River Laughter/Chapter 4

OLUMBIANA MUSCATINE O’BINE stood staring out into the gray fog. In the abstraction of her reading and the depths of her subsequent sleep, she had drifted clear. She found her anchor on the bow deck and the rope hanging down. It had been hauled up, handed over, and she had floated out.

Now she didn’t know how long she had been floating, except that she had gone to sleep around nine o’clock. She didn’t think she had been cut loose before that. It was now midnight, or past. Uneasily she stood at her sweeps, trying to penetrate the gloom with her gaze. Even when her eyes grew accustomed to the dark, she could see nothing. It was as if she were blind and in mid-river, going whither she could not tell—whether around and around in an eddy, or whether swiftly down the semicircle of a long bend.

She felt the boat heaving ever so little, up and down, as if in long rollers, and she knew it was a crossing. It might be above Mendova in the reach or at the foot of Mendova Bend or away down below Mendova.

She remembered the pirates, and her hand stole to the butt of her automatic. She went through her two rooms and looked around from her stern deck with an electric-flash to see by—but all she could see was the fog, dragging into lines. The fog eddied around in coils, spirals, puffs and lumps. At first she thought perhaps she could tell in which direction she was floating by watching the fog dragging by, but it drew first one way and then another. It was full of light airs, zephyrs, and never twice alike in its shape or drift.

The fog was soon full of sounds. She heard far-away voices, rustling and washing of water and then the tinkling or ringing of a bell, curiously distorted by the fog. She heard shouts and calls. A dull glow in the fog puzzled her for a little, and then she realized that it must be Mendova lights reflected on the fog. But she couldn’t tell in which direction it was. It seemed to be all around the boat and even reflected enough on the water to enable her to see the surface.

In a little while it was gone again—and then just fog! It was fog across the river, which was alive now with voices and splashes and other sounds. She heard babbling by humans, as it seemed, all around her. She heard a dog whining somewhere; she heard a baby’s wail; she heard the bumping of oars on their pins.

“Sounds as if everybody was afloat to-night!” she told herself.

The thought gave her an ominous twinge. The Mississippi River is a stranger to its own people. It occurred to her that perhaps there had been some great change in the Bottoms; perhaps the lands had sunk again, and perhaps there had been earthquakes, eruptions, caves and upheavals? Things are never twice alike down that river. The anchor on her deck—that was kind of human and mischievous, but the voices and whisperings in the dark—the passing of strange sounds among human voices.

The wonder, more than the ominousness, appealed to her. She heard some one say something plain at last. Some one hailed:

“Say, Jack! There’s an awful fog on the river!”

“Tha’ so?” some one asked sleepily.

“Yeh! Say, Jack—Jack—Jack—Jack! Say—we’re adrift, Jack! Say”

Columbiana heard some one tumbling out of a squeaky bunk or bed and heard a pattering of feet.

“That’s right. What the—say! What—where—what’d you tie to?”

“Me—me—I didn’t”

“What—why—yes, you did—you”

“Me—you tied yourself—to that sand-bar snag”

“That was when we stopped to hunt rabbits. We anchored”

“That’s so—we did anchor. I’ll go look”

A minute later a voice cried:

“Say, Tim! The rope’s gone!”

“Slipped off the cleat! That’s what it done. Slipped”

“Slip yer gran’mother! It was tied to the tow-bitts, and through the hawser hole—why! Here’s the anchor”

“Hold on, Jack!” a voice said a minute later. “Better start the motor—kind of slow so you got headway to steer”

“You fools!” Columbiana exclaimed. “You’ll ram somebody or run aground—the river’s falling”

“Hark!” the two men exclaimed and listened, one continuing, “I thought I heard somebody. Somebody say we’d ram some thing”

“So’d I. What do you suppose” the voices trailed.

