CHAPTER IX

The little bear took very kindly to his new home. He slept well and rose to stretch himself hungrily when the first beam of sunlight came over the brown water. Softly he padded about the half circle of which his chain was the radius, but there seemed to be nothing to eat within reach. Rolled up in a blanket near by, however, he found one of the queer-smelling two-legged creatures that had been kind to him the day before, and being of an inquisitive turn of mind he immediately thrust a moist little black snout between the blanket and the sleeper’s neck.

Tad, awakened by the touch of the cub’s cold nose, let out a squeal and rolled violently over on to Abe, who woke in his turn, and scrambled up, reaching for an ax.

“Haw!” roared Allen. “Haw, haw, haw! Might think the ol’ Scratch himself was arter ye! Wal, he got ye up anyhow.”

Abe and Tad rubbed their eyes and joined sheepishly in the laughter. And the cub, after looking at them all solemnly, returned to his investigation of Tad’s blanket.

“This little feller’s got to have a name,” chuckled Abe. “He acts like he’s adopted us fer keeps, an’ if he’s goin’ to be a full-fledged hand we’ll have to call him somethin’.”

“Let’s christen him Poke,” said Tad. “He’s always into everything.” And Poke was his name from that moment on.

Allen had tied up to the shore after midnight and risen to start again at dawn. Now they were drifting steadily down the middle of a reach where there was no immediate occasion for steering, and Allen sat down with the others amidships at breakfast. He was weary and cross from his vigil at the sweep.

“See here,” he demanded as Poke looked up hopefully after his third helping of johnny-cake, “how in Tarnation are we ever a-goin’ to feed this brute? We ain’t provisioned fer but two hands, an’ this b’ar eats more’n a grown man.”

Abe went on calmly with his breakfast. “I didn’t save him an’ wrastle fer him jest to throw him back in the river,” he said. “Here, he kin have mine.” And placing his own piece of corn-bread in front of the greedy little bear, he rose, whistling, to take up his morning’s labor at the bow oars.

“Tad,” he called, from the fore deck, “you’re the rightful owner of this b’ar. S’pose you git out that hand-line an’ bait it an’ see if ye can’t save the rations by puttin’ us on a fish diet fer a day or two.”

The boy was only too glad to try. He had done some fishing farther up the river, but without any notable results.

“Ought to bite good, today,” said Allen, sniffing the breeze with a knowing air. “Feels like it’s comin’ on to rain, soon--tonight, mebbe. That’ll bring ’em up.”

Tad dropped his baited hook over the side and sat down comfortably, prepared for a tedious wait. But scarcely had the length of the line run out, when he felt such a tug on the other end that it nearly pulled him overboard. He held fast, bracing his feet, and shouted excitedly for aid. Allen took hold with him.

“Huh,” he grunted. “Must be snagged, I reckon. Wal, we can’t afford to lose the hook. Nothin’ for it but pull her in.”

Together they hauled the line aboard hand over hand. There seemed to be a heavy, inert weight attached to it.

“Golly,” growled Allen, “all this work jest to turn loose a durned ol’ water-logged root or somethin’!”

But Tad was still pulling manfully. “Look!” he cried. “It’s no snag--it’s a fish--a catfish--great jumping catamounts, what a fish! How’re we going to land him?”

Allen gave one astounded glance over the side and dashed for the bucket-hook, a stout sapling with an upward-forking branch at the lower end. While Tad held the nose of the big fish at the surface, Allen thrust down the wooden hook and brought it up under one of the gills. “Now,” he cried, “both together, heave!”

And out of the water came a great, grizzled mud cat, so heavy that it took all their strength to haul him over the gunwale. The big fish thrashed ponderously about for a moment and then lay quiet.

“He’s more’n four-foot long,” estimated Allen, “an’ he’ll tip seventy-five pound if he will an ounce. By gum, that’s the biggest ol’ catfish I ever caught.”

“_You_ caught!” snorted Abe, ambling aft to view the prize. “All the claim you’ve got on this fish is that you’re goin’ to cook him. This is Tad’s fish.”

