# The Popular Magazine/Volume 72/Number 1/The Fight at Boggy Bayou

The Fight at Boggy Bayou
By Harris Dickson Author of “The Hideaway,” “Amiable War Horses,” Etc.
What happened when the Father of Rivers ran amuck— and “Long Grim's” boy let duty prompt his heart.
WHEN Father Mesaseba behaves himself and lies contentedly in bed, he rarely sees a levee. These long and tortuous dikes keep their most respectful distance on either side, yet guard his every twisting and escort his overflows to the Gulf of Mexico. Ages ago—Mesaseba is long, but his memory is longer—ages ago he roamed unfettered from Cairo to the Gulf, until men began erecting their puny ridges. Again and again had he torn them down, but next year found the levees rebuilt, stronger and higher. Not until the spring of 1922 did Mesaseba summon all his power to sweep away these irritating barriers. Up every branch of his many-forked streams went the mobilizing call. “Rise! Rise!” he commanded Sinnemahoning Creek in Pennsylvania. “We'll be ready,” answered Rocky Mountain rivulets, and ice-locked waters of Alberta. Barely in time to resist their simultaneous assault young Furlong B. Grimshaw, Jr., had just completed his embankment across the marshy lands at Boggy Bayou.
At Boggy Bayou there are two lines of defense. The old levee angles outward in front of the new, like the apex of a huge sprawling A, the point of which was so persistently attacked by river currents that engineers decided to abandon it for a stronger bulwark along the cross line of the A. Grimshaw's construction camp crouched behind this cross line—a precise little row of canvas houses with gabled roofs, toy habitations such as children cut from cardboard and set up in a street of make-believe.
The long Southern dusk had scarcely begun to deepen, yet Grimshaw's quarters already showed their light. Beside it, with brown bare arm lying across his desk, the engineer sat in an attitude of utter relaxation. He had finished his big job. The last few tons of dirt had been thrown in. The last gap was closed and leveled up. He was done.
Two years before, when this immaculate city lad had first shown up to work on the levees, it was whispered that he claimed to be a son of the Furlong B. Grimshaw, called “Long Grim” on Wall Street. “Yes,” the upstanding youngster had replied. “That's my father.” Then he said nothing more about it. Neither did anybody else. Fight​ing off the Mississippi River does not encourage idle gossip. For a while the other men wondered why this heir to millions should go splashing around in mud a little deeper than they, who had their bread to earn. But Grimshaw did splash around, most effectively, and had built a thumping good levee.
Against every difficulty and obstacle there stood his embankment. He could look through the window and see it, cleaving the forest like the swath of some gigantic reaper. Grimshaw's work was done. All his energy had gone into the task. With listless hand he now stirred the neglected personal correspondence which lay before him. A metropolitan newspaper fell open, and he jerked himself upright as a girl's familiar face smiled at him from the photogravure section.
“Jessica!” he exclaimed. “What's her picture doing in the papers? Oh, yes. Bridesmaid at Alicia's wedding.”
A queer sense of aloofness took possession of the expatriated New Yorker as he scanned the pictured bridesmaids who surrounded a portrait of the groom, His Grace the Duke of Druidsholm. All of that seemed so far, so very very far away. Vaguely he remembered. Every recent letter from Jess had sizzled with half-read details of this international function at which Mr. Furlong B. Grimshaw, Jr., was scheduled to exhibit himself as a groomsman. Groomsman at a duke's wedding! He could remember the time when that might seem the proper end and aim of human ambition. But now his thoughts were in the dirt, of the earth earthy. He dreamed of nothing but levees, and beating the Mississippi River. So he sat smiling and shaking his head when the foreman's excited voice called out:
“Cap'n Grimshaw! Oh, cap! Oh, cap!”
“What is it, Mr. Barlow?” Furlong sprang up to answer an oldish-looking man who thrust in his bristled beard at the doorway.
“Front levee's caving! At the p'int!”
Together they went bounding up the steep embankment and ran toward the front. Furlong outstripping the even longer-legged Barlow. At the very apex of the A, where ravenous currents dug and tore, they found that one great section of dirt had already sloughed off, while a larger slice hung like a precarious avalanche, ready to slide into the river.
“This levee's gone, cap!” Old Barlow spoke abruptly. “Better cut her before the overflow gets any higher.”
Of course their outer skirmish line could be held for a few days longer, but when it eventually gave way the floods might have risen ten or fifteen feet, and the resulting crevasse become a resistless torrent. As Barlow suggested, it were wiser to let the water in more slowly. Furlong's every muscle tightened at the inevitable test, for Mesaseba would now rage against the fresh dirt of his untried levee.
“Very good, Mr. Barlow,” he decided. “We'll cut this outer lime right here. I'll go and call out the men. Mr. Barlow, we are going to have a hard fight.”
