Marcs ]^ 1905.J 
FOREST AND STREAM 
an organ — the difference between a rattle and a hum. 
The big mill was sawing gum on that day. The logs 
were anywhere from twenty-five to forty-five inches in 
diameter. They came up the incline on a car, and 
were rolled bumping down a slight incline by an iron- 
toothed arm. They rolled into a big iron V-maw, 
which held the log until the saw was ready, when the 
V flopped over and the log went on to the carriage, 
where it was clinched by two negroes at the upright 
holds. Before the log was fairly still, a lean, reddish 
man, with his two hands on levers, had worked one of 
them, and away went the carriage with a jerk, which 
the riders had learned to meet by bending. In a moment 
the whining band-saw began to scream as it bit down 
through the dripping wood. It was wonderful to see 
the speed at which the log was cut in two, and brought 
back to be quartered. Water poured on the saw lo 
keep it cool. Once quartered, the pieces were run 
into boards in a jiffy, and as they rolled away into 
edging machines, the V-maw flopped again and another 
log was flung lengthwise against the whining band-saw. 
From the mill, the boards were scattered all over the 
yard on small handcars and piled up in sweet-scented 
heaps, which are characteristic of the sawmill town, and 
the size of every board was noted down, as the size of 
every log to be sawed brought in had been. Every 
thing seemed to be rushing in a breathless hurry, but 
the workers moved about without haste. Even the 
two clinchers on the carriage had time to rub their 
hands once in a while. But one man was plainlj^ the 
nerve center of the whole visible business. He was a 
lean, sunken-eyed sawyer, who shoved his levers and 
shot keen glances from the incoming load of logs to 
the outgoing lumber, but no further and not elsewhere. 
Every board passed under his sharp eyes — and he 
gauged. each one before the saw ran into the quartered 
log, if not before. He decided whether the stick would 
make inch boards or three-inch planks. 
In another mill nearby was a young fellow in rela- 
tively the same place. He was a wide-eyed, smiling 
individual, who wore his hat slightly a-slant and whistled 
snatches of song music at intervals — judging by the 
pucker of his lips. He yelled at the negroes, joshing 
some and telling others to move. He saw most of what 
happened anywhere in sight, but didn't look his part 
of nerve- center, save that when he leaned one . way, a 
four-ton log- jumped to destruction, and. when he 
leaned another, the bedlam of a breaking log' jam 
rolling on boards broke loose. He wasn't tens^e, but 
just free and' easy— -happy-go-lucky. They said- that in 
proportion to the power*.he; breaks rriore;; saws and saws 
more lumber than any -other .sawyer.on the Mississippi. 
A day's work here is io6',boo' fSet Sf"Cottpnwood,«45,ooo 
to 65,000 of oak, ■ ; ■ - . . ' 
Just over the levee from the sawmills, th^_:^-gfeyern- 
ment was -putting in a mattress to save the' bank. A 
mattress is made of willow .trees, a couple or three 
inches in diameter at the butt, which are . tied up in. 
bundles as long as the mattress. The bundles are a.= 
couple , of 'feet, in diameter and a hundred yards long. 
Each bundle is tied with wire rope and quilted into the. 
next bundle; "until the matting is as wide as the place 
to be covered. A couple of hundred men were at work' 
on the mattress. The quilting barge had an inclined 
plane oh-it, on which the mattress was made. Levers 
pulled the wire ropes, and when the mat was done, it 
would stand the weight of tons of rock used to sink it 
on the worn bank: - The sinking process is said to be 
the most thrilling of the government operations. It has 
to be done flying, ari'd the men throw the stone hand 
over fist, Speed is necessary because sometimes a mat 
gets j to "weaving" in the . swift current — begins to 
undulate — ^^and then rolls up lengthwise and tears loose 
in spite of ropes and rock. When it is torn loose, the 
mat whirls away down stream, hooks upon the bottom 
somewhere, and an island builds forthwith. Opposite 
Greehville is one such mattress, and above Memphis 
another mattress worked loose. Above Cairo was 
another. At such places $10,000 or $20,000 worth of 
work goes to smash in a, very few minutes. Neverthe- 
less, the engineers of the River Commission have proved 
that they can handle the river about as they please, 
providing the value of property saved is worth the 
expense. 
