it was pretty hard to wait five minutes before i started, and it was exciting, too. we were so still it made me nervous, but we just couldn’t talk, for we were listening—listening to hear if mark was discovered. minute after minute went by, and we didn’t hear a sound, so we concluded he had got away safely. at last my time came. i said good-by to the fellows and went through the floor. this time there was no lantern, and i had to crawl under the house in that black darkness. i found the hole, all right. but i would rather have found it some other way, for i fell into it and got my mouth full of sand again. it was lucky the cover of the paint-pail was on tight, or i’d have spilled it.
it was no trick at all to claw through the little tunnel and get out on the other side. it was dark out of doors—dark and cold and lonesome. around at the front of the house i could hear some one stirring—i don’t know whether it was jiggins or collins—and that made me pretty careful.
i crept straight back, keeping the house between me and the enemy until i got to some underbrush. i ducked into this and swung around to the direction where the canoe lay. i don’t want you to think it was easy to find that path through the bushes that led to the canoe. it wasn’t. i came very near to getting lost, but i found where the path began at last and hurried down it, taking all the pains i could to be still. i was making good time, though, because i wanted company. i had all i needed of being alone out there in that woods, and you can believe it, too.
then all of a sudden something seemed to grab my feet. i let out a yell; i couldn’t help it. you’d have yelled, too. as i say, something seemed to grab my feet and knock them out from under me, and i came down with a smash. the paint-pail went end over end, but i hung onto the other things. i was in a regular panic, but for a minnit i was too stunned to get up. then i heard mark tidd’s voice.
“s-s-sorry to give you a tumble,” says he, “but i had to f-find out.”
“find out what?” i snapped.
“if it would w-work.”
“did you do that?”
“t-tied a piece of rope across the path. tied th-th-three others farther along. they work f-f-fine.”
“oh,” says i, “they work great. they tickle me most to death.”
“if we were ch-ch-chased they’d come in handy,” says he; and just then we heard tallow holler loud. “look out!” says he. “they’re comin’. look out!”
they had heard me fall, i guess, and the yell i couldn’t stop.
“now see what you did,” i says to mark, as i groped for the paint. it was his fault, all right; he should have known better; but i expect he got so interested in his experiment he forgot i might make a racket.
“c-can’t be helped now,” says he. “come careful.”
we ran as fast as we could. mark knew where the ropes were, and so we got over them safely, and in a couple of jerks of a lamb’s tail we were at the canoe. mark had it in the water all ready, and we stepped in.
“shove off,” says mark.
just as we left the shore we heard a crash and a lot of yelling back at the beginning of the path. somebody had hit mark’s first man-trap.
“l-lucky i thought of that,” says he.
“if you hadn’t thought of it we never would have been discovered,” says i. i was scratched and bumped and felt pretty cross.
“paddle,” says he.
the stream was narrow there, but deep enough to float a canoe. the current was swift, but it was so dark we couldn’t see much where we were going. about all we had to go by was that the shore looked blacker than where there wasn’t any shore. one good thing was that there weren’t any stones or dead-heads or brush-heaps.
we had to take chances or we would have gone along slow and careful, but luck was with us, i expect, and we didn’t have any serious accident. a couple of times we scraped the shore, and once we grounded going around a curve, but on the whole we felt pretty well satisfied. we had got away.
the worst of it was that jiggins and collins knew which way we’d gone, and would be able to find we left in a canoe. if it hadn’t been for mark’s man-trap they would have had to guess at that, and, as likely as not, would have guessed wrong. anyhow, we had a start, and it was too dark for them to chase us along the shore. i don’t know what happened to the men in that path, but i expect they had a couple more tumbles before they came out where we had hidden the canoe.
we paddled along till daylight, and then we kept on paddling. we figured we were safe now, because jiggins and collins were left three hours behind; and, besides, we didn’t see how they could possibly chase us. there were several things we didn’t know, though. it isn’t safe to figure up the score till the last man’s out, and we crowed too soon. uncle hieronymous’s mine was worth too much money for these men to give it up without trying pretty average hard, and i will say for them they did their best.
“all we have to do now,” says mark, “is to k-keep on down-stream until we f-f-find your uncle and ole and jerry. they’re s-s-somewhere along the river, and we can’t miss ’em.”
the middle branch, i guess i’ve said before, was nothing but a little stream. sometimes it was fifteen feet wide, but very seldom any wider, except once in a great while where the current had worn out a pool at a sharp bend—a place like the one where we rescued mr. macmillan’s landing-net. there was hardly a place where we could have landed, because the underbrush grew right down to the water’s edge so thick it would have been next to impossible to get through it without cutting a path with a hatchet. once, after we had been out about an hour, we jammed into a pile of brush and logs that clogged the stream. it didn’t do any harm, but we had to haul the canoe over the top of it. this took us all of twenty minutes. we didn’t think anything of it then, but, if only we had known it, twenty minutes was a lot to waste just then.
shortly after daylight we came out into the père marquette river. that meant the real start of our voyage.
“aha!” says mark. “the great river the indians t-t-told us of. i never thought to l-l-live to see it.”
“what’s that?” says i.
“i’m father marquette,” says he.
“shucks!” says i. “he never got way inland as far as this.”
“you can’t prove it,” says he, “and, anyhow, this is the mississippi river, hain’t it?”
“to be sure,” says i, “to be sure.”
“it’s been a wonderful trip, hain’t it?” mark asked. “canoein’ way down the shore of lake michigan from mackinac? when king louis hears of what we’ve d-done he’ll be p-pretty tickled, i bet.”
“let’s see,” says i; “you’re buried down ludington way somewheres, ain’t you?”
“there’s about a dozen places claims my grave. er”—he stopped and scowled at me—“i mean will claim it when i’m dead and buried.”
