THE TORNADO
The sun had risen before the crew of the ark finished their grim
clearing of the decks and the skiff in which the outlaws had rowed out
to attack the ark. There was no way of telling who had fired the shot
which killed the notorious outlaw, on whose head a price of a thousand
dollars had been fixed. Marion was in favor of burying him in the river
with his two companions of the skiff, but Jimmy had the matter very much
at heart.
“Just let me have his head,” pleaded that young savage. “If I can take
his head to the fort I won’t ask them for the reward—honest, I won’t.
But this Big Harp was just about the worst of the whole lot, and mebby
if the others learn that he’s paid for his crimes they won’t be so
venturesome. He was worse than the Indians.”
He spoke with so much emotion that Marion felt the force of his
argument. If it became definitely proven that Big Harp had been
delivered up to justice at the army post, it would make a great
difference in the safety of the pioneers and rivermen. They—Big Harp and
Little Harp, and John Mason—had been the leaders of a band of robbers,
thirty or more in number, who for ten years were the terror of Ohio
boatmen; they attacked “arks” and “keels” alike, and on several
occasions had murdered the entire crew of the captured craft. Their
actual headquarters had been Diamond Island, just below Henderson; but
the caverns higher up the river made convenient lurking places, from
which they could sally forth, or into which they could retreat secure
from pursuit.
Jimmy watched the captain anxiously. In the bright light of sunrise,
Jimmy’s paint and feathers failed grotesquely to conceal the white man.
His head had been shorn, all but the scalp and forelock, which were put
up in a piece of tin, with a bunch of turkey feathers, while the
feathers of at least two turkeys hung to the hair of his scalp.
“You’re a sight,” said Moses, as he gazed on these uncouth adornments,
while Marion was making up his mind.
“I’d ’a been more of a sight if this Big Harp had had his way with me,”
answered Jimmy, whose eyes never left the young captain’s face. “_He_
wanted to cut off my ears and eyelids because I wouldn’t tell him
exactly when the ark would sail from Fish Creek. Only for Logan—the one
I went away with from my cabin—he would have done it, too. Logan was a
pretty good friend to me because I helped him to get away when he had a
broken leg. He would have been caught and handed over to the authorities
more than once if I hadn’t been along. He was pretty helpless. After he
was killed by the Shawnees I lost my job, though, and as the robbers
didn’t have any agricultural employment for me (they said that that was
all I was fit for, because I wouldn’t turn pirate), they took my gun
away from me and launched me in a canoe that happened to be hauled up in
a creek where we camped. There was a dead Shawnee lying by it; and,
before they let me go, Big Harp and that one-eyed fellow that you dumped
out of the skiff just now, thought it would be fun to decorate me with
his head-dress, so that I shouldn’t miss the clothes they took from me.
Those outlaws actually lost a good hour fixing me up, and then put me
into the canoe and shoved me off and told me I could go on and join my
father at the Chickasaw Bluffs, and maybe he’d recognize me by the
resemblance between us. They wouldn’t give me even a day’s rations. Big
Harp said the ark would be along and that you’d take me in.”
Jimmy told these things stolidly, without laying any particular stress
on them until he came to the way in which Big Harp and his gang had
amused themselves by making him into a feathered object of derision
before launching him on the river without food and with no more covering
than the dead savage had worn. His voice trembled with rage when he told
of that, and Moses, who was always the first to feel any strong emotion
in those around him, and to respond to it, shut his fists passionately.
“I wish we could kill them over again,” Mose ejaculated. “We killed ’em
too easy. They had ought to have hung.”
Jimmy looked at him. It was the first moment he had taken his somber
eyes off of Marion since he had asked for the outlaw’s head.
“Yes, Mose,” he said, “even hanging would have been too good for ’em.”
“How did they get hold of you again?” asked Marion.
“I drifted for two days and nights before I could get ashore,” said
Jimmy, taking up his story where he had left off. “They weren’t able to
find the paddle that the dead Indian had had, or else they had hidden it
themselves, so I had nothing to control the canoe with, and I couldn’t
get to shore.”
