The Cedar turned and twisted, first on one side of the heavily wooded valley and then on another. Bayous opened off on long, quiet stretches of back water and once in a while he could see the mouth of some tributary sneaking in around a bluff.
There was no sign of human habitation and he felt immensely lonely. He might have been the first white man down the stream and he would not have been surprised to have rounded a curve and sighted an Indian village on the next strip of sand.
The day was warm and if his mission had not been so urgent, he would have fully enjoyed the trip. But there was a tension that gripped him and drove him on at full speed. He wanted to be at Crazy John’s well before sundown.
At noon Tim estimated that he was two-thirds of the way to his destination. Slowing down the motor, he dug into his provisions and managed a snack of lunch. He drank deeply from a jug of cool water the riverman had placed in the boat and felt greatly refreshed. The strain of a night without sleep and the hard drive from Atkinson was beginning to tell on him.
Tim wondered when the amphibian would soar overhead. Ralph certainly had done an excellent job in putting the big craft out of commission.
Another hour slipped by. He was nearing the bayou where he would turn away from the main river and seek out the island of Crazy John. The boatman had told him to look for an island with a monster cottonwood, split by a bolt of lightning. When he came to that island he was to take the bayou to the right and continue taking every possible turn to the right. Crazy John’s island was a third of a mile from the main stream. Tim remembered the warning to shout lustily at intervals after he left the main channel.
His sturdy little craft swung around a broad curve, dodged the end of a projecting sand bar, slid between two snags, and straightened out down stream again. Tim’s heart leaped.
A half mile down river, standing on an island in the center of the stream, was a giant cottonwood, its top split asunder by lightning. The huge tree towered above everything else in the valley. There was no mistaking it and Tim looked for a bayou to the right of the island.
From behind him and sounding above the steady throbbing of the outboard came the thrumming of airplane engines. Tim glanced back. The amphibian, flying fast and low, was coming down stream.
Tim wondered if the pilot of the big ship would try to land on the river. The Cedar was wide enough but the danger of snags was a very real one. A sunken log could rip out the bottom of the plane and pull the entire craft to the bottom of the river.