Chapter 2
The Steamboat
"Gee, you look terrible," said John Fleming the following morning. "Here's your milk 'nd eggs! Are you goin' back in the house?"
He had found Bret, still wrapped in his blanket, sitting on a bench under the old sycamore tree and just staring off into across the ocean.
Bret shook his head. "I don't want to." He fidgeted in his dew-laden blanket, pulling it closer to him.
"Why? That lady do anything last night?"
Bret turned his shivering body towards the boy, and nodded.
"What, for gosh sake?"
"Wouldn't leave the tablecloth alone." His teeth chattered and it wasn't cold out, not in August.
The boy struck a pose and gazed up at the sun. He laid a hand on Bret's shoulder. "Come, mister, we'll build up a fire in the parlor. I'll stay with you for a while."
"I am havin' a chill," Bret said. With the brave lad's help, he inched his way back into the house, staring into corners and starting at nothing.
"Gee," said John, using his favorite expletive. "She's really got to you already." He laughed. "Last man, he ran out o' here shoutin'! He moved in one day, out by noon the next. Left everything. I had my pick of his stuff. So did ma."
While he rested on the satiny couch, Bret watched the boy poke at the fire. "Have you ever seen anything? Or heard—" he asked, but couldn't quite finish.
"Sometimes," John answered. "I've busted in here once or twice to see things. Right pretty stuff she's got."
"And you never—" Bret left the question unasked, for the boy had cocked his ear and raised his hand. "Hear anything?" he asked instead.
"Yeah, like crying. A lady crying, upstairs."
Bret swallowed. "I heard it last night. It might have been the wind, but it's died down now."
"Do you think we ought to check on it?" asked the boy, standing rigid on the Turkey carpet. He and Bret shared the color brown in their eyes. They also shared the look of alarm as both were hearing it now.
"We could," Bret answered. Getting up, he moved to the parlor door and ran his eyes up and down the foyer. Then he gazed up the stairs, his eyes fixed as the crying grew louder. It seemed to come from the bedroom he had chosen to sleep in three nights ago.
The boy hissed, "What is it?"
"It's still crying. Stronger now," Bret said.
John raised his voice, valiantly, saying, "No use tarryin', ma always tells me." Then he darted past Bret and once at the main door, heaved back on it and fled through it.
Bret reached down to the floor and grabbed the handles of his maroon carpetbag, then trotted after the boy, leaving the door wide open and a fire going inside.
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"So you left the fire going?"
Bret, who had hiked the three miles back to town, nodded, gazing rather sheepishly at the lawyer Quimby, who sat at a card table in the saloon.
"You owe Guyot a considerable sum of money, Maverick, a considerable sum!"
"I can't stay. I—I …"
"You can't stay a month to pay off your debts?"
Bret shook his head, hat in hand. Holding the brim, he began turning the hat in short half-circles. He was very nervous. He didn't have the money to pay Guyot. Guyot could send him to jail.
He sighed. Why had he ever left Mississippi for Louisiana? On his way south, steaming down the Father of Waters, he had played in the boat's salon and won quite a few games. Netting thousands. But in New Orleans, he'd met his match in Guyot. He lost his proverbial shirt!
He stiffened his shoulders. "If I go back to New Orleans, I'm sure I can win it back."
Quimby, Moses P., looked like a snub-nosed cannon. He had a blunt way about him that set Bret's teeth on edge. "No man runs out on one of my clients and lives to tell it!"
"I just need time to raise the money."
"What did you play him for? Like to lose, do you?"
"Usually I win," said Bret, honestly.
Mr. Quimby snorted. "Bah! Likely story!" He chomped on his unlit cigar and dealt his friends at the table a hand of cards.
"But it's true—until New Orleans, that is," Bret said. He decided to plead. "What do you say, Mr. Quimby? I checked, and there's a boat leaving today for New Orleans."
Quimby turned heavily in his chair, a small Windsor, its spokes creaking. Looking up at Bret, directly in the eye, he said, "You won't be on it."
"Where will I be?"
"Two places spring to mind, boy. One, in jail. We have a nice jail. Built long ago and sound. Red ants live there and they'll keep you company. Or, at Breck's Point, outlasting that ghost."
Bret gulped, then turned away. He walked out of the saloon into the bright sun, and putting his hat on again, looking up at the shrieking gulls, fighting over fish. He'd have to brave that house. Or else spend time in jail in this forsaken place, fighting fire-ants!
Maybe he had another option. He could fly the coop. That boat, leaving at sunset, sat at the wharf. If he could bargain for his passage, maybe offer to work his way, then he'd be in New Orleans in a day or two.
It might have worked but for his present run of bad luck.
As he exited the hotel saloon where Quimby was holding court at one of the poker tables, he had the eyes of the whole town on him. Everyone by now knew the story of the gambler and the reason for his stay at Breck's Point. He was trying to prove that Breck's Point had no ghost. What a hoot!
He had decided to try his luck with the packet at the wharf, but it would be hours before it was ready to depart. Finding a spot to hide out in until the boat left wouldn't be easy, so he decided to hide in plain sight.
At one of the seedier drinking holes in town, and they were legion, he slipped in and made himself at home at one of the small wooden tables. A couple of men came over and shoved a deck of cards under his nose, but he just shook his head. Dead broke, he didn't have enough money to raise a penny ante.
Heavy hearts sat on the men as they walked away, murmuring low to one another. Bret crossed one leg over the other knee, threw his arm on the table, pulled his hat low, and tried to sleep. He could feel the eyes of the saloon upon him.
As a guitar player and a dancer took the small stage off to his left, he cocked an eye open, curious to see if the couple was any good. Not too thrilling. The guitar squeaked, and when she threw her dress up in back, the lady showed off her heavy thighs.
