by Talbot Mundy
So Sherry bought blankets and a thermos bottle, chucked the lot into a hired car, invented a rig to hold his typewriter so that he might use it on the run, and ordered the darky driver to follow the left bank of the Mississippi until further orders.
“Step on her. I’ll pay the fine,” said Sherry. “If there is a flood, I’ll write it!”
After four days of tireless activity, he learned what fifteen minutes’ inquiry in New Orleans would have supplied him at no expense — the exact position of the real danger-point. And there he planted his car with its wheels hub-deep in mud, face to the enemy, and waited, writing down the symptoms of the sick brown bank. He knew to a decimal point how many tons of dirt the dump-carts brought — how many thousand bags of sand were piled — how many men were working. And the levee held. Sherry Mansfield nearly wept.
He was mortified when Wahl showed up in a big car, late one afternoon and turned his satyr-smile on the situation. If he could, he would have sunk into the ground before Wahl saw him, but there was very little that Wahl did not see — even to the brief-bag full of typewritten description.
“Glad I found you, youngster.”
Sherry made note of the change of address, and was not too glad, and looked it.
“You missed a big thing when you turned that wedding down. Double tragedy. Best story of the year.”
“Wait till the levee breaks!”
“It won’t. Never does when it’s watched. I wired the story of that wedding to the Tribune. Your dad sent for me at once — got his wire last night. Thought I’d do you a turn in exchange — you see, I owe it to you two ways; for recommending me in the first place, and for making me cover the wedding myself! So I decided to catch the Limited at the junction, and make it by road on the chance of running into you. I’ve brought a copy of the paper — here, take it — whole front page.”
Sherry took the paper absent-mindedly and stuffed it in his pocket, which annoyed Wahl.
“Be advised, and read it, youngster. That’s a story. It’s what got me on the Tribune.”
Sherry looked rather more interested, but his eye was on the levee all the while, and on a man in overalls on top of the bank who stood remarkably still, with his hands in his pockets, whistling. Wahl continued:
“It occurred to me you’d like a chance to clean up on the story. You’ll get more of it than from the Mississippi in a hundred years. I’ve got to go — I’m wired for, and the Limited won’t wait. You pick up the story where I left off. It’s your big chance!”
Sherry met his eyes — nodded — looked back at the levee. He was hardly listening.
“The girl’s name’s Lanier. Jacqueline Lanier. Get her story from her own lips. I hadn’t time to make her talk, and she won’t see any one, but they’ll haul her out before the coroner tomorrow; but she’s one of those deep-eyed wise ones, who won’t tell much. You use your wits and get next to her somehow. Believe me, you’ll have a story you can sign!”
Sherry glanced down at the paper protruding from his pocket and smiled politely.
“Thanks,” he said, “I’ll read it.”
“Well, I’m off. See you in Frisco, I suppose. Good-by.”
“Good-by,” said Sherry, suddenly remembering to shake hands. “Good of you, I’m sure. Thanks awfully.” He had almost forgotten the incident — had forgotten the paper entirely, before Wahl’s car was out of sight. He was dreaming dreams and seeing visions — planning — letting ideas come to him from where they would — imagining a future Mississippi Valley, drained and safely banked with all the flood-waters stored up a thousand or more miles away — being a boy with a man’s brain. The boy watched like a lynx to see the mud-bank go. The man schemed reconstruction.
It was the whistling man with hands deep in his pockets on the levee who invited him at last to join him in a launch and see the night patrol through by water.
“Suit yourse’f, son, but of you’ll excuse me the observation, you seem interested. If so minded, you may sleep, suh. But if you’d keep that searchlight moving in the bow, you’d see more, and help me. How about it?”
All that night long Sherry stayed awake, plying the electric searchlight as the launch patrolled the bank, returning again and again to the point of most imminent danger, while the leisurely individual who gave the orders stood by the whistle to sound the alarm, and the gangs ashore kept toiling under kerosene flares.