The voices were silenced. Columbiana could fairly hear them trying to listen. She started to laugh, but on second thought she didn’t. She had heard something laughing before that night. She didn’t feel like being that kind of something. Besides, something was crazy on the old Mississip’, and no one cares to be caught up with an absent mind or too frivolous when things none can understand are abroad on the river.

At the same time a glint of anger shot through Columbiana’s mind. For days she had been just about the same as bumping into that motor-boat with the nice-looking and impudent-acting man, whom she had seen playing with the children up on Putney Bend bar, on board.

She heard a rowboat coming. The oars were dipping with energy, and they were continuing with speed. Somebody was rowing fast—and in that fog! She had only time to think of that, and then almost at her feet the skiff passed by; she heard its cutwater slicing the surface and felt it going through the fog. In a minute it was somewhere toward her left hand. Then, suddenly, out there in the black she heard a crash.

The skiff had run into something. She heard it scraping along on the side of some thing. She heard a voice calling excitedly:

“Excuse me! Excuse me! Excuse me!”

A minute later she heard a hail:

“Hello—hello, on board!”

There was no reply. By and by she heard some one scraping up over the side of a boat. She could even hear the lopping as a rope was thrown around a timber-head or over a large cleat. She heard footsteps and another hail; she heard somebody rapping on a door or the side of a cabin, and that made her laugh.

“If there are just women on board that boat, the next thing will be gunshots!” Columbiana said to herself. “I don’t know why any woman would be tripping down in this fog at night any more than I know why I am, but if they are and Mister Man comes knocking on the door instead of hailing from five or ten yards, like a gentleman”

But there were no shots. Instead, she heard the skiffman fall over something in a cabin, something that sounded like the cross between a crowbar and a stick of cordwood. Then she heard an exclamation:

“My land! I wonder what this is! My land—it’s awful extraordinary, this is—down the river—my land!”

Columbiana listened, thinking judiciously.

“That,” she said, “sounds like a soft-paw—only a soft-paw would go rowing at full speed in a fog like this—unless he was being chased. Perhaps he was being chased. But I know that voice. Where—um! Putney Bend!”

Confusion was abroad that night on the Mississippi. Columbiana had considerable knowledge of the river’s whims and whimsies, and she was in an expectant mood in consequence. From all directions she heard the passing of shanty-boat and motor-boat sounds. Away off yonder, some motor-boat man was running his engine with the cut-out open, and the throbbing of the exhaust whaled through the fog, hammering the ears—though it was miles away. Suddenly the motor choked up and then exploded with a hoarser note—in reverse.

“The fool—driving like that in a fog!” Columbiana muttered. “Looks as if all the fools were tripping down—-what do they want to float in the fog for, anyhow?”

She paused for answer. Then she choked—

“What’m I out for, anyhow—like the rest of them?”

Indignant rebellion against her predicament, not knowing which way to row to get anywhere, succumbed to awe—awe of the strange experience. She didn’t understand, and she couldn’t just remember how deep she had cast her anchor, being bothered by that fool who had been following her along down. Then, as if to lighten her wonders, there fell upon her ears the music of an accordion. Somebody out yonder was taking to music for solace or for revenge or just for the music.

It was wonderful, that gay, rippling tune, full of Italian grace and tripping inspiration. In that gray gloom of night, it was like a ship going down with the band playing—but it did quicken the spirits of the young woman. It wasn’t ghostly, that music, but human and companionable like a fleet of shanty-boaters going by on a starlight night with all hands romping to the calls of a square-set.

At the end of the tune there was silence, deeper than ever. People seemed to be all around. A voice rose in a long-drawn call—

“Keep’r up, old hoss!”

THE accordion began, again in assent. It was half a mile from Columbiana, and a quarter of a mile in another direction she heard somebody “Patting Juba” sharply with his hands. Then a banjo began to pick in, somewhere near the accordion, and a violin began to play second. The violin hadn’t played a minute when a big gimp string snapped and a voice rose in melancholic wailing.

