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One had assisted in rescuing the party from the wrecked keel-boat, and had seen the two women, as they came aboard under the glare of a torch, but his description of their appearance was far from clear, and as to what had become of them since, he knew nothing.
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.
Bruce's first memories had to do with long nights when he perched beside his father on the cabin roof of their keel-boat and watched the stars, or the blurred line of the shore where it lay against the sky, or the lights on other barges and rafts drifting as they were drifting, with their wheat and corn and whisky to that common market at the river's mouth.
Adventurers were dropping down the old river roads and "traces" across Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi, into Louisiana and Texas. The flatboat and keel-boat days of the great rivers were at their height, and the population was in large part transient, migratory, and bold; perhaps holding a larger per cent. of criminals than any Western population since could claim.
As the party was to begin their long journey by ascending the Missouri River, their means of travel were provided in three boats. The largest, a keel-boat, fifty-five feet long and drawing three feet of water, carried a big square sail and twenty-two seats for oarsmen. On board this craft was a small swivel gun.
Ah don't know much whut did happen after dat, till 'bout de time de steamboat done hit us; an' 'bout de next thing Ah wus yanked up yere on deck." "But there was another woman on the keel-boat when it was sunk a prisoner also. Surely you must have seen her," I insisted. "Ah saw her yas," eagerly. "But Ah don't know who she wus, sah, nor whar she ever cum frum." "Then she is not there with you?"
A keel-boat was fitted up nicely for the occasion, and in addition to our immediate family, including Andrew of course, we had as fellow travelers Captain Leonard, his wife and two children, making quite a large party.
Surely you must know that he risked all he possessed on a game of cards and lost?" "Thockmorton knew something about it, and there were other rumors floating about the Landing, but I have heard no details." "You did not see the two men, then?" "No, I was not at home, and they went on down the river the next day on a keel-boat. You saw the play?"
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.
Was she aboard the keel-boat, locked below in the cabin, when it rammed into us? If she had been captured at Shrunk's camp during their murderous raid, what had become of her companion? Where was Eloise Beaucaire? The harder I sought to straighten out this mystery the more involved it became. I knew so little of the facts, there was nothing I could argue from.
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