The Last of the Flatboats

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.

CHAPTER XI

THE WONDERFUL RIVER

As the “Knobs” – which is the name given to the high hills back of New Albany – receded, the day was still young. It was also overcast and cool. So Ed, who was always studying something, brought his big map up on deck and, spreading it out, lay down on his stomach to study it. He worked over it till dinner time, and in the afternoon he spread it out again.

The boys having gathered around him, he said: —