River Laughter/Chapter 5

SOFT-PAW remains just “that soft-paw” or “the soft-paw” until something happens to him to give interest to his name and make somebody of him. James M. Caroost had preserved his nonentity for a thousand miles while he floated down the Mississippi. The Indian youth seeks an opportunity to distinguish himself, become somebody and earn a name. James M. Caroost, having a long and inherited name, had never dreamed that he would ever become subject to the immutable laws of humanity and under the necessity of being somebody all by himself and without regard to the fortune which his ancestors had acquired. He had presumed to be a high brow adventurer with a purpose.

The commercial agencies who list men according to their finances had the name of James M. Caroost indexed with a credit of one hundred thousand dollars; it had more than a dozen of the Caroost relatives listed, too, and the aggregate rating was satisfactory to any one from the maker of a player-piano to a promoter of speculative securities seeking some one willing to take a chance.

The name Caroost was utterly unknown down the Mississippi. No shanty-boat man had ever borne it; no fugitive from justice had ever assumed it; no lady had ever run away from home on its account; no man had ever come down the river to hide its shame; and at first James M. Caroost had no distinguishing qualities, except rather more complete ignorance of river ways than common in soft-paws, to mark him among a sore-handed crowd of anxious and worried trippers. His inquiries about one Mr. Barklow Waldin seemed a fad in him.

But no sooner had he been arrested with Columbiana Muscatine O’Bine than all the shanty-boaters from Pittsburgh to the Passes heard of him. Nobody could figure it out. Nobody believed the wildly improbable ideas that were suggested and became discards immediately. It was some time before a whispering grew to a certainty.

James M. Caroost was sure a lucky lad, if ever there was one. That O’Bine girl had just naturally been too proud to escape Old Mississip’, even if she had sassed and escaped about every one and everything else from above the Forks down to New Orleans. Just imagine the glory of being arrested with the prettiest and least approachable girl on the Mississippi. Some folks are just naturally fools for luck! Or at least are born lucky.

Sheriff Dabonne took the two down the crossing in the big shanty-boat, loaded with loot, and tied in at Briscol County court landing. Thence he marched them, handcuffed together, up to the jail and locked them safely in separate cells while he notified Chief Clumb of Mendova over the telephone of the capture. The facts were printed in the afternoon newspapers as far away as St. Louis and New Orleans, and overnight about everybody on the river had heard of the matter.

Nobody believed on the river that Columbiana Muscatine O’Bine and James M. Caroost had actually robbed the famous Duck and Deer sporting-goods store, where everybody on the way down stopped to purchase ammunition or fish-hooks, or something just for the sake of getting acquainted with the noted Dart Coldby of Mendova, who knew all the gunmen east of the Mississippi and all the long riders and robbers west of that thoroughfare and dividing-line, not to mention a great assortment of river-pirates, sportsmen and Gipsies.

But at the same time no one in Mendova official circles or in any of the various sheriff outfits along the river bar believed that Columbiana Muscatine O’Bine was a river queen of pirates and that Caroost was a desperado from Broadway, New York, or Michigan Avenue, Chicago.

Chief Clumb drove down to Briscol court landing in the department’s fast motorboat, the Dareall. He landed and walked up to the jail and had dinner with Sheriff Dabonne and had a glass of soda water, for Briscol County was dry, and a good cigar for a smoke. Dabonne told how he had tried to understand the things that Miss O’Bine had said to Caroost in a low, earnest voice. He had heard her say something about a “foolish soft-paw,” “five years on the State farm” and similar incriminating things, Caroost being red-faced and helpless to deny.

“They’re a bad pair,” Sheriff Dabonne warned. “You’n your engineer wants to keep your eyes on ’em, for they are slick riveh artists, if eveh there was one down thisaway!”

Dabonne had the jailer bring out the two prisoners, and Clumb slipped one pair of handcuffs on them, chaining Caroost’s right hand to Columbiana’s left wrist. She looked at the two representatives of Government with narrowing eyes, and Caroost bit his lower lip in confusion. The period in the jail had not overcome his embarrassment nor her alert indignation.

They were just going to walk down Main Street and over the levee when the telephone bell rang and Sheriff Dabonne listened with disgust to the fact that he must go with two deputies back into the brakes to hunt for a negro who had been ructioning around with a club.

