CHAPTER X

Memphis, in 1828, was little more than a raw hamlet straggling along the river. It had a big landing-stage for steamers and a series of smaller wharves where the arks and keel-boats from upstream could tie up. There were half a hundred craft of all sorts and sizes hitched to the mooring-posts when the _Katy Roby_ drew alongside, for nearly every flatboat crew made a stop of a day or a night at Memphis. It was the largest town between St. Louis and New Orleans and handled a considerable commerce with the back country.

The boys worked the boat’s nose in between other broadhorns until they could get a rope fast, and Allen retired to the shelter amidships to shave and spruce himself up.

“Reckon I’ll step ashore an’ see what prices they’re offerin’ fer corn an’ pork,” he remarked, endeavoring to part his hair with the aid of a piece of broken mirror.

“Yes,” said Abe, “an’ don’t fergit to take note o’ the number o’ purty gals an’ the color o’ their dresses. Tad an’ me, we’ll stick along here an’ teach this no-’count Poke some new tricks.”

They cooked supper, and as Allen did not return at dusk, they ate it, sitting together on the edge of the fore deck. There were numerous boatmen joking, swearing, and passing the time of day in the craft about them. Several of the crews were familiar to them from earlier meetings along the river, and there was much cheerful banter about Abe’s towering frame. He took it all with his customary grin and gave them as good as they sent.

“Say, Hoosier,” yelled one jolly-looking, red-bearded keel-boat man, “how long are them shanks o’ yourn, anyhow?”

“Jest the proper length,” Abe returned. “They’re jest exactly long enough to reach the ground.”

Gradually the talk and laughter quieted down as darkness fell. By nine o’clock the river front was quiet except for the gurgle of the high water sweeping past and an occasional burst of song from roisterers in the town.

Abe waited patiently until sometime close to midnight. Then he nudged the drowsy Tad awake and told him to mind the boat while he went ashore after Allen.

Tad succeeded in propping his eyes open for half an hour, and at the end of that time he saw a huge, dim shape lurching along the dock. As it reached the bow of the _Katy Roby_ it became recognizable as Abe, carrying a limp body over his shoulder.

Tad leaped up, startled.

“What is it--is Allen hurt?” he whispered.

“No,” Abe replied, quietly. “He’s drunk.”

They took off some of his clothes and wrapped him in his blanket. Then Abe stretched his big arms and spat over the gunwale disgustedly.

“There’s no law to stop a feller from makin’ a fool of himself,” he remarked. “Only ye’d think plain common sense ought to tell him.” And with that they went to bed.

Allen made a very unheroic figure next morning. His complexion was a sort of greenish yellow, and he refused all food with groans.

“What about prices on the cargo?” Abe asked him. “Want to stay an’ unload some?”

Allen shook his head. “Too cheap,” said he. “Let’s hold the stuff fer New Orleans an’ git thar as soon as we kin.” Whereupon he rolled over once more and lay in a miserable heap while Abe and Tad made preparations for departure.

They needed sugar and white flour, and before casting off, Abe made a hurried trip up into the town to get them.

When he came back his face was grave.

“They say there’s a heap o’ damage from the high water all along below here,” he told Tad. “We’ll have to watch sharp and help folks out whar we kin. An’ then I heard another piece o’ news. They say this outlaw John Murrell is back from up river, an’ him an’ his gang are startin’ to make life miserable fer the planters betwixt here an’ Natchez. The storekeeper wanted to skeer me, I reckon. He claimed Murrell would sink a flatboat an’ drown the crew fer a ten-dollar note. But I don’t pay much heed to that sort o’ talk.

“An’ anyhow, if he wants our ten dollars, let him try it. I’d sort o’ like to see Mr. Murrell fer myself an’ find out if he’s such a terrible feller.”

Tad was not quite so sure he wanted to test the notorious outlaw’s mettle, but he agreed that it might be thrilling to get a glimpse of him.

They got off before the morning was far advanced, and soon overtook some of the other flatboats which had started before them. Abe took a keen delight in overhauling them, one after another, and tossing back a gibe or two at each vessel they passed.

At length there was only one craft left in sight ahead of them--a long, trimly-built keel-boat, with lines that were almost graceful compared to those of the _Katy Roby_. She was making good headway, due to the efforts of a husky bow-oarsman, but Abe’s extra-long sweeps and the tremendous power he put into his stroke were rapidly eating up the distance between the two boats.