A good deal of government money is spent in dredg- 
ing, but one hears that steamboatraen do not usually 
follow the ditches made. The snag boats, however, have 
saved countless boats and countless lives by digging on 
the big trees that lodge in sand where they were a con- 
stant menace from the days of the first keelboat — if not 
canoes. It is . probable that at some time in the future 
niattressing and riprapping will be the chief work done 
on the Mississippi — but this will not be until the river 
bed has outgrown the levee systefm. 
A great deal of the work done along the river is by 
contract; ahd many men grow rich doing work on the 
levees, getting out willows, furnishing supplies and 
the like. But they must do the work they contracted 
to do as well as they said they would. "The commis- 
sion is not unreasonable when a man has bad luck," 
a man, thoroughly familiar with one phase of the situa- 
tion, told me. "The commission will even seem blind 
in little things for a time. . But the man who presumes 
on their leniepcy: Suddenly finds himself just off the 
road that leads to preferment, and it is done so nicely 
that he never knows what hit him. But if a man does 
his work right up to the mark, and sometimes washes 
over the line, he is just as thoroughly marked as in 
the other cases, and his future is assured. The govern- 
ment wants its work well done, and gets what it wants.'' 
If the levee system is right, the levees are as good as 
they can be made. Every detail is watched, every care 
is taken. The contractor is held responsible for his 
work — and there is plenty of work for contractors in 
keeping the levee system intact. The big river is al- 
most like drops of water on a window pane. The 
floods are the drops that go chasing down the glass, 
darting first one way and then another. The high water 
cuts into the bank on one side and fills in a sand bar 
on the other. On the cutting side the banks are worn 
to the levee, and behind this another levee must be con-, 
structed a hundred or a thousand yards behind it. The 
Jand in between may be washed away soon, or a new 
vagary may send the current gnashifig through a penin- 
sula neck, leaving a beautiful green lake, where a 
yellow torrent had previously been pouring. To place 
a levee, and sink a mattress where they will do the 
most good are the great tasks of the River Commis- 
sion. If the government was to make passenger boats 
of its - river fleet, the fleet would rival that of other 
river fleets combined, one would say. The government's 
tender care for river commerce is shown by the million 
dollars put in at Mussel Shoals, on the Tennessee, in 
ord^ that a couple of $70,000 steamboats might go 
through if they wanted to. 
On the Mississippi, however, the towboat business, 
which brings countless millions of bushels of coal down 
the river, has proved so serious a competition to rail- 
roads that railroads once attempted to control it. They 
bought a big towboat or two, and tied them up. Rail- 
roads did good business until other towboats, larger 
and more powerful, could be built when towboats 
knocked them again. There are many phases of the 
Mississippi River commerce, control and condition ques- 
tions, some of which it would be worth the time of 
an analytical statistician's research — such things as 
whether it is worth while spending a million dollars in 
order to give a single steamer a "show" could be decided 
upon, for instance. 
Chief of Police Clancy, at Helena, Ark., is a big, 
burly, florid sort of man. His corrugated face was 
what a policeman might be expected to have, if he 
faces weather, temptation and arbitrary control often 
enough. A most positive kind of man is the chief. He 
speaks almost exclusively in the indicative mood. 
"There's no honest man on the river — they're all 
thieves. I want a man, and I get him. A nigger's a 
thief." 
_ Chief Clancy has had to deal with many bad men in . 
his time, as desperate men are found in the Mississippi 
Bottoms as anywhere. The daring of a river thief is 
one of Clancy's chief troubles. Two men, Davenport 
and Nash, stole two big levee tents just below Helena. 
Ihey set the tents up on Montezuma Bar, a few miles 
below town, and then proceeded to fill the tents with 
goods taken from Helena stores. Night after night, the 
little corner groceries, scattered in the lower part of 
Helena, were broken into and the contents looted. 
Canned, salted, woven and manufactured stuffs were 
toted away to the river side and floated down to 
Montezuma Bar. At last the police got a hint. They 
swept down the river on gasolene launches, cleared for 
action, and in line abreast. Had the officers only waited 
. a few days, Nash and Davenport would have been able 
to go into the store boat business on a grand scale. 
As it was, the thieves were captured and sent to the 
pen. Davenport got out and was killed at Friar's 
Point. He had gotten into trouble there, and in trying 
to escape the Deputy Sheriff, Fitzgerald, by rowing 
away in a skiff, got killed. Fitzgerald followed his man 
in the gasolene launch ferry boat. 
