Feb. 21, 1903.3 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
143 
But the money a gang of river pirates would get out of 
that crew would not pay for the powder they would bum 
in getting it; they ought to know that; everyone else on 
the river knew it. We had never been afraid of being 
robbed by these men. We knew they were here some 
where; it was talked of then everywhere on the river. 
I'll get out of this as soon as things are quiet here, 
I told myself, the woman has told the truth, the river 
is not two miles off. Why that old fellow lied about it 
I don't know, I may find out later. 
I noticed that the floor was made of loose boards. 
The most of them were slabs with the round side 
laid next to the stringers, and they were not nailed 
dow^n. I can lift one of them, I thought, then drop 
through and go, as soon as Martha goes to bed. 
Martha had been working about her stove; she now 
went to her father and looked at him, then coming to 
where I lay placed her hand on my face, then asked 
"Are you still awake, stranger?" 
"Yes." 
She looked at her father again, then sitting down on 
the edge of my cot; I had risen partly up now; she 
said, "Don't go to sleep here. You are in danger. Go 
to your boats. Get out of this as soon as you can. 
The river is less than a mile and a half from here; a 
path back of the house goes part way to it; follow it 
to the turn, then go straight ahead. Don't turn there. 
Leave the path at the turn. Your boats are up at the 
bend; go up, not down. This floor is loose, raise a 
board when I tell you and go; go soon. Don't forget 
your gun; take it." 
"I am going right now, Martha. Good-by, now." 
And I took her hand. 
She looked toward her father again, he had not 
moved. "He won't miss you," she said. She still held 
my hand. "Good-by," she said again, and in reply I 
drew her head toward me and kissed her. Then she 
got up, and taking her lamp, opened her store door to 
give me liquor; then going to her room door raised 
her hand to me and disappeared through it, closing it 
after her, 
I pulled on my eoat and boots in a hurry; then mov- 
ing my bed to one side, raising up the plank next to 
the wall, resting it on edge, my bed lield it there; then 
got my gun, powder flask and shot pouch; and was 
going to take both of their rifles and drop them into 
the bayou, when the thought struck me that if I did 
any damage here this woman might have to suffer for 
it, so left the guns where the}^ were. 
I dropped through the floor; then letting the plank 
down in its place again carefullv. I crawled out from 
under the cabin and ran into the timber back of it, and 
by good luck struck the path here; it was plain enough. 
Bringing my gun to a trail arms — I had not been 
drilled to do it then "in one time and two motions at 
the last part of the command, which is 'Arms,' " as I 
used to tell my "rookies" (regular army recruits), 
when I put them through this very movement years 
after that, but I knew how to do it even then — I started 
off down the path on a dead run and kept it up for a 
few hundred j'ards; then stopped. Who was I running 
from now? A cripple who was dead drunk and could 
not follow me, and a woman who would not. I only 
wish she would, I would try to get her among decent 
people, I thought; she was never meant for a river 
pirate; their women would sooner shoot me than help 
me off. I examined my gun now; that young man 
had been working at it and he might have drawn the 
charges; he had taken the caps off and had let the ham- 
mers down. 
No, the charges were in it yet; I bad it loaded with 
heavy charges of powder and BB shot. I put caps 
on again, then throwing it over my shoulder kept on 
at a walk, keeping a good look out to the front now; 
the young man was out here somewhere, I might meet 
him, if I did I would not want him to see me. 
Just before coming to the turn, where Martha had 
told men to leave the path, I heard voices off to my 
right. A fallen tree lay parallel with the path just at 
the turn; the roots were still in the ground and it was 
green yet; I got behind the trunk close up to the 
branches; then cocking both hammers, lay down. Three 
men came down the path and stopped just at the turn; 
the log lay between them and me. 
It was partly light here; I could just see them. Two 
had guns; the third was Martha's brother, he had 
none; one of those rifles at the cabin was his probably; 
he may have been counting on having a double gun; 
it was here now. 
