Driftwood (Spears)/Chapter 9

IBLEY, with a repeating twelve-gage shotgun loaded with BB shot, went up on the roof of the house-boat to watch for the pirates in case any of them should venture to try to recover one of the motor-boats or other craft which they had abandoned so precipitately.

Owls hooted at intervals; wild geese, flying overhead on their way north, showered the flood with the music of their hoarse voices; a wild turkey called from a tree at some distance from the house-boat; a tree swaying on loose roots in the current that flowed out of the foot of Reelfoot Lake through the Shakes, as this part of the bottoms was called, sawed a branch against another tree with a screaming, fiddling sound; a low undertone, part noise, part shuddering of the wilderness in the current of the inundation, filled the night with sensation which was thrilling to the brave youth.

At the end of an hour Sibley awakened Jimmy and gave him the gun. Five minutes later Sibley was sound asleep, while Jimmy went about the decks, over the roof, and along the narrow running-board which he found on each side of the house-boat, at the deck level. He, too, listened to the throbbing of the flood as it ran through the standing timber, shaking the trees and eddying around the trunks with low whispering chuckles and the swishing of twigs and branches dragging through the surface.

The pirates did not return, however. They knew better than to try to raid the posse. Having lost the thousands of dollars’ worth of things stolen from abandoned houses and stores, they did not dare risk a fight which would probably mean injury or loss of liberty. They had lost not only what they had stolen but all their own launches, arms, and supplies. The only thing they could do was go out into the river, drop down to some refugee camp, and beg for something to eat.

Before dawn the members of the posse were up and cooking breakfast from provisions they found on board—bacon, ham, even a crate of eggs! As soon as it was light enough to see plainly, the two launches which the pirates had used were made fast, one on each side of the house-boat. Then Sibley’s boat was laid across the bow of the boat, and made fast there.

On Sibley’s suggestion, long lines were run to trees near by, and with the aid of these the men warped the house-boat around so that its bow was headed down the current in the bayou. As it swung there in the two-mile current, Sheriff Tainell turned to Sibley and said:

"Well, Captain, when you’re ready we’ll cut loose and trip down this bayou!"

"What! Why?" Sibley exclaimed.

"You’re off the river, and you know more about boats than all the rest of us, I know," Tainell smiled. "Tell us what to do, and we’ll do it!"

Sibley hesitated, but only for a minute. He had helped to navigate a raft down a narrow creek, and he had managed a small shanty-boat many times. He had often assumed responsibility when the need demanded. He had never been in command of men before, but working with the boys, and, especially driving into the crevasse flood, he had learned self-confidence.

"All right, Sheriff, if you say so!" he said, with the skin tightening around his lips. "Let go the stern-line, please! Start the motors!"

The rope which was snubbed around a timber head was released and one end started up the current and around the tree as two men hauled in the other. The house-boat started, with all three of the motors running, the gears in neutral.

The bayou wound in and out, twisting in almost complete circles. The current, holding the same direction through the trees, threatened at one bend to carry the boats against the woods to the right, and in the next it seemed as though they would crash into the tall gray columns on the left. But Sibley had Jimmy, in the "bug," as the launch across the how was called, throw the propeller into reverse, or ahead, so that that end of the house-boat was thrown to right or left according to the drive of the propeller. The two boats on the sides served to hold the house-boat back when both were in reverse gear, or to turn when one was in reverse, the other driving ahead.

Sibley, standing on the cabin roof, watched the current ahead. The three in the motor boats listened keenly for his quick orders, and obeyed on the instant. Drifting astern in a skiff, with a big coil of inch-line in it, one end of which was fast to a timber-head on the stern deck, were the sheriff and another man, ready to rush to a tree and make fast, if need be to snub up the house-boat and keep it from crashing into the trees down the steady, powerful current.

They floated down, always slower than the current and often just making headway as Sibley held off the woods in bends, but in straight reaches, of which there were several hundreds of yards long, he drove faster, with the boat hugging the up-current side.

"Snub her!" he shouted, suddenly, and Sheriff Tainell bent the ash oars of the skiff, rowed to a ten-inch gum-tree thirty feet distant, and took a double loop around it. The line snapped up with a loud, fiddle-string twang, but it was new rope and did not break with the weight suddenly sprung against it.

Sibley, standing tense, at the wheel of the launch watched the fleet swing slowly to the left. Not ten feet ahead, as they looked, the men saw the black nub of a snag as it sawed up out of the current.

"Ease!" Sibley called, and the sheriff let the line slip; the big launch, backing, carried the boats clear and they floated on down-stream. Sibley flanked a sharp, swift bend by sending the sheriff with his handy-line down to a tree on the point, where, having made fast, he took in the slack till the boat was in the turn. There the handy-line held the stern of the boat and the bow swung around, a few yards from the trees in the narrow way.