Anyway, at present he was not interested even in buying her a drink, once she was done flopping about up there on the boards like a beached whale.
It was going to be a long wait until sundown.
He bought himself a rum with a quarter he found in a trouser pocket. That had been four hours ago. As shadows filled the saloon, and the white beach outside the windows took on a dark, satiny sheen, like old pewter, he continued to romance it. A long time on one coin.
The bartender, polishing glasses, his white towel spiraling inside of each in its turn, looked over at him once or twice. Bret avoided his eye, preferring the dancer instead. Shaking his head, the bartender went back about his business.
He'd push men out the door who only bought one drink in four hours, but he let this one linger, maybe thinking he was the kind of man whose luck had its fits and starts. If it turned, the bartender himself might reap some profit. The gambler might leave a sizable tip.
But now he was going, and he had not played in a single game. All that time spent hoping for nothing!
Bret saluted the irate bartender and slipped out into the dusky twilight. Purple haze hung over the west, with bands of yellow and orange at the horizon. As he headed for the wharf road, he wove in and out of alleys, buildings, and sheds just to stay out of sight.
He'd left his satchel behind in the house, but he wasn't going back for it now, so he made his way down the path leading to the two or three jetties. Courtesy of a clothesline, he was now wearing blue jeans and a simple cotton shirt, his frock coat and top hat dangling from the same clothespins.
It wasn't too hard to find the steamboat, the Edwin Wharton, as it was only one at the dock. Turning he took one last look at the glowing sunset, then picked up a small barrel of molasses and hoisted it to his shoulder. As he was walking up the gangplank to the boat, one of the crew, on his way down the plank, jostled him.
"Look where ye're goin', mate!"
Bret nodded and yield the right of way, not wanting to stir up trouble for himself right off. At the top of the plank, he stepped onto the main deck, or the lowest deck of the steamer. Here, running the length of the boat, was a wide open space for boilers, cargo, livestock, crew, and third class passengers.
In his humble disguise as a dock worker, still carrying his barrel, he strode to the deepest, darkest spot he could find, a cubbyhole between a storage locker, which was filled with odd bits of rope and some cork life preservers, and the boiler room. There, he'd stay until the packet reached New Orleans, in about two days.
He sat back against a support pole and crossed his arms over his knees. Shifting the molasses barrel with his foot, he turned it into a kind of sugary-sweet barricade.
The boiler deck for first-class passengers was directly above him, and the open hurricane deck above that. Many a night, on the Mississippi, he and a lady friend had strolled arm in arm on this uppermost deck, catching a warm breeze, or stopping to admire not just the dark river, but each other.
It was utterly dark now. The boat was getting underway, with timbers creaking, shouts and bellows, brays, moos and clucks—he could have been on the Ark, but it was a typical packet of those days, with cabins and staterooms above, and livestock below. He counted himself in the latter category.
A few gruff voices were heading his way, so he tried to pull his feet in even further. Then the voices moved on. He breathed out again and arched his back like a cat, trying to stretch in those tight quarters. But tight as they were, it beat sleeping in a windy old house with a ghost.
Closing his eyes, he let his mind drift. Just then, he didn't think of a ghost, or a haunted house, or the large sum of money owed to Harlan Guyot, or of that donkey Quimby.
Instead, he could see the tables in New Orleans, rich with bills and chips; he could see fair ladies in bosom-revealing dresses, painted, be-ringed, and inviting. He could see his own hands raking in those bills and chips, and the plump piece of satin and lace on his knee as he did so.
His idyll didn't last long.
When Bret had left the saloon where Quimby was playing, two of Quimby's spies had followed him even as he tried to lose himself in the alleys of the sea-town, always keeping one step behind him, though he didn't know it. At the Edwin Wharton, the two rogues went aboard and questioned the boat's steward, the very man Bret had had a slight run-in with on the gangplank.
"I recall bumping into a fellow of that description," said the steward. "He was carrying a barrel like a common roustabout." A roustabout loaded and unloaded cargo on and off the boats.
"Have you seen 'im since?" asked one of Quimby's men. He forked over a ten dollar bill.
Pocketing it, the steward said, "He must be here on the main deck," where the three were standing.
"Can you spare the time to look for him?" asked the second of the two spies.
"He could be hiding anywhere. There's lots of boxes and crates," said the steward, holding out for more money. As the first spy put another ten in his hand, he said, "But let's look."
The barrel was kicked out of the way, spilling molasses in a thin stream along the planks of the boat, and startling the gambler just as he had begun to doze. A pair of hands reached in, locked onto his arms, and pulled him up. Opening his eyes, he saw a lighted taper at the level of his nose.
Then in that dark hold he felt rope slap his wrists, the stiff hemp wires biting into his flesh. Shortly, he found himself on the gangplank, and then on the wharf again. Ultimately, he was pushed up the path towards town.
At the hotel, he met Quimby in the same plush saloon where he had begged Quimby to allow him to go earn the money to pay Harlan Guyot. His hands were untied as Quimby shook his head in disapproval.
"Take him to one of the storage rooms, Benson, and lock him in."
In a back storage room, amid kegs of beer and dusty whiskey bottles, he stayed that night, the door locked. Besides a good secure door lock, the saloon keeper had also nailed shut the windows in an effort to protect his liquor investment from thieves.
Still untied, Bret pulled down a bottle of wine, its label so old he couldn't read it, and uncorked it with his teeth. Angrily, he did justice to that wine until he fell asleep in its throes, and knew no more until morning.
Three nights already gone. Could he last the remaining twenty-eight?