That left Clumb and the two prisoners to walk along the street together. The chief was not averse to the parade. They went over the levee and down to the landing. Several shanty-boats were tied along the bank, and a stern-wheel tow-boat, the Bridle, had just hooked on to the fifty-foot cabin-boat, loaded with the Duck and Deer loot, which had been under a deputy’s guard till it was turned over to the Mendova chief.

The Dareall scout-boat was all ready to take on the prisoners and start up the river, but at the last moment Chief Clumb discovered that he didn’t have a cigar, except the one between his teeth. Neither did Croty, the motor-boat engineer cop.

“I’ll run up an’ get some, Chief!” Croty said, and Clumb handed him a five-spot. Croty ran up the bank, and Columbiana and Caroost clambered rather awkwardly into the bow of the launch.

At that moment a man emerged from a red cabin-boat down the eddy and began to toss chunks of wood on to the bow deck. The wood made a hollow, booming sound, and Caroost glanced that way. He started up from his seat and began to exclaim—

“Why, that’s”

Columbiana pulled him down beside her with a low hiss—

“Yo’ fool!”

Happily, Clumb was casting an eagle-glance at the energetic shanty-boater. He even moved in the shanty-boater’s direction, keeping a sharp eye on the man. Being Chief of the Mendova Police, Clumb always looked strange river outfits over, and he didn’t exactly recognize the shanty-boater. But he had the feeling that he ought to.

“I beg pardon,” Caroost turned to her softly. “Did I hurt your wrist?”

“No—that shanty-boater’s a friend of ours,” she replied in a voice scarcely audible.

“I’m sure sorry—this thing’s up to me. My ancestors helped to settle Ohio and Indiana, and they were very successful people. They were famous Indian-fighters and had many hair-breadth escapes and”

“Don’t strain your imagination,” she glared at him. “Did they wear black-rimmed specs?”

“I don’t need them,” he flushed, taking the black bows from his eyes. “You see—I thought they gave me a kind of intellectual appearance. Apparently, looking intellectual isn’t any help to me!”

With his dark-rimmed spectacles off he wasn’t anywhere near the same looking man. Clumb was thirty yards down the bank by this time, and he glanced back and saw the two sitting numbly in the launch. As he looked, the shanty-boater gave them an eloquent look, a gesture that Columbiana understood but which Caroost, looking at her, did not even see.

A talking-machine on the little red shanty-boat started a brass band record, and the shanty-boater threw armfuls of wood on to the shanty-boat bow. The tow-boat, having straightened up the big boat of loot, was splashing and sighing out at the eddy edge. A sawmill down the levee was roaring, and the band-saw began to scream through a knot.

Columbiana reached and slipped the mooring-line from the cleat on the bow of the launch and moved into the steerman’s seat. Inspired, Caroost kicked the battery-starter switch and threw in the reverse. The motor-boat backed swiftly and, as a good police-boat should, noiselessly out into the eddy. Then the girl swung the bow sharply down the eddy, and he threw over the reverse. The boat shook with the change of the power from astern to ahead.

The next instant the Dareall was lifting her bow out of water and beginning to skim over the surface. And then Chief Clumb turned. He saw the two prisoners crouching and swinging out into the current fifty yards away. He snatched out his automatic pistol and began to empty it, but in vain. His heavy bullets slapped into the water, first on one side, then the other, and skipped off across the river surface for half a mile in shortening jumps.

Chief Clumb yelled profanity, threats, orders, but the patrol-boat merely swung wide, straightened out, squatted more and more at the stern and began to boil away down-stream.

It was the swiftest boat for miles along the river. It had a double engine with automatic couplings, and, when both sets of cylinders were applied to the screw, the bow rose from the surface, and, standing on her tail, the Dareall scooted like a wild goose stepping in the water for fun.

IN THREE minutes the boat was, to Chief Clumb’s gaze, a mere agitation a long way down the river. And in seven minutes there was nothing in sight to lend possibility to the hope that there would be a break-down. What Chief Clumb remarked to his subordinate with a handful of cigars is utterly unthinkable, unless one has heard a river-town police man swing his tongue on such an occasion.

When the escapers had gone from sight, Clumb turned wrathfully on the shanty-boater.

