The lady voyagers were travelling on various businesses. To "keep shanty" at some levee camp; or pass the winter south with some friends—not exactly a visit of pleasure either. Rather antiquated and a trifle worse for wear they were too. But the gentlemen treated them gallantly. Passed them the circulating bottle with a "Drink hearty, miss! It's paid for!" and boiled coffee in pots and oyster cans for them on the stove. Expectorating tobacco-juice and depositing superanuated quids outside the limits of their immediate vicinity, and, in fact, "paid them those thousand and one little attentions which are so grateful to the gentler sex when coming from gentlemen." (The last expression is in quotations on account of not being altogether original.)
There was one female present whom there could be no doubts about, however, even had she not loudly pronounced herself "A high old gal, you bet!" several times, greatly to the edification of the crowd about the stove, and the virtuous indignation of the members of her own sex, who carefully withdrew their skirts from her. This woman, though young and not ill-looking, was a "gun boat" fragment that had drifted off and found herself on board the Argenta.
Gun boats? In every large city there is a portion of the town that visiting officials from other cities are not driven through on aldermanic rides of courtesy. Perhaps the local dignitaries would think it derogatory to have a knowledge of them—perhaps they leave their visitors to hunt up the town for themselves. So have the water-ways of the west a floating life upon them to which we are not anxious to introduce the reader on this trip down the river. The young lady in question circulated among the crowd with a freedom and ease of deportment that astonished Ben.
"It is terrible," said he to Tommy.
"It's disgusting!" replied Tom.
"And yet how many poor lost ones there are who come down this low," continued Cleveland.
And Tommy, growing a little pale, and looking upon the "fragment" with loathing and pity said quietly: "Yes, man's victim has no half-way station on the road to wreck and ruin," and the boy walked away, to the forward part of the boat, where he sat down on a coil of rope and gazed fixedly at the black river.
There was much drinking and subdued carousing being indulged in. Songs were sung and jigs were danced, and the crowd seemed determined to inaugurate their pilgrimage by a general time of festivities. The center of attraction, however, was a negro, black as black could be, who was conducting the fascinating game of chuck-a-luck in one corner; a cadaverous countenanced, thin-lipped, hawk-nosed white man acting as banker. The chuck-a-luck bank was not a very extensive affair, consisting simply of an empty cracker box mounted on a grain sack, with numerals from one to six inscribed upon it with chalk. Behind the box the black dealer manipulated the dice, and at his side the white hawk drew in the nickels and small change of those in front. Two short stumps of tallow candles, permanently located in their own grease, stood on the box and illuminated proceedings. This scene, peculiar to the river, was a novel one to Ben. It was full of life and full of vice.
As the night advanced the crowd thinned. Some went to sleep on the mountain of grain sacks. Others cleaned up a place on the floor and lay down, while others went forward and crept under the boilers, for their warmth. Black and white lay down together. Ben still watched the scene, which though quieted down, was still attractive from its novelty. The gunboat visitor having satisfied every one that she was a "High old gal, you bet!" borrowed a nickel from a susceptible tourist and proceeded to invest in the chuck-a-luck bank. She won, and greeted her success with a shout of triumph that startled the sleepers. But luck soon turned against her and she became peevish, abusive and belligerent; claimed that the black dealer "fingered" his dice, and suggested the propriety of dispensing with his services and devoting his body to the flood. She became an annoyance to the game, and the hawk tried to buy her off with a bribe of two nickels, which she accepted, but immediately staked them on the ace. The ace lost, and with a whoop, the damsel sent the box spinning toward the boiler-deck by a kick, scattering dice, candles, nickels and small change in all directions. In the crowd of tatterdemalions toasting potatoes, and parching corn at the stove, were men of action—men who seize opportunities. The single lantern went out in a twinkle, and in black darkness, Ben felt a writhing, struggling, kicking mass of humanity on the floor. Blows, yells, laughter, curses and groans filled the confined limits of the "deck." A pistol was discharged. Some one cried, "I'm shot!" And the mate with half a dozen watchmen appeared with lanterns and clubs upon the scene. With the clubs they untied the human knot on the floor. The gunboat visitor being dragged from the bottom of the heap in a sadly demoralized condition, but stoutly clutching a handful of curly black wool. The tatterdemalions looked still more tattered, but happy and contented, as though they had enjoyed themselves. The hawk and the banker arose bankrupt. All struggled to their feet. No. Not all. One man did not move; not even after the mate kicked him several times. They then rolled him over and pointed out the bullet hole in his head. The man was dead. No one knew who fired the shot, or why. No particular investigation was made. He was a deck passenger, and what are deck passengers? Human live stock—and not a very choice breed either. So they rolled the dead man off to one side and at Cairo he received about fifteen minutes' attention from a coroner's jury, (who made the discovery that he was killed by being shot) and about twenty-five minutes from a jobbing undertaker. The captain of the Argenta paid all expenses rather than have the boat detained, and who the dead man was or where he lived are secrets buried with him.
Ben climbed the mountain of grain sacks in company with Tommy, the two went to sleep immediately under one of the exhaust pipes, where it was warm and comfortable; for the night air on the river grew quite chilly.