I stuck my head up above the log to get a good look 
at them, but it was almost too dark to see them. It 
may have been lucky for me that it was. I would not 
stick my head up that way now under the same circum- 
stances; I haA'e followed too man}' Indian trails since 
then and know better now. 
The two men seemed to be rather poorly dressed. 
One of them I noticed wore a high soft hat that had 
the crown run up to a peak a foot high, this was a 
popular style of hat then with river men. I saw that 
hat again a few hours later, and its wearer heard from 
me. I was not in hiding then. 
One of the men asked, "Will we wait here or go 
on to the cabin?" 
"Go on, of course," the other told him. "We won't 
sit here all night. Lige and Reddy won't get here be- 
fore midnight. They won't look for us here. Let us 
go to the cabin and get a few hours' sleep." 
"Yes." the young boy spoke up now, "go to the 
cabin, the old man has some orders he wants to give 
you." 
"He is out of the game just now," the man with the 
high hat said. "He can't go, so we need none of his 
orders; you, of course, get your share." 
"Oh, I'll attend to that," the boy told him, "don't 
worry about my share. The old man may be out of it, 
I ain't, don't forget that, will you?" 
It won't need a steamboat to carry off any of 3'our • 
shares if you don't mean to raid us before morning, 
I thought; I'll try and take a hand in those shares mv- 
self. 
"Well, let us go on, then," the man in the high hat 
said. "We can get a few hours' sleep before 4 o'clock," 
That sets the time now, I thought. We are not go- 
ing to be favored with your company before morning; 
go and get your few hours' sleep now and let me get 
out of this; I am in luck, I'll try and give some of you 
several hours in a hospital when you do come. 
"That man off the boats will be there, won't he?" one 
of the men asked. 
"Yes, the old man has him a prisoner, but the 
fool don't know it," the boy told him. 
Neither do you now, I thought. 
"Well, then, he may be in the road there." 
"Oh, he won't," the boy told them. "He is asleep 
by now unless Martha has kept him up chinning to 
him; he is not a regular coal boater, anyhow; he is a 
boy from the city up there, he told us he only came on 
the boats for amusement; he gets a lot of it on a 
pair of coal boats, don't he?" 
"Yes, and we will give him all the amusement he can 
take care of before we get through with him. Just 
let me amuse him; I am a first-rate hand at it," the 
man in the steeple crown bat said, while the others 
roared and laughed. 
When the amusement began later on it was my turn 
to laugh, though. 
"He has a first-rate double barrel scatter gun with 
him. He told us he had been out in the swamp hunt- 
ing, but could find nothing but alligators," the boy 
says; "he is not dangerous." 
"if one of them bears out there had found him he 
would have got all the hunting he wanted," my friend 
in the high hat thought. This furnished a subject 
for another laugh, and my friend of the altitudinal 
headgear added, "I only asked about him because the 
old man might not want him to see us; he might know 
us again; that is, if the old man let's him go." 
"The old man ain't likely to let anyone go who finds 
his cabin. "Don't worry about the old man, he knows 
his business." 
I was beginning to get uneasy here. These fellows 
seemed to want to stand here all night chinning, as 
the boy called it. Though they had been here only a 
few minutes yet, these minutes seemed hours to me. I 
never gave a thought to the danger of my being 
found here by them, but I wanted to get to the boats 
and warn Morrison. They did start, though; and as 
soon as they had been gone long enough to get far 
enough away so that there was no danger of them 
hearing me, I crawled over the log and standing in 
the path, just short of the turn, I looked up to see if 
I could see a star exactly in front of me that I could 
use as a guide: but as I did so I heard a sound that 
put all thoughts of the stars out of my head; I did 
not need them now. A steamboat directly in front of 
me sounded her whistle. The sound seemed not to be 
half a mile awaJ^ 
I started now plunging through swamps and over 
fallen logs, not trying to get around any obstacle, but 
bent on going exactly straight ahead. I did not want 
to lose any time in here now. The men, as soon as 
they had got to the cabin, would find me gone, of 
course. 
