by Dave Mckay
When it was starting to come on dark we put our heads out of the trees, and looked up and down and across; nothing to be seen; so Jim took up some of the top boards of the raft and made a timber tent to get under in rain or in hot weather, and to keep the things dry. Jim made a floor for the tent, and lifted it a foot or more above the level of the raft, so now the blankets and all the traps was out of reach of waves from the big river boats. Right in the middle of the tent we made a box of dirt about five or six inches deep; this was to build a fire on in wet or cold weather; the tent would keep it from being seen. We made an extra steering-oar, too, because one of the others might break.
We fixed up a short stick with a fork in it, to hang the old lantern on, because we must always light the lantern when we seen a river boat coming down toward us, to keep from getting run over; but we wouldn’t have to light it for boats going up river, apart from if we see we was in what they call a “crossing”; for the river was pretty high yet, so up-going boats didn’t always run the channel, but hunted easy water.
This second night we run between seven and eight hours, making over four miles an hour. We caught fish and talked, and we took a swim now and then to keep off feeling too sleepy. It was kind of holy and serious, going slowly down the big, quiet river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars, and we didn’t ever feel like talking loud, and it weren’t often that we laughed -- only a little kind of a low quiet laugh. We had pretty good weather as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to us at all -- that night, or the next, or the next.
Every night we passed towns, some of them away up on black hills, nothing but just a big bed of lights; not a house could you see. The fifth night we passed St. Louis, and it was like the whole world was lighted up. In St. Petersburg they used to say there was twenty or thirty thousand people in St. Louis, but I never believed it until I seen that wonderful blanket of lights at two in the morning. There weren’t a sound there; everybody was asleep.
Every night we would land about ten o’clock at some little village, and I'd go and buy ten or fifteen cents worth of meal or meat or other things to eat; and sometimes I lifted a chicken that weren’t sitting comfortable, and took him along. Pap always said, take a chicken when you can, because if you don’t want him yourself you can easy find someone that does, and a good act like that people won’t ever forget. I never see pap when he didn’t want the chicken himself, but that is what he always said, anyway.
Mornings before the sun come up I would go into corn fields and borrow a watermelon, or a pumpkin, or some new corn, or things of that kind. Pap always said there weren’t no wrong to borrow things if you was meaning to pay them back sometime; but the widow said it weren’t anything but a soft name for robbing, and no right person would do it. Jim said he thought the widow was partly right and pap was partly right; so the best way would be for us to take out two or three things from the list and say we wouldn’t borrow them any more -- then he said it wouldn’t be no problem to borrow the others. So we talked it over all one night, going along down the river, trying to make up our minds if we was to drop the watermelons, or pumpkins or what. But toward morning we got it all fixed up, and said we would drop crabapples and persimmons. We weren’t feeling just right before that, but it was all comfortable now. I was glad the way it come out, too, because crabapples ain’t ever good, and the persimmons wouldn’t be ready for two or three months yet.
We killed a duck now and then that got up too early in the morning or didn’t go to bed early enough at night. Take it all around, we lived pretty high.
The fifth night below St. Louis we had a big storm after midnight, with a power of thunder and lightning, and the rain poured down in a solid wall. We stayed in the tent and let the raft take care of itself. When the lightning come out we could see a big straight river ahead, and high cliffs on both sides.
By and by says I, “Hello, Jim, look over there!” It was a river boat that had run up onto a rock. We was moving straight down on her. The lightning showed her very clearly. She was leaning over, with part of her top floor above water, and you could see every little chimney rope clean and clear, and a chair by the big bell, with an old soft hat hanging on the back of it, when the lightning come.
Well, it being away in the night with a storm and all, I felt just the way any other boy would a felt when I seen that broken ship laying there so sad and all alone in the middle of the river. I wanted to get onto her and look around a little, and see what there was there.
So I says: “Let’s land on her, Jim.”
But Jim was dead against it at first. He says: “I don’t want to go playing around on some broken ship. We’s doing well enough, and we better let well enough alone, as de good book says. Like as not dey’s a watchman on dat ship.”
“Watchman your grandmother!” I says. “There ain’t nothing to watch but cabins and the steering room; and do you think anyone’s going to try to rob them on such a night as this, when it could break up and wash off down the river any minute?” Jim couldn’t say nothing to that, so he didn’t try.
“And what’s more,” I says, “we might borrow something worth having out of the cabin. Cigars maybe -- that cost five cents each, solid money. River boat drivers is always rich, and get sixty dollars a month, and they don’t care a cent what a thing costs, long as they want it. Put a candle in your pocket; I can’t rest, Jim, until we give her a look over. Do you think Tom Sawyer would ever go by this thing? Not for pie, he wouldn’t. He’d call it an adventure -- that’s what he’d call it; and he’d land on that ship if it was his last act. And wouldn’t he make it special too? -- wouldn’t he put his whole being into it? Why, you’d think it was Christopher Columbus finding America. I wish Tom Sawyer was here.”
