Nan Ryan (2 page)

Shortly after nine o’clock that evening, an impeccably groomed Johnny Roulette, smiling broadly, weaving slightly, descended the wide marble staircase into the opulent lobby of the Plantation House. When his old friend Ben Robin, the hotel’s rich young owner, who was engaged in conversation with a pair of downriver planters, looked up and saw Johnny, he knew immediately that he was drunk. Excusing himself from the guests, Ben Robin crossed the spacious lobby.

“John,” Ben said, placing a companionable hand on Johnny’s left shoulder, “how about the two of us having dinner in my suite this evening? The dining room is very crowded tonight.”

Wearing a foolish grin, Johnny blinked down at his friend. “Thanks for the invitation, Ben, but I’m not hungry. I’ll allow you to buy me a drink though.”

“Johnny, you don’t drink.”

Johnny frowned. “I don’t?”

“No. Never.”

“In that case, I’ll be on my way.”

“Where to? It might be best if—”

Smiling once more, Johnny Roulette interrupted. “Think I’ll stroll on down to the levee and check the action on the
Moonlight Gambler.
”

2

A stranger looked back at Nevada from the mirror. She didn’t know herself, couldn’t believe that the pretty young woman with heavily lashed blue eyes and ruby-red lips and shimmering black curls could actually be her. She stared with frank admiration and astonishment at the unfamiliar reflection, her cheeks hot with excitement.

The gown she wore, a vivid blue satin with a tight bodice and low, revealing neckline and flounced skirts, was the most exquisite garment she’d ever laid eyes on. Exactly the kind of dress she’d dreamed of wearing all those nights when she’d stood in the pale moonlight aboard her papa’s keelboat and sung her heart out while the crew clapped and whistled and shouted their approval.

Old Willie and Luke and Big Edgar. Slim and Teddy and “Black Jack” Jones. They’d all applauded and encouraged and assured her that she truly “sang like a nightingale.” And of them all, her papa had been her most loyal admirer, the one who spun golden dreams of the future triumphs that awaited her.

Nevada Marie Hamilton never knew the small raven-haired woman who was her mother, nor the wild untamed land for which she had been named. Newton Hamilton, a restless young Southerner who in the autumn of 1857 drifted to the silver mines of the West, had stayed less than a year in Virginia City, Nevada.

A big sandy-haired man with a bass voice and twinkling green eyes, Hamilton had fallen in love with Beth Davis the first time he saw her. She was attempting to cross a busy street in boisterous Virginia City. She’d looked so young and fragile and helpless as she carefully picked her way along a wooden plank that bridged a loblolly of deep gummy mud.

Enchanted, Newt Hamilton hurried to her, reaching the small startled beauty in three long strides. Ignoring her cries of indignation, he plucked her up into his strong arms and carried her across the muddy street. By the time they reached the other side he was in love. In less than a month so was Beth.

They married in the judge’s chambers and spent their one-night honeymoon in a second-floor room of the Silverado Hotel, right in the heart of loud, rollicking Virginia City. Beth Hamilton, the happiest of brides, never noticed the sounds of rinky-dink piano or the clatter of dice or the shouts and laughter coming from downstairs. Swept away by newfound passion, she gloried in the ecstasy of that long snowy November night spent in a soft featherbed with her amorous new husband.

And exactly nine months later, on a hot August evening when the thin mountain air was oppressive and not a hint of a breeze stirred the lace curtains in the stuffy little bedroom of her home, Beth went into painful labor that was to last throughout the night. Finally when the first streak of gray lightened the summer sky behind the towering Sierras, Beth, totally exhausted, her blue eyes dull and sunken, gave birth to a perfect baby girl with silky raven hair and a cute button nose and curved rosebud lips.

“You’ll have to name her, Newt,” whispered Beth, “I’m just too tired.” Those were her last words. She died before the sun came up.

A month later a brokenhearted Newt Hamilton closed the door to the cabin where he’d lived with and loved his Beth, leaving everything just as it was. He took only the squalling tiny infant he called Nevada; and together they left forever the state for which she was named.

