River Laughter/Chapter 1

HE Turtles were a select crew of Mississippi River pirates. They knew the river so well that it was an instinct—so well that they could go straight across it in a fog, rowing a skiff. They waited in Tupelo Bend, above Mendova, for a favorable night to ply their occupation of loot, and, when at last a gray mist rose thickly from the surface of the water and drifted out over the sand-bars and eddied through the longshore trees, they dropped down.

They landed on the sand-bar at the upper end of Mendova wharf and tied their shanty-boat to stakes already there. They walked fifty yards across the sand to the cobbled wharf, which had been masked by the bar, and climbed to the level of Front Street. They walked across the brick paving, and there a gloomy figure emerged from the wall and whispered:

“All hunky! Get busy!”

Four men entered the little recess in the wall of the building, which was between two plate-glass windows; they did something to the double door, and it opened before them. They entered the famous “Duck and Deer” store, and one sweep of the flash disclosed the fact that it contained goods to please their fancy. They wasted no time on imagination, however; they set to work.

They dumped boxes of ammunition into bags; they caught up and tied rifles and shotguns into rolls; they filled a big tub with jack-knives and other cutlery—with flashlights, compasses, fishing-tackle and other sporting-goods-store material—and scurried across the street, down the wharf and over the sand-bar to the shanty-boat moored in the gray gloom.

They returned to the store, gathered another load and hurried to the boat with it; and, as they worked separately, they were coming or going—all four of them, for half a dozen trips. No mere minute of business satisfied them. They dealt in no diamonds, pearls or cash affair; they were low-grade workers, but they made up in quantity what they failed to get in quality or price. Many and many a dip, post-office yegg, jewelry-case trader and the like might well envy their average winnings in the precarious game they played. They specialized in method, but not in loot. This happened to be a sporting-goods-store proposition; once they had handled, or turned over, the contents of a grocery store; another time they had taken a dry-goods store; they recalled with evil glee a pawnbroker’s establishment and a fur-buyer whom they had easily raided.

The Ohio River knew their work by evidence only; in St. Louis they had a reputation not attached to names; they had even worked in New Orleans, and Kansas City and St. Paul; they were thorough, competent and of great discretion. All they wanted was a dull, foggy night, a beat seldom patrolled by police, a store of some kind and a line of disappearance. They were pirates, but they did not disdain the assistance of motor truck or flat car or even a purloined team of mules and truck.

So now they operated with the skill of experience, the daring of many escapes and the carelessness of those whom the Mississippi has long favored or played with. To their minds, Old Mississip’ was sure their good old granddaddy, and they knew him, and he knew them, and the understanding was mutual. At the same time, it is possible that one should not be too sure that he knows the silent, swinging torrent whose moods are full of many seemings.

Little remained in the sporting-goods store when they returned at last, all together, to get the safe. It wasn’t a very large safe; one of the four had given it a tentative lift with his hand and was surprized to discover that he could raise a corner. Accordingly, they all returned, caught their fists under the steel box and walked away with it.

They stopped to close and lock the door, too, and, when they went down the levee, they were conscious of the fact that, when the policeman came along on his beat, he would see nothing wrong in the store, except that the electric light had burned out.

The sand was loose on the bar, and that made lugging the safe a hard proposition. They grunted as they stumbled and staggered along—the involuntary grunts of men heavily burdened. A little noise did not alarm them, nor would it alarm any one. The banks of the Mississippi are strangely silent at times and curiously noisy at other times. No one pays much attention to minor sounds.

They had a plain path to follow across the bar. Their four pairs of feet had trampled a trail which they could follow with their toes had their black-night instincts failed them. They arrived at the edge of the bar and lowered the safe to the place where the boat’s bow had been.

“Where t's that shanty-boat?” one choked. “I cayn’t feel hit!”

“Ner I!” another gasped for breath.

Their feet were in the water, where they had bumped into the nine-foot-wide bow of their shanty-boat on every previous trip. They lowered the safe and scurried up or down the water’s edge. They returned and, hearing one another’s foot steps, stopped together.