Jim he argued a little, but give in. He said we mustn’t talk any more than we could help, and then talk mighty low. The lightning showed us the ship again just in time, and we tied up to a hook on the right side of it.
Out there, the floor was pretty high. We went slowly down it to the left, in the dark, toward the steering room, feeling our way with our feet, and pushing our hands out to stop us from hitting the ropes, for it was so dark we couldn’t see no sign of them. Pretty soon we come to the forward end of the window in the roof of the steering room, and climbed on to it; and the next step brought us in front of the door to the top cabin, which was open, and true as anything, away down at the other end of the steering room we seen a light! and all in the same second we seemed to hear low voices down there!
Jim whispered and said he was feeling powerful sick, and told me to come along. I says all right, and was going to start for the raft; but just then I heard a voice call out and say: “Oh, please don’t, boys; I promise I won’t ever tell!”
Another voice said, pretty loud: “It’s a lie, Jim Turner. You’ve acted this way before. You always want more than your part of the takings, and you’ve always got it, too, because you’ve promised if you didn’t get it you’d tell. But this time you’ve said it just one time too many. You’re the lowest, most two-faced dog in this country.”
By this time Jim was gone for the raft. I was just burning up with wanting to know what was happening; and I says to myself, Tom Sawyer wouldn’t back out now, and so I won’t either; I’m a-going to see what’s going on here. So I dropped down on my hands and knees in the narrow walkway, and moved forward in the dark until there weren’t but one cabin between me and where the room with the voices was at the end of the walkway. In there I could see a man lying on the floor and tied hand and foot, and two men standing over him, and one of them had a lantern in his hand, and the other one had a gun. This one kept pointing the gun at the man’s head on the floor, and saying:
“I’d like to! And I should, too -- you dirty skunk!”
The man on the floor would pull against the ropes and say, “Oh please don’t, Bill; I ain’t ever going to tell.”
Each time he said that the man with the gun would say: “It’s true you ain’t! You
never said no truer thing than that, you can count on it.” And once he said: “Hear him beg! and yet if we hadn’t got the best of him and tied him he’d a killed us both. And what for? Just for nothing. Just because we stood on our rights -- that’s what for. But I know you ain’t a-going to be a danger to nobody any more, Jim Turner.”
And the other man says, “Put up that gun, Bill.”
Bill says: “I don’t want to, Jake Packard. I’m for killing him -- and didn’t he kill old Hatfield just the same way -- and ain’t it right that he gets the same thing?”
“But I don’t want him killed, and I’ve got my reasons for it.”
“Bless your heart for them words, Jake Packard! I’ll never forget you long as I live!” says the man on the floor, in a crying like voice.
Packard didn’t take no interest in that, but hanged up his lantern on a nail and started toward where I was there in the dark, and moved his hand to show that he wanted Bill to come. I moved back as fast as I could about two yards, but the boat leaned so that I couldn’t make very good time; so to keep from getting run over and caught I moved into a cabin on the high side. The man came a-feeling along in the dark, and when Packard got to my cabin, he says: “Here -- come in here.”
And in he come, and Bill after him. But before they got in I was up in the top bed, cornered, and sorry I come. Then they stood there, with their hands on the side of the bed, and talked. I couldn’t see them, but I could tell where they was by the whiskey they’d been having. I was glad I didn’t drink whiskey; but it wouldn’t a made much difference anyway, because most of the time they couldn’t a found me because I didn’t breathe. I was too scared. And, besides, a body couldn’t breathe and hear such talk. They talked low and serious. Bill wanted to kill Turner. He says: “He’s said he’ll tell, and he will. If we was to give all that both of us have to him now it wouldn’t make no difference after the fight and the way we’ve done him. Sure as you’re born, he’ll turn and help the police; now you hear me. I’m for putting him out of his troubles.”
“So am I,” says Packard, very quiet.
“Well, I’ll be... I’d started to think you wasn’t. Well, then, that’s all right. Let’s go and do it.”
“Hold on a minute; I ain’t had my say yet. You listen to me. Shooting’s good, but there’s quieter ways if the thing’s got to be done. What I say is this: it ain’t good thinking to go doing something with a rope around you if you can get at what you’re up to in some way that’s just as good and at the same time don’t bring no new problems into the action. Ain’t that so?”
“Too right it is. But how you going to do it this time?”
“Well, my plan is this: we’ll look around and bring together whatever things we’ve missed in the cabins, and push off for the other side of the river and hide the takings. Then we’ll wait. Now I say it ain’t a-going to be more than two hours before this old ship breaks up and washes off down the river. See? He’ll be drowned, and won’t have nobody to go to prison for it but himself. I say that’s a good measure better than killing him. I don’t feel good about killing a man as long as you can get around it; it ain’t wise, it ain’t right in the eyes of God. Ain’t I right?”
