BOOK IV
CHAPTER I
One afternoon in early September Sam got on a westward-bound train intending to visit his sister on the farm near Caxton. For years he had heard nothing from Kate, but she had, he knew, two daughters, and he thought he would do something for them.
“I will put them on the Virginia farm and make a will leaving them my money,” he thought. “Perhaps I shall be able to make them happy by setting them up in life and giving them beautiful clothes to wear.”
At St. Louis he got off the train, thinking vaguely that he would see an attorney and make arrangements about the will, and for several days stayed about the Planters Hotel with a set of drinking companions he had picked up. One afternoon he began going from place to place drinking and gathering companions. An ugly light was in his eyes and he looked at men and women passing in the streets, feeling that he was in the midst of enemies, and that for him the peace, contentment, and good cheer that shone out of the eyes of others was beyond getting.
In the late afternoon, followed by a troop of roistering companions, he came out upon a street flanked with small, brick warehouses facing the river, where steamboats lay tied to floating docks.
“I want a boat to take me and my crowd for a cruise up and down the river,” he announced, approaching the captain of one of the boats. “Take us up and down the river until we are tired of it. I will pay what it costs.”
It was one of the days when drink would not take hold of him, and he went among his companions, buying drinks and thinking himself a fool to continue furnishing entertainment for the vile crew that sat about him on the deck of the boat. He began shouting and ordering them about.