“Hit’s gone!” one whispered fiercely.

“Who d’ ”

“Some sucker’s”

“Who’s done us?”

There was no answer from the four pirates. From out in the fog, however, apparently close at hand—but it was fog—returned a laugh. It was a low, vibrating, merry, chuckling laugh.

“Ha-ha-ha-ha!” in short, light expirations.

It seemed low, but the faces of the buildings along River Street, Mendova, returned the laugh in an echo as loud but breaking.

A minute later they heard another burst of laughter, further away, but carried with the uncanny distinctness which is the property of some kinds of fog. They stood there paralyzed by their disaster and heard the laugh again away down the bend.

“The dad-blasted, no-’count, son of a sneakin’ thief!” one of the four on the sand bar cursed deeply.

Another waded at the bottom of his breath:

“He hadn’t no right to take that bo’t! What’d he rob us fer? Why didn’t he go up the bank an’ steal”

“An’ we doned all the work!” a third whined.

“An’ then he laughed at us!” the fourth one gritted his teeth.

They stood there, cursing and growling. Then, suddenly, away down River Street they heard a footfall, followed by another one and another, as some heavy-heeler came pounding along. He kept coming up and up the street, hitting concrete, slabstone and brick, according to the walks in front of the buildings. They heard him thump upon a plank, and it squeaked a little, not having as yet become damped by the fog. They heard him stop at the corner and drop a locust stick on the curb.

Away up town, three blocks up the hill, they heard the echo answer; then the cop continued his peregrination along the next block and into the one which they had entered to loot. They listened as the cop walked along. Then they heard him stop. The silence was pathetic. It was full of loneliness. Long arms reached out through it; horrors crawled along under the dark. And several sets of teeth chattered and clicked out there on the sand-bar.

The long, rising, screaming shrill of a policeman’s whistle shot through the fog like a bullet—or explosion—with the sting of a freezing gale.

“Fo’ Gawsake!” one whispered. “For Gawsake!”

He repeated it over and over again in a trembling whisper, unconscious of the fact that he was saying anything and not merely thinking or feeling it. They heard, away up yonder, the pound of heavy feet; they heard the running roll of a big cop coming down the grade, dragging his bounding locust on the pavement to let his partner know he was coming. Then there were two revolver shots. The four men down on the bar saw the faint flashes in the cloud like reflected lightning, and they knew that the bull on the beat had discovered the raid.

“You fool!” a voice hissed. “Yo’ was smokin’ a cig’, an’ I seen yo’ drap hit—an’ hit ain’ went out yet—an’ they knows—they knows we ain’ be’n gone long! What’ll we do? They’ll throw circles—thisaway fustest!”

Away up yonder they heard a sharp musical ringing, and they needed no in formation as to what that meant. It was the bull cart, big, red and gold bus with the headquarters reserves in it—word had been sent from some comer that there was shooting down on River Street and whistling.

The pirates whispered together. One was for going down the bar. Another preferred up the bar, and a third was for running up into the town, scattering and hiding wherever they could find a hole.

“Stand still, boys,” one warned them. “The bull up the slough beat’s on, and the one down to the bridge is on—probably been asleep down theh—an’—they’d nab us! They ain’ never seen us—but we ain’ no angels to look at, boys; we’s riveh-rats, an’ we look hit! We ain’ no friends to count on—we’ll jes’ do like we done befo’; come on, boys!”

They felt, rather than saw or heard, him turn from the anxious staring toward that blank gray wall of ominous sounds. They did hear his light step into the water. They knew that he was wading in, and they followed him. It was Autumn water, out of the cold and bitter North. Nevertheless, swimming was better than languishing through a third degree.

Silently they took to the water, and, with strokes like muskrats or frogs, they entered the river. As they floated up into the eddy, they heard some one crossing the bar and heard him call:

“This is the way they went!” And, as they felt the current eddy, they heard, “Hey—here’s the safe!”

With that, they took the main current and, like ducks, swam away out of danger.