JIM
It didn’t take long to “run the falls.” From where the flatboat lay
above Louisville to the lower end of the rapids was a distance of about
eight or ten miles. Not only was the river bank full, but a great wave
of additional water--a rise of four or five inches to the hour--struck
them just as they pushed their craft out into the stream. There was a
current of six miles an hour even as they passed the city, which
quickened to eight or ten miles an hour when they reached the falls
proper.
The boat fully justified the old pilot’s simile of a girl waltzing. She
turned and twisted about, first one way and then the other, and now and
then shot off in a totally new direction, toward one shore or the other,
or straight down stream.
It all seemed perilous in the extreme, and at one time Jim Hughes
hurriedly went below and brought up his carpet-bag, which he deposited
in one of the skiffs that lay on deck.
“What’s the matter, Jim?” asked Phil, who was more and more disposed to
watch the fellow suspiciously. “What are you doing that for?”
“Well, you see we mout strike a rock, and it’s best to be ready.”
“Yes,” said Phil, “but what have you got in your carpet-bag that you’re
so careful of?” and as he asked the question he looked intently into
Jim’s eyes, hoping to surprise there a more truthful answer than he was
likely to get from Jim’s lips.
“Oh, nothin’ but my clothes,” said Jim, hastily avoiding the scrutiny.
“Must be a dress-suit or two among them,” said Phil, “or you’d be
thinking less about them and more about your skin. Let’s see them!” he
added suddenly, and offering to open the bag.
Jim snatched it away quickly, muttering something which the boy didn’t
catch. But by that time the falls were passed and the flatboat was
floating through calm waters between Portland and New Albany. So Jim
retreated to the cabin and bestowed his precious carpet-bag again under
the straw of his bunk, where he had kept it from the first.
“Wonder what he’s got there, Phil,” said Irv Strong, who had been
attentive to the colloquy.
“Don’t know,” replied Phil; “but if things go on this way, the time will
come when I’ll decide to find out.”
“By the way,” broke in Will Moreraud, “did any of you see him bring that
carpet-bag aboard?”
Nobody could remember.
“Guess he sneaked it aboard as he did that jug,” said Phil, “and as he
did his cramps.”
“Don’t be too hard on the fellow, boys,” said Ed, whose generosity was
always apt to get the better of his judgment. “Remember he’s ignorant,
and ignorance is always inclined to be suspicious. Probably he hasn’t
more than a dollar’s worth or so in that carpet-bag; but as it is all he
has in the world, he’s naturally careful of it. He’s afraid some of us
will steal his things. If he knew more, he would know better. But he
doesn’t know more. So he guards his poor little possessions jealously.”
There was silence for a minute. Then Phil said:--
“See if he’s listening, Constant;” and when Constant had strolled to the
gangway and reported “all clear,” Phil had this to say:--
“I’m not over-suspicious, I think. I don’t want to be unjust to anybody.
But I’m responsible on this cruise, and it’s my duty to notice things
carefully.”
“Of course,” said Irv Strong, the other “irreclaimable.” “I haven’t a
doubt you noticed that I ate four eggs and two slices of ham for
breakfast this morning. But before you ‘call me down’ for it, I want to
say that I’m going to do the same thing to-morrow morning, because,
since I came on the river, I’ve got the biggest hunger on me that I ever
had in my life, and not at all because I have any diabolical plot in my
mind to starve the crew of this flatboat into submission or admission or
permission or any other sort of mission.”
But Phil did not smile at the pleasantry. He hesitated a moment before
replying, as if afraid that he might say too much; for Phil, the
captain, was a very different person from the happy-go-lucky Phil his
comrades had hitherto known. After a little while he said:--
“You remember, don’t you, that Jim Hughes wanted to ‘get down the river’
so badly that he shipped with us without pay? If he is so poor that he
has only that carpet-bag and only a few dollars’ worth of stuff in it,
why didn’t he try to ‘strike’ us for some sort of wages? Does anybody
here know where he came from, or why he came, or where he is trying to
go to, or why he wants to go there, or in fact who he is, or anything
about him? Can anybody explain why he shammed cramps yesterday?”
