River Laughter/Chapter 7

HE shanty-boat load of sporting-goods which had been carried from the Duck and Deer was brought to Mendova by the gasoline-packet Bridle, and a gang of negro roustabouts were employed to carry the stuff back up to the Front Street store. Two clerks and the proprietor spent some time filling up the shelves and cases which had been so thoroughly evacuated.

The shanty-boat, which was fifty feet long, was claimed within three days by a man from up on the Ohio River, who had missed it from its landing between two days. Having identified it, proved ownership and engaged a tow-up in a barge fleet, he returned it to his own berth.

Adjustments were made with regard to other shanty-boats which had gone down the river on that night of fog. River-people, among themselves, looked out upon the placid current, wishing that they could swear, but not daring to, for fear the Mississippi would hear them. No less than three shanty-boat towns had gone afloat that night, besides half a hundred boats that had been moored along banks, bars, towheads and islands, from fifteen or twenty miles above Mendova to below town.

It could happen, of course, because it had happened. The memory of that weird, prolonged, chilling laughter could not be eradicated; that was as tangible and important as the mere going adrift had been. It really meant more in the minds of those who had heard it.

Word that Columbiana and a sport, or a soft-paw, had been arrested in a fifty-foot Point Pleasant-built shanty-boat with all the Duck and Deer stock on board was another fine bit of live gossip. Among some of the women, the fact that Columbiana had always held herself aloof and refused to marry any man and had shot no less than three persistent admirers—all easy, and no one fatally—they resented as a criticism on their own conduct and ideas.

Columbiana had always held her head high, daytimes, anyhow, and now—she was just getting what was coming to her for being that kind of a girl, river-pirating along, and caught at last. Of course, river-ladies like Mrs. Mahna, Mrs. Young, Mrs. Haney and old-timers of discretion and experience understood Columbiana’s viewpoint and stood up for her.

“Jes’ ’cause she don’t have no man a-hangin’ around ain’t no sign she ain’t no regard for ’pearances!” Mrs. Mahna declared. “Likely she’s got reasons. Perhaps some feller she likes is gone off some’rs scouting er is into jail er something like that, an’ she’s jes’ waitin’ on him. She ain’t obliged to tell her business, is she? Course, she ain’t. Them O’Bines never was no hand to talk their own business”

“Well, how does she live?” Mrs. Dapnell demanded. “What she got to live on if she ain’t what she says she ain’t and if she ain’t a river-rat pirate like some others, I’d like to know!”

“She’s educated, Columbiana is!” Mrs. Mahna retorted. “Take a man er lady that’s eddicated, an’ they don’t have to work. All they got to do is think, and they make money same’s the rest of us does lifting our daylights out lugging nets er drift logs er—er anything!”

The capture of Columbiana and the soft-paw, who was now believed to be a regular old sport hiding behind a pair of big round specs, was an almost unanswerable indictment of Columbiana, at least.

“If she ain’t one of them pirates, what is she?” Mrs. Dapnell demanded.

“How comes hit yo’ drapped down forty mile into that fog, an’ you ’lowed to lie there above Thirty-Four Towhead till it come cold?” Mrs. Haney demanded.

“That’s ole Mississip’—the dad”

“Couldn’t Ole Mississip’ git Columbiana into that boat, somehow?” Mrs. Mahna asked tartly.

“Course”

“That’s hit! Course! Sho!”

“Gittin’ caught with the goods neveh made no one a pirate, ’thout they was circumstantial evidence,” Mrs. Drost explained elaborately. “Why, one time me ’n’ my husband that used to was—le’s see; hit were Mr. Jacklin’ or Mr. Reel, I fergits which—found fo’ thousand dollars up by Buf’lo Island. Hue-e! Wa’n’t we rich! Well, we took to spendin’ hit along same’s anybody would, an’ next we knowed we was right into U. S. court an’ ’cused of counterfeitin’. “Was we counterfeiters? Nope! We never got no good out ’n that money, to speak of. They took—I ’member, now, hit were Mr. Cumstark I was married to then—all we had left, exceptin’ some into a tin can they didn’t find. We bought chickens an’ such stuff and pigs an’ hides off’n darkeys, after that; so, really, we didn’t git to lose so much as we mout of. But theh they had us ’cused of counterfeitin’—shucks!

“S’posen Columbiana did have them things? Likely she’d jes’ stopped in theh to say howdy to that black-bow-specked feller what laid off to be a soft-paw an’ fooled everybody! Sho! I ain’t no faith in nobody that acts iggerant; mebby they is iggerant, an’ mebby they’s jes’ reg’lar pirates. But yo’ take a smart Alec, an’ yo’ know he’s iggerant, because he plays smarty.”

Thus they discussed, professed and recorded during the interim of the capture and escape of Columbiana and that sporting soft-paw, Caroost. When the river-people learned of or witnessed the escape of the two while handcuffed together in the Mendova police patrol-boat, leaving Chief Clumb standing up the bank swearing through the cadences of a complete repertoire of profanity, there was great joy. Pig-Foot Clumb always was acting so superior to shanty-boaters; and then, right on top of the escape, the burglary and the excitement arrived the gagging and binding of Old Britler in his little pearl, baroque and shell headquarters there in Mendova!