“I know it, sir.”
The official steamer of the Mississippi River Commission plowed southward through the turbid waters, bearing a committee of senators and congressmen to inspect the levee system. On its forward deck Miss Jessica Faison glanced up languidly from her magazine, quite unimpressed by the terrible grandeur of Father Mesaseba at flood height, or by the fact that a presidential possibility was bending over her chair.
“Frankly, senator,” she admitted, “I'm bored stiff.”
Yet Jessica looked so provokingly pretty, and her father, old Joshua K. Faison, was so influential in party councils, that Senator Rutherford showed no annoyance.
“Suppose we play bridge,” he suggested.
“I'm fed up on bridge.” The girl shrugged her ennuied shoulders. “I don't want to do anything except to catch Furlong before he has time to get mulish, and rush him back to New York.”
“Only a few more hours, Jessica; a few more hours. It's all arranged.” The senator's butter-smooth voice tried to pacify her. “We reach Boggy Bayou at noon. I have already had Colonel Clancy telephone Furlong to meet our boat. We will take him on board, and the three of us will catch a fast train out of New Orleans on Saturday night.”
“Saturday night? No, siree! Furlong must reach New York in full time for the wedding.” From between the pages of her magazine, Miss Faison produced an A. & ​V. time-table, and pointed to the positively underscored express. “I'm not going to New Orleans. We catch this train. Out of Vicksburg. To-morrow night.”
As a party leader, accustomed to give orders, Senator Rutherford was not keen on taking such dictation. But that was the only way to get along with Miss Jessica Faison, who had the sweetest possible disposition provided she was allowed to do precisely as she pleased. Which Jessica invariably did, whether she were allowed or no. So the senator agreed. It seemed manifestly for the good of his party that he should make fair weather with old Joshua K. Faison, and kill two birds with one stone by placing Long Grim under personal obligations—two patriotic paymasters who were relied upon to finance the Rutherford presidential boom. Being a friend of both families he knew all about young Furlong's engagement to Jessica, and how everybody hated to see the lad buried in the mud of a Mississippi levee, when he should be playing his proper rôle in New York as son to the famous financier. Consequently Rutherford saw his opportunity when the River Commission invited these congressmen to inspect their levees during the high water. The commission needed appropriations for flood control; the possibility needed financial backing for his boom; their hands played well together, and Jessica had jumped at the idea of bringing Furlong home.
To make sure that their prodigal would return like a most obedient lamb, Rutherford had brought a letter of recall bearing Long Grim's potent autograph, together with an order from the war department accepting the resignation of Assistant Engineer Grimshaw, to take effect at once. The Rutherford credentials were horse high, bull strong and pig tight.
If her kidnaping could have been accomplished in a whirl, like motoring up to Tarrytown and restoring Furlong to his normal habitat, Jessica would have dashingly carried off the coup. But she had not reckoned upon these interminable stretches of the Mississippi. Why did the devil build this river so long, when all the other bridesmaids were having such a thrilling time with their dresses? Being penned up with these politicians fatigued her. They couldn't talk about the Duke of Druidsholm, but gabbled of levees and revetments and appropriations; or huddled at a table with their heads over a map, while Colonel Clancy, president of the commission, demonstrated just how these tiresome overflows might be prevented. Why make so much fuss about a little water? When these people got wet, why couldn't they run up to New York and really see something? It might civilize them. Anyway, Jessica got bored at the levee talk that went on endlessly, endlessly.
“Senator,” she dismissed him with a weary smile, “you don't have to amuse me. I'll sit here and read, or watch the river.”
In spite of herself there was something about this river that held her, a power, a Majesty, a mystery that kept Jessica wondering what new vistas might unfold when their boat rounded the next bend. Unconsciously she caught what desert dwellers call “the horizon fever,” the craving desire to see what lies beyond the next ridge.
So for two hours she sat quiet. Then it jarred upon her when the congressional committee poured themselves through the doorway and Colonel Clancy announced:
“All ashore at Boggy Bayou! Now, Miss Faison, I'll show you a bully bit of levee construction.”
“How exciting.” Jess never blinked a lash to betray more than a polite attention.
“We tie up here for two hours,” the colonel added.
“Two hours?” Jessica whispered to Rutherford. “Will that give us time to get Furlong?”
“Plenty. Any fool should be glad to escape from this hole in two minutes.”
Boggy Bayou! This was the paradise from which no allurement could drag her fiancé! Boggy Bayou! With a glance Miss Faison dismissed its dreary shores. Under a slow bell their pilot was steering straight into a forest that grew on what appeared to be solid ground. The boat did not stop, and every passenger gasped as it went crashing among the treetops, to go plunging through a thicket of overflowed willows. Beyond the willow thicket they emerged into an open basin and tied up against a broken levee. This was the same old levee that Grimshaw had cut, its point, the apex of the A, having now caved into the river, while swirling waters beat against the new line.
