Driftwood (Spears)/Chapter 2

R. and Mrs. Carruth were in Cape Girardeau for some time. They had supplies to buy, besides being anxious to get news of the overflow. News was coming by telephone and telegraph every little while. In St. Louis there was a good deal of trouble, and East St. Louis was fighting the still rising flood. Soldiers were on guard to prevent any one cutting a levee in one place to ease the strain somewhere else. Thousands of men were working to fight the flood back, by placing bags of sand, layer upon layer, on the levee-top. Rumors were flying that Cairo, the St. Francis Bottoms, Kansas City, and a score of other towns had suffered disaster. It was said that the rescuers were going out into the bottoms and finding people in the extremities of peril and destitution. Little groups of spectators stood looking down the half-flooded streets of the town on the bluffs, at the dark drift that flowed by.

"There’s a house! There’s a big barn!" some one cried.

"Look’t! There’s a barge torn loose!" said another.

Boxes and barrels, sections of fences squeezed upright into the drift, even a telegraph-pole, still erect, with wires dangling,—went by without causing comment. In a gray gust of rain the watchers saw a shanty-boat drifting down, turning around and around.

"Them shanty-boaters don’t care what they do, or where they go!" some one exclaimed. "They’d better keep a driftin’ by!"

Everything seemed brought to a standstill by the passing of the terrible spring tide. That night people who lived on the high rocky bluffs did not envy the owners of the rich bottom-lands, who saw their wealth submerged, and who could not know what trick the waters would play upon them. Perhaps a wave of sand would wash down over the most fertile of fields, and make it useless; perhaps the swirling sucks would bore deep pits into the level ground, "blue holes" an acre across and a hundred feet deep; perhaps the banks would be caved in, and where there had been a wheat-field or a corn-field the river itself would be flowing in a new channel.

"I remember the big flood that spring when Kaskaskia cut-off went across and the Mississippi took it down into the Kaw River instead of over on the west side, back in the old times!" somebody began, but people hadn’t the patience to listen to history when there was so much news at hand, and the narrator talked to deaf ears.

A few whispers, low-voiced remarks, and then steady silence for minutes at a stretch. People were so insignificant and unimportant in the presence of that phenomenon that most of them knew it, and if any one pushed his hat upon the back of his head and opened wide his mouth, to talk loud in order to attract attention, he was immediately punished as those near him would draw away and leave him to his self-importance.

The Carruths found themselves answering questions; they were river people, and when some one recognized them as such it was with curiosity and some irritation,—the usual attitude of "bank folks" towards shanty-boaters.

"Well, what’s she doin’ now?" one demanded.

"Still rising," the river-man said.

"Thought she’d quit makin’ for a while!"

"It’s that bulge out of the Illinois coming down, ahead of the big upper-river wave," Mr. Carruth explained. "She’s past thirty feet now, and still going up! Lucky place to be here; that big flat across the river lets the current run by fast. At Cairo the water goes away above fifty feet, and here you don’t go past forty feet—never did, except in eighteen forty four when you got to forty-two and a half. That’s the record here. In nineteen hundred and three you went to thirty-six, but I see the current is faster this year, and probably it won’t go so high."

Thus they talked in technical river phrase and compared the present with the past.

Mrs. Carruth had bought her supplies, and after a time she and her husband went down to the skiff moored in the side street, and Mr. Carruth rowed up one street, and out into the dead water above town. The back-wash from the flood was calm and glassy between rain gusts. A little drift specked the surface, but there were neither current nor waves to interfere with them. Of course, they had to row between the fence posts and in one place they held down the barbed wire so the skiff could Slide over.

Following along the shore, they rounded the point and started up the creek ravine, against the slight current. It was nearly dark. When they had gone some distance up the narrow waterway Mr. Carruth remarked:

"Why, I didn’t know we were so far up the creek! We’ve come some distance, haven’t we?"

"There are those trees—I thought—" Mrs. Carruth looked sharply around, but the place seemed strange.

It was strange! They found that their shanty-boat had disappeared, and with their observation sharpened by anxiety they soon located the trees opposite which they had moored it, and then they found the very hole into which the stake had been driven.

It was late candle-light by that time. The boat was gone, and the father and mother looked around in increasing fear and dismay. It had pulled loose, floated out with the current, and—Who could say what had happened to it?

"I don’t see how it could have happened!" Mrs. Carruth declared. "Sib’s a good riverman—as good as anybody of his age!"

"He may have gone ashore," the father suggested.

"We’d have seen him," she said. "He wouldn’t have gone after dark!" "Perhaps he went to sleep, and—"

"Went to sleep!" She shrugged her shoulders. "You couldn’t make him take a nap in the afternoon; not for anything! I don’t know—I’m worried. I wish—What can we do?"

"We’ll drop down the edge of the current; he may have lodged or made fast somewhere down below, along the main current. You see, we came up inside, close to the bluffs. Perhaps he is tied to one of those trees."

They went down in the edge of the drift, but they saw no house-boat moored anywhere along there. They rowed up one of the Cape Girardeau streets, and talked to other boatmen, and to people who had been watching the flood that afternoon.

The hard rain had prevented any one’s having a clear view of the river, but two or three shanty~boats had been seen going down. They went to the River Tavern to await news.

"I don’t see how it could have happened!" the father said. Mrs. Carruth sat stifling the sobs that rose in her throat.

"My poor boy!" she whispered. "My brave son!"

The river had carried away her son!

"Oh, he’ll be sure to get out all right!" Mr. Carruth assured her. "All he’ll have to do is take the sweeps and row ashore somewhere. He’ll land in down below."

"If he isn’t caught in a squeeze," she suggested, "and the boat all smashed!"