“how come they to name this river after you, father marquette?” i asked him.
“’cause i d-discovered it,” says he.
there we were getting mixed up. we were pretending we were discovering the mississippi, and right in the middle of it we forgot and talked about the père marquette. the père part of it means “father,” you know.
the big river was considerable wider than the middle branch—maybe seventy feet sometimes—and it was swifter and deeper. right where we were was a sort of shallow, but even at the far side it was good and deep. it was a hard river to canoe on because it was so irregular about being deep. first the water would be over your head, and next it would be so shallow you’d be scraping on the bottom.
we paddled along until we came to a bend in the river where there was a sand-bar sticking out into the water on the point of the bend.
“there,” says mark; “l-let’s git ashore for breakfast. no sign of h-hostile indians.”
“all right,” says i. “i’m both willin’ and hungry.”
so we went ashore. i’ve told you how the river curved and wriggled. folks tell me it twists five miles through the country to make one mile ahead. i don’t know how near right this is, but it didn’t seem to us like any exaggeration when we were floating down. well, what i meant to say was that when we were on the point we could see up-stream only about a thousand feet, and down-stream not so far as that. it was just like being on the shore of a tiny lake, except that the current kept swishing by so fast.
“haul the canoe up on the s-sand,” says mark, “so the current won’t carry it off.”
it was on the lower side of the point, and i pulled it up till its nose was sticking into the underbrush.
“hush!” says mark. “look!”
it startled me, but there was nothing to be afraid of. it was just a big crane flopping his wings and coming down to the water about a hundred feet off.
“g-goin’ fishin’,” mark whispered.
the crane lighted in the water about to his knees and stood as quiet as a gate-post, waiting for a fish to swim by where he could grab him in his long bill.
while we watched him another crane came settling down not fifty feet from the first one and stood up as straight and stiff as a soldier. he hardly got placed when three more came down and got into the water up-stream farther toward the bend. that made five.
“whee!” i whispered to mark, “i never saw so many together before.”
“hush,” he says, and pointed up. there, over the trees, came two more cranes with great wings extended, just sort of floating toward us, and they settled in the water, too.
“must be a fine place to f-f-fish,” says mark, and at that what should happen but two more cranes who picked out spots in the line.
before we had done being surprised another came rushing down—he was in a hurry, i guess; and then another, who lit at the far end of the line. it was a pretty sight, i tell you. eleven big cranes, most as tall as i am, all standing as pompous and stiff and motionless as could be, just as if they were on parade.
“i wouldn’t have m-missed it for a quarter,” says mark, and i felt that way too.
we forgot about breakfast, it was so interesting to watch them. every now and then one of them would dart his head down quick as lightning, there would be a splash in the water, and sometimes you could see the big bird gulping down a little fish. this kept up for maybe twenty minutes.
“l-l-look at the last one,” says mark, all of a sudden.
the bird at the far end of the line didn’t act satisfied with things—he sort of fidgeted. then all at once he spread his wings and began slowly flapping them till their tips touched the river. up he rose, acting for all the world like a startled girl. the next crane caught the scare, and up he went.
“whew!” mark whistled. “somebody comin’. haul the boat out of sight. quick!”
we jumped for the canoe and dragged it into the underbrush and lay down on our stomachs beside it.
“hostile indians,” says mark.
i was pretty sure in my mind there were no more hostile indians in michigan, but, after all, you can never tell. it was wild enough along there to suit anybody, and there might have been a tribe of red men that somehow had got themselves overlooked. so i made no bones about hiding. mark hadn’t meant real indians, though. he was still being father marquette on the mississippi.
by the time we were well hid the last crane up and flapped into the air, and then around the bend above us poked the blunt end of a boat—a sort of flatboat—and in the front of it was nobody in the world but jiggins. mark pinched my leg. of course collins was there, too, and they were paddling for all that was in them. afterward we found out that was a flatboat built special by larsen, where collins and jiggins were staying, for the very purpose of going down the river.
you can bet we laid pretty still. it seemed like it took that boat an hour to get abreast of the point. both jiggins and collins were keeping their eyes straight ahead of them, though, and there wasn’t a bit of danger to us. they simply went sweeping by as fast as they could force their boat, thinking they were chasing us. it almost made me laugh. in another few minutes they went out of sight around the next bend, and i was for jumping out of concealment, but mark held me down.
“wait,” says he, “till we’re s-s-sure.”
so we waited maybe five minutes. then mark decided it would be all right, so we got up and hauled our canoe out.
“now what?” says i.
“i dun’no’,” says he, shaking his head. “g-guess i better think it over some.”
so he sat down in the sand, with his fat legs sticking out ahead of him, and tugged away at his round cheek till it looked like he would pinch a hole in it. first he’d shut his little twinkling eyes, and then he’d open them again.
“well,” says i, after my patience was about worn out, “what about it?”
“they won’t n-never suspect we’re behind ’em,” says he.
“no,” says i, “but what about their findin’ uncle hieronymous? they may git to him any minnit. we don’t know but he’s only a mile down.”
“he’s more’n that,” says mark.
“how d’you know?” says i.
“because,” says he, “they couldn’t ever get a big scow with a derrick on it up h-h-here.” he almost strangled getting out that last word, he stuttered so hard.
he stopped a minnit to get his breath, then he says, “we’ll just keep stringin’ along b-behind them. maybe we’ll f-find a good chance to s-sneak by after a while. there hain’t n-nothin’ else we can do,” says he, with a sort of dissatisfied grin like a fellow grins when he has to take the best he can get.
“well,” says i, “we better git some breakfast, then.”
“you bet,” says mark; and his voice sounded real enthusiastic.
