Page 1 of Blowing Off Steam

“A pilot, in those days, was the only unfettered and entirely independent human being that lived on the earth.”

— Mark Twain

CHAPTER ONE

November 1853

San Francisco

Rushy Wakeman had to walk through the Chinese laundry to reach his boat, the barrel of a revolver jammed between his shoulder blades.

The discourteous gunman shoved him through the reedy swamp where the Celestials from Kwangtung washed laundry for citizens. Rushy had heard the other outlaw call the gunman Mike, and this malodorous Mike gent viciously poked him in the back with the gun as they sloshed through pools of miners’ undergarments. Rushy wound up with someone’s drawers clinging to his ankle.

He stumbled toward the El Dorado, his graceful paddlewheel riverboat with the lean hull, capable of great speed. He wished there was some way he could warn his partner Field Trueworthy of these arriving outlaws. Captain Trueworthy was currently on board finishing a cylinder bore. Field was a mechanical genius and was repairing the finest engine to ever ply the Sacramento River. She had recently bested Rushy’s own record of six hours ten minutes for the San Francisco to Sacramento run. But with this fellow urging him onward with an impolite sidearm, the other chap ranting and waving an official piece of paper, Rushy had a sinking feeling.

They might never get a chance to best their own record.

“This here boat is well stacked!” cried the fellow waving the papers.

Indeed, the feathering at the top of the El Dorado’s two stacks was highly intricate, giving a token of her fanciness and reliability as the sleekest, plushest, speediest boat on the river.

Since the paper-waving fellow seemed to have some knowledge of steamers, Rushy found the grit to say, “Captain Fulton isn’t done working on the engine.” Luckily, he had the presence of mind to recall their code names. Fulton was some gent who had invented a whole new breed of riverboat, so Captain Trueworthy had selected that code name in cases of emergency. “He’s finishing the cylinder bore by hand, and it’s not sitting absolutely true yet.”

Mike shoved Rushy up the landing stage. “We don’t care none about no damned boring cylinder. When you went showing off in Sacramento acting like the big dog of the tanyard about your fancy vessel, every Tom, Dick, and Jorge between here and Tierra del Fuego heard about it. And we aim to take it back for the fellers you stole it from.”

Rushy protested, “But I don’t even know if those papers are real! You haven’t allowed me to see them. How do I know you’re not some damned pirate?” He leaped onto the main deck where longhorn cattle vied for shitting space with grunting hogs that skittered between crates of canned oysters, bundles of shovels for miners, bags of coffee beans, and a veritable flood of beer, rum, and champagne.

Damn it all to hell. They were going to take all their cargo as well as the boat itself. Rushy spun to face Mike, who was ragged out in a dandy-enough rig to be an agent of some kind, fancy waistcoat with a watch chain arrogantly displayed. “Captain Fulton owns half this boat! You can’t just put a lien on it without consulting him first.” Rushy’s own Smith and Wesson was in his gun belt, but it would take some intricate maneuvering to overtake two armed thugs. Mayhap if he yelled loud enough, Field would be alerted, and—

“Grundman,” Mike grunted. “Show him the papers. And Captain Kidd.” He meant Rushy. Captain Kidd was his code name. “Holler for your partner to get out here from the engine room.”

Gladly. “Captain Fulton! On deck, full chisel!” Field would know by the moniker that something was awry and perhaps sneak out with all pieces blazing. Meanwhile, Rushy shook the paper that declared NOTICE OF PUBLIC ACTION. But he wasn’t so educated as to read the rest—Field could help with that, being a graduate of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he helped design elaborate locomotive engines. “Captain Fulton! To the main deck, ready about!”

His shrieking only served to rile the nearby critters, and a steer took an inordinate interest in Grundman, nosing him in the ass with an upward thrust. The louse leaped forward and swatted the steer with the remaining papers in his hand—the hand that wasn’t also holding a pistol.

“Listen up,” Rushy said with authority, pointing to the deck. “You can’t just come in here and seize my boat with your ‘public actions.’ It’s mighty little of this world’s goods I’ve got aside from this boat. Given all the facts in this connection, you’ll alter your tune mighty sudden when our solicitor gets wind of this.”

“Public actions.” Mike chuckled. His big red nose was misshapen like a chayote squash, the way a constantly oiled fellow’s nose got. “It says public auction, you flatheaded dolt. Auctioning off this floating farm is the only way your creditors will get their money back.”

Rushy seethed. “You’ll go to perdition, you miserable old critter!” But this outburst only encouraged Mike to cock the revolver’s hammer and raise the barrel to Rushy’s throat. Mike had a steady hand. He had probably shot more men than Rushy had.

“What’s the uproar here?”

Relief washed through Rushy’s being at the sight of his partner Field, currently known as Captain Fulton. Fresh from the engine room, where it was a good twenty degrees hotter than the ninety Fahrenheit that it was on deck, Field’s shirtless state was a welcome sight. Such an aristocratic fellow was Thomas Field Trueworthy, an educated engineer of Scottish descent who knew how to apply science to the common purposes of life. Rushy was just an ignorant Mississippi riverboat helmsman, but with Field’s knowhow they had already achieved much in the past several weeks.

Field narrowed his eyes, the nostrils of his extremely Greek nose flaring skeptically. His thick chestnut hair spiked up every which way as though a butcher had coiffed it, and drips of sweat rolled down his muscular throat, glistening in the sprinkling of satiny hair that peppered his chest. The pirates probably did not admire how Field’s biceps flexed as he wiped his oily hands off on a rag, or how shiny the soft line of hair that arrowed down his abdomen. Field came forward slowly, his boot heels sounding against the wooden deck.

“Cap’n Fulton!” barked Mike, extending a falsely welcoming hand, while not lowering the pistol from Rushy’s throat. Field didn’t accept the hand, but Mike continued, “Michael Hunt, Shipping Agent for concerns back East in St. Louis. You’re in possession of a stolen steamer, and we aim to take it back to reimburse the rightful owner.”

“How do you know who the rightful owner is?” Rushy protested. “All the ownership papers on the El Dorado were lost at sea. Any tomfool rascal from the bottomless pit can just waltz on in here claiming to be the owner—who could prove otherwise?” He took a few sideways steps to nervously hand Field the Notice of Public Auction. Field also wore his gun belt, the usual practice in the Far West, but it would be a gymnastic feat if they could shoot the pirates before they were shot themselves.

Grundman now leveled his own pistol at Field’s head. “We’ve got original ownership papers from St. Louis, and it’s obvious to any dumb ox that someone painted the name El Dorado over the original name of New World. Five hundred thirty tons?”

Only Field’s deep mahogany eyes flicked up from the paper. “Five hundred thirty tons,” he agreed.

“Walking beam engine.”

Field corrected Grundman. “Brand new walking beam engine.”