Chapter 166: Sweet Corn

Esther had brought Aunty and Matilda together.

Now I knew I was in trouble.

All extra-perceptional and sexual experiences aside, those two women were actually quite adept at controlling me. The only advantage I had at hand was that I knew that fact, not that I could change it but I wasn’t simply a blind puppet. That and the realization that I could still order them around; that wasn’t worth much but it was something. How’s that old axiom go? ‘When you see a man of power look behind him to find the woman holding the reigns.’ Yeah, that was my life; not a bad thing but it’s best to know where you stand.

I knew one thing for certain, I was very glad that I made sure that coffee, beer and bourbon were tops on our loading list coming out of St. Louis. I was going to eat, drink and then sleep; my grand plan for this Friday afternoon. Tomorrow would start a slew of meetings followed by our ‘Welcome to Rulo’ party, Sunday would simply be a day of rest. Knowing that tomorrow would be a slew of reports and discussion about mundane things keyed me up to relax a little tonight.

I heard some musicians start to warm up somewhere in the background and was happy to see that Amos was on his toes. I also remembered to send a rider to let Thomas, Martha and little Miss Daisy know we were having a party tomorrow, it wouldn’t do to forget them. It was turning out to be very handy having added Clara to the assistant ranks, there was always someone nearby to record things when I remembered them. In this case I smelled BBQ coming from the bits and I knew that meant that Matilda and her team had gotten into our meager tomato puree reserves. Our tomatoes were still small on the vine so it had to be the last of our canned stuff, this meant we needed to add a focus on canning jars during our upcoming boat runs.

The tomato fields were still huge but if we weren’t able to preserve them it would be wasted, there were a lot of options for preservation and we were going to try to use them all. All I had to do was note that out loud and Clara jotted it down. Now we just needed to organize a purchasing department for RT&T (Rulo Trade & Transport) and we’d be golden, however to make that work we need better communications.

Communication started with postal mail and while the pony express wouldn’t work for me we did have engineers and technology, we needed a fast mail boat. All we had to do first was get our shops up and running to build the steam engine to power that boat upstream against the relentless current of the Missouri river.

What would we need make all of this happen? Well bricks would be a good start, I wasn’t anxious to pay men to attempt to pole a load of bricks upriver when we could make them ourselves. Basically I needed to get industry up and running, I really hoped my captains and council were ready for this push. We had a lot to do and a long way to go and I’d be gone for a lot of this effort. My next trip would be to finish my business with Henry Leavenworth and then I needed to head off to the Washington D.C. Patent office to start making some real money.