“Couldn’t you run up there an’ buy it out an’ out if we gin you a little somethin’ for your trouble?”
“No, I couldn’t. I am not the only trader there is on the river, and if you watch out you may find somebody willing to take the risk. I am not willing.”
“They gave up mighty easy,” observed Rodney, as the three men turned away and walked slowly up the bank.
“Don’t you know the reason?” replied Jack. “They had no use for me when they found that I don’t carry a large sum of money with me. They haven’t a bale of cotton, and I doubt if they have been in the rebel army. They are guerillas and robbers like those in Missouri that Dick told us about. No doubt I shall have to go up into that country after this lower river has been cleared of cotton, but I’ll tell the captain to keep as far from the Arkansaw shore as the channel will let him go.”
This little incident reminded the boys that the war was not yet ended, and that they might hear more about it at any time. They heard more about it when they arrived at New Orleans and found the steamer Von Phul lying at the levee with her cabin shot full of holes. She had been fired into by a battery of field-pieces twenty miles below Memphis, but her captain was brave, as most of the river men were, and could not be stopped as long as his engines were in working order. He reported the matter to the captain of the first gunboat he met, and the latter hastened up and shelled the woods until he set them on fire; but the battery that did the mischief was probably a dozen miles away.
“There’s no telling how long it will be before we shall come here with our boat looking just like that,” said Jack. “And the worst of it is, we shall have to take whatever the rebs please to give us without firing a shot in reply. I don’t like that pretty well.”
But for a long time the Venango was a lucky vessel. She was not obliged to go very far out of reach of a gunboat to find her cargoes, for the planters who owned cotton took pains to place it on the river at points where it would be under Federal protection. But the supply was exhausted after a while, and then Jack was ordered into the dreaded Arkansas region, where guerillas were plenty and gunboats and soldiers stationed far apart. Then their troubles began, and Rodney and Dick smelled powder again. On one trip the Venango was fired into at three different points, but owing to her speed and the width of the river, which was almost bank full, she escaped without a scratch. On another occasion the rebels shot with better aim, and sent a shell through one of her smoke-stacks and two more through her cabin; but little damage was done, for the missiles did not explode until they passed through the steamer and struck the bank on the opposite side. After that it was seldom that Jack reported to his agent without adding: “Of course I was fired into on the way down,” and sometimes he was obliged to say that he had had men killed or wounded. But that was to be expected. A wooden boat couldn’t make a business of running batteries at regular intervals without losing men once in a while.
The winter passed in this way, Rodney and Dick never missing a trip, and all the while the agent was besieged by planters living along the Arkansas shore who had cotton to sell, who had permits to ship it and papers to prove that they had always been loyal to the government, and who were ready to stake their reputation as gentlemen upon the truth of the statement that the trading boat that came to their landings would not run the slightest risk of falling into the hands of guerillas. When the agent spoke to Jack about it the latter said:
“If you want to take the responsibility, why, all right. If you order me to go after that cotton I’ll go; but before you do it, I’d like to have you recall the fact that the trading boats Tacoma and George Williams were all right and made money until they were sent to the Arkansas shore, and then they went up in smoke. And every shot that has been fired at my boat came from the west bank of the river.”
“This cotton is at Horseshoe Bend opposite Friar’s Point,” continued the agent, “and you will have five or six gunboats within less than a dozen miles of you.”