One week later, on New Year's Day, 1903, Emma and Cassie boarded a passenger car at the C&O Station and headed east, to Paint Creek. The railway ran overland until it reached St. Albans, and from that point it paralleled the river. Cassie watched coal barges move along the river below them. Emma pointed out the steam packet that ran three days a week from Charleston to Point Pleasant and then down the Ohio to Huntington. Cassie wondered what it would be like to travel on the packet. At the Masonic Home, they were occasionally allowed to go down to the Ohio for a picnic, and Cassie always watched for the paddlewheelers that traveled up and down that river. She'd run down to the riverbank and wave if one passed by near enough. Sometimes she could hear the sound of a piano and other instruments being played from somewhere inside the boat. At night, she would listen for the distant sound of the steamer horns and whistles as she lay in her bed, waiting to be carried off into sleep.

    Cassie turned and look up earnestly into her mother's face. "Momma, somethin' always stirs in my brain when I see riverboats. I can't say exactly what it is, but it feels kinda scary and kinda thrillin'. Do suppose I'll be a steamboat captain when I grow up?"
      
    "Whatever do you mean?" asked Emma, studying her daughter.
    "I mean just what I said, Moma. Can a girl be steamboat captain."
    "I got that part, Cassie, it's the brain stirrin' I'm asking about. I hope you haven't inherited my headaches."