"That'll be all right," said the mayor, "we'll fix you up in a dress suit and attend to all the details. We'll get out bills, hire the hall, get a band and just fix you up as snug as a bug in a rug. Don't you let anything worry you; but just stay here and rest up while we make the arrangements."
The people had been so kind that Boyton could not resist their desires and consented. That evening the mayor drove up to the hotel and entered Paul's room with a swallow tail coat, white vest and tie, and a collar that was fastened around his neck without the assistance of shirt buttons. The upper half of him looked all right and quite appropriate for presentation to the public. They waited for the gentleman whose pantaloons just fitted Paul, but he did not appear.
"All right," said the mayor again, "I reckon he's gone to the hall with them and there's a dressing room there. Come on now, just hop into my carriage and we'll drive there. No one will see you."
They reached the hall and waited in the dressing room for the other gentleman to get there with the pantaloons. It was growing late and the people who crowded the hall began to get impatient.
"That's all right," once more exclaimed the ever ready mayor, "we can fix that."
He shoved a stand to the middle of the stage and taking a large table cover; arranged it so that it hung to the floor in front, thus hiding everything behind it from the eyes of the crowd. On the stand were placed the rubber dress, the Baby Mine, a pitcher of water and a glass. Then Boyton stood behind it and from the front he looked as though attired in an irreproachable dress suit. The curtain was rung up discovering him standing in the shelter of the table, the mayor on one side, ready to introduce him. In that position Paul acknowledged the introduction and proceeded to describe the rubber dress, his 'mode of navigating in it and an account of his voyages. In recounting his adventure with a shark in the straits of Messina, he became somewhat excited and without thinking, stepped from behind the protecting folds of the table cloth in all the glory of a dress coat, white vest and violently red drawers.
There was a stare of wonder, an awful silence for a moment and then a wild roar of laughter, which brought the orator to a sense of the comical figure he cut, and he fled from the stage with the unfinished shark story on his lips. The mayor after a violent effort, got the attention of the crowd and explained the situation. They took it so good humouredly that they gave three rousing cheers for Paul, and a tiger.
To make up for the time he had lost with the hospitable citizens of Helena, Boyton was compelled to make an extra long run and he paddled to Arkansas City without leaving the water, a distance of one hundred and sixty miles in thirty one hours, which was the longest continuous run he ever made up to that time. That night on the lonesome stretches of the river, he frequently started a loon from its resting place and it would fly off into the darkness with a wild, unearthly shriek, so ghostly in its echoing cadences that with a nervous start, Paul would glance around for that "dead man in a boat."
Early in the morning the voyager struck a big eddy and was twisted round and round for quite a while before he could clear himself and then found he was pretty close in shore. Through the thick growth of cottonwoods he observed a thin spiral of smoke rising, and knowing it to be from the cabin of some negro, he blew a merry blast on his bugle. Before the clear notes had faded from the morning air, a venerable darkey with whitened head and slightly bent, though walking without the assistance of a cane, appeared on the bluff overlooking the river. He raised his eyes to the eastern horizon, as though to determine the weather probabilities, and then he scanned the river up and down. He failed to see Boyton at first, and another blast was given on the bugle. Slowly, and with evidences of some fear, the old darkey bent his eyes on Paul, and then as slowly he deposited his white, broad brimmed hat on a stump by his side, reverently raising his eyes and with outstretched hands he solemnly said:
"He bloowed his trumpet on the watah. Bless God, bless God."