They might come back hunting me; I had no time 
to hunt trails now. In less than ten minutes I came 
out in sight of the river, and running over to the levee 
climbed up on it. The light of the steamer still showed 
far up the river, and I now saw why she had sounded 
her whistle. Slae had only given a single blast, that 
would mean a warning to a boat coming in the oppo- 
site direction to tell it on which side of it this one 
meant to pass. The other one then would answer 
with its v/histle; but had not done so. This signal 
was not for a landing; the boat would have blown her 
private signal then, so many long and so many short 
whistles. Ever since I had heard the boat I found 
myself wondering why it had been blown. Now I 
knew. 
^ Up to my left, in a small bend here, I saw my own 
signal. The boats lay here, and Morrison had taken 
one of our oars (they were timbers 15 feet long with 
a lo-foot plank pinned on the end of them for a blade), 
and had set it up with a lantern hung to the top to 
guide me should I come out on the levee anywhere in 
sight of it. I was on board of the boats in five minutes, 
and lost no time in telling Morrison what he might 
expect at 4 o'clock in the morning. 
There had been nothinp- said by the men to indi- 
cate that we would be the object of their raid, but 
there were no others in this neighborhood for them 
to raid; it was us, of course. 
"Well, we have a few hours yet to live," Morrison 
says; "get to bed now, all of you. I will call all hands 
at 3 o'clock." 
It was only lo- o'clock. I was surprised at it being 
so early 3^et. I had no watch and had supposed from 
the adventures I had gone through to-night that it 
must be after midnight. 
We always kept one man on watch when tied up this 
way, an anchor watch, though Morrison did not call 
it that, but that is what it was. Years after this I saw 
it stood many thousand miles from here, in the South 
Pacific. I did not have any of them to stand there 
then, I was a "Alister" with that even then, and my 
watches were all below at the engine. Morrison told 
the watch man to keep a good lookout to-night. 
"Let him have your gim," he told me, "and I want 
you men when on watch to fire at anything you see 
moving. Shoot first; then see who it is afterwards. 
You need not stand a watch to-night," he told me, 
"you have stood yours already; I'll stand your watch 
mj'self." 
I drew my BB shot, replaced it with buck shot, 
then handed the gun to the watch man. Our quarters 
on these boats were at the stern. A bulkhead ran 
across each end of the boat 10 feet from the end. The 
space at the bow was filled with coal; we used those 
at the stern for a "forecastle." 
At 3 o'clock Morrison called all hands ; and while the 
cook went about getting breakfast the same as if there 
might not be any of us left to eat it, the rest of us 
lay on our arms — one shotgun and a lot of "twisters." 
The twisters are hand spikes that are used to tighten 
lines with; I would sooner face a shotgun than one of 
them wielded by one of these men. 
One man was sent up on the levee on picket to let 
us know when to clear the decks for action, then 
Morrison says: 
T*^^'^ better let me have that gun to-day." 
No, I want to keep it, Pinky; I can shoot as close 
as you can. 
"You can shoot all around me; I would be glad to let 
you run it; none of us here know more about it than 
you do, but you may get hurt." 
"I'll risk that, if I get half a show at those fellows it 
will be some one else who will get hurt; and, anyhow, I 
am in no more danger with the gun than without it. 
I am not as good at swinging a club as the rest of you 
are; I can do better with the gun." 
I had a reason for wanting to keep my gun, but I 
did not tell Morrison what it was. I had made up my 
mind that this brother of Martha's would not get shot 
with this gun to-day. If he should come over that 
levee, I would not fire at him; we would have him then 
between it and the boats and could take him and not 
hurt him, I meant to claim him as my prisoner; then 
after the fuss was over I would have Morrison let him 
go. But the next man who crossed that levee would 
get all the buckshot that was coming to him. 
