stoke ’er boiler, anyway.” He pushed away from the table and ducked below.
“My deal,” Adam said.
Shaking off the fog of sleep, Nicolas lay in his chair and studied the gambler. The man must’ve had an appetite; he looked squeezed into that fancy, specially tailored suit. And Nicolas had seen that long thin nose before, hadn’t he? That coarse, wide face? Or one like it?
“I got three of a kind here,” Adam said. He laid his cards down. A smirk tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Aces.”
The gambler gave a nod. “Got me beat. It’s good hand.”
The gambler’s voice sent a bolt of misgiving through Nicolas. Something familiar in it, something foreign.
“You got good luck.” The gambler collected the cards. “Maybe luck too good to be true, huh?”
Nicolas snapped awake. A Russian accent. He dared not move. A shiver shot down him and he couldn’t help but let out a gasp. He felt the gambler’s eyes trained on him.
“Uh-oh,” the big man said. “I see it’s time.”
The gambler pushed back from the table and in one silky-smooth movement pulled a copper-colored Derringer pistol from his sleeve and leveled it at Adam.
“Do not move, you. You not my man, but your smart friend here spoil things.”
The gambler held the pistol with remarkable delicacy in his big, powerful paw, and with equal delicacy he reached his left hand into his boot and came up with another pistol, this one a Remington Double Derringer, upstairs-downstairs barrels, with an opalescent mother-of-pearl grip. He pointed the second pistol straight between Nicolas’s eyes.
For an instant Nicolas saw the future; he knew precisely the mistake Adam was about to make—that crazy half Seneca he knew like a brother, only a foot from a barrel loaded with sure destruction. Don’t do it, Adam, he thought. No!
Before Nicolas could utter a sound Adam made his move for the pistol. Time stood still, the single barrel smoked a tiny puff . . . and yellow flame leapt square at Adam’s chest.
Adam fell to the deck, heart-shot, without ever touching the filthy Russian cur. A spasm arched his back, then he went limp. Nicolas stared down two forty-one-caliber barrels—both still loaded, shiny clean, and steadily trained on his forehead.
“You see, I am sent for you, Mr. Ice Man,” the gambler growled as he stood and moved away from the table. “Too bad I get this one, too. He was good at cards.”
“You’re courtesy of Mr. Zhivakov, I take it,” Nicolas said, angling for time. “Perhaps we can discuss this. There may’ve been a misunderstanding of some sort and there may be a way of—”
“Niet! No talk.”
The man smiled and nodded at Adam. “First, you clean here. Please to put your friend overboard.”
“Surely. Anything to help.” Nicolas edged toward his friend’s body. Adam’s eyes were glazing over like a fish at the market.
Behind the big gambler, Nicolas saw Captain Rossbacher lean over the bridge, then disappear back into the wheelhouse. Nicolas feigned getting a grip around Adam’s dead body. He took his time with it. Do something, Rossbacher…now, goddamn it!
The Lady’s engine suddenly began to scream and her twin paddles flailed, spinning the ship in a circle. The gambler staggered, just what Nicolas needed—he grabbed a forearm that felt like a fence post and forced the pistol high. A shot rang into the black sky.
But the Russian’s bulk was too much. Still holding the gun at bay, Nicolas twisted and bashed the man’s hand on the table, upending it. The two fell to the deck in a chaos of cards and coins. Somehow, Nicolas loosened the big man’s grip and the pistol skittered away. The two untangled and the big m
an sprang to his feet. Still on his haunches, Nicolas saw a flash as the Russian drew two metal bolts from his vest, a fine wire strung between them.
The gambler lunged, the bolts firm in his grip, the wire aimed at Nicolas’s throat. Nicolas caught both the man’s wrists, slowed the wire’s progress, but he was pinned . . . pinned against the rail . . . slowly . . . bent backward, the wire closer and closer. He shifted his weight. Use the big man’s bulk against him . . . He twisted, trying to pull the gambler over the rail with a death grip on the scoundrel’s wrists. The cur’ll go with me . . .
The gambler twisted a hand free, dropped the bolt, and shoved Nicolas further out over the Mississippi. Dirty water raced below. A blade flashed. Thunk! The assassin’s knife sank into the wood right where Nicolas’s hand had been . . . Nicolas pushed away and . . . dropped into the night.
