River Laughter/Chapter 3

OUR river-rats, treading water and cursing their luck, floated down Mendova Bend with their heads in the fog that hung black upon the night. They kept near enough to one another to talk in low voices, awed by their misfortune and wishing that they could find the scoundrel who had stolen their shanty-boat after they had filled it up with tons of loot from a water-front sporting-goods store.

Out there in mid-Mississippi it was like floating in a lake, except that once in a while they felt the water boiling around them and currents pulling them about. Water-rats that they were, they didn’t mind floating down the current, even though it had been cold to plunge into the water; now it felt almost warm.

They kept their lungs full of air, breathing in short gasps, to float better, and they swore with angry, ignorant fluency. Some mean scoundrel had been too lazy to pull a trick and had robbed them after they had done all the hard work. They had carried guns and hardware and all that kind of stuff till they sweat and were dead-tired. They had taken all the chance of being caught by a bull or somebody or other, and, just when they had the safe and everything right, they find their boat stolen, their loot gone and themselves under the stern necessity of taking instant flight!

“Danged ole Mississip’ all oveh ag’in!” one grumbled. “’Membeh the time we was killin’ beef in the Overflow an’ we was left high an’ dry into that Ohio sport’s launch an’ neveh did get to git out, Tid?”

“Yeh!” Tid’s voice grumbled. “An’ that time we took them logs out’n Wolf Riveh, nicest line of Black Walnut an’ sech, an’ the dang thing sunk on to us, afteh we’d got hit mos’ to N’Orleans—Yo’ ’membeh that, Rooter?”

“Sho! I wouldn’t mind hit none if I could git to go up the bank, but hit don’t agree with a feller. I’m always gittin’ sick er took bad er arrested er sunthin’ up the bank. Hit don’ agree with me!”

“Me nuther!” a plaintive voice responded. “Sh-h-h!”

They all heard a sound and felt an echo through the water. They knew it as beavers know the slap of a beaver’s tail. Sharply and eagerly they listened. It was the dip of a pair of oars—big oars—or long, shanty-boat sweeps.

“All right, boys!” a whisper went around the drifting pirate crew, and Tid added, “I’ll rattle the water so’s we won’t git los’ in this yeah danged thickenin’!”

They followed the touching splash he made as he reached toward the sound they heard. To the dipping of the oars was added the sound of a soliloquizing voice:

“Where in the world am I? Seems as if I’d ought to be getting somewhere! This must be the Mississippi! It can’t be any lake! I never heard of any lake down here. Lake Pepin’s up on the upper river. But this water isn’t moving. I wonder”

He began to pull his oars tentatively again. The swimmers, not without imagination, could think of the lost soft-paw standing there in the black gloom, looking in all directions and seeing nothing. The depths of his folly they did not know until they were baffled and disturbed by the apparition of a great, yellow glow in the night.

Tid stopped swimming, and the four stood erect in the water, treading, their faces faintly visible as they rode with their heads like pumpkins staring ahead at the source of that light. It was light enough for a steamboat, but they heard no paddle-wheels.

“Hit’s that danged fool!” Tid managed to convey to the crew.

“Yeh!” they all breathed.

Tid moved toward the center of radiance, and they heard the tripper musing:

“I wonder which way is which? My! But this fog’s thick! It’s an awful eery feeling, out here all alone, not knowing which way is which! Why, I can’t tell anything about it! It’s just as if ghosts might be walking around. Ghosts would be lost in this like the river-man said wild geese are lost in canebreaks and river-bottoms sometimes. I can’t tell anything by the maps—they’re—Wha—what’s that?”

The pirates, too, stopped to listen. Somewhere around in the fog was something. It was a sound, and the sound grew from a rattling death-cough to a loud, long laughing—

“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-a!”

“Fo’ lawse—a gosh!” one of the pirates breathed, and through the fog of yellow-golden haze returned a quick reply:

“What—what’s that? Did somebody speak?”

“Nope!” Tid replied without thinking, and the drifting soft-paw started to laugh but stopped suddenly.

“Hello!” he called doubtfully.

There was no answer. He called louder, and there was still no reply. Then he shouted, and a minute later his bellow returned doubled in volume from some bank of trees or bluffs alongshore.

“Ha-ha-ha-ha-a!” a laugh followed out of the fog, and for the first time the pirates all felt very, very cold.

“Gosh!” they heard the soft-paw muttering. “That man’s crazy! This river’s crazy! How’d I get to floating off down the Mississippi! Why, I had two anchors out, and I—and I know I tied the ropes fast. I wonder—somebody must have turned me loose!”

Tid turned and looked at his mates. They could see one another plainly now, and their expressions were puzzled and baffled. They, too, had seen a shanty-boat where it wasn’t—or where it ought to have been. Some darned scoundrel. …

However, they had something personal to attend to just then. If the old river was tricking them same as usual, they couldn’t float around all night and perhaps two or three days in a falling river, waiting for the fog to lift so that they would know where they were. Right there ahead of them was a shanty-boat, and it was a soft-paw. Soft-paws notoriously never thought anything about people. At the same time Tid decided he had better be polite.

