The little bear took very kindly to his new home. He slept well and
rose to stretch himself hungrily when the first beam of sunlight came
over the brown water. Softly he padded about the half circle of which
his chain was the radius, but there seemed to be nothing to eat within
reach. Rolled up in a blanket near by, however, he found one of the
queer-smelling two-legged creatures that had been kind to him the day
before, and being of an inquisitive turn of mind he immediately thrust
a moist little black snout between the blanket and the sleeper’s neck.
Tad, awakened by the touch of the cub’s cold nose, let out a squeal and
rolled violently over on to Abe, who woke in his turn, and scrambled
up, reaching for an ax.
“Haw!” roared Allen. “Haw, haw, haw! Might think the ol’ Scratch
himself was arter ye! Wal, he got ye up anyhow.”
Abe and Tad rubbed their eyes and joined sheepishly in the laughter.
And the cub, after looking at them all solemnly, returned to his
investigation of Tad’s blanket.
“This little feller’s got to have a name,” chuckled Abe. “He acts like
he’s adopted us fer keeps, an’ if he’s goin’ to be a full-fledged hand
we’ll have to call him somethin’.”
“Let’s christen him Poke,” said Tad. “He’s always into everything.” And
Poke was his name from that moment on.
Allen had tied up to the shore after midnight and risen to start again
at dawn. Now they were drifting steadily down the middle of a reach
where there was no immediate occasion for steering, and Allen sat down
with the others amidships at breakfast. He was weary and cross from his
vigil at the sweep.
“See here,” he demanded as Poke looked up hopefully after his third
helping of johnny-cake, “how in Tarnation are we ever a-goin’ to feed
this brute? We ain’t provisioned fer but two hands, an’ this b’ar eats
more’n a grown man.”
Abe went on calmly with his breakfast. “I didn’t save him an’ wrastle
fer him jest to throw him back in the river,” he said. “Here, he kin
have mine.” And placing his own piece of corn-bread in front of the
greedy little bear, he rose, whistling, to take up his morning’s labor
at the bow oars.
“Tad,” he called, from the fore deck, “you’re the rightful owner of
this b’ar. S’pose you git out that hand-line an’ bait it an’ see if ye
can’t save the rations by puttin’ us on a fish diet fer a day or two.”
The boy was only too glad to try. He had done some fishing farther up
the river, but without any notable results.
“Ought to bite good, today,” said Allen, sniffing the breeze with a
knowing air. “Feels like it’s comin’ on to rain, soon--tonight, mebbe.
That’ll bring ’em up.”
Tad dropped his baited hook over the side and sat down comfortably,
prepared for a tedious wait. But scarcely had the length of the line
run out, when he felt such a tug on the other end that it nearly pulled
him overboard. He held fast, bracing his feet, and shouted excitedly
for aid. Allen took hold with him.
“Huh,” he grunted. “Must be snagged, I reckon. Wal, we can’t afford to
lose the hook. Nothin’ for it but pull her in.”
Together they hauled the line aboard hand over hand. There seemed to be
a heavy, inert weight attached to it.
“Golly,” growled Allen, “all this work jest to turn loose a durned ol’
water-logged root or somethin’!”
But Tad was still pulling manfully. “Look!” he cried. “It’s no
snag--it’s a fish--a catfish--great jumping catamounts, what a fish!
How’re we going to land him?”
Allen gave one astounded glance over the side and dashed for the
bucket-hook, a stout sapling with an upward-forking branch at the lower
end. While Tad held the nose of the big fish at the surface, Allen
thrust down the wooden hook and brought it up under one of the gills.
“Now,” he cried, “both together, heave!”
And out of the water came a great, grizzled mud cat, so heavy that it
took all their strength to haul him over the gunwale. The big fish
thrashed ponderously about for a moment and then lay quiet.
“He’s more’n four-foot long,” estimated Allen, “an’ he’ll tip
seventy-five pound if he will an ounce. By gum, that’s the biggest ol’
catfish I ever caught.”
“_You_ caught!” snorted Abe, ambling aft to view the prize. “All the
claim you’ve got on this fish is that you’re goin’ to cook him. This is
Tad’s fish.”