He looked the catch over with an appraising eye. “Pretty fair-sized catfish for such a young one,” he remarked. “He’s only about forty year old. You kin tell by the whiskers. His ain’t even turned gray yet.”

“Humph!” grunted Allen suspiciously.

“’Course,” Abe went on, “you ain’t had the opportunities for observin’ catfish that I’ve been favored with. When I was workin’ on the Anderson Creek ferry, up on the Ohio, there was an old fisherman that used to set thar in his boat day after day. He had two half-inch hemp ropes over the side. One was his anchor rope an’ the other was his line. He never caught any small fish because on the end o’ this line he used the hook off an ox-chain, baited with a half a ham.

“One day he let out a holler we could hear clear across the Ohio, an’ we saw him wavin’ his arms an’ workin’ like all git out. Then by ’n’ by he come a-rowin’ over our way. It was slow pullin’, an’ the stern o’ the skiff was ’way down in the water, with the bow half out. When he got alongside we saw a real fish. The ol’ feller had hauled him in till his nose was up against the stern, an’ then lashed the rope to a thwart, an’ hit him in the head with an ax. We helped him reach the landin’ an’ rigged a tackle an’ fall, an’ with two teams o’ horses we managed to git the critter on shore.

“Eh? What did he weigh? Wal, now I don’t jest quite recollect, but it was either four hundred and eighty-five pound or five hundred and eighty-four--my memory don’t run to figgers. The real interestin’ part was his age. Riveted into his tail was a brass plate, marked with a man’s name an’ the year 1705. Seems like this ol’ fisherman’s grandfather had caught the fish ’way back more’n a hundred years ago an’ marked him an’ turned him loose.

“Talk about whiskers--why, this one had a full beard, jest as white as snow, an’ I reckon his eyes had gone back on him in his old age, fer he wore a pair o’ heavy-bowed spectacles.”

“The fish?” asked Tad, gaping with astonishment.

“No,” chuckled Abe, “the grandfather.” And he returned to his oars.

“Humph!” said Allen again, this time with a real snort. “Whar you ever got the name of ‘Honest Abe’ is more’n I know. Honest! Why, thar ain’t a bigger liar from the Falls o’ the Ohio to the Gulf o’ Mexico!”

They skinned the huge mud cat and cut it in two, putting the larger part in a cool place, wrapped in wet weeds. Tad was just building the fire preparatory to cooking the rest of the fish, when Abe spoke suddenly from the forward deck.

“Look astern, thar, boys,” he said. They stood up, their eyes sweeping the river to the north. There were the usual two or three flatboats in the distance and the smoke of a steamer above the last bend. But less than a quarter of a mile behind them, and drawing rapidly nearer, they saw a big rowboat with oars flashing in quick rhythm along its sides.

As the craft approached, it swung out a little to one side, and they saw that it was a good-sized barge, rowed by six powerful negroes. Four white men sat in the stern sheets, cradling shot-guns in the crook of their arms. They drew up alongside the _Katy Roby_, perhaps twenty yards distant, and at a word of command the blacks rested on their oars. For a moment the occupants of the two boats studied each other in silence. The white men aboard the barge were dressed in the elegant, careless fashion of southern planters. Their faces were unsmiling, very polite, very hard-eyed.

One of them nodded. “We’re out after a runaway nigger,” he said, in an even tone. “Maybe you can tell us where he is, suh.”

Abe straightened up, towering from the fore deck like a young Goliath. His voice had the ring of steel in it, and his speech, as always at tense moments, was singularly free from the slipshod backwoods dialect.

“He’s not aboard here,” he answered, “and as far as we know we haven’t seen him.”

There were whispers among the men in the barge. Then the spokesman, with another look at Abe, made an impatient gesture to the rowers, and the craft was speedily under way once more.

“What did I tell ye last night?” said Allen, when they were out of earshot. “That’s what all the noise was about on shore. They must ha’ tracked him to the river with bloodhounds. Gosh all fishhooks, Abe! I figgered they was goin’ to search us, sure. Did ye see them guns!”

“Yep,” said Abe. “They could ha’ done it fast ’nough if they’d wanted to.”