Nevada’s earliest memories were of the constant easy roll and pitch of the creaking old keelboat beneath her feet as she glided endlessly up and down the swirling waters of the Mississippi. And of the big, smiling, sandy-haired man who, more times than not, smelled of whiskey when he kissed her good night.

Nevada loved both with all her heart.

The treacherous, eddying, muddy Mississippi. And the big, heavily muscled, indulgent man who guided them safely down it. Save for those four awful years when Newt had left her, crying and screaming, in a fancy girls’ boarding school in New Orleans while he went off to fight in the war, she had not been away from her papa. Or from the Mississippi.

Except for those lonely years when she’d been taught by stern-faced teachers to read and write and do her sums, her home had been the keelboat her father owned and operated. The necessary comforts were contained in their quarters—a boxlike dwelling with two small bedrooms, dining room, pantry, and a big room in front for the crew with a fireplace where old Willie did the cooking.

The top of the boat was flat and had seats and an awning under which she could sit protected from the fierce sun glinting off the river. From there she could watch her papa skillfully pilot the boat from one port to another, transporting tons of commodities. Bacon, flour, corn, lard, oats, butter. Barrels of cider and whiskey. Hemp and yarn and lumber and shoe leather. Apples and dried fruit and beans and tobacco. And sometimes even horses—spirited, beautiful Thoroughbreds sent from upriver to the racetracks of the South.

It was a life any adventurous little girl would have loved. Nevada was sure the children she waved to on the crowded levees envied her the lazy days of floating downstream with the current, trailing her bare toes in the muddy water, making elaborate plans for the future.

What she most wanted, she decided when she was ten years old, was to be a singer on one of the grand showboats plying the waters of the Mississippi. An entertainer like the beautiful ladies her papa told her about while she listened, awestruck.

“The fine ladies,” Newt Hamilton said, the slight slurring of his words unnoticed by his rapt audience of one, “are very glamorous and talented, Nevada. And the gentlemen who court them are cultured and handsome. Rich planters and steamboat captains and moneyed scions of old southern families.”

“Papa,” said Nevada, her big blue eyes sparkling with anticipation, “when I grow up I want to be a singer on one of the big floating palaces. I want to meet one of those handsome gentlemen who’ll fall madly in love with me!”

Newt Hamilton, the storyteller who most times was anxious to finish the story so he could go ashore and drink whiskey and visit the “fine ladies” he spoke of, always said “And you will, child. Nobody has a sweeter voice than you. Now say your prayers and go to bed. I won’t be gone long. Old Willie and the boys will look after you until I get back.” And he’d kiss his only child and Nevada would deeply inhale the unique scent that was her papa’s—sun-warmed skin and strong soap and whiskey. Always whiskey.

Sure that, as she grew up, his daughter’s foolish yearnings for a singing career on the river would be replaced with more worthy ambitions, the big man who needed lots of whiskey and lots of women never discouraged Nevada’s harmless daydreaming.

As the years passed and she grew into a stunningly pretty young woman, the crew, like family to Newt and Nevada, warned the permissive Hamilton that it was high time he pointed the rapidly blossoming girl in another, more respectable direction. He would, he assured them, when the time came. But went right on as before, never discouraging her, instead telling her that she would have to wait until she turned twenty-one.

There was, he reasoned, plenty of time to worry about that far-distant day. But time itself was running out for Newt Hamilton and, with a strange kind of women’s intuition, his young daughter sensed it. Her father’s fading green eyes did not sparkle as they once had, not even when he was drinking whiskey. Slowly the big lovable man was disintegrating, wearing out, winding down. The old confidence was fading, his zest for life waning, the ever-present gaiety disappearing.

So Nevada was heartbroken but not shocked when her father, ever more combative and out of sorts, got into a fight one night in an Ashport, Tennessee, bordello. Newt Hamilton never saw the knife or even felt the pain as the gleaming blade, wielded by a big, ugly Arkansas farm boy, slashed open his stomach. He was too drunk to know he was dying.

