A Dawn Most Wicked (Something Strange and Deadly 0.5)(2)
You’re being paranoid, I chided. Ain’t no one there. Fortunately Cass didn’t seem to notice the speed with which I’d detached myself from her. So I tried to salvage the moment as best I could with a rakish grin.
“Why, Miss Cassidy,” I said, “we’ve only been docked a few hours, but you look like you ran clear across Natchez and back.”
“Because I did run.” She spoke in a breathless way that made my blood stir. “I was at the Natchez telegraph office waiting for the news, and it came, Danny!” She dug around in her gray uniform’s pocket—a match for mine but with skirts instead of trousers and looking fresh instead of grimy. Then she whipped out a newspaper and shoved it at me. “It’s today’s Picayune.”
I took the New Orleans newspaper warily from Cass’s hand. Sure enough, a glance at the top showed, “June 16, 1873.” I scanned the headlining article as fast as my meager reading skills could get me.
Haunted Steamer to Race
New Orleans is alight with news that Eric Dunlap, captain of the luxury steamer Abby Adams out of New Orleans, has accepted a race challenge from his longtime rival, Captain Robert Cochran of the Sadie Queen. Once the most popular steamboat for Mississippi cruises, the famous Sadie Queen recently lost all business due to a series of hauntings that began in April of this year.
“Apparitions or no, we are the fastest ship on the Mississippi,” claimed Captain Cochran to this Picayune reporter three weeks ago. “We will prove it once and for all, if Dunlap is man enough to accept my challenge: A race from New Orleans to Natchez.”
Racing steamboats, a long tradition on the Mississippi, can bring captains and their ships great fame or great failure. Early yesterday, Captain Dunlap accepted Cochran’s challenge, declaring that “the Sadie Queen is about to taste the bitter tang of loss.” Such a highly publicized rivalry and race have not been seen since the Great Steamboat Race of 1870, in which the Robert E. Lee raced the Natchez from New Orleans to St. Louis. Already bets are being placed on who will win this latest competition.
According to Kent Lang, heir to the Lang Company, which operates out of New Orleans and owns the Sadie Queen, “We hope that winning this race will prove to potential passengers that the integrity of the Lang Company’s fleet has not been affected by the hauntings.”
Yet even with a win for the Queen, this Picayune reporter speculates nothing can bring back the steamer’s glory days.
I reached the final line—a line I was inclined to agree with—and noticed that a familiar clack-clack-clack, thwump!, clack-clack-clack had filled the room. I lifted my eyes to Cassidy. She held her tarnished old spyglass and was extending it. Clack-clack-clack. Then snapping it shut. Thwump! Open, shut, open, shut—she always did that when she was nervous.
The electric lamplight flickered on her hair, making the mahogany color shine red. Her eyes met mine, and a grin spread over her lips. Clack-clack-clack, thwump! “Well?” She dropped the spyglass in her pocket.
“It wasn’t an optimistic article,” I said cautiously. “The reporter said we’re doomed no matter—”
“I don’t care what the reporter said.” She grabbed my wrists, rocking back and forth on her heels. “Dunlap accepted Father’s challenge. That means we’ll go back to New Orleans tonight to get as prepped as we can before the race next week. If we win—and by God, we have to, Danny—then the Langs won’t shut us down.”
Won’t shut us down yet, I thought. But I kept the sentiment to myself. What the Sadie Queen needed was passengers, and if she didn’t get some soon, the Lang Company was going to take her—and all her crew—off the river. I didn’t think a race would change that.
Cass must’ve realized the direction of my thoughts because her smile faltered . . . and then fell. She released my wrists. “You don’t think we can win?”
“Of course I do.” I slung off my flat cap and scrubbed at my scalp. “You’re the best apprentice pilot on the Mississippi.”
“Damn straight.” She stomped one heel and set the command bells—an array of all sizes that hung on a column between the engines—to ringing. “And you’re the best striker on the Mississippi. No engineer is as fast as you.”
“So there you have it.” I spread my hands. “We’ll whip Captain Dunlap and the Abby Adams. Me and you. A team.”
“A team,” she repeated. Then she punched the air and gave a loud whoop. “We’ll whip ’em, all right.” But almost instantly her arm dropped . . . and her smile crumbled. “I wish Ellis could see it.”
Ellis. Cassidy’s little sister. I’d only met the girl once, but it had burned her image in my brain—a neck swollen wider than her head and a life confined to a hospital bed.
“Hey now.” I tugged my cap back on. Winning a race wasn’t going to change Ellis’s fate, and I wasn’t about to let Cassidy lose hope already. “What was the very first thing I told you when we met?”
Her forehead bunched up, replacing her frown. “I don’t know. That was a year ago, Danny.”
I took a step toward her. “I said that if anyone could tame the Mississippi, it would be you.”
She gave a sly, satisfied smile—my favorite kind. “How could I forget that? I usually catalog all your compliments up here.” She tapped her temple. “I’ll just file that one under M for ‘Mississippi.’ Or should I make it T for ‘taming’?”