"Bring Me His Ears"

by Clarence Edward Mulford

"Th' boilers'll blow up! Th' boilers'll blow up! Look out for th' boilers!" yelled a tenderfoot, fighting to get to the boats. "They'll blow up! They'll blow——"

Zack took one swift step sideways and brought the butt of his pistol down on the jumping jack's head. "Let 'em blow, sister!" he shouted. "You won't hear 'em! Any more scared o' th' boilers?" he yelled, facing the crowd menacingly. "They won't blow up till th' water gits to 'em, an' when it does we'll all be knee-deep in it. Thar on this hyar deck, ye sheep!"

One man was running around in a circle not five feet across, moaning and blubbering. Tom glanced at him as he came around and stepped quickly forward, his foot streaking out and up. It caught the human pinwheel on the chest and he turned a beautiful back flip into the crowd. Zack's booming laugh roared out over the water and he slapped Tom resoundingly on the shoulder.

"More fun right hyar than in a free-fer-all at a winter rendyvoo, pardner. You kick wuss nor a mule. An' whar you goin'?" he asked a tin-horn gambler who took advantage of his lapse of alertness to dart past him. Zack swung his stiff arm and the gambler bounced back as though he had been struck with a club. "Thar's plenty o' it hyar if yer lookin' fer it," he shouted, raising his pistol.

Uncle Joe clawed his way back again, Tom's double-barreled rifle in his hands, and grimly took his place at his friend's side. Suddenly he cocked his head and then heard Tom's voice bellow past his ear.

"Listen, you fools! Th' fur boat! Th' fur boat!" he yelled at the top of his lungs. His companions and the other little group of resolute men took up the cry, and as the furor of the crowd died down, the answering blasts rolled up the river. Suddenly a light, and then an orderly series of them pushed out from behind the last bend downstream, and showers of sparks from the belching stacks of the oncoming fur company boat danced and whirled high into the night, the splashing tattoo of her churning paddles sounding like music between the reassuring blasts of her whistle. The two stokers hanging from the levers of her safety valves kicked their feet in time with her whistle, not knowing which kick would usher them on an upward journey ending at St. Peter's eager gate. Their skins were as black as the rods they swung from, but their souls were as white as their rolling eyes.

"Thank God!" screamed a woman who was fighting her way through the crowd toward Tom's post, her clothing nearly torn from her; and at the words she sagged to the deck, inert, unresisting. Tom leaped forward and hauled her back with him, passed her on to Patience and resumed his grim guard.

A great shout, still tinged with horror and edged with fear, arose from the decks of the Belle and thundered across the river, the answering roar chopped up by the insistent whistle. Several red, stringy, rapier-like flashes pierced the night and the heavy reports barked across the hurrying water, to be juggled by a great cliff on the north bank.

Captain Newell had been busy. Learning that cool minds were dominating the panicky crowd, and that the bullboats were being properly launched and were ready for use if the worst came, he gave his undivided attention to the saving of the Belle. Her paddle still thrashed, but at a speed just great enough to overcome the current and to hold the snag in the wound it had made. Experience told him that once she drew back from that slimy assassin blade and fully opened the rent in her hull her sinking would follow swiftly. Already men had sounded the river on both sides and reported a steep slant to the bottom, twenty feet of water on the port side and fifteen on the starboard. One of the spare yawls, manned by two officers and a deck hand, shot away from the boat and made hurried soundings to starboard, the called depths bringing a look of hope to the captain's face. Forty yards to the right lay a nearly flat bar; but could he make that forty yards? There remained no choice but to try, for while the Missouri Belle, if she sank in her present position, would not be entirely submerged, she would be even less so every foot she made toward the shallows.

Part of the crew already had weighted one edge of a buffalo hide and stood in the bow, directly over the snag, which luckily had pierced the hull more above than below the water line. The captain signalled and the great paddle wheel turned swiftly full speed astern. The grating, splitting sound of the snag leaving the hull was followed by a shouted order and the hide was lowered overside and instantly sucked against the rent; and the paddle wheel, quickly reversing, pushed the boat ahead at an angle to the current until, low in the water, she grounded solidly on the edge of the flat bar. Anchors were set and cables made taut while the Belle settled firmly on the sandy bottom and rested almost on an even keel. There she would stay if the river continued to fall, until the rent was fully exposed and repaired; and there she would stay, repaired, until another rise floated her. The captain signalled for the paddles to stop and then drew a heavy arm across his forehead, sighed, and turned to face the fur company packet.