The populace of Independence was as mixed and varied as were the buildings. Across from him, half a dozen Negro men with grizzled white stubble for beards wrestled with a load of freight. Missouri had largely been settled by slave-holding Southerners and had come into the Union as a slave state under the Missouri Compromise. Some settlers from the north were starting to balance that a little, but it was still heavily Southern, and Negroes were still in evidence everywhere.
A few feet from Joshua a man peered with curiosity into the window of the dry goods shop. His hair was long, jet black, filthy, and matted in hopeless snarls. A piece of cloth pulled it back away from the back of his neck. The buckskin he wore was likewise stained and soiled. His features were flat and broad, giving him a menacing look. He gave Joshua a long, surly stare, then moved away. Osage tribe, Joshua guessed, noting the man’s height. The Osage were notably taller than the Missouri, the Fox, and the Sauk. They hunted the low hill country to the south and west, and it surprised Joshua a little to see one this far north.
Coming toward him were two heavily bearded men on horseback, stringing three loaded mules behind them. They were dressed very much like the Indian, with full-length buckskin breeches and shirts. They also wore hats made of possum and squirrel skins. Each carried a long-barreled rifle and had a huge hunting knife strapped to his waist. Joshua felt a quick twitch of envy. It was only mid-July. Experienced trappers knew an animal’s fur was at its thickest and most luxurious in the winter months. Since it was only mid-July, this meant they had a long way to go to find good fur, perhaps even into the Snake and Columbia river basins of Oregon Country.
Joshua had arrived in Independence in late February. For a time he had been tempted to throw his lot in with the trappers and mountain men that were pouring in from the west to trade their furs. The romance of the vast regions to the west was enticing, and he found the quiet confidence of these men almost mesmerizing. John Jacob Astor had virtually cornered the entire fur market west of the Mississippi, and a man with some good business sense could make a small fortune in one season of trapping. Farming interested him not at all. The prairie sod was a tangle of roots so thick it took three yoke of oxen to plow it, and with the shortage of trees, the settlers lived in sod huts that leaked mud every time it rained.
Eventually though, Joshua was realistic enough to recognize that trapping was not the life for a novice. Tales told around camp fires and in the taverns spoke of snow ten and twelve feet deep, of hostile Indians that would skin a man alive and leave his flesh for the buzzards, of grizzly bears that could take a man’s head off with one swipe of their paws, of wolf packs cutting a man’s horse right out from underneath him. Besides, Joshua knew the freight business, and if there was one thing that was booming in Independence it was the moving of goods and people. He had plans for making his way in the world, and Independence figured heavily in those plans, not the wild, untamed stretches of the West.
Joshua paused for a moment on the plank sidewalk outside Roundy’s saloon. The noise coming from the open doorway was boisterous and filled with energy. If freight was Independence’s number one industry, then liquor had to be a close second. There were three taverns and four saloons along Main Street. This was due in large part to the nature of the town’s inhabitants. This was the frontier in every sense of the word—the border of the United States and Indian Territory lay less than ten miles west of Independence. The West attracted the daring, the restless, and in many cases the lawless. If a sheriff or marshal came sniffing around, it was a simple thing to slip across the border into Indian Territory and out of any legal jurisdiction. Independence was a name well suited to most of the town’s residents.
Taking a cigar from his vest pocket, Joshua cut off the end, carefully lit it, then turned and stepped inside. He stopped, squinting in the comparative gloom of the saloon. Then he smiled inside himself. The wagon master was at the table already and it was obvious that the poker game was just getting underway.
On the keelboats along the Ohio, Joshua had learned a valuable lesson about poker. He had saved over a hundred dollars before he fled from Palmyra. He lost all of it in one night of drunken poker playing. When he sobered up he realized that in cards there were two choices—you could be the fool or you could be the man who made fools out of others. Things changed dramatically for him when in Cincinnati he intervened in a barroom brawl and saved an older man’s life. Though Joshua picked up a warrant for his arrest and a six-inch scar on his shoulder, he also learned the man he had saved was a professional gambler. They fled Ohio with the law in hot pursuit, but once they were clear, the man repaid his debt. Under his tutorship, Joshua learned the subtleties of the trade—picking the mark, recognizing the slicks and avoiding them, spotting a marked deck, how to string a sucker along, bluff and counterbluff. By the time he had won back more than triple his original stake, Joshua had tired of the game. There was too much Steed in him to make a living as a parasite, and he and the gambler had split company. But there were times when the old card skills could be used to advantage, and this was one of those times.
