Driftwood (Spears)/Chapter 11

IMMY VERAINE, going down the levee, passed guards and little groups of men and women who were watching the river, and who paid no attention to him as he went by. If any one had seen him get out of the boat Mr. Kalas had arrived in, nobody thought anything of it. Certainly, no word reached Badoria of his having come with Kalas.

This little settlement behind the levee was raw and weather-beaten. Water that had siped through the levee or fallen in rains or come back from the overflow in the brakes stood in the level bottoms, with scarcely a bit of ground showing above it. The houses, built on piles and high foundations, were above the flood. People went around in hip-boots or in skiffs, according to their circumstances.

Reaching the Badoria section, Jimmy felt the sullen suspicion of some of the people who noticed him. He glowered as surlily as the least pleasant of the levee-roosters. He was stopped at last by a burly, scowling man.

"Where you goin’?" the man demanded.

"I’m off the river," Jimmy answered. "I was tore up, and I ’lowed maybe I’d get a snack down thisaway."

"We got all we can tend to, without feedin’ a lot o’ river-rats," the man said.

"I wondered if a river-rat wouldn’t be good for somethin’, seein’ ’s there’s so much river around," Jimmy said, insolently.

"Hi-i!" the man laughed. "River-rats is all that’s got much show now!"

Jimmy made no comment. The man gazed at him sharply for a minute or two, considering, then turned and walked down the levee to a little group standing on the top, talking in low tones. Jimmy waited. Kalas had sent him down there to find out what men like this one were thinking and talking about. He had assumed the manner of a homeless, reckless river boy, and the man had instantly recognized the type he was portraying.

By and by, a big man beckoned to Jimmy, who strolled over to the little group. They were gruff, husky fellows and as he looked at their faces Jimmy realized the kind of men they were. A little way beyond them were an other kind of men in another group—"honorble citizens" Jimmy called them in his thoughts.

"Off the river, eh?" the man demanded.

"Yas, suh!" Jimmy admitted.

"Always lived on the river?"

"Oh, I been to St. Louis, an’ Louisville, and around," Jimmie replied, in the bored manner of a river pirate.

"Makin’ easy money?"

"I make a livin’," Jimmy retorted, "but I never found an easy one."

"That’s right!" some one chuckled.

"Lookin’ for a job'!"

"I never found one I didn’t look for."

Jimmy shrugged his shoulders.

"Maybe there’s one comin’ to you."

"I ain’t seen hit yet!"

The men laughed shortly, and overloud.

"You-all partic’lar about what you do!" one asked in a low voice.

"Yas, suh; I’m partic’lar. What I want’s a job that ain’t too hard work, an’ which has enough spondulics into hit to pay my time and trouble."

Still the men hesitated. They studied the river lad sharply, and in silence. They looked at one another, while Jimmy nonchalantly looked at the river. These men had something on their minds. Mr. Kalas wanted to know about them. At once Jimmy had found that the people were in a desperate frame of mind, and he had seen river pirates in a swaggering mood, needed for criminal work and waiting for their price.

"Take ’im home, Talkron," one suggested. "Give ’im a snack."

"Come on, you!" Talkron ordered, and Jimmy went down the back of the levee and into a clinker-built skiff with the man, who rowed him into the settlement of Badoria.

They entered a yard, through the gateway in the fence, and tied the boat to a gallery post of a little house. Inside, a wan, worried woman greeted them:

"The levee goin’ to hold, Drurin?"

"I bet hit’ll hold," the man declared. "Set up a snack for us, Jane."

He went out into the kitchen with her, and talked in a low voice. When he returned, he sat down and talked to Jimmy, asking him question after question,—where he was from, where his people were, what he did for a living. Jimmy evaded all the questions by giving answers that were half truth.