“To all the highly interesting questions in that competitive
examination,” said Irv Strong, “I beg permission to answer, in words
made familiar to one by frequent school use--‘not prepared to answer.’”
All the boys laughed except Phil. He was serious. The _boy_ hadn’t at
all gone out of him, as was proved by the fact that in spite of the
October chill in the air he just then slipped off his clothes and “took
a header” into the river. But the serious _man_ had come into him with
responsibility, as was shown by the fact that he used a towel to rub
himself with after his bath. Having donned his clothes, he continued:--
“There may be nothing wrong about Jim Hughes. I don’t say there is
anything wrong. But there is a good deal that is suspicious. So, while I
accuse him of nothing, I’m watching him, and I have been watching him
ever since we left Craig’s Landing. I don’t believe he was drunk there,
for one thing.”
“Don’t believe he was drunk!” exclaimed the boys in a breath. “Why, you
had to knock him down yourself to save the landing!”
“Yes, of course,” said Phil. “But I took pains afterward to smell his
breath while he was supposed to be in a drunken stupor, and there wasn’t
a trace of whiskey on it.”
“But you remember we found his jug hid among the freight.”
“You did,” replied Phil; “and you reported to me, though you may have
forgotten the fact, that it was ‘full up to the cork.’ Those were your
own words, Will.”
Will remembered, though he had not before thought of the significance of
the fact.
“Well, Phil, what was the matter with him, then?” asked Ed.
“Shamming, just as he shammed the cramps yesterday.”
“But for what purpose?”
“I don’t know, any more than you know why he pretended to have cramps.
My theory is that he was so anxious to get down the river that he tried
to make us miss Craig’s Landing entirely. The sum and substance of the
matter is this. At Craig’s Landing I wanted to put the fellow ashore.
Now I don’t want to do anything of the kind, and I won’t either, till I
can read a good many riddles that he has given me to puzzle over.”
“Can we help you to read the riddles?”
“Yes. Watch him closely, and tell me everything you observe, no matter
how little it may seem to mean.”
Just then Jim Hughes came up out of the cabin scuttle, and all the boys
except Phil found occasion to go to other parts of the boat. When you
have been talking unpleasantly about another person, you naturally
shrink from talking to him.
Phil, however, stood his ground. “Hello, Jim!” he called out. “How are
the cramps, and how’s the carpet-bag? Going to try to earn your board
now by steering a little?”
Jim hesitated in embarrassment. Suddenly Phil began bombarding him with
questions like shots from a rapid-fire gun.
“Where did you come from, anyhow, Jim? What’s your real name? What are
you hiding from? How much do you know about the river? and about
flatboating? Have you really ever been down the river before, or was
that all a sham like your cramps yesterday? Who are you? What are you?”
Jim struggled for a moment. There was that in his face which might have
appalled anybody but a full-blooded, resolute, dare-all boy. But he
quickly mastered himself.
“See here, Phil,” he said in persuasive tones, “you’re mighty hard on a
poor feller like me, and I don’t know why. That was a vicious clip you
hit me at Craig’s Landing.”
Phil instantly responded, and again after the fashion of a
breach-loader. “So you remember that, do you? Then you were not so drunk
as you pretended.”
“Well,” said Jim, “I was pretty full, but of course I knew who hit me.”
“You were not drunk at all,” said the boy. “You hadn’t even been
drinking. I smelt of your breath, and the blow I struck didn’t knock you
senseless, for an hour, as you pretended, or for six seconds either. Now
look here, Jim, I don’t know what your purpose is in all this shamming,
but I know for a fact that it is shamming, and I’ve had quite enough of
it.”
With that the boy turned away in that profound disgust which every
healthy-minded boy or man feels for a lie and a liar.