I guess if teachers always knew how lickings were going to turn out they
wouldn't lick us fellows so much. I am thinking about Miss Murphy, the
one that taught the room me and Swatty and Bony was in, and about the
time she was going to lick Swatty. One of the times. There were plenty
of others.
You see, me and Swatty and Bony is chums, and we go together mostly,
but this was when we was in Miss Murphy's room. She's a good-looker, but
she's a tartar, too, when it comes to licking.
The way of it was this: My sister Fan was mushy over Swatty's brother
Herb and she didn't care who knew it, because they were engaged, and Fan
was fixing up her things to get married in, and she wished I was a girl
so I could be her flower girl at the wedding, but she didn't know what
she'd do with me. She thought maybe she'd lock me in the cellar, she
said, but she didn't mean it. She was always codding me and Swatty.
She'd cod us that way, and then she'd give us a dime or something. She
was all right, and Swatty thought so too.
So then Fan and Herb had a fight, like girls and fellows always do have;
but this was a good one. It was because Herb said maybe Fan would like
to have Miss Murphy for a bridesmaid, and Fan got mad because Herb had
gone with Miss Murphy once. So then Fan wouldn't forgive Herb. Herb came
over and fought for three evenings, and then Swatty brought a note from
him to Fan, and I took one from Fan to Herb, and that was the end of it.
The note I took had a ring in it, because I could feel it. Then Fan just
moped around the house and cried some, and after a while Herb had to go
and teach the eighth grade at school, because Professor Martin broke
his leg on the ice the janitor ought to have scraped off the steps but
didn't. So right away Herb began to get thick with Miss Murphy, but that
didn't make any difference to me. As soon as a fellow hasn't got one
girl he has another one, anyway, and I didn't blame Herb. I was
just sorry for Fan. And I thought Herb was crazy to make up to a
school-teacher, especially a tartar like Miss Murphy. She was an awful
licker. She'd lick a fellow for anything.
Well, one day me and Swatty was going to school and we was talking at
each other the way we always did, and I said he thought he was great,
didn't he, because his brother was Miss Murphy's beau, and Miss Muiphy
wouldn't lick him when his brother was her beau. I didn't mean anything,
I just said it, but Swatty hauled off and hit me one and dared me to
say that again. So I said it again, and all the fellows got around and
yelled “Fight! Fight!” and I had to fight him. It would have been a
pretty good fight if Miss Murphy hadn't come along. She jumped right at
us and grabbed us both.
“Who started this fight?” she asked, hopping mad.
“He did,” I said.
“Didn't neither!” said Swatty. “He did.”
“Who struck the first blow?” says Miss Muiphy.
Well, everybody told her Swatty did, which was the truth, and she let me
go.
“Just as I thought, you--you little bulldozer,” she said, shaking him.
“You've been getting entirely too uppish of late, young man. You think
you can take advantage of--of circumstances; but I'll teach you a thing
or two. Get into school there, and wash yourself, and see that you are
in your seat when the bell rings.”
So Swatty did it. Me and the Bony Highlander stayed out till the bell
rung, and then we went in, too, and as we went past Swatty's desk he
whispered, “She thinks she's going to lick me, but she ain't.”
“Bet she does, if she said so,” I says; and I bet she would, too. So did
the Bony Highlander, because we knew she was the sort that would rather
lick a fellow than not.
Well, that was in the morning, and they never lick at noon because the
way some fellows wriggle and twist it takes a long time to lick them,
and it would use up the noon hour. So they lick after school in the
afternoon when there is plenty of time. So me and the Bony Highlander
waited for Swatty, and we tried to scare him. We told him we bet Miss
Murphy would make him holler, because she licked with a rawhide pony
switch and whipped on the legs where the switch would wrap around and
sting, but we couldn't get Swatty to even pretend he might holler. He
said no teacher in the world could make him holler. We all said it. Or,
I don't know whether the Bony Highlander said it or not. He'd never been
licked in school. He wasn't the kind that gets licked, somehow. But he
was a pretty nice fellow, anyway. We liked him just as well, but not as
well as Swatty and me liked each other of course, because me and Swatty
was cow-cousins.