“Excuse me, mister!” he hailed. “Give us a ride? Our maw is sick down the river to Memphis, and we’s in a hurry, and we thought likely you’d let us ride down with you.”

“Certainly! Row right over this way!” the soft-paw replied.

“I’m Re—I’m Thomas Cumstark, an’ I got my three brothers with me,” Tid explained and began to swim.

The other pirates, too, began to swim. It was a thick fog, and they were close to the shanty-boat. Their splashing to a soft-paw’s inexperienced ears sounded some thing like dipping oars, and they were swimming fast.

“Look out!” Caroost cried. “You may ram me!”

Tid looked up into a great hanging lamp suspended from the bow of a shanty-boat porch; as he looked up, the shanty-boater looked down. The soft-paw for the moment was dazzled. He evidently saw the four heads coming in line en échelon, for he gave a slight squawk of astonished excitement. And then with a yell of determination he turned and fled. He choked as he dashed through the cabin to the deck at the other end of the flatboat.

Tid caught the bow-bumper and scrambled out like a mink, drawing his automatic pistol as he did so and shaking the water out of it. But the soft-paw had not gone after a gun. Caroost cast off the line of the skiff floating at the opposite end of the boat and with a pull and a jerk set the boat from the flat and shoved clear into the fog.

“Gosh!” the pirates heard him exclaim. “What a river! What were they?”

Awkwardly but quickly the soft-paw set the oars in the locks and began to row full-speed away into the black night. As he took his departure, they heard an answering consolation:

“All right! I’m a-coming! Ha-ha-haaha-a!”

“Oh!” the pirates heard the soft-paw ejaculate. “He’s a madman!”

THE pirates knew what to do. They unswung the lamps in the bow and stern of the boat, blew them out but left the little table-lamp in side burning. They closed the doors and pulled down the window-shades. One stood outside at the sweeps while the others looked around.

It was a nice twenty-four-foot shanty-boat with deep hull, six-foot-six high cabin and two rooms, kitchen and living-room. A lot of ammunition for a sixteen-gage shotgun and a .25-20 rifle were on the tops of the gunwales, and the siding of the boat had been laid on good waterproof roofing. It was a tight, warm boat There were three stoves: a wood or coacoal [sic] heater, a cooker and a three-burner oil-stove.

On the stove was a funny jigger of a coffee-pot that was spouting up inside itself. But the coffee smelled all right, and, after they had all sampled it, they thought it tasted all right—except that there wasn’t so much flavoring in it as when one boils coffee in a regular coffee-pot and has the grounds to chew on.

The bed was wide enough for two, and there was enough stuff to make another bed on the floor, especially as there were two thin mattresses on the bedstead, besides the chain-springs.

“Hit’s a purty good boat,” Tid admitted. “Hit ain’t nothing like so big’s the one we got off that store-boater up the Ohio when he was drunk, but hit’s a good un to operate from. What you ’low he done with all them books—sell ’em? Who’d buy ’em, anyhow?”

At intervals, while they inspected their new property, they stepped outside to listen. All was quiet again. The soft-paw wasn’t inviting any wild loon crazy man to find him, and the laughter was silent, too. In low voices the river-men tried to straighten out the wonder of their adventure. Of course, it was easy enough to explain a fool soft-paw floating down in the night, when he had tied up at dark. Soft-paws don’t know much about making boats fast to stakes or anything. But their own big boat had gone adrift.

Also, that laugh—that made chills in their souls. It never did anybody any good to hear hard laughing like that in a fog. No wonder the soft-paw had suddenly choked into silence. They could hear him rowing away, slowly, stopping at intervals—to look around no doubt. They threw some water on the oar-pins of the shanty-boat, so they wouldn’t squeak and, after listening a while, determined that they were dropping down a long bend, and, if they pulled away from the noise of rustling waters and the splash and crash of sawyers and the lumping in of the bank, they would get to the sand-bar opposite or run into the dead water or eddy where they could anchor. Figuring as they could, they estimated they had been in the water long enough to float about fifteen miles, which would take them into the horse-shoe bend below Mendova where they could land—but on second thought they guessed they wouldn’t land.

“Probably they’ll be lookin’ around fer suspicious characters,” Tid muttered resentfully. “An’ they’d likely suspect us if they’d see us. Course, we could dress up real fancy in this here feller’s clothes, but four different-sized fellers all in the same size pants ’d probably make them sheriffs think sunthin’”

“Hit shore would!” Rooter grumbled. “Course, we ain’t rightly guilty of stealin’ nothin’! We didn’t get to getaway with them things”

“An’ they got our boat, so’s I bet they’s stoled hit! That’d give us kind of a holt on ’em,” one suggested.

