"None. I worked my way as a stoker – fireman they call it out here."
"No wages? Just passage and grub?"
"That was all."
"What have you got on your wheel house?"
"I fear I don't understand."
"Oh, that's river slang. You know every side-wheel steamer has a statement of her destination painted on her wheel house. I meant to ask what are your plans?"
"To find work and do it."
"What kind of work?"
"Any kind that's honest."
"You are educated, I suppose?"
"Yes, in a way. I'm an A. M. and a graduate in law."
"Know anything about business?"
"No, but I shall learn."
"If you can, you mean?"
"Oh, I can. A capable man can learn anything if he really wants to."
"I don't know about that. But I'll gamble on the proposition that you can."
"Thank you."
"No thanks are needed. I wasn't complimenting. I was just expressing an opinion."
Scribbling a memorandum on a scrap of paper, Captain Hallam handed it to Duncan, saying:
"Give that to the cashier as you go out, and get your wages. Then you'd better get your breakfast. I recommend you, while you're poor, to eat at the little booths along the levee, where they sell very good sandwiches and coffee cheap. After breakfast, if you choose to come back here I'll try to find something for you to do. Oh, I forgot. You were up all night, so you'll want to sleep."
There was an interrogative note in the last sentence. Captain Hallam was "sizing up" his man, and he closely scrutinized Duncan's face as the answer came.
"Oh, I'm used to night duty. I'm ready for a day's work if you can give me one. As for breakfast, I've had it."
"Then you had money?"
"A very little; but I didn't spend any of it. I sawed and split a load of wood for the keeper of a booth, and he gave me some bread and ham and coffee for my work."
"Oh, that's the way you managed it. Very well. Come back here in two hours anyhow."
After the young man had passed out, Captain Hallam said to one of his partner brothers:
"That fellow is a good sort. He has sand in his gizzard. When he comes back set him at work at something or other – several things in succession in fact – and find out what he can do."
Such was Guilford Duncan's mustering into the new service of work.
VIII
On Duty
During the next four or five days Guilford Duncan was kept busy with various small employments, some of them out of doors and some of them in the office. During this time Captain Hallam did not again engage him in conversation, but Duncan knew that the man of business was closely observing his work. He was not slow to discover that he was giving satisfaction. He saw that with each day the work assigned him was of a kind that required a higher intelligence than that of the day before.
Every evening the cashier paid him his day's wages, thus reminding him that he was not a salaried employee of the house, but a man working for wages from day to day.
Out of his first wages he had purchased a change of very cheap underwear, a towel, and a cake of soap. Every morning about daylight he went to a secluded spot on the levee, for a scrub and a swim. Then he washed out his towel and placed it with his other small belongings, in a storage place he had discovered in a great lumber pile.
One morning when he entered the office Captain Hallam gave him several business letters to answer from memoranda scribbled upon them by clerks or others. He gave him also a memorandum in his own handwriting, saying:
"Cut that down if you can and make a telegram of it. I'll be back in half an hour or so. Have it ready for me."
The case was this: A huge steamboat lay at the levee, loaded almost to the water's edge with grain which Captain Hallam was more than anxious to hurry to New Orleans to meet a sudden temporary and very marked advance in that market. That morning the boat had been "tied up" – as the phrase went – that is to say, she had been legally attached for debt, at the suit of a firm in St. Louis. Until the attachment should be removed the boat must lie at Cairo, in charge of a sheriff's officer. Captain Hallam wished to secure her immediate release, and to that end he purposed sending the telegram.
When he returned to the office Duncan handed him for inspection and signature the letters he had written.
"Here is the telegram, also," he said, "but, if you will pardon the impertinence, I think you had better not send it – at least in the form you have given it."
"What's the matter?" quickly snapped Hallam.
"It binds you to more than I think you intend."
"Go on! Explain!"
"Why, I cannot help seeing that if you send this dispatch you will make yourself legally responsible, not only for the claim for which the boat is now attached, but also for every claim against her that may exist anywhere. There may be none such, or there may be many. In any case I do not think you intend to assume them all."
"Go on! The boat must be got away. What do you advise?"
"That you go on her bond for this claim – which seems to me so clearly illegal that I think you can never be held upon the bond – and – "
"Remind me, when this is over, that you are to come to my house to-night for consultation on that point. Now go on."
"Well, by going on her bond for this claim, instead of asking the creditors to release the boat on your promise as made in the telegram, you can secure her immediate release, making yourself liable, at worst, for no more than the six hundred dollars claimed."
"But if I do that, what is to prevent another tie-up at Memphis and another at Vicksburg and others wherever the boat may happen to land. She's in debt up to the top of her smokestacks, all along the river."
"As you own the cargo, and she can't carry another ton, why should you let her stop at all? I suppose the captain would do as you desire in that matter. You might request him to run through without any landings."
"Request be hanged. I'll tell him what to do and he'll do it. He knows where cargoes come from. Can you get the papers ready?"
"I can, sir."
"All right. Do it at once." Then turning to a shipping clerk he sent for the captain of the steamer, to whom he said:
"Get up steam at once. You are to leave in less than an hour. How much coal have you?"
The captain told him.
"Take two light barges of coal in tow, one on each side, and draw on them for fuel. When they're empty cast them loose with two men on each to land them. You can pick them up on your return trip. You are to steam to New Orleans without a landing anywhere. You understand?"
The captain understood. By this time the papers were ready and after half an hour spent in legal formalities the released steamboat cast loose from the wharf and backed out into the river.
Then Captain Hallam turned to Guilford Duncan and said:
"I've an idea that you'll do. If you like I'll put you at regular work at a monthly salary, and we'll see how we get on together."
"I should like that."
"Very well. Now, where are you boarding?"
"Nowhere. I get what I want to eat at the booths down along the levee."
"But where do you sleep?"
"Among the big lumber piles down there on Fourth street."
Captain Hallam looked at the young man for a moment with something like admiration in his eyes. Presently he said:
"You'll