“Why didn’t you drop overboard and swim for it?” asked Lewis.
“In that ice water, with that current and no knowing how long it would
take me? You couldn’t swim in the river, even to-day, for fifteen
minutes, without doubling up with a cramp and going down! What’s the use
of asking me a fool question like that?”
“Yes,” added Moses, “what do you want to go interrupting him for?”
“You’re interrupting just as much yourself,” retorted Lewis.
Jimmy smiled at them, and then went on addressing Marion. “You get
mighty hungry when you’ve been floating down the river two or three
days. Finally, I paddled with my hands into a creek into which the water
had backed up considerably. It was along about sundown, I reckon. There
were some men working on board an ark—not as big as this, and not very
much more than just decked over. They were hammering so hard, trying to
get all they could done before night, most likely, that they didn’t hear
me shout to them, but went right on working while I got my canoe beached
and started to ’em. I had to pick my way through the blackberry bushes
and grapevines that grew thick along the creek, and I was so sick from
hunger that I expect I sort of crept towards ’em, wondering if I’d have
strength to get to them before they stopped work and went home, and if
I’d have strength left to shout when they stopped hammering. I was so
glad to see honest men that that made me sort of sick, too. I’d ’a’ been
pearter if it had been Indians or outlaws. But, just the thought that I
was in sight of friends made me tremble so I couldn’t scarcely stand up.
I never remembered my head-dress. When I was in the canoe I kept it on
because I thought if I passed any Indians they wouldn’t notice me so
much, and when I got into the creek and saw the white men I forgot
everything except to try to get to them as quick as I knew how.”
“Did they _fire_ at you?” exclaimed Moses.
“Fire? They fired the minute they clapped eyes on my head-dress over the
bushes. They didn’t wait to see the color of the rest of me. The minute
they fired I understood, but it was too late. Some Indians who were
passing by ran in on them before they’d time to load again, and scalped
the whole outfit, and took me captive. They were pleased to death with
my decorations—I don’t know why; and they made a sort of mascot of me,
except that I had to carry the loads, when we traveled, and they showed
me by signs that I’d have to do squaw’s work when we got to camp. They
fed me like themselves, but I was too faint to eat their sort of
cooking; and you would be, too, if you had seen the way they cooked.
Then I showed them I wanted to cook for myself, and they let me do it to
get back my strength. I reckon it must have been a week. I didn’t keep
track of time, and we didn’t go near any settlements. One night we
camped in the mouth of a cave near the river. It was raining, and it had
been raining all day. I expect I was feverish and my head was flighty,
for I got an idea into it that I’d find the other mouth of the cave,
which very likely overlooked the river, and sit in it and wait for you
to come by in the ark. It was a little past the first quarter, and I
thought it had been the last quarter of the moon when I left my cabin
with Logan. You see I was mixed, but I thought I had it all clearly
reasoned out. So I wandered off into the cave.”
“Did the Indians chase you?” asked Moses.
“No,” said Jimmy, “I don’t reckon they did. They had too much sense,
probably, after they’d found how far in I’d gone. They hadn’t any idea
of getting lost themselves. That cave was a hundred caves, all
partitioned off and running in and out of each other. I expect I pretty
near died in them. All I remember is creeping and crawling along on my
hands and knees most of the time, half the time in the water and half
the time out, and then I went sort of crazy and beat against the rocks
and screamed until the whole cavern mocked and mocked me. The next thing
I knew I was lying on blankets in a cave that was fitted up as a
hiding-place, and I learned that my rescuers were part of Big Harp’s
gang. When Big Harp and the rest came, they were so amused they couldn’t
do enough for me. They said they had come down to meet you folks, and
that I should lead the party.”
“How did you come to have the letter to write the warning on?” asked
Moses, whose imagination had supplied the rest of the story, and run
ahead of the narrator.
