A Cable Snaps.
Our lazy land smiling and dreaming to itself had disappeared; in its
stead, the wind howled down the river from the west and lashed the water
into what would have looked respectable waves to one who had not been on
the ocean and seen the real thing. The new grass lay flat upon the
prairies, and chunks of dirt rattled down from the roof of Pochette's
primitive abiding-place. It is true the sun shone, but I really wouldn't
have been at all surprised if the wind had blown it out, 'most any time.
Pochette himself looked worried when we trooped in to breakfast. (By the
way, old King never showed up till we were through; then he limped in and
sat down to the table without a glance our way.) While we were smoking,
over by the fireplace, Pochette came sidling up to us. He was a little
skimpy man with crooked legs, a real French cut of beard, and an
apologetic manner. I think he rather prided himself upon his familiarity
with the English language--especially that part which is censored so
severely by editors that only a half-dozen words are permitted to appear
in cold type, and sometimes even they must hide their faces behind such
flimsy veils as this: d----n. So if I never quote Mr. Pochette verbatim,
you'll know why.
"I theenk you will not wish for cross on the reever, no?" he began
ingratiatingly. "The weend she blow lak ---- ---- ----, and my boat, she
zat small, she ---- ----."
I caught King looking at us from under his eyebrows, so I was airily
indifferent to wind or water. "Sure, we want to cross," I said. "Just as
soon as we finish our smoke, Pochette."
"But, mon Dieu!" (Ever hear tell of a Frenchman that didn't begin his
sentences that way? In this case, however, Pochette really said just
that.) "The weend, she blow lak ----"
"'A hurricane; bimeby by she blaw some more,'" I quoted bravely. "It's
all right, Pochette; let her howl. We're going to cross, just the same.
It isn't likely you'll have to make the trip for any body else to-day."
I didn't mean to, but I looked over toward King, and caught the glint of
his unfriendly eyes upon me. Also, the corners of his mouth hunched up
for a second in what looked like a sneer. But the Lord knows I wasn't
casting any aspersions on _his_ nerve.
He must have taken it that way, though; for he went out when we did and
hooked up, and when we drove down to where the little old scow they called
a ferry was bobbing like a decoy-duck in the water, he was just behind us
with his team. Pochette looked at him, and at us, and at the river; and
his meager little face with its pointed beard looked like a perturbed
gnome--if you ever saw one.
"The leetle boat, she not stand for ze beeg load. The weend, she--"
"Aw, what yuh running a ferry for?" Frosty cut in impatiently. "There's a
good, strong current on, to-day; she'll go across on a high run."
Pochette shook his head still more dubiously, till I got down and
bolstered up his courage with a small piece of gold. They're all alike;
their courage ebbs and flows on a golden tide, if you'll let me indulge in
a bit of unnecessary hyperbole. He worked the scow around end on to the
bank, so that we could drive on. The team wasn't a bit stuck on going, but
Frosty knows how to handle horses, and they steadied when he went to their
heads and talked to them.
We were so busy with our own affairs that we didn't notice what was going
on behind us till we heard Pochette declaiming bad profanity in a high
soprano. Then I turned, and he was trying to stand off old King. But King
wasn't that sort; he yelled to us to move up and make room, and then took
down his whip and started up. Pochette pirouetted out of the way, and
stood holding to the low plank railing while he went on saying things
that, properly pronounced, must have been very blasphemous.
King paid about as much attention to him as he would to a good-sized
prairie-dog chittering beside its burrow. I reckon he knew Pochette pretty
well. He got his rig in place and climbed down and went to his horses'
heads.
"Now, shove off, dammit," he ordered, just as if no one had been near
bursting a blood-vessel within ten feet of him.
Pochette gulped, worked the point of his beard up and down like a villain
in a second-rate melodrama, and shoved off. The current and the wind
caught us in their grip, and we swashed out from shore and got under way.