That was rubbing it into Clumb! At the same time river-people couldn’t be, sure whether the theft was by their own pirates or some of those long-riding or automobile fellows who had lately begun to appear far and wide as claimants for attention of those on the mid-line between Up-the-Bankers and regular river-pirates. However honest a river-man or lady might be, he could not refrain from a genuine interest in, the doings of the people who might drop in any day, all unbeknownst, and have dinner at their own very tables, or perhaps merely tie in at the same eddy or sand-bar.

In any event, they enjoyed the embarrassment manifested by Chief Clumb and the Mendova Chamber of Commerce and all that kind of people when they chipped in and offered five thousand dollars reward for the capture and conviction of the raiders who dared tie up and rob, first a famous sporting-goods store and then a leading merchant, a dealer in pearls and baroques and buttonshells.

It was bad enough to have a ratio of one hundred and thirteen killings to the one hundred thousand population, but, when it came to having four tons of stock and twenty-five thousand dollars in pearls stolen one night right after the other—that was too serious to go unresolved and without resolution.

Tavell Love and Tinkle, proprietor of the Island 37 resort, took the police patrol-boat, Dareall, up to Mendova and reported it by the wharf-boat telephone to police headquarters. Clumb came down in the sky-blue, gold-trimmed police automobile and looked the boat over with rueful dissatisfaction. It wasn’t because some of the contents were gone—taxation would pay for that—but because the two culprits were not in it.

“Where’d you get it?” Clumb grumbled.

“Down in the big cut-off, Chief”

“Anybody into it?”

“No—it just floated down, swinging into the eddies. I was out duck-shooting, and I saw it swing by, and I ’lowed perhaps yo’d like hit”

“Course, Tavell! But—” Clumb stared at him.

“Yo’ ain’t nothin’ on me now, Chief!” Tavell declared. “Not sincet that feller come down with”

“Didn’t see them two prisoners?”

“Didn’t see anybody, Chief. Who was they?”

“Why—a white girl name of Columbiana O’Bine, and a fellow name of Caroost. They robbed the Duck and Deer”

“I heard somebody talking about that!” Tavell exclaimed. “Somebody said”

“Aw, come off! Yo’ know all about hit! What ails me is it took ’leven rousters two-three hours to pack that stuff back up to the store, an’ them two—feller and a girl—packed hit all down to the shanty-boat in about an hour.”

“When pirates has a job, they works fast,” Tavell declared.

“What you heard about that Britler business, Love?”

“Not a word!” the islander shook his head.

“You’re lying!”

“Nope, hope to die, not! That wa’n’t no river job; hit were up the bank. I don’t know anybody that ’d have the nerve to do hit. How much did they get?”

“Pearls and slugs Britler paid eighteen thousand seven hundred and sixty dollars for and more’n seven thousand dollars cash.”

“Hit were a nice tidy little haul, Chief.”

“The of it is, I got to get ’em back er lose my job!” Clumb choked.

“Wh-a-at?”

“That’s right!”

Tavell Love stared out across the Mississippi.

“Reckon yo’-all could he’p a feller? I ain’t been mean—you know that!” Clumb reminded him.

“Who’d get your job?” Love demanded practically.

“Dolend!”

“What! Why”

“That’s right; I wouldn’t mind gettin’ dumped so much if it wa’n’t for havin’ a dadblasted reformer come in. He’d sure raise”

“I ain’t heard nothin’, Chief—but if I should”

TAVELL went on down the river in a little runabout he had towed up behind the patrol-boat. He was perturbed by the prospect. If they put in Dolend, Mendova would be dead; the State would be dead; the Mississippi River would be dead; there wouldn’t be anything doing anywhere. The next he knew, they’d enforce the law against blind-tigers on river islands; the Mississippi would go dry. He couldn’t think of any calamity to equal the thought of the Mississippi River going dry.

When he arrived at Thirty-Seven, he asked around about that job on Old Britler. Gossip said that it was a river job, but no one knew who had done it. The money hadn’t showed up yet. Tid, Rooter and two others of the Turtles had just dropped in, and they told him they didn’t know anything about it.

“You see how it is, boys,” Tavell Love declared, “if they dump Clumb out, that’ll bust up Mendova. You know how it is down in Memphis now—all dried up so they’ve begun to tell how extravagant people is about drinking so much coffee, and it’s bad for the nerves. Well, now ’f Mendova”

“I don’t cyar if old Clumb gits his and they’s forty of them reform cops put in,” Red Tid sniffed. “I don’t have to ast any man fer a drink. I come from the mountangs, an’ I can make mine, an’ I’ll do it but what I have my liquor. It don’t do no man any good, goin’ without his liquor. Why, what fun is there in this world if a man don’t have liquor? Why, that’s all the real fun they is!”

“But look’t, Tid! Ev’rybody ain’t sit’yated the way you be! Take them that cyan’t make their own liquor—what’ll they do?”

