Driftwood (Spears)/Chapter 8

HEN Sibley and Jimmy awakened from the exhausted sleep which followed their toil, they found that the line by which they had moored their launch to a tree, tied nearly as high as they could reach from the bow of the boat, was now only two feet above the surface. During the night the water behind the levee, damned partly by the railway embankment back on the bottoms, and checked partly by the woods at the edge of Reelfoot Lake, had risen five or six feet.

The two ends of the broken levee had been lumping off, too, and the gap between them was hundreds of feet wide, and still cutting away rapidly. The current through was no longer the cascade of the night before, when they had run down into the bottoms to begin the rescue work among those immediately in front of the break; instead it was a wide, smooth sheet, with long, low undulations, broken where a tree stood against the current, and swirling, back on the bottom, where bores, or sucks, were already digging through the soft silt and cutting out deep pits, which would be "blue holes" when the water settled and the flood had gone by.

Day was breaking. The sky was clouded, but there was a sparkle of sunshine for a few minutes, and the bright, gay beams flickered on the glassy surface of the flood. One could hardly realize that the pretty running water, the singing birds in the trees, the coming green of spring, were so close to the scene of desolation which meant suffering and destitution for tens of thousands of people and destruction for none could tell how many tens of thousands of animals.

As we have seen, other boats had come down and were ready to take care of the people in jeopardy out on the Reelfoot Bottoms. The fact that they had gone through in the black night, and had risked tearing the bottom out of their launch, with the certainty of utmost peril to themselves, had given the two youths a certain distinction, and Mr. Kalas, the engineer who had been trying to build up the Reelfoot levee when the overtopping came for lack of help, asked them ashore to eat breakfast with him out of a little iron kettle simmering over a driftwood fire on the levee-top.

There was a reason for his asking them there. He needed them.

"Can you get up into the main river?" Kalas asked.

"It’s a swift current out there," Sib replied, "but if you’ll tie a handy line to a tree and float the other end down Jimmy and I can tie to it and put on our power, and pull ourselves up!"

"You’re off the river, all right!" Kalas laughed. "There’s a light line on the commission steamer coming in now, and we’ll float the rope down, tied to a keg."

Immediately Sib and Jimmy ran around into the middle of the gap in the levee. The current was too swift for them to stem it and work up through, though they could get nearly up to the line of the levee that had washed out. From a skiff, manned by three men, a keg was floated down to them with a half-inch rope tied to it. They caught the keg, and the skiffmen made the other end fast to a little gum-tree. Then Sibley and Jimmy hauled in the line, hand over hand, and, with the power of the motor behind them made the slope of the running torrent. Once over the low crest, the motor picked up and they could hardly pull in the line fast enough. They slowed the push of the motor, and as they reached the tree, the line was taken into the skiff, and the launch swung out around and down to the levee, where Kalas was waiting for them.

Kalas was one of the old, famous river engineers, who for years had studied the Mississippi, fought it, planned campaigns against it, and through it all had kept his love for the magnificence of that great flood, the might of which makes the efforts of men seem so puny and ineffectual at times, but which at other times responds to the restraints of revetments and levees.

Sibley had read his reports in the Mississippi River Commission documents. They had shown, those simple words of the man who knew the river, what must be done, what should be done, what ought not to be done. If he read the reports of some men twice, he read those of Kalas a dozen times.

Now Kalas, the great river scientist, had asked Sibley Carruth to help him and take him down the flood, because Sibley was a regular river boy, and knew the handling of a first-class motor-boat. Kalas did more than that. As they cut loose from the levee to go down the stream, he turned his bright eyes under their shaggy gray brows, upon Sibley, who stood at the wheel.

"I’m glad they sent you over," he said. "When you went down last night through that gap, all dark so that you could see, I said to myself you knew something about the river. Then you turned on the lights—your searchlight! I tell you, that was fine!"

Sibley couldn’t speak after that. Kalas was praising him! By and by he blurted out:

"I like the river!"

Kalas looked at him and smiled.

"So do I!" he exclaimed. "I wasn’t abusing the river, you know; Old Mississip’d be all right if we only knew how to get along with him! It’s like lots of things. You know, in the old days kerosene lamps used to explode and explode, and everybody wondered what on earth was the matter with them, and if they’d never be safe. Well, by and by, somebody came along and separated the gasolene from the kerosene, and now we’re burning the kerosene in the lamps and the gasolene is exploding, the same as always, but it’s in the motors, where it’ll do some good! It’s that way with lots of things we don’t know about, or understand. Look at that flood out there! Millions of horse-power—and next summer we’ll not have enough water in that channel to float a steamboat. Now an ocean steamer would have enough water under it. Some day, boys, some day, some of us’ll get things right with the old river, and we’ll be good friends, the Flood Spirit and we humans."