“Theh—theh, yo’ scoundrel. See what you done, distracting my attention!”

Clumb choked in his anger and effort to find a scapegoat.

“What all did they do?” the river-man asked with all the innocence Tid could muster.

“Do—do! They stole the Duck and Deer stock”

“They did! Sho! That lil’ gal an’ that feller—the paper said there was a big safe—them two tote a safe across Mendova mud an’ sand-bar!”

Clumb’s jaw dropped. How had those not overly-strong river man and girl carried a weight like that—carried the tons of merchandise in the short time they had had to work, between the passings of the patrolman on the beat? Clumb saw and was dazed by the point.

“Riveh-pirates could do anything!” Clumb declared angrily. “Co’rse, they could”

Tid laughed as if he had been paid a compliment, but he said seriously:

“Them two ain’ no scoundrels, Chief! They’s jes a soft-paw an’ one of them independent riveh-gals—so they say. I hearn tell some real riveh-rats done hit an’ was snucked off ’n the night. Somebody cut ’em loose—an’ when they got down theh, the boat was gone, an’ they hadn’t time to bust open the safe”

“Who said that?” Clumb demanded sharply.

“Feller drappin’ by ouh bo’t las’ night, suh—up on the County bar, suh.”

“Shucks!” Clumb snorted indignantly. “Yo’ shanty-boaters is all crooks and all riveh-rats, an’, when we catch one bunch of yo’, hit’s neveh the right bunch, accordin’ to yo’ tell. Them two”

“Yas, suh,” admitted Tid humbly. “Theh’s a heap of iggerance up the bank about what’s down the eddy, yas, indeedy!”

“They had the boat and they had the loot!” Clumb declared, justifying his conclusion.

“Columbiana’s bo’t was theh with hit—an’ Caroost’s skift, too; ’cordin’ to the paper, they said they found hit deserted into the fog, and they salvaged hit, ’count of nobody bein’ on to hit. Hadn’t be’n fo’ them, that boat’d be’n by Memphis an’ clost to Vicksburg er Helena, anyhow, by now. What they said stood to reason, Chief!”

“They had them goods on, an’ they was receivers on hit!” Clumb retorted.

“I hate to see innocent fellers took up,” Tid suggested.

“Likely yo’ know all about hit?” Clumb turned suspiciously.

“No, suh; I’m jes’ a drifter. That big boat was comin’ down, mostly nights; feller name of Tid an’ one name of Rooter had hit—four fellers.”

“Tid? Ain’t that Red”

“Yassuh, a mean little scoundrel—’bout my size, suh, leetle heavier,” Tid said without batting an eyelash and as innocent as the river in appearance.

“How come hit that feller ’n his gal was on to that bo’t?”

“Yas, suh—hit’s seo. Theh they was! But hyar I be, too; likely yo’ ain’t hearn about hit, but about a hundred shanty-boats jes’ cut loose by theirselves, an’ fust anybody knowed he wa’n’t theh no mo’, but five, ten, twenty-five mile down-stream an’ in the dang-blastedest fog”

“Why—Mendova wharf-boat cut loose, too!”

“Yas, suh—hit’s what I’m tellin’ yo’. Nobody reg’lar wa’n’t accountable fo’ nothin’ that night. Them pirates had awful hard luck, Chief. Jes’ when theh’d got that boat loaded down, an’ when they’d brung down that safe, the boat was cut loose, an’ theh they was with yo’n’ all them bulls coming down. An’ they had to git to swim fo’ hit down the bend that night er git took up. Them pirates got Caroost’s bo’t—that’s what they say. ‘Whisky Sam’ was tellin’”

“I’d like to git my hands on Whisky Sam!” Clumb grumbled. “I bet he lands a thousand pints into Mendova every week, an’ Mendova’s dry!”

“Yas, suh, Chief—but not so overly dry, at that!”

“I’d bust his haid!”

“Yas, suh—but hit’s tolerable thick, suh. Yo’ hadn’t no call to ’rest Columbiana an’ that feller. He waren’t nothin’ but a soft-paw. Co’se, he ain’t no soft-paw, not now. He’s ’sperienced, now. If he hain’t areg’lar ole riveh-man already, Columbiana ’ll shore make one of him. Yas, indeed!”