He looked the catch over with an appraising eye. “Pretty fair-sized
catfish for such a young one,” he remarked. “He’s only about forty year
old. You kin tell by the whiskers. His ain’t even turned gray yet.”
“Humph!” grunted Allen suspiciously.
“’Course,” Abe went on, “you ain’t had the opportunities for observin’
catfish that I’ve been favored with. When I was workin’ on the Anderson
Creek ferry, up on the Ohio, there was an old fisherman that used to
set thar in his boat day after day. He had two half-inch hemp ropes
over the side. One was his anchor rope an’ the other was his line. He
never caught any small fish because on the end o’ this line he used the
hook off an ox-chain, baited with a half a ham.
“One day he let out a holler we could hear clear across the Ohio, an’
we saw him wavin’ his arms an’ workin’ like all git out. Then by ’n’
by he come a-rowin’ over our way. It was slow pullin’, an’ the stern
o’ the skiff was ’way down in the water, with the bow half out. When
he got alongside we saw a real fish. The ol’ feller had hauled him in
till his nose was up against the stern, an’ then lashed the rope to a
thwart, an’ hit him in the head with an ax. We helped him reach the
landin’ an’ rigged a tackle an’ fall, an’ with two teams o’ horses we
managed to git the critter on shore.
“Eh? What did he weigh? Wal, now I don’t jest quite recollect, but
it was either four hundred and eighty-five pound or five hundred and
eighty-four--my memory don’t run to figgers. The real interestin’
part was his age. Riveted into his tail was a brass plate, marked
with a man’s name an’ the year 1705. Seems like this ol’ fisherman’s
grandfather had caught the fish ’way back more’n a hundred years ago
an’ marked him an’ turned him loose.
“Talk about whiskers--why, this one had a full beard, jest as white as
snow, an’ I reckon his eyes had gone back on him in his old age, fer he
wore a pair o’ heavy-bowed spectacles.”
“The fish?” asked Tad, gaping with astonishment.
“No,” chuckled Abe, “the grandfather.” And he returned to his oars.
“Humph!” said Allen again, this time with a real snort. “Whar you ever
got the name of ‘Honest Abe’ is more’n I know. Honest! Why, thar ain’t
a bigger liar from the Falls o’ the Ohio to the Gulf o’ Mexico!”
They skinned the huge mud cat and cut it in two, putting the larger
part in a cool place, wrapped in wet weeds. Tad was just building
the fire preparatory to cooking the rest of the fish, when Abe spoke
suddenly from the forward deck.
“Look astern, thar, boys,” he said. They stood up, their eyes sweeping
the river to the north. There were the usual two or three flatboats in
the distance and the smoke of a steamer above the last bend. But less
than a quarter of a mile behind them, and drawing rapidly nearer, they
saw a big rowboat with oars flashing in quick rhythm along its sides.
As the craft approached, it swung out a little to one side, and they
saw that it was a good-sized barge, rowed by six powerful negroes. Four
white men sat in the stern sheets, cradling shot-guns in the crook of
their arms. They drew up alongside the _Katy Roby_, perhaps twenty
yards distant, and at a word of command the blacks rested on their
oars. For a moment the occupants of the two boats studied each other in
silence. The white men aboard the barge were dressed in the elegant,
careless fashion of southern planters. Their faces were unsmiling, very
polite, very hard-eyed.
One of them nodded. “We’re out after a runaway nigger,” he said, in an
even tone. “Maybe you can tell us where he is, suh.”
Abe straightened up, towering from the fore deck like a young Goliath.
His voice had the ring of steel in it, and his speech, as always at
tense moments, was singularly free from the slipshod backwoods dialect.
“He’s not aboard here,” he answered, “and as far as we know we haven’t
seen him.”
There were whispers among the men in the barge. Then the spokesman,
with another look at Abe, made an impatient gesture to the rowers, and
the craft was speedily under way once more.
“What did I tell ye last night?” said Allen, when they were out of
earshot. “That’s what all the noise was about on shore. They must ha’
tracked him to the river with bloodhounds. Gosh all fishhooks, Abe! I
figgered they was goin’ to search us, sure. Did ye see them guns!”
“Yep,” said Abe. “They could ha’ done it fast ’nough if they’d wanted
to.”
