The day before their departure south was a very busy one for both men
and boys.
When Barker told the boys at breakfast that they would all start down
the river in the evening, it was only the strange place and people that
kept the boys from shouting and turning somersaults.
"Are you going with us all the way to Vicksburg? And is Tatanka going?"
Tim asked, big-eyed with suppressed excitement.
"We are both going," Barker told them, "if we can get through. We should
not have much trouble until we get to Memphis. Below Memphis, the river
is full of gunboats and the country full of fighting armies. I don't
know how we shall manage there. We'll have to see, when we get there."
The four travelers could now take their horses no farther, and although
they disliked to part with the animals there was nothing else to do. Old
Joe, the hostler, paid them a fair price for the animals and again
pledged his secrecy.
"There's a good market now for horses," he told his friends, "and I'll
sell them in a few days. If any inquisitive gent comes around, I'll send
him about his own business."
After dark the four friends went on board the _Red Hawk_.
"You lads keep quiet in your cabin," Barker told the boys, "till the
boat has started. Tatanka and I will do a little scouting till we have
cast off."
The two men took a position behind some boxes and bales of freight. The
landing was lit by several glaring torches, so that the two scouts could
see clearly every person moving about, but they could not be seen
themselves from the landing.
The deck-hands were just throwing on the last sticks of cord-wood and
carrying on board the last sacks of wheat, when a stranger appeared and
spoke to the captain.
"Can you carry another passenger?" Barker heard him ask. "I have
blankets and can sleep on the deck."
[Illustration: "Walking is good, on you can ride on a log, the water is
fine."]
"Not another soul," replied the captain. "Get off the gang-plank, you're
in the way."
"But I must get to St. Louis," the man argued.
"I don't care what you must do," the captain replied gruffly. "Walking
is good, or you can ride on a log, the water is fine. Now get off the
gang-plank. This boat leaves in five minutes."
"Hicks," whispered Tatanka. "Bad man Hicks," as the man slouched back up
town. "I'd like to throw my ax at him."
"It's a good thing that I described Hicks to the captain," Barker
chuckled. "The captain recognized him all right."
Then the _Red Hawk_ gave a long whistle, the pilot pulled the bell at
the engine, there was a great hissing of steam and the big stern-wheel
noisily churned the brown water of the Mississippi. Slowly the
heavily-laden boat backed into mid-stream, again the pilot rang the
bell, and the boat made a half-turn and was headed down-stream.
The boys came out of their cabin.
"How can the pilot find his way?" asked Bill, "when the night is so
pitch-dark?"
"A good pilot knows the river by heart," Barker told the boys. "He knows
it by day and by night, and up-stream and downstream."
At the present time it is comparatively easy to pilot a steamboat on the
Mississippi. Hundreds of wing-dams, built by the government engineers,
keep the current in the same channel, and numerous guideboards and
lights on shore tell the pilot where to steer his boat. In addition to
this, the modern boats are all provided with powerful headlights and
search-lights.
At the time of the Civil War wing-dams, guideboards, shore-lights, and
search-lights were all unknown. The safety of the Mississippi steamers
depended entirely on the pilots. Their accurate knowledge of the river,
their skill in handling the wheel, their quick decision in moments of
danger, brought every year hundreds of boats safely back and forth
between the ports of St. Paul and St. Louis.
As the _Red Hawk_ was gliding by the magnificent groves of cottonwoods,
which begin to line the Mississippi just below the Indian Mounds at St.
Paul, the trapper and his three friends were quietly sitting on the
upper deck in front of the pilot-house.
There was little talk, for all were absorbed in the running of the boat.
Now the boat seemed to be headed into an absolutely black wall, which
proved, however, to be only the dense shadow caused by the forest or by
a high rocky bank. Had the pilot not had the nerve to steer straight
into the black shadow, he would have wrecked his boat among the snags on
a sandbar, where the safe channel seemed to run.
