River Laughter/Chapter 6

ITH their thirty-foot police patrol-launch speeding down the river at nearly twenty-five miles an hour, the soft-paw, James M. Caroost, and the river-girl, Columbiana Muscatine O’Bine, were fully occupied in steering it. Going at that rate, the boat slipped and slewed around, and only by quick, hard pulls on the wheel could Columbiana steer it properly. Caroost stood patiently beside her with his right wrist fastened to her left wrist by the handcuffs. When they had rounded the long bend below Mendova, on her order, he pulled the lever to cut out the extra motor, and they dropped back to the less exacting gait of ten or eleven miles an hour.

The soft-paw could not speak, and Columbiana’s mind was too full of thoughts to make any remarks. Becoming fugitives from justice was the last idea that would have occurred to either of them, and now they had stolen the Mendova police-launch from under the very foot of Chief Clumb.

“Did you know who that shanty-boater was, talking to Chief Clumb?” she turned and demanded suddenly.

“No!” he shook his head. “Did you?”

“Of course, I knew him! One of those river-pirates, and the first time I eveh knew him to get to do anything—anything—kindly for anybody!”

“What do you mean?”

“Why, didn’t you notice? Clumb was watching that shanty-boat, and that gave us a chance—that shanty-boater did it on purpose! Helped us get away!”

“Helped us escape!” Caroost turned to look at her.

“Well, didn’t he?”

“Why—yes—of course. But—bu”

“Possibly you had moral scruples about his helping us get away?” she demanded.

“Why—you see—it’s so—so unconventional—helping—ah—prisoners escape. I thought”

“Who-all mout you be, stranger?” she drawled, her expression one of bewilderment and her eyes wondering and yet twinkling.

“James M. Caroost,” he replied absently.

“I thought so—but I wasn’t at all sure!” she said, turning to see whither she was steering, and then a minute later she continued, “One of my friends was arrested by Chief Clumb, once, up above here. He said as they came down to Mendova, chief opened some things he called emergency rations, and they had a regular feed. I’m hungry!”

“I am, too—awfully!” Caroost exclaimed. “I will get”

He started, and the unaccustomed handcuffs brought him up short. He stared at the steel links, while Columbiana steered industriously. He looked from side to side helplessly. Sheepishly he returned and sat down. It occurred to him—it dawned on him at last—that their predicament had a number of wide-spread ramifications.

“For a man,” she murmured at last, “I think you are a person of exceedingly trifling and no-account ingenuity.”

“I—I have to have time to—ah—think!” he explained contritely. “Our family were, really, plodders”

“You must have been astonished when you found yourself escaped from the—ah—authorities,” she half-mocked him.

“Well—ye—yes; I recall that our dear ancestor, Jevone Caroost, did escape from Indians by the exercise of superior intelligence and—and ability to run.”

“You’re running true to form then, aren’t you?”

“Eh—true to form?”

“Yes; you know when horse-races are run, horses are said to make about a certain speed under certain condition of training—according to their form, you know.”

“Eh—of course. You—ah—are familiar with race-tracks?” he asked in obvious effort to restrain himself.

“They amuse me,” she admitted. “I just love the Louisville races—and in N’Orleans, too!”

He looked at her.

“Aren’t you afraid—possibly you think I may contaminate you?” she smiled at him suddenly. “A sporting girl—you think?”

“I beg your pardon!” he hastened. “I didn’t happen to have met any like you before.”

“Never was attached to one like me before, then?”

“N-n-n—” he started, and then he threw his head back to laugh in an outburst, which he followed by a contrite, “I beg your pardon! It sounded—er—so humorous. Of course, I came down the river because”

She gazed at him with hopeless admiration.

“Because of some untoward incident?” she suggested.

“Yes—you see,” he burst forth, “there was a lady sang in our church, and she—and she”

“I see—refrained from marrying you?” gently.

“Yes,” he blinked, “a very lovely lady; her voice was beautiful, thrilling. Her mother promised she would marry me, and, of course, it seemed all settled. It was all settled, but she married a—married a garage-owner instead.”

“And you didn’t even own an automobile?”

“Oh, several”

“And you could drive an automobile?”

“Oh my, yes!”

“I thought you started that motor as if you knew it—I was astonished at your facility. So you came down the river?”

“So I came down the river. I—I felt very badly, of course. They said—her mother, you know, and the rest—that down the river I would forget.”

“And you forgot?” she asked, softly.

