Chapter 11

Most of the passengers we had brought from New Orleans booked passage for the return trip. The few new passengers we picked up were almost all women. Capt. Johnson asked me to check discretely to determine whether or not any of these women were prostitutes. I did find one of them was a prostitute, so Capt. Johnson met with her before we left Kansas City. He told her that he personally had nothing against prostitutes, and, if she was traveling with us as a normal passenger, she was welcome. However, if she planned to ply her trade during the voyage, he would refund her money, because he was not going to have that going on during this trip—too many of his female passengers were insulted by that sort of thing. She agreed to abide by his wishes and stayed aboard.

The number of female gamblers we had on this trip taxed the capacity of the small lounge that had been set aside for them. Nevertheless, we had no complaint from the women. Apparently, they were thrilled that someone would make the special effort to cater to them. It was so seldom in the male-dominated world they lived in to find someone who tried to make them happy.

The whole trip, Capt. Johnson mumbled to himself that he needed a bigger boat.

Mary and Helen still took our children around to visit the crewmen working the various parts of the boat, and they were welcomed as they had always been. However, they did not go into the men's gambling hall, as women were not welcomed there. On the other hand, they did visit the women's gambling hall and were welcomed there by all of the passengers. It seems that women are always happy to see another baby or infant—bless their hearts!

The first stage of our trip was unusual in that we met more pirates than we expected. The first attack came on our second day on the river. This one happened at a fuel stop and began the usual way. This time it was Helen who spotted the pirates and fired the warning shot before they had time to do any harm.

This battle was a little different because of the way the fuel was stacked on the dock. The pirates were able to get behind the stacks of wood so that they could not be shot at from the boat, so the fighting was done more "close up and personal." The quick-loading shotguns really proved their worth when a defender was attacked by a pirate wielding a saber. Two of our people were cut pretty badly, but none of our people were killed. On the other hand, as nearly as we could tell, only two of the pirates escaped, and eight were killed in the raid.

Two passengers were very happy over the raid, one a man and the other a woman. They were the winners in the betting pools over when we would have our first pirate attack. Each one won $50 on a ticket costing $5, so the boat made a hell of a lot of money off the pool! Luther Logan bowed to popular pressure and set up a new pool on the timing for our second attack. Hell, these people would bet on anything!

A few days later, a single shot was fired from the shore. We didn't even know if it was fired at us, but the crowd wanted it counted as an attack so that the prize could be awarded. I was sure that what we heard was the sound of a hunter at work, but I didn't complain as long as the passengers were happy. The boat made so much money off the pool, it would have been worth while for us to stage our own attack!

A clamor was started for another pool, but that was the last "attack" before St. Louis. Nobody objected when Logan declared that this pool was void as we pulled into dock at St. Louis, so we made an extra $100 off of this one.

Nobody left us at St. Louis, so we had no room for additional passengers. A couple of disappointed potential passengers bought tickets for our next run to make sure that they would not be left out the next time around. We refueled and left St. Louis the next day, bound for Cairo, where we were due to discharge five passengers.

The pirate attack pool was going strong before we even got away from the dock at St. Louis, and everybody had bought tickets by the time we had been underway for an hour. Some people even bought more than one ticket! Gambling fever had reached epidemic proportions.

Most of the passengers headed for the gambling halls as soon as we got underway. In fact, a few didn't wait that long. The men's gambling room had nothing but tables for poker and a little booth where a beautiful woman (the only woman in the room) sold chips. Logan had said that there would be less trouble if we always dealt in chips, not in cash. Not having any reason to argue, we went along with him.

This booth was never unattended, so it was possible to buy or trade in chips at any time of the day or night. A few passengers had headed for the chip booth as soon as they came aboard, and, except for certain necessary body functions, never left the poker table. We even had waiters who could bring food to the table for those who could not stand to leave to eat. At least one poker game went on during the pirate attack; it was easy to see where priorities lay.

We made our money by taking 10% from every pot. It was the responsibility of the dealer to collect the "tax." The dealer did not play, he just handled the cards. That way, we had less to worry about concerning the honesty of the dealers. The dealers earned a salary, plus they were allowed to keep any tips they received. A floor boss walked around making sure that the correct amount was drawn from every pot and dumped into a special metal bin attached to every table. The floor boss had the key to unlock the bin from the table, and Logan and I had the only other keys. So far, everything had worked well.

The dealers worked an 8-hour shift, and a relief was sent in whenever a dealer had to visit the head. The dealer ate a sandwich at his table, so a table was never left unattended. As expected, the Lovely Louise now had more employees than ever before, and there had been some worry about how we were going to house them. Temporarily, until we could get a better setup worked out, we were having to go with a "hot-bunk" principle where a bed was never unoccupied.

The trip to Cairo was enlivened by one pirate attack, but this one was more amateurish than we had come to expect. A day out from Cairo, we were approached by two rowboats, each holding two men. God only knows what they expected to accomplish, since four men were not enough to rob the average fishing boat, much less a working riverboat.

We were not pushing very hard to get to Cairo, so the two rowboats were able to meet us in the middle of the channel. In fact, they had stopped and were waiting for us to get to them. One man was using a set of oars while the other man was holding a musket. When we got close, our lookout in the bow called to them to move out of the way, since there was no way for us to avoid them. In answer, the man in one of the boats raised his musket and fired.

This was really stupid! My whole family happened to be on our firing platform at the time. We raised our rifles and put what must have been four bullets into the idiot. There were three men left, so I had each of my wives pick a target while I stood in reserve. They fired, and I was not needed. Both rowboats swamped as we steamed by; the turtles must have eaten well that day.

The only happy people to come out of this were the man and the woman with the winning pool tickets. A new pool was started immediately, though we were less than one whole day from reaching Cairo. Nobody won that one, so the boat inherited another set of pool money.

We spent only one day in Cairo before leaving for New Orleans. This was a totally uneventful trip. There were no pirates, so it was kind of boring for me. The women had the children to look after, and Sarah was acting kind of funny so that I wondered if she was pregnant. It certainly was her turn, and, at nearly 15, people would start to wonder if there was something wrong with her if she didn't get knocked up pretty damned soon.

Capt. Johnson could tell that I was bored, so he was not surprised when I asked if I could spend some time in the pilot house learning how to run a riverboat. He grinned and said, "I wondered if you were going to get interested in riverboats. They kind of grow on you, don't they?"