Me and Swatty was both raised on the milk of the same cow, but it was
Schwartzes' cow, and when I was being raised on it Herb Schwartz used to
fetch the milk around, the way Swatty does now. I guess that's how Herb
got to know Fan. But the Bony Highlander was just a kid that moved into
the neighborhood.
His name wasn't really Bony Highlander, but we called him that because
when he was reading a piece of poetry out of the Reader in school, and
ought to have said “bonny Highlander,” he said “bony Highlander.” But
we mostly called him Bony for short, like we called Schwartzy Swatty for
short. He was all right, but he never started to do things; he just
went along when we did them, and waited on the outside of the fence, and
things like that.
Well, we waited on the corner for Swatty that afternoon until the bell
rung but he didn't come, so we went along, and he was at school already,
and after he had stayed in to be licked and Miss Murphy let him out, he
told us why he went early. He knew where she kept her rawhide, in the
closet at the end of the room on the shelf where the chalk boxes were,
and he went early at noon and took his pocket-knife and cut the rawhide
into little pieces about an inch long. He laid them all out on the shelf
in a row, and he said he nearly died laughing when she went to pick it
up and it was all in pieces. So Miss Murphy went to get another rawhide
from another teacher, but everybody had gone home, and she told Swatty
she would tend to him to-morrow.
“I'd rather have been licked to-day and then I'd be done with it,” I
said, but Swatty didn't say so.
“If you've got a licking,” he said, “you've got it, and you can't ever
un-get it, but I ain't ever going to get this one. I'll run away first.”
“Ah, I bet you get it to-morrow,” I said, and the Bony Highlander said
so too.
“Bet I don't!” said Swatty. So we made a bet. I bet him my clay pipe
against a nigger-shooter rubber he had.
So the next day was when we'd know, and at noon Swatty came over to my
barn to get some oilcloth we had in the barn to put in his pants so the
licking wouldn't hurt so much, and I guessed I would win the bet. But he
couldn't fix the oilcloth so it would do any good and let him sit down.
He thought Miss Murphy would be onto it if he couldn't sit down. So he
gave that up. So we went to school.
When school was nearly out Swatty got up and started to walk down his
aisle and up the next, like he was going out for a drink, but Miss
Murphy, who was doing an example on the blackboard for the B class,
turned around and saw him.
“Where are you going?” she asked, like tacks in a bottle.
“Just to get a drink,” said Swatty.
“You take your seat this instant!” said Miss Murphy, and when she said
it, Swatty started to run; but she got there first and headed him off
and grabbed him by the arm. He kicked at her shins, but she gave him
a shake that made him see stars and marched him back to the end of the
room. I thought she was going to take him to his seat, but she didn't.
Our schoolhouse has four rooms on a floor--two in front and two in
back--and the hall comes in the middle, but it don't run all the way
from front to back. In the middle in front on the second floor there is
a little room with some books in it, and they call it the library room.
It has a window and three doors--one into the hall and one into our
room, and one into the room across the hall. So Miss Murphy yanked
Swatty into that room and locked all three doors. So she had him safe
until she got ready to lick him. Then she was going to unlock the door
and bring him out and do a good job, because she had a new rawhide all
ready. I guess she made up her mind she'd lick him until he hollered
that time.
So Swatty waited until school was out. Then he had to wait until Miss
Murphy got rid of the ones she had kept in to write their names five
hundred times, and things like that, but he didn't wait. He opened the
window and looked out, and right below him was the peak roof of the
porch. It wasn't very big, and it was slated, and if he slipped he'd
be a goner and break a leg or something, but he got onto the window
sill and hung down with his hands on the sill, and dropped. He dropped
straddle of the roof and hung on the best way he could.
