Chapter 13

I looked for advance men in each of the other 15 towns on my list. We agreed that St. Louis and Kansas City were big enough to be special cases and we would quickly generate a full house without advance publicity. This proved to be true, but the advance notice was important for all of the other places.

The only negative reaction we got was from some of the passengers who resented having their exclusive use of the gambling facilities shared by "peasants." They had a point, to some extent—we did insist that the people who came on the boat wash off their boots before setting foot in our carpeted casinos.

Also, security was more important while we were tied up at a dock. Alcohol was severely limited on our boat. We didn't want anything to distract the people from gambling, and too much alcohol could do that. This caused a problem when a drunk potential gambler tried to come on board and our security blocked him at the gangplank. On a couple of occasions, we had to rescue men who were so drunk that they fell into the river when they were stopped on that narrow entranceway.

When we got back to New Orleans, we compared income for upriver versus downriver, and the downriver take was significantly better than the upriver income. This seemed to prove that we would be better off if we gave up on trying to be a riverboat and turned ourselves into a floating casino that moved from place to place. Capt. Johnson was disappointed, but he was willing to bow to the obvious advantages of the floating casino. Hell, at the rate we were going, we could pay for the new boat in only four more trips!

The payoff of a gambling casino was fantastic. We could have made a hell of a lot of money if we had stuck with Lovely Louise if we had realized how much money we could make by becoming a casino. Sure, Angel was capable of making more money simply because she was a bigger boat, but Angel also needed a lot more people to keep her running. A glimmer of an idea was beginning to form in my head, but I had not pushed it all the way to its logical conclusion, yet.

We got Angel all spiffied up and ready for its next trip to Kansas City. This time, purely by coincidence, we were tied up next to Lovely Louise, and I had a stab of nostalgia every time I looked at her. Before leaving New Orleans, we operated in our casino mode for five days and made so much money that we had to pull ourselves away from the dock. This time, we moved with no passengers, just with the working crew so that the accommodations on board were much less cramped and everybody was more comfortable. Traveling between towns was almost like a vacation when it was done this way.

We had 20 stops scheduled for this trip, and I had set up advanced publicity for each stop. We stopped for two days in the smaller towns and four days in the larger towns. For practical purposes, this meant that we would only be making three full up and down trips each year, and then, only if the weather would cooperate. Because we had committed so far in advance for appearance dates, we were on a tight schedule and could not tolerate much interference.

We still had trouble with pirates, but our two cannon and our fierce reputation were beginning to pay off. Nobody was foolish enough to attack us with boats, any more, and we only had our rare trouble with pirates when we stopped for fuel. Our "marines" were very experienced by now and probably too complacent, but they were never seriously challenged by any attack.

By our fourth trip, we had completely recovered our investment in Angel, and Capt. Johnson was getting itchy feet. He liked the fact that we were making so much money, but he just could not get over the fact that what we were doing was not "real riverboating." On several occasions, I stumbled upon him dejectedly wandering around Angel nearly with tears in his eyes.

I discussed this with my wives and we were all puzzled by the situation. We were all still happy and excited by our life on the Mississippi River, and the addition of Sarah's baby girl, Elizabeth (Beth) Charlotte Ostermier, had made us a complete family. All three children were the darlings of the boat and welcomed wherever their mothers chose to take them.

Sarah was Capt. Johnson's favorite, though he tried to be impartial, so she was the one who finally wormed out of him the reason for his deep unhappiness. It turned out that Trevor was just not having fun any more. He deeply missed the day-to-day challenge of a working riverboat, including the fight to get enough freight and passenger traffic to stay in business. Angel was just a way to make money, and a good one at that, but she just was not fulfilling Capt. Johnson's basic need.

Once we knew the problem, we set our minds to finding a solution. By the time we got back to New Orleans on this trip, my wives and I had worked out a proposal to offer to Capt. Johnson. We waited until the business details had been covered from our latest trip, then we asked him to meet with the four of us—we had a proposition to offer him.

Capt. Johnson met with us on our third afternoon back from the trip and we sat down in our cabin for a serious discussion. He was a little apprehensive, as were we all, but for different reasons. Though I am normally the spokesman for our family, we had decided to let Sarah lead our side of the discussion because of the special regard Trevor had for her.

Sarah opened the discussion with the statement, "Trevor, we all know how unhappy you have been lately. We also now know the reason. We asked you to meet with us to discuss a possible resolution of the problem. We all love you and have been very distressed over your unhappiness, so we want to help you to overcome the difficulty."

"Thank you, my dear, sweet Sarah, but I can't imagine what you could do to help."

"We have discussed the problem among ourselves and we think that we have found how we can help. John noticed that your beloved Lovely Louise is still tied up at the dock where we left her. We propose that we buy her back for you to run as a regular riverboat carrying freight and passengers in the normal manner. You would return to running her as you always did, while John takes over running Angel as captain, in the manner you have taught him.

"What we would need to work out is how to pay you for your share of Angel. If you would give us time to make five runs of the type we have been doing, we could earn enough money to buy out your share of Angel. Your profit on the deal would be the ownership, free and clear, of Lovely Louise. How does this sound to you?"

"You would do that for me? YES! ... YES! ... YES! That would make an old man very happy!

"John knows enough to run Angel as a floating casino, and do it profitably. I would be around to help if you needed advice, but I don't think that you would need any. How soon can we do this? I can hardly wait to get started!"

I said, "Let's go see the broker tomorrow morning. I'm sure that we can work something out with him very quickly, since you already know all there is to know about Lovely Louise."

"Oh, yes. The only delay will be the time it will take to convert her back into a regular working riverboat. While that was being done, I could make one more run in Angel with you as captain. Lovely Lady would be ready to go by the time we got back. Then, all we would have to do is to work out how to divide the crew. I am sure that some of the crew will want to come with me aboard Lovely Lady and some will want to stay with Angel. I'll help you fill the holes in your crew when we get back, since I know very nearly every riverboatman on the Mississippi."