Aug. s, igo^.i 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
107 
is anything that Avill stampede a burro quicker than 
a mountain lion I. never saw nor heard of it, unless it 
be a grizzly, and it is an even break between them. The 
burros threw forward their ears, took one look, wheeled 
and there was a clatter of hoofed feet over the gravel 
down the canon as each sent out a raucous bray through 
the hills for help. A moment later Pete came running 
up. The Professor was still laughing heartily at his 
joke. Pete looked at the lion’s pelt and asked: “What 
have you been doin’?” 
I have been playing a joke on the- burros. You 
should have seen them skedaddle down the canon.” 
“Yes, tliat’s funny; in fact, it is funny. I could 
almost split myself laughin’ when I think of you and 
me footin’ it ten miles or more across the desert 
packin’ blankets, grub and water to round up- them 
burros; they won’t stop this side of Mule Springs. Oh! 
yes, it’s awful funny, ha! ha! I ain’t heerd of such a gooa 
joke sence I went to sleep and rolled in the fire,” and 
throwing his canteen one way and his pick another, 
Pete Avent in the cabin and kicked a box till it split. 
Pete was right; they followed the trail of the burros 
for ten miles and more; and before they came up with 
them the Professor fully realized the point of his joke. 
He did not know on which foot to limp when he got 
back to camp. Pete rested one day and then announced 
that he was going to start for Salton the next day for 
another supply of grub and hinted strongly to the Pro- 
fessor that it would be his last opportunity for company 
across the desert for three months. The Professor took 
the hint and began packing. He apologized for any 
trouble he might have caused us but was too much of a 
gentleman to even think of offering any monetary re- 
muneration. He was a good fellow, well-educated and 
all that, and the trip added to his education, for he 
learned that all knowledge is not included between book 
covers. E. E. B. 
Floating Down the Mississippi* 
A Lumber Camp, 
As WE dropped down stream^ broadside, to, the Medi- 
cine Man watched the lumber camp closely, “sizing it up,” 
as he said. When we came close to the camp we ran 
into the eddy at the caving bank and tied. Men, who 
were rafting logs in the dead water, were rolling' them 
off the flat top, jumping them down the fifteen or twenty 
feet. The water shot out from under the logs in yellow 
spray. Then the log was piked around under the long 
pole binders, and spiked fast with nails nearly a foot 
in length. 
The Medicine Man had greeted every one with a 
cheery Howdy, and mentioned the weather, the stage 
of the river and the log business. As he talked we made 
fast and climbed the bank to see the place. 
Nearly a dozen tents of assorted sizes were scattered 
over a hundred yards square. Up stream was the log 
dump, with logs coming in, one or two at a time, on 
wagons fit carry obelisks, drawn by mules. A 
couple of white men were in sight, but the dozen others 
were negroes. One of the white men was a broad- 
shouldered, broad-faced, square-set individual. As he 
looked me in the eye, and then took in the details of 
my dress, and the features of my companion, it was 
easy to see that he was boss, the more so as the other 
men were all working. 
He had the look of an ideal lumber camp foreman. 
I had seen his kind in the Adirondacks, and if a certain 
Jim. MacBeth of the Adirondacks had been there it 
would have been a question as to which was which at 
first glance. But there was a difference between the 
Adirondack and the Mississippi River man. Jim Mac- 
Beth would put up a mighty fight if need be, but_ there 
is none of the peculiar over-bearing, set expression in 
bis face that was in the face of the man who eyed us 
Our reception was open, and not free. We didn’t 
know that the next steamer, expected that afternoon, 
would bring some hundreds of dollars to the camp to 
pay off the men, but apparently the boss presumed we 
knew. 
I introduced myself, and the boss said he was Hiram 
Marshall. The camp was one of five in the vicinity 
run for Anderson, Tully & Co., veneerers. L. C. 
Snider was the contractor, or jobber, and was the gen- 
eral superintendent, and boss of one of the five camps 
himself. On the job so far 25,000,000 feet of cottonwood 
had been cut from the vicinity of Lake Lee. While I 
was talking to the boss, he turned to a young map 
and said, “Go down and take a look at that boat — see if 
it’s the kind of a boat we was talking about the other 
day for a dormitory.” 