He said the only thing he thought about was what a fool he had been not
to shut the window, but it was J une and most of the windows were wide
open anyway, and I guess Miss Murphy didn't notice. She unlocked the
door and looked into the room and Swatty wasn't there. Then I guess she
thought maybe somebody had come to the library room for a book and had
let Swatty out. She never put her head out of the window at all. So she
was beaten that time, and she went home.
So Swatty waited until the janitor had swept all the rooms and started
to sweep the walk and he hollered to him. It is none of the janitor's
business who gets licked or who don't, so he came up to the room and
helped Swatty get in the window. He just laughed about it.
So the next day Swatty went to school just the same as always, but at
noon he came over to my barn and Bony came with him. They generally came
because I had to feed my rabbits at noon. This time Swatty sort of poked
at the sawdust that was the floor of our barn and didn't say much. He
most generally wore his hat on the back of his head, but this time he
had it pulled down over his eyes and that was the way he did when he was
getting ready to fight a fellow.
After a while he looked up.
“Are you fellows going to school this afternoon?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Ain't you?”
“Go and get licked? I guess not!” he said. “I'm going down to the
river.”
“What are you going to do down at the river?” Bony asked.
“Going to look at it; what you think I'm going to do?” said Swatty.
Well, looking at it wasn't a bad thing to do, because the river was
away up, and when the Mississippi is up it is worth looking at. It looks
twice as big and sort of rounded up in the middle, and all sorts of
things floating down it--dead trees, and boxes, and logs, and dead pigs,
and sometimes sheds and things. It generally gets up in June, and we
always go down on Saturdays to see how she's getting along.
“She's higher than she ever was,” said Swatty.
“Well, I guess she'll be mighty high by Saturday,” said Bony.
“No, she won't,” said Swatty, “because she's going to begin falling
to-day, the paper says. Why don't you come along down with me?”
“Yes, and get licked for staying out of school!” I said.
“All right for you fellows, then!” said Swatty. “I'll be mad at you for
good. If you were going to get licked I'd just _want_ to do something
so I could get licked too. Don't I always stick by you fellows? And when
I'm going to get licked you go back on me. You're 'fraid-cats.”
“Who's a 'fraid-cat?” I asked, for I don't let anybody call me that.
“You are!” said Swatty. “And so's Bony. You're afraid to stay out of
school one afternoon. You're afraid to stay out the day the river hits
high-water mark. You'll look nice, won't you, with just you and Bony and
a lot of girls in school!”
“Who said we'd be the only kids there?” I asked.
“Who said it? Why, I said it. You don't think any kids will go to school
this afternoon, do you? Everybody will be down at the levee--men and
everybody. If the river don't drop this afternoon she'll go over the
island levee. And you sit around in school like it was a common day!
Why, it's like--like election, or Fourth of July, or something like
that! It's worse than when the ice goes out.”
Well, I never knew a boy to get licked for staying out of school when
the ice was going out of the river. He gets kept in the next day, or
something, but nobody can blame a boy for wanting to see the ice go out,
not even a teacher. So I guessed I'd go with Swatty, if I could sneak
it. Bony didn't want to go much, but he didn't like both of us to call
him a 'fraid-cat, so he came. We climbed out of my barn window, because
Swatty said we'd have to be careful; but I guess it wasn't much use,
because if we had gone out of the back gate it would have done just as
well, and if we had gone out of the front gate nobody would have thought
anything but that we were going to school. We kept in the alley all the
way down to Indian Creek, and Indian Creek was worth seeing, I tell you.
Mostly there is nothing in it but a little bit of water twisting along
in the wet sand, away down in the bottom of the creek bed, but now the
creek was full right up to the top, and there were rowboats moored in
it. We played in the rowboats a while, until a man came and chased us
away, and then we went down along the creek to the river. I tell you,
she was some river!
