So then we began to ask when there was a steamboat to St. Louis. And a man said, "To-night. Hey, Bill," he called to another feller, "ain't the City of Peoria goin' down to-night?" The feller called back "yes." Mitch's eyes just glowed. He just stepped aside and I did and he said, "Now luck is with us." Then I said, "Let's ask somebody else about the boat, we might as well be sure." Just then a big boy came along, about eighteen, so we asked him. He was carryin' some fish and was in a hurry, and he said, "No boat for a week, kids," and went right on. That took the spirit out of us. So we went to a house-boat and asked a woman who was cookin' supper and she said she didn't know whether the St. Louis boat was a day late or not; that sometimes it was a day late, and if it was, it wouldn't be in till day after to-morrow. Just then her husband came up and heard us, and he said, "'Pears to me the boat went down last night. I can't ricollect. We don't pay much attention to the boats, havin' our own business to watch. But," says the man, "if you go up to the hotel, they have a time card up there; or I'll tell you, go over there to the landing, and look on the door of the office, and see if there ain't a time card tacked up." So we hurried over there, but some one had torn off the card, and the office was closed. Then we went up to the hotel.
We could see into the dinin' room and see the waitress girls carryin' trays and the food smelt wonderful, but it was fifty cents to eat and we couldn't afford it. Anyway we came up to ask about the boat. There was a gray-haired little feller standin' behind the desk, and awful busy with people comin' and goin', and we stood there tryin' to get in a word; but just as one of us would say, "What time—" a man would step up and say: "I'm checkin' out," or "Let me have 201 again," or somethin' like that. Finally nobody was there and Mitch got it out, "When does the steamboat go to St. Louis?"
The little feller didn't look at Mitch, he looked at me stiddy a long while. Then he looked at Mitch and back again at me. And he says: "Ain't you the son of States Attorney Kirby?" He got me so quick I couldn't say nothin', so I says, "Yes, sir." "Wal," says he, "I thought so. You look like him. And I believe you boys are runnin' away. I think I'll turn you over to the policeman."
So I stood there and said to myself, "It's ended—we're done." And I was so scared I couldn't move. And just then Mitch began to talk, and he says: "You can't, because we just talked to him ourselves, and asked him about the boat, and he's gone home to supper, and he knows us and knows where we're visitin' with my aunt here in Havaner. And if you don't want to tell us when the boat comes in so we can go down and look at her and really see a steamboat, all right."
Just then the bus backed up to the hotel and a lot of men got out with satchels and came hurryin' in and writin' their names in the book and gettin' rooms and things—and while the clerk was flustered with this business, we sneaked out.
"Ain't You the Son of States Attorney Kirby?"
So then we was pretty hungry and we went back to the river, I don't know just why. But we came to the fisherman's boat again, where the woman was cookin' supper, and said she, "Did you find out when the boat comes?" And we said no, but we asked her if we could have some fried fish for a nickel and she says "yes," and asked us in, and so Mitch and me sat with the fambly and looked out of the little winder at the river and et all the cat fish we wanted, with corn bread and onions and things. There was a baby at the table and his nose kept runnin' and his ma just let it; and besides there was a little girl with hands as little as a bird's and black eyes and a pig tail, which made her hair as tight around her head as a drum; and besides them, two boys and a man who boarded there and the husband. And we could see the bed to one side and some cots. They all lived here together, right on the river, with the mosquitoes and the flies, which was awful. And at supper the man said: "Now ain't it funny that nobody can tell about the boat! She's comin' in to-night from St. Louis and will land about 11, like she allus does. And she goes back to-morrow, or the next day, I forget which. Sometimes she changes her schedule and don't go back till Saturday—and sometimes they get up an excursion here to go up to Copperas Creek, and then she don't go back until that's over. But when she gets in, just ask the captain, and he'll know for sure."