“Big Horn wasn’t a good reader,” said Jimmy, “and I had been given the
letter, to make out what he couldn’t make out for himself. Big Horn
thought it said something about the Governor sending some money by the
brig that was to leave Marietta with the ‘fresh,’ and he thought it
might be more worth while to make sure of the brig than to capture you
fellows. But when he learned that the word that he thought was ‘money’
was ‘_militia_,’ he lost interest in the letter, and they decided not to
wait very long for you folks. If you hadn’t come in a day or two, they
would have gone back further into the caves until the brig was safely
past.”
“I suppose,” said Lincoln, “that the ark we passed, where the men were
scalped, was the place where you were captured.”
Jimmy looked absently at Lincoln. “I guess that’s about all,” he said to
Marion. “Big Harp warned me, when we attacked you, that if I turned on
any of the gang he and the rest of his crowd would avenge themselves on
any of you they captured, if they got the best of the fight. That’s why
I didn’t kill any of them when the fight began.”
“That’s why you pitched into _me_?” asked Moses, in a sympathetic voice.
“Yes,” said Jimmy. “I didn’t want to seem to be idling.” He fixed Marion
with his steady, dogged eyes. “Now, may I have Big Harp’s head to take
to the commandant at Natchez?”
Marion looked from one to another of the arksmen.
“_Yes!_” they shouted.
“Yes,” said Marion.
Cutler’s body was buried that evening on a wooded eminence of Cumberland
Island, overlooking the Ohio and opposite the mouth of the Cumberland
River. Many such solitary graves double-line the banks of these great
water-ways—the unmarked resting places of victims of savage hate, or
outlaw violence and robbery. Later, in the night, the ark passed Diamond
Island, so long the home of the river pirates. It loomed beside them,
safe, silent, wooded, wrapped in peace.
The next morning they were floating across the broad mouth of the
Tennessee River, nearly half as wide as the Ohio itself, past the site
of the pretty city of Paducah. At two that afternoon Cairo was sighted,
with the broad channel of the Mississippi in plain view over the forest
to the northwest.
Little enough like the populous and commercially important Cairo of
to-day, was the Cairo of a century ago! Not a house was then to be
discerned on the dreary mud-flats. The “town” consisted—this is not a
joke—of a single long flatboat, moored by two infirm old cables to
stumps ashore! Aboard this capacious “broadhorn,” however, there was a
“tavern,” a “saloon,” a smithy and a general store; and, altogether, the
queer craft harbored seventy or eighty persons, men and women. As was
not unusual in those days, the saloon did the larger share of the
business, and of the character of these early inhabitants of Cairo the
arksmen were soon able to form an opinion.
For, contrary to their captain’s wishes, Merrick, Charlie Hoyt, Simon
Corson, Kenton and MacAfee insisted on paying the floating “town” a
visit, to indulge in a social glass and hear the news of the two rivers.
The ark was, therefore, tied up for the night a few hundred yards above
the “city,” which six of the older men visited in the skiff.
During the evening, however, an altercation occurred between the
visitors and a crew of rough fellows at the saloon; and in the unseemly
“mix-up” which followed, Simon Corson had his right eye badly injured—in
a most unfair fight, it was claimed.
He came back to the ark, in that pitiful condition, a little past
midnight. MacAfee, also, had been savagely kicked and beaten.
So incensed were Corson’s companions that it was with difficulty that
Marion prevented them from turning on the town with their rifles, at
dead of night. He did not forget the indignity, however, and “Cairo” had
yet to hear from him on this score.
As for Corson, he was in his bunk for two weeks, and suffered a
permanent disfigurement. It proved a costly social glass for him.
Casting off very early the next morning, the arksmen dropped down past
Cairo, being jeered from the saloon door as they did so, and soon
reached the confluence of the two mighty rivers.
It was a scene of quiet, yet imposing, grandeur. The strong, muddy
current of the Ohio, fully a mile in width at flood, pushed forcefully
out in opposition, and for a time seemed to have the mastery; but soon
the more voluminous, stronger, and even muddier current of the great
Father of Waters prevailed, and with a thousand boiling eddies and vast
upheavals of the contending streams, the Ohio was forced to yield and
was borne away captive.
