A Captain in the Ranks Part 4

It was a little after sunset on Decoration Day--May 30, 1865--when young Duncan went ash.o.r.e from the tow boat at Cairo. The town was ablaze with fireworks, as he made his way up the slope of the levee, through a narrow pa.s.sage way that ran between two mountainous piles of cotton bales. At other points there were equally great piles of corn and oats in sacks, pork in barrels, hams and bacon in boxes, and finer goods of every kind in bales and packing cases. For Cairo was just at that time the busiest _entrepot_ in all the Mississippi Valley.

The town was small, but its business was larger than that of many great cities. The little city lay at the point where the Ohio River runs into the Mississippi. From up and down the Mississippi, from the Ohio, from the Tennessee and the c.u.mberland, and even from far up the Missouri, great fleets of steamboats were landing at Cairo every day to load and unload cargoes representing a wealth as great as that of the Indies. A double-headed railroad from the North, carrying the produce of half a dozen States, and connecting by other roads with all the great cities of the land, made its terminus at Cairo. Two railroads from the South--traversing five States--ended their lines at Columbus, a little farther down the river, and were connected with the northern lines by steamboats from Cairo.

Cairo was the meeting place of commerce between the North and the South.

Out of the upper rivers came light-draught steamers. Plying the river below were steamers of far different construction by reason of the easier conditions of navigation there. At Cairo every steamboat--whether from North or South--unloaded its freight for res.h.i.+pment up or down the river, as the case might be, upon steamboats of a different type, or by rail. And all the freight brought North or South by rail must also be transferred at Cairo, either to river steamers or to railroad cars.

The South was still thronged with Northern troops, numbering hundreds of thousands, who must be fed and clothed, and otherwise supplied, and so the government's own traffic through the town was in itself a trade of vast proportions. But that was the smallest part of the matter. Now that the war was at an end, the South was setting to work to rebuild itself.

From the c.u.mberland and the Tennessee rivers, from the lower Mississippi, from the Arkansas, the Yazoo, the Red River, the White, the St. Francis, and all the rest of the water-ways of the South, energetic men, of broken fortune, were hurrying to market all the cotton that they had managed to grow and to save during the war, in order that they might get money with which to buy the supplies needed for the cultivation of new crops.

Pretty nearly all this cotton came to Cairo, either for sale to eager buyers there, or for s.h.i.+pment to the East and a market.

In return the planters and the southern merchants through whom they did business were clamorous for such goods as they needed. Grain, hay, pork, bacon, agricultural implements, seed potatoes, lime, plaster, lumber, and everything else necessary to the rebuilding of southern homes and industries, were pouring into Cairo and out again by train loads and steamboat cargoes, night and day.

Even that was not all. For four years no woman in the South had possessed a new gown, or new handkerchiefs, or a new toothbrush, or a new set of window curtains, or a new comb, or new linen for her beds, or new shoes of other than plantation make, or a new ribbon or bit of lace, or anything else new. Now that the northern market was open for the sale of cotton the country merchants of the South were besieged for all these and a hundred other things, and their orders for goods from the North added mightily to the freight piles on the levee at Cairo.

As Guilford Duncan emerged from the alley-way between the cotton bales and reached the street at top of the levee, a still burning fragment of the fireworks fell upon a bale of which the bagging was badly torn, exposing the lint cotton in a way very tempting to fire. With the instinct of the soldier he instantly climbed to the top of the pile, tore away the burning bunches of lint cotton, and threw them to the ground, thus preventing further harm.

As he climbed down again a man confronted him.

"Are you a watchman?" asked the man.

"No, I'm only a man in search of work."

"Why did you do that, then?" queried the stranger, pointing to the still burning cotton scattered on the ground.

"On general principles, I suppose," answered Duncan. "There would have been a terrible fire if I hadn't."

"What's your name?"

"Guilford Duncan."

"Want work?"

"Yes."

"What sort?"

"Any sort--for good wages." That last phrase was the result of his stoker experience.

"Well, do you want to watch this cotton to-night and see that no harm comes to it, either from fire, or--what's worse--the cotton thieves that go down the alleys, pulling out all the lint they can from the torn bales?"

"Yes, if I can have fair wages."

"Will three dollars for the night be fair wages?"

"Yes--ample. How far does your freight extend up and down the levee?"

"It's pretty nearly all mine, but I have other watchmen on other parts of it. This is a new cargo. Your beat will extend----" and he gave the young man his boundaries.

"You'll be off duty at sunrise. Come to me at seven o'clock for your pay. I'm Captain Will Hallam. Anybody in Cairo will tell you where my office is. Good-night."

This was an excellent beginning, Duncan thought. Three dollars was more money than he had carried in his pocket at any time since he had bought his suit of clothes at Wheeling. Better still, the prompt.i.tude with which employment had thus come to him was encouraging, although the employment was but for a night. And when he reflected that he had won favor by doing what seemed to him an act of ordinary duty, he was disposed to regard the circ.u.mstance as another lesson in the new service of work.

The night pa.s.sed without event of consequence. There were two or three little fires born of the holiday celebration, but Guilford Duncan managed to suppress them without difficulty. Later in the night the swarm of cotton thieves--mainly boys and girls--invaded the levee, with bags conveniently slung over their shoulders. As there were practically no policemen in the town, and as his beat was a large one, young Duncan for a time had difficulty in dealing with these marauders. But after he had arrested half a dozen of them only to find that there were no police officers to whom he could turn them over, he adopted a new plan. He secured a heavy stick from a bale of hay, and with that he clubbed every cotton thief he could catch. As a soldier it was his habit to adapt means to ends; so he hit hard at heads, and seized upon all the stolen goods. It was not long before word was pa.s.sed among the marauders that there was "a devil of a fellow" in charge of that part of the levee, and for the rest of the night the pilferers confined their operations to s.p.a.ces where a less alert watchfulness gave them better and safer opportunities.

