“You bet I'll row!” Swatty said, and we did. We steered off to one
side of the mush-rat's house and rowed hard. We had a good double-ender
skiff, rounded bottom and not flat bottom, and we made her hump! All of
a sudden Swatty's left oar came out of the oarlock and he nearly fell
backwards into the bottom of the boat. He got up and slapped the oar
back into the oarlock and we both rowed hard.
“We ain't moving!”
Bony said that. He was hanging onto the sides of the skiff with both
hands, looking scared and white, and you never heard anybody say
anything the way he said that! It was like he had seen a ghost. Me and
Swatty stopped rowing and looked. About twenty feet away from us was
that old mush-rat house and we could see a little ripple of water on
the upper side of it but it wasn't moving and we weren't floating away
from it. There was the same kind of ripple against the bow of our boat.
We rowed again and we rowed hard and the skiff didn't move! There we
were, out in the middle of that haunted lake, or whatever it was, and no
bottom that you could reach with an oar, and we couldn't row up-stream
and we didn't float downstream. And over yonder was a mush-rat's house
just like we were. It sure looked like we were in a haunted lake and I
didn't blame Bony for being scared and crying. I was scared myself. It
looked like we were in a haunted lake we could not row out of and that
we might have to stay there forever.
“Well, garsh!” Swatty said, “we rowed up here, we ought to be good and
able to row back where we come from.” So we swung the skiff around and
rowed down-current. No good! We didn't move at all. Or we just moved a
foot or two.
It wasn't like when you run up on a snag or a rock. It wasn't stiff
like that. We floated all right but we couldn't go anywhere.
“Listen!” Swatty said.
Away off far we heard voices and splashing, sounding the way things
sound when you hear them across water. Swatty shouted. “Hello!” he
shouted, and his voice came back to him, “Lo-wo-wo!” in an echo, the way
echoes do.
“All right!” he said. “Now we know where the Illinois hills are, anyway.
That's the way they echo back at you, so they must be over there. And I
bet those men splashing in the water are after buffalo with pitchforks.
So that's where we want to row.” That was pretty fine, wasn't it, when
we couldn't row at all? I told Swatty so. I said we'd better shout and
have the men come and get us. Swatty said they'd just think it was kids
shouting for fun; and I guess that's what they did think, for we shouted
and shouted, and when we quit we could still hear the men laughing and
talking and splashing. So then Swatty sat down and put his head in his
hands and thought. When we looked up he said:
“Do you believe in haunts and things?”
“I don't know,” I said. “Do you?”
“I don't know, either,” Swatty said. “Maybe I do and maybe I don't, but
I know one thing: I ain't going to believe in them until I have to. I
ain't going to believe this boat is 'witched here until I know it ain't
stuck here some other way. I'm going to find out.”
“How?” I asked.
“Well, if we're stuck we're stuck on something under the water and
that's sure, and I'm going to skin off my clothes and find out.”
So he did. I wouldn't have done it for a million dollars and I tried to
make him not, but he did it. He took off his clothes and lowered himself
over the side of the boat and said, garsh! how cold it was! So then he
edged himself along, holding onto the side of the boat and all at once
he swore.
“What?” me and Bony both asked at once.
“Bob wire!” he said, and he let go with one hand and felt down into
the water. Then he took hold of the boat with both hands and felt along
under the boat with his feet. “It's a post,” he said. “It's a bob-wire
fence.”
So that was what it was. There was a bob-wire fence and we had
rowed right on top of one of the posts and stuck there, on a nail or
something, and the post was loose in the mud and gave when we rowed, so
we couldn't wrench loose by rowing. And that was why the mush-rat house
did not float downstream; it was caught on another post. So all at once
Swatty said:
“I know where we are; we're in Shebberd's lower cornfield!” And that was
where we were. The water had come up and covered it up to the tops of
the bob-wire fence posts.
Well, Swatty's teeth were chattering but he wouldn't get right into the
boat. He made me and Bony row while he was out, and I guess with the
boat lighter it floated off the post easier, for it did float off. So
then Swatty got in and dressed and we rowed toward the voices and the
splashing.
It was Judge Hannan all right. He was pitch-forking buffalo fish with
the Shebberds. He had on rubber hip boots and he was hot and having a
good time. We rowed in close to where he was and watched them pitchfork
awhile and then Swatty backwatered the skiff up to where the judge was
standing and said:
“Say, mister judge!”
The judge leaned his hand on the stem of the boat and said:
“Yes, my lad, what is it?”
“Are you the judge that gives diworces?”
“I'm the one that don't give them unless I have to, son,” the judge
laughed. “Looking for one? You don't look as if you had reached that age
and state yet.”
“It ain't mine,” Swatty said. “It's Bony's folkses. They're having a
fight and they're going to get a diworce and me and Georgie and Bony
don't want them to. So we rowed over to tell you not to give them one.”
The judge felt in his pocket and got out his spectacles and put them on
and looked at us. He asked which was Bony and then he knew who Bony was
and that he knew Bony's folks. He said he did.
“And you don't want any divorces in your family, hey?” he said. “Why
not?”
Bony didn't say anything, so Swatty started to tell about the bicycle,
but before he got very far Bony just doubled over and put his head on
his knees and began to beller like a real baby. So the judge stopped
Swatty.
“Son,” he said to Swatty, “I guess you've mistooken the proper legal
grounds for not giving divorces. The desire of a youth to learn to ride
one of the condemned things when he is related to the separating parties
only by neighborhood is not sufficient to sway the court. But you, son,”
he said to Bony, “have got exactly the right idea. You've swayed this
old, bald-headed court right down to the mud he's standing in and, so
help me John Joseph Rogers! if those two parents of yours get a divorce
it will only be over my dead body! Hey, Sheb! can these kids go up to
your house and get some buttermilk?”
So I said I didn't like buttermilk and the judge said: “Caesar's ghost!
I didn't mean get it for you; I meant get it for us!”
So we got it. So Bony's folks didn't get a divorce. Anyway, if they
did they didn't separate apart from each other and that was all me and
Swatty cared for because Herb Schwartz wouldn't be scared to marry Fan,
and maybe we could hurry up the wedding and get the tricycle sooner.