As he ceased speaking he looked out at the flood tide and his sharp glance softened into a bright, friendly gaze. Sibley couldn’t imagine him cursing the river, as he had heard men along the levee and out in the overflow curse it. Kalas knew in his heart that the real trouble is that people have not really learned to get along right with the monarch stream.

They went down the Reelfoot levee and around the long bend, out of the woods into the open of Slough Neck bend, opposite Island No. 10 and Donaldson Point. The spectacle that met their eyes was most wonderful, for right there the river was going out of all bounds, and cutting across the neck with the long-drawn thunder of river rapids. It was only a mile across the low land from bend to bend of the mighty flood, which was going around ten miles to gain the mile. It was running down a grade of six feet or thereabouts in the ten miles—or six feet in the mile across.

When he saw the jumping, rolling, darting little flood across the neck, Kalas stood up to look at it. He sprang upon a locker, and then he stood erect on the bow of the boat. One of the great river phenomena was imminent there, and he studied the situation as Sibley slowed the boat down to give him time.

"It may cut through there!" the man said. "You can see by the way the water bounds that it’s scouring down there. Yes, sir! We’re lucky if it doesn’t go through, and leave New Madrid six miles away from the river on a blue horseshoe lake. I’d like to go down. I might—but—"

He looked at Sibley. It was Sibley’s boat and there would be risk in going down through there. However, Kalas needed to take a close look at those waters. So Sibley gave the motor a little more gasolene, and running down the edge of the main torrent, he turned a long curve and started down the midst of the romping, bounding, jumping, sliding waters that were rolling over Slough Neck.

They had to go between two patches of woods; they crossed another wood lot, through an old road, and came about in the slackening water below the woods, where Kalas studied the outlook, and felt of the bottom with the pike pole. Sounding along, he found deep scours, deeper than the length of the pole, and he had Sibley heat back and fourth across the current, so that the work of the water could be judged.

"It’s all right, boys," he said at last. "Much obliged for taking me through here; it’ll save me coming back. There won’t be a cut-off this year—that’s that streak of heavy land, like Crowley’s Ridge and the soil at Tiptonville; it isn’t regular silt and dry mud, but a harder, firmer deposit. If it wasn’t. we’d have a cut off in this tide. Gracious! Look at New Madrid!" The town was underwater, and skiffs were rowing up the main street between the rows of houses, whose foundations were submerged. New Madrid was a famous trading-station and river town in the old days, and the long continued series of earthquakes in those bottoms that startled the country from 1812 during several years were known by the name of the town the Spanish had settled. In former times none had dreamed that Old Mississip would ever submerge that ridge, but hundreds of millions of cubic yards of gravel, silt, and sand flowing down the channel had changed conditions, to the discomfort of the village. However, as the Government had protected the river bank from the current’s attacks, there was little danger there.

Kalas laughed when he told the boys that the town had voted "dry" by several hundred majority a day or two before. He had them land him in against the foot of Main Street, Tiptonville, on the east bank. Here there was a tent city, sheltering refugees from the overflowed bottoms.

Word had come from out in the overflow that miscreants were abroad, and that river pirates were raiding the abandoned homes, stealing cattle and other animals marooned on the ridges, and even floating away rafts of logs which had been cut by loggers for towing down Old River, the St. Francis, and other streams to sawmills.

"Hello, Colonel Kalas!" a man hailed the engineer. "I want to borrow your launch. All right?"

"What for? You see, Sheriff, I’m using it!"

"A dugout canoe just brought word that river pirates are raiding down the Bend. Yours is a strong boat, and shallow draft. See how it is!"

"All right, Sheriff! How about it, boys?"

The two river lads well knew what this meant. Sibley, especially, had heard many stories of the desperate work of the river bad-men, and in the overflow they were sure to be more reckless than ever. An expedition with a sheriff’s posse against a crew of pirates might be a dangerous one if the pirates were found at work or caught while trying to make their escape with booty.