“Why—ye—largely. I’ve had to. Dear me! Life is so unexpected down here—events are so varied. My excuse was to find my dear old college professor”

“Exactly!” she smiled. “Suppose you look in that tool-chest, there in the locker, and see if there isn’t a file?”

“That’s so!” he cried. “That’s so—if we had a file”

“You’re so anxious to be separated from me?” she demanded.

“No!” he exclaimed after gazing at her for a full half-minute.

He sat back against the gunwale and made no motion toward the tool-chest. He sat stubbornly when she attempted to go to it. She was helpless. She discovered that, despite his light appearance, he was immovable.

“Please!” she exclaimed, at last.

Without a word he threw up the locker top, and there were trays of tools and, in cover slots, a score of assorted files. He drew a thin, fine blade with a saw-edge and had taken two or three cuts with it when he turned to her and said:

“This is a police-boat. Don’t you suppose in those lockers? In that cabinet inside?”

“That’s so!” she exclaimed. “Really, you are learning!”

Sure enough, hanging over a bar in a gun-cabinet were a score of pairs of handcuffs, ready for any police emergency. They found one pair that was exactly like their own, and its key clicked the lock. Their manacles fell from their wrists.

“Thank you!” she smiled.

“I shall never forget—” he hesitated—“our attachment!”

She tried not to smile, but she could not help it. One of her own birds had come flying home.

“What are we going to do?” she asked. “We’ll change the boat’s name!”

“They certainly would recognize—identify this boat!” he admitted. “I don’t know—I am—I am not familiar with the river—not very”

“But a callous gathers on your hand?” she queried.

“Eh? You mean—oh!” he laughed gaily. “I realize—I begin to understand. You know—people said so much about ‘soft-paws’—and I—and I”

He turned up his palms, and gazed at the four lumps along the bases of each of his sets of four fingers.

“I am delighted!” he cried. “Isn’t the Mississippi wonderful? And the patois—the dialect—the colloquialisms—are so amusing and so appropriate! I begin to like—I begin to love it!”

“It treated you mean at first?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t say exactly that,” he shook his head. “Not meanly but with—with a kind of discourtesy!”

She laughed.

“My hunger is not yet appeased,” she added. “Won’t you look for an emergency ration? We can not go down much farther. By this time they’ve telephoned and telegraphed our descriptions to N’Orleans. We don’t dare pass Memphis in the day time. We can run down Barnay Chute, though, and I reckon there’s enough water to come across the bar at the head of Thirty-Seven; anyhow, there’s a new cut across Centennial Island, and we’ll lie in there till after dark and drop on down, unless”

“Unless what?”

“Unless you’d rather not travel with a lady?”

SHE looked him in the eye with level gaze. In all his life he had never met quite that cold, gray stare. Columbiana Muscatine O’Bine had thought of things which he had not yet surmised. She had lived alone on the Mississippi for a number of years, and she was far from ignorant; she knew things which never were included in the sheltered life and circumscribed education of an ignorant up-the-bank man. She was a girl of the world, competent and adaptable; he was just a narrow, hapless townsman.

“I am sorry!” he exclaimed. “Of course—as you say! If you’ll just land me up the bank here—anywhere!”

“You’re—you’re going to leave me—to get away as best I can?” she asked, and she had to turn her face away lest he see the twinkle in her eyes as she thought of being protected by the like of him.

He started. Bewildered and blanked by her sudden shift of view-point, he could only open his mouth and gaze helplessly at the sand-bar, the trees of a long bend, the willows and the narrow chute toward which they were heading.

“I don’t know!” he whispered, wiping his arm across his forehead, where had gathered beads of sweat at the crisis of his predicament. “You—you are so much more familiar with—with affairs down here. I—I was never a fugitive before with a lady!”

She burst into a laugh, and he grinned ruefully. As she laughed, she steered the police-boat down the chute. She cut down the gas and as the boat slowed she ran it around a point and up into an old bayou. There, hidden behind young willows growing on a bar and in a pocket in a wilderness, clear of the mainland and surrounded by many islands, they threw over an anchor and came to rest.

It was nearly sunset, and Columbiana made haste to examine the emergency rations and found that the big, sheet-metal, porcelain-lined cupboard contained bread in waxed paper, smoked meats, canned goods, a bushel of potatoes, cans of flour and cornmeal and other ample supplies. Rapidly she spread out what she wanted. While she prepared to bake hot-bread, he acted to her orders and peeled potatoes and sliced smoked beef. She tried to find a coffee-pot but found, instead, a percolator.

