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merchandise hauled by riverboat, or about to be.
    Back in the days when Angus McKinn had stepped off an Ohio River flatboat and swept this very scene with his flinty gaze, French had been spoken on every hand, and the narrow unpaved streets were lined with the shabby dwellings built in the way of the
voyageur
—logs or planks driven vertically into the ground with the interstices daubed with mud—interspersed by a few more stately abodes of brick and stone. One of these, still standing in '46, and which, for nostalgic reasons, Delgado wanted to see, was the home of Auguste Chouteau, one of the stalwart band who had come here with Laclede. The Chouteau home and outbuildings occupied a square near the center of town, between the Rue de la Tour and the Rue de la Place.
    Chouteau's son and grandson had made theirfortunes in the fur trade, Pierre Chouteau, Sr. had partnered with Manuel Lisa, William Clark, and Andrew Henry to form the Missouri Fur Company in 1809. Pierre, Jr. had carried on the family tradition and allied himself with John Jacob Astor in the formation of the American Fur Company twenty years later. The Chouteau family had shown Angus McKinn every kindness.
    In the new West a fluid society provided a forum where any immigrant, regardless of his ancestry, could command respect, so long as he demonstrated ability and ambition. Personal drive and self-reliance were virtues to be admired in a man of talent and personality. Angus McKinn fit that bill in every particular, and the Chouteaus had warmed to him immediately.
    Today, the southern part of St. Louis, called the Vide Poche, was still the stronghold of the French Canadian trappers and traders. It was considered the rough side of town, and for good reason. By way of contrast, there was Washington Square, where the affluent—people like Jacob Bledsoe—lived in palatial homes. High society was comprised of old French families who had made their fortunes in the fur trade, and southern slaveholders, relative newcomers, who had found the rich black soil of the area conducive to the growing of money crops. Great plantation homes and lavish town manors were now commonplace. Two renowned hostelries, the Planters House and the Union Hotel, vied for the custom of the well-heeled visitor. Some of the major thoroughfares were paved now, and a few were even lighted. There were churches side by side with cathedrals, an opera house, business establishments of all persuasions, a typically American epidemic of lawyers, the famous Market House, a notorious slave auction, a good many mills on the outskirts, numerous taverns and gambling dens, and Bloody Island, the city's designated dueling ground.
    One thing, though, hadn't changed since Angus McKinn's days here. Regiments of pigs roamed the streets, growing fat on the refuse. Delgado had learned that even a metropolis as sophisticated as New York tolerated these porcine "street cleaners"—one had to take care not to trip over them while emerging from private club or theater house.
    In the melee of white and black, gentleman and common laborer, with the tumultuous babble of French, English, and German ringing in his ears, Delgado paused at the bottom of the gangplank, burdened with a bulging valise in either hand, momentarily at a loss. Jacob Bledsoe, his father's business partner, was expecting him. He had forwarded a letter to Bledsoe from New Orleans in advance of his six-day, twelve-hundred-mile journey upriver. But, having never before met Bledsoe, they would have no way of recognizing one another, slender and dark-haired, Delgado resembled his Castilian mother, not the stocky, ruddy-complected Angus McKinn.
    "Delgado!"
    A big man was coming toward him, cleaving the stream of humanity on the levee.
    Delgado grinned broadly. Here was a familiar face in a sea of strangers. He set the heavy valises down and stuck out a hand. The man clasped it with an iron grasp and an easy grin of his own.
    "Hugh Falconer!" said Delgado,