At last! Here she was! The self-contained Miss Faison tingled with anticipation and ran down to the lower deck. She would be first to spring ashore and give Furlong ​the surprise of his life. But Furlong wasn't there. Nobody was there, nothing except one lone snag standing above the flood, and one lone girl standing on the deck of a shanty boat. The snag wasn't Furlong, and the girl wasn't Furlong. They were of equal indifference to Jessica.
A dingy little sun-blistered shanty boat lay moored against the levee, nearly opposite their big white steamer, and from its deck the native girl stared upward, stared at this sudden apparition of a goddess in white.
Disappointed, Jessica, with every eye on watch for her fiancé, never glanced again at the fisher girl, for Colonel Clancy was saying:
“Sorry, gentlemen. I cannot understand why Mr. Grimshaw isn't here. Come, Miss Faison.” He took Jessica by the arm and led her down the stage plank.
In single file the statesmen followed their host along a narrow path on top of the nearly submerged levee, until Colonel Clancy passed a clump of trees that obscured his view to the left. Abruptly he stopped and pointed, with the startled exclamation:
“Look! Look! Something's happened. Pardon me.” And, brushing past Miss Faison, the officer began to run.
For several moments his guests stood where he left them, gazing at a tugboat towing a barge. Nothing unusual in that. A more distant barge hugged the main line of levee. And there they saw no cause for alarm, but Colonel Clancy was running in that direction. Something must be wrong. Then everybody ran after Clancy, one behind the other, like geese.
Far ahead of the congressional committee; Jessica sped along the levee which barely showed its crest above water, like a strip of carpet lying flat upon the floor. The ridge was less than five feet wide, and she laughed to herself at the dizzy sensation of dancing along a tight rope. Presently this semisubmerged ridge joined a higher embankment—the new line of levee which Furlong had just completed. Jessica scrambled up, whirled to her left, and raced south, with Clancy holding his lead of a hundred yards.
Breathlessly she ran. The yellow river bubbled on her left. On her right she passed a deserted camp, a pretty little camp, but empty. No human creature remained. Beyond the camp she saw a barge lying beside the levee, with men filing on and filing off again, like a string of ants, each carrying a bag upon his shoulder. They seemed to be in a frenzy. Why were these people so hysterical? The levee wasn't breaking. It stood eight feet above the flood, and felt solid as a rock beneath her feet. What could be wrong? And where was Furlong? Jessica sprinted forward and overtook Clancy, just as the colonel caught a laborer by his arm and asked: “What's the trouble?”
“Hell of a sand boil,” the man answered, broke loose from Colonel Clancy and went running down the steep slope with his sack.
“What did he say, colonel? What did he say?” In turn Jessica caught the colonel's arm; in turn he jerked loose, as the laborer had done, and also ran down the declivity.
Jessica stood on the levee's crest, with her back to the river, watching Colonel Clancy. Far below her, at the base of the slope, dozens of frantic men were splashing about in water from what seemed to be a geyser which spouted up a stream about four feet high. That was all. Pshaw! Such trivialities failed to sidetrack the single-minded Jessica. With perfect composure she turned to Senator Rutherford, who had come up, sweating and breathing hard.
“Senator,” she urged him, “you must get hold of Furlong at once. He may need a little time to pack.”
“Yes.” Rutherford mopped off the sweat. “But where can I find him?”
“Ask one of these men.”
There were plenty of men to ask, men rushing in every direction, white men and black men, crowding on to the barge which lay moored against the levee, and hurrying off again, each with his sack of dirt upon his shoulder. None of them had time to answer questions. They were busy. Neither a lady in white nor a presidential possibility could distract their attention from that spout of water below. This water was bubbling up on the land side, at the base of the levee; and there every man rushed to drop his sack.
Nobody answered their questions about Mr. Grimshaw, so Jessica and Senator Rutherford scanned each face in the file of passing sack bearers; they peered over the gunwale of the barge at every white man who was shoveling sand into the bags. Furlong was not there. Together they turned to see if he might be among those amphibious crea​tures at the base of the levee. Neither Rutherford nor Jessica disturbed themselves by curiosity as to why a lot of crazy people should be floundering about in the edges of a shallow lake—a lake that was a tangle of brushwood and rotting logs and matted vines. Unconcerned with them, Jessica's eye passed over a dripping figure that waded out from,the water, and came striding toward her, up the levee's slope. His was not the kind of figure that any lady should look at. He drew near, about to pass. She was only conscious of hearing the water that sloshed in his boots, and he might have got by unnoticed if she had not recognized a familiar something in his gait. She looked straight at him, and gasped:
“Furlong!”
