Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1954 Read Online Free PDF

her time to gain midstream
before he mounted to the deck, then to the texas house, with its officers’
quarters, and on up to the pilot house. This was a glass-walled cell, where
Captain Bowen was talking to the man at the wheel. The captain had exchanged
his tall hat for a visored cap and held a big silver watch in his hand.
                “ Two o’clock ,” he announced. “We’ll make Cairo before sunup tomorrow, and Memphis the next morning, without straining a
paddle. Oh, hello, Jones. Sam, this is George Jones, your new cub.”
                 The
pilot was nearly as tall as Captain Bart Bowen, and had the same rosy,
long-moustached face. “I’m Mr. Sam Bowen, son,” he introduced himself. “See
that ice-water pitcher on the shelf behind me?”
                 Barry
saw a bright silver pitcher with a snug lid. “Yes, sir.”
                 “Take
it down to Stateroom Number Seventeen,” the pilot told him. “Knock twice. When the lady answers, say, ‘Ice-water, ma’am.’ ”
                 Barry
stared, then took the pitcher and hurried down the stairs. He had not counted
on becoming an errand-runner. However, he went along the corridor between rows
of silent stateroom doors, and knocked at the one numbered 17.
                 “Who
is it?” asked a woman’s muffled voice. “Ice-water, ma’am,” Barry repeated
dutifully.
                 The
door opened and a slim hand beckoned him in. Barry faced a small, level-gazing
young woman with the rosy face and brown eyes of the two men he had left in the
pilot house.
                “I’m Amanda Bowen,” she said, barely
louder than a whisper. “Captain Bart and Pilot Sam are my brothers. And
you’re—”
                 “George
Jones,” Barry remembered to say.
                 “Yes.
Bart told me that name; and said you’d come down. You and I have charge of
these. I can carry one, if you can manage the other two.”
                 She
gestured at three swollen traveling bags. One was the carpetbag Absalom Grimes
had fetched from Bowling Green . Grasping two by their handles, Barry
managed to hoist them.
                 “Right
heavy to drag off the boat at Memphis , ma’am,” he observed.
                 “We’ll
drag them a longer way than that,” said Amanda Bowen. “We don’t land at Memphis —we drop off above town, at Colonel
Selby’s.”
                 “Above
town?” echoed Barry. “Why?”
                 “A
telegram came just as the boat cast off.” Amanda Bowen showed him a message on
yellow paper. “It’s in code, and it says that there’s a doublesharp watch being
kept on passengers to Memphis from Saint Louis . Sometimes their baggage is searched on the wharf, and we can’t risk
that. So our Memphis friends want us to leave the Graham upstream from town, and come in by horse from Colonel Selby’s.” “What about
Captain Grimes?” asked Barry. “We’ll see him in Memphis . But that’s day after tomorrow. Now we
wait, and try not to look suspicious, because there are Union men among the
passengers. Don’t come back here until you’re sent for. Here, take the pitcher
back with you.”
                 Returning,
Barry found Captain Bart Bowen gone from the pilot house. A black-moustached
stranger in pepper-and-salt clothes, sat on the bench,
talking to the pilot. Sam Bowen glanced at Barry.
                 “High
time you came loafing back, cub,” he snapped. “Pour a glass for Mr. Newlands
here, and then see if you can keep us in mid-channel.”
                 Barry
poured water for the stranger, then took the wheel. It
had been the dream of his life to pilot a steamer, and he felt an eager thrill;
but Sam Bowen, lounging beside Newlands, grunted sour advice.
                 “Lighten
your hand on the wheel; you’re not sawing