“I show you how I mek one gr-r-rand mortarr,” he proclaimed. “Flour at one dollar ze pound, whiskey at ten dollars ze quart; zat ze way ol’ Jules mek gr-r-rand mortarr. Wow! Hooray! If anybody teenk he mek one better mortarr, I cut off hees ears. Dees my country; I do as I please.” And he hoed vigorously at his “mortar bed,” and screeched and capered and threatened and boasted and made a fool of himself.
Some of the crowd laughed and applauded; but the majority were disgusted. To Davy it seemed a great pity that any human being should so lose all control of himself and be less human than an ape. He speedily tired of this silly exhibition by Jules, the store-keeper, and turned away for fresh air. He and Charley, the wagon boss, emerged from the crowd together.
“Old Jules is spoiling his own business, I reckon,” observed Charley. “How any man can watch that in there and ever taste whiskey again is more than I know. To see him make a fool of himself is better than signing a pledge.”
The crowd rapidly wearied of this drunken Jules and his antics and dwindled away. As for Davy, he had decided to take a walk to the mouth of Lodgepole Creek, up the river a short distance. Lodgepole Creek emptied in on the opposite side of the Platte, and was named because the Cheyennes used to gather their lodge poles along it.
The Platte flowed shallow and wide, with many sand bars and ripples, and many deepish holes where the water eddied rapidly. The banks were fringed with willows not very high. From a rise in the trail Dave, trudging stanchly in his heavy dusty boots, beheld an object, far up the channel, beyond the willow tops, floating down.
It was a large object flat to the water, and as he peered he saw a flash as from an oar-blade. A boat! No—too large and low for a boat. It must be a raft with somebody aboard. Davy waited, inquisitive; for craft floating on the Platte were a curiosity. The upper river was too shallow, especially at this time of the year.
The raft came on gallantly and swiftly. It carried three persons and their outfit. The crew were standing up: one of them steering, behind, and one at either edge, with oars, was helping to fend off from the bars. It looked like an easy mode of travel, and Davy prepared to stand out and give the voyagers a cheer.
But just before the raft arrived opposite, going finely, it appeared to hang on a snag or else strike a sudden eddy; or perhaps it did both at once; nobody could tell. Under Davy’s astonished eyes it stopped for a moment in mid-stream; the crew wildly dug with their oars and fell to their hands and knees; whirling around and around the platform fairly melted away underneath them, leaving only three black dots on the surface of the water. These were heads!
Waking to the situation, Davy waved and shouted; the swimmers may have seen him, he thought, because they were making for his side. The current bore them along, as sometimes they swam and sometimes they waded; and he kept pace to encourage. As the foremost neared the bank, Davy rushed down and waded in to meet him and help him ashore. He wasn’t a very large person—that drenched figure floundering and splashing for safety; he wasn’t large at all; and extending a hand, to give him a boost, Davy gasped, only half believing: