Chapter 12

CHAPTER XII.

IT must a been close on to one o'clock when we
got below the island at last, and the raft did seem
to go mighty slow. If a boat was to come along we
was going to take to the canoe and break for the
Illinois shore; and it was well a boat didn't come, for
we hadn't ever thought to put the gun in the canoe,
or a fishing-line, or anything to eat. We was in
ruther too much of a sweat to think of so many things.
It warn't good judgment to put EVERYTHING on the raft.

If the men went to the island I just expect they
found the camp fire I built, and watched it all night for
Jim to come. Anyways, they stayed away from us,
and if my building the fire never fooled them it warn't
no fault of mine. I played it as low down on them as
I could.

When the first streak of day began to show we tied
up to a towhead in a big bend on the Illinois side, and
hacked off cottonwood branches with the hatchet,
and covered up the raft with them so she looked like
there had been a cave-in in the bank there. A tow-
head is a sandbar that has cottonwoods on it as thick
as harrow-teeth.

We had mountains on the Missouri shore and heavy
timber on the Illinois side, and the channel was down
the Missouri shore at that place, so we warn't afraid of
anybody running across us. We laid there all day,
and watched the rafts and steamboats spin down the
Missouri shore, and up-bound steamboats fight the big
river in the middle. I told Jim all about the time I
had jabbering with that woman; and Jim said she was
a smart one, and if she was to start after us herself she
wouldn't set down and watch a camp fire -- no, sir,
she'd fetch a dog. Well, then, I said, why couldn't
she tell her husband to fetch a dog? Jim said he bet
she did think of it by the time the men was ready to
start, and he believed they must a gone up-town to get
a dog and so they lost all that time, or else we
wouldn't be here on a towhead sixteen or seventeen
mile below the village -- no, indeedy, we would be in
that same old town again. So I said I didn't care
what was the reason they didn't get us as long as they
didn't.

When it was beginning to come on dark we poked
our heads out of the cottonwood thicket, and looked
up and down and across; nothing in sight; so Jim
took up some of the top planks of the raft and built a
snug wigwam to get under in blazing weather and
rainy, and to keep the things dry. Jim made a floor
for the wigwam, and raised it a foot or more above the
level of the raft, so now the blankets and all the traps
was out of reach of steamboat waves. Right in the
middle of the wigwam we made a layer of dirt about
five or six inches deep with a frame around it