“I ain’t got no mo’ gimp strings!” he announced. “Yo’ cayn’t play right in no fog!”

“Nobody asted yo’ to play!” a jeering voice called from another quarter.

Columbiana listened in increasing amazement. No less than ten boats were somewhere around her; she could hear the people talking; she heard the music; she felt their presence—and then somebody yelled:

“Who set my boat loose? Where the am I at?”

“Oh, you’re tripping down!” Columbiana called with feminine sweetness.

“Who are you?” the rasping masculine voice demanded.

“Me? Oh, Old Mississip’s second wife,” she replied.

Instantly from away off yonder a voice swore profanely—

“Well, by the Lord Harry, if I’d married any such dad-blasted old son of a no-’count son-of-a-gun ’s him, I bet I’d shift him an’ ’vorce him!”

“Why?” Columbiana asked.

“Why? Why?” the man yelled, “Why, dang blast hit! I went to sleep up in Mendova Bend on to Gas House Slough an’ I had a good job at three-fifty a day, an’ now where the am I, an’ how the  ’d I get here in this dangblasted fog—hey?”

“That’s no way to talk to a lady!” Columbiana called imperturbably.

“Lady! Lady! No lady ever married this danged Old Mississip’!” he retorted, discourteously.

“My husband will sink you for talking that way,” Columbiana suggested.

“Hit wouldn’t be the fustest time!” the man yelled. “I ain’t done nothin’ but sink er fight, drift er hunt for my dangblasted boat, since I come down here to live cheap into a shanty-boat.”

“Oh, I thought you talked like an Up-the-Banker!” Columbiana said.

“Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-a-a!” a laughing clatter came through the fog, and all other sounds ceased while the chilling echoes returned from both sides of the river and from the sides of none could tell how many shanty-boats, after the baffling manner of fogged-in sounds.

Repartee ceased. There was no competition with that dank and thrilling sound, demoniac laughter neither distant nor yet near at hand. Old river-people knew the symptoms of that night. Old Mississip’ was up to some deviltry, and no one was escaping. Columbiana had thrown a chill about when she said she was old Mississip’s second wife. She knew they were probably calculating on the chances of whether or not she had told the truth. Lord help the man who insulted her if she had!

She counted the boats which she could identify by their sounds, old-timers—men and women—declaring to gracious they never had heard the beat, were mingled with Up-the-Bankers, who called in futile endeavor to discover where they were at.

“Wu-hoo!” Columbiana called suddenly. “Is that you, Mrs. Mahna?”

“Yes, indeedy, Columbiana!” Mrs. Mahna replied. “I ’lowed hit were yo’, ’count of yo’ laughing at them through-trippers! What yo’ reckon ails us?”

“Old Mississip’!” Columbiana suggested. “Where’d yo’ tie in at?”

“Yeh! Up above Mendova into the head of the Islands. Now we’s down away below Mendova—I could smell them cottonseed-oil mills theh, ’sides hear the p’lice autymobill comin’ by when we was drappin’ along. Wheh’d yo’ start at?”

“Into the foot of the Chute of Thirty-Five.”

“Well, I hope to goodness I ain’t neveh seen no beat of this! Up above yeah, I was pullin’ my daylights out, an’ they was a whole passel of them riveh-rat scoundrels, an’ theh was Tid an’ Rooter an’ them pirates right acrost the way I was goin’, neveh sayin’ nothin’ tell I bunked and bammed ’em. Shucks! They’d lost theh boat, they said, an’ theh they was into a soft-paw’s, out’n the Forks, some’rs—a red boat, an’ I bet they killed ’im”

“Aw—we ain’t nuther! Mrs. Mahna, hit ain’ so!” a voice returned out of the fog, and Mrs. Mahna exclaimed:

“Gracious! I ’lowed I was shet of yo’ scoundrels—I bet yo’ done somethin’ this night”

“We ain’t!” the voice retorted, and then the two women heard somebody begin to pull on a pair of sweeps.