Just as the bow of the broadhorn drew even with her rival’s steering-oar, another figure sprang to the fore deck of the keel-boat. It was the big red-bearded river-man who had asked Abe about the length of his legs. He swung an arm in vigorous gesture, and his voice roared out across the water.

“Git down from thar, ye lousy swab,” he cried to the oarsman. “Let somebody pull that knows a sweep from a shovel.”

The rower hastened to surrender the great, clumsy oars and scramble down, out of the way. And then indeed began a race! The slenderer lines of the keel-boat gave her a slight advantage, which Abe had to overcome by the sheer force of his strokes. During that moment while the oars were changing hands, the tall Indiana boy quickened the beat of his swing and succeeded in pulling up till he was a shade ahead of the other craft. From this point he could watch his rival without turning his head, while the redbeard was forced to crane his neck in order to see what Abe was doing.

So they went, side by side, for the best part of a mile, the muddy water churning in yellow foam behind them. The other four men in the keel-boat’s crew bellowed constant encouragement to their mate, and one of them seized the steering-sweep, sculling from side to side to help them along. Tad saw this maneuver and promptly matched it by doing the same thing with the _Katy Roby’s_ stern oar.

At the end of ten minutes the furious pace began to tell on the red-whiskered rower. He was wilting visibly, while Abe, who had been at it for more than an hour, was still pulling as strongly as ever.

One of the keel-boat men climbed to the fore deck and held a whisky jug to the lips of his champion. This measure seemed to put new vigor into him for about ten strokes. Then he stumbled and caught a crab, and the race was over.

Abe pulled far enough ahead so that there should be no doubt about it, then waited, resting on his oars.

He was panting hard, but his grin made him look anything but exhausted. As Tad came forward, he mopped his forehead with his sleeve.

“Son,” said he, between breaths, “don’t ever let the other feller know you’re as tired as he is. If he thinks you’re still fresh he’ll quit.”

After that they drifted for a while, and toward noon the big keel-boat dropped down abreast of them again. The ruddy-bearded captain steered close enough for conversation and grinned sociably as he spoke.

“Whar you from?” he asked.

Abe told him and came back with a similar question.

“We’re bringin’ a load o’ furs down from St. Louis,” answered the keel-boat skipper. “Ol’ Man Carillon, he’s scairt to ship by steamboat--’fraid they’ll blow up. So he still sends his furs this way. More’n a thousand prime beaver skins we’ve got, an’ plenty of other kinds besides. That’d be a haul worth even John Murrell’s time, eh? I’ve got two extra men in the crew jest ’count o’ him an’ his gang.”

“They tell me he’s back,” said Abe.

“Sure thing,” replied the other. “He was layin’ low fer a couple o’ months, up river, but this last week he’s been seen ridin’ the roads on that three-stockin’ boss o’ his--him an’ Bull Whaley an’ Sam Jukes. That means thar’s some sort o’ devilment a-bilin’.”

“Well,” Abe answered, “jes’ so he stays on horseback an’ don’t come meddlin’ with river folks, he’ll mebbe keep a whole skin.”

The keel-boat left them some distance astern while Abe was getting dinner, but later in the day they sighted it again, and for the next forty-eight hours the two craft were rarely more than a few miles apart.

Allen did not wake up until nearly dark, and even then he had little stomach for the sizzling hog meat that Abe was frying. Next morning, however, he was feeling like himself once more, and was even ready to brag about his experiences ashore in Memphis, if Abe’s cutting sarcasm had not quieted him.

They went down swiftly on the flood-water, twisting and turning through new channels, and dashing through chutes where the river had straightened its course and ran like a mill race. Occasionally they saw the roofs of submerged cabins, and once or twice, when there seemed a chance that people might be left in them, they stopped to see if they could be of any help. In one house, floating with a gable end thrust up at a crazy angle, they saw the body of a drowned woman caught by the clothing to a window frame and trailing pitifully in the water. But aside from that they found no human trace in all the desolate welter of the river.

On the third day after leaving Memphis they passed the mouth of a great river--the Arkansas--a raging tide that bore witness to heavy floods in the back country.

For miles below, the surface of the Mississippi was littered with gruesome débris. There were limbs of trees, parts of houses, bloated bodies of farm animals. A huge flock of buzzards circled and settled, on tilting black wings, and a stench of death filled the air.

Once, when Tad was perched high astern, swinging the steering-oar, he caught sight of the carcass of a pig a little distance off. And even as he watched, it was suddenly yanked under, leaving only a gurgling eddy in the stream.