It was a matter of no little surprise to Lewis and Moses—this being
their first voyage—to find the Mississippi below the confluence with the
Ohio no wider. But the depth was manifestly much greater and the current
more rapid. Before noon that day the ark was passing Iron Banks, a line
of dark-red bluffs along the left shore.
[Illustration:
A “KEEL” FROM ST. LOUIS CAME ALONGSIDE]
The breaking of a sweep, however, compelled the men to tie up for two or
three hours, and while they were here a “keel” of forty tons, from St.
Louis, came alongside and spoke them, in the hope of buying eggs and
poultry.
Thus far they had seen but few boats on the Ohio, and had actually
spoken but two, both from up the Wabash—the one a broadhorn, the other a
keel from Vincennes. Yet now, as a chance result of the erratic
navigation of those days, the Mississippi seemed suddenly to swarm with
ascending and descending flats, keels and skiffs. Merry salutes from the
horns and bugles of the boatmen were heard every few minutes.
A ship, too, was lying-by in the bay below Iron Banks; and a “smithy”
also passed while the captain of the keel was hailing them—a cheery
ding-dong from the blacksmiths’ anvils resounding from the steep bank.
Soon after the keel had left them two large arks from Kaskaskia veered
in, to pass the time of day and ask whether any late news had been heard
from down the river. For the attitude of the Spaniards toward Americans
at New Orleans was now the absorbing topic of interest. Whether they
could make a market or not meant much to these arksmen, whose all was
often at stake on the chances of a voyage.
A skiff and two “covered sleds” from Cincinnati, loaded with horses,
also came in sight up-stream, and seeing the three arks lying-by in
company, they also veered in and joined the little flotilla at the foot
of Iron Banks.
No such warm weather had as yet been experienced, not even at Big Bone
Creek.
Herons and other aquatic birds were flapping lazily up and down the
shores; the sunshine was so hot and the air so stagnant that the horses
and other live stock beneath the low roofs of the arks were manifestly
distressed.
There was much talk of a hostile Indian band at Island No. 10; and the
captains of the two arks from Kaskaskia proposed an arrangement very
common in those days, namely, that they should make the three broadhorns
and the two covered sleds fast to each other by spars and hawsers, and
so float down in company, for mutual aid and protection in case of
attack, either by the savages or riotous white boatmen.
Self-reliance and a disposition to manage his own boat without depending
on others, were leading traits of Marion Royce’s character; but, since
the other captains asked it and his own crew liked the idea, he
consented; and the three larger craft were made fast abreast, with the
two Cincinnati flats and the skiff astern, and in this order they poled
off from Iron Banks.
It was now about four o’clock in the afternoon, the sun still very hot
and the air close and sultry. Clouds were rising in the northwest,
however, with promise of a breeze or a shower; and, being desirous of
catching the first cool breath that came, Moses Ayer, Lewis Hoyt and
Wistar Royce climbed on the roof of their ark. Here they could overlook
the entire flotilla, as well as the shores of the river.
The peculiar aspect of the sky at once attracted their attention.
“That’s a mighty queer-looking cloud!” Lewis exclaimed. “Looks like
smoke, and see how the edges of it are rolling in together!”
“There’s a thunder-squall coming,” said Wistar. “It’s coming fast, too!”
“Below there, Mack,” he shouted to his brother, who was forward under
the roof. “Squall coming!”
The young captain climbed to the roof to see for himself, for the roofs
of the two large Kaskaskia boats on each side of them obstructed the
view from the deck of the ark. He had hardly done so, however, when they
saw the trees on the other shore of the river sway, bend, and twist
violently. Branches, twigs and leaves were whirled upward, and
immediately the intervening water of the river was wildly agitated,
appearing to rise in the air in vast white sheets.
No opportunity was afforded for precautions of any sort. They barely had
time to swing down from the roof when, with a wild howl, the squall—a
true tornado—was upon them!