Sibley, however, replied promptly. "If you want us, we’ll go,"

"Good boys! You know how to drive the boat better than any of us!" the sheriff, John Tainell, exclaimed. He waved his hand and four of his special deputies ran over to the launch and climbed into it. They carried two rifles and two shot-guns, and they brought with them two soap-boxes filled with things to eat. All five of the men wore heavy leather belts with leather holsters swung on them to hold revolvers.

In three minutes the launch had backed into the longshore eddy, swung around, and headed down-stream toward Cypress Log landing.

The three hours that had elapsed between the time when the messenger left Cypress Log to find the sheriff and the arrival of the posse, had enabled the pirates to make their raid and scurry away in their boats. But a frightened boy, lying quiet and undiscovered in the garret of the Tiplon mansion, had heard one of the miscreants say to a mate that they would run down to Obion River.

It was a slender clue, but Sheriff Tainell went down the edge of the river drift and turned into Obion River. All the bottoms were covered deep with water. The flood level was among the tree branches. Obion River, itself, was only a narrow lane between two lines of partly leafed tree branches, with the current flowing across the lane.

Night was approaching when the posse’s launch turned up the lane, and with muffler closed and motor running at half-speed, almost noiselessly, entered the wilderness where the pirates might have taken refuge from pursuit.

The launch passed a shanty-boat, on the bow deck of which a bee-hunter sat, comfortably smoking.

"See any motor-boats going up Obion?" Sheriff Tainell asked.

"I mind my own business," the man replied imperturbably.

Sheriff Tainell shrugged his shoulders and the launch continued up the river lane.

"No use trying to make a river-rat talk about his own kind!" he remarked.

They rounded one of the innumerable bends and Sibley saw a lane through the trees on the left. On one of the tree-trunks he saw a place where the bark had been knocked off, and a scraggling, paint-stained dry-stub just above indicated a collision of a boat with the trees.

"There’s a track!" Sibley said. "Somebody was carried wide against those trees when they tried to steer up that bayou! It’s fresh, too, for the sap’s running!"

"Think they’ve gone thataway?" the sheriff asked.

"Looks like!" Sibley replied, and the deputies agreed as to the indication of the river sign.

Accordingly, they steered up the bayou. Night had now fallen, and keeping in the bayou’s winding course was difficult. But Sibley knew the river night, and he had good eyes for the opening through the forest. He had steered up the bayou only three miles or less when suddenly, with a low exclamation, he pointed through the standing timber.

"A light! There’s a light!" he said quietly.

In a minute, the distant yellow light, with its reflection on the surface of the flood, was visible to all. Just making steerage way against the slow current, Sibley headed for it. Only a shanty-boat or other craft could be in those woods; no house or cabin was within many miles of the place. None but a fugitive was likely to have chosen such a retreat for a mooring-place, for the sudden lowering of the flood level must have held the boat behind snags and other obstructions.

As the launch approached nearer and nearer to the light, the sheriff and his party discerned a large house-boat afloat in the nearly sub merged woods. They saw several launches swung by lines from the stern deck, down the current. They heard voices—laughter and singing.

"Hi-i, Red!" one shouted. "We sure made a haul to-day!"

"You fool!" a sharp voice replied. "They’d hear you four miles, echoing over the water!"

"An’ nobody’s within ten mile of us!" the shouter retorted.

The posse’s launch struck a submerged log. There was a low, scarcely audible boom as the thin dry sides quivered. At that sound, however, there was a sudden hiss of warning on board the big house-boat.

"Sh-h-h!" some one ordered.

The next instant the house-boat light went out, and Sheriff Tainell caught Sibley by the shoulder and whispered:

"Drive her, boy! Full speed ahead!"

Sibley, as the launch swerved along the log, turned in more gas for the motor, and the boat quivered as the propeller speeded up. All hands crouched lower as they drove straight for the black rectangle that marked the position of the pirate lair.

For a minute there was only the throbbing of the motor, as it drove the launch with increasing speed toward the pirates. Whether or not the pirates would open fire on the posse was a question. The sheriff, after a few seconds of suspense, turned on the powerful little search-light in the bow of the boat.

The blue-white beam revealed the launches and the house-boat in bright relief against the wilderness background. All was perfectly silent, and there was no sign of life on board. Rapidly turning the search-light on and off alternately, Sheriff Tainell sought to blind the pirates, so that they would not be able to aim accurately if they decided to make a fight against the forces of the law.

