Page:Boys Life of Mark Twain.djvu/103

LEARNING THE RIVER Once more I didn't know.

"Well, this beats anything! Tell me the name of any point or place I told you."

I studied awhile and decided that I couldn't.

"Look here! What do you start from, above Twelve-Mile Point, to cross over?"

"I—I—don't know."

" 'You you don't know,'" mimicking my drawling manner of speech. "What do you know?"

"I—I—Nothing, for certain."

Bixby was a small, nervous man, hot and quick-firing. He went off now, and said a number of severe things. Then:

This was a red flag to the bull. He raged and stormed so (he was crossing the river at the time) that I judged it made him blind, because he ran over the steering-oar of a trading-scow. Of course the traders sent up a volley of red-hot profanity. Never was a man so grateful as Mr. Bixby was, because he was brimful, and here were subjects who would talk back. He threw open a window, thrust his head out, and such an irruption followed as I had never heard before. . . . When he closed the window he was empty. Presently he said to me, in the gentlest way:

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