Chapter 10

This was a straight run for Kansas City. The only stops were for fuel and food. The latter was necessary since we had a lot more people on board than Capt. Johnson had planned for. The 32 mountain men that we were carrying as passengers really cut through our food stores. Man, could those men eat! Oh, well, they were also damned good hunters, so we rarely took long in our stops for hunting. Fuel replacement usually took much longer, but the extra hands cut the time for that, too. Everybody understood the need for haste if they were to receive anything for their pelts.

When we got to Kansas City, the story was a bad as it had been at the rendezvous—nobody was interested in buying furs. The only hope at this point was to head for St. Louis. There were no pirates this time for us to contend with, but that was a mixed blessing. Some of the tension could have been relieved by a battle, but even that was denied the mountain men. They were chewing logs and spitting toothpicks by the time we reached St. Louis.

Capt. Johnson had some contacts there who could be of a little help. With some diligent searching, he found an agent for a carpet and tapestry manufacturer who was willing to take the pelts off their hands. The mountain men didn't get any thing like what they thought the pelts were worth, but they did get enough to carry them through the winter. Capt. Johnson did not recover his expenses for the trip, but he was philosophical about it. At least, he had been able to help his friends.

Capt. Johnson had lost his main source of income, so he had to find some other place to pick up the money he needed to keep his boat going. I asked him why he did not consider running a "high speed" passenger only service between Kansas City and New Orleans. If he did not stop for freight loading and unloading and only stopped at places where he needed to refuel, he could make a significant cut in his running time between the two cities. I suggested that he calculate the running time and add 10% as a cushion; he could advertise that and see how many passengers he could pick up. Nobody had yet tried this, so maybe he could make some money by offering a novel service.

When nothing else showed up, Capt. Johnson decided to give it a try. He ran newspaper ads and handbills for two weeks and picked up quite a bit of interest. The newspaper even did a couple of articles about the Lovely Louise and her amazing ability to fight off pirates. This may have been what was needed to pique the public interest and push them into buying tickets. Whatever it was that did the job, we had enough passengers to make the trip worthwhile by the time of the advertised departure date.

We left on a Saturday morning with considerable fanfare. Capt. Johnson had hired a small band to play for the passengers' entertainment in the main lounge during the evening, and these men played a number of lively tunes as we left the dock. There was even one man who came running up and jumped aboard as we had already started pulling away from the dock. It turned out that he was trying to escape an irate husband.

We did, indeed, make a very fast run as far as Cairo, and several passengers got off there. Others got on, so we did not loose much in the way of the number of passengers. There was one small problem: three prostitutes had come aboard at Cairo and were plying their trade among the gentlemen passengers. None of us had any objection to the prostitutes, since it was a recognized craft at the time; however, several of the women passengers objected to the patronage by their husbands. Capt. Johnson refused to do anything about the prostitutes, except to ask them to be a bit more discrete in their solicitation of business.

The real problem passengers were the professional gamblers that plied their trade in the main lounge. There was at least one poker game going at all times, and sometimes as many as three at once. I was not a poker player, as I have mentioned before, so they did not attract me. However, Capt. Johnson did have to forbid his crewmen from playing in order to keep the boat a going proposition.

I did ask Capt. Johnson why he didn't collect a commission from the prostitutes and the gamblers, since they were using his facilities to earn money. In fact, if things got hard, I wondered why he couldn't turn the Lovely Louise into a floating bordello and gambling house. Capt. Johnson said that he had never though of it, but it did look like a promising idea. Certainly, the Lovely Louise was too small to make a profit as a freight hauler, and she was even marginal as a passenger hauler. He would discuss the prospect with some friends when we got to New Orleans.

The rest of the run to New Orleans was routine, except for the pack of pirates we ran into just south of Vicksburg. Sarah and I were standing guard on our firing platform, though, if the truth be told, we were more nearly just sunning ourselves. My other two wives were feeding the children, though it was getting close to the time to wean Anna. Personally, I thought that two years of breast feeding was enough!

Anyway, we were relaxing at our position when Sarah spotted a large rowboat pull out from the shore and head directly toward us. This could have been a purely innocent act, but I was not going to bet anything on that possibility—there were just too many men in that rowboat. I blew my warning whistle and was heard in the pilot house. Either the pilot or the captain used the main boat whistle to signal a warning, and the rest of our "marines" poured out onto deck with both their rifles and their shotguns. It was too late, now, to use the cannon, so those seven men had joined the other fighters at the side of the boat.

The pirates might have gotten away if one of them had not pulled out his musket from hiding and fired it at us. I have no idea what he expected to accomplish, maybe it was the equivalent of the one-finger salute. My other two wives had shown up by now, so his shot was met by 24 rifle shots and three shotgun blasts. The range was about 60 yards, so I doubt that the shotguns made much difference, but the 24 rifles certainly did! Seven men in the rowboat were killed or wounded, and the other five in the rowboat were treated the same way by our second volley. The rowboat was left wallowing in our wake as we continued to speed toward New Orleans.

Our arrival in New Orleans did not attract any attention, since we had not announced an arrival time. The locals did not know that we had made the run in such a short time, but Capt. Johnson was sure that the word would get around as soon as the current passengers had time to talk to their friends and visit a few saloons. We had cut one-third off of the usual running time for a river boat headed down river, and expected to do even better going back up river if we towed the barge loaded with fuel so that we did not have to make so many stops.

Capt. Johnson disappeared for a few days, and when he returned, he announced that the Lovely Louise was to be converted into a gambling emporium. On the advice of some of his friends, he had hired Luther Logan to manage the gambling operation. Furthermore, on the advice of friends, he had decided to bar prostitutes from the Lovely Louise, since they annoyed so many of the women passengers by their mere presence.

The plan was to convert the main lounge into a gambling hall for men. The smaller lounge would be split in half, and one half would be made into a gambling hall for women with more gentile ways than poker to wager, while the other half would remain as a lounge for people who did not wish to gamble at the moment. A stage would be installed in that lounge, and a small orchestra would be hired to play chamber music in the evening.

Luther Logan would be responsible for the gambling phase of the boat's business, and Capt. Johnson hoped that I would accept a position as the manager of security, the job I had been doing unofficially almost from the time I came on board. However, this gave me a salary of $100 per month, along with room and board. Hell, that was so much money that I grabbed the job with both hands!

I met Luther Logan the next day, and I was not impressed by what I saw. He looked a little bit smarmy to me, but I had to admit that I was probably prejudiced. He claimed to be Cajun, but I still didn't like him, though I figured that I had better learn to work with him. We spent most of the time talking about him and how I could help him do his job. He never once mentioned helping me do my job. Oh, well, I would just wait to see how things developed.