Denman Fink 1442

Drawn by Denman Fink. Half-tone plate engraved by J. Tinkey "WADE TUCKER STOOD UP ON THE WAGON SEAT"

Under the im

able predictions. petus of his ugly temper the quaint equipage rattled along the winding road at a good rate of speed, and the nearer they came to the Micken farm the more apparent became that estimable family's lack of foresight. To be sure, the Mickens were in one of the few two-story houses in the Bottom, and were on a slight elevation; but they were also between the river, though ordinarily out of sight of it, and a chute known as Red-eye Bayou, and both river and chute were zestfully extending their spheres of operation that June morning. Wade Tucker stopped the mule and stood up on the wagon-seat to look at the spreading waters.

"Bee-es-wax! They goin' to be ketched in here like a shuck in a whirlwin'," he ejaculated, and sat down with emphasis.

As he headed his mule in toward the Micken gate, the Micken family flocked into the front yard in neighborly welcome. Standing there in the sun and wind, they showed that they were a lazy, laughing people, too comfort-loving to take quick alarm at anything.

Thah 's Berry on the gallery, Chills. Thah's Berry."

"Don't call me Chills," he said; for as his eye fell on that girl again he began wishing deliriously and resentfully that he was what he used to be. In the presence of her straight youth and vitality all weakness seemed monstrous. He would have given his chance against the river to have been able to cast from him the marks of ill health; he was sorry he had not put on his red necktie, glad he could still square his big shoulders out of their stoop when he wished to, and he resented in advance what the Mickens would inevitably have to say about his look of physical deterioration. Fortunately for him, the discussion of his appearance took place close to the gate, so that by the time he reached

LXVI.-72

the girl on the gallery he had worked the talk around to the river. Then she came to the top step and gave her hand to him in a pretty effort to act like the Penangton girls with whom she had been thrown that winter, and he had to shake hands with her just as though he had forgotten that she had preferred music to him. He held his head up stockily while she led him to the door where the Grandfather Micken was standing in waiting.

"Gramper," she said, "this is Mist' Tucker. You know-Wade?" She hesitated over the name by which she had known him all her life, and then let it come out on her smile shyly.

"W'y, Chills, that you? W'y, you ain't be'n sparkin' raoun' this clearin' in a long time. I'm mighty glad to see you. What you be'n doin' to yourself? I declah, you look like the little end er nothin'-sharpened."

"Ain't so weak but what I cand print my tracks yit," answered Chills, harshly. He turned abruptly from the old man, followed the others into the Mickens' " front room," and began at once to hammer at Berry Micken's father and brothers about the danger from the river.

But the exasperating grandfather was just behind him.

"Naow, Chills, you got the malary. River never kim up this high in '44," demurred the old man, as though argument ended there.

"Well, ain't you lived long enough in Sweet-Corn Bottom to know that the lan' don't lay like it did in '44? You 're jes abaout a mild closeter to low water in this yere haouse than you was on this yere site in '44. What you take Mizzourah soil fer, pig-iron or clay?"

Mrs. Micken jostled the men with hospitable interruption.

"Jes reach up chairs. Ef the river 's high as you say, Chills, you an' your maw cayn't git back noway, an' thah ain't nothin' to do but be comf'ble 'long of us till the boat comes daown the river an' picks you up."

This setting of himself and his mother into the go-away class and the Mickens into the stick-it-out class was too much for the man who had pocketed his pride to come to warn his neighbors.

Shet up

Bee-es-wax!" he thundered. naow, ev'body but me. I kim up here to

save somebody, an' I 'm a-goin' to do it, ef 't ain't nobody but that dawg-gone pianner."

There was no escaping the compulsion in his eye, and Mr. Micken met it awkwardly. "Well, what in the name er Gawd you want us to do, Chills?"

"Want one of you to go put up a rag fer the ferry. She won't git daown here before dark, an' we may be right well tickled to see her abaout then. Want some of you to tote all the furniture up-stairs. Want some of you to corral the cattle an' horses, so 't we cand run 'em aboard the ferry ef thah's room fer 'em. Want the rest of you to lug in some chunks to h'ist this pianner on to. Want all of you that don't wanter do what I say to go aout behin' the willows an' look at Red-eye Bayou."