"In a squeeze there are always lots of logs and things to ride on; in the morning, or perhaps to-night he may be taken off by a skiffman, or a drifter, or some one else. Perhaps he has been already."

So Mrs. Carruth worried and Mr. Carruth consoled her all that long dark night as they waited in the tavern at the edge of the flood’s waters, listening to the low thunder of the crashing of timber against timber out in midstream, or straining their ears to catch any unusual sound that rose above the murmurings of the restless current. Sometimes they slept a little, but before daylight they were awake and downstairs.

Just at dawn they sat down at the breakfast-table, where men who had been up all night, watching buildings and boats jeopardized by the rising tide, joined them. A minute later, others came in who had been down below Cape Girardeau in a gasolene-launch, to rescue a family reported to be lodged in the woods above La Croix Creek. They told how they had found a man and a woman in the trees, their house-boat having broken up against the woods in the bend, through the send of a floating island of drift.

"Didn’t see anything of my boat?" Carruth asked.

"You lost your boat, eh?"

"It drifted out. Boy’s on it, too!"

"That so? But he’ll be all right—right’s a muskrat’d be! I saw him and some other little chaps once riding logs in the back-water. Why, that boy’d walk across the drift!"

"You think so!" Mrs. Carruth exclaimed. "You really think he could?"

"Why, of course! You couldn’t get that boy under, light’s he is on his feet! Why, he spun the log right around, one of those white-pine poles, same as a log-driver would!"

The Carruths smiled. It was comforting to know that their son could do things with a skill he might need when the river caught him. He could swim, row a boat, make a landing, and read the river signs; and he knew a thousand things no Up-the-Banker need know, but which are vitally useful to one who goes shanty-boating.

Word that Sibley Carruth had been carried away in his father’s shanty-boat had been gossiped around town. Messages had been sent down the railway line, to be forwarded into the overflow, as opportunity offered, so that people would know about the matter.

"No word from down below," Mr. Carruth was told by the telegraph operator. "Our wires over Thebes bridge are open of course. He’ll be passing Cairo sometime this morning. It’s fifty-five miles down. They’ll see the boat from the levee, if it has’nt [sic] landed above there. Everything is under below Commerce and they think it’s caving fast at Saladin towhead; drift is piling in there, some—"

"Oh!" Mrs. Carruth caught her breath. "Suppose, Perry—"

"Don’t worry!" Mr. Carruth replied. "There’s a chance of the boat’s being carried into the trees by the drift, but you remember that time we tripped down tied to a big snag, for two days, right out in the drift? We didn’t think a thing—"

"Of course not!" she laughed, a little hysterically. "We didn’t know any better."

"It’s all right!" he declared. "You mustn’t worry. Every one knows Sib can take care of himself if any one is able to!"

"And he’s been wanting to go alone, too!" she recalled, with just a touch of asperity. "I hope he’s satisfied."

"Lots to eat, a good little boat that rows like a skiff, a brave heart—And he knows—Why, that boy has read River Commission reports clear through, and he’s always talking to shanty-boaters, asking them about the river and how to do things. I wish he had a skiff, though—in case—in case—"

"The drift should break the hull in, and sink it!" she cried. "If we could only do something! What can we do?"

"Just wait." He shook his head.

"Well, I won’t wait!" She announced. "I’m going over to see what I can do for the refugees!"

People who lived out on the near-by bottoms, driven from their homes, had flocked into the village. Some had remained too long at home, and had escaped only when their houses were rocked on the foundations. Some had even been taken from roofs, or off improvised rafts. Some women and children needed a great deal of help from others better situated. The Carruths did not feel quite so badly lost as some others. They had lived as shanty-boaters for several years, but they had the calm and poise of well-educated and intelligent persons. Mr. Carruth’s work of finding choice logs for extra fine lumber paid him well. Living in a house-boat on the rivers, he had been able to save money through the wise investment of which he received a considerable income in dividends and rents. He knew most of the ten thousand miles of navigable streams in the Mississippi basin, and had seen them in all their phases, from extreme low water, with the baffling changes of channels in quicksands, to great and overwhelming floods which devastated the bottoms from river ridge to river ridge.

During their years afloat Sibley had been growing up with his bright eyes filled with the wonders seen from the river, from miles-wide prairie to bad-land washes; from arid sage brush land to miles-square wheat-fields; from cattle herded by cow-boys to wild deer in the timber brakes along the river. The Carruths had entered the lower river, with its willow towheads, caving banks, dark swamp brakes, and settled territory interspersed with virgin wilderness.

Having learned to read, the boy had looked upon one of the old Missouri River Commission reports as a treasure of literature. The report told of the failure of men to cope successfully with the Big Muddy. The river maps, on a scale of an inch-to-the-mile, showed the twists and bends of the river, the islands and reaches.

Besides river reports, Sibley had read histories and stories, trappers’ magazines, biographies, grammars, and what not, when he must sit in the little cabin of the shanty-boat floating in a still sheltered eddy, with the rain pattering on the canvas-covering of the thin board roof.

So while, in this great emergency, Mrs. Carruth could not help worrying about Sibley, she knew that he had knowledge and training, experience and courage. Not only did he know books but he was river-wise. He pulled a sturdy stroke on the long, light shanty-boat sweeps as they swung on their iron pins in the tops of oak posts on each side of the bow deck. He could swim far in river currents. He had fished from skiffs in running water, and spent many a day earning money at busy river ferries, where he handled motor-launches carrying passengers across, while the ferrymen handled the slower, more difficult flat-boats with loads of cattle, horses, wagons, automobiles, and other vehicles.

"At least, he was prepared to take care of himself. He knows what to do!" Mr. Carruth assured her. "What boy has had better training?"