The river raged around him. A shot rang out, then another. The ship careened downriver. Smack in the middle of the Mississippi, Nicolas chose a shore—didn’t matter which—kicked off his shoes, wiggled free of his jacket and vest, and set a steady stroke.
Nicolas was a swimmer, but the river had a mighty grip. His strength flagged. Each bend in the river seemed to sweep him further from shore. The cold, silty water tasted of chalk. He rolled onto his back and floated motionless, watching clouds pass over the moon like smoke. Stiff with cold, his mind wandered to Adam’s last moments, holding aces. A lifelong friend, gone! First Ruth . . . now Adam. When will it stop?
He’d taken a few stiff strokes when something solid jabbed his cheek. He wrapped an arm around an oak tree’s limb, part of a giant snag racing downstream. He struggled to lift himself onto the tree’s trunk, half out of the wintry water.
A few feet to his left something bobbed in the murk—a shapeless, pale lump the size of a man. Nicolas reached over and grabbed a shred of cloth and hauled. Could it be? Adam, still a fellow traveler? Caught by the same snag?
Fighting back tears, Nicolas pulled again, but it wasn’t Adam Klock’s dead body—it was nothing but a sack of flour fallen from some ship. When he pushed it away in disgust, a murky white paste oozed out.
Nicolas inched further up the oak’s trunk, panting with exhaustion. He laid his head on the rough bark, until out of the gloom the riverbank emerged a few feet away. He gained his feet, balanced on the trunk, and leapt for shore. Landed in muck. Scrambled up the slippery clay bank into the underbrush.
A few steps and he was on a dirt road tracing along the riverbank. Shoeless, his hair fouled with red clay, he turned downstream, dripping fetid river water with every step. Strands of rank-smelling river weeds hung like ill-kept muttonchops from his face.
It seemed like hours before he stood in a village of low-slung buildings, swaying in the street in the grey dawn light. A gentle rain had begun to fall. Down a narrow path to the river, Nicolas’s eyes fell on the Jilted Lady, tied to a dilapidated dock. He took off at a trot, then stopped himself.
“Is the murderous bastard still aboard?” he mumbled. He advanced cautiously, his feet raw, his filthy socks flapping on the road. Then he saw Captain Henry Rossbacher sitting on the dock with his head buried in his hands. Rossbacher looked up and made a low, rumbling sound.
“Van Horne? I’ll be damned . . . you’re not dead.”
“Thank God you’re spared, too, Captain. How’d you manage it?”
“The goddamned privateer needed me to get him ashore. Once I docked the Lady, he forced me to open her safe, which he proceeded to empty. He even jettisoned your baggage, the rotten skunk.”
“Left me nothing but the blasted ice, eh?”
“Devil take your precious ice, Van Horne.”
Nicolas sank onto the dock and slumped against a piling. “Yes, damn my precious ice,” he said softly. “My best friend. A man I’ve known since childhood, lost.” Nicolas choked on a sob, tears falling freely now. He raised a fist, unleashed a woeful cry. “Despicable scoundrel! Adam . . . oh, Adam . . . why’d you go for that gun?”
“Git a grip on yerself, man,” the pilot said, taking Nicolas by the shoulders to still his shaking. “We’ll carry on. We’ll get your damned ice to market.”
Rossbacher plunked down next to Nicolas and wrapped an arm around him. He gazed stolidly at his ship in the weak river light. “Of course, my chickenhearted crew skedaddled,” Rossbacher said with a chuckle. “So you, sir, will be feedin’ her boiler.”
70
Hasty Delivery
The north wind blew a gale over the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico, striking the side-wheel steamer Jilted Lady broadside with hail and ice that came like scattershot out of the night. High in the wheelhouse, Nicolas poured a touch of warmth for Captain Rossbacher from a bottle of rum purchased in New Orleans, where they’d taken on firewood for the Lady’s boiler and managed to hire one additional deckhand.
Van Horne, the newly installed chief mate, had been stoking the boiler’s furnace all evening. Soot was wedged into every crevice of his flesh. Besides that, he’d been forced to borrow clothes from Rossbacher, who was half a foot shorter. Nicolas Van Horne was a sorry sight. His bare arms protruded from a faded peacoat badly thinned at the elbows. He’d belted his pants with coarse twine. The borrowed shoes squeezed his toes like a vise. Rossbacher had offered a loan to buy clothes in New Orleans, but Nicolas felt in too black a mood to shop. Besides, his job as mate would’ve ruined any finer duds.