“Ef the river don’t drop by dawn, she’ll open up,” was the only comment the inspector made; but he made it more than once.
However, dawn came, and the levee held. The searchlight paled and was switched off. Sherry yawned, considering coffee and a razor. An hour after dawn, the inspector ran the boat’s nose against the bank, threw a line to some one ashore, glanced behind him casually — and sprang for the whistle like a fiend let loose. He gave three long blasts; and as if that were the signal for the whole world’s end, the levee broke at the danger-point three hundred yards below them. A new brown river burst through to the bottom-lands. The very river-current changed, and the launch at full speed forward fought to keep the rope from breaking.
“Drowned the gangs?” asked Sherry.
“Mebbe.”
The levee kept going in sections, leaving islands here and there that cut up the flood into hurrying torrents in which it looked impossible for anything to live. The inspector cut the bow-rope with an ax, and after thirty paralyzing seconds at the helm contrived to work the launch out into the river, where he headed up-stream and worked slowly around in a semicircle until they were a hundred yards above the scene of the first break.
“Time to make it’s now, I guess,” he said quietly, in Sherry’s ear.
“Make what?”
“Pick up a few. There’ll be some swimmin’ — an’ some not. You swim, son?”
Sherry nodded.
“Soak her all she has now, Mose!”
It was gorgeous madness, and Sherry laughed aloud. The long lean inspector at the wheel pulled out a plug of tobacco from his overalls, bit off a piece, and handed the rest to Sherry.
“Gee, she’s openin’ up! She’ll fill the bottoms most a hundred mile one way. There’ll be funerals. Ain’t she got no more’n that, Mose? Hang on, all!”
The launch plunged like a bit of driftwood but the inspector kept her headed almost straight for the middle of the broadest gap, where a torrent a quarter-mile wide now poured with a roar like Niagara.
“Get y’r boat-hook, son, an’ ketch ’em if you see one. You’ll have to make it snappy.”
Sherry unfastened the boat-hook from its rack and stood amidships. But it was impossible to see anything except driftwood and drowned cattle in that hurrying brown flood. It was fifteen minutes before they reached water that was slack enough for the engine to hold its own, and five minutes after that before Sherry stuck the boat-hook into something black that was jammed in the fork of a floating tree.
“What ye got, son?”
“Woman, I guess.”
“Kickin’ too, by the look of her! Lend a hand, Mose!”
She was less than half-drowned, but all-hysterical, and angrier at the boat-hook than a she-tiger at the cleaner’s rake; what with wet clothes and a basket she still clung to, her weight was enormous; but they hauled her aboard between them, and set her gasping against the engine housing.
“Name, please,” Sherry asked her, remembering his chosen profession.
“Consuelo Martinez.”
The answer was automatic — the subconscious functioning of a mind nearly unhinged by the experience she had come through. Her first act was equally automatic. She undid the basket and pulled out an image of the Virgin, beginning to cry as she saw the paint and gilt had suffered.
“Friends?” asked Sherry, feeling for his pencil and scrap of paper. “Relatives? Any one with you when you got lost?”
For a second she looked blankly at him, then set the image of the Virgin down, rose staggering to her feet, and screamed: “Conchita! Conchita!”
“Who’s she?” asked Sherry, while the launch chugged steadily ahead in search of other victims.
“Conchita! Oh! Oh! Conchita! My baby! Conchita! Conchita!”
She leaned over the side of the launch and screamed at the brown flood, striking angrily at Sherry when he tried to calm her, pointing at driftwood — at dead cattle — at anything that moved or showed itself for a second on the water.
“There she is! There she is! Conchita!”
“I’ll put her ashore first chance,” said the inspector, and Sherry left off trying to question her. But it made no difference; she ran from one to the other, striking at them, even wrenching at the wheel, demanding that they find Conchita, then returning to lean overside and spread her arms out, crying the same name again and again until her voice cracked and nothing came forth but a hoarse whisper. The inspector touched his forehead, and Sherry nodded.
