“Great Heavens, Dick, do you call that a dugout!” exclaimed Barker. “It’s a canoe. Haven’t you ever seen one before! No dugout for me. We can portage this ship wherever we wish to go.”
“You needn’t worry about portages, Sam. The river is high all the way to Vicksburg. Just see you don’t get lost in those endless swamps and forests.
“You don’t have to go by way of Island No. 10. You can go by way of Bissell’s Channel and Wilson’s Bayou, and cut off about six miles. The channel may be dry now, but you say you can carry that bark tub of your’n.”
“Dick,” Barker replied, laughing, “if you ever again call our canoe a dugout or a tub, I’ll swat you one. See if I don’t!”
“Tatanka, and I made it ourselves and it is the best and safest birch-bark afloat on all this river.”
“May be she is pretty steady,” Banks took up his banter again, “but she is not much of a snagboat, and a mighty poor ram. Better let me stow you all away on the Grey Hawk and take you safely down to Haynes Bluff, that is as far as we are going. From there you can walk to Vicksburg, if the Boys in Blue will let you, but I know they won’t.”
“No, Dick, thank you for your kind offer. The boys want to see Island No. 10, and I want to see it myself, but we may meet you at New Madrid.”
“All right, Sam. If you are not afraid to show your outfit at New Madrid. We’ll be there day after to-morrow.”
Tatanka, although he saw and heard everything about the earthquake and the sunken lands with close attention, was happy when Barker had said:
“Let’s get back to Hickman and the Old Mississippi. I reckon Hicks has lost our trail by this time, if he really ever found it.