Chapter 19

CHAPTER XIX.

TWO or three days and nights went by; I reckon I
might say they swum by, they slid along so quiet
and smooth and lovely. Here is the way we put in
the time. It was a monstrous big river down there --
sometimes a mile and a half wide; we run nights, and
laid up and hid daytimes; soon as night was most
gone we stopped navigating and tied up -- nearly
always in the dead water under a towhead; and then
cut young cottonwoods and willows, and hid the raft
with them. Then we set out the lines. Next we slid
into the river and had a swim, so as to freshen up and
cool off; then we set down on the sandy bottom where
the water was about knee deep, and watched the day-
light come. Not a sound anywheres -- perfectly still
-- just like the whole world was asleep, only sometimes
the bullfrogs a-cluttering, maybe. The first thing to
see, looking away over the water, was a kind of dull
line -- that was the woods on t'other side; you
couldn't make nothing else out; then a pale place in
the sky; then more paleness spreading around; then
the river softened up away off, and warn't black any
more, but gray; you could see little dark spots drifting
along ever so far away -- trading scows, and such
things; and long black streaks -- rafts; sometimes
you could hear a sweep screaking; or jumbled up
voices, it was so still, and sounds come so far; and by
and by you could see a streak on the water which you
know by the look of the streak that there's a snag
there in a swift current which breaks on it and makes
that streak look that way; and you see the mist curl
up off of the water, and the east reddens up, and the
river, and you make out a log-cabin in the edge of
the woods, away on the bank on t'other side of the
river, being a woodyard, likely, and piled by them
cheats so you can throw a dog through it anywheres;
then the nice breeze springs up, and comes fanning
you from over there, so cool and fresh and sweet to
smell on account of the woods and the flowers; but
sometimes not that way, because they've left dead fish
laying around, gars and such, and they do get pretty
rank; and next you've got the full day, and every-
thing smiling in the sun, and the song-birds just
going it!

A little smoke couldn't be noticed now, so we would
take some fish off of the lines and cook up a hot break-
fast. And afterwards we would watch the lonesome-
ness of the river, and kind of lazy along, and by and
by lazy off to sleep. Wake up by and by, and look to
see what done it, and maybe see a steamboat coughing
along up-stream, so far off towards the other side you
couldn't tell nothing about her only whether she was a
stern-wheel or side-wheel; then for about an