They pulled out two drowned men after that, and towed a living horse behind them to a bank, where a raised road checked the flood and people were already building fires. There were several corpses laid out in a row, and there were signs that the inevitable somebody had taken charge and had begun to form the nucleus of a rescue station.
“You bes’ stan’ by that woman till she’s fixed up,” said the inspector, as they landed the dead freight feet-first. Consuelo was trying to jump ashore, still screaming, still imagining she saw Conchita everywhere. Sherry went to help her and she fell on him, bearing him down head-under into the water at the bank’s edge, but she scrambled out first and up the bank ahead of him, crying to the groups of men beside the fires and wringing her hands. Sherry took her basket and went after her, and before he could turn his head the launch had gone.
Consuelo collapsed at last from lack of breath, and Sherry found a woman who promised to look after her. With breathlessness came a trace of returning sanity. She clung to Sherry, begging him to find Conchita and even trying to describe her:
“Blue eyes — dark hair — seventeen—”
“I’ll look for her,” said Sherry.
“Promise me!”
When he promised she let go of him — drove him away — screamed at him to make haste, and the last he heard as he followed the road toward what looked like a village a mile away, was her cracked, hoarse shriek: “Conchita! Conchita!”
He could not have forgotten the name if he had tried. A few minutes later he found a man struggling to launch a flat-bottomed plank boat that had been cast up against the bank with oars still chained to the rowlocks. He helped him, and volunteered to row with him in search of victims, so they set off, paddling slowly until the current swept them around a bend and outward toward the main stream. Then the other man broke his oar in frenzied efforts to force the half-filled boat’s head shoreward, and one oar was worse than useless. Sherry sat still.
“Suit yourself!” said the other man suddenly, and jumped for a tree that rolled and whirled by.
Sherry did suit himself, and sat still in the sinking boat, while the great tree rolled and bobbed and ducked, and he lost sight of the man altogether. Then he saw something moving faster than the water, fifty yards away to his right, toward mid-stream, and began to kick his boots off. The boat would sink in a minute or two. He might as well go and lend that strong swimmer encouragement, if nothing more. So he ran his belt through his coat sleeves, tied his boots to it by the laces and, towing the coat, plunged in.
He used the crawl stroke, and he was a strong enough swimmer to have reached shore by quartering the current, but that obviously living head being borne along in front of him was a challenge that stirred his pluck, and he struck out in pursuit. It was about the time that the current began to get the mastery and to sweep him farther toward mid-stream that he discovered he was following a dog.
He drew abreast, and the dog looked at him piteously, beating the water to raise itself and coughing up a plaintive whine.
“All right, doglums!” he cried out, and swam closer, keeping far enough away to prevent the dog from pawing him.
A minute or two later he overhauled a section of an old board fence, and seizing the dog’s collar helped him on to it. Swimming was easier then; he clung to the planks and more or less floated with the stream, only the fool dog would not keep still, although he cursed him loud and fervently. At last, barking his mongrel head off at a barn-roof, the dog tipped the planks too far, lost his balance, and fell into the water panic-stricken, swimming in rings. Sherry seized him by the collar, and struck out for the barn-roof; but he hardly made it; he was more tired than he knew, and the flood was running with the full weight of the Mississippi heaped behind it.
But the barn-roof swung, and he caught a corner of it with his left hand. He had to let go of the dog to do that, and the dog yelped miserably as the current carried him away. Sherry did not like half-doing things. Or it was possibly the streak of sentiment, that gave his father so much uneasiness. He went back for the dog.
Then the roof swung around again toward him in the vortex of the flood. He seized the side of it — threw the dog up high and dry — and hauled himself out with his last remaining strength. After that he did not remember much for a long time, except that he was sleepy and that the sky turned around and around overhead.
CHAPTER 16.