The youth went down with the Medicine Man, and 
looked at it carefully. When he came back to report, 
my companion remained behind. A log rolling down 
the bank caused me to turn from the boss as the youth 
reported, but I happened to observe a little gesture of 
the boss, which meant, “Do they sell liquor?” and a 
sideways shake of the head was the answer. I’ve 
wondered since what would have happened to us if 
our boat had been a whiskey saloon. I think we would 
have left the camp very soon. Mississippi lumber camps 
do not like to have whiskey in them. 
There was reason for the boss to think we had come 
because it was pay day at the camp. I had been there 
ouly a few minutes when I saw a tall, lean negro lop- 
ing down the log road along the river bank. He was 
astonishingly dressed in a suit of black, with creased 
trousers, a shirt like a house a-fire, clean collar and 
cuffs and a natty brown derby. _ He addressed a log 
roller of his own color, who motioned toward the boss. 
The boss said in a low voice: “Here they come! 
Just like a lot of black buzzards.” 
The negro came to the boss, smirking and bowing 
low and touching his finger to his hat. “Be yo’ de boss, 
sell? Yasseh, yasseh, thankee. Would you ’low me teh 
stay yeh to-night?” 
“You’re a crap shooter, aint yeh?” the boss said. 
“Nosseh, nosseh — I ain’ no crap — ” 
“What’s the use o’ your lying? You’re a gambler — 
but you can stay — that’s my tent there.” The negro 
didn’t approach within forty yards of the tent indicated 
thereafter, but the permission to stay he received with 
a happy little jump, and a smile wider than his face. 
The steamer came toAvard night. The coming of the 
steamer was noted with joy by all hands in sight. It 
whistled for the landing, and the boss, flanked by a 
couple of white men, went aboard and got the money-— 
about $700. As, soon as he got it to his tent, paying 
off began. No lumber or other boss in a negro camp 
cares to have any great quantity of money on him 
over night. The negroes, one at a time, or in twos 
or threes, went in after the monej- they had earned. 
Three beds were in the tent, and on them lounged the 
three or four whites, beside the boss, employed there. 
The boss was flanked by them from any possible at- 
tack by a desperado. 
The money was piled up on a small square table — 
rolls of bills, heaps of silver dollars six inches high, 
and other smaller coins in proportion. The men be- 
ing paid off, rolled their eyes down on the glistening 
piles, actually wetting their lips at the sight. Some of 
the black men glanced around the tent from under 
protruding brows and accepted their jingling share with 
their lips rolling up in a pursing curl of a sneer — so 
little from so much!. The money rvas soon paid out, 
and the Medicine Man, when I glanced around for him, 
was missing. At last he appeared at the door, just 
after dark, and with an expansive smile on his face 
wanted to know if he could come in. 
He carried the leather grip, and he remarked to the 
foreman: “I ’lowed to show you all that medicine I 
was a-telHng of, Za-mi-a-ya Bitters, consisting of sarsa- 
parilla, rhubarb, quinine, salsify, celery, pennyroyal, 
witch hazel, ipecac and other ingredients to the num- 
ber of fourteen, including za-mi-a-ya, the great health 
and nerve restorer, discovered in the Philippines and 
recently brought to this country. It is guaranteed to 
cure rheumatism, blood disorders, stomach troubles, 
etc., etc.,” reciting the list printed on the label. It 
had seemed to me that the list was a preposterous one, 
and that it cured too much. But an old white lumber- 
man sitting on one of the beds showed unmistakable in- 
terest in what was passing. His lean face and sallow, 
wrinkled skin showed the symptoms of several of the 
diseases named, and long before the Medicine Man had 
completed his “talk” a half dollar was transferred for 
a bottle of the stuff. The Medicine Man then tried to 
sell to the others present, but met with no success. 
He asked the boss for permission to go to the negro 
quarters, and gat it. 
“They might’s well buy that as lose their money 
crap-shooting,” he remarked sardonically. The Med- 
icine Man left. 
Knowing that I was after stories, Marshall proceeded 
to fill me up with some stock tales which were epidemic 
in the southern papers — negro incidents magnified and 
changed and localized from Bayou Tech to Reelfoot 
Lake. Gradually the supply gave out, and then I be- 
gan to hear of the work done — seventjMwo logs rolled 
in that day and rafted, and 252 on the dump that morn- 
ing. The raft would number 3,500 logs. 
Through the thin side walls of the tent came sounds 
of distant shouts. “What’s all that noise?” I asked. 
“The niggers is parting with theh money, I reckon,” 
was the answer. 