I can't say that trip looked good to me, from the first rod out. Of
course, the river couldn't rear up and get real savage, like the ocean,
but there were choppy little waves that were plenty nasty enough, once you
got to bucking them with a blum-nosed old scow fastened to a cable that
swayed and sagged in the wind that came howling down on us. And with two
rigs on, we filled her from bow to stern; all but about four feet around
the edges.
Frosty looked across to the farther shore, then at the sagging cable, and
then at me. I gathered that he had his doubts, too, but he wouldn't say
anything. Nobody did, for that matter. Even Pochette wasn't doing anything
but chew his whiskers and watch the cable.
Then she broke, with a snap like a rifle, and a jolt that came near
throwing us off our feet. Pochette gave a yell and relapsed into French
that I'd hate to translate; it would shock even his own countrymen. The
ferry ducked and bobbed, now there was nothing to hold its nose steady to
the current, and went careering down river with all hands aboard and
looking for trouble.
We didn't do anything, though; there wasn't anything to do but stay right
where we were and take chances. If she stayed right side up we would
probably land eventually. If she flopped over--which she seemed trying to
do, we'd get a cold bath and lose our teams, if no worse.
Soon as I thought of that, I began unhooking the traces of the horse
nearest. The poor brutes ought at least to have a chance to swim for it.
Frosty caught on, and went to work, too, and in half a minute we had them
free of the wagon and stripped of everything but their bridles. They would
have as good a show as we, and maybe better.
I looked back to see what King was doing. He was having troubles of his
own, trying to keep one of his cayuses on all its feet at once. It was
scared, poor devil, and it took all his strength on the bit to keep it
from rearing and maybe upsetting the whole bunch. Pochette wasn't doing
anything but lament, so I went back and unhooked King's horses for him,
and took off the harness and threw it in the back of his wagon so they
wouldn't tangle their feet in it when it came to a show-down.
I don't think he was what you could call grateful; he never looked my way
at all, but went on cussing the horse he was holding, for acting up just
when he should keep his wits. I went back to Frosty, and we stood elbows
touching, waiting for whatever was coming.
For what seemed a long while, nothing came but wind and water. But
I don't mind saying that there was plenty of that, and if either one had
been suddenly barred out of the game we wouldn't any of us have called the
umpire harsh names. We drifted, slippety-slosh, and the wind ripped holes
in the atmosphere and made our eyes water with the bare force of it when
we faced the west. And none of us had anything to say, except Pochette; he
said a lot, I remember, but never mind what. I don't suppose he was
mentally responsible at the time.
Then, a long, narrow, yellow tongue of sand-bar seemed to reach right out
into the river and lap us up. We landed with a worse jolt than when we
broke away from the cable, and the gray-blue river went humping past
without us. Frosty and I looked at each other and grinned; after all, we
were coming out of the deal better than we had expected, for we were still
right side up and on the side of the river toward home. We were a mile or
so down river from the trail, but once we were on the bank with our rig,
that was nothing.
We had landed head on, with the nose of the scow plowed high and dry.
Being at the front, we went at getting our team off, and our wagon. There
was a four or five-foot jump to make, and the horses didn't know how about
it, at first. But with one of us pulling, and the other slashing them over
the rump, they made it, one at a time. The sand was soft and acted
something like quicksand, too, and we hustled them to shore and tied them
to some bushes. The bank was steep there, and we didn't know how we were
going to make the climb, but we left that to worry over afterward; we
still had our rig to get ashore, and it began to look like quite a
contract.
We went back, with our boot tracks going deep, and then filling up and
settling back almost level six steps behind us. Frosty looked back at them
and scowled.
"For sand that isn't quicksand," he said, "this layout will stand about as
little monkeying with as any sand I ever met up with. Time we make a few
trips over it, she's going to be pudding without the raisins. And that's
a picnic, with our rig on the main deck, as you might say."
We went back and sat swinging our legs off the free board end of the ferry
boat, and rolled us a smoke apiece and considered the next move. King was
somewhere back between our rig and his, cussing Pochette to a
fare-you-well for having such a rotten layout and making white men pay
good money for the privilege of risking their lives and property upon it.
