"Driftwood". Raymond S. Spears
sir; we was tore out at Meramec River. Dad was driftin’, an’ we was helpin’ him. All of a sudden our skift was busted. Dad jumped. We did, too, but not far enough. Dad romped it down the bank lookin’ for a skift, but, shucks! we was comin’ down eight miles an hour, and he was behind a mile. We ’lowed we’d git drifted in, but we didn’t have a chanst."
"Two nights and two days!" Sib exclaimed. "And nothing to eat! Say, we’ll have some supper, now!"
"You just trippin’?" the boy asked.
"No; I was carried out of a creek. Was asleep on the cot, and the stake we tied to pulled out, and let me float down. I didn’t know it till just a little while ago. Whew! it’s after midnight!"
"It seemed a long time, stranger, when you was comin’, but you come!" the boy said gravely. "Who-all mout you be?"
"Sibley Carruth."
"I’ve heard about you; you come down the Missouri; Dad was trappin’ below Kansas City on those old river lakes there. You come clear down from Fort Benton. I’d like to do that. We started to Kansas City. My name’s Jimmy Veraine; he’s Jepson Veraine. Ho law! I never saw so many books onto a shanty-boat before!"
"We use them when we’re tied in," Sib explained. "Father and Mother are great hands to read."
"Dad’s that-way, too," Jimmy said. "He don’t ever stop in anywheres but what he buys a newspaper. We was to St. Louis a week, and Dad bought two newspapers there. He never misses a word. Everytime he reads a piece, he marks it with a pencil, so’s he’ll know he read it. He don’t b’lieve in wastin’ any time, readin’ the same thing twicet. Paw don’t. This stuff’s awful good drinkin’; what is it?"
"Tea."
"Paw always drinks coffee, but this is good. Seems like this bread an’ butter’s got more taste to hit than any cake or pie I ever ate!"
"I could eat a barbecued cow!" the other boy said from the cot. "I was so dog-goned tired I hadn’t a squawk left in me!"
"Then you never had none in you!" Jimmy grinned. "He never said a word, but I could see he was worried some, the way he set his jaws."
Sib was working fast; he threw some cold rabbit, a few sliced potatoes, a cut-up carrot, two onions, salt, a half-turnip, and two cabbage leaves into cold water in a kettle. He covered the kettle and put it on the kitchen stove, over a good fire.
"A little soup will taste good to you," he said. "You don’t want to eat too hearty, after ’most starving!"
"I won’t eat any more than one spoonful after another," Jimmy grinned. "We found somethin’ to eat, there in the drift, I forgot to tell you. There was three oranges; they was tol’able old, kind o’ soaked, and wa’n’t what you’d call pretty to look at, but they was good!"
"I never ate nothin’ so good!" Jep declared.
"How is the leg?" Sib asked.
"The ankle’s sore, but the thick sole o’ my shoe sort of held the log off."
"You’re lucky!"
While the soup was boiling, Sibley went out on the bow to look around. Jimmy followed him. They were still in the middle of the current. Blackness shrouded the sky and the surface of the river. It was beginning to rain again.
"We’re all right!" Jimmy remarked. "It’s only when the squeeze gits you that there’s trouble! This is a nice boat, too! She rose right up when the logs come in under ’er. If we could see, we mout pull in, but it’d be better to wait for day, ’count o’ sawyers and drift piles and things along the edge. Dad said that next to bein’ up the bank, bein’ out into the middle of it’s safest. We wa’n’t only just in the edge, and it snatched us out, and you—you drifted out of a creek!"
"Your father’ll worry."
"Not any more’n your folks will. You got a mother, ain’t you?"
"Yes."
"I ’lowed you had; you don’t never see any boat like this ’n, ’less there’s one o’ them females on board. Take it when Maw’s to home, you git so you wash your neck every day. When she’s away takin’ care of your aunt, prob’ly you ain’t so dog-goned particular."
"I hope she won’t worry!" Sib exclaimed.
"Well, she will; bet your boots she’ll think everything in the world’s happenin’ to you. I know them women. Maw’s that away. Say stranger, if you’ll let me git to lay down there by that stove, I’ll—"
"Not much!"
"Yes, sir! I won’t sleep on no bed; that bed’s so dog-goned clean an’ I’m what Maw’d call so mussed up—"
They compromised by swinging a hammock across the room, with a blanket in it.
"Call me purty soon, and I’ll spell you!" Jimmy suggested sleepily, and Sib said he would. But he blew the lights out, and went up on the roof, with his heavy shirt and a waterproof coat on, to keep watch. They were in the midst of open water, but at intervals from both sides of the current came the roar of water rushing through woods or against banks or over shoals.
"Come day, and we can make shore somewhere," he thought.
He could see dimly, when his eyes became accustomed to the dark. The falling rain made the distance invisible, and drowned all sounds while it lasted. Out of the gray mist of a downpour he saw something approaching. He lighted the lantern. Then sprang down and caught up a pike-pole, to fend the thing off.
"Why, it’s a boat!" he cried. "It’s a motor-boat!"
Instead of fending it away, he reached with the pike-pole and drew the two boats together, side by side. He made them fast at the bows with what was left of the launch’s mooring-line, which had chafed off somewhere up-stream. Running through the cabin, he made the two boats fast with a rope across the stems, from cleat to cleat on the decks.
It was an open launch, covered from end to end with a canvas tarpaulin, and it stood high in the water, showing the hull was dry. It was four feet longer than the twenty-eight-foot shanty-boat. Sibley raised the canvas and found the motor covered with a box. On raising this, he saw a fine heavy-duty engine, with reverse gear, storage-battery, starter, and lighting-wires. It was a new boat, with strong towing-bitts. Even the gasolene tank was full, and there was motor oil in a five-gallon can ready for use.
"When it comes day, I reckon this’ll drive us ashore!" Sib grinned, "and the salvage will be worth a hundred dollars to us!"
For "findings is keepings" down Old Misissip, against all claims but that of an owner. If one rescues a boat, a log, or other valuable drift, the finder is paid for his trouble by the owner—the salvage fee varying according to circumstances. "Drifting" for logs and boats is a regular flood-time occupation.
CHAPTER IV
A BABY AFLOAT
DOWN the Mississippi, amid the thousands of tons of jagged, menacing drift, floated a baby-carriage. Its wheels were under-water; its body was half-submerged; its handles stood up in a graceful curve behind.
Strapped into the seat of the carriage was a blue-eyed, fair-haired baby, in a short dress and thick worsted jacket and cap, bright red in color. Over the little buggy swung a parasol top.
All night long the strange little ark had floated down the river, the baby sleeping, with a milk-bottle in its hands. Perhaps the baby had waked up and cried, or perhaps its instinct had been to keep still in the black gloom. After daybreak, when the sun came out, the child sat up and looked around from under its canopy. A hundred yards away was the shanty-boat, with the big motor-launch lashed alongside.
"Da-da!" the baby cried, waving its hands.
The