Читать книгу Parade of the Empty Boots - Charles Alden Seltzer - Страница 3

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Having captured romance, only to lose it after a brief season, was worse than having no romance at all, reflected Colonel John Burleigh as he sat in an easy chair on the upper deck of the small stern-wheeler Clara Belle and tried, through the impenetrable darkness, to trace the east shore line of the Mississippi. His daughter Clara was somewhere below, probably reading—since they were grounded upon a mud bar, and there was no possibility of their getting off very soon.

Colonel Burleigh had disdained bringing a pilot along from Cincinnati—where his vast interests were—for, as he explained to a friend: “I have traveled the river so much that I know every inch of it. I expect to do most of the piloting myself. It will give me something to think about.”

The present predicament of the Clara Belle only slightly annoyed him, because it had been his own fault that he had mistaken a big bend in the river for the main channel, pursuing it for miles until he realized his mistake, and then grounding the boat hard and fast at the edge of a swamp just where several miles of cypress forest concealed the Clara Belle from any steamer which might be passing.

The colonel’s lost romance had begun twenty years ago. It had brought Clara and had taken away his wife, which had ended everything for him. As colonel of an Ohio regiment in the war he had thrown himself at death many times but had survived it; now he had only his daughter and his business and his memories. So now, upon this mudbank of the Mississippi, with a moist darkness crowding in upon him, and his annoyance at having made a fool of himself disturbing him more than he cared to admit, he felt that life, after all, was niggardly in its compensations.

The crew, he supposed—consisting of the wheelsman, the engineer, who was also the stoker; a Negro cook; and a mulatto boy who made himself generally useful—were asleep, for there was no sound below, and no light aboard except for the one in Clara’s stateroom. The fire under the boiler had been drawn. The Clara Belle waited, dreary and dark but expectant, for the colonel had made arrangements for assistance in getting his vessel back into the main channel, and he momentarily expected a hail from the wall of blackness shoreward, where he knew there was a road leading inland.

This was the Clara Belle’s second night on the mud bar. She had come in here after dusk—when she should have been at a safe anchorage, or tied up at the wharf of a town on the river—and she had stuck there in spite of all the mad churning of the paddle wheels, and there she would stay until pulled off by some outside force.

At daylight the first morning the colonel looked out upon a mile or so of brackish water stretching between the Clara Belle and a great cypress swamp, dank with a heavy mist that rose from green slime to float in weird wisps and streamers through the gray and green lacy festoons of Spanish moss.

An hour or so after daylight a punt stuck its blunt nose out of the swamp mist and came toward the Clara Belle with tentative jerks. It was propelled by a gaunt man whose garments flapped loosely about him as he wielded the long pole with which he forced his queer craft through the water. When within hailing distance of the Clara Belle he stood motionless, staring, permitting his boat to drift. He was black bearded, long haired, half wild. But when he saw Burleigh on the upper deck he called to him querulously:

“When did yo’-all git in hyar?”

“Last night after dark,” answered Burleigh.

“Thet air was a mighty fool thing to do,” commented the denizen of the swamp. “Ain’t yo’ got ary a pilot?”

Burleigh told him they had no pilot, and the swamp man sat down in the bottom of the punt, evidently to meditate.

“Yo’-all must be a passel o’ damned fools,” he finally said.

Burleigh admitted that he, at least, was a fool.

“Whut fer cargo yo’ got aboard?” asked the man.

“Not much of a cargo. Food and supplies for ourselves,” answered Burleigh.

“How yo’ expaict to git outen the mud?”

“When we get someone to pull us out. How far is the next town?”

“Nigh to twenty miles. Hit air Chandler.”

“I’ll pay you twenty dollars to ride down there and tell them we are in trouble,” offered Burleigh.

The boatman stared at Burleigh. His eyes, squinted, seemed to search the faces of the others, who were watching and listening—Clara Burleigh, who had emerged from her stateroom in morning negligee, looking very fresh and beautiful; and the members of the crew at the lower rail, aft, who seemed little interested in the conversation.

“Twenty dollars, eh?” said the boatman. “How air I to know yo’ got thet much money aboard?” He smiled skeptically, slyly.

“Do you mean that you won’t trust me?” laughed Burleigh.

“I don’t trust nobuddy. Who air yo’?”

“I am Colonel Burleigh of Cincinnati,” answered Burleigh. He couldn’t afford to antagonize the boatman.

“Never heered of yo’,” said the boatman. “This yere all the crew yo’ got?”

Burleigh peered over the side, to see the crew at the lower rail. “That’s all,” he admitted.

