River Laughter - Raymond S. Spears

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and it squeaked a little, not having as yet become damped by the fog. They heard him stop at the corner and drop a locust stick on the curb.

      Away up town, three blocks up the hill, they heard the echo answer; then the cop continued his peregrination along the next block and into the one which they had entered to loot. They listened as the cop walked along. Then they heard him stop. The silence was pathetic. It was full of loneliness. Long arms reached out through it; horrors crawled along under the dark. And several sets of teeth chattered and clicked out there on the sand-bar.

      The long, rising, screaming shrill of a policeman’s whistle shot through the fog like a bullet—or explosion—with the sting of a freezing gale.

      “Fo’ Gawsake!” one whispered. “For Gawsake!”

      He repeated it over and over again in a trembling whisper, unconscious of the fact that he was saying anything and not merely thinking or feeling it. They heard, away up yonder, the pound of heavy feet; they heard the running roll of a big cop coming down the grade, dragging his bounding locust on the pavement to let his partner know he was coming. Then there were two revolver shots. The four men down on the bar saw the faint flashes in the cloud like reflected lightning, and they knew that the bull on the beat had discovered the raid.

      “You —— fool!” a voice hissed. “Yo’ was smokin’ a cig’, an’ I seen yo’ drap hit—an’ hit ain’ went out yet—an’ they knows—they knows we ain’ be’n gone long! What’ll we do? They’ll throw circles—thisaway fustest!”

      Away up yonder they heard a sharp musical ringing, and they needed no in formation as to what that meant. It was the bull cart, big, red and gold bus with the headquarters reserves in it—word had been sent from some comer that there was shooting down on River Street and whistling.

      The pirates whispered together. One was for going down the bar. Another preferred up the bar, and a third was for running up into the town, scattering and hiding wherever they could find a hole.

      “Stand still, boys,” one warned them. “The bull up the slough beat’s on, and the one down to the bridge is on—probably been asleep down theh—an’—they’d nab us! They ain’ never seen us—but we ain’ no angels to look at, boys; we’s riveh-rats, an’ we look hit! We ain’ no friends to count on—we’ll jes’ do like we done befo’; come on, boys!”

      They felt, rather than saw or heard, him turn from the anxious staring toward that blank gray wall of ominous sounds. They did hear his light step into the water. They knew that he was wading in, and they followed him. It was Autumn water, out of the cold and bitter North. Nevertheless, swimming was better than languishing through a third degree.

      Silently they took to the water, and, with strokes like muskrats or frogs, they entered the river. As they floated up into the eddy, they heard some one crossing the bar and heard him call:

      “This is the way they went!” And, as they felt the current eddy, they heard, “Hey—here’s the safe!”

      With that, they took the main current and, like ducks, swam away out of danger.

       Table of Contents

      COLUMBIANA IS MILDLY ANNOYED

      COLUMBIANA MUSCATINE O’BINE dropped down the Ohio in a little white cabin-boat with a red hull; she had a twenty-foot gasoline-launch beside her boat, covered with a half-cabin on the bow and a canvas over the engine-pit to prevent rains from sinking it. A pair of long, light sweeps on the twenty-four-foot flatboat saved gasoline in making landings and showed river-wisdom as well as river-thrift.

      As she floated down the edge of Putney Bend eddy, where several boats were tied in, her gaze discovered a number of children and a man of perhaps thirty years playing down on the sand-bar. He was an agile, square-shouldered man, tanned by sun and wind, smooth-shaven and with the smooth action of what is called a “city man” down the river. His glance was quick and keen, and he amused the youngsters and enjoyed himself on the firm, floor-like sand.

      With the snag roots and limbs for safeties, the children and man were playing Puss in the Corner; men and women in the other shanty-boats regarded the adult among the children with amusement a little tinged with contempt.

      The man was oblivious, however, till the voice of Columbiana crossed the eddy in a sharp hail—

      “Don’t teach them Puss in the Corner!”

      “Why not?” the man demanded resentfully, gazing at her through horn-bow spectacles with wide eyes.

      “Because Puss in the Corner is just getting there first and grabbing safety from the others. Teach them Prisoner’s Base. Prisoner’s Base teaches sacrifice, heroism and rescuing at personal risk! Can’t you see?”

      The man gazed at the young woman with scowling expression and puzzled eyes. A number of the adult spectators chuckled. The children looked from one to the other, wondering. The game stopped while the shanty-boat went drifting on down, and the woman pulled clear of the shoal and began to make the crossing below.

      “That’s right, kids!” the man said at last. “I hadn’t thought of that; we’ll play Prisoner’s Base!”

      “I never played hit!” one of the children wailed. “I wanta——”

      “I’ll show you how,” the man declared. “First, we must find two long lines—there! That pole-sycamore snag’s good for one base, and I’ll draw a line between that ship timber and the broken barrel for the other base. Now we’ll line up; I choose Timmy. Who do you choose, Myra?”

      So they began to play Prisoner’s Base, with its racing, romping and daring rescues of caught companions. But there was an odd number, and so the man was referee and told them how. When they were engrossed in playing and had caught the idea, he turned and looked away down the crossing—where a glimmer and a reflection of the sunshine on a cabin-boat window cast darts of light over the river surface and showed whither the young woman was traveling.

      When it was time for supper, the children were called to the boat, and they were happy, laughing and full of the delight they had had, playing with the big man, whose name was Caroost. Mrs. Cramell called the big man in to supper with her and her little girl and her own man, for she was grateful to have him so friendly to the little ones, teaching them games that were good to play.

      At the table the big man was silent and even diffident. His smooth-shaven face, his bright, blue eyes and his quick smile were attractive, especially to children, whom he seemed to understand better than grown folks. They got nothing from him at the table, not even whether he was out of the Ohio or the Upper Mississippi. Clean, mannerly and a listener; Mrs. Cramell liked him better than ever, for he made talking so easy for her—and she had so much to say!

      After supper he took down Cramell’s banjo and began to pick it to the immense delight of the little girl, not to mention Cramell and Mrs. Cramell, who loved music. He played fast music and slow, loud music and soft, good dance-tunes and sweet things to think by. When he went out on the gangplank, he tiptoed so as not to wake the little girl up, and he did not light the lamp on his own cabin-boat. He made it easy for the Cramells to sleep that night.

       CAROOST put together all the gossip he had heard down the Ohio and Mississippi, but there was nothing in it for him so far as he could tell. Apparently, Mr. Barklow Waldin had been swallowed up by the Mississippi; at the same time, duty is duty!

      He looked from the deck of his red shanty-boat out across the river and recognized it as one of the interesting moments of his life. Adventure had come to him in satisfactory frequency. This was another adventure, hunting for a lost human straw in ten thousand miles of navigable waters and fifty thousand miles of canoe waters—Kismet—Selah—so be it! In the years since Prof. Barklow Waldin had dropped out of sight, he might

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