Driftwood (Spears)/Chapter 16

HE telegram from Mr. Kalas telling about the finding of the shanty-boat at New Madrid found the Carruths ready to hurry to their son. Then, when the other telegram came, saying they would meet at Memphis, was another detail settled. The big government steamer Tupelo, one of the craft of the greatest fleet on the Mississippi—a fleet probably numbering more boats than all the privately owned companies’ fleets put together,—came down the river to Cape Girardeau that evening. and Sib’s parents took passage to Memphis.

They ran down to Cairo, past the Forks, into the lower river. At Hickman the steamer stopped to take on a crew of bridge-builders needed by a railway whose embankment had been washed out over in the St. Francis Bottoms west of Memphis.

A man and a woman came aboard the steamer and stood talking to the captain. Then they went ashore, the woman crying, and the steamer went on its way down the flood. Fair weather in the lower Ohio and upper Mississippi valleys had given the outpour of run-off waters a check, and the flood showed signs in the Cairo district of receding as much as three tenths of an inch.

They tied up at New Madrid for a little while. There too, the situation had changed for the better, as the people adapted themselves to flood conditions, and became reconciled to the largest flood in the recorded history of the river. In mid-morning the steamer stopped at Tiptonville to unload supplies; and at Caruthersville a few hundred cotton bags to be filled with earth were thrown off to be added to the supply there, ready to surround sand boils.

That evening, as they sat at the supper-table with Captain Prendal, the Carruths told him of their errand down the river.

"Our boy was carried away in our house-boat," Mr. Carruth said, "and we didn’t know what had become of him till we read about his working with Kalas in the overflow."

"Kalas just told me to take you on at the Cape," the captain said. "I didn’t know you’d lost anybody down the line. There’s been a lot of people missing, and families broken up, this tide. There always is in a big overflow, and it stands to reason it would be worse this flood, when the river has gone so high out of its banks. A man and woman, Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Brail, came aboard at Hickman and asked me to watch out for their boy. I told them I would, but what’s the use? There’s no hope for them. They might better make up their minds."

"What happened?" Mrs. Carruth asked.

"The foundation of their house just above Cairo, in the back-wash, gave way all of a sudden. Brail saved his wife—that’s all. The baby was sunning in the baby-buggy on the gallery. The building collapsed, and the parents rode the drift and found high ground. They heard the baby call, they said; but they imagined that! They even thought they saw him, but there’s not a chance in a thousand that they did. And what chance would a kiddie have floating down the drift in a baby-carriage, the way it was running on the rising waters a week ago? They owned thousands of acres of land and a big sawmill, too!"

Mrs. Carruth listened breathlessly. Her eyes sought her husband’s. "Can it be that the boys have found him?" she asked.

"It’s barely possible, but you know all that’s happened!" he replied, referring to the uncounted mysteries of the great river tide.

Tears flooded Mrs. Carruth’s eyes. Herself a mother, she knew what that other mother was feeling, what hopes were fighting against the fear, even the certainty, that her child was gone.

The steamer rushed swiftly down the current, throbbing and almost alive in its send and turn, swerve and hold. Sometimes it would strike a submerged log, and they would hear the thump and rolling thunder of the wood as it bumped along the bottom, a distant bell ringing and the engines stopping their soughing and sighing, that the stern-wheel might not be torn to pieces by a timber in the buckets. All clear, they would go on again, stopping the next time to drift by when a signal from a levee alongshore warned them that the wash of the steamer’s swell might overtop the dirt bank and make a crevasse.

They landed at the wharf-boat in Memphis, and when the gang-plank was run out, Sibley and Jimmy Veraine were waiting at the hand-rail for them to come down. Never had the Carruths seen Sibley so straight and sturdy looking, nor had they ever seen his face happier than when he sprang to catch them in his arms, as though he were large enough to hold them both.

Then he turned and introduced Jimmy, his river partner. "And we’ve lost Jep—and the baby!" Jimmy exclaimed; for nothing else interested him so long as his brother was missing.

"What happened?" Mr. Carruth asked.

Sibley told everything that had taken place.

"Somebody wanted to adopt the baby up there. I read that," Mr. Carruth interrupted.

"I wish we hadn’t gone to them!" Sibley exclaimed angrily. "As soon as they found out that—who we were looking for, they sicked a lot of detectives and deputy sheriffs on us, to find out what we knew about Jep getting away with the baby. They’re hunting all over the city, now. You see, Memphis is about the only place anybody could run a baby-carriage, so we thought he might be here. If he is—There!"

He turned and glared at two keen-eyed, intensely preoccupied men who had drawn near and were straining their ears to hear what Sibley was saying. Mr. Carruth looked at the two.

"You are city detectives?" he demanded.

"Why—well, yes, sir!" one replied.

"What can we do for you?"

"Why—er—we were just walking around."

"Nonsense!" Carruth exclaimed. "Where is headquarters, Sibley? I’ve forgotten!"

