Tales of a Vanishing River

by Earl H. Reed

There was a tale of another band of horse thieves, whose secret retreat was on an island in the middle of a big lake of soft muck several miles south of the river.

The one route of access to it was a concealed sand bar known only to the outlaws. The unsavory crew collected their plunder on the island, where the pilfered beasts were cared for, and their markings changed with various dyes. In due time they smuggled them away in the darkness to distant markets. They once captured a too curious preacher, who was looking for his horse, and kept him in durance vile for several months. The expounder of the gospels labored so faithfully in that seemingly hopeless vineyard that the blasé bandits were finally “purified by the word of the Lord, gave up their dark practices, made restitution, and ever after lived model lives.”

There was a record of a mighty flood that drowned out everything and everybody, ran over the top of the bridge and carried part of it away, and following this were notations of approximate dates of sundry happenings—when the gang of counterfeiters that dwelt in Pinkamink Marsh were caught and “sent up”—the year that Bill killed a blue goose on “Boiler Slough”—when the tornado blew all of the water out of the river at “Ox Bow Bend” and left the channel bare for half an hour, and the year that “forty-six thousand rat skins was took off Shelby Marsh.”

A page was devoted to a reign of terror that lasted several weeks in 1877. For five nights an awful roar had come out of “Bull Snake Bayou.” The mystery was never explained, but Bill thought that the noise had been produced by a “whiffmatick” or a “hodad” that had come down with the spring flood, lost its way, and was shedding horns or scales in the vine-clad thickets.

The births, weddings and deaths of all the old settlers were carefully recorded, and many of their exploits detailed at length. There was an account of the capture of Hank Butts and his illicit still by the revenue officers, the failure of the jury to convict, owing to the reputations of the culprit’s two sons as dead shots, and the story of Hank’s death in a feather bed, with his boots on, when he went to visit a city relative and blew out the gas a few months later.

Bill’s experience with a “cattymount” was related with much detail. He had encountered it in the woods when he was young, and had spent two days and nights in a tree, living on crackers, plug tobacco, and a bottle of sage tea that he fortunately happened to have with him. The animal’s foot had been shattered by Bill’s only bullet and this prevented it from going into the foliage after him. The captive had chewed up over a pound of the plug and had carefully aimed the resulting juices at the baleful eye-balls that gleamed below him at night, hoping to blind his besieger. When the supply of this ammunition was exhausted the animal’s eyes were still bright, although Bill had scored many body hits and had decidedly changed the general color of his enemy.

Hunger finally compelled the savage beast to beat a retreat and the situation was relieved. The “cattymount” had evidently increased in size with the succeeding years, for in the manuscript its estimated length had been twice corrected with a pen, the last figures being the highest. Bill added that he had killed this “fierce an’ formidable animal” later, and that “its skin was taken east.”

Somewhere among the confused piles was the tale of the last voyage of the little stern-wheel steamer, “Morning Star” to the ferry, under command of “Cap’n Sink.” She had come up from the Illinois river, and the falling waters had left her stranded for a week on a sand bar. Her doughty commander paced the deck and blistered it with profanity. He swore by nine gods that he never again would go above “Corkscrew Bend,” that was so crooked that even the fish had sense enough to keep out of it. His vociferous impiety filtered intermittently through the green foliage that overhung the river, and desecrated the shadow-flecked aisles of the forest, until the Morning Star’s sister boat, the “Damfino,” came wheezing up stream. The unfortunate craft was pulled off the bar and navigation officially ended.

Reliable data was becoming scarce. Bill’s recollections were getting hazy. The old settlers, whose memories could be relied upon, were dying off, and the mists were absorbing his ascertainable facts, but, while life lasts the chronicles will go on, for Bill’s genius is not of the sort that admits defeat.

There is much human history that might with profit be entombed in these humble archives, and its obscurity would be a blessing to those who made it. As the world grows older it finds less to respect in the dusty tomes that are filled with the story of human folly, selfishness and needless bloodshed.