He stubbed out his third cigar, eyeing the man across the table through the heavy cloud of smoke in the tavern. The man was a teamster from Virginia, come to Missouri with three Conestoga wagons and nine teams of horses—six horses to a wagon—come west to make his fortune. Seven hundred eighty miles west of Jackson County lay Santa Fe, where wagonloads of manufactured goods could be lucratively traded for mules, gold, silver, and furs. The wagons were fully loaded, and the man had stopped in Independence just long enough to let his teams rest before plunging into the wilderness.
Joshua knew his kind well. After leaving his gambler-partner, Joshua stayed in Indiana, driving wagons along the National Road between Terre Haute and St. Louis. There he had learned the freight business. He had also learned the business of the men who moved freight. And this backwoodsman from Virginia was nothing more than a sharpshooter who had decided to go it on his own.
In teamster parlance, there were two kinds of wagoners—the regulars, who were continuously on the road with their horses and wagon, and the sharpshooters, farmers who put their farm teams on the road when rates shot up and there were quick profits to be made. Joshua had the natural disdain for sharpshooters felt by all the regulars. They provided unwelcome competition in a highly competitive market and did so in a way the regulars viewed as patently unfair.
This particular sharpshooter was trying to cross over. He had sold his farm in Virginia in order to get into the freight business and make it all back in one swoop. Leaving his wife and three little ones in the care of relatives, he had gone to Pennsylvania, bought three wagons and eighteen head of horses, then continued on to Pittsburgh, where he bought about forty thousand pounds of manufactured goods to sell out west.
Once Joshua had heard his tale, spilled out after a free whiskey or two, he had walked out west of town where the Virginian had left his rigs in care of the two hired men who drove with him. That’s when Joshua’s idea had first begun to incubate. The wagons were a sight to behold. These were the great Conestogas—named, like the teams that drew them, for the valley in eastern Pennsylvania whence they had originated. Now, there was a wagon! Every part was built of wood especially selected to stand whatever conditions it might encounter on the trail. The wagon box was four feet deep, fourteen feet along the bottom, and curved upwards to nineteen feet along the top, a feature which prevented spillage of the load when going up or down hills. It was also watertight, and with the wheels removed it could float across rivers or creeks like a barge, a feature which saved days of unloading the wagon at every crossing and then reloading it again on the other side.
And the teams! The Virginian had spared no expense there either. The Conestoga horse was a special breed, a powerful creature that stood sixteen hands high and weighed as much as fourteen hundred pounds. With six of those magnificent animals hitched to one of the Conestoga wagons, they could easily pull the twelve-thousand-pound loads—or the “hundred and twenty hundred pounds,” as the teamsters liked to say—across a thousand miles of wilderness.
From that point on, Joshua had watched the man carefully. A short man with a tremendous ego, he was brash, arrogant, and loud. And greedy! He was constantly at the tables seeking a game, and Joshua had noted he was a shrewd gambler. But his greed exceeded his wisdom, and that made him the perfect mark.
Joshua poured the man another glass of whiskey, then sipped at his own as he considered the cards in his hand. The game had started almost three hours ago now. Joshua had played carefully, lying back, taking enough losses to whet the man’s appetite to the point at which the avarice shone in his eyes. Then Joshua had begun his move. Six had started the game. Two had dropped out after the first hour. The other two men were still in. One was about even with where he had started, the other, twenty or so dollars behind. But the teamster, a big winner for the first hour and a half, was now taking heavy losses. The man’s earlier exhilaration had turned to obvious desperation.
As the stakes went up and the game became more intense, the scattered patrons of the tavern had gathered around one by one to watch. Joshua knew they would—in fact, counted on it. It was part of the strategy. The more people watching, the greater the pressure to save face. And now he finally had the hand he had been waiting for.
