Summary
A soot-smeared titan of the Mississippi, Jim Bludso, commands the thunderous boilers of the Prairie Belle while cradling a fragile Eden at Gilgal—an Illinois river-town crib, a Southern-bred wife, and an infant christened only by the coo of “Little Breeches.” Secession’s drumbeat detonates the idyll; Union enlistment cleaves the marriage along the Mason-Dixon fault of loyalties, sending Jim marching northward and his bride drifting southward into the perfumed traps of Natchez. There, the reptilian contractor Ben Merrill—equal terms river-shark and war-profiteer—oozes into her loneliness, coaxing her to abandon both conjugal vow and maternal instinct for the gaslit promise of New Orleans. Merrill’s next scheme is civic annihilation: a shoddy levee at Gilgal whose inevitable collapse he intends to pin on the absent engineer and on Banty Tim, the ex-slave whose blood once soaked the same battlefields where Jim learned mercy. Post-war, Jim returns to scorched earth—wife vanished, child bewildered—yet finds in Kate Taggart, the storekeeper’s daughter, a second dawn. The prodigal wife, gutted by guilt, crawls back; Merrill weaponizes her contrition, persuading her to sabotage the sandbag line at flood crest. A sabotaged skiff, a mid-river sinking, and Banty Tim’s Christ-like rescue invert the lynch-mob logic: the Black savior stands condemned until Little Breeches’ toddler testimony shames the noose. One year forward, the Prairie Belle races rival steamers in a pyrotechnic regatta; Merrill, now stoker in shackles, traps the boy amid roaring furnaces. Boilers detonate like Vesuvius on water; Jim, pinned by iron and memory, is hauled from Hades again by Banty Tim. In the hush after thunder, death takes the wandering wife, allowing the survivors—widower, orphan, bride-in-waiting, and redeemed hero—to re-knot their four-strand cable of kinship and steam once more into the copper sunrise.
Synopsis
Jim Bludso is engineer of the Mississippi River packet the "Prairie Belle." He has a home in Gilgal, Ill., and a wife and twelve-month-old baby at the time the story opens, in 1861. A call is received for volunteers and he joins the Northern army. His wife is a Southern girl, and she opposes his joining the Union forces. The quarrel results in a separation and Jim goes to war. Ben Merrill, an unscrupulous contractor, meets Jim's wife in Natchez, her home town, and induces her to go with him to New Orleans. She deserts her baby and goes. In New Orleans a levee contractor comes to Merrill with the proposition that they take the contract for a new levee to be built at Gilgal. Merrill accepts and leaves New Orleans without telling the woman where he is going, and she is left to take care of herself. After the war Jim returns to Natchez and finds that his wife has deserted their little boy, and no one knows where she is. He takes the boy, Little Breeches, and Banty Tim, a negro, who has saved his life during the war, and returns to Gilgal. He is welcomed by Kate Taggart, the daughter of the village storekeeper. Jim's wife yearns for her baby and returns. Jim forgives her for the child's sake. The high waters are coming on and Merrill is afraid that the levee will not hold. He plans to lay the blame on Jim and the negro. He arouses the suspicion of the townspeople against the negro and Jim is forced to fight for Banty Tim on several occasions. Merrill meets Jim's wife and induces her to loosen the sandbags and leave the water into the village. She escapes in a boat, the bottom of which has been cut by Merrill. In the middle of the stream the boat begins to sink and Banty Tim goes to her rescue. The negro is accused of breaking the levee and then escaping. Jim offers his life as a forfeit if the negro does not return by sunrise. The next day the village people are at Indian Mound, and the men are about to hang Jim because Banty Tim has not come back. Just then he comes on with Little Breeches, who tells of his rescue by the negro. A year later Jim is again engineer of the "Prairie Belle." In a race with another boat the engines become overheated. Merrill is aboard and Jim has him locked in the oil room. When the boat takes fire Jim goes and opens the door of the oil room and finds his son there with Merrill. While they are trying to escape the boilers explode. Jim is rescued from the debris by Banty Tim. Some time later Jim's wife having died, he and Little Breeches and Kate and Banty Tim are united in a happy family.