“Yes, I think you are. But what if she don’t break up and wash off?”
“Well, we can wait the two hours anyway and see, can’t we?”
“All right, then; come along.”
So they started back to their prisoner, and I left after them, scared half to death, and climbed forward. It was dark as tar up there; but I said, in a kind of rough whisper, “Jim!” and he answered up, right at my elbow, with something like a groan, and I says:
“Hurry, Jim, it ain’t no time for playing around and groaning; there’s a gang of killers back there, and if we don’t hunt up their boat and cut it loose so these boys can’t get away from this ship there’s one of them going to be in a bad way. But if we find their boat we can put all of them in a bad way -- for the police will get them. Fast -- hurry! I’ll hunt the right side, you hunt the left. You start at the raft, and -- “
“Oh, my good lord! Raft? Dey ain’t no raft no more; she done broke loose and went -- and here we is!”
Chapter 13
Well, I caught my breath and almost fainted. Shut up on a dying ship with such a gang as that! But it weren’t no time to be feeling sorry for ourselves. We needed to find that boat now -- had to have it for ourselves. So we went a-shaking down the right side, and slow work it was, too -- seemed a week be- fore we got to the back of the ship. No sign of a boat.
Jim said he didn’t believe he could go any farther -- so scared he had almost no strength left, he said. But I said, come on, if we get left on this ship we are in serious trouble, for sure. So on we went again. We headed for the back of the steering house, and found it, and then moved forward on the roof, hanging on from window to window, for the side of the roof was in the water.
When we got pretty close to the door to where the gang was, there was the boat, sure enough! I could just make her out in the darkness. I felt ever so thankful. In another second I would a been into it, but just then the door opened. One of the men put his head out only about two foot from me, and I thought I was gone; but he pulled it in again, and says:
“Cover that stupid lantern, Bill!”
He threw a bag of something into the boat, and then got in himself and sat down. It was Packard. Then Bill he come out and got in. Packard says, in a low voice:
“All ready -- push off!”
I almost couldn’t hang on, I was so weak. But Bill says: “Hold on -- did you go through him?”
“No. Didn’t you?”
“No. So he’s still got his part of the money.”
“Well, let's go; no use to take things and leave money.”
“Say, won’t he know what we’re up to?”
“Maybe. But we got to have it anyway. Come along.”
So they got out and went in.
The door shut loudly because it was on the side leaning in; and in a half second I was in the boat, and Jim come jumping after me. I cut the rope with my pocket-knife, and away we went!
We didn’t touch an oar, and we didn’t speak or whisper, or almost even breathe. We went moving along quietly and quickly, past the top of the big wheel that moves the boat, and past the back of it; then in a second or two more we was a hundred yards below the ship, and the darkness covered her up, every last sign of her, and we was safe, and knowed it.
When we was three or four hundred yards down the river we seen the lantern show like a little candle at the steering house door for a second, and we knowed by that that the robbers had missed their boat, and was starting to understand that they was in just as much trouble now as Jim Turner was.
Then Jim took the oars, and we took out after our raft. Now was the first time that I started to worry about the men. I think I hadn’t had time to before. I started to think how awful it was, even for killers, to be in such a way. I says to myself, there ain’t no telling but I might come to be a killer myself yet, and then how would I like it? So says I to Jim: “The first light we see we’ll land a hundred yards below it or above it, in a good hiding-place for you and the boat, and then I’ll go and make up some kind of a story, and get someone to go for that gang and get them out of there, so they can be hanged in the right way when their time comes.”
But that plan never got started; for pretty soon it started to storm again, worse than ever. The rain poured down, and never a light showed; everybody in bed, I think. We raced down the river, watching for lights and watching for our raft. After a long time the rain let up, but the clouds stayed, and the lightning kept showing a little here and there, and by and by it showed us a black thing ahead, moving on the water, and we made for it.
It was the raft, and mighty glad was we to get on it again. We seen a light now away down to the right, on the side of the river. So I said I would go for it. The boat was half full of things which that gang had robbed there on the ship.
We pulled it onto the raft, and I told Jim to keep going down, and show a light when he judged he had gone about two miles, and keep it burning until I come; then I got in the boat and headed for the light. As I got down toward it, three or four more showed -- up on a hill. It was a village. I reached land above the light, and put down my oars and let the river move me. As I went by I see it was a lantern hanging on a big ferry boat. I got out and looked around for the watchman. By and by I found him resting at the front of the boat, with his head down between his knees. I gave his shoulder two or three little pushes, and started to cry.
He waked up in a kind of surprised way; but when he seen it was only me he took a good look, and then he says: “Hello, what’s up? Don’t cry, boy. What’s the trouble?”
I says: “Pap, and mom, and my sister, and – “
Then I broke down crying out loud.
He says: “Oh, stop it now, don’t take on so; we all has to have our troubles, and this one’ll come out all right. What’s the problem with them?”