This was the least I could do in return for what 
Martha had done for me. Had it not been for her I 
would not be here now. True, I meant to go just as 
she afterward told me to go, through the floor; but 
had she stayed in that room another hour I would not 
have had a chance to go; I did not suppose I was in 
enough danger there to use force with her in order to 
leave, and had she not told me about this path, when 
I did find it, I should have gone over it at a run in- 
stead of at a walk, and would have taken the turn and 
kept on thinking, of course, that it led to the river, 
when it really did lead to another of these hangouts 
bacK somewhere. Then I should have walked on top 
of those men, and if they did not shoot me they would 
have brought me back to where I had left. I would 
have 110 trouble then in finding out that I was a pris- 
oner, if I was a condemned fool. 
Four o'clock came, but no pirates. 
"I don't expect them much before 5 o'clock," Mor- 
rison said. "Let us get breakfast; I would as soon 
die on a full stomach as on an empty one, and I am 
not just now anxious to die on either." 
We had just sat down to breakfast when the picket 
up on the levee gave a whistle, then ran down and 
came on board. 
Picking up ray gun I climbed out oh deck just in 
time to see my friend of the sky-scraper hat. The 
hat was all of him that was in sight yet; he stood just 
behind the levee, which was about six feet high here, 
but now he raised up his head and shoulders slowly; 
and as he did so I sent him his share of buckshot out 
of the right barrel. He got it. I had not been wing 
shooting for the past few years for nothing; and my 
friend of the church steeple headgear gave a yell that 
might have been heard up at Natchez, then" pitched 
backward down to where he had come from. 
"Take it all," I yelled; "I am not charging you a 
cent for it; amuse yourself with that." Then proceeded 
to load again in a hurry, while Pinky yelled at the 
top of his voice, "Pile out here, you men; bring them 
rifles; get on the levee; be in a hurry, now." 
This was meant for a bluff, of course, "them rifles" 
would not be brought on that levee in a hurry. I was 
wishing now that I had mine; but the "scatter gun" 
had done well enough so far. 
I ran across the gang plank and climbed the levee. 
Not a soul was in sight. I had given my "master 
hand at amusements" too much time; I had no busi- 
ness to stop and load or I might have got up here in 
time to amuse him with the left barrel. 
The brush in this swamp began about 10 yards 
back of the levee, I could not see behind it, but bring- 
ing the gun up I let go both barrels into it at a ven- 
ture, and was answered by a single rifle shot that was 
fired only a short distance behind the brush, as I 
could see by the smoke, 
I ran down and loaded again; and was in such a 
hurry that, as I afterwards found, I put a full double 
charge of powder in my left barrel. It was lucky I 
did not have to fire it here, the barrel would have 
stood it, but I doubt if my cheek would, when that 
butt came back on it. I drew the charge later on. 
We saw these fellows no more. The knight of the 
sugar loaf hat had been sent on a scout to see if we 
were awake, while his friends had remained under 
cover waiting for his report. That fairy story that I 
had given the old man about the fabulous number of 
shotguns, rifles and Colt's pistols, that we had, had 
caused them to be cautious; they did not want to 
"meet up" with a coal boat crew that was armed with 
more deadly "weapons" than clubs. I had seen the 
clubs make havoc among these down river men when 
one of our crews had broken loose. 
Morrison had the lines cast oft' now, and we worked 
out into the stream and went on; he might have gone 
on hours ago, the wind had gone down then, but I al- 
ways thought he stayed here just to give these men a 
chance to attack him; they wanted a fight, he thought; 
he was willing to accommodate them. It turned out 
to be no fight at all; I did all of it myself and my share 
of it had not hurt me any. After w^e had got well 
under way and were out of range of their rifles, should 
they come back, we finished our interrupted breakfast, 
"Are you going to report this. Pinky?" I asked. 
"No, not to-day. What is the use of me telhng a 
man what he knows already? The authorities know 
that these men are there; they can't help knowing it; 
I am not going to waste any time telling them." 
"I am glad of that, I don't want to be tried, if that 
man should die." 
"Well, you won't be if you wait for me to report 
you. And now, men, see that 3'ou never mention this 
affair. This is an order, remember, and you know me. 
I tell you now that the man who disobeys that order 
would have better been asleep when he did it. That 
boy and his gun have saved some of yous wives from 