The _Katy Roby_ held her course all day, proceeding at the leisurely gait that seemed so well suited to her buxom lines. The sky grew more and more overcast, and by afternoon a steady drizzle of rain began to fall. There was little to do but stay under cover as much as possible, swap yarns, and play with Poke, now apparently quite at home in his new surroundings.

It was during Allen’s trick at the oars, when Tad and Abe were lying under the shelter of a tarpaulin, that the younger boy brought up a subject always close to the surface of his mind.

“Abe,” he said, “how long ought it to take that letter of mine to reach New Orleans?”

Abe put down the tattered copy of Shakespeare’s tragedies he was reading. “Let’s see,” he pondered. “That was a week ago yesterday we went ashore, up thar. S’pose the steamboat happened along right off the next day, like the store feller said. That would give a week--sartin sure--that’s time enough fer ’em to git to New Orleans, easy. I’ll jest wager your Paw is a-readin’ that letter an’ congratulatin’ hisself right this minute.”

“Gee,” sighed the boy, “I’ll feel better when I know for sure that he’s got it and isn’t worrying any longer!”

It was well on in the afternoon and the dismal sky was bringing an early dusk when they sighted the barge once more, returning upstream. It passed fairly close, the oars still beating in brisk time against the current. But this time there was a fifth figure among the armed white men in the stern. A big negro, his naked back and shoulders gleaming darkly in the rain, crouched in the middle of the group. They could not see his face, but there were terror and despair in every line of his cowering body.

As they watched the boat they saw it veer over in the direction of a small island they had passed in midstream a mile or so above.

“That’s whar they’ll fix him,” said Allen grimly.

“What do you mean--kill him?” asked Tad.

“Not a mite of it,” the other replied. “Ye don’t ketch them fellers throwin’ away a thousand dollars. They’ll make him wish he hadn’t, though. The way I’ve heard tell about it, they’ll likely start a bonfire, thar on the island, an’ take a gunbar’l, or mebbe a reg’lar iron made fer the job, an’ burn a big mark on to his chest an’ arms. Arter he gits well that brand’ll allers be on him, so the overseers kin watch him extra keerful an’ give him a double dose o’ the whip if he looks sideways.”

“Yes,” said Abe, sober-faced, “as fur as he’s concerned, he’d be a heap better off dead.”

They tied up to a big cottonwood on the Arkansas side, that night, and Tad lay a long time awake, listening to the ceaseless thud of the rain on wet planking and dripping canvas. The thought of the runaway negro, captured after his break for freedom and dragged back to the torture, seemed to haunt him. At last the monotone of the rain was broken by a shivery squall--the cry of a wildcat, somewhere back in the brush. Poke roused himself with an uneasy grunt, and Tad rolled over, pulling the blanket tighter about him.

“That you, Tad?” came Abe’s low voice. “I can’t git comfortable, neither. That poor devil gittin’ caught that way ’pears to have upsot me. Well, thar ain’t much we kin do about it. Let’s go to sleep.”

And whether Abe was successful himself or not, his suggestion seemed to be all that Tad needed, for he dropped off at once into deep slumber.

The rain continued falling steadily for the next two days, and with it the water began to rise. They watched it climb inch by inch as they drifted south, till the yellow tide was swirling halfway up the tree trunks and broadening into vast lakes in the lower lands.

It was difficult, often, to pick out the course of the main river, for except where lines of cottonwoods fringed the banks, it was all one dreary expanse under the sullen beat of the rain.

Everything was wet--clothes, blankets, food. Even Allen’s banjo was temporarily out of commission. The boys’ spirits flagged, and if it had not been for the antics of the little bear and an occasional story from Abe, their party would have been glum indeed.

At last, in the late afternoon of the second day, there was a shift in the wind and the clouds began to break, with hazy shafts of pink and gold streaming through. In the midst of their jubilation, Allen, who had the steering-oar, pointed a finger toward the Tennessee shore.

“Look,” he cried, “a steamboat landin’ an’ houses! That’s Memphis, boys, sure as you’re born!” And leaning heavily against the sweep, he swung the flatboat’s bow over toward the town.