“They’s iggerant, an’ I never worry none about iggerants,” Tid jerked his head. “Les’ have some more liquor, boys, before we gits dried up!”

Tavell Love, afraid of Mendova’s going dry and being reformed and everybody’s pleasure dried at the fountain-head, was poor company for them. They spent a drink around for everybody and then announced their intention to drop on down the Old River and out into the Mississippi.

“You boys got lots of money!” Love declared suspiciously.

“We’s got business to ’tend to,” Tid declared. “We needed a little money to kind of prepare for it.”

“I bet you got a sawmill pay-job on hand?” Tavell hinted.

“If we have, likely yo’ll see the envelopes’ insides,” Tid grinned, and they parted, the pirates in their pretty little red shanty-boat.

However, they took six jugs full of Arkansaw Bottom Overflow with them, and, when they reached the Mississippi, they didn’t care much which way the boat floated.

They had gone down for thirty-six hours when in the dusk a skiff drew near them. The cabin-boat was going around in an eddy and had been for an hour or more. The skiff drew out of a little chute-bay and ran alongside. Its occupant stealthily climbed aboard and turned a flashlight into the interior, where he saw the pirates sprawled on the floor. The light confirmed a suspicion.

“Why, this is my boat!” the skiffman muttered softly. “I think I’ll take possession!”

It was Caroost, fugitive from justice, ex-soft-paw, and learning still. He climbed aboard and gently slipped handcuffs upon all the wrists of the band of pirates. Then he dragged them out on the bow deck.

Then Caroost proceeded to sweep out the boat and pick it up. He threw overboard several empty jugs, but inherited sense of economy prevented him from throwing overboard the full jugs. He searched through the boat and found many of his own things intact, except the food supply. That had been depleted, and sundry unfamiliar meat lumps and the like substituted.

As he swept by lamplight, he saw something roll along the floor, and, picking it up, he saw by lamplight that it was a pearl. It was a beautiful pink pearl. Its size made him wonder if it wasn’t artificial. A closer search revealed a pail full of little envelopes, each marked with figures, and he recognized the contents of the envelopes as baroques.

He went out and searched the clothes of the pirates and discovered that he had been idiotic. Each pirate had one or two automatic pistols and ammunition. Moreover, they all had money-belts and in the neighborhood of one thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars in each belt. Gazing at one of the faces, its familiarity struck Caroost as remarkable; that, and the fact of the boat being his, and the certainty that four horrid water-monsters had come through the fog to alarm and dismay him—surely, these were the monsters!

The money and additional pearls from their garments stirred Caroost’s mind to diverse ideas. He brought out the bottle of forty per cent. ammonia which he had for cleansing purposes and, dragging one of the pirates into the cabin, proceeded to revive him.

The pirate was Sunflower, the least of the four. Sunflower came out of his stupor slowly as from a bad dream.

“We got ernough, boys!” he whimpered. “I’m all wore out, totin’ this stuff! Lawse! We couldn’t sell no more rifles er shotguns! Look’t—we got fo’ hundred automatics already—aw, come on, boys! Les’ quit while the quittin’s good. I’m tired! Yeh—aw—what’s the ust of the safe? They ain’ no money into hit! They don’t leave no money into a safe. Come on!”

Caroost listened with quickened mind. So these were the men who had loaded up that big house-boat with firearms. He plied the half-conscious wretch with ammonia and with questions. Sunflower gave up, told all about the raid on the Mendova Duck and Deer sporting-goods store, and Caroost listened with gratitude and attentiveness. He wrote down the confession, and Sunflower signed it, “Jerry Miskole, alias Druley Frane.”

Next Caroost partly revived Rooter, and Rooter boasted of his prowess and swore that, when he stole, he stole clean. Under Caroost’s questioning, he told the story of robbing Old Britler, and he signed the paper. Red came partly to with a desire to fight, but Caroost managed him psychologically, and Red confirmed the stories of his unfortunate piratical mates—and signed the confession. The fourth man, when Caroost went out to find him, was gone, handcuffs and all. Caroost was sorry he hadn’t chained him to the cleat, but at the same time it was a lesson.

He chained the three who remained, elbow in elbow and from cleat to cleat on the stern. Then he knew what he had to do.

“This clears Columbiana’s reputation,” he exclaimed gratefully. “It was my life’s work and necessity to clear her reputation! My land! It wouldn’t do to let an innocent girl like her suffer under that strain! I wish she were here to help me think what to do about this. My gracious! These men must be awful bad men, robbing and burglarizing the way they tell about!”

Caroost, innocent and with the proof and evidence of his innocence, with substitutes for court action, too, knew of but one way of settling the affair. He studied the maps and found that he was still somewhere above Memphis. Memphis, naturally, would be the place to go to with the prisoners, as he had no power with which to buck the current up to Mendova.

Accordingly, he pulled out into the current and floated down. Memphis was just below the second bend where he could see the yellow haze of the sky-reflections. He landed at the Mud Bar and, sitting guard, waited for day.