“Where are they?” 
“They’s in the crap tent, I reckon.” 
“Got a crap tent?” I asked. 
“Yesseh! You all knows what craps is, don’t yeh? 
Well, this is jes’ a tent whah they all plays craps, 
that’s all.” 
“Is it?” I said, “Well, I’d like to see it.” 
“Would you? Huh! Nothing but a lot of niggers 
shooting craps.” 
“I’ll go out with you,” the boss said, giving me a 
look that I did not understand till I was nearly to the 
crap tent. He had a good deal of money on his per- 
son, in spite of the amount paid out. And as we 
walked the hundred yards to the gamblers he kept a 
full step behind me, and when I looked back at him, 
his right hand was clenched at the top of his belt, and 
it was there all the time we were alone together, a 
precaution well worth his taking when in the Missis- 
sippi swamps with a rough-looking stranger “off the 
iHer.” 
With such a companion just behind me, a river man, 
I spread the tent flaps and looked inside. The tent 
was jammed full — there were thirty-five or forty in 
it, and all black. Two flickering lanterns swung over 
a waist high table, round which was a 3-inch high 
board fence. El old of the fence were half a hundred 
hands, some with long, curving nails. Leaning over 
the table were a score of curly-haired craniums with 
lumpy projections on them. In the center of the left 
side was the long, lean negro whom the boss had 
accused of being a crap-shooter. His hat was on the 
back of his head, and he was swaying back and forth 
with a wide smile on his countenance not dissimilar to 
the smile of my Medicine Man when he “began. busi- 
ness” with the boss of the camp itself. 
A glance was all that any one gave us, and only a 
few so much as glanced in our direction. They all 
watched the little “bucks” as they jumped half way 
across the table, jerked whirling from some toil-cracked 
fist. Quarters, half-dollars and dollars were on all 
sides, and it needed only a few minutes to observe how 
much found its way doAvn into the lean man’s pocket 
and how little came up from it. ' 
Four deep they stood around the table, reaching over 
shoulders, and crying for a chance to put their money 
down. Occasionally, when a play won, there would be 
an unconscious burst of song: 
“ ’Tis the old-time religion,” 
or, more frequently, a snatch from some roustabout 
lay. 
After a time the boss and I walked back. He had 
watched me while I watched the crap-shooters, and he 
was by my side, instead of behind me as we walked 
back. When inside his tent Once more, I remarked to 
him that I should think he would be afraid of having 
so much money on him, even for a short time, as he 
had had that afternoon. . 
“Afraid!” he snorted, drawing a revolver from his 
pocket. It was a .45, 4-inch blue-barrel Colts, of latest 
and most approved pattern. As he tucked it back into 
his holster, a yellow man came in. 
“Say, boss, ’ll you all loan me a dollar?” 
Marshall laughed. 
“Heah’s mah gun — hits a new one, bran new!” The 
negro drew a gun just as good as the one owned by the 
boss, and on this he got a dollar. Ten minutes later, 
he came back and got $9 more — all the boss could let 
him have, and went back again to the crap tent — and 
this, in spite of the remonstrances of the boss. 
“They’ll play all night,” the boss remarked, “and 
nflien that nigger sharper goes away, he’ll carry all the 
money with him. It’s bad, but if we didn’t let them 
play here, every man in our gang would quit on pay 
day, and go to town, Tliey wouldn’t show up again 
till the money was gone, and theii it would be a week 
more before we could work the cocaine out of them. 
As it is, they’ll go to work Monday, and repeat their 
circus again next Saturday.” 
In the morning, the Medicine Mdn made a tour of 
the quarters, and came back disgusted. “I sold eight 
bottles last night — I’d a sold a dozen to-day if that 
nigger scoundrel of a gambler hadn’t cleaned the whole 
camp out. I tell you, they ought to lynch therri 
gamblers. Why there’s a fellow up there lost all his 
wages and a $20 gun. How can a man do any business 
when them gamblers gets all the niggers’ money?” 
The Medicine Man worked himself up into a fine 
frenzy of indignation, and then fell a stuttering, when 
I said: “It’s blamed tough, for a fact. You won’t be 
able to sell half as much sugar and water as you might 
have done.” 
We pulled out of the lumber camp before noon, and 
soon were wrestling with the problem of which course 
to take through the snags or against the far bank. We 
got caught in a large Arkansas eddy, and were held 
there by the wind and water for an hour, but these 
things did not dismay. 
