But I did go to Benton, in spite of my intention to the contrary. The Moon, as Bilk had told me, was a through freight, a fast boat, passengers and cargo billed direct to the head of navigation, and carrying mail for but one or two places between. Towns along the Missouri were few and far apart those days, once north of Sioux City, and for none did the Moon slow up. Wood-slips were her only landing; since food for the hungry monster that droned in the bowels of the ship was a prime necessity. For the next three days Tupper, and Bailey, the second mate, gave me no chance to quit my involuntary servitude. Their fists I avoided by submission. When we had progressed that far up-river I ceased to look for opportunity to take French leave, reasoning that I would have more trouble retracing my steps through that thinly settled land than if I stuck to the Moon and made the round trip; besides this, my anger at the dirty treatment had settled to cold malevolence. I wanted to stay with the Moon, to be forced to stay with her—for I had promised to make the captain and the mate dance to sad music once we tied to a St. Louis dock and I could get the ear of my guardian. That prospect was my only joy for many dolorous days.
Meantime I unwillingly carried wood, slushed decks, and performed such other tasks as were gruffly allotted me; always under a protest which I dared not voice. I suppose one would eventually become accustomed to being cursed every time one turned around, but it never failed to set me plotting reprisals; I can easily understand the psychology of a mutineer, I think. Once or twice I had it in mind to make some sort of appeal to one of the passengers—a prosperous-looking individual who, Bilk informed me, was a St. Louis fur merchant, and whom I thought might possibly know my father. But the sleek one transfixed me with such a palpably contemptuous air when I was in the act of approaching him that I hadn’t the heart to face a rebuff. A sternwheel deckhand is not an attractive person, as a rule, and I suppose I looked the part, aggravated considerably by my discolored optic and bruised face. My failure to get speech with one of the elect, and being scowled at as if I were a mangy dog into the bargain, didn’t tend to make me feel kindly toward the well-fed, well-clothed mortals who lounged on the after deck smoking Havana cigars. Of the hide man I took particular note, hoping to meet him some time in the future, when I’d settled with Tupper, Speer et al, and tell him what a damned snob he was. There was a woman or two aboard, but they stuck to their cabins and concerned me not—until a day when I was fool enough to show a trace of the soreness that always bubbled within.
I do not know why I tackled the captain. I did not want wages, for Bilk had made it clear to me that if I signed the steamer’s roll I thereby precluded the possibility of hauling the Moon’s commander over the coals for refusing to set me ashore and keeping me in practical peonage, and I would not have missed making it warm for that coarse ruffian for half the cattle my dad had left me. I dare say it was a flickering up of the smoldering fires of hostility. Neither Tupper nor Speer ever came close to me that I did not have to fight down an impulse to club them with whatever was nearest my hand. And this day I unthinkingly baited Captain Speer, much as I feared the weight of his ready fists. I was coiling a rope just aft of the wheel-house, when the captain paced along the deck, and turned a cold eye upon me. I dropped the rope.
“Say,” I asked bluntly, and perhaps more belligerently than was wise, “do I get paid wages for the work I’m doing?”
“Hey? Get paid?” he growled. Then he lifted up his voice and swore: “By God, you pay for the grub you eat and the clothes you got on an’ we’ll talk about wages. You—you double-dyed, gilt-edged, son-of-a-feather-duster!”
This is not a literal transcription of Captain Speer’s expletives, but it will have to serve. His rendering was of the sort frowned upon in polite literature, being altogether unprintable. Never did the captain sacrifice force to elegancy of expression. I have heard it said, and the statement is indubitably true, that he could swear louder and faster and longer than any two men between Benton and New Orleans. With the full tide of his reviling upon me, he lurched forward, his big-knuckled fingers reaching for my throat. I turned to dart around the wheel-house; Tupper, grinning maliciously, showed up from that quarter. And when I swung about to go the other way I tripped and Speer nailed me before I could dodge again. Like a cat pawing a helpless mouse, he slammed me against a deck-house wall, and I should doubtless have had my head well worked over but for a timely interruption.
Aft from the wheel-house a promenade deck ran over the cabin roofs, whereon the passengers lounged when they cared to sun themselves. The captain, the mate, and myself were on the narrow deck below. From just over our heads came the voice of feminine disapproval; at which Captain Speer let go my throat, and Tupper paused with his foot drawn back to kick me.
“You’re a pretty pair of brutes, indeed you are!”
The girl, a small serious-faced thing, her brown hair standing out in wind-blown wisps from under a peaked cap, leaned over the rail and flung down the words hotly, stamping one small foot to lend emphasis to her observation.
“You may be typical ship’s officers,” she went on scornfully, “but you are certainly not men.”