Swatty: A Story of Real Boys

by Ellis Parker Butler

So then we knew the ice must be going out faster on the Iowa side than on our side. What Bony's father was trying to say and do was to tell us to keep off the ice, and to get off it himself; but he did not have to tell us much because before he got close enough for us to hear him much the ice was making such a noise we couldn't hear him at all. And he couldn't get off! The ice began to pile up against the upper side of the bend, shearing itself off and sliding on top of itself and leaving a big open space below the bend.

Well, I guess Bony cried then! And he had something to cry about that time. His father came running as near as he could to us, but it wasn't very near, because the ice near shore was cracking up into big pieces. He ran up-stream on the ice, shouting to us all the time, but the ice was going downstream, and at last it floated down so there was an air hole opposite us and he had to stop. I say he had to stop, but he kept going, because the ice carried him on down the river. He looked all around, and then waved his arm at us and started to run toward the Tow Head.

The Tow Head is a big island in the river but nearer Iowa than Illinois, where we were. The wind was pushing the ice over that way, and I guess he thought maybe he could get off the ice on the Tow Head if he could get there before the ice carried him by.

Bony's father ran around the air hole and kept running up and across, and he ran hard; but by that time the ice was going pretty fast, so me and Swatty and Bony got down to the sand and ran down-stream as fast as we could. Or maybe not as fast as we could; we kept even with Bony's father. He was running up-stream but he was going downstream all the time.

Pretty soon the old race track the men had made on the ice went by, and then the end of the wood road went by. It was funny to think that me and Bony and Swatty were running one way and Bony's father the other way, and that we kept right opposite each other. But it wasn't very funny, because we all thought Bony's father would be drowned.

Well, the ice went past the Tow Head. It went past before Bony's father was halfway to the Tow Head, and he stopped running and stood still. Then he turned and started to run toward us again.

On our side of the river the water between the shore and the ice was getting wider and wider, because the river was wider here and because the wind was blowing the ice toward the Iowa shore. If I had been Bony's father I would have run for the Iowa shore because the ice was pushing up against it, but it would have been foolish because the Tow Head was like a knife and split all the ice as it came to it. Nobody could get across from where Bony's father was to the Iowa shore, but I did not think of that. But Bony's father did. So did Swatty. He said so afterward. He said he would have done just what Bony's father did.

Bony was crying, of course, and he was running in front, because he wanted to see his father drowned if he was drowned, I guess. I was next, but Swatty was behind because he had stopped to look, and that was the way we were when we came to the mouth of the First Slough. The ice was rubbery, but Bony and me ran across and up the bank and in through the woods—you have to, there—and kept right on as soon as we came out on the shore.

Bony's father was getting nearer and nearer, but the stretch of water was getting wider. It was too wide for anybody to swim, of course. I felt kind of sick. I don't know why—I guess it was because I thought, all at once, that I was running like that just to see a man drown in the river, and it made me sick. I shouted to Bony, but he kept on running and then I looked at Bony's father.

He was still running, but he had his hand in the air and he was waving a white handkerchief, and then he put it in his pocket and just ran. Pretty soon I looked back for Swatty, and I saw him!