At the end of three hours the boat stopped at Prescott, at the mouth of
the St. Croix, one of the two navigable tributaries of the upper
Mississippi, near St. Paul and Minneapolis, almost two thousand miles
from the Gulf of Mexico. Here the river grew wider and deeper, so that
the pilot could pick his way with a little less anxiety, but to the four
fugitives from the Sioux country, the mystery continued.
At one moment the boat was headed into a dark forest of tall cottonwoods
and maples, and a little later the boys felt sure she would crash
against a solid wall of rock, and then suddenly the river seemed to come
to an end.
"We've lost the river, we're in a big slough," Tim whispered as he held
firmly to Meetcha.
But always just in time, the wheel turned just enough and the boat
glided safely past trees and cliffs, past sandbars and snags, and around
every bend and turn.
The four travelers began to feel a little more at ease now. Tatanka lit
his red pipe, Barker treated himself to a cigar which his friend Joe had
slipped into his pocket, while the boys began to feel sleepy.
The smokers had taken only a few puffs when a messenger came. "The
captain," he said, "wishes you to smoke somewhere else. The light from
your pipe and cigar bothers the pilot, so he can't see where he is
steering."
"The boy is lying," Tatanka murmured.
"No, he is not," Barker dissented. "I have often heard the pilots say
that on a dark night like this, the light from a pipe or cigar annoys
them so much that they cannot steer right. We must find another place."
It was not long before all four of the friends sought their beds. The
boat stopped for more freight at Red Wing; and at Lake City, at the head
of Lake Pepin, it was delayed until noon by some necessary repairs on
the engine.
The first mate who took charge of the boat at noon was in doubt whether
he should wait for a threatening storm to pass before he started down
the lake, but the captain was impatient.
"We have already lost five hours," he remarked. "Start her off, she is
well built, a little wind won't hurt her. I am in a hurry with that war
freight."
Lake Pepin is only a widened Mississippi. On account of long bars of
silt and sand which the Chippewa River has thrown across the
Mississippi, the river has backed up till it fills the whole valley, two
miles wide, and twenty miles long. On this long, deep body of water, the
wind and waves attain a terrific sweep, and many a boat, safe enough on
the river, has met disaster on Lake Pepin.
While the _Red Hawk_ was lying at Lake City, a strong wind had been
blowing from the south toward great masses of clouds that were rising in
the north. When she headed down the lake the wind died down, but half an
hour later it broke with a gale from the north, carrying before it
whirling clouds and sheets of swishing rain that hid from view the high
bluffs on either side.
Almost at once, as if by the magic of a demon, the lake was in an uproar
with a smashing sea of foaming, toppling white-capped waves, which
together with the raging wind, threatened to throw the _Red Hawk_ out of
her course into the trough of the waves.
The pilot strained every nerve and muscle to keep her headed toward the
foot of the lake. He signalled to the engineer for full steam ahead,
because a boat at high speed is more easily steered than one at low
speed.
For a while, all went well. Then a sharp snap was heard at the engine.
The wheel stopped turning at once, and the boat swung helpless into the
trough of the sea, while big splashing waves began to break over the low
sides of the vessel and into the hold.
"The Wakon, the bad spirit, will swallow the ship," Tatanka murmured.
"We must all try to swim ashore."
One of the piston-rods had broken and one engine alone could not turn
the big stem-wheel, but Captain Allen did not mean to give up his boat
without a fight. In five minutes the carpenters were at work spiking
together two long wide planks. A heavy rope, twice as long as the
planks, was tied to each end of the planks. To the middle of this rope
the ship's hawser was fastened, and the sea anchor was ready.
"Heave her over," commanded the captain, and within a few minutes the
boat swung around with her bow to the wind.
It was high time. For the waves had put out the fires, and the pumps had
stopped working.
A little longer and she would have filled and sunk in thirty feet of
water. As it was, she drifted fast before the wind, and in a little more
than half an hour she crashed against the rocks on the Wisconsin shore,
where storm and waves broke her to pieces.