The _Katy Roby_ held her course all day, proceeding at the leisurely
gait that seemed so well suited to her buxom lines. The sky grew more
and more overcast, and by afternoon a steady drizzle of rain began to
fall. There was little to do but stay under cover as much as possible,
swap yarns, and play with Poke, now apparently quite at home in his new
surroundings.
It was during Allen’s trick at the oars, when Tad and Abe were lying
under the shelter of a tarpaulin, that the younger boy brought up a
subject always close to the surface of his mind.
“Abe,” he said, “how long ought it to take that letter of mine to reach
New Orleans?”
Abe put down the tattered copy of Shakespeare’s tragedies he was
reading. “Let’s see,” he pondered. “That was a week ago yesterday we
went ashore, up thar. S’pose the steamboat happened along right off the
next day, like the store feller said. That would give a week--sartin
sure--that’s time enough fer ’em to git to New Orleans, easy. I’ll jest
wager your Paw is a-readin’ that letter an’ congratulatin’ hisself
right this minute.”
“Gee,” sighed the boy, “I’ll feel better when I know for sure that he’s
got it and isn’t worrying any longer!”
It was well on in the afternoon and the dismal sky was bringing an
early dusk when they sighted the barge once more, returning upstream.
It passed fairly close, the oars still beating in brisk time against
the current. But this time there was a fifth figure among the armed
white men in the stern. A big negro, his naked back and shoulders
gleaming darkly in the rain, crouched in the middle of the group. They
could not see his face, but there were terror and despair in every line
of his cowering body.
As they watched the boat they saw it veer over in the direction of a
small island they had passed in midstream a mile or so above.
“That’s whar they’ll fix him,” said Allen grimly.
“What do you mean--kill him?” asked Tad.
“Not a mite of it,” the other replied. “Ye don’t ketch them fellers
throwin’ away a thousand dollars. They’ll make him wish he hadn’t,
though. The way I’ve heard tell about it, they’ll likely start a
bonfire, thar on the island, an’ take a gunbar’l, or mebbe a reg’lar
iron made fer the job, an’ burn a big mark on to his chest an’ arms.
Arter he gits well that brand’ll allers be on him, so the overseers kin
watch him extra keerful an’ give him a double dose o’ the whip if he
looks sideways.”
“Yes,” said Abe, sober-faced, “as fur as he’s concerned, he’d be a heap
better off dead.”
They tied up to a big cottonwood on the Arkansas side, that night, and
Tad lay a long time awake, listening to the ceaseless thud of the rain
on wet planking and dripping canvas. The thought of the runaway negro,
captured after his break for freedom and dragged back to the torture,
seemed to haunt him. At last the monotone of the rain was broken by a
shivery squall--the cry of a wildcat, somewhere back in the brush. Poke
roused himself with an uneasy grunt, and Tad rolled over, pulling the
blanket tighter about him.
“That you, Tad?” came Abe’s low voice. “I can’t git comfortable,
neither. That poor devil gittin’ caught that way ’pears to have upsot
me. Well, thar ain’t much we kin do about it. Let’s go to sleep.”
And whether Abe was successful himself or not, his suggestion seemed to
be all that Tad needed, for he dropped off at once into deep slumber.
The rain continued falling steadily for the next two days, and with it
the water began to rise. They watched it climb inch by inch as they
drifted south, till the yellow tide was swirling halfway up the tree
trunks and broadening into vast lakes in the lower lands.
It was difficult, often, to pick out the course of the main river, for
except where lines of cottonwoods fringed the banks, it was all one
dreary expanse under the sullen beat of the rain.
Everything was wet--clothes, blankets, food. Even Allen’s banjo was
temporarily out of commission. The boys’ spirits flagged, and if it had
not been for the antics of the little bear and an occasional story from
Abe, their party would have been glum indeed.
At last, in the late afternoon of the second day, there was a shift in
the wind and the clouds began to break, with hazy shafts of pink and
gold streaming through. In the midst of their jubilation, Allen, who
had the steering-oar, pointed a finger toward the Tennessee shore.
“Look,” he cried, “a steamboat landin’ an’ houses! That’s Memphis,
boys, sure as you’re born!” And leaning heavily against the sweep, he
swung the flatboat’s bow over toward the town.