"You see," the man said cautiously at last, "us folks on this side the river are all pore folks. I got some cattle back there in the bottoms, an’ if we overflow, they drown. That big feller, he’s got a lot o’ cattle, too, an’ he’ll be a pore man if the levee breaks. Besides, there’s all our fam’lies and chilluns. You can see we’re worried a lot. What use’d it be to build our levee away up, an’ them fellers on yon side with a new levee an’ lots o’ money an’ workin’ the way they be to keep hit from overtoppin’?"

"Rich fellers always has the highest levees," Jimmy suggested.

"An’ poor fellers on t’ other side—look what they got!"

Jimmy could hardly keep from laughing. From Badoria to Gumbo few volunteers appeared on the levees to help fight the rising waters in the time of high tide. Up and down the river, people said that Badoria was hard hit by the hook-worm, and was too lazy to help itself.

"They’re a tricky set, down thataway, and mean!" river people said.

"Some of us has got together," the man went on cautiously, "to see ’f we couldn’t do some thin’. We kind o’ chipped in together, us fellers you was talking to, to get somebody to hep us out. We need somebody that’s a lot o’ nerve. You’re a smart-lookin’ kid, quick-actin’. Likely you’d open up yer eyes at a chanst to earn—ah—fifty cart-wheels, eh?"

"There’s some jobs pays bigger," Jimmy sniffed, and the call to the snack gave the man a chance to revise his estimate of the river youth.

"Maybe it’d be a hundred—two hundred," the man hinted darkly. "What for?" Jimmy demanded bluntly.

"Why, you see, if that levee over theh should happen to break—why that’d lower the water on this side the river two-three feet, prob ’bly, and then we’d be safe."

"An’ anybody done that—if I considered that," Jimmy said scornfully, "they’d shoot me, er they’d put me in jail for a thousand years!"

"But—’course! They’s mean over that side the river," Talkron admitted. "But—hit wouldn’t take but a minute, in the fog. You’re off the river! You know how to use fog—and night!"

"I ben out in the fog," Jimmy said.

"We’d look after you!" the man exclaimed. "We got a lot o’ people around here—our kind! We looks after our friends! Look’t!"

He held up his hand and counted off seven or eight names, cotton-raisers, cattle-men, land owners, and the like, he said. It was a little clique, and though a moment before he had been pleading the poverty of the Badoria side of the river, now he discoursed on how they would take care of their friends.

Jimmy listened. This was something to know—this list of men conspiring to hire some one to destroy the levee on the other side of the river, in order to save themselves from the consequences of their own failure to go to work and make an honest fight against the flood. Jimmy nodded his head wisely, and after supper he went up on the levee with the man.

Eagerly Talkron’s cronies gathered around. They whispered without disguise now. They told Jimmy all about how he could go over to the other side and break the levee; they told him where to strike, and what to do. They said they’d give him everything to work with—dynamite, fuses, and all the rest. They told him where they had the things stored, and that they would have used them long before, but they didn’t know the river well enough themselves, and they thought it would be better for some one from somewhere else to do the actual work.

They patted Jimmy on the shoulder, and praised him, as evil men do when they want some youngster to do something they are too cowardly to do themselves and yet by which they expect and long to profit. Jimmy listened, made clever replies to comment, and then said:

"I got the idea. I heard likely there’d be somethin’ down thisaway for a man to do and prob’bly you’ll hear from me again, see?"

"Good! Say—that’ll be fine! Here’s good faith money onto it."

Jimmy hesitated. There was the evidence, binding him to the bargain—and binding them. It was a roll of damp, dirty bank-bills, and a stack of silver,—one hundred dollars in all. Jimmy counted the money.

"You can look for me, to-morrow, if not to-night," he said, tucking the money into a five-pound sugar bag—of which he carried several in which to "tote" purchases—and went back up the levee in the gathering night. He had not dared refuse this evidence of a wicked plot.

Jimmy plodded up the spur levee, and saw the motor-launch swinging from the stern of the shanty-boat. He went out and hailed the boat, and when the door opened he saw Kalas sitting with Sibley before a warm fire.