"Up-town, there."

"We’d better go up and talk to the chief of police, or the sheriff, I think," Mr. Carruth declared. "Jep is not a criminal, and perhaps it would have been better if he had not run away when the authorities tried to take the baby from him. He had as good a right to it as any one, and it is our baby as much as anybody’s. I’ll find out what they mean by offering a reward for him."

Mr. Carruth had studied law, though he was a business man now, and they all started up town together—the detectives, the two youths, and the father and mother.

"It’s like this, Chief," Carruth explained to the chief officer. "My son here, and James and Jepson Veraine were caught in the drift and as they came down the river they rescued a baby about two years of age who was floating in a baby-carriage. Somebody in New Madrid wanted to get that baby to adopt, but it belongs to us—"

"Well, I don’t see but what respectable town people would make better parents and associates than shanty-boaters," the officer remarked rather superciliously.

"Oh, I beg your pardon, Chief! Where is the mayor’s office?"

"What’s the matter with you?" the chief demanded, uneasily.

"I want to talk to some one I consider my equal" Mr. Carruth declared sharply. "Here’s my card; if money will make any impression on you, I may tell you that I own Sibley Carruth Timbers, Incorporated, which is rated in the commercial agencies at a million dollars."

"Oh-h!" the officer cried. "Say! I understand, now! Say! you leave it to me! I’ll find that kid—those kids of yours! Sure I will! Right away! Hey-y outside there! Captain—"

The door opened and a police captain appeared.

"Hey, Captain!" the chief said. "Send out the motor-cycle squad, looking for that—what’s his name—you know, boy and baby——Jep Borum—or—"

"Jepson Veraine," Jimmy corrected him.

"That’s it! Jepson Veraine! Go get ’im, see? But don’t hurt ’im! There’s been a mistake. We thought he was a crook, but he’s the son or friend of this gentleman, Mr. Carruth!"

So the Police Department bestirred itself: from headquarters a dozen policemen of the motorcycle squad, and two yellow roadsters started forth to search for the missing boy and the river foundling.

"We’ll get ’im!" The chief nodded his head wisely. "We get anybody we want, if we want ’im bad enough. Why, we’ve arrested nine hundred people here in a month—I think! That’s counting speedsters and misdemeanors, of course. The only crooks that really bother us around here are pickpockets, and sometimes hold-ups, and so on. Yes, sir! If we get after anybody, we get him! Why, we make this city safe to live in! If it wa’n’t for us police, you’d never know what’d happen, one day to the next. Now you can generally tell, for we’ve got this town spotted, and spotted right!"

The chief was an enthusiastic officer. To his mind, the whole city revolved around the Police Department, just as, probably, the mayor or the political boss, or the chairman of the Board of Trade, or any other important citizen would be sure the city revolved around him.

Mr. Carruth stopped at a cigar store and sent a box of cigars to the chief and he and his party went to the hotel for lunch. The police had been looking for Jep and the baby, but had failed to find any clue. It was doubtful that the two were in Memphis, or had been there.

After lunch the Carruths and Jimmy walked up Main Street till they arrived at Ferry Street, where they made their way down to the water’s edge, and looked at the skiffs and small gasolene-launches along the pavement. Sitting on the bow of one of the boats was a youth of sixteen years, playing a French harp—and making it sing!

The boy didn’t look at them, but recognized their presence by a little exaggeration of his shrugging and swaying to the time of his harmonies. When, with a flourish, he ended "Shooting Pigeons," the musician drew a long breath and patted his eloquent little harmonica fondly.

"Say, Buck!" Mr. Carruth approached him, "you off the river?"

"I am now," the boy replied evasively.

"So am I," the man replied, looking up the street. "My shanty-boat’s down to Helena," he went on, falling into the speech of the river people, "but Sib, here, salvaged it. It came by here, about four or five days ago—dropped out of New Madrid between days—understand? Friend of ours had it, but he turned up missing. He wasn’t on the boat when Sib, there, hooked on to it. We’re kind of wondering could we get word to him."

"You river folks?" the boy demanded, with a shrewd, sidelong gaze.

"Yeh!" Mr. Carruth looked around as though to learn whether or not any one were within ear-shot; "out the upper Mississippi. Carruth’s my name. That’s my wife, theh. Sib’s my boy. The other boys are Jimmy and Jep Veraine.

"I heard—don’t know, though—that somebody was rewarded out o’ New Madrid t ’other day—um-m—kidnappin’, or somethin.’"

"Likely," the man admitted, "though he hadn’t done anything."

"Yeh; an’ theh’s two rewards, now—a hundred an’ a thousan’!"

"What!" Carruth gasped, losing his air of caution.

"That’s right. Feller was down yeah just fore you come—one o’ those foxy wise ones down to headquarters!" the boy sniffed. "’Lowed ’f I’d get him next, he’d gimme a hundred!"

"Shucks! And he take a thousand?"

"Looks like!"