Thus pa.s.sed Guilford Duncan's first night as a common soldier in the great army of industry.

In the morning, at the hour appointed, he presented himself to Captain Will Hallam, and was taken into that person's private office for an interview.

VI

A CAPTAIN IN THE ARMY OF WORK

Captain Will Hallam Was a Man Of The Very Shrewdest sense, fairly--though not liberally--educated, whose life, from boyhood onward, had been devoted to the task of taking quick advantage of every opportunity that the great river traffic of the fifties had offered to men of enterprise and sound judgment.

Beginning as a barefoot boy--about 1850, or earlier, he never mentioned the date--he had "run the river" in all sorts of capacities until, when the war came, temporarily paralyzing the river trade, he had a comfortable little sum of money to the good.

Unable to foresee what the course and outcome of the war might be, he determined, as a measure of prudence, to indulge himself and his little h.o.a.rd in a period of safe waiting. He converted all his possessions into gold and deposited the whole of it in a Canadian bank, where, while it earned no interest, it was at any rate perfectly safe.

Then he sought and secured a clerks.h.i.+p in the commissary department of the army, living upon the scant salary that the clerks.h.i.+p afforded, and meanwhile acquainting himself in minute detail with the food resources of every quarter of the country, the means and methods of transportation and handling, and everything else that could in any wise aid him in making himself a master in commerce.

Then one day in 1863, when he had satisfied himself that the fortunes of war were definitely turning and that in the end the Union cause was destined to triumph, he made a change.

He resigned his clerks.h.i.+p. He recalled his money from Canada, and considerably increased at least its nominal amount by converting the gold into greatly depreciated greenbacks.

With this capital he opened a commission and forwarding house at Cairo, together with a coal yard, a bank, five wharf boats, half a dozen tugs, an insurance office, a flour mill, and other things. He sent for his brothers to act as his clerks and presently to become his partners.

From the beginning he made money rapidly, and from the beginning he was eagerly on the lookout for opportunities, which in that time of rapid change were abundant. He quickly secured control of nearly all the commission and forwarding business that centered at Cairo. By underbidding the government itself he presently had contracts for all the vast government business of that character.

He was always ready to take up a collateral enterprise that promised results. When the Mississippi River was reopened to commerce by the fall of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, Captain Will Hallam was the first to see and seize the opportunity. He bought everything he could lay his hands on in the way of steamboats and barges, and sent them all upon trading voyages--each under charge of a captain, but each directed by his own masterful mind--up and down the Mississippi, and up and down the Ohio, and up and down every navigable tributary of those great rivers.

This field was quickly made his own, so far as he cared to occupy it. If a rival attempted a compet.i.tion that might hurt his enterprises, Captain Hallam quietly and quite without a ripple of anger in his voice, dictated some letters to his secretary. Then freight rates suddenly fell almost to the vanis.h.i.+ng point, and after a disastrous trip or two, his adversary's steamboats became his own by purchase at low prices, and freight rates went up again. He bore no enmity to the men who thus antagonized him in business and whom he thus conquered. His att.i.tude toward them was precisely that of a soldier toward his enemy. So long as they antagonized him he fought them mercilessly; as soon as they fell into his hands as wounded prisoners, he was ready and eager to do what he could for them.

Those of them who knew the river, and had shown capacity in business, were made steamboat captains in his service, or steamboat clerks, or wharf-boat managers, or agents, or something else--all at fair salaries.

It was Captain Will Hallam's practice to make partners of all men who might render him service in that capacity. Thus when he saw how great a business there must be at Cairo in supplying Pittsburg steam coal to the government fleets on the Mississippi, and to the thousands of other steamboats trafficking in those waters, he went at once to Pittsburg and two days later he had made a certain Captain Red his partner in the control of that vastly rich trade.

Captain Red was the largest owner of the Pittsburg mines, and the pioneer in the business of carrying coal-laden barges in acres and scores of acres down the river, pus.h.i.+ng them with stern-wheel steamers of large power, but still of a power insufficient for the accomplishment of the best results.

Captain Red's fleet was unable to control the trade. Captain Hallam pointed out to him the desirability of making it adequate and dominant.

Within two days the two had formed a partners.h.i.+p which included a number of New York bankers and investors as unknown and silent stockholders in the enterprise, and an abundant capital was provided. An order was given for the hurried building of the Ajax, the Hector, the Agamemnon, the Hercules, and half a dozen other stern-wheel steamers of power so great that they could not carry the coal needed for their own furnaces, but must tow it in barges alongside.

These powerful steamers were to push vast fleets of coal-laden barges down the river all the way from Pittsburg on the east to St. Louis on the west, and New Orleans on the south. They were to supply, through Hallam's agents, every town along the river and every steamboat that trafficked to any part of it. Hallam was master of it all. Cairo was to be the central distributing point, and if anybody along the river owned a coal mine in Kentucky or Indiana, or elsewhere, he was quickly made to understand that his best means of marketing his product at a profit was to sell it through the Hallam yards at Cairo.

In the meanwhile, as one region after another in the South was conquered by the Union arms, Captain Hallam, whose long river service had brought him into acquaintance with pretty nearly everybody worth knowing south of Cairo, established agents of his own at every point where there was cotton to be bought at extravagant prices, payable in gold, even while the war was going on. These agents bought the cotton, the planters agreeing to deliver it upon the banks of the rivers and leave it there at Hallam's risk. Then Captain Hallam's steamboats, big and little, would push their way up the little rivers, take the cotton on board, and carry it to Cairo.