She went rushing along, all big and muddy and foamy, and she was half
covered with floating stuff--bark and whole haystacks and old trees and
boards and boxes and things. It scared a fellow just to look at her. It
made me feel the way a little baby feels when a big twelve-wheel mogul
engine comes roaring up to the depot platform, only ten times as scary.
It was like a whole ocean starting out to rush away somewhere. We just
stood and looked at it, and pretty soon Swatty says, “Gosh!” Only he
always says “Garsh!” And I said, “Gee!” That was all we said, and Bony
didn't say anything. He just stepped backward three or four steps and
looked frightened. That's the way you always feel when you see the old
Mississippi on a rampage. You feel as if you ought to do something to
stop it, and you know you can't--that nobody can. When it gets going it
is going to keep right on. So we went down to the levee.
Well, there wasn't any levee! Our levee is just a long down-hill of
sand, and it wasn't there. The river had backed clean up to the railroad
tracks and was sploshing against the second rail of the outside track,
and at the down-river end of the levee it had gone under the tracks
and was all over Front Street at the corner. The ferry dock, that was
usually away down at the bottom of the levee, was tied right up close
to the railroad track, and the ferry was tied in behind the steamboat
warehouse, so she wouldn't wash away. The water was clean up over the
floor of the steamboat warehouse, too, and nothing looked the way it
used to look. It was worth forty lickings just to see how different
everything was. We just stood and looked and couldn't believe it.
“Come on,” said Swatty, all at once, “let's have some fun. Let's take
off our shoes and stockings and have some fun.”
We went across the street and asked a man if we could leave our shoes
and stockings in his store, and he said we could, and then we went back
and began to wade where the water wasn't very deep. There were a few
other boys there, wading, and a lot of men standing around, looking at
the water. Some would come down and look a while and then go away again,
and all at once Swatty said, “Garsh! What if our fathers came down
here!”
So we got away from there, quick. We went down below the steamboat
warehouse, where the ferryboat was tied, because nobody was apt to come
down there, and nobody did. We played on the ferryboat a while and then
we got off her, and Swatty saw where somebody had fastened a lot of logs
and bridge timbers to the railway track. I guess they were stuff some
men had gone out in skiffs to catch as they floated by, before the river
got so rampageous. The way they fastened them was to drive a spike
in one end and tie a rope to that, and then tie the other end to the
railway track. So Swatty said, “Come on! Let's have some fun with these
logs and bridge timbers,” or something like that; so we did. We walked
on them, and some of them would sink under us, and then we would jump to
another.
Well, there below the steamboat warehouse the water made an eddy, and
the bark and foam and some sticks kept going around and around in the
eddy, and pretty soon Swatty said: “Let's ride on these logs,” and that
was all right, too, because we could sit straddle of a log or a bridge
timber and paddle with our feet. So we did that. Swatty cut three of
them loose, and we each took a bridge timber, because they didn't turn
over like the logs did, and we paddled around in the eddy and played
we were steamboats. I was the “War Eagle,” and Swatty was the “Mary
Morton,” and Bony was the “Centennial.” We played that a long time and
then we took boards for paddles, and we could go better that way so we
played Indians in canoes, and I got on Swatty's timber and let mine go,
which was all right because the timbers would just go around and around
in the eddy. But Bony wouldn't get on with us, because he was afraid the
timber would sink.
It got along to about five o'clock, and Bony said we had better go home.
He was always the first to want to go home. He told Swatty that Swatty
would be late going for his cow if he didn't start right away, but
Swatty said he didn't care if the old cow never got home. He said it
wouldn't hurt the old cow to wait a while, anyway. So we started to
paddle around the eddy again, and that time we got almost too far out,
I guess, and the end of the timber stuck out beyond the eddy into the
swift water.
“Back her up! Quick!” Swatty yelled, and we both tried to back her with
our board paddles, but it was too late. The swift water caught her on
the side and swung her right out into the current. Gee, but she went!