“If we wanted to exercise hit,” Tid squinted one eye. “Co’rse”

“Co’rse!” the others echoed.

Accordingly, they let their boat drift with the current. As they drifted in silence, having drunk some coffee and eaten some canned fish and cased ginger-snaps, they blew their lights and went out on the bow deck to kind of keep track of things. Lots of times they had cut loose in the night or in a fog and gone to sleep, but not this night. Somehow, they didn’t feel like sleeping.

As they sat there on the wall-benches of the bow, they heard a sort of cross between a yelp and a squall, followed by:

“Tom—you old fool—Tom! Wake up—Tom—hi-i! Tom!”

“Hit’s a lady,” Tid explained in a low, cautious voice. “Some lady”

They heard a “sn-lop” sound carried across the water surface as a sound sleeper awakened with difficulty.

“Heh?” the sleeper asked querulously.

“Yo’ ole fool!” the woman fairly screamed. “I tole yo’ now for six weeks yo’ needed a new morrin’-line, an’ now where be we? Now where be we?”

“Hey—what!” the man demanded.

“Hey what! Hey what! Yo’ ole fool, hyar we be goned adrift, an’ laws knows where we be—driftin’ up on to a towheader sucking inter a cavin’ bank. Where be we? I tole yo’”

“Well, dad drat hit!” the voice retorted. “Spos’n ye did tell me! Spos’n—a new line’d cost fourteen cents a poun’”

“Yeh—yeh! An’ hyar we be, gittin’ drowned er sucked in under a tow—yo’ didn’t half tie them ropes, an’ neveh did! Jes’ ’cause I didn’t go out’n tie them lines oveh ag’in, hyar we be. An’ we’re ’n—my line! I got mos’n to swearin’, an’—oh, go put on yer pants! Yo’ll ketch yer death o’ cold. I got ’er! Hit’s foggy as the ole scratch—shut up! Now, George Ebenezer! Stop your crying! It ain’t nothin ’at all! Many’s the time we tripped at night”

The wail of a small boy, scared of tripping in the fog, had taken the river-lady’s attention.

“Yo’ ole fool!” she began all over again. “What’d yo’ tie them lines to last night? That two-inch Gove’ment line never bruck!”

“I tied the starboard one to a big cypress snag,” the man replied, “two half-hitches an’ a bight, same’s”

“Tell me same’s yo’ always did! Didn’t yo’ make a half-noose jes’ up by Putney Bend? An’ didn’t yo’ slip yo’ stakes off, into Tiptonville? An’ then down by Little Prairie Bend, yo’ old fool, yo’ used willer stakes into a cavin’ bank, an’, if hit hadn’t been fer that big gum root I tied to, yo’d”

“I bet that’s Mrs. Mahna!” Tid turned to his mates. “She’s allus givin’ old Mahna down the banks thataway! She kin remember on to him ten yea”

“Hark! Shut yo’ ole fool mouth—listen? I hearn-”

“Lawse!” Tid whispered. “Likely I drawed her fiah now!”

“I ain’ said no”

“Oh, shut up, yo’ ole fool! Keep still—ain’ I tryin’ to listen? Mebby hit’s—U-whoo,!”

Not one of the pirates made answer.

“U-whoo!” the voice exclaimed more determinedly, and then she turned on her man again. “If yo’ hadn’t made so much noise, yo’ ole fool, likely hit’s somebody trippin’ nights. I neveh ’lowed to trip nights, ’thout hit’s necessary. Listen! Hear that echo come back? Hit’s the bank er off’n the side of anotheh shanty-boat. U-Whoo!”

She stopped, listened, heard something and began again:

“Theh—hear hit! Right in theh! Likely—I bet hit’s some of them darn riveh-rats. They kin hear well’s we kin. Bring that big rifle, yo’ ole fool—I kin feel somebody right aroun’ yeah, an’ I’m goin’ to plug around. Nobody’d not answer but riveh-pirates, an’ I”

“Hit’s us!” Tid raised his voice. “Hit’s us, Mrs. Mahna. We jes’ woked up an’”

“Time yo’ woked up. Neveh mind, George Ebenezer—don’ shoot! Who yo’ all, anyhow?”

“Why, hit’s Tid an’”

“Oh, I know who ’tis, now—what yo’ doin’? What yo’ trippin’ nights fo’, anyhow? I bet yo’ be’n doin’ meanness er sunthin’!”

“No’m! No’m! We jes was into a hurry, an’”

“Yeh—an’ p’lice wa’nt quick ’nough to git yo’! I know! Lawse! Ain’ this fog thicker’n all git aout?”

She was pulling her sweeps, following the sound and coming through the black night. Suddenly she banged into the other boat.

“Yo’ ole fools, yo’!” she screamed. “Where’s yo’ lights?”

Just then through the fog returned a long, breaking laughter.

“Fo’ lan’s sake!” she gasped. “What’s that?”