No Good Deed 10

Rather foolishly, I thought, Haycock pushed half of the pile toward me, which meant I had, in fact, made a small profit on my first venture into the mysteries of Poker. Though but half the bottle had been consumed during our brief hand, my new friend made for the bar to purchase another. On his return he took a seat facing away from the other customers and the bar and stationed himself at my right hand. He pushed the half-empty whiskey bottle toward me and de-corked his. Then he leaned toward me, wide-eyed,

'You a friend of the railroad?' he asked.

' To tell the truth, Haycock, of late my funds have not permitted me to travel so luxuriously.
Besides, I prefer the river.'

He made a sound between a clearing of the throat and an exhalation,

'What I mean is, are you a shepherd?'

I choked a little on the whiskey, not entirely due to its particular charms.

'No, my talents have been employed in other fields.'

Haycock twirled the end of one of his prodigious moustaches, before saying,

'An agent? You understand?'

I did not, but after brief consideration, decided to attempt to descry what the loon was talking about.

'An agent, how did you guess, Haycock?'

The guffaw which greeted this query lifted the moustaches as wind might lift a lady's skirt,

'Hellfire, Anson, ain't no riverboat gambler knowed as little about cards as you do! Who ya meetin'?'

'Surely you cannot expect me to reply?'

' 'Course not. But...' he broke off and looked to either side, 'My paw's a stationmaster, back home in Illinois.'

He gave a slow wink, which did not, as he perhaps supposed it might, enlighten me.

'The railroad? I see.'

'Cargo,' he said and gave two vigorous nods.

'Quite,' I replied.

'Yuh got ta be meetin' somebody, or else why the vest, huh?'

Why indeed? I thought, but merely nodded at the man.

'Reckon it's a stockholder,' he nodded again and laid a finger alongside his nose. 'Don't worry, Anson, my paw's been sellin' tickets on the Gospel Train as long as anybody. I'll git along now and you can look out fer yer meetin'. You need me, Bill Haycock'll come.'

With that he took his bottle and headed, rather unsteadily I thought, above decks.

The boat seemed to be making erratic progress upriver. The swilling of the whiskey in the bottle caused by this occasioned in me a somewhat bilious feeling. I had heard that navigating the river required the services of a pilot, which fellow was normally hired by the captain of the vessel out of his own pocket. These pilots claimed knowledge of every shoal and bank of the river. I took myself forward to see this marvel of memory at work first hand.

Not unexpectedly, the 'pilot-house' as it was termed, stood near the bow of the vessel. It was a wooden-framed superstructure, half-glazed, doubtless to offer good all round visibility. A stern-looking fellow looked forward as if intent on reading the river. A bluff-looking and portly man hovered at his shoulder; his eyes darted hither and yon as if Tennyson's Kraken were about to emerge from the water at any moment. He caught sight of me and waved me in.