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By the time our otherwise pleasant visit with the grandparents ended, I had made my decision. The railroad life with its perfect schedules imposing order on society, and with its tracks knitting the trans-Mississippi West into a quilt work stitched together with crossties, and with its massive corporate structure that reinvented the style of overseers and serfs‚Ķit could not be the life for me. After considering retiring, or opening a locomotive factory to build big steam engines, or becoming a cattle man like Big George, or just moving my whole family to California for the hell of it, I decided to stay a steamboat man, to run my boats one step ahead of Old Nick-as I named the railroads-by emphasizing our operation on the Upper Missouri River. Unless the Northern route was chosen by Washington, D.C. to be the transcontinental railroad, I would be an old man before rail pierced that part of America. My decision came to me while I played my violin to an Ohio River sunset, when the river bends red and gold across a darkening land. At that moment I heard the unmistakable hoot from a Big Cat steamboat, and when my steamboat came into view, I knew I had led a charmed life, to be so favored by the gods that I had been allowed to experience such a sublime joy. She was our newest steamboat, named Saber Tooth Tiger after the bones farmers were finding in dry washes in Dakota Territory. According to Rachel, museum men from the East had also found elephant skeletons with huge, curving tusks in Dakota Territory sands. Before cock's crow, I woke to the clatter of a carriage halting at our front door, followed by the sharp rapping of a metal cane on our door. When mother opened the peep-hole, she giggled and said, "I'm glad you're back early." From my shadowed perch, I shuddered at the large man's hulking figure, he dressed in a rich fur coat and hunter's hat, a holster straining to surround the handgun strapped to his right thigh, a scabbard and war sword dangling on his left hip. His furs made a swishing sound when he bent to meet my mother's long, lingering kiss. "I have a surprise for you," she told him. "It's David! Duke Paul sent him home." The big man turned, to my horror indeed Prince Sigmund, and fixed angry eyes on me."You? I don't believe it!" "Duke Paul sent me home at Rotterdam." "Really? Who came with you?" he asked, piercing me with his gaze. "No one." "Hard to believe," he growled. "I swear it." "Damn unlikely." He seemed to see right through me. "I told Duke Paul to be sure you reached America." Mother bristled at his tone. "He is of my flesh and blood, your highness. Please welcome him to your domains." "Mine while my brother stays abroad." He turned back to me. "My attendants will return you to the workers‚" chambers, to the single men's quarters. Time will tell if you have lied to me, Jew Boy." I did not like the threatening tone in his voice, with its hints of his sadistic nature, his foremost trait which staff nannies claimed first became discernible as a child, when Duke Sigmund laughed while methodically ripping wings from birds he trapped in nets. Deathly pale, my mother frowned at him while she helped me gather my things and hugged me as Prince Sigmund's footman reminded me which road to walk.' |
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