Driftwood (Spears)/Chapter 13
CHAPTER XIII
AN ENIGMA
THE newspaper reports showed undiminished anxiety behind the levees, from Cairo to the Gulf. Everywhere hosts of men were fighting against the peril, which in some places grew more and more imminent, until, as at Reelfoot levee, the crevasse opened the way to disaster from which the people had hoped to protect themselves by enormous expenditure in heaping up banks of earth.
At Reelfoot, Sibley Carruth and Jimmy Veraine had won their way into the news by being first to go through the gap and rescuing the people in the immediate sweep of the torrent released from the main flood. The next day it was recorded that Kalas had requisitioned the river youths’ launch, and enlisted them to carry him down the river just ahead of the flood crest, to give the fighters along the line the benefit of his unrivaled river lore and experience.
Kalas had stopped at Tiptonville to consult with the captain of the National Guard company stationed there; he was spoken of as having stopped at Caruthersville, with the result that certain unsavory saloons had been closed so that honest lives need not be imperiled by the insanities due to liquor.
Knowing that Sibley and Jimmy were with Kalas, the Carruths were able to keep track of their son, through published reports of what the great engineer was doing, they were proud that Sibley’s ability to assume responsibility had won him notice and opportunity. When they were feeling reasonably safe about Sib the following news caused them new uneasiness:
BOY ESCAPES WITH BABE!
New Madrid—This city is greatly exercised over the sudden disappearance of a youth known as Jep Veraine, whose boat landed in on the Bayou several days ago. He had with him a very beautiful baby, with blue eyes, light hair, plump cheeks, and bearing every appearance of being a child of the very best breeding. He was seen by Mrs. Hatlet and her sister, Miss Tarwal, and they immediately took steps to adopt the child, and rescue it from the unnatural shanty-boat surroundings.
In some way, and probably to obtain the reward for rescuing the foundling from the drift, the boy Jep escaped from the landing. City Marshal Choper, when he went to serve a requisition and adoption papers, in behalf of the Children’s Society, unfortunately served them on the wrong boat, and incurred the wrath of Mr. and Mrs. Torkly, respectable river people whose baby he attempted to take away. Mr. Torkly held Mr. Choper up with a double-barreled shot-gun, and Mrs. Torkly threw him into the river.
Later, the affair was amicably adjusted in the city court, and notices were sent out to apprehend the two fugitives, Jep Veraine and the baby.
Neighboring shanty-boaters, including the Torklys, declare that the baby desired by the New Madrid ladies was found in a baby-carriage floating down the Mississippi in the drift, so it is a genuine foundling, and it will go hard with the youth who is keeping the child merely for a reward, accordng to the belief of the authorities. A reward of one hundred dollars had been offered by Mrs. Hatlet, who has no children of her own, and who desires to bring the child up in a manner becoming to so fine and likely a baby.
"Mercy!" Mrs. Carruth exclaimed, when Mr. Carruth had read the account aloud, "I’d almost forgotten about Jep and the baby! The idea of those boys trying to take care of a baby, anyhow! You’d think Jep would want to be rid of the little thing. He must be a perfectly dear boy, to want to take care of it! I hope he doesn’t get into any real trouble!"
"I’d better write to Mr. Veraine," Mr. Carruth said thoughtfully. "And I’m not sure but that we’d better go down there and take a hand in that matter ourselves. Why, they’ll run our cabin-boat clear down to New Orleans if we don’t stop them! If I’d been sure about the boat’s being at New Madrid, I’d have gone down there, of course. But, the way things are, I know the New Madrid people don’t want strangers coming in, making more mouths to feed, and more beds to furnish. I wonder where Jep will go."
"I wish we could find out whose baby it is they’ve found. I haven’t heard anything about a baby being missing," Mrs. Carruth observed.
"Oh, there have been a good many children separated from their parents." Mr. Carruth shook his head. "The boys just left the baby to Jep, so they could do rescue work. And Jep won’t give the baby up to any one."
