Gideon's Band Part 60

"No, us two Kentuck's will try it here." The pair found seats together, and soon the Californian was making the best of an opportunity he, no less than Gideon Hayle, had coveted for eight years. It interested him keenly, as affording a glimpse into the famous boatman's character, that the latter showed a grasp of the dreadful voyage's story as vivid and clear in each of its two versions--the mother and daughter's and the twins'--as though the intervening months had been one instead of a hundred--and two.

They rehea.r.s.ed together the arrival of the _Votaress_ at Louisville in the dead of night; confessed the folly of any "outsider" seeking the grief-burdened Gideon's ear in that first hour of reunion with his family, and the equal unwisdom of his pressing, in such an hour, an acute personal question upon Hugh and his grandfather who, at Paducah, had just buried John Courteney.

"And you've never pressed it sence?" asked "California."

"Mm-no."

"Nor let either o' them press it?"

"No!"--a st.u.r.dy oath--"nor you nor anybody alive. Go on with your story."

The gold hunter went on unruffled; told it as he had seen it occur; recounted, among other things, how, on the final landing of the immigrants, at Cairo, Marburg and not a few besides had covered Madame Hayle's hands with kisses and tears and would have done Hugh Courteney's so could they have got at him. His hearer frowned and set his big jaw, but the narrative flowed on, describing how, like Marburg, many had waved affectionate farewells to Hugh and to Ramsey which she could guess no reason for in her case except her own wet eyes, but which "California" saw was because, through himself and Phyllis, the immigrants had found her out as another who believed in letting the oppressed go free and come free. He told even those irrelevant things about himself which had made him ludicrous. They imparted a needed lightness and kindled the big commodore's smile.

"They never found out," said "California," "that the fellow who played 'Bounding Billow' and 'A Life on the Ocean Wave' was me--I--myself."

He told all as honestly, fearlessly as we might know he would. When his huge listener tried to say off-handedly that every man who knew anything knew that women and men never see things alike and that different witnesses could, quite honestly, give irreconcilable accounts of the same thing, the Californian serenely waved away all such gloss and with the seated giant hanging over him like a thunder-cloud said that the twins could never see anything straight enough to tell the truth about it if they wanted to and that just as certainly they often didn't want to. Pausing there and getting no retort, he ventured another step. Said he:

"And there you've hung the case up for eight years."

"That's my business!" Gideon smote the arm of his chair.

"California" laughed a moment like a girl, with drooping head. Then--oh, the twins had their good points, yes. One was the way they stuck to each other. And their biggest virtue, their "best holt," the one their worst enemy couldn't help liking them for, was their invincible sand.

"The devil couldn't scare 'em with his tail red-hot."

At that the father laughed gratefully.

"They'd ought to be in some trade where pluck," the Californian went on, "is the whole show. They'd ought to be soldiers. As plain up-and-down fighters for fight'n's sake, commodore, they'd hit it off as sweet as blackstrap!"

The truth smote hard but the parent feigned a jovial inappreciation. If that was so they had made a "most d.a.m.nable misdeal," he laughed, having settled down in Natchez together, "too soft on each other to marry and as tame as parrakeets"; Julian as county sheriff, his brother a physician.

The Californian silently doubted the tameness. Abruptly, though in tones of wors.h.i.+p, he inquired after Madame Hayle.

Madame just then was at home, on the plantation at Natchez. Yes, she and Ramsey often made trips with Gideon on that _Paragon_ which they had gone up the river to come down on, in '52. The _Paragon_, wonderfully preserved, was still in the "Vicksburg and Bends" trade and happened then to be some forty-eight hours ahead of the _Enchantress_ and nearing New Orleans. Madame and her daughter now and then spent part of the social season in the great river's great seaport, which was--"bound to be the greatest in the world, my boy," said Gideon. But Ramsey----

When Ramsey became the topic, even "California," while the father boasted, had to hold on, as he would have said, with his teeth to keep from being blown away. Her "one and only love" was the river! She "knew it like a pilot" and loved it and the whole life on it not merely for its excitements, variety, and outlook on the big world.

"That is to say----for its poetry," prompted "California."

"Yes, not for that only but just as much for its prose, by Mike! Why, my boy, that's all that's kept her single!"

"Except!" said the Californian softly, but Gideon pressed on. "And single, now, I reckon, she'll always be. Why, sir, not a day breaks but she knows, within an hour's run, the whereabouts of every Hayle boat alive."

"Some Courteney boats too, hmm?"

"Why, eh"--a stare--"I shouldn't wonder. Yes. Humph! 'youngest captain on the river'--fact is, that's _her_. Lady as she is, and lovely as she is, she's a better steamboatman to-day than--than many a first-cla.s.s one. She's nearer being my business partner than any man I ever hired."

"Partner's share of the swag?"

"No," laughed the giant, "but I'm leaving her the boats."

"Well," said "California," "all that's good preparation."

The huge man shot him a glance and the two pairs of blue eyes held each other. Then "California" smiled his winsomest and said: "Did you ever notice how much easier you can see through the ends of an iron pipe than through its sides?"

Gideon stared. "Humph! Any fool that wants to see through me may see and be--joyful. What do you think you see?"

"Oh, things you'd ought to thought of and never have."

"Why, you in'--Well, I'll be d.a.m.ned."

"Shouldn't wonder a bit," said "California" so amiably that the big man laughed.

"Maybe you'll tell me my oversights!"

"No, but you'll be told, shortly, if the man I think I know is the man I--think I know. Let's pa.s.s that now, commodore. Oh, I wish you'd been with us on the _Votaress_. How different things might 'a' turned out.

You know? I don't believe any other trip on all this big river, barring the first steamboat's first, ever made so big a turning-point in so many lives. Why, jest two or three things in it, things and people, made me another man."

"One not so need'n' to be hanged?"

"Yes, and not so hungry to hang other fellers. I hadn't ever met up with such aristocratic stock as I did then but I tchuned right up to 'em and I've mighty nigh held their pitch ever sence. Fo'most of all was this Hugh Courteney. Fo'most because, he being a man, I wa'n't afraid of him.

But a close second was yo' daughter; second because, she being a woman, I was afraid of her. Why, even Phyllis, that's now chambermaid on this boat----"

"By Jupiter!" Gideon Hayle half started from his seat. "On this boat?

our Phyllis? that Ramsey set free?"

"Yes. Captain Hugh's nurse that was."

"Look here, my boy, is that why you're aboard?"

"No, sir-ee! Don't you fret. That trip, I tell you, made another man of me. It lifted; why, commodore, it made me a poet."

"Made you a--Oh, go 'long off!"

"Yes, sir. Writ poetry ever sence. Dropped prose; too easy. It's real poetry, commodore; rhymes as slick as grease. Show you some of it later."

"George! if you do I'll jump into the river."

"Agreed! I've got some that'll make you do that."

"You haven't got any that wouldn't."

Neither smiled, neither frowned. Obviously each knew how to like an adversary and when "California" rose and the two, glancing aft, saw another two approaching from the pilot-house, one of whom was Watson, Hayle touched the poet detainingly and said:

"Don't go 'way, I want some more of your prose."

"Want to know why I'm here? Not countin' the fun o' seein' Captain Hugh, half the reason's that gentleman yonder comin' with Mr. Watson, and the other half's his lady, down below a-powwowin' with yo' daughter. Fact is I'd struck it rich again out West and got restless and come East, and at Saint Louis I see by a newspaper that them two was allowin' to go down to Orleans on this boat this trip, and ree-collect-in' the pinch they got into of old on the _Votaress_, s'I to myself,'me too!'"