Right away she was half a block away from Bony and I began to cry, for
there was no telling where she'd stop. You couldn't expect her to stop
this side of St. Louis or New Orleans. So I began to cry, and I stooped
down and hung onto the timber with both arms. It was all I could think
of to do. But Swatty let on he wasn't scared at all. He tried to paddle
toward shore, but there was so v much driftwood and stuff floating that
he couldn't do it.
“Aw, shut up! Don't be a cry-baby!” he yelled at me. “This ain't
nothing. Grab your paddle, and we'll paddle out to the Tow Head and
we'll be all right.”
The Tow Head is the big island in the river below town, but more to this
side of the river than to the other side. It is shaped like a horseshoe,
with the two ends down-stream. Me and Swatty knew it pretty well because
sometimes we used to row down there. It was all trees except a strip of
sand on each side, and in low water there used to be a sandbar below it.
It looked like a good idea to get to the Tow Head if we could; but I was
afraid to sit up so I just stayed the way I was. But Swatty paddled like
a good fellow. I guess the current helped him some. In low water there
are two channels, one on each side of the Tow Head, but when the river
is on a rampage it don't care anything about channels--it just goes. But
it kind of bends below town and I guess that helped Swatty.
He kept yelling at me not to be a 'fraid-cat and to paddle, but I didn't
dare. So he paddled, and pretty soon I saw he was going to hit the Tow
Head all right. That made me feel better and I kind of raised up on
my hands and stopped crying, but when I looked I was scared worse than
ever. It looked as if the Tow Head was coming up-stream like a big
packet at full tilt. It didn't look as if we were floating down to
it, but as if it was tearing up-stream toward us, and it was coming
lickety-split. At its nose, where the water hit it, the river reared up
in a big yellow wave, like the bow wave of a ship, and was cut into foam
and spray where it hit the trees and then rushed away on either side
like mad. So I saw Swatty had made a mistake in trying to land on the
Tow Head.
There wasn't really any Tow Head to land on. The river was way up in
the branches of the trees, and I guess the water was ten feet deep all
over the Tow Head, or deeper, and rushing through the trees like it was
crazy. But we didn't have time to think much about it. We just had time
to be scared, and to see the old Tow Head come rushing and foaming at
us, and then it sort of nabbed us, like a cat nabs a mouse. It was all a
big swosh of water noises and a big swosh of tree branches being slashed
by the water, and then me and Swatty was splashed all over, and the
bridge timber banged into two trees and stuck. Swatty went off the
timber like a stone out of a nigger-shooter, but I hung on. I've got
a black and blue spot inside my leg yet, where it hit the edge of the
timber. Right away the water began to surge over the timber like a giant
pushing against me, and I saw I couldn't hang on there very long, so I
reached up and grabbed a branch of one of the trees and hoisted myself
up and got up in the tree. And there was Swatty! He wasn't in my tree,
but he was in the tree next below mine.
“Garsh!” he said, and that was all he said right then. So I began to
cry. It would make anybody cry to be there, up in a tree, with the whole
Mississippi River rushing along under him, so near he could stick his
toes down into it. It's an awful thing to think about. You can sit in a
tree and look at a creek run under you and you don't care, but when the
Mississippi is on a tear it is different. It's the biggest and strongest
thing in the world, and there was all of it rushing along right under
us, and the tree sort of waving back and forth.
So I cried.
“Aw, shut up!” Swatty said. “What are you crying about?”
Well, I guess we were in a pretty bad fix--worse than we thought we
were. No boat there ever was could get at us where we were. No boat
could come at that Tow Head the way we did and last a minute, because
it would smash against the trees. And even if anybody knew where we were
they couldn't get to us. Even if the strongest men in town tried to
row a boat up-stream from below the Tow Head they couldn't get to us,
because they couldn't row among the trees on it. So I cried.
“Shut up!” Swatty yelled at me. “Ain't it bad enough without you
bellering?”