"He’s grown fond of him, taking care of him," said Mrs. Carruth. "It often happens that way. People who take care of babies for parents find they love them as much as the parents do."
Boys were an enigma to Mrs. Carruth. She professed not to understand them at all. Sibley possessed for his mother the attraction not only of a good son, but of a fascinating puzzle, or rebus. How many boys would be interested in Mississippi River Commission Reports, and would pore over the "Summary of Cost" of a revetment, "Cost per Unit Statement," "Material per Unit Expended"?
She had worried a good deal lest Sibley should grow up in ignorance, because he lived on a shanty-boat and attended no school; but she had found time to teach him to read, write, and study. Without urging, he had accumulated an enormous fund of information about the river.
The government workers crossing the river, back and forth, heaving leads and signaling with flags from the banks, sending the tin cans afloat with markers on them, squinting through surveying instruments, measuring caving banks, and making notes in yellow-backed books about everything that was done, seemed to Sibley wonderfully endowed human beings, who were learning to know the Mississippi River, and who would at last shackle the mighty torrent in the service of mankind.
As Sibley talked about these things with his mother, his face would light up at the wonder of some one man’s idea going out to hundreds and thousands of other people, resulting at last in holding a river bend against the encroachments of the sawing current, or in converting the whole current of the upper Mississippi into a force to furnish power for machinery, to run cars, to supply cities with light—as at Keokuk.
"Mamma!" Sibley had asked, "was it an awful big man who thought of it first?"
He had felt that any one with so big an idea must be nine feet tall at least, and for a long time he had puzzled over the fact that men of the largest size do not necessarily have the most valuable thoughts. Boys had sometimes had ideas or made observations that changed the whole world, as the youth who discovered that steam in a boiling kettle raised the cover and pushed strongly from the spout, and after thinking about it for many years at last made an effective steam-engine. Mrs. Carruth, when she had explained that fact and told that anecdote to Sibley, wondered if there was already in his head some glimmering of an idea that he would work over and study and learn all about, and at last—What might not Sibley do some day? Mothers like to think that their sons will become useful citizens!
Now Sibley was taking part in the control of the flood that was sweeping down the Mississippi. He was going down the river with the engineer whose knowledge of the river was superior to that of any other man. Every one knew that Kalas had fairly attacked the river with his bare hands, going up and down the levees in the making, glaring at the right of way, peering into the trench, picking up clods of dirt used, and paying such strict attention that the contractors would have been glad to have him a thousand miles distant—till they learned that his interest was due to some fact or idea that, like the levee dredge, would save them huge sums, enable them to do their work better, and at the same time reduce the cost to the Government.
Sibley seemed to understand the "feel" of the river and the people who were working to use or control it. Mrs. Carruth realized that now. Suddenly, and without warning, the son of her heart had stepped out from the protection of his parents, and was doing his own work in his own way. The more she thought about it, the more wonderful it seemed that Sibley should have read those volumes of governmental adventure, the commission reports, and thus prepared himself for the emergency.
Mrs. Carruth felt that the accident of the little house-boat being carried adrift had been arranged by the river,—as she preferred to say,—so that Sibley should ride the great flood in the company of the most competent of the river engineers, seeing the whole thing from the best possible vantage-point, the little motor-boat which, the newspapers said, was going down just ahead of the crest.
The terrible doubts which had possessed her when she did not know what had become of her son were replaced by contentment and happiness. Steadfastly, she had led Sibley through the years, step by step, from little one-syllable story-books, to the River Commission Reports, which she did not pretend to understand. Mr. Carruth had taught his son ax-craft, rifle skill, river navigation, mathematics—as needed!—carpentering, and even hydraulics.
Sibley had trapped wolves in Montana and otter in Louisiana, but all the attractions of woodcraft and bird life had been as nothing to him compared with the fascination of running streams the most wonderful of all, the swaggering Mississippi.
To Mrs. Carruth it seemed as though she were sitting at the threshold of her son’s career. Literally, she gazed down the river reach. Her son, her splendid boy, had embarked there to do his life’s work.