CHAPTER XVIII—ACROSS THE RIVER
As the night shut down and the rain began again, the party at Holloway’s had paid no attention to the rising flood. But on the other side of the river the increasing depth of the water was narrowly watched.
“It’s the biggest rise she’s showed since Adam was a small boy!” Mr. Jimson declared. “Looks like she’d make a clean sweep of some of these bottomland farms below yere. Mr. Lomaine’s goin’ t’ lose cash-dollars befo’ she’s through kickin’ up her heels—yo’ take it from me!”
Mr. Jimson’s audience consisted of his immediate family—a wife, lank like himself, and six white-haired, lank children, like six human steps, from the little toddler, hanging to the table-cloth and so getting his balance, to a lank girl of fifteen or thereabouts. In addition, there was Curly Smith.
Curly had been taken right into the Jimson family when he had first come along on a flatboat, the crew of which had treated him so badly that he had left it and applied at the cotton warehouse for work. He worked every day beyond his strength, if the truth were told, and for very poor pay; but he was glad of decent housing.
The world had never used a runaway worse than it had used Curly. All the way down the river from Pee Dee—where his money had run out, and his transportation, too—the boy had been knocked about. And farther north, as Ruth Fielding and Helen knew, Curly Smith’s path had not been strewn with roses.
Therefore, if for no other reason, the boy who had run away to escape arrest, would have remained with Mr. Jimson. The latter’s rough good nature seemed the friendliest thing Curly had ever known; but he was scared when he recognized Ruth and Helen and knew that they were the “little Miss Yanks” of whom he had heard the cotton warehouse boss speak.
Here were two girls who knew him—knew him well when he was at home—right in the very part of Dixie in which unwise Curly Smith had taken refuge. Curly had no idea while coming down on the New Union Line boat to Norfolk, that Ruth and Helen were aboard; nor had he recognized Helen when he went to her rescue at the City Park zoo when the stag had so startled her.
In the first place, he did not know that any of the Briarwood Hall girls who had made their home with his grandmother for a few weeks in the spring, had any intention of coming down to the Land of Cotton for a part of their summer vacation.
It was a distinct shock to Curly when he brought the half-drowned cat ashore that afternoon, to see Ruth and Helen as the guests of Nettie Parsons. He did not know that the girls recognized him; but he was quite sure they would see him if he continued to linger in the vicinity.