Paperwork was the bane of civilization everywhere and everywhen. That morning, I was having trouble focusing for whatever reason. Some days I just couldn’t bend my focus onto the piles of paper in front of me. It didn’t help that more and more of the reports I was seeing were handwritten; it was bad enough when everything was neat and tidy on bright white paper or screen with fonts chosen for clarity. Now it was off-white mostly parchment paper with hand written script; some of it neat and tidy like Sonya’s, others not so much. It ran the gamut from small and tight to loopy and lovely, the most annoying was the chicken scratch that Timmons or Sheriff wrote up. Those fellas were bad to start with, but if they were hurried or tired it was nigh on unreadable.

The more I stared at the charts of postal rates and freight fees per pound, the more frustrated I got. I was definitely getting someone to go with me the rest of the trip, probably Sonya as she’d been pestering me to see the ‘city’ of St. Louis for a while. Michelle was less interested at this point, she was busy setting up her own little life and nesting like any expectant mother. Matilda just flat out wasn’t interested. Aside from the non-interest she was also hugely pregnant and getting ready to pop. She was already starting to waddle a little bit as she wandered around the camp; a blessing with her though was that she never complained. Zip in the complaints department from tough little Matilda, that didn’t surprise me though – she’d probably go through the entire labor process with only a yawn and a sigh.

So Sonya was it. We needed to get all of our subsidiaries doing their bookkeeping the same way, so taking her along made sense. Even if it might extend the overall trip by a day or two it would be worth it to get a handle on the bookkeeping before things got too far out of control. I thought about going up to discuss the idea with Sven but decided that I had one more task left. I needed to sort and count my money.

I knew how much I owed Henry Leavenworth but I wanted to sort it out by currency type: bank drafts, coin and gold, of course. I was supposed to be exercising our first deal a little further and sell him more gold at the elevated price but if I could pay for anything else with bank drafts I’d be a lot happier. I preferred to build up the currency in townfolks’ hands to prime our economic pump a little further.

So as we chugged upriver I spent the better part of the next hour carefully sorting, counting, stacking and bagging each type of currency. Each bag of gold had to contain exactly one pound: whether it be dust, nuggets, or coin, it shouldn’t be mixed. I did have a few odds and ends that I bagged separately and just strove to remember what they were.

I was taking twenty pounds of gold with me to exchange for greenbacks. That should give me a sizeable chunk of capital to work with when spring arrived. I hoped to get down to New Orleans come spring and make some major purchases, namely more steam engines and lots of steel stock. Our smelting process was slow and it was far more expedient just to purchase the steel we needed. The other thing we needed a lot of was tools - any type of hand tool or farm tool I could get my hands on.

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My watch was telling me that we would be approaching the Fort soon, so I packed my carry bag with gold and armed myself well with pistol, long knife and rifle. It wasn’t wise to carry about that much money without protection. No need to mention my 1911 which sat snugly in its holster, hidden away from prying eyes.

Sven was sitting with John Johnson, the shipwright, at the crew table when I came out of my tiny cabin. I refilled my coffee and sat down to join them. Whatever they had been talking about must not have been important because they dropped that conversation and turned to me. The way they were looking at me expectantly caught me off guard and I was tempted to just start telling bad jokes until they lightened up a bit. Instead I played my Leader role and got right down to business confirming with Sven that we were less than an hour out from the Fort and closing fast. I turned to young Johnson and said, “John..”.

He cut me off quickly with a sheepish grin and said “Please, please, sir call me Jack. I’m not as amused by the entire John Johnson thing as my father is.” The pleading tone in his young voice got to me and reminded me of my own lack of confidence as a youth. I also resisted the humorous temptation to label him ‘Johnny’ figuring that would just be adding insult to injury.

“Jack it is, then!” I stated with a warm grinning smile. I felt for the kid so I kept his instructions short and sweet. Ask around about people with shipwright experience and feel them out. I passed him a hand full of coins - possibly about five dollars in total - and you would have thought he was carrying a mint. I don’t think he’d ever had that much money in his life.

“Don’t be stingy buying drinks to get info, but don’t drink much yourself. All they have is swill anyway and we have plenty of good stuff here if you want to enjoy yourself later. See if you can find anyone and we’ll try to recruit them. Report back to Sven down here on the boat at meal times. If you need me, come to the fort.” I tried to keep the instructions simple. We had discussed what we were looking for yesterday so this was just a follow up. He gave me a good old “Yessir” and then took off to find his bag and get ready to out recruiting.

I turned to Sven and told him my idea of taking Sonya with us and I also listed my concerns. I was seeking possible solutions and he had what I needed.

“Well now Zach, we can just take me wife along to watch over her. Nobody in his right mind gives the ol’ lady any grief and she can help Miss Sonya get used to how things are done out here.”

Sven’s idea was excellent. It also gave us two women on the boat with one of them being experienced and more than a little tough. I’d heard stories about her and that knife she carries, not a woman to be trifled with, by any means. She could also manage Sonya’s behavior as they bopped around town.

Sven had sussed out that something was very different about our little clan. He didn’t know what it was but he knew we were out of place and he didn’t mind helping us. One thing he did know is that we had money and we were doing some awfully cool things with it.

I had to agree with him on that last notion, I was having a lot of fun with my lottery winnings.