I put my hand
on the sun's face and make it night in the earth; I bite a piece out of
the moon and hurry the seasons; I shake myself and crumble the
mountains! Contemplate me through leather - don't use the naked eye! I'm
the man with a petrified heart and biler-iron bowels! The massacre of
isolated communities is the pastime of my idle moments, the destruction
of nationalities the serious business of my life! The boundless vastness
of the great American desert is my enclosed property, and I bury my dead
on my own premises!' He jumped up and cracked his heels together three
times before he lit (they cheered him again), and as he come down he
shouted out: 'Whoo-oop! bow your neck and spread, for the pet child of
calamity's a-coming! '
Then the other one went to swelling around and blowing again - the first
one - the one they called Bob; next, the Child of Calamity chipped in
again, bigger than ever; then they both got at it at the same time,
swelling round and round each other and punching their fists most into
each other's faces, and whooping and jawing like Injuns; then Bob called
the Child names, and the Child called him names back again: next, Bob
called him a heap rougher names and the Child come back at him with the
very worst kind of language; next, Bob knocked the Child's hat off, and
the Child picked it up and kicked Bob's ribbony hat about six foot; Bob
went and got it and said never mind, this warn't going to be the last of
this thing, because he was a man that never forgot and never forgive,
and so the Child better look out, for there was a time a-coming, just as
sure as he was a living man, that he would have to answer to him with
the best blood in his body. The Child said no man was willinger than he
was for that time to come, and he would give Bob fair warning, now,
never to cross his path again, for he could never rest till he had waded
in his blood, for such was his nature, though he was sparing him now on
account of his family, if he had one.
Both of them was edging away in different directions, growling and
shaking their heads and going on about what they was going to do; but a
little black-whiskered chap skipped up and says -
'Come back here, you couple of chicken-livered cowards, and I'll thrash
the two of ye!'
And he done it, too. He snatched them, he jerked them this way and
that, he booted them around, he knocked them sprawling faster than they
could get up. Why, it warn't two minutes till they begged like dogs -
and how the other lot did yell and laugh and clap their hands all the
way through, and shout 'Sail in, Corpse-Maker!' 'Hi! at him again, Child
of Calamity!' 'Bully for you, little Davy!' Well, it was a perfect pow-
wow for a while. Bob and the Child had red noses and black eyes when
they got through. Little Davy made them own up that they were sneaks and
cowards and not fit to eat with a dog or drink with a nigger; then Bob
and the Child shook hands with each other, very solemn, and said they
had always respected each other and was willing to let bygones be
bygones. So then they washed their faces in the river; and just then
there was a loud order to stand by for a crossing, and some of them went
forward to man the sweeps there, and the rest went aft to handle the
after-sweeps.
I laid still and waited for fifteen minutes, and had a smoke out of a
pipe that one of them left in reach; then the crossing was finished, and
they stumped back and had a drink around and went to talking and singing
again. Next they got out an old fiddle, and one played and another
patted juba, and the rest turned themselves loose on a regular old-
fashioned keel-boat break-down. They couldn't keep that up very long
without getting winded, so by and by they settled around the jug again.
They sung 'jolly, jolly raftman's the life for me,' with a musing
chorus, and then they got to talking about differences betwixt hogs, and
their different kind of habits; and next about women and their different
ways: and next about the best ways to put out houses that was afire;
and next about what ought to be done with the Injuns; and next about
what a king had to do, and how much he got; and next about how to make
cats fight; and next about what to do when a man has fits; and next
about differences betwixt clear-water rivers and muddy-water ones. The
man they called Ed said the muddy Mississippi water was wholesomer to
drink than the clear water of the Ohio; he said if you let a pint of
this yaller Mississippi water settle, you would have about a half to
three-quarters of an inch of mud in the bottom, according to the stage
of the river, and then it warn't no better than Ohio water - what you
wanted to do was to keep it stirred up - and when the river was low, keep
mud on hand to put in and thicken the water up the way it ought to be.
The Child of Calamity said that was so; he said there was nutritiousness
in the mud, and a man that drunk Mississippi water could grow corn in
his stomach if he wanted to. He says -
'You look at the graveyards; that tells the tale. Trees won't grow
worth chucks in a Cincinnati graveyard, but in a Sent Louis graveyard
they grow upwards of eight hundred foot high.