"Well?" "If I was him, an’ they’d rewarded me, I’d keep my mouth shut to anybody," the boy declared. "But I ain’t him. I’ll go see Paw; likely he’s heard somethin’. I’ll let yeh know. You watch these boats, will yeh?"

"Sure thing!"

The boat-watcher jumped into a motor-skiff, backed out, and headed down the stream toward Wolf River. He rounded the corner and disappeared toward Ash Slough, where the shanty-boat town was located for the period of high water. He was gone only a few minutes, and returned with a lank, keen-faced river man.

"Why, howdy, Carruth!" the man grinned. "How y ’am?"

"Fine!" Carruth smiled. "How’s Crimson?"

"Silky as a thoroughbred. That’s the missus, eh? Hi-i!"

They shook hands around, and after commonplace greetings, and the remark that the Mississippi was rambunctious, Crimson and Carruth drew off to one side.

"The boy says you got a int’rest in those kids that New Madrid’s been rewardin’."

"Yes; one’s that boy’s brother. Sib, there, was toted off by the tide, out the creek above Cape Girardeau. He picked the two brothers out the drift somewhere down below, and come day, they found a baby in a baby-carriage, and took him on. ’Cording to the papers, they want the baby up to New Madrid."

"A blockader dropped down last night," Crimson said; "they’d heard at Caruthersville about it. Seems they had an awful row up to New Madrid about it. They grabbed off the wrong baby, and the city marshal got in Dutch with a double-barrel shotgun. It was Torkly’s gun. You know him?"

"Sure—and he’s an awful temper, too!"

"Wonder he didn’t blow the marshal’s head off, but they’d always been friendly, and Torkly give him a chance to explain. Ho law! Mrs. Torkly wouldn’t take any explanations, and she grabbed the marshal and drapped him off the bow in five foot o’ water. An’ she wouldn’t ’pologize, neither, when she found it were all a mistake, and the baby they was after was blue-eyed, and not black-eyed like hers."

"The boy had escaped?"

"He cut loose right away; bright boy, that! He knowed when trouble was comin’ was the time to begin to evade it. He just dropped out. He wouldn’t ’a’ done it, ’course, only he hadn’t no friends there, and he wanted to see somebody before he let go. Possession’s nine points o’ law, you know,’specially regardin’ river waifs. He knowed he had no legal claim, and he knowed those women hadn’t any, neither, and just wanted it ’cause the kid was a clever little kid, to look at."

"He’s safe, then?"

"Prob’ly," Crimson replied blandly.

"We’d like to find him," Carruth remarked.

"You ain’t the only folks that would," the river man grinned. "The boy tells me there’s ’leven hundred into it, now."

"Why, if it’s the reward you want—"

"Just stop right there, Carruth!" the river-man exclaimed angrily. "I don’t take some things from any man; remember that! Us river folks sticks together, and if there’s traitors that would give anybody up, I ain’t that kind. I know you, an’ I’ve seen you, but you’re so respectable I don’t know, yet, whether to trust you or not. Those detectives around are always comin’ some new game or other. If you are all right, ’course I ’pologize to you for suspicionin’ you, but if you ain’t all right, why, you can go right plumb down Ole Mississip into the Gulf o’ Mexico!"

"That boy there is his brother." Carruth nodded, for he understood the river point of view. "His name is Jimmy. The missus, Sibley, and I’ll go back up-town. You talk to Jimmy. They’re out of the Meramec River, above Cape Girardeau. I’m going up to the Natchez House. When you can, let us know what we’d better do, will you?"

"’Course I will! But I can tell you this much, without violatin’ any confidence: when the police and plain-clothes men and deputy sheriffs began to run up and down and around, and searchin’ our cabin-boats, there was a grand old skedaddle—just for a hundred dollars. You know us river folks! Those kids ain’t here, consequently. Now that they raised the bid, we got to be an awful lot more partic’lar! But we’ll leave it to Jep. He’s likely, that boy! Personally, I’d just soon talk to you, myself, but it’s his secret, not mine. You understand that?"

"Why, of course! I’ve lived on the river quite a few years."

"I remember your first trip down. ’Course, nobody that hasn’t lived on the river all his life can ever get to be a reg’lar right-down river man, but you can kind o’ get the hang of it, after a while—sort o’ understand. If I get a chance, I’ll get a word to Jep. I’ll take his brother over to my shanty-boat, too. He’ll be all right over there."

"Hey, Jimmy!" Mr. Carruth called, "Mr. Crimson, here, wants you to go with him. We’ll wait up-town till we hear from you at the Natchez House."

The Carruths went up-town, and as they went they talked over the question of the whereabouts of Jep and the baby. They laughed at the care taken by Crimson not to betray the boy "rewarded" by Up-the-Bankers, who often bothered river folks. Although they laughed, they understood the faithfulness to their own kind—the sometimes misdirected friendliness to fugitives as evil in their ways as Jep was good in his.