“Yo’ tell folks around that I offer five hundred dollars reward for them two scoundrels!” Clumb cried out angrily, his judgment unshaken by the cunning and tricky shanty-boater.

“Yas, suh!” the river-man grinned.

As Clumb and his discomfited motor-boat man went aboard the ferry, the shanty-boater returned into his own craft.

“Theh!” he said to his pals. “Old Clumb’s plumb sure Columbiana an’ that feller Caroost done that job. Good thing we towed up with ‘Sour Pop.’ Hit’s jes’ the way he said. I bet we can pull that pearl-buyer tonight. We ain’t never bothered them pearl-buyers none. This here boat ain’t big enough fer any real freight. Hit don’t take much joolry o’ that kind to make a load, though.”

“Lawse!” Tid grinned. “Them two made that getaway slick! She held the wheel, an’ he kicked over the starter.”

“How’d they managed the rope?”

“Columbiana kicked hit off the cleat.”

“Yo’ ’low hit’s safe to pull a job tonight—so soon?”

“On to that pearl-buyer”

“But they’ll all be nervous 'count of them pirates.”

“We got to bait ’im,” Tid explained. “They never was a buyer turned down a pearl ’count of nervousness yet. Lucky I got them pearls yet. They ain’t much account, but I kin play off I expect they’re worth about a thousand.”

“Hit’s seo!”

A little after dark they put the outboard motor on the skiff and drove up the river to land in Gas House Slough of Mendova and walked up to Tivoli Street, turned south and then turned again toward the river. Two stopped at the first comer, and Tid and Rooter went on down the block to a little block and concrete building with a delivery alley along one side. They entered the building, and ten minutes later the other two strolled down and also entered.

In the back room a man with greatly distended jaws sat firmly bound in a chair. His eyes were eloquent gray-blue. Tid and Rooter were making a businesslike collection from the large, open safe in the room. Within five minutes the four turned out the lights, closed the doors and carefully locked them. They strolled past a policeman on Front Street and walked up to Gas House Slough, entered their skiff, dropped back to the County court landing and cut loose their shanty-boat.

Down the bend they counted their money, seven thousand six hundred and forty dollars. They examined their pearls of price and decided that they had about fifteen thousand dollars’ worth, Old Britler having collected enough for several strings and matched six pairs of beautiful ear-drops.

They had played a bold game and won handily. They floated all night, playing poker with a five-cent ante and a twenty-five-cent limit—a rate that gave them excitement but did not leave them stranded as a big game would have done. They knew what a big game would do to them—that it would break them up and that probably they would fight before they were through.

“I tell you, boys,” Red boasted, “we’ll drap down to Vicksburg and go into N’Orleans, and there we’ll have some fun, eh? We’ll get shut of them pearls and slugs, an’ we’ll have fifteen thou’, all right, and we’ll get some new hats and pants and so on, an’ what we won’t do won’t be do-able. No! Nobody can tell us how to do things!”

“Yeh!” Sunflower cried with delight. “I know what I’m goin’ to do. I’m goin’ to salt some of my money away, an’ I’m goin’ to live around an’ maybe kind of git married er somethin’. An’ I’ll have a little place to live on so, ’f I got to git to scoutin’, I’ll have a place I kin go to an’ settle down an’ never say nothin’ but what I’m one of them swell sports who lives out’n the country”

“Believe me,” Rooter grinned, “I’m goin’ to circulate around. I’m going around to ’Frisco. I ain’t be’n there sincet the earthquake, when they made me work—work like a darky—an’ me with two thou’ into my pockets I’d picked up around before they got to shootin’ so promiscuous just if yo’ was walkin’ around and bendin’ over”

“Let’s stop into Thirty-Seven an’ get some of Tavell Love’s Arkansaw Overflow, eh?” the fourth man suggested. “We kin git somethin’ so’s when we go drappin’ down, scoutin’ down the bends, we’ll have somethin’ to do. I don’t know nothin’ harder to do ’n jes float down an’ watchin’ the banks. If yo’ got some good liquor along, hit kind of passes the time; see?”

“Sure—that’s right! We’ll jes’ have a drink aroun’, an’ we’ll sort of float down nights an’ tie up back in some’rs days!”

Thus they contrived to fall into the hands of Nemesis.