“Just slip down as quietly as you can and lie down in the middle of it. Tatanka and I will do the paddling.
“And no matter what happens, you boys keep quiet. We are going to Vicksburg.”
“Mr. Barker, did you get a pass?” Tim whispered anxiously.
“Never mind, Tim,” Barker ordered, “you just lie still and keep quiet now. Don’t move and don’t speak till I tell you.”
Sitting low in the bottom of the craft, Barker and the Indian paddled the large dugout into midstream, where both shores were lost. For a little while they paddled without making the slightest noise, as if they were hunting moose or deer on their northern streams. Then Barker lifted his paddle out of the water.
“Down!” he whispered. “Lie flat and drift.”
For some time the dugout drifted like a dead log swinging around to right and left with the current. The boys lay absolutely still, hearing their own hearts beat and listening to the low sound of the current against the sides of the dugout.
Barker rose up slowly. “Paddle,” he whispered; “we are drifting into the timber.”
Again they paddled in silence.
A flash of lightning threw a gleam of light over the dark water. A dugout shot out from under the timber on the west bank.