The Obion River was wider than the bayou, and they ran down it to its mouth without much difficulty. There they were obliged to anchor the big craft, in the shelter of the woods. No boat could be towed up the Mississippi with that mass of black drift running. Accordingly, Sheriff Tainell left three men on board to guard it until the craft could be moved down to Caruthersville, or up to New Madrid or Tiptonville, to await the making of an inventory of the stolen goods and the advertising necessary to bring their owners to identify the recaptured booty.

Leaving one of the launches with the house-boat, the sheriff took one for his posse and Sibley drove his own up the river, in and out among the fleets of drift. Thus they arrived at Tiptonville. There was no rest for the boys there. Mr. Kalas had organized the refugee camp at Tiptonville, and he now left it in charge of the state troops, who had been summoned to guard property and keep order in the river towns and settlements.

"I’m taking you away from home, boys," he said. "As soon as you’ve filled your tank with gasolene and taken on a stock of oil, we’ll have to be moving on! It’s an emergency, and you’re needed! The sheriff tells me you are the greatest pilots ever. We’ll see! I hear that your partner’s looking after a baby you picked up."

"Yes," Sibley said.

"Well, they’ll be all right, there in New Madrid. We’ll go down to Caruthersville. The place used to be called Little Prairie, in the old days, but people hated to keep that name: you see, it isn’t sufficiently up-to-date. Some day they’ll have to change the name of this creek. Mississippi is an Indian name, you know. Really, it isn’t dignified. Davis River would sound pretty nice, or Jefferson Flow. I believe it’s ’most time to make a change; the only trouble is, what to call it. When I hit a name that sounds just right I’ll put it onto the next map I draw, and—my!—won’t people be surprised and glad!"

He chuckled, under his breath, and the two boys looked at him. They didn’t know exactly what to think, but somehow, as they looked at the great flood, they felt what a fine thing it was that it had the name it had, and they saw, at last, that what the old river-man had said was really meant as a protest against changing the picturesque and significant names of places to something that suggests nothing and means nothing to seers of maps.

"It’s a sight!" Kalas said, looking out over the driftwood as they worked through it. "It’s a big flood, and she’s going higher than any flood we’ve ever had! About all the stock that grazed out on the bottom below Reelfoot levee have been drowned. A woman walked twelve miles to Hickman, up the levee, with six children—one in her arms—and after she’d got by, the levee broke. Over at Ridgley there’s a big colony out of those bottoms. More have come to Tiptonville; and wherever there’s a levee, people are perched on it. Over on Crowley’s Ridge, which is two hundred feet high or so, there are thousands and thousands of people; and they’re swimming cattle over to it. Those Swamp Angels call that ridge the Poor Man’s Levee. Everybody that owns land in there which is ten or twenty feet underwater, on account of a levee crevasse, is wondering what profit he got out of the taxes he paid to build those levees. Sand and gravel will ruin much land."

He could talk to the boys. Among men, among the Up-the-Bankers and land-owners, he would not talk, except on the stand and under oath—and then he was sparing with his words. But these youths who had stepped into the river work, who knew and liked the river, who were unafraid in the drift, and who had no big ideas to back up, regardless of the facts or theory—he could talk to them! Many a man would rather talk to intelligent boys than to the wisest men in the world.

The levee for miles along the front above and below Caruthersville was swarming with refugees, workers, guards, and sight-seers. The water behind the levee was twelve or fifteen feet lower than in front of it. The big gap up at Point Pleasant, where the skeptical land-owners had refused to have levees cutting their farms in two, with the best acres rendered worthless outside the protection, was pouring down acres of water, yards deep. But only two or three feet of water was a good deal better than ten or fifteen feet, rushing through a crevasse in a raging torrent. A dozen levee sections were in peril. Those at Golden Lake, Pecan Point, Lambville, Mound City, and Holly Bush were all struggling with the relentless pressure of the coiling, insidious, penetrating waters. Mr. Kalas landed at Caruthersville and walked along the top of the levee, studying it, stamping on it, and listening to the sound it made, feeling the very texture of the fill.

"Still holding," he said to the boys. "Its shoulder is against the shove of the river! But look at the way the flood comes worming and squirming down along that waterfront! We’ll go on down—"

"I want to mail a letter," Sibley said, and Kalas took the sheet of paper the boy offered him, put it into an envelop, and sealed it. Sibley addressed the envelope to Mr. Carruth.

"You’re on government business, now," Kalas smiled as he gave the envelop to a section guard, who sent it over to the post office. "Now we’ll go on down. We’ve just begun!"