"He's talkin' abaout what he knows abaout, paw." It was Berry Micken who spoke, but she had moved over by her piano, and it was plain that she was seconding him only because she feared for the piano's safety. Fortunately, however, it needed but the slight added weight of the opinion of one of their own household to scatter the now roused men to their several tasks, though they went about the work with laughing complaint. It was mid-afternoon before Chills would let them stop, and when they did stop, everything movable in the Micken house had been safely stowed up-stairs, and the piano was perched in mid-air, six feet above the front-room floor.

"It has a chanst," he said to Berry Micken, when he could bring himself to say anything to her.

It uz a sight er work," she answered, with a soft, soothing sort of appreciation. "Ain't you orful hungry? I'm goin' to go set table right away." She passed close by him as she spoke. Don't care to come he'p, do you?

An' remain a fool abaout Berry," he reminded himself as he followed her.

"Looks like the river 's goin' to chase us clean acrosst, don't it?" she asked, innocently flirting the red table-cloth over the table to him.

He straightened out his end of the cloth conscientiously before he made any reply, and in replying he kept his eyes on the cloth.

"T ain't goin' to chase me acrosst. I ain't a-goin'."

"You ain't a-" she stared at him aghast. "W'y, haow come you to come up here ef you

"He'p you git acrosst," he interrupted stolidly. You so fond of it over thah. I ain't. Wy, Berry, I could n' go acrosst. Ev'm ef I tried to, thah would n't be any of me in the man that 'd git aout on yether side. I've putt jes that much into sayin' I wa'n't goin' to go-jes that much."

"Trouble with you is you putt too much into what you say, Wade," she said, rebelling, as his mother rebelled, at the hard tenacity of his character.

“Trouble with you was you did n't putt enough." But he had never found it easy to reproach her when he was facing the bright brown of her eyes, and he did not now. "Aw, well, yestiddy's sayin's ain't always to-day's doin's, air they?" he said, by way of dismissing a painful subject with philosophy, and fell into a sort of reverie, with his eyes on the green fields outside. "Yestiddy ain't to-day, yestiddy ain't to-day," he sighed.

She turned away from him to the safe and swung open its perforated tin doors upon a wonderful array of china with purple houses and purple trees upon its fat, bulging sides. When she came back to the table she had a sugar-bowl in one hand and a syrup-jug in the other.

“D' you take short sweet'nin' or long sweet'nin', Mist' Tucker?" she asked demurely, balancing her bowl and jug before him.

'Always took what I could git, but"But yestiddy ain't to-day, is it?

She was around the table from him, but she leaned over farther than there was any need of her doing to set down the jug and bowl; and Wade Tucker, whom malaria and misery had not yet made quite blind, attempted suddenly and under the impetus of strong emotion to get around that table. Unfortunately, however, he managed to wind his foot about a chair-leg a yard behind him, and went heavily to the floor. It was then that Grandfather Micken looked in at the dining-room door hungrily, and the situation was not helped by the grandfather's cheerful chuckle.

"Don't you care, Chills. Always that way. When we want to do our best we do our durndest."

When, a little after, the Mickens invited their guests to sit down to an abundant

dinner of pork and greens, preserves and pickles, it was noticeable that Wade Tucker had to be summoned from the far corn down close to the water's edge. All through the meal he talked nervously and continuously of what the river was doing, and at his suggestion the men followed him on another and final tour of the lower farm as soon as dinner was disposed of.

As the sun went down, the wisdom of his precautions began to show discouragingly. The river was making one of its unbelievable jumps, fearful and marvelous. Over its swollen, heaving body a light skiff laden with refugees could here and there be descried, cutting for the Penangton shore. Up and down the lowlands, through the gaps in the willows, other families were visible, surprised as the Mickens were being surprised, out in their yards, at windows and on roofs, waiting the coming of the ferry. It was a sober group that turned from the water at last and beat a funereal retreat to the house.

"Reckon you-all will take the boat along of mother," said Chills, without triumph, when they were back on the porch.

"Reckon," admitted Mr. Micken, morosely. "D' you believe the water 's goin' to come over the first story, Chills?"

"Well, need n' ter fret. I'll go up an' daown between my place an' yourn in the skifft an' kinder watch."

"You Chills! Ain't you goin'?"
"Nary a go."

