Page 4 of Blowing Off Steam

Field thought fast. “I need to do the daily dozen with the Johnson bar,” he lied. “That’s dangerous, and essential if we want to get this wheel unstuck. Go, man, go! Unless you want to drop a few more of these ricemen in their tracks and get arrested for murder!”

“No one’s gonna arrest anyone for dropping a riceman,” Mike grumbled. But the hapless gunman holstered his weapon and clambered onto one of the stationary buckets. “Where do I stick this giant oar?”

“Right under that spoke!” Field shouted from the safety of the engine room’s bulkhead where he would ostensibly do the dangerous “daily dozen.” “Put your weight into it—lean into her hard! You only need a quarter turn to—”

There went Mike, like a puppet sucked down into the workings of the wheel’s paddles. His arms flew upward like the arms of a marionette dropped suddenly from a great height, mangled into a pool of broken bones. Field had known that the minute the crank crossed center it would take charge of the wheel, chopping everything in its path. If he’d been forced to do it himself, he would have been more delicate and would have jumped out of the way in time.

Well, at least Mike had succeeded in unsticking the wheel, and now the boat ploughed dead center toward Yerba Buena Island, away from the dangers of the laundry and fishing operations.

Predictably, as the wheel lurched into life, the wooden bar went zooming straight through an engine house window as though thrown by a powerful arm—but it would be too much of a miracle if it had impaled old Grundman.

Field dashed up two flights of the central stairs to gain the pilothouse in what felt like only four great strides.

He knew Cincinnatus had not snuck back onto the boat and rang the gong. Cincinnatus would probably have stumbled aboard and gaped at them moronically before becoming the pirates’ third hostage.

No, poor Rushy had woken himself from the steaming mass of shit and had somehow hauled himself up to the pilothouse where he had banged the gong to alert Field to his presence. He now stood—barely—at the wheel, hanging onto it more than steering it.

Field grasped him by the shoulders. “Rushy! I got rid of that Mike fellow, but that Grundman assassin is still in the engine room. Can you hang on another two minutes?”

Rushy only nodded, his lower jaw swinging loose to allow a steady stream of blood to trickle from his nostril and into his mouth.

Field patted him on the back with a joviality he certainly didn’t feel. “Good!”

Tearing down the stairs, Field swung the engine room door open to find Grundman still obliviously working the valves, with no apparent mind as to what he was doing.

“Good work, Grundman!” Field made directly for a bucket of tar, which he emptied into the raging firebox. He closed a few vents and left the firebox door open. “I need you to keep an eye on these valves. Just make sure they don’t move.” The momentum of the paddle wheels was sufficient for Field to drop the hooks onto the cranks, so the engineer was relieved of his work—but Grundman didn’t know that.

Swooping down to pick up the wooden bar from the pile of glass on the floor, Field commanded Grundman, “Keep an eye out!” and closed the engine room door. He used the wooden bar to bolt the door shut and leaped back upstairs to the wheel house.

He led Rushy to the bench, where the poor pilot collapsed. They were on a true steady course for the mouth of the Sacramento River now, so Field grabbed his box of paper from the strong box and jammed a pen into an inkwell.

“Rushy, Rushy!” he called out frantically. “What have we done?”

Rushy’s head lolled about. “Is anyone…following us?”

Field whipped his head this way and that and saw only a few Kanakas from the Sandwich Islands diving off small vessels. It was 1853. In today’s modern world the river was glutted with twenty-seven other riverboats, but none of the others were in sight. Field saw no schooners crammed with Vigilante Society men coming to arrest them. No vigilante would probably care about two dead thugs anyway.

“Stay awake, buddy!” Field urged as he touched his pen to paper.

My dear C,

I regret I haven’t given you the life you deserve. My quest for a fortune has led us down many questionable paths. It is a flaw in my spirit that my adventurous lifestyle has driven me astray. I have not been a good father to poor Benjamin. I did not come up to snuff in the gold fields. Even digging for gold was too daunting a task for someone as weak as I.

No, all I am suited for is this dubious river life, and it has once again gotten us into a big fix.

Field’s handwriting was sketchy and fractured, as befitted his panicked state. Already he could see the tarry smoke roiling up from the escape pipes that jutted up aft through the hurricane deck. Sticking the cork back into the inkwell, Field gently slapped Rushy on the face.

“Mm?” said Rushy.

Field whipped a handkerchief from the velvet-edged pocket of Rushy’s frock coat. Wiping off the sensual, full lower lip of blood and grime, Field leaned over to plant a kiss there. Rushy’s only response was to lift an arm and drop it just as swiftly.

“I love you,” Field whispered and went downstairs with his own cocked pistol in hand.

CHAPTER TWO

October 1853

San Francisco