So there we were.
When Bony saw us go out into the river he sat on his timber with his
mouth open, and he couldn't even holler--he was so scared--and then he
just paddled for shore and jumped off his timber and ran. He didn't know
where he was running--he was just running away from there. He was scared
stiff. When he come to, he was halfway home, and blubbering and panting,
and then he sat down on a horse block and didn't know what to do. He
thought we were drowned, sure. So he thought the best thing to do would
be to not say anything about it. He was afraid. First he thought he
would go home and act as if he had been at school and just stayed out
playing a while, and not do anything else about it and let folks find
out anyway they could; and then he thought that Mrs. Schwartz would miss
Swatty when it was time to fetch the cow, and that she would come over
to his house to see if Swatty was there, and he didn't know what else.
So he thought he would go over to Swatty's house first and sort of keep
Mrs. Schwartz from doing anything like that. So he went. He forgot he
was in his bare feet, or that he had ever had shoes and stockings.
When he got to Swatty's house Mrs. Schwartz was on the front terrace
in her calico dress and with a birch switch in her hand, looking for
Swatty, because Swatty knew what time the cow ought to be fetched home.
Bony went up to the steps.
“Do you want me to fetch the cow home, Mrs. Schwartz?” he asked.
“What for should you fetch the cow home?” said Mrs. Schwartz, as angry
as could be.
“I thought maybe Swatty was late, and I didn't want to keep you
waiting,” he said.
“For why should you think he was late?” Mrs. Schwartz asked. She always
talked in a funny way, because she was German.
“I thought maybe he was playing down at the river,” said Bony. “Lots of
boys were playing down there to-day.”
“So!” said Mrs. Schwartz. “And he sends you home to get his cow, yes? He
could get his own cows. I wait for him.”
So then Bony didn't know what to say. He stood around. And after a while
he said:
“Maybe he won't come home to get the cows.”
“What do you mean?” asked Mrs. Schwartz. “Maybe he's drowned,” said
Bony. “Maybe him and Georgie went down to the river and--and--”
So then _he_ began to cry, and the first thing anybody knew he had me
and Swatty drowned and our bodies floating down to St. Louis or New
Orleans, and Mrs. Schwartz wringing her hands and hollering for Herb. So
Herb come out on the porch, and Bony told him me and Swatty had floated
away on a bridge timber and got drowned, and Herb got Mr. Schwartz out
of the house, and then he come over to my house to tell my father,
and my father and mother and Fan and all the Schwartzes and a lot
of neighbors all went running down to the levee, and took the Bony
Highlander with them to show them where we had got drowned from. So that
was why Bony didn't go home, and why he got licked when he did get home.
By that time it wasn't dark but it was getting dark. Me and Swatty just
hung onto our trees, and that was all we could do; but all our folks and
most everybody in town got down to the levee, because Tim Mulligan at
the waterworks pump-house blew the alarm whistle. The firemen all came,
too, with their hose carts and ladder trucks, but most of the folks just
went around saying it was too bad, but that it was hopeless. Even the
mayor said it was hopeless. You see, nobody knew we were on Tow Head.
They thought we were drowned in the river, like Bony said. So there
wasn't anything to do, because it was too hopeless to do anything. The
only thing to do was to wait until the river fell, in a couple of weeks
or so, and then maybe they'd find what was left of me and Swatty
down-river, where we'd be washed up, if we ever was.
Well, that was what everybody thought. My mother cried, and Mrs.
Schwartz cried, and I guess most of the women cried, and the men looked
mighty sober, and said what a pity it was so hopeless; but what could
they do? Everybody was sober or crying, I guess, except Fan, and I guess
she'd been so mad at Herb she just couldn't be anything but mad. She was
so full of mad that it had to come out, so while everybody was crying
and all she just flew up in the air and went over and gave Herb a good
raking.