“I got $7 out of that bunch,” said the Medicine Man. 
“How’s that for five hours’ work rubbing the bank, eh? 
I’m a grafter, I am!” 
A restless, vacillating character, the Medicine Man 
pulled the oars first one way, then the other, fearing 
first the water, then the bank, and all the time nervous 
lest he miss a good landing where medicine was wanted. 
“I tell you, a man sells when there’s an epidemic on — 
everybody thinks he has the yellow fever when the 
fever’s at N’ Orleans, an’ small-pox when small-pox 
is up the river. It’s then a man can sell Za-mi-a-ya, yes 
sir!” he said. 
We now began to have fogs in the mornings — hours of 
waiting with nothing to do. They were the hardest 
to bear of any river hours. The mist would lie across 
the river surface in a 20-foot layer, trailing away south- 
ward before a faint breeze. From a bank top, the 
surface of the fog presented a beautiful sight rolling 
and flowing like a gray stream. To see a great wave 
of fog coming, inundating the thin layer of fog, and 
rolling the trees and banks under, is one of the most 
interesting and awing sights of the river, the fog looks 
so solid and so threatening of asphyxiation for one 
caught in the pathway. To go down from a high bank 
and clear air into a dimly seen cabin boat in a fog 
bank is like descending into fearful depths. Onee we 
started to float when the fog was only four or five feet 
deep; we were on the edge of a wide eddy, where he 
had moored when we saw the whole surface of the 
river apparently rising and toppling over upon us from 
a vast height, a veritable breaker of fo.g. We found 
the bank by means of the compass I carried. 
And these days were bad ones on the boat, for the 
Medicine Man had secured a quart of whiskey somehow 
on the bank — some blind tiger, probably. He wasn’t 
offensive — merely glum and distant and uncommunica- 
tive, according to the stage of the alcoholic action. 
The fog, which Avas in flour-like particles, and the 
man were part of the river system. 
The fog was so long-lasting one moring that he 
couldn’t stand it. I was writing some notes, when sud- 
denly I felt the boat tilt slightly. Looking up, I saw 
nothing on any side but the gray water dust, thick and 
lonesome. The Medicine- Man was sober, and he stood 
in the doorway looking into the fog with morose sat- 
isfaction. It was curious to watch the fog eddying at 
the corners of the boat, and behind the boAV posts. 
Soon, ahead of us. we heard the rustling of water. He 
seized sweep handles, and looked into the fog, unable 
to see three rods. The water was undulating under 
the boat, and then a black snag ploughed past us in 
the stuff. We seemed to be motionless, and the water 
still, and the hook-armed snags on the shoal bar we 
passed through seemed to be shooting past us like pro- 
jectiles. 
“Sposen we’d a hit that!” my companion would re- 
mark with satisfaction at the little excitement such 
things gave us. _ “This is better than dying there on 
that mud bar, ain’t it?” 
The wind came up rapidly not long after this, and we 
had to drop anchor to keep from being blown on a bar. 
There we hung for hours, obliged to take in slack on 
the rope at intervals because the anchor dragged. We 
slept part of the afternoon, and at night when the wind 
lay, we carried the anchor out and swung ourselves to 
the bar by a couple good “staubs” or stakes. The sun 
setting red promised three days of hard wind, and nights 
of calm. Nevertheless, next morning we pulled out in 
gusty weather. We fought the wind for a couple of 
hours, and then landed — tied to Louisiana bottom land, 
and that Avas near Lake Providence — so near and yet 
so far. 
In the morning we started at 6:30 o’clock and ran 
into a gale. The boat pitched and plunged astonish- 
ingly, and because it was an old scow, I was wrought 
to a considerable nervous tension. But we were in 
sight of the place, one might say, and this was reason 
enough to try to fight our way down. Night found us 
in a little sand bar bay, anchored out of the waves. 
The wind died away, the moon came up — “Let’s 
float!” he said, so we cut loose, with sL lantern on our 
roof. Wild geese were honking on the sand bars and 
ducks quacking in the eddies where the water was shal- 
low. We could see very plainly, apparently, but at 
intervals there was a haze out of which jumped snags 
in disquieting fashion, while far away was a steamer 
coming which might come too close to us for our com- 
fort and safety. Night floating in a clumsy cabin boat 
is one of the most thrilling of river experiences — but 
