American Adventures Part 44

"The fellow was quiet through the rest of the meal.

"Pretty soon they got up to go out, and Baldy took up a pair of stovepipes.

"'What do you do with them pipes?' asks the stranger.

"'Wear 'em, of course,' says Baldy. 'Haven't you got any?'

"'No,' says the fellow. 'What for?'

"'Why,' says Baldy, 'the rattlesnakes out there will bite the legs right off of you.'

"With that the fellow had enough. He didn't go any farther, but turned around and took the boat down the river."

In all his years as captain and line owner on the river, Captain Parisot never lost a vessel. "I never insured against sinking," he told us.

"Just against fire. But I got the best pilots I could hire. In all I built twenty-seven steamboats. I had $150,000 worth of boats when I sold my line in 1880. After I sold they did lose some boats."

Later we saw Captain "Billy" Jones, a much younger man than Captain Parisot, yet old enough to have known the river in its prime. Captain Jones deserted the river years ago, and is now a golfer with a prosperous banking business on the side.

"Captain Parisot was right when he said business on the river was done largely on friendship," said Captain Jones. "Also business used to be turned down for the opposite reason. There was a historic case of that in this town.

"Captain Tom Leathers was in the habit of refusing to take freight on the _Natchez_ if he didn't like the shipper or the consignee. For some reason or other he had it in for the firm of Lamkin & Eggleston, wholesale grocers here in Vicksburg, and declined their freight. They sued him in the Circuit Court and got judgment. Leathers carried the case to the Supreme Court, but the verdict was sustained and he had to pay $2500 damages. He was furious.

"'What's the use,' he said, 'of being a steamboat captain if you can't tell people to go to h.e.l.l?'"

It is the lamentable fact, and I must face it, and so must you if you intend to read on, that the language of the river was rough. At least ninety-nine out of every hundred river stories are, therefore, not printable in full. Either they must be vitiated by deletions, or interpreted at certain points by blanks and "blanketys." As for me, I prefer the blankety-blanks and I consider that this method of avoiding the complete truth relieves me of all responsibility. And of course, if that is so, it absolves, at the same time, good Captain "Billy" Jones, or any one else who may have happened to tell me the stories.

Both Leathers and Cannon were large, powerful men, and they always hated each other. Leathers was never popular, for he was very arrogant, but he had a great reputation for pushing the _Natchez_ through on time. Also, such friends as he did have always stuck by him.

Something of the feeling between the two old river characters is revealed in the following story related by Captain Jones:

"Ed Snodgra.s.s, who lived in St. Joseph, La., was a friend of both Cannon and Leathers. When the _Natchez_ would arrive at St. Joseph, he would go and give Leathers news about Cannon, and when the _Lee_ came in he would see Cannon and tell him about Leathers.

"Well, one time Leathers was laid up with a carbuncle on his back, and brought a doctor up on the boat with him. So, of course, Ed Snodgra.s.s told Cannon about it when he came along.

"'A carbuncle, eh?' said Cannon.

"'Yes,' said Ed.

"'Well,' said Cannon, 'you tell the old blankety-blank-blank that I had a brother--a bigger, stronger man than I am--and he had one o' them things and died in two weeks.'

"Soon after that Cannon made a misstep when backing the _Natchez_ out, at Natchez, and fell, breaking his collar bone. Of course Ed Snodgra.s.s gave the news to Leathers when he came along.

"'Huh!' said Leathers. 'His collar bone, eh? You tell the old blankety-blank-blank that I wish it had been his blankety-blank neck!'"

I asked Captain Jones for stories about gambling.

"After the war," he said, "there weren't the big poker games there used to be. Mostly we had sucker games then. There was a gambler named George Duval who wrote a book--or, rather, he had somebody write it for him, for he was a very ignorant fellow, and began his life calking the seams of boats in a shipyard. He had a partner who was known as 'Jew Mose,'

who used to dress like a rich planter. He wore a broad-brimmed hat and a very elegant tail coat, and was a big, handsome man.

"After the boat left New Orleans, this 'Jew Mose' would disguise himself with whiskers and goggles, go to the barber shop and lay out his game.

George Duval and a fellow called 'Canada Bill' were the cappers. They would bring in suckers, get their money, and generally get off the boat about Baton Rouge.

"Once when I was a clerk on the _Robert E. Lee_, Duval got a young fellow in tow, and the young fellow wanted to bet on the game, but he had a friend with him, and his friend kept pulling him away.

"Later, when Duval had given up the idea of getting this young fellow's money, and closed up his game, he appeared in the social hall of the boat with a small bag held up to his face.

"Somebody asked him what was in the bag.

"'It's hot salt,' he said. 'I've got a toothache, and a bag of hot salt is the best thing in the world for toothache.'