With barely a flicker, he glanced over at the slender girl behind the bar. Jessica Roundy was the only child of Clinton Roundy, the owner of the saloon. A pale woman whose face was somewhat scarred from a childhood bout with smallpox, she was three years older than Joshua. Quiet to the point of painfulness, shy as a fawn, she seemed a complete incongruity in a saloon on the western frontier.
She caught Joshua’s glance and dropped her head quickly, but immediately grabbed a tray with a bottle of whiskey on it.
“I’ll raise you five.” The man next to Joshua had finally decided to stay in. He pushed a gold coin into the center of the table.
Out of the corner of his eye, Joshua saw Jessica move through the crowd toward him. She passed behind him, and though he had his cards close to his chest, he made sure she could see them. Coming around the table, she moved quietly up behind the teamster, leaned over, and took the nearly empty bottle off the table, putting a fresh one on. The man barely glanced up at her. He was glowering at Joshua. “You gonna play or not, Steed?”
Joshua scanned his cards again, brows knitting in concentration. As he leaned forward, he saw Jessica’s little finger drop. He felt a quick stab of exultation. “Just hold your patience, friend,” he growled. “Some things can’t be rushed.” With an effort, as though it cost him dearly, he picked up a twenty dollar gold piece and pushed it into the middle of the table. “I’ll see that five and raise it fifteen more.”
A sudden hush fell over the room. The teamster stared at the gold piece, then at his cards. The stack of paper and coins in front of him had dwindled to a small pile. Joshua calculated quickly. There was over a hundred in the pot already, almost half belonging to the wagon master, and the man now had only about forty dollars left in his pile.
The Virginian licked his lips, then counted quickly. He studied his cards, then counted again. The man on his left, the one who was already behind, finally shook his head in disgust and tossed his cards down. “I’m out.” The other man fingered a gold double eagle, worth twenty dollars, picked it up, toyed with it, then suddenly made up his mind. “Me too.” He laid down his cards.
The teamster smiled wickedly. “I think you’re bluffing, Steed.” He shoved the remainder of his pile into the center of the table. “I see your twenty and raise you twenty more.”
Joshua studied the money for a moment, then smiled thinly. “Well, you’ve obviously got a good hand, but…” He looked at his cards, now holding them close to his chest protectively. “But I think my luck is still holding.” He counted quickly, then pushed more paper and coins forward. “I’ll see that and raise you fifty more.”
There was an audible gasp from the surrounding onlookers. The man to Joshua’s left whistled softly. The teamster blanched. “You know I don’t have anything left.”
Joshua shrugged and reached out and started to scoop in the money.
“Wait!”
Joshua stopped, feeling a quick stab of shame. The desperation in the man’s eyes was like that of a starving man. Joshua wanted to look away, but forced himself to meet his gaze. The man was no child. A fool maybe, but then, poker was a game for fools.
“I’ve got some goods down in my wagon. I can cover it.”
Joshua pulled at his lip thoughtfully.
Gently now!
“What?” the man demanded.
But Joshua took his time. He poured another drink and sipped at it carefully. Finally, he set his cards down, face to the table. “Shall we really make this interesting, Mr. Farnsworth?”
Again there was a sudden gleam in the man’s face, half desperate hope, half fear.
“You know I’m in the freight business too,” Joshua continued. “Just getting a good start. I’ve got two wagons, six oxen, eight head of good horseflesh, plus a small barn and stable. The men here can vouch for me.”
Several of those surrounding the table nodded vigorously or said, “Yeah, that’s right. It’s a good outfit. Worth a lot.”
Joshua touched the pile of money in front of him. “I’d guess I’ve got close to five hundred dollars here. There’s another two hundred or so in the middle there.”
“Yes.” It was a hoarse whisper.
“You’ve got what in your outfit?” He kept his voice bored, almost sleepy. It took real effort, for this was the moment on which all his careful planning hung.
“Three wagons, eighteen Conestagas to pull them, and about three thousand dollars’ worth of freight on board.”