The fact that the side door of the car which they had caught was open would have published to an experienced traveler that that particular car was not going very far.
When Mustard and Pap woke up, they thought at first that the train had stopped.
Then peeping out cautiously, they ascertained that the engine had sidetracked their car and gone on. Finding themselves in the middle of an immense sugar plantation, they climbed on top of the car to reconnoiter.
Their first familiar sight was a broad, muddy river.
“Dar now!” Pap exulted. “Dat’s ole Massasap. Home’s up de ribber.”
“I bet dis here plantation ain’t fur from some town,” Mustard reasoned. “Less hoof it up de river an’ see kin we find some place whut ain’t so lonesome.”
Picking up their musical instruments, they walked to the levee and turned upstream.
“I smells Tickfall,” Mustard muttered, sniffing the air. “’Tain’t no matter how fur it is, dis river goes past it.”
“I hopes Tickfall ain’t smellin’ us,” Pap declared. “I’s got it proned into me dat we made a good riddunce outen dat place.”
Two miles up the levee and around a bend in the river, they came to a little town squatting like a bullfrog under the protection levee, its gutters running constantly with the seepage water from the dike, its few houses clothed in river fog and standing on high foundations like stilts, the paint upon them cracking and their eaves dripping with moisture.