that he would have to answer to him with the best blood in his body.
The Child said no man was willinger than he was for that time to come,
and he would give Bob fair warning, now, never to cross his path again,
for he could never rest till he had waded in his blood, for such was
his nature, though he was sparing him now on account of his family,
if he had one.
Both of them was edging away in different directions, growling and
shaking their heads and going on about what they was going to do;
but a little black-whiskered chap skipped up and says–
‘Come back here, you couple of chicken-livered cowards,
and I’ll thrash the two of ye!’
And he done it, too. He snatched them, he jerked them this way and that,
he booted them around, he knocked them sprawling faster than they could
get up. Why, it warn’t two minutes till they begged like dogs–and how
the other lot did yell and laugh and clap their hands all the way through,
and shout ‘Sail in, Corpse-Maker!’ ‘Hi! at him again, Child of Calamity!’
‘Bully for you, little Davy!’ Well, it was a perfect pow-wow for a while.
Bob and the Child had red noses and black eyes when they got through.
Little Davy made them own up that they were sneaks and cowards and not fit
to eat with a dog or drink with a nigger; then Bob and the Child shook
hands with each other, very solemn, and said they had always respected
each other and was willing to let bygones be bygones. So then they washed
their faces in the river; and just then there was a loud order to stand
by for a crossing, and some of them went forward to man the sweeps there,
and the rest went aft to handle the after-sweeps.
I laid still and waited for fifteen minutes, and had a smoke out of a pipe
that one of them left in reach; then the crossing was finished, and they
stumped back and had a drink around and went to talking and singing again.
Next they got out an old fiddle, and one played and another patted juba,
and the rest turned themselves loose on a regular old-fashioned keel-boat
break-down. They couldn’t keep that up very long without getting winded,
so by and by they settled around the jug again.
They sung ‘jolly, jolly raftman’s the life for me,’ with a
musing chorus, and then they got to talking about differences
betwixt hogs, and their different kind of habits; and next about
women and their different ways: and next about the best ways
to put out houses that was afire; and next about what ought
to be done with the Injuns; and next about what a king had to do,
and how much he got; and next about how to make cats fight;
and next about what to do when a man has fits; and next about
differences betwixt clear-water rivers and muddy-water ones.
The man they called Ed said the muddy Mississippi water
was wholesomer to drink than the clear water of the Ohio;
he said if you let a pint of this yaller Mississippi water settle,
you would have about a half to three-quarters of an inch
of mud in the bottom, according to the stage of the river,
and then it warn’t no better than Ohio water–what you wanted
to do was to keep it stirred up–and when the river was low,
keep mud on hand to put in and thicken the water up the way it
ought to be.
The Child of Calamity said that was so; he said there was nutritiousness
in the mud, and a man that drunk Mississippi water could grow corn in his
stomach if he wanted to. He says–
‘You look at the graveyards; that tells the tale. Trees won’t
grow worth chucks in a Cincinnati graveyard, but in a Sent
Louis graveyard they grow upwards of eight hundred foot high.
It’s all on account of the water the people drunk before they laid up.
A Cincinnati corpse don’t richen a soil any.’
And they talked about how Ohio water didn’t like to mix with