Dylan's Journey by C. J. Petit

Author:C. J. Petit [Petit, C. J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-10-10T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

Burke Riddell’s next morning wasn’t much different than those before that fraudulent sixteen-year-old had arrived. Mrs. Wilcox had his breakfast ready and he left his house at eight o’clock to go to his offices near the bank.

He spotted the Frantz brothers outside, gave them an acknowledging nod as he passed and walked east toward the bank and his nearby office.

As they watched him leave, Bill, the older of the two by three years, asked his brother, “What do you think, Jimmy? How long before those boys return?”

“Beats me, but I hope it’s for at least another couple of days. We get an extra three dollars a day for just standin’ around his place to make sure nobody gets to thinkin’ that they can try somethin’.”

“You don’t really reckon that the bunch of sheep that live here would take him on, do ya?”

“Nah, but the boss wants to be sure, so we’ve gotta make sure they all see us.”

“It’s an easy way to make some extra spendin’ money.”

“Did you hear that Riddell offered that young girl he had shipped in from Kansas City to those other boys?”

“Nope. I knew he wasn’t happy with her. Curly told me that he thought she was a cow, which is really funny. I saw her and she didn’t seem all that big to me.”

Jimmy snickered then said, “She was bigger than that Indian kid we got for him.”

“Yeah, but she didn’t last very long either.”

“That’s ‘cause she was an Injun and he didn’t want to be seen with her.”

“Sounds like he didn’t want to be seen with this one either. He sent Oscar back to find another one.”

“I wonder if Oscar’s just gonna keep goin’?”

“I know if I was Oscar, I’d sure stay down south and look for another job.”

“He’s got a while to figure it out, anyway.”

_____

Oscar had come to that conclusion before he stepped on board the Lafayette, and he’d been careful to only take out half of his money from the boss’s bank, so it didn’t raise any eyebrows. He knew that if he’d emptied the account, the cashier would tell Burke and he’d never get a chance to leave Fort Benton.

But just as the Frantz brothers had reasoned, he thought that he’d have at least two weeks to reach that decision point, but that meant that the Lafayette would need to safely navigate the twisting turns and rapids of the high Missouri without the benefit of a pilot.

Even as Gwen and Dylan were having their breakfast in their lodge, the Lafayette discovered a hidden sand bank forty miles south of the trading post with no other downstream settlements closer than fifty miles.

For most of that day, the captain had tried all sorts of methods to free his sidewheeler from its trap. He’d moved most of the cargo and stock to the back of their decks to raise the bow then had the engineer open the throttle. The Missouri’s water churned in man-made geysers on both sides of the riverboat, but it refused to budge.

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