Free The Fugitive Son by Adell Harvey, Mari Serebrov Page B

his horse on a high ridge and gazed out over the spectacular Great Salt Lake Valley. If it were true that God had a plan for him, maybe his visit with Pa and the prophet wouldn’t be so bad.
    With that cheerful thought, he coaxed his mount into a fast trot and rode into the valley.

    Near St. Louis
    The 200-mile trip upriver to change steamboats at the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers went quickly. Elsie chatted comfortably with John and Mary as though they were longtime friends, yet knowing it would be a very short friendship.
    Mary broke into her thoughts. “If only we were going to the same place! It seems my entire life is spent making friends, then having to leave them behind.”
    Elsie patted her hand. “I’m not sure who is leaving whom behind – I’m going much farther west than you are!”
    “We’re going to be plowing up prairie sod, and you’ll be tending a mercantile way out in the desert Southwest,” John noted. “Truly, the United States are on the move!”
    “All I know is that I keep saying goodbye to friends,” Mary complained. “And it certainly isn’t fun!”
    “John? John Montgomery? What in blazes are you doing this far from home?” A big voice boomed from a small, wiry man as he exited the pilot house and came toward them.
    “Sam?” John whirled around in surprise. “I might ask the same of you! Last time I saw you was at the print shop in New York where we were both setting type. What brings you to the Mississippi?”
    Sam twirled an amazing handlebar mustache, grinning broadly. “It’s been a couple of years since our days in the big city. I decided life should be more exciting than setting the alphabet into other people’s words and sentences every day, so I became a riverboat pilot.”
    John glanced at his clothing, which was obviously not pilot’s attire.
    “Not quite a pilot yet,” replied Sam, totally unabashed at his exaggeration. “Actually, I’m a cub – been up and down the Mississippi several times with Pilot Horace Bixby teachin’ me the ropes.”
    Remembering his manners, John introduced his old friend to the ladies. “Mary and Elsie, this is my old partner in crime, Samuel Clemens. We were both printer’s interns back in ’53 in New York.”
    “Those were the days!” Sam inserted. “Me and John were quite the ladies’ men and made plenty of memories.”
    The frown on Mary’s face as she possessively clutched John’s elbow forced a quick change of subject. “Now Horace thinks I need to take a few runs on a smaller steamer up the Missouri before I get my license. Can’t wait to get my hands on my own rudder!” Sam held up a notebook, ruled like a ship’s ledger. “But I have to learn all these consarned notes first. Horace talks so fast, we call him ‘Race for short. Durn near wrote my fingers off trying to keep up with him!”
    As Sam continued jawing with John, Elsie looked him over. He appeared to be in his early twenties, a few years younger than John – much too young for having done all the things he was bragging about. She summed him up as a man who liked to be the center of attention and enjoyed stretching the truth a bit for a laugh.
    At the moment, he had drawn an audience of travelers around their little group, regaling them with a lampoon of a captain named Isaiah Sellers, “a self-important but rigid rooster who likes to think that, because he’s a senior riverboat captain and writes steamboat stories for the New Orleans newspaper, we should all offer him obeisance.” Sam strutted up and down the deck, mimicking the pompous captain. “Obeisance, my foot!” he mocked. “We all call him Starchy Boy!”
    Elsie laughed along with the other river-weary travelers, thankful for the escape from the sad thoughts of leaving her new friends. Sam, who had taken on the role as a one-man show for his appreciative audience, chewed the end of his unlit cigar thoughtfully.
    “Lessen you think your lives will be in danger with