“Well!” she says. “And you call yourself a man! Do you mean to stand
around here like a bump on a log and do nothing?” she says. “I'm glad
I found out in time what a helpless ninny you are,” or something
like that. She gave it to him good, I tell you! “This trash,” she
says--meaning the mayor and the firemen and the city council and
everybody--“I don't expect anything else from, but I once thought you
had some gump.” Or something like that. So Herb got red.
“Very well,” he says, like a man ready to jump off the high school roof,
“if you say so, I'll take a skiff and go out upon the river. You can't
call me a 'fraid-cat, Fan. You'll never call me that.” Or something like
that, he said.
“Skiff indeed!” says Fan. “You'd have a nice picnic with a skiff,
wouldn't you? Have some sense, Herbert Schwartz. What good is that
ferryboat doing, tied up here?”
Well, that was what they done. At first Captain Hewitt didn't want to
take the ferryboat out. He said it was hopeless, and that she was an
old rotten hull, and that a log would go through her like a needle,
and she'd sink, and she couldn't make headway up-stream against such a
flood, and a lot more, but with all the folks in town there he couldn't
keep that up long; so he went aboard and fired up, and sent up-town
for Jerry Mason, who was the regular fireman. By that time it was dark
enough for anybody, so Mr. Higgins, the steamboat agent, went and got
the two flambeaux he uses when steamboats unload at night, and everybody
that had a porch lantern with a reflector got that, and they put them
all on the ferryboat. Flambeaux are big iron baskets on iron poles,
and the poles are pointed at the bottom so they can be jabbed into the
ground or a floor or anything. You fill the baskets with tar and wood
and light them. So when that was all ready most of the firemen got
aboard with their hooks, off the hook and ladder trucks, and a lot of
other men got aboard with pike poles and grapple hooks, and Herb went
up in the pilot house with Captain Hewitt, and they set out to find our
bodies.
But me and Swatty wasn't bodies yet, we was still folks. We were
feeling a little bit better, too, because Swatty found out that the tree
he was in was a slippery elm tree, and he peeled off some slippery elm
bark and chewed it, and he tossed some over to me, and I chewed that.
So we wondered how long a fellow could live on slippery elm bark, and if
Swatty would have the tree peeled clean before the river went down. If
he did we'd starve to death; but Swatty said that, as the water went
down, more and more of the tree trunk would be above water and we
could peel it and eat it. So we both felt better, only there was a dead
something had caught in the tree branches and when the wind changed it
didn't smell very good. It smelled worse than that, even. So about then
we began to see the lights come out on shore, and pretty soon we saw
the big, smoky light the flambeaux made. We thought it was a bonfire on
shore up at town.
Well, I guess we'd have been bodies before anybody got to us, anyway,
if we hadn't had some bad luck. Me and Swatty was there in our trees
chewing away at slippery elm when all at once something big and black
come slamming down onto the point of the Tow Head. It looked like a
house, but I guess it was only a cow shed or something like that, that
had got floated off the river bottoms by the flood. It came all of a
sudden, and before we knew what had happened it hit the Tow Head point
and banged into the tree I was on, and the water began to rush over
it, and then all at once the tree I was on began to give. It began to
topple. It went slow at first and then it went quicker, and it fell over
against the tree Swatty was in, and the shed came bumping after it, and
then Swatty's tree keeled over, too, and me and Swatty went down under,
and the shed come grating over us--right over our heads and pushing our
trees down into the water.
All I ever knew was that the next thing I knew I was slammed up against
the side of the shed by the water and pushed against it like a big hand
was pushing me, and I was fighting to get more out of the water, and
then the shed sort of melted and went to pieces and I was holding onto a
board and going down with the current between the trees of the Tow Head.
Sometimes the board hit a tree, and sometimes it didn't, but I thought
I was all over with, anyway, and then right ahead of me I saw the water
rushing and roaring up against something.