Sherry and nuts
A cold wet nose thrust into her ear awoke Jacqueline. She tried to brush it away and go on sleeping, for there was a rather delightful sensation of being rocked gently in a cradle, although her left hip ached a little where she lay on something hard. But the wet nose reasserted itself several times, and she opened her eyes; whereat a mongrel dog promptly began licking her face, and she was aware of brown water everywhere, and a blue sky overhead.
The funny part was that she felt — if not exactly happy — confident; perhaps because the dog was friendly; first impressions when you wake make a world of difference. She sat up, pulled her shoes off, and poured the lees of water out of them. She was wet to the skin, but not so very wet; her clothes felt as if they were drying — tickled horribly, and she stood up to let the wind blow through them.
That gave her a view of the whole horizon, for the low-pitched roof on which she found herself was slowly revolving in mid-stream. There was a shore on either side, but a long way off, and there seemed no end to the water in the direction the roof was taking.
“Consuelo!” she called.
Then she remembered that Consuelo was certainly drowned — and felt very sorry for Consuelo, but not for herself — and wondered why not. What she did not know was that she had been crushed to the limit of endurance, that youth was now asserting its resilience and that there would come a sort of ground-swell of depression presently. She tried to feel ashamed of not wanting to cry because Consuelo had gone with every other thing she ever cared for. But she could neither cry nor feel ashamed.
Then she felt hungry and wondered if the dog was hungry too. The dog had climbed up to the ridge of the roof and was barking. He disappeared over the top, was gone a minute and returned to bark at her again. He was a shaggy affectionate fool of a mongrel dog, of the sort that you like in spite of him, or because of his comic lack of anything resembling class. Again he disappeared, and returned, barking. There was something on the other side of the roof, she supposed. It might even be Consuelo. Her heart leaped at that thought. She climbed up on hands and knees to see, tearing her stocking on a shingle-nail.
She checked a scream, and her blood ran cold as she peered over the top, for a young man’s face looked into hers hardly two feet away. He, had a crumpled collar — a two days’ growth of dark whiskers — and his coat was hanging to his waist from his belt. He looked as annoyed to see her as she was to discover him; and the fool dog stood on the ridge between them wriggling with delight and trying to lick both their faces. Some one had to speak. One says idiotic things on such occasions.
“I was looking for Consuelo,” she remarked.
“Oh, are you Miss Conchita?”
“Oh! Well, your mother’s all right. I fished her out with a boat-hook. She’s ashore somewhere and being looked after. Better sit on the ridge, hadn’t you? It’s easier. Here, use my coat.”
He undid his coat from the belt and made a cushion for her on the ridge.
“There. Sit on that.”
It was interesting to be ordered about, and she was too dazed to resent it. She sat facing one way, and he perched himself on the ridge about two yards away from her, facing the other way. Then he called the dog and began petting him.
“Had a long swim, didn’t you, doglums!”
She wondered what sort of a person he was. You could not possibly tell from his clothes, for they were wrinkled and soiled; and the two days’ growth of whiskers made him look rather tough. But he spoke nicely, although his voice was a shade sullen, and he was certainly kind to the dog.
“What are we going to do?” she asked him presently.
“Sit here, I suppose. This roof’ll hit something sometime.”
“Can’t you swim?” she asked.
“Yes, but I can’t leave you here.”
She did not feel embarrassed — and he did, which was funny. It ought to have been the other way around, for it was the first time in all her life that she had been alone with a male of anywhere near her own age. She did not dare to ask about Consuelo, for fear of being questioned in turn; she had begun to remember that she mustn’t tell any one who she was, and his one idea seemed to be to avoid saying anything, if possible. She decided she was not a bit afraid of him, and wondered again and again whether, after all, it would not be safe to ask about Consuelo, but decided not to for a while. But she thought he was distinctly rude.
“Is this your roof?” she asked him presently.
“No,” he said looking at her sharply.
“Why?”
“Oh, I thought perhaps it was.”
He laughed at that, and though the tone of it was hardly courteous his whole face lit up when he smiled, and she decided at once that she liked him.
