River Queen (19 page)

“I think I can nap,” Roseann said and closed her eyes.

She left her mother’s room and went to find Leah, who was scrubbing the floor in her stateroom. Together they sat on the bed while Julienne told her about her mother and supper. “And I don’t know when Mr. Bronte will be back. He was a little vague about what exactly it was he was going to go see about.”

“What good would it do for him to explain it to you?” Leah asked with amusement. “I know whenever he tries to tell us about the equipment and things he needs for this boat, it sounds like he’s speaking Chinese. Tiddle-de-diddles and boggledy-geegaws and such.”

Julienne giggled. “That’s true. If he had told me, I wouldn’t have known anything anyway.”

Leah’s light expression sobered up and she said, “Julienne, he is working very hard to help us. You believe that, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And we have to trust him. No, that’s wrong, no one is forcing us to, least of all him. But I trust him. Do you?”

“Yes,” Julienne said slowly, “yes, I do. You really like him, don’t you, Aunt Leah?”

“Ever since the first time I met him, when he brought you home. He reminds me of my husband. Barry Norris was a wonderful man, and I think Dallas Bronte, when he truly finds himself, will be every bit as wonderful too.”

TWO DAYS LATER IN late afternoon, Julienne was sitting with her mother and Aunt Leah, trying to sew curtains. She wasn’t a very good seamstress. For the third time she pricked her forefinger and stuck it in her mouth.

Carley came running in and said, “Dallas is back! And he brought a whole bunch of stuff!”

At once Julienne put her sewing down and hurried outside with Carley. She saw four wagons filled with what looked to be enormous pieces of junk. She and Carley went down the landing stage, and Dallas jumped down from the wagon and smiled at them. “Did you think I ran off with all your money, Miss Ashby?”

“No,” Julienne smiled. “It wasn’t enough to tempt you. What is all this?”

“Well, these are the boilers. These are parts of the engine. These are the pipes we need to replace.”

“Is that everything we need?” Julienne asked.

“Just about. Still need to replace a couple of gauges, and some of the lines have rotted so bad they can’t be spliced. We’ll have to replace those. But this is the bulk of it.”

“Good, I’m so glad you found these—things,” Julienne said. “I think Ring and Libby are working on supper. Don’t you want to come inside and rest?”

He laughed. “No resting on a riverboat when she needs work done. I’m going to round up this crew and we’re hauling all of this stuff inside right now. We’ll grab some supper, but we’ll be working tonight.”

At midnight Julienne could still hear the men on the deck below, banging and talking, sometimes swearing. She had not yet undressed, so she pulled on a shawl and went down to the boiler room. Ring, Willem, and Jesse were all working there, but she didn’t see Dallas. It was a few moments before they saw her, then they all stopped working and almost came to attention. Each man was literally black from head to toe, with their eyes shining out eerily.

Her mouth twitching, Julienne said, “Thank you, gentlemen, but under the circumstances I think you’re going to need to stop jumping every time I or my mother or my aunt appear. You’re working men, not our butlers. Please, just go on with what you’re doing. Where is Mr. Bronte?”

“He’s back in the engine room, Miss Ashby, I’ll fetch him,” Jesse offered.

He disappeared, and soon Dallas came in. He too was completely black, and his grin looked a mile wide, with big shining teeth. “Evening, Miss Ashby. Are we keeping you awake?”

“No, not at all,” she said hastily. “I just was curious and wanted to see how the work is going.”

He nodded. “Why don’t you come outside with me for a minute. I’d like to breathe something besides soot and oil for a change.”

He kept his distance, so he wouldn’t brush up against her and soil her dress. They walked out to the railing on the main deck and Dallas took a deep breath. “She’s fine tonight, isn’t she?”

Julienne understood that he meant the river, and she looked around. It was a warm night, with a light haze that softened all the lights on the boat and make them look like round fuzzy globes. The river was serene, with only occasional gleams of starlight on the quiet waters.

“You love this river, don’t you?” she asked.

“I do. Always have. It was the best thing that ever happened to me, when I realized I could be a pilot and live on this river. It’s all the home I’ve ever really wanted.” He turned to her. “What about you, Miss Ashby? Can you ever love this old river, after everything that happened?”

“I don’t love it as you do, but I am beginning to understand how you can. No, I don’t fear the river, and I certainly don’t hate it. I guess you might say I’m learning to like it a little.”

“Like me,” he said with a half-smile.

“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe a little. No joking now, though, Mr. Bronte. I want to thank you, for all my family. Words don’t seem enough—”

He put up a hand to stop her. “You and your mother and your aunt have thanked me so much, it makes me want to crawl under a rock. I want you to understand something. You gave me a job, as a pilot. I just told you how much that means to me. And no one else would give me a chance. I owe you as much gratitude, if not more, than you could ever owe me.”

“A pilot,” she sighed. “Of a grounded boat.”

“Not for long,” he said happily. “Miss Ashby, in two days we’re going for a ride. We’re going for a ride on the
River Queen
!”

Julienne, Roseann, and Aunt Leah were seated on the “lazy bench,” the bench in every pilothouse where everyone sat except the pilot, who never sat. Carley was supposed to be sitting with them, but she was so excited that she kept hopping up to yank on Dallas’s arm and ask questions. Even Darcy lounged in the doorway, the interest plain on his face. Dallas had been overly optimistic; it had taken the crew five days to get the
River Queen
ready. By now they were all nervous and eager, watching as the first thin streams of smoke started threading from the smokestacks.