Nash and Davenport one time robbed a slaughter 
house below Helena of 300 green hides. They loaded 
the hides on a steamer, which they hailed in that night 
at the Helena wharf and sent them to Memphis, where 
Clancy got them. Nash was pardoned out to tell what 
he knew about a murder case, but when the pardon- 
was signed and delivered, Nash forgot what he knew 
on the stand. 
Clancy said that some of the largest fortunes in 
Phillips county were founded on old-time river thieving. 
He said that in the produce-boat days, gangs of river 
pirates operated from Porter's Lake, where they had 
their camp. The crews were run ashore or killed, and 
then the produce boats were taken in tow by a river 
steamer, owned by the thieves, and taken down to "New 
Orleans and sold, three or four at a whack. Anderson, 
the old fisherman, told me some more things about 
this gang. He said it comprised nearly all of Helena's 
officials in those days— forty years ago. Finally matters 
got so bad that a lot of the plantation men back in the 
country organized a raid and came to town, five hun- 
dred strong. They killed the mayor, sheriff, most of 
the policemen, and many of the leading citizens. This 
disorganized the gang to a considerable extent. 
But in these days, thieving is confined chiefly to steal- 
ing junk, and petty burglary and sneak-thieving. This 
is done in organized fashion sometimes. An inconspic- 
uous cabin boat drops into a landing late some day. 
A couple of river men saunter up town and buy things 
in various stores, invariably receiving the invitation to 
conie again. Perhaps they lay around for a week. 
While they are there, a store is broken open and any- 
where from a hundred weight of crockery to $5,000 
worth of firearms disappear. There's a hue and cry, 
of course. Cabin boats are searched and telephone 
messages and circulars distributed by the dozens. The 
two_ men go on down the river. A week or so later 
a big store boat comes down stream. It ties up at a 
sandbar, or a willow-thicketed bank. After a night, the 
boat goes on down stream, the sandbar or thicket hav- 
ing given up its buried booty. Two hundred miles or 
so down stream the guns and other things become a 
part of the things sold by the store boat. 
At least twice in his river career, Anderson had met 
men who stole the entire contents of a country store, 
and then either built or bought a cabin boat, from 
which to sell the stuff down the river. On one occasion 
that he told about, the stuff was buried under a brush 
pile, and on the other he found a pit under an old . 
fireplace, in which a lot of crockery was buried. 
Raymond S, Spears. 
Faith and Works. 
A pretty anecdote is related of a child who was 
greatly perturbed by the discovery that her brothers 
had set traps to catch birds. Questioned as to what she 
had done in the matter, she replied: "I prayed that the 
traps ^ might not catch the birds." "Anything else?" 
"Yes," she said, "I then prayed that God would prevent 
the birds getting into the traps, and," as if to illustrate 
the doctrine of faith and works, "I went and kicked the 
traps all to pieces."— -Household Words. 
The Great Fight with the Kiowas 
and Comanches* 
_ The main camp was on the South Platte River, and the 
Dog Soldiers were camped a day's ride from there. Por- 
cupme Bear was the chief of the Dog Soldiers. 
The Dog Soldiers determined that they would make a 
war expedition against the Kiowas and Comanches, and 
they sent Porcupine Bear to the main camp to ask the rest 
of the people to join with them. 
After Porcupine Bear had reached the camp and had 
delivered his message,' some one there who had whiskev 
gave him some. A good many people got drunk, and 
some men began to fight. Little Creek had Lean Bear, 
one of Porcupine Bear's relations, down on the ground, 
and was cutting him with his knife, when Lean Bear 
called on Porcupine Bear, who was also drunk, to help 
him. When his relation called on him for help. Porcu- 
pine Bear stabbed Little Creek, and his cousin then took 
the knife and killed him. After this, Porcupine Bear, 
and all who were concerned in the killing, were sent away 
from the Dog Soldiers, and the command of that body 
was giveri to White Antelope and Little Old Man. The 
Dog Soldiers and the rest of the Cheyennes now came to- 
gether to consider the question of the expedition against 
the enemy. 
This happened in the year 1838, and the men who took 
part in the killing were nephews of White Thunder, then 
the keeper of the medicine arrows. For the offense they 
were outlawed, and were not permitted to remain with 
the main village, but were obliged to travel and encamp 
by themselves, off to one side. There were a very few 
lodges of them, less than a dozen men in all. Soon after 
this the whole camp started south to find the Kiowas and 
Comanches. All the Kiowas, Comanches and Apaches 
were together, and moving against ihem from the north 
were all the Cheyennes and Arapahoes together. 