"I want to talk to Mr. Kalas," Jimmy said, and when the engineer came out on the levee, Jimmy told what had taken place. He gave the engineer the hundred dollars in bills and coin.

"They paid you good-faith money—a hundred dollars!" Kalas gasped. "They sure are anxious down there, aren’t they! Well—leave it to me."

Kalas went over to the main levee, ran down the back slope to a skiff, and rowed out into the bottoms, to a commissary. There he called a landing by telephone, and talked for a time about the flood, and raiders in the swamps, and other things which every one was talking about. But in what he said was a cryptic phrase full of meaning.

He returned to the shanty-boat and sat a long time without speaking, while the shanty boater played his victrola. At half-past eight o’clock Jimmy and Sibley made a bed in the launch bottom, and Kalas lay down to rest on a folding cot in the shanty-boater’s cabin.

Before daybreak a motor-boat ran down the river and swung in to the landing. Two rough men were in it, and they whispered with Kalas a while. Then they went out and brought Jimmy in to talk. Pretty soon Jimmy and the two men went on down the river, in the men’s semi-cruiser motor-boat, and they landed at Badoria just at daybreak.

"Hello, you!" some one greeted Jimmy. "These your pals!"

"Yas, suh," Jimmy nodded.

"Come," the man beckoned, and they all went down the back of the levee and rowed over to a house. They hailed the occupants, and were quickly admitted. Others were sent for, and the group around the stove was augmented by new arrivals, until all the chairs and several boxes were occupied.

Talkron and the big fellow did most of the talking, in low whispers. They were willing to pay well, and they wanted a good job done; they would furnish the tools, and they brought in a box of dynamite to prove it. They had a lot of fuse, too, and they told how the stuff could be sunk at a certain critical point, and how the explosion would surely open up that levee on the other side, like barn-doors.

It was a villainous idea. All they had to do was to destroy the work of the energetic and capable people across the flood, and the pressure would be relieved on their own side. Down on the Arkansas River dynamite had lately been used with great success, by people who had the nerve.

"We’re willin’ to pay for it, too!" Talkron declared, showing the money.

The two rough men took charge, now, and Jimmy saw and heard the bargain made, saw the dynamite and tools and fuse delivered, heard the "Good lucks!" and final instructions. He heard the chuckle of the conspirators as they thought how they would be benefited though they knew that their own neighbors, reputable people, would rather have their very homes destroyed than profit by crimes of river desperadoes working for cowards, for hire.

Jimmie and his companions returned to the levee, and went aboard their own launch. Casting off and turning out into the river, they steered around, up-stream, and out of sight in the gray day. That night, the Badoria people, who knew what was expected, listened for the explosion,—the roar that would spell safety for themselves and disaster for the victims on the other side of the river.

They heard no such roar. Some looked out into the night. They were sure it was a good night for the "job." They waited in vain for the destruction of the levee over the way. In the middle of the morning a big steamer appeared out of the upper river, and stepped off shore from the levee, and two or three boat loads of men came ashore. These men went around among the bystanders and touched certain of them on the shoulders.

"You’re wanted," they said. "Don’t make any fuss. Arrested on charge of conspiracy to break a levee."

Some protested; some merely turned gray with terror. And well they might be frightened.

Meanwhile Kalas, with Sibley and Jimmy, had gone down past Badoria, without stopping, to Luxora, where the engineer took a look along the levee and examined the loops and main levees, to make sure everything was being done there as it should be.

"We’re riding the crest down," he told the two, as they ran out into the flood clear of the levee. And then with one of his big laughs he turned to Sibley.

"We’ll have to watch this fellow here!" he said, with a nod toward Jimmy. "He’s a regular detective."

"Why—that’s so!" Jimmy gasped. "I—I never thought of it!"

Then the three laughed together. One learns to be many things, has many adventures down the Mississippi—and doesn’t know it till afterward!