He made the coffee. When it came on dark, they turned on the cabin light, pulled down the curtains and closed the door. They sat up to the table to dine. Out of the stores they had succeeded in making a delicious meal, including smoked-beef, sauce, hot bread, corn pone, sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes and many other things.

“The police live in plumb comfort when they go shanty-boating, don’t they?” Columbiana suggested.

It was, however, an intolerable position. They were both embarrassed. They had but touched the brim of their affair together. She had minded her own business, refrained from asking him any least question—but she just had to know now. Yet she hesitated to ask the questions.

“You seemed plumb surprized when Sheriff Dabonne told you those things were stolen?” she hinted.

“I was!” he admitted. “If I’d known—I couldn’t imagine—you see, it was this way. I’d tied in up at the head of Island 35—and, first thing I knew, I was down in a big fog—I didn’t know where.”

“You’d anchored?”

“Yes. And then—then, while I was looking around, I saw four horrible monsters coming right up to my boat, swimming, and—and—well, I was greatly alarmed, and I went away in my skiff, and I bumped into that big house-boat, all full of sporting-goods.”

“And I arrived just in time to be caught with you by Sheriff Dabonne?”

“Exactly, and I’m so sorry”

“I’m not!”

He started and then gazed at her. She did not meet his gaze. This was something different again. He could not guess what was in her mind. He realized, however, that for some reason she was not blaming him nor greatly disturbed by their predicament.

“I should not forgive myself if by my stupidity I had gotten you into this difficulty,” he said slowly, “and if there is any thing I can do—anything possible—I’ll go back and explain to the chief—I’ll take all the blame—anything!”

“Just to save me annoyance?” she asked.

“Exactly!”

“You weren’t to blame,” she told him. “It’s just what Old Mississip’ did. The river’s cutting up all the time. It’s got us into this scrape, and perhaps it’ll get us out, but we can’t depend on it. Of course, we can’t keep this boat. There’s something you could do”

“I’ll do it!” he declared.

“It’s down below, on Island 37. There’s a blind-tiger there—a Black-and-Tan dive, if you know what that is?”

“No,” he shook his head.

“They sell whisky there and beer; all the disreputable men and women off the river, and around, go there. It’s a regular shack settlement on the island and a lot of shanty-boats. Nobody decent ever goes there, except—except fugitives from justice. I’d die before I’d go there—but”

“I might—I might find somebody there who”

“We’ve got to have another boat—two boats. Skiffs. One for you—one for me—of course! And”

“Of course—I’ll go. You are the captain!”

“Thank you!” she replied, not without feeling.

His eyes turned to a clothing-cabinet or locker part way up the cabin at the foot of the sleeping-car bunks. He walked over and looked at the contents. He smiled as he found uniforms of several of the water-front policemen.

“I’ll go down to those shacks in style!” he told her, drawing the curtains.

In a few minutes he emerged. He was a policeman, from the jaunty lieutenant cap down to the oil-polished shoes On his feet. She stared at him.

“You—you wouldn’t go there in that—that uniform!” she gasped. “Why, they’ll shoot you—dead!”

“I deserve to be shot,” he replied. “This is the police-boat, and it’s been seen—a boat came down this chute ahead of us. They’d be sure I was a detective if I went in there in plain clothes. If I go there in this—and tell my business, why perhaps”

An exclamation of astonishment broke from her lips.

“Really—you are bright!” she cried. “That is the thing to do!”

With side-lights burning and the searchlight picking their way, they ran down to the rear of Island 37 and rounded up to the stern of a big boat there. The side of the board carried the weather-beaten inscription—

Dancing and music ceased within a half-minute after the police-boat appeared, and there was a scampering of feet over the bow and up the bank. With line in hand, Caroost jumped to the big cabin-boat stern and threw a hitch on a timber-head. He stood there, fully revealed in the stern light of the concert-boat. He walked into the cabin and out on to the dancing-floor.

Columbiana watched him with catching breath. She saw that his shoulders squared, that he stepped upon the balls of his feet, his heels raised like an anxious bear. He was going into a den, the like of which he had never seen, but she noticed what she had not seen before—that both of his outside coat pockets sagged heavily, though his hands were not in them but on the protruding butts of two police automatics.