The Micken family broke into general protestation, and Berry Micken brushed his arm and said something in a low voice as she passed.

What 'd say, Berry?" he asked; and as she did not answer him, but pressed hurriedly into the house, he left the rest of the Mickens to appease their consternation as best they might while he followed the girl.

She was back by the piano when he reached her, and she seemed to have forgotten him again. One of her slim brown arms was stretched up against a black claw-foot clingingly and protectingly, and her head drooped on her arm.

"Had to wait so long fer it," she whispered with a little dry click of her tongue; could n't bear to lose it.”

"Tryin' to."

Ef it cand git through to us, ain't you goin' acrosst sure enough?"

"Nope. Pianner 'd git lonesome by itself. Goin' to keep comp'ny with it."

Though she said nothing this time, her face fell into the same rigid lines it had shown out on the porch, and he knew that she was thinking now whatever she had been thinking then.

"What was it you said to me out thah on the gallery?" he queried; but she held up a hushing finger.

"Ferry's comin', Wade. I hear paw hollerin' to 'em. We better go he'p git the child'en together."

They passed through the house, and the girl gathered the younger children about her, and marshaled them down the yard to a spot where a stout-trunked tree seemed to make feasible the securing of the advancing boat long enough for the gangplank to be run down to the threatened people. Immediately, too, the trouble of getting the boat-ropes tied to the tree was upon the men, and the shouts and execrations of the rescue crew that had come over from Penangton rang through the trees so wildly that he could get no further word with her.

"Tree 'll come up by the roots: run the yether plank daown, boys-yether one, yether one! She won't hold. Whewwee! but Ol' Miss sucks! Start them kids abaoard-for Gawd's sake, Mis' Micken, throw them things daown! We ain't got room fer draownin' people, much lessen wax wreaths."

The Micken tribe and Mrs. Tucker were being guided up the teetering gang-plank by men up to their knees in water when Berry Micken sped away up the yard again. Chills saw her, but refrained from going after her until a few head of the most valuable cattle were cared for and the men were ordered aboard. He knew that he would find her at the piano, and when he reached the door and saw her standing in front of it, her arms folded tragically and tears upon her cheeks, he tiptoed in, despite the need of haste, and roused her gently.

"Ain't a minute to lose," he whispered, as he drew her away with him.

Out in the yard the man at the wheel was shouting like a lunatic: "Run for it, Chills! Run for it! Can't stand the strain.

Current 's going to smash us into kingdom. come."

Not for nothing was the Micken girl built like a fawn, with lithe, straight limbs. With her hand in his, they fled toward the boat, and Berry's light feet were near the gang-plank when, with a sly gulp and a great wrenching and tearing, the tree which held the rope came up by its roots and dragged helplessly and hinderingly behind the ferry. The boat shot downstream like an arrow in the vehement current; the two on land moved back a little way up the yard to wait, and the ferry pilot tried to return for them. It was a futile effort. The little stern wheel thrashed unavailingly around and around in the tremendous volume of water, and stayed the boat's progress with the current not at all. The rescued stood dumbly like sheep and stared across the widening gulf at the two who remained on the treacherous, watereaten earth. Then a smitten mother-wail rang out on the air, and two brown and wrinkled women fell on their knees at the ferry rail, and held out clasped, imploring hands.

"Don't you pester, Mrs. Micken," shouted Chills, from the warmth of a new and vast self-confidence. "Berry an' I 'll foller in one the skiffts.-No, don't you try that, Mr. Micken! I cand save her if anybody cand."

The Micken girl's face was showing an unaccountable satisfaction, as of purpose fulfilled. She gave a little rocking laugh as she looked up into Chills's eyes.

“Did n't hear what I said up thah on the gallery jes naow, did you?"

No, he had not heard. What was it? Quick, what was it?

Said I wa'n't goin' acrosst lessen you did."

Those on the ferry could see the two on land turn and run to the porch where the skiffs lay, could see them dragging one of the skiffs to the water; but they could not see the great awakening light on Chills's face.

Goin' acrosst naow, Chills?" she asked, with her head tucked down and her eyes on the lapping water.

He was taking out the oars, and he rose from over them to say:

"Goin' where you go, Berry-but don't you call me Chills. I don't 'laow to chill again 's long 's I live."