Carley was so keyed up she started jumping up and down, pointing, and demanding, “What’s that? What’s this thing over here? Can I pull this rope? Can I turn the wheel?”

The last request was funny, because it was absurd. The
River Queen
’s wheel was midsized; it was ten feet in diameter. They could range up to thirteen feet. So that a man could even reach the top of the wheel, the floor directly underneath the wheel was countersunk four feet. The top of the wheel reached Dallas’s shoulders. The pins were eight inches high, and about three inches thick. When a pilot had to make a hard turn, or if the ship were going downstream and a current pushed the rudder hard up against the hull, the pilot may have to stand on a pin or one of the spokes to get her to turn. Little Carley could have hung from a spoke all day long and the wheel would never have moved.

“Can’t turn the wheel, Miss Carley Jeanne, that’s my job, and I wouldn’t want you to steal my job away from me,” Dallas said gravely.

“But I want to be on the crew,” she said, propping her tiny—and for once, clean—hands on her hips. “Ring said you have a skinny crew, and you need some deck hands, and he said a word that Mama told me never to say.”

“He did, did he?” Dallas asked, his eyes glinting. “Well, he was telling the truth, even if he did say that word. I’ll have to have a word with him about that. Sorry, Mrs. Ashby.”

Roseann sighed. “I’m sure Carley was hiding and Mr. Macklin didn’t know she was listening. She does that a lot.”

“But I want to be on the crew,” Carley insisted again.

“Tell you what,” Dallas said. “How about if I make you second mate?”

Suspiciously Carley said, “I know Ring is first mate, Jesse’s the fireman, and Willem’s the engineer. What does a second mate do?”

“She does whatever the first mate and the pilot tell her to do,” Dallas said. Then, to her delight, he scooped her up and held her high underneath a big golden ring suspended by a cord from the ceiling. It was next to a trumpet-like tube that ran into the floor. “Okay, mate, pull that ring for me. That’s an order.”

“How many times?” Carley asked. Her face was lit with perfect bliss.

“As many as you want.”

Carley pulled hard on the bell pull three times, and very faintly below they could hear it ring. After a moment, Ring Macklin’s deep voice sounded through the tube. “Here, sir.”

Dallas held Carley over the tube, because at four feet tall she couldn’t speak into it. “Ask him if we’re fired up and ready to go.”

In her shrill little voice she yelled, “This is Second Mate Carley! Pilot Dallas wants to know if we’re fired up and ready to go!”

“Ready, Miss Carley,” Ring answered.

“No, it’s Second Mate Carley!”

“Oh, sorry. Tell the pilot we’ve got plenty of steam, mate!”

“Okay. ’Bye, Ring.”

Now Dallas held her under another brass ring and said, “Now, pull that one time.”

“Is that another one that only Ring and Jesse and Willem are going to hear?” she demanded.

“That’s right, it’s called the backing bell, so they’ll know to start backing us out.”

“Can’t I pull that one?” she pleaded, pointing to the largest ring, just above the wheel. “That’s the huge outside bell, isn’t it?”

“You’re right, Second Mate. Sure, we need to alert the crew that orders are coming. When we ring the big bell, we call it ‘tapping.’ So give it two taps, mate.”

Carley reached up and pulled the ring twice. It was hard for her, so Dallas had to help. They all heard the great two-hundred-fifty-pound brass bell out on the fore of the hurricane deck sound its grand gong.

“Now ring the backing bell,” Dallas said, watching her.

“You have to put me over there,” she said impatiently, pointing to it. “I can’t reach it from here.”

“You remembered which bell pull, that’s good, Second Mate,” he said, moving to the left, or port side, of the pilothouse.

“That’s my job,” she said gravely, and pulled it one time.

They felt the ship begin to tremble, and Dallas set Carley down to take the wheel. Immediately she ran out the door, to the stern, and looked over to watch. They heard her high, excited voice, the words unintelligible, but they knew she was watching the big paddle wheel start to turn.

Very slowly the
River Queen
started backing in a mild curve. The movement of the boat seemed choppy and hesitant to Julienne. Finally the ship was pointed almost straight downstream, and Dallas reached up and pulled another bell cord. Heavily she waded to a sluggish stop, then, almost by inches, she started moving forward.

“Now we’ll see,” Dallas muttered. “If we do have a queen, or if we’ve got a mud crawler.”

She gathered speed, the paddle wheel beginning to make a solid rhythmic beat of a drum. Underneath their feet they heard the engines, a low cadenced hum. Her gait smoothed out, and within minutes she was moving smoothly and effortlessly down the old river. Carley came running back in, breathless. “She’s going! The
River Queen
is going! HOOORAAAAYYY!!”

The others got excited and stood up to line the windows. Carley said, “I can’t see, I can’t see.” Darcy picked her up and held her so she could watch out the starboard windows. The deep forests and rust-red clay banks slid by.

Julienne went to stand by Dallas. “Well, Pilot, what’s the verdict?”

He grinned down at her. “Oh, we’ve got a queen, all right. She may not look like it on the outside, but she’s got heart, and she travels like a dream. Light, smooth, and graceful. A real river queen.”