The St. Louis keel-boat was not far away, and her red-bearded captain called across to Tad.

“Did ye see that?” he cried. “Big alligator done it. We’ll find lots of ’em below here.”

Sure enough, as they cast off next morning from the high bank topped with cottonwoods where they had spent the night, a row of gnarled gray logs below them came alive, turned with a swish of tails, and went lumbering into the water.

“Don’t reckon we’ll be so keen to go swimmin’, from here down,” Abe chuckled.

There were other signs that told them they had come into the real South. Cotton plantations replaced the woods and squatters’ farms on the higher ground. Broad, stout levees held the river in check for miles along the steaming bottom lands. The weather was uncomfortably hot, even in the scanty costumes which the boys wore. They kept out of the sun as much as possible during the heat of the day, but their faces, arms, and ankles were burned the color of an Indian’s. Abe, who had been reading _Othello_, told Allen solemnly that he looked like the Moor of Venice.

Three days after they passed the Arkansas mouth, they sighted Vicksburg, a white town nestled in the crook of a bend, with water above the top of the landings and washing over the lowest street.

Allen was ready for another adventure ashore, but Abe prevailed on him to wait.

“Ye don’t figger the price o’ pork has gone up much since we left Memphis, do ye?” said the lanky bow-oarsman scornfully. “After the spectacle ye made o’ yerself up thar, I should think ye’d want to look the other way if a town so much as came in sight.”

“That whisky must ha’ had pizen in it,” Allen muttered. But he had very little more to say until they had left the landing astern.

“Oh, well,” he remarked at length, “we’ll be down to Natchez in another day or two, an’ I reckon we’ll need some more provisions by then. Natchez-under-the-Hill!” He pronounced the name of the town with a certain relish. “The toughest landin’ on the whole river. I sure aim to see the sights of that place.”

“The toughest sight you’ll see,” said Abe firmly, “will be the flat o’ my hand, unless you behave yourself mighty well from here down.”

The crest of the high water had passed, and the river was gradually receding as they drifted southward. Along the bluffs on the Mississippi side they watched a panorama of cotton plantations, half screened by glossy-leaved magnolias in the gardens of the big white houses.

This was a rich country--a land of fabulous ease and prosperity, it seemed to the two Hoosiers. Even Tad, who had seen plenty of wealth in the Eastern cities, was amazed by the glimpses they got of the luxurious planters’ life.

Once they passed a barge trimly painted in green and white, with cushions and trailing silks over the stern. It was rowed by four negroes, and its passengers were a lovely lady in a flowered bonnet, a big, jolly, fair-haired man, and a little girl with golden curls.

The barge stopped at a private landing where a shining barouche with two high-headed bay horses was waiting. Other horses, saddled and held by negro grooms, stood near, and an elegantly dressed gentleman and lady strolled down to the landing to greet the visitors. The crew of the flatboat, drifting out of sight, caught a chime of fairy-like laughter that followed them around the bend.

“Jiminy!” sighed Allen. “This is the section to live in, all right. Niggers to wait on ye, an’ fine hosses, an’ summer all the year ’round!”

“I dunno,” said Abe, thoughtfully. “It’s grand fer the folks that owns the niggers, but how about these poor whites, along the bottoms an’ back in the brush? They ain’t as well off as you an’ your Paw, by a long shot. The South is fine, but it’s no country fer folks that ain’t born rich.”

There were two more drowsy, uneventful days of drifting, and then at dusk they came in sight of Natchez. It was the beginning of an experience that Tad was never to forget as long as he lived.

There was a terrifying beauty over the river that night. A strange green light had overspread the sky after sunset, and in it every detail of the bank and the bluff stood out with unearthly clearness. The air was sultry, with no hint of the breeze that usually ruffled the water at evening. From a reedy place, shadowed by moss-draped live oaks, a pair of great white egrets rose and winged silently away to the northward.

They saw a church spire above the trees at the top of the bluff, and then, low in the shadow along the waterside, the outlines of shacks and houses, with a swarm of flatboats moored to the levee. A thin tinkle of music reached their ears, and as they drew closer it resolved itself into the squeak of fiddles and the throb of banjos.

They found a place to tie their craft, down at the lower end of the line, near the steamboat landing, and hardly had they made the ropes fast when a growl of thunder drowned out the music. A wind sprang up, blowing from the south, and the sky grew dark with scudding clouds.

A sudden foreboding filled Tad. From that instant he had a dread of Natchez-under-the-Hill.