"We'll have to unload and take the wagon to pieces and pack everything
ashore--I guess that's our only show," said Frosty. We had just given up
my idea of working the scow up along the bar to the bank. We couldn't
budge her off the sand, and Pochette warned us that if we did the wind
would immediately commence doing things to us again.
Frosty's idea seemed the only possible way, so we threw away our
cigarettes and got ready for business; the dismembering and carrying
ashore of that road-wagon promised to be no light task. Frosty yelled to
Pochette to come and get busy, and went to work on the rig. It looked to
me like a case where we were all in the same fix, and personal spite
shouldn't count for anything, but King was leaning against the wheel of
his buggy, cramming tobacco into his stubby pipe--the same one apparently
that I had rescued from the pickle barrel--and, seeing the wind scatter
half of it broadcast, as though he didn't care a rap whether he got solid
earth beneath his feet once more, or went floating down the river.
I wanted to propose a truce for such time as it would take to get us all
safe on terra firma, but on second thoughts I refrained. We could get off
without his help, and he was the sort of man who would cheerfully have
gone to his last long sleep at the bottom of that boiling river rather
than accept the assistance of an enemy.
The next couple of hours was a season of aching back, and sloppy feet, and
grunting, and swearing that I don't much care about remembering in detail.
The wind blew till the tears ran down our cheeks. The sand stuck and
clogged every move we made till I used to dream of it afterward. If you
think it was just a simple little job, taking that rig to pieces and
packing it to dry land on our backs, just give another guess. And if you
think we were any of us in a mood to look at it as a joke, you're miles
off the track.
Pochette helped us like a little man--he had to, or we'd have done him up
right there. Old King sat on the ferry-rail and smoked, and watched us
break our backs sardonically--I did think I had that last word in the
wrong place; but I think not. We did break our backs sardonically, and he
watched us in the same fashion; so the word stands as she is.
When the last load was safe on the bank, I went back to the boat. It
seemed a low-down way to leave a man, and now he knew I wasn't fishing for
help, I didn't mind speaking to the old reprobate. So I went up and faced
him, still sitting on the ferry-rail, and still smoking.
"Mr. King," I said politely as I could, "we're all right now, and, if you
like, we'll help you off. It won't take long if we all get to work."
He took two long puffs, and pressed the tobacco down in his pipe. "You go
to hell," he advised me for the second time. "When I want any help from
you or your tribe, I'll let yuh know."
It took me just one second to backslide from my politeness. "Go to the
devil, then!" I snapped. "I hope you have to stay on the damn' bar a
week." Then I went plucking back through the sand that almost pulled the
shoes off my feet every step, kicking myself for many kinds of a fool.
Lord, but I was mad!
Pochette went back to the boat and old King, after nearly getting kicked
into the river for hinting that we ought to pay for the damage and trouble
we had caused him. Frosty and I weren't in any frame of mind for such a
hold-up, and it didn't take him long to find it out.
The bank there was so steep that we had to pack my trunk and what other
truck had been brought out from Osage, up to the top by hand. That was
another temper-sweetening job. Then we put the wagon together, hitched on
the horses, and they managed to get to the top with it, by a scratch. It
all took time--and, as for patience, we'd been out of that commodity for
so long we hardly knew it by name.
The last straw fell on us just as we were loading up. I happened to look
down upon the ferry; and what do you suppose that old devil was doing? He
had torn up the back part of the plank floor of the ferry, and had laid it
along the sand for a bridge. He had made an incline from boat nose to the
bar, and had rough-locked his wagon and driven it down. Just as we looked,
he had come to the end of his bridge, and he and Pochette were taking up
the planks behind and extending the platform out in front.
Well! maybe you think Frosty and I stood there congratulating the old fox.
Frosty wanted me to kick him, I remember; and he said a lot of things that
sounded inspired to me, they hit my feelings off so straight. If we had
had the sense to do what old King was doing, we'd have been ten or
fifteen miles nearer home than we were.
But, anyway, we were up the bank ahead of him, and we loaded in the last
package and drove away from the painful scene at a lope. And you can
imagine how we didn't love old King any better, after that experience.