Then I jumped in the canoe and dug out for our place,
a mile and a half below, as hard as I could go.
I landed, and slopped through the timber and up the
ridge and into the cavern. There Jim laid, sound
asleep on the ground. I roused him out and says:
“Git up and hump yourself, Jim! There
ain’t a minute to lose. They’re
after us!”
Jim never asked no questions, he never said a word;
but the way he worked for the next half an hour showed
about how he was scared. By that time everything
we had in the world was on our raft, and she was ready
to be shoved out from the willow cove where she was
hid. We put out the camp fire at the cavern
the first thing, and didn’t show a candle outside
after that.
I took the canoe out from the shore a little piece,
and took a look; but if there was a boat around I
couldn’t see it, for stars and shadows ain’t
good to see by. Then we got out the raft and
slipped along down in the shade, past the foot of
the island dead still—never saying a word.
It must a been close on to one o’clock
when we got below the island at last, and the raft
did seem to go mighty slow. If a boat was to
come along we was going to take to the canoe and break
for the Illinois shore; and it was well a boat didn’t
come, for we hadn’t ever thought to put the
gun in the canoe, or a fishing-line, or anything to
eat. We was in ruther too much of a sweat to
think of so many things. It warn’t good
judgment to put everything on the raft.
If the men went to the island I just expect they found
the camp fire I built, and watched it all night for
Jim to come. Anyways, they stayed away from
us, and if my building the fire never fooled them it
warn’t no fault of mine. I played it as
low down on them as I could.
When the first streak of day began to show we tied
up to a towhead in a big bend on the Illinois side,
and hacked off cottonwood branches with the hatchet,
and covered up the raft with them so she looked like
there had been a cave-in in the bank there.
A tow-head is a sandbar that has cottonwoods on it
as thick as harrow-teeth.
We had mountains on the Missouri shore and heavy timber
on the Illinois side, and the channel was down the
Missouri shore at that place, so we warn’t afraid
of anybody running across us. We laid there all
day, and watched the rafts and steamboats spin down
the Missouri shore, and up-bound steamboats fight
the big river in the middle. I told Jim all
about the time I had jabbering with that woman; and
Jim said she was a smart one, and if she was to start
after us herself she wouldn’t set down and watch
a camp fire—no, sir, she’d fetch a
dog. Well, then, I said, why couldn’t
she tell her husband to fetch a dog? Jim said
he bet she did think of it by the time the men was
ready to start, and he believed they must a gone up-town
to get a dog and so they lost all that time, or else
we wouldn’t be here on a towhead sixteen or seventeen
mile below the village—no, indeedy, we
would be in that same old town again. So I said
I didn’t care what was the reason they didn’t
get us as long as they didn’t.