The sound moved away in the fog, and Mrs. Mahna chuckled as she cupped her hands to talk across to Columbiana.

“I bet them fellers is scairt of sunthin’!”

Every little while there would be a yell of excitement, or at least agitation, as some sleeper awakened and hailed the fog. The old-timers would answer back with a roar of laughter, but the laughter quickly perished. Word had gone around: several boats from Gas-House Slough at Mendova, boats from the shanty-town at Mutton Island and through Sentinel Cut-off and trippers who had just landed in—they didn’t know where—were within a mile or so. And word passed up and down that indicated four or five miles in the shanty-boat fleet. A few laughed, but mostly it was indignation, tempered by mystery and superstition.

While they wondered, listening to the music, or cursed the occasion, there was a sudden flare through the gray gloom. In stead of black night, it was gray day. Columbiana clambered to the roof of her cabin and found her head above the level of the mist. She could see the trees on both banks and here and there a flagpole or the riding-light of a motor-boat flagstaff—pale in the dawn.

As she looked, other heads appeared above the fog here and there as far as she could see: heads of men and women, some with whiskers and some with disheveled hair, some with circles of agitated fog around them as they waved their arms.

Through the fog echoed the laugh of the night, and half an hour later the fog was gone, except for little shreds. Forty or fifty, shanty-boats and motor-boats pulled shoreward, and eddies where there hadn’t been three boats at once in twenty years suddenly had whole shanty-boat towns with an indignant, puzzled and revengeful population.

Columbiana floated down close to the west bank eddies till she saw a tall, slim man with thin, brown face standing on a great shanty-boat deck with an expression of bewilderment on his features.

“Excuse me!” he hailed her. “I am greatly disturbed, perturbed, and I am a stranger down the river”

“A soft-paw?” she asked, sweetly.

“Yes, indeed! Just so; if you”

“All right,” she smiled. “I’ll come over and see what’s the matter.”

She pulled in and made fast to the stern of the big boat. She climbed aboard and went into the cabin. It was stacked with rifles, shotguns, great heaps of ammunition, cutlery, fishing-tackle, nets, bales of net-twine and bushels of unassorted material.

She looked at the rough heaps and stacks and bundles. Then she looked at the man who stood there, equally bewildered, but helpless instead of experienced and efficient as she was.

Columbiana looked the outfit over, walking around it and sniffed through the cluttered up kitchen-gallery, and disheveled bunk-rooms. There were tons of the stuff, and it was inexplicable to her mind. It was a sporting-goods store run riot. She sat down on a bale of rope and considered. She was sitting there when the shiver of a gentle bump ran through the craft. The next instant, there was the trampling of feet, and the doorway flashed with figures rapidly entering, one by one.

“Hyar they be, boys!” the leader shouted, exultantly. “Hands up! Yo’ riveh-pirates don’t git by Sheriff Dabonne, neveh indeed!”

The astonished soft-paw stared wide-eyed through his big, round glasses at the muzzles of several black and blue automatics. The pretty girl glanced calmly from raider to raider, and she Was sorry for Caroost, sorry for herself. She had been too long on the river not to know the terror of circumstantial evidence applied to shanty-boaters.

“Yo’ two alone on this yeah boat?” Sheriff Dabonne demanded. “Ho law! Yo' two’s swell-lookin’ pirates. All dressed up, eh? Sho!”

“Shucks!” Columbiana looked him in the eye to say. “Are honest folks so scarce where you’re from that you don’t know them when you see them. Not that kind!”

“Hue-e!” members of the posse yelled, and the sheriff reddened.

“Yo’ all cayn’t play no innocent game on me!” he declared. “We gets five-hundred dollars for this year outfit up to Mendova, yo’ two! Yes, indeed! All this stolen goods on yo’. Sho! We shore got a haul this time, boys!”

“Stolen! Stolen goods!” the man exclaimed. “My land!”