As Sib ran the launch alongside the big craft, which was at least seventy feet long and twelve feet wide, the sheriff shouted:

"Hands up! We all are the sheriff and his posse."

For reply there was an echo from the woods, and then from somewhere, apparently a long distance away, there sounded a mocking laugh. As the launch rubbed along the house-boat’s side, the sheriff sprang to the stern deck with two of the deputies; the other two, when Sibley had steered to the bow, sprang aboard. Jimmy caught a cleat with a stern-line loop, and, Sibley having stopped the motor, jumped aboard with a bowline, and made fast.

The posse, dividing in two, charged each end of the house-boat, meeting face to face in the big bow cabin. There was no one else on board, but the table was heavily laden with roast wild turkeys, slabs of beef, and roast hams. Open fruit-cans, vegetables smoking in dishes, and plates of bread hot from the kitchen oven stood about among the larger dishes.

"Just in time for supper!" Sheriff Tainell remarked dryly. "Look at the loot!"

Relighting the big swinging oil lamp over the table, and looking about, they saw trunks, boxes, bags, and bundles which had been brought on board. Perhaps a hundred mansions and other smaller bottom-land homes had been raided, and the loot brought to this big house-boat. On the table were silver, cut-glass, and old French and Spanish china. On a silver server where the light shone on it, was a heap of jewelry, which some one evidently had intended to take but had forgotten when the pirates fled. A wall safe which had been pried out of a wall with crowbars was on a box of soap awaiting the convenience of the thieves.

The house-boat was laden with valuables and edibles which the pirates had selected with care and greed. The miscreants, however, had made their escape. Perhaps they had run out on the bow deck and, slipping overboard in the shadow, swum away among the trees, river rats that they were. But more likely they had jumped into pirogues—dugout canoes—or skiffs and paddled swiftly away, to disappear easily in the wilderness shadows.

Six or seven of them had been sitting at the table. Only two had had time to cut slices of meat and spread gravy on their hot biscuit. The sheriff and his posse, with the two youths who acted as boatmen, sat down in the places of the pirates and supped in their stead. They ate with solid silver forks and spoons, from thin, beautiful china, some of which was of almost inestimable value. There were tumblers of colored glass which must have been hundreds of years old—stolen, no doubt, from some old mansion on a great cotton farm.

"The pirates knew better than to make a fight," one of the deputies remarked. "They knew what they’d get if they did!"

"We’re lucky that they didn’t, though," Sheriff Tainell added. "We’d had a bad time boarding them. Look at their guns!"

A score of shotguns and rifles with twice as many revolvers and automatics—nearly all new and the loot of a sporting-goods store in some submerged village—stood in a corner or were heaped on the floor. Several thousand rounds of ammunition were packed in boxes near by. It was a fine meal for the representatives of the law. They ate their fill, and drank coffee from a large nickel percolator boiling on the stove. After supper they examined the capture more thoroughly. It was a new boat, freshly painted and tight, without a leak any where. The hold was full of goods,—trunks, wearing apparel, blankets, and canned fruits and vegetables. A thousand pounds of bacon was stacked like wood in one of the state-rooms. Enough motor-boat accessories to stock a store—doubtless the stock of some store!—was in an other small room, all stowed away, to take up as little space as possible.

There were hundreds of bolts of cloth, and clothes from many a mansion closet. Two barrels of green cane molasses, a tank of gasolene, a few fine pieces of furniture, some old beveled mirrors, several paintings, a case of beautifully bound books, three baby-carriages, a mile or two of handy-line or half-inch rope, bedding, and carpenter tools were among the things discovered. But most valuable of all was a trunk which held at least a hundred pounds of silver tableware, thrown in helter-skelter and doubtless intended for the melting-pot.

"Can we make it out to-night?" the sheriff asked Sibley.

"I don’t think we’d better try," the boy replied. "This boat is drawing two or three feet of water. She lies deep with all this cargo. We might stave a hole in the bottom, and she would sink from the weight of the hardware. By daylight we’d have some chance of seeing which way they towed into this snug berth."

"That is what I was thinking," the man admitted. "We’ll have to turn in here. There isn’t much danger of any one being cold with all these blankets!"

"Some one will have to keep watch," Sibley suggested. "They might come slipping back, looking for one of the boats."

"We’ll stand watch and watch, every one having an hour on duty," and so it was ordered.

Sibley was given the first trick, Jimmy the second, and after that the sheriff and his men were to be called, one by one.