"Presently, when he went to his stateroom to get something, he left the bag of salt on the stove to heat it up. While he was gone somebody suggested, as a joke, that they dump out the salt and fill the bag with ashes, instead. So they did it. And when Duval came back he held it up to his face again, and seemed perfectly satisfied.

"'How does it feel now?' one of the fellows asked.

"'Fine,' said Duval. 'Hot salt is the best thing going.'

"At that, the man who had prevented the young fellow from betting, down in the barber shop, earlier in the day, offered to bet Duval a hundred dollars that the bag didn't contain salt.

"Duval took the bet and raised him back another hundred. But the man had only fifty dollars left. However, another fellow, standing in the crowd, put in the extra fifty to make two hundred dollars a side.

"Then Duval opened the bag, and it _was_ salt. He had changed the bags, and the fellows who worked up the trick were his cappers."

One of the old-time river gamblers was an individual, blind in one eye, known as "One-eyed Murphy." Murphy was an extremely artful manipulator of cards, and made a business of cheating. One day, shortly after the _Natchez_ had backed out from New Orleans and got under way, Marion Knowles, a picturesque gentleman of the period, and one who had the reputation of being polite even in the most trying circ.u.mstances, and no matter how well he had dined, came in and stood for a time as a spectator beside a table at which Murphy was playing poker with some guileless planters. Mr. Knowles was not himself guileless, and very shortly he perceived that the one-eyed gambler was dealing himself cards from the bottom of the pack. Thereupon he drew his revolver from his pocket and rapping with it on the table addressed the a.s.sembly:

"Gentlemen," he said, speaking in courtly fashion, "I regret to say that there is something wrong here. I will not call any names, neither will I make any personal allusions. _But if it doesn't stop, d.a.m.n me if I don't shoot his other eye out!_"

I cannot drop the river, and stories of river gambling, without referring to one more tale which is a cla.s.sic. It is a long story about a big poker game, and to tell it properly one must know the exact words.

I do not know them, and therefore shall not attempt to tell the whole story, but shall give you only the beginning.

It is supposed to be told by a Virginian.

"There was me," he says, "and another very distinguished gentleman from Virginia and a gentleman from Kentucky, and a man from Ohio, and a fellow from New York, and a blankety-blank from Boston--"

That is all I know of the story, but I can guess who got the money in that game.

Can't you?

CHAPTER XLIX

WHAT MEMPHIS HAS ENDURED

An article on Memphis, published in the year 1855, gives the population of the place as about 13,000 (one quarter of the number slaves), and calls Memphis "the most promising town in the Southwest." It predicts that a railroad will some day connect Memphis with Little Rock, Arkansas, and that a direct line between Memphis and Cincinnati may even be constructed. This article begins the history of Memphis in the year 1820, when the place had 50 inhabitants. In 1840 the settlement had grown to 1,700, and fifteen years thereafter it was almost eight times that size.

Your Memphian, however, is not at all content to date from 1820. He begins the history of Memphis with the date May 8, 1541--a time when Henry VIII was establishing new matrimonial records in England, when Queen Elizabeth was a little girl, and Shakespeare, Bacon, Galileo and Cromwell were yet unborn. For that was the date when a Spanish gentleman bearing some personal resemblance to "Uncle Joe" Cannon--though he was younger, had black hair and beard, was differently dressed and did not chew long black cigars--arrived at the lower Chickasaw Bluffs, from which the city of Memphis now overlooks the Mississippi River. This gentleman was Hernando De Soto, and with his soldiers and horses he had marched from Tampa Bay, Florida, hunting for El Dorado, but finding instead, a lot of poor villages peopled by savages whom he killed in large numbers, having been brought up to that sort of work by Pizarro, under whom he served in the conquest of Peru. It seems to be well established, through records left by De Soto's secretary, and other men who were with him, and through landmarks mentioned by them, that De Soto and his command camped where Memphis stands, crossed the Mississippi at this point in boats which they built for the purpose, and marched on to an Indian village situated on the mound, a few miles distant, which now gives Mound City, Arkansas, its name. One hundred and thirty-two years later Marquette pa.s.sed by on his way down the river, and nine years after him La Salle, but so far as is known, neither stopped at the site of Memphis, though they must have noticed as they pa.s.sed, that the river is narrower here than at any point within hundreds of miles, and that the Chickasaw Bluffs afford about as good a place for a settlement as may be found along the reaches of the lower river, being high enough for safety, and flat on top. The first white man known to have visited the actual site of Memphis after De Soto, was De Bienville, the French Governor of Louisiana, who came in 1739. De Bienville found the Chickasaw village where De Soto had found it two centuries earlier; but whereas De Soto managed to avoid battle with the inhabitants of this particular village, De Bienville came to attack them. He fought them near their village, was defeated, and retired to Mobile.