CHAPTER I
Hugh McVey was born in a little hole of a town stuck on a mud bank on the western shore of the Mississippi
River in the State of Missouri. It was a miserable place in which to be born. With the exception of a narrow
strip of black mud along the river, the land for ten miles back from the town−−called in derision by river men
"Mudcat Landing"−−was almost entirely worthless and unproductive. The soil, yellow, shallow and stony,
was tilled, in Hugh's time, by a race of long gaunt men who seemed as exhausted and no−account as the land
on which they lived. They were chronically discouraged, and the merchants and artisans of the town were in
the same state. The merchants, who ran their stores−−poor tumble−down ramshackle affairs−−on the credit
system, could not get pay for the goods they handed out over their counters and the artisans, the shoemakers,
carpenters and harnessmakers, could not get pay for the work they did. Only the town's two saloons
prospered. The saloon keepers sold their wares for cash and, as the men of the town and the farmers who
drove into town felt that without drink life was unbearable, cash always could be found for the purpose of
getting drunk.
Hugh McVey's father, John McVey, had been a farm hand in his youth but before Hugh was born had moved
into town to find employment in a tannery. The tannery ran for a year or two and then failed, but John McVey
stayed in town. He also became a drunkard. It was the easy obvious thing for him to do. During the time of his
employment in the tannery he had been married and his son had been born. Then his wife died and the idle
workman took his child and went to live in a tiny fishing shack by the river. How the boy lived through the
next few years no one ever knew. John McVey loitered in the streets and on the river bank and only awakened
out of his habitual stupor when, driven by hunger or the craving for drink, he went for a day's work in some
farmer's field at harvest time or joined a number of other idlers for an adventurous trip down river on a lumber
raft. The baby was left shut up in the shack by the river or carried about wrapped in a soiled blanket. Soon
after he was old enough to walk he was compelled to find work in order that he might eat. The boy of ten went
listlessly about town at the heels of his father. The two found...... |