I didn't know what it was, but it was a log raft the mill folks had put
in behind the Tow Head so it wouldn't get washed away. It was in the
inside of the horseshoe, and all across the front of it was driftwood
and trash and old boards and everything, and that was what the water was
splashing against, and before I knew it I was slammed up against it--me
and my board. And what I slammed up against was the bridge timber I had
been on before, or one like it. If I had slammed up against where it was
just bark and driftwood I would have clawed at it a while and then gone
under, I guess; but I crawled onto the timber and just lay there and
tried to get the water out of my nose. It looked like half a mile of
driftwood was jammed in between me and the log raft--jammed in and
pushed together the way a flood can jam it and push it.
Well, that timber wasn't any place to be. The water rushed against it
and over it, so I was getting ducked all the time, and I put out my hand
and tried the drift stuff, but it didn't seem like it would hold me up,
but there was one board that was on top of the stuff, and I tried that.
I slid over onto it and it seemed all right, so I edged along it, and
when I got to the end of the board the drift stuff seemed firmer and
I got on my stomach and edged out onto it. It was firm enough, but not
very firm, but on my stomach that way I covered a good deal of it at a
time, and I sort of wiggled along, and the more I wiggled the firmer it
got. It had to, with all the river pushing it, and the driftwood back of
it pushing too.
So it took me about an hour to get to the log raft, and when I got to
the edge logs, that are chained together, I was all scratched and sore
and I just sat down and cried, because I knew Swatty was dead.
And all at once he said, “Hello, Georgie!” and there he was, crawling
along the logs toward me. He said he went under when the tree fell over,
and that he went under all the driftwood and come up through a hole
in the raft. Maybe he did. There were holes enough in the raft. But I
didn't get there that way.
Anyway, there he was, and that made me feel a lot better, and we crawled
around the edge of the raft, because we wanted to get to the lower side.
Swatty said maybe we could push a log under the outside chain of logs
and paddle to shore on it, but I wasn't going to do it. Only I wanted
to see him do it if he did it. So we got to the lower edge of the raft,
where it stuck out below the Tow Head, and just then along came the
ferryboat. She was back-paddling and going as slow as she could, and she
looked like an excursion with all the porch lamps and the flambeaux.
So me and Swatty hollered, but I guess they saw us before we hollered.
Everybody came over on our side and that tipped the ferry over a little,
and a lot of the men threw ropes at us and held out their pike poles,
and me and Swatty grabbed them and they yanked us aboard. So then she
whistled five times and waited and whistled five times again, and so on,
because that was the signal they was to make if they found our bodies,
and they had found them, but they were alive yet. So then Herb made the
captain whistle long and steady without stopping, so maybe they'd know
we were alive yet. But nobody knew it, because nobody thought we would
be.
Well, the old ferry let out so much steam whistling she couldn't go
up-stream. I guess she couldn't anyway. So they ran her into the shore
just where she was and tied her to a big tree, and when we got to the
road there was Mother and Father and Mr. and Mrs. Schwartz in a livery
rig, because they had followed the boat all the way down. And Fan was
in the rig, too. So they all pawed me and Swatty over and saw how bad we
was scratched and all, and said we was suffering from exhaustion, but we
wasn't. We was only played out.
So then Herbert said, “All right!” and started to go away, and Fan said,
“Herbert!”
“What is it?” he said.
“I want you to ride up-town with us,” she said.
“No,” he said, “I'll go back and help Captain Hewitt get the boat in
shape. I guess I've done enough to show you I 've some gump.”
“But I _want_ you to come,” Fan says. “I want to talk to you.”
So he came. Him and Fan sat on the front seat and drove and talked, and
I guess their talk was all right, because they fixed everything up. And
that was where Miss Murphy got left. Just because she wanted to lick
Swatty she lost her beau. That's why I say I guess if teachers always
knew how their lickings were going to turn out they wouldn't lick us
fellows so much. Not when the fellow is the brother of their beau,
anyway.