SHE could see the men and women crowding back against the walls of the cabin. There were three or four whom she knew, “Big Sue,” for example, and “Pete the Gunman” and two or three trappers and market-hunters whom she did not know by name. There was a blue-eyed yellow girl and a little, smart-Alec white man with a face like a cat, who walked from the far side and, smirking, greeted the newcomer in a policeman’s dress uniform.

“Who yo’-all ’low to git, Lieutenant?” the little man demanded. “My name’s Tavell Love, and I’m superintendent here.”

“I don’t happen to want to get any man,” Caroost replied. “I want two good skiffs, clinker-built and sixteen or eighteen feet long. I want them right, too, and good oars. If you’ve got an outboard motor, so much the better.”

“Then—then yo’ ain’t afteh nobody?”

“If I was, I’d come down like a river-rat, and I’d work like a snake, and I’d be a plain-clothes man!” Caroost retorted.

“Sho! Yas, suh! We don’t aim to interfere with nobody that don’t bother us, er ouh friends!” the little wretch grimaced, and, turning to a gingerbread darkey leaning against the bow door jamb, he ordered, “theh’s them two skifts down by Palura’s yacht. One’s clinker-built, but one’s laid smooth—a narrow-strip boat, Lieutenant?”

“Tight?”

“Yassuh, theh’s both varnished boats, suh. One’s twenty-foot long, an’ hits got a two-hoss motor, suh”

“Good! I’ll go down and look at them.”

The three walked down the bank to the “yacht,” which was a whisky-running motor-boat. There, in an eddy beside a square timber float, were several skiffs. With a flash Caroost looked them over. The boats the little man pointed out were the best ones there.

“How much, old man?” Caroost asked.

“Nothing, suh!”

“What! Why, I’m willing to pay”

“Yas, suh—course! I know that; I know every bull in Mendova, too—an’ yo’ ain’t one of them. Yo’ shore come hit dandy on to ‘Pig Foot’ Clumb—yo’n that gal, Columbiana. Hit’d be a favor to me, though—if—if”

“If what?”

“If yo’ ’n’ her’d leave that police-launch down by Old River Mouth landing—she knows where hit is. I’d shore like to telephone Pig Foot I got hisn’s boat to return hit as a special ’commodation to him!”

“Oh!” Caroost exclaimed astonished.

“Yo’ throwed a good bluff, old sport!” the man cackled. “But hit wa’n’t necessary; any time yo’ git to scoutin’, drap in hyar, an’ we’ll take cyar of yo’, yassuh—an’ if that gal—if she wants to hide out hyar—why”

“We’ll go up and talk to her!” Caroost hastened to say.

“You kin!” the man grimaced. “I done hit onct; I was six weeks into Memphis Hospital, an’ my side’s tender, yet, where the bullet went. Lawse! She ain’t—she’s friendly with yo’-all, suh?”

“She’s captain!” Caroost answered.

“She sent yo’ in in that uniform?”

“It was my idea—coming down in the police-boat—I didn’t want anybody to think I was a plain-clothes man”

“Sho! Didn’t yo’-all wear big round specs?”

“For a time—yes!”

“An’ they said yo’ was a soft-paw—say! Go get some extra gasoline an’ that out board, Tinkle!”

The gingerbread turned and hurried away.

“Say, sport!” the man lowered his voice. “I could use you—down b’low! Yo’-all want to tie up for a job?”

“Not with a lady on my hands.”

“That’s so—any other lady, course—but—um-m; Columbiana’s awful particular—yas, suh!”

Five minutes later with two skiffs along side the police-patrol dropped down the Old River behind Island 37, and Columbiana laughed when she heard the plan of the little man.

“He’s bad, that scoundrel!” she said. “I met him onct.”

“He said he knew you.”

Her eyes narrowed as she looked down the search-light beam.

“Yes; he helped establish my reputation down this way,” she admitted. “Most anywhere else in the world a lady with a reputation lots of times deserves it but don’t like it. But down this way a reputation’s useful and necessary—and I have one.”

They anchored in the Old River Mouth landing eddy. She picked supplies and outfit for the skiffs from the lavish stock on the police-boat, including waterproof blankets, swing cots and the balloon canvas tents and flies—used when the chief went turkey-hunting or hounding a fugitive. She took her pick, too, of the boat’s firearms, and Caroost took his—and his discrimination pleased her fancy. He took, too, a bunch of handcuffs.

“What for?” she asked.

“There are some scoundrels who scared me,” he answered simply. “And I have a grudge!”

Then they abandoned the police-patrol.