Everything loose on the roof—the large poultry-cages, spare sweeps,
oars, setting-poles, and a part of the mammoth bones—were whirled upward
and away; and, not only from their ark, but from all the others,
everything loose went flying to leeward. The roof of the ark to windward
of them was torn off, and, with a terrific crash, went hurtling over
their heads.
The shouts of the men blended with the squalling of poultry and the
hideous squeals of terrified or injured horses. Immediately, too, the
heavy craft felt the impulse of the tornado, and went drifting rapidly
before it.
Whether they would have been safer apart than together is not easy to
say. The two flatboats astern prevented the arks from using their
sweeps; and, seeing that all six of the boats were being blown rapidly
toward the bank, Marion Royce shouted to the captains of the two
Kaskaskia arks to cut the hawsers and try to get clear of each other, so
as to use their sweeps.
If they heard, which is doubtful, nothing was done; in fact, the craft
to windward was in great distress from waves that were breaking aboard
her.
Captain Royce then seized an ax and cut the cables himself. His instinct
was to get free. As he did so one of the spars caught, and slipping
inboard, crashed through the gun-room, seriously injuring MacAfee, who
had run in there for shelter. But the pressure of the wind still held
the boats together; they drove on before the gale, and within five
minutes all went ashore where a gravel bank rose steep out of deep
water.
Fortunately for the ark, it had the middle berth; for, owing to the
momentum and weight of the mass of boats, the Kaskaskia ark next the
bank gave beam, and was so crushed that it immediately filled and sank,
the crew with difficulty escaping across to the other boats.
One of the flats astern—the one inshore—also sank. Six of the horses
aboard it, whose halters it was impossible to cut, were drawn down; the
other fourteen of the poor animals succeeded in keeping their heads
above water. The boatmen were powerless to do anything for them; indeed,
the attention of all was given to rescuing the crews of the two wrecked
boats.
Rain was now falling in such sheets that it was impossible to see
objects twenty yards away. What became of the six-ton skiff that had
joined them no one knew. So dire was the confusion and uproar of the
disaster that none of the survivors was able to give any information
concerning it—whether it was swamped, with all on board, or had got free
and gone out of sight below the foot of the bluff. It was manned by four
pioneers, one of them a clergyman named Willis, from the new settlement
at Fort Jefferson, a little below the mouth of the Ohio.
Two men had been drowned or crushed on board the wrecked Kaskaskia ark;
the other one had also lost a man, probably knocked overboard and
drowned when the roof was blown off. A man was also reported missing
from the Cincinnati flatboat.
Even after the tornado had passed and the waves subsided, the three
craft which had escaped were in bad plight, having lost nearly all their
sweeps, poles and other gear. Evening was at hand, and being unable to
get away, they lay there against the bank all night.
By working hard with lines and a pulley-block, eight of the horses in
the water were hauled out. The other flat from Cincinnati, being a small
craft, could take but three of them aboard, however, and what to do with
the poor animals became a serious question with their almost equally
luckless owners. Our arksmen finally made shift to find room for them
alongside their own horses. Captain Royce consented to take them on
shares, and pay one-half what he could sell them for in New Orleans,
when he came back up the river in the fall.
A large brindled wolf-dog, called “Tige,” from one of the wrecked boats,
also came aboard and savagely refused to go ashore with his former
friends and master.
It was a dreary night for all concerned; doubly so for the crews of the
foundered boats, who had now no alternative before them save to trudge
disconsolately back along the river bank for hundreds of miles, and deem
themselves fortunate if they reached home without losing their scalps.
Working by lantern-light, our own arksmen hewed out new steering sweeps
from planks ripped from the bulwarks, and succeeded in getting off at
daylight. They had had enough of river partnerships. Captain Royce gave
such friendly aid as he was able to the other boats, but firmly declined
to establish any closer relations with them. Altogether this first day
on the Mississippi had been an exciting one, but even greater perils
were at hand.
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