Grief-stricken, Nevada decided to sell the keelboat to the crew and was shocked and horrified to learn that her father had long ago sold it to them, retaining for himself only a ten-percent interest. She sold them the remaining ten percent and said it was time she pursued her dream of becoming a singer on a big showboat And she wondered why, to a man, they all shook their heads and did their best to dissuade her. Strong-willed, she refused to listen. She was, after all, eighteen years old. A full-grown woman. She would wait no longer!

Nevada put on her best Sunday dress, a frilly pink-and-white gingham with lace-trimmed sleeves and bodice, brushed her long ebony hair, packed her cardboard valise, wrapped her money in one of her father’s linen handkerchiefs, put the handkerchief inside her bodice next to her heart, and marched out on deck.

All the crew hugged her and when old Willie embraced her she saw tears glistening in the sad devoted eyes. Swallowing back the lump in her own throat, she patted his bony shoulder and said, “Stop your frettin’, Willie. By tonight I’ll be entertaining on one of those fancy showboats.”

“Dat’s what I is afraid of,” said the aging black man.

Undaunted, Nevada stepped onto the busy Memphis levee, turned about, and looked down at the six frowning men. Luke and Big Edgar and Slim. Teddy and “Black Jack” Jones and old Willie.

Bravely she smiled and said, “When you’re back in Memphis, I’ll come down to visit you.”

Then, afraid she would cry just like old Willie, Nevada hurried away. The June sun was hot on her bare head and the suitcase was heavy, but she didn’t have far to go. She’d known all along where she was heading. She’d seen the dazzling lights of the glittering floating palace,
Moonlight Gambler
, from the window of her keelboat bedroom.

She stood before the imposing steamer, looking with hopeful eyes up at the glass-enclosed pilothouse and the high texas deck and the gingerbread-fringed hurricane deck. The huge white sternwheeler looked sleepy and deserted in the middle of the quiet afternoon, but Nevada knew that come dusk the big pleasure palace would come alive with gambling and gaiety.

Hurrying anxiously up the long companionway, Nevada had her way barred by a huge barrel-chested man who stood, arms crossed, at the top of the gangway.

Miss,” he said in a deep, authoritative voice, “the
Gambler
is not open to customers or guests at the moment.”

“And I am not a guest, sir,” she informed him. “I am a singer. I wish to speak at once with the person in charge of entertainment.”

The muscular giant grinned and his big arms came unfolded. “That would be Pops McCullough. Is he expecting you?”

Nevada fibbed. “Yes, he is. This sun is fierce. If you’ll kindly show me to Mr. McCullough’s cabin …”

Like many gigantic men, the burly
Moonlight Gambler’s
fearless bouncer was easily bullied by women. Especially pretty young women.

“Right this way, miss,” said the giant, his voice now friendly; and taking Nevada’s suitcase, he escorted her to a closed door below decks. With calloused knuckles he rapped and announced to the man inside, “Pops, you have a visitor.”

Pops McCullough looked exactly like a real live Santa. His hair, mustache, and full wavy beard were snowy white. His cheeks were ruddy, his eyes a light blue. Pops was dozing in his chair, hands folded atop a fat belly, his pink lips open just enough to make a high whistling sound as he snored.

Pops awoke with a start and his blue eyes opened wide when he saw, standing directly before his mahogany desk in the dim cabin, a tiny dark-haired girl who was so pretty and sweet-looking, he was sure she’d stepped out of his dreams. When he heard what she’d come for, Pops McCullough told her she was in the wrong place.

“Child,” said Pops, “you look like an angel. You ought to try a convent.” He closed his eyes and added, “Pull the door shut when you leave.”

Nevada said, “I am not leaving.”

He opened his eyes. “Yes, you are. This is a gambling boat, missy. The women who work for me are singers and dancers and … and”—he cleared his throat—“they … ah, entertain and charm men, if you know what I’m saying.”

“Of course I know what you’re saying,” Nevada replied evenly, having no idea that she wasn’t comprehending what he was trying to tell her. That the ladies who entertained on the stage of the
Moonlight Gambler
were sometimes called upon to entertain in one of its silk-walled bedrooms as well.