“If the others will stay and guard the boat I mean it,” was the reply.
“Go if you want to,” Clay answered the inquiring look, “for Jule and Mose can help me keep off the pirates! Only don’t remain away all night.”
“Ah done like to see dis town!” Mose suggested.
“You’ll have to wait until some other time, Mose,” Clay replied. “You must stay on board and help repel boarders now!”
The little negro grinned as if perfectly satisfied with the arrangement, and went on with his boxing match with Teddy. Case and Alex. dressed as rapidly as possible and were taken ashore, in the four-oared boat captured above Memphis, at the foot of a street not far from a trolley line running to the business center of the city. When Clay returned with the rowboat, Mose was on one of the willow mattresses which had been brought down the river.
In a few minutes Clay called to him to come on board, but there was no reply. Mose was nowhere in sight. He had evidently started out to see the city on his own hook!
“I reckon that is the last we’ll ever see of him,” Jule commented, as they gave up the search for the boy. “He’ll get to shooting craps in the city and live there forever. Can’t do anything with a kid like that.”
“It is hard work to knock any sense into the head of a boy brought up on the St. Louis levee,” Clay admitted, “but I hope he’ll return.”
“Perhaps he followed Case and Alex., and will return with them,” Jule suggested.
“That would be like him,” Clay admitted.