“It’ll take me a tu’lable time to git help to yo’,” said the boatman.

“You mean you want more than twenty dollars?” laughed Burleigh.

“It’s wuth thu’ty dollars.”

“All right,” agreed Burleigh. “I’ll pay thirty.”

“Yo’ll pay it now?” drawled the boatman.

“Sure,” said Burleigh. “Come closer.”

While the boatman poled his craft to the side of the little steamer Burleigh went into his stateroom, to reappear almost immediately with a small buckskin bag into which, with the boatman watching, he delved, to bring forth two gold pieces, a twenty and a ten, which he placed in the boatman’s extended right hand. Bright avarice gleamed in the boatman’s eyes as he stared at the gold which, Burleigh decided, must seem like a fortune to him.

“Move along now,” said Burleigh. “You’d best go right to the town hall in Chandler and tell them it’s Colonel Burleigh with the Clara Belle,” he added.

The punt was now drifting away shoreward. The boatman had pulled a leather tobacco pouch from a pocket and was depositing the gold pieces in it. He was grinning hugely. Presently he seized the pole and began to work his craft toward the swamp. Gradually he vanished into the mist.

Clara Burleigh was staring after him.

“Father,” she said, “I don’t trust that man. He is so greedy! Did you notice his eyes—how they stared at us?”

Colonel Burleigh laughed. “The poor devil was half starved, I suppose. He was driving what he thought was a hard bargain, possibly for more money than he has ever seen in his life. He’ll be back with help before night.”

But night had come again, and the humid blackness of it had rolled in upon them and over them, gradually deepening until shore line and swamp were no longer visible. The light that filtered through the margins of the drawn shades of Clara’s stateroom diffused only a flickering glow upon the upper deck, yet there was enough light to reveal in shadowy outline the figure of Colonel Burleigh seated in his deck chair impatiently awaiting the arrival of the help he had arranged for.

The stillness that enveloped the steamer became the ominous calm that precedes a storm. Distant mutterings and rumblings came to the colonel’s ears upon a breeze so slight that it didn’t even stir the canvas canopy that covered part of the forward deck. Vainly in this quiet Burleigh strove to catch the sound of a steamer’s throbbing engines, or to see the running lights of a vessel gleaming through the trees that blocked his view of the main channel, miles away.

Nothing. Nothing but the persistent diapason of night insects, the shrill pipelike calls of whippoorwills, the monotonous castaneting of tree toads and the guttural croaking of frogs in the swamps.

It was nearly midnight when the door of Clara’s stateroom opened, the light from within flooding the deck behind Burleigh. Clara stood in the light, softly silhouetted. She was ready for bed.

“No signs of them yet, Father?” she said.

“No. Something has miscarried, I suppose.”

“Your thirty dollars,” laughed Clara.

“I suppose so,” reluctantly conceded Burleigh. “The boatman said it was twenty miles to a town named Chandler. Of course they may not have had a boat of suitable draught for this mud.”

Clara yawned. “Well, there is nothing to do about it,” she said. “I’m sleepy. You won’t mind if I go to bed, Father?”

“Good night. I’ll be turning in myself if they don’t come in sight in an hour.”

The colonel lighted a cigar, leaned back in the deck chair and relaxed. After a while the light in Clara’s stateroom went out, and the blackness enveloping the steamer seemed to descend, bringing with it a deepening silence.

Well, it was a great night to sleep, anyway, and Clara was wise in taking advantage of it. There was just enough breeze to lull one into a doze, and presently, reclining at full length in the deck chair, a pleasant drowsiness stole over Burleigh, and he yielded to it. He dreamed. The dream was so vivid that he thought he was awake and fully conscious of what was transpiring. The boatman had been honest and trustworthy after all. For Burleigh dreamed that the running lights of a steamer were coming around the bend from the main channel, bearing straight down upon his own stranded craft. He thought he could hear the slashing of the paddle wheels, the rippling of the water as it was parted by the bow of the oncoming vessel.

A series of thuds awakened him to a consciousness of danger, sudden and terrible. The rippling noises he had heard had been caused by a number of swamp punts being rapidly poled toward his vessel, and as he leaned over the side the water was thick with them, and dark forms were climbing from them to the lower deck. From bow and stern came thumps and harsh voices.

River pirates!

He started to run toward his stateroom for a weapon, realizing as he ran that he was too late. A dozen dark forms closed in about him, and he was suddenly flayed to the deck, his head and spine and legs paralyzed, dazzling white light flashing inside his eyelids. In an infernal moment before he knew anything at all he heard Clara screaming.