The outlaws, though not permitted to camp or to re- 
main with the main village, accompanied it, traveling and 
camping by themselves, two or three miles to the west- 
ward. They were in constant touch with the main camp, 
and kept themselves informed of all that was happening. 
After leaving the Arkansas River, the Cheyennes and 
Arapahoes were sending out frequent parties of scouts 
to locate the Kiowa village. The first men sent were 
Pushing Ahead and Crooked Neck. They had been 
strictly ordered to find the village if possible, but on no 
account to attack any Indians that they might see. One 
day as they were watching from a hill overlooking Wolf 
Creek they saw two men coming down the stream, carry- 
ing shields and leading horses — evidently two Kiowas who 
had been on the war path. The Cheyennes watched them 
pass down the stream, and then returned to the camp 
and reported, saying that they believed that the camp 
must be lower down on the stream. 
The Cheyennes and Arapahoes continued to move on 
south. From Crooked Creek. Wolf Road and Gentle 
Horse, whh five or six others, were sent out to locate 
the camp. These scouts were sent out after the ordinary 
custom pf the tribe. The chiefs assembled in the center 
of the circle and called out the names of men whom they 
knew to be swift runners and not afraid, ordering them 
to come to the center of the circle. When they had 
come, the chiefs told them that they had been chosen to 
go out to look for the enemy, and that each one must do 
his best. The chiefs told them all they knew as to where 
the enemy's camp might be, told them where the village 
would stop each night for the next few davs, so that they 
could readily find it, and ordered them not to leave the 
camp in the daytime, but to start after night had fallen. 
Following these orders, the scouts had gone on almost 
to Wolf Creek, and were traveling along in the bed of a 
httle stream running into it from the north, when sud- 
denly they saw people coming over the hills, prepared to 
run the buffalo which were all about them. The 
Cheyennes lay down in the high grass of the creek's bot- 
tom and saw the Kiowas killing buffalo. One man, riding 
a big bay mule, drove a bunch of buffalo close by them, 
and killed several on the hillside, not more than forty 
yards away. The mule was fast ; he kept among the buf- 
falo all the time. Afterward the man's wife and a Mexi- 
can came along and cut up the animals and took the meat 
to camp. Wolf Road, Gentle Horse and the other scouts 
saw all this through the grass. Just at sundown, after 
all the people had gone, the Cheyennes left the creek and 
climbed to the top of the hill and saw the smoke of the 
camp, and the horses feeding on the hills all about it. 
The scouts returned. V/hen they came in Wolf Road 
was ahead, for he was the leader. As a sign that he had 
seen sotpetliing, Wolf Road carried in his hand the wolf 
skin which he alway.s had with him. The approach of the 
scouts had been observed, and the chiefs had already 
gathered in the center of the camp to receive the report. 
They were singing, and some were piling up a heap of 
buffalo chips, some distance behind which the chiefs stood. 
The scouts came toward the village running swiftly, and 
just as they reached the entrance of the circle they began 
to howl like wolves, and to turn their heads from one 
side to the other, like wolves looking. 
They entered the circle in single file. The men of the 
camp, who from all these signs knew what the scouts were 
about to repprt, were putting on their war clothing, get- 
ting out their shields, and jumping on their war horses, 
for they knew that good news was coming—that the camp 
of the enemy had been found. The scouts ran around in 
front of the chiefs and stopped. Wolf Road told what he 
had seen, then Gentle Horse, then each of the others. 
They passed on around behind the chiefs, and then from 
all sides of the camp all the young men on their horses 
charged toward (he center, each trying to be first to reach 
the pile of buffalo chips and to strike it, for it represented 
an enemy. Three men might count coup on it. 
Then all the mounted young men rode around the chiefs 
while they were singing, and afterward they dispersed. 
All were now busily preparing to attack the camp of 
the enemy which had been found. The Cheyennes and 
Arapahoes were camping together in one big circle, the 
Arapahoes at the northeast end. 
Now a crier mounted his horse and went to the south- 
east end of (he circle, and from there rode about it, tell- 
ing what these scouts had seen. He cried out that the 
village would move against the enemy that night. It was 
a time of great confusion— men singing their war songs. 