“I-is this tub seaworthy?” Nicolas asked through chattering teeth.
“She’s been through a gale or two,” Rossbacher said.
Nicolas passed the pilot a tumbler of rum and poured one for himself.
“Crossed the Lady to Mexico last summer,” the pilot continued, turning serious. “Of course she’s a might top-heavy with that boiler’s big stack.”
He took a slug of rum and swung the wheel a quarter turn to steady his vessel’s progress against twelve-foot swells from the starboard. “This norther should blow itself out by morning,” he said. “Then, with the easterly I’m expecting, we’ll set some sail and make time.” Casting a sideways glance, he added, “But for now, I believe she needs a bit more power, mate . . . if you please.”
Nicolas tightened a weary grip on his tumbler before going below. The deckhand they’d taken on in New Orleans was a lazy no-good, and Nicolas had been doing most of the Lady’s work.
The gale hardened through the night and pounded their starboard until daybreak. Once the storm relented, Nicolas, sleepless and covered in a salty crust, breathed easier.
By midday the swells subsided and the wind steadied from the east under an azure sky. Captain Rossbacher told Nicolas to let the Lady’s Scotch boiler go cold; they unfurled her cloth and sailed full and by on the easterly Rossbacher had predicted. Nicolas took advantage of the respite to duck belowdecks and scribble a note—a note he would post upon making port.
My dearest Abigail,
I am alive and well, but steel yourself for horrid news. Our dear friend Adam was MURDERED & lost on the Mississippi, may God rest his noble soul.
Surely I relate to you one of the darkest moments of my life. At Saint Louis our steamer shipped out well, all business having gone according to plan. Late that night Adam was SHOT DEAD defending me from a murderous slave trader, an assassin sent for me. I barely escaped into the river. Adam’s killer is long gone, the ship’s safe and our trunks emptied, the only good tiding being that we continue in the open gulf toward Galveston with cargo intact.
Regrettably, the task of telling poor Gertie Klock falls to you, dearest Abby, my courageous daughter. I am sure you will provide Gertie great comfort. Please extend my deepest, most heartfelt condolences. I look forward to finding Schuyler to see how his icehouse has progressed.
Until now, I’ve kept the worst of this from you, Abby. I’ve not let on how dangerous these slave traders are. Take caution, extreme caution. Stay close to home, and pray that my worst fears are unfounded, and Adam’s killer will not pursue me to Galveston.
; All love
Yr father
Near midnight Rossbacher sighted the light at Half Moon Shoal. When they slipped into the bay they lost the wind, and Nicolas fed the boiler’s furnace one last time to steam around the tip of Galveston Island.
“I’d request that you dock at the first pier on the east end of the island,” Nicolas told the captain. “And no need to blow her horn, Rossbacher. We’ll pull in quietly, send your useless deckhand packing, and you’ll be free tonight to find yourself a room.”
“Gladly.”
“Tomorrow I’ll secure a permanent berth at Pier 28. We’ll unload her ice there.”
After making the Lady fast, Captain Rossbacher cast a questioning eye at the shoddy medical college pier, then strode off for a meal and a decent drink. “I’ll be taking quarters at the Jolly Seaman’s Inn,” he said in parting.
Nicolas was heartened to see electrical lights from the upper floor of the college. They meant that even at this late hour he needn’t roust old Keiller out of his bed.
The cool silence of the medical college’s interior and the dark stench of formaldehyde on the long stairway were immediately familiar to Nicolas. Though it had been almost a full year, he felt like he’d never left the island. As he neared the upper landing, a door swung open and erratic footfalls came from the research laboratory. The professor limped out, his gait slower than Nicolas remembered.
“Professor Keiller!” Nicolas called up the stairs. “Hold on, sir.”
The old man spun around slowly and squinted, a startled look on his face. He extracted a pair of wire-rim spectacles from his vest and fitted them clumsily around his ears. “Who? . . . Who’s that?”
Since Nicolas last set eye on the elderly gent, Professor Francis Keiller had changed for the worse. He’d shrunk a half foot; his back was doubly crooked; his hair amounted to little more than a few wisps protruding like lonely wires from the sides of a wobbly head. The keen, professorial face was drawn and ashen, though his eyes still had a blaze to them—a blaze that flickered brighter at the sight of the ice merchant.