The smeary-faced creature halted and stared incredulously, then said:
“Jess? What are you doing here?”
“I might ask what you are doing?”
From Furlong's appearance he might have been wallowing in mire; he glanced at his own muddy hand, and did not offer it. Black paste clotted upon his flannel shirt; his face was streaked with mud, and water exuded from him like a sponge. Jessica made no effort to veil her disgust as she suggested:
“Won't you speak to Senator Rutherford?”
“How are you, senator?” The young man spoke mechanically, being wholly preoccupied, not thinking about Rutherford nor looking at him. His eyes turned back to the menace of the geyser. He muttered a few words and commenced to run, when Jessica gripped his elbow.
“Wait, Furlong. Don't be in such a rush. We came down with the commission, especially to get you, and——”
“Can't talk about it now. I've got to telephone for help.”
“But you must get ready to leave,” she persisted. “You are going home with us. In two hours.”
Furlong made no answer; he only tried to break loose and Jessica gave him a shake. “You are going back to New York. To the wedding.”
“Oh, yes. Alicia's wedding. That's all right. I have declined. They won't be expecting me.”
“Declined?” Jessica dropped his arm, amazed by this astounding dementia in the bristle-bearded Furlong, with the sunken cheeks, and the haggard weariness of a man who has not slept.
“Read this, Furlong,” the senator interposed. “Here's a letter from your father.”
Furlong stuffed the letter into his pocket without a glance.
“Read it.” The senator held him fast.
“Not now. Let me go.”
“But you must hurry to catch our boat.”
“No. I've got to stay here.” Furlong kept pulling back while the senator clung to him and explained:
“But, my dear boy, you need not stay here. The war department has relieved you from duty.”
Furlong whirled and confronted Rutherford with intense gray eyes as he repeated: “The war department has relieved me? From this work?”
“Yes. To take effect at once.”
The boy's head drooped, then came up with a defiant snap.
“By whose orders?” he demanded. “Upon what charges?”
“No charges were filed against you. At my request you have been honorably relieved—that is, when your resignation is sent in.”
“Oh! That's the way of it?” The color surged back into Furlong's face. “You mean if I resign?”
“Yes,” the influential personage assured him. “I've settled everything with the department.”
“Then unsettle it! Can't you see that my levee's about to break?”
“But your father! The duke's wedding!”
“Damn the duke's wedding!”
By one powerful wrench the exasperated engineer jerked loose and went running toward his camp, while Jessica stood watching Rutherford trot behind him, until both men disappeared among those queer little canvas houses.
After she had traveled two thousand miles to see him, her fiancé couldn't spare two minutes. Oh, well! Fini! She'd come to the end of that. Quite calmly Miss Faison glanced about her. Appearances must be preserved. At the base of the levee she saw that their congressional party had assembled around Colonel Clancy, so she sauntered down the slope, and nobody listened with more rapt attention while Clancy explained the nature of a sand boil.
“You will observe, gentlemen,” he said, pointing upward, “that this levee is excep​tionally high, with a base of more than three hundred feet, and is constructed across the bed of an ancient lake. Its foundations may rest upon masses of rotted driftwood, or upon a sand bar—we do not know. Tremendous pressure from the river outside has forced this stream to flow underneath our embankment, and to bubble up inside like a spring.”
“Isn't that dangerous?” queried Senator Conway.
“Dangerous?” Clancy lowered his tone to avoid discouraging the workers. “It is tearing out the interior of Grimshaw's levee, and unless he stops it, quick, the whole embankment must collapse.”
In spite of her pretended obsession by the sand boil, Jessica did not fail to see Furlong when he came rushing back, with Senator Rutherford just behind him. Rutherford had been three times defeated before he landed in the United States Senate—the kind of man who never lets go. But Furlong was intent upon his job, and brushed off presidential possibilities as a cow shakes off a swarm of gnats. The senator galled his flank until he waded into waist-deep water, and left Rutherford stranded at the edge.
“Brace up, boys!” Furlong shouted cheerily. “Help's coming. Pass me those sacks.”
The congressional committee drew nearer to watch every movement of the young engineer, who began laying his sandbags under water, in a ring around the boil. After marking out a circle he summoned his foreman.
“Here, Mr. Barlow, take Ellis and build your second ring—outside of this. Lay 'em close.”
While Miss Faison realized the absurdity of Furlong B. Grimshaw, Jr., dabbling in this messy mud, yet she felt a thrill to see how blindly men obeyed him. Human authority could not be more despotic.
Suddenly everybody stopped. No man spoke. Workers halted in their tracks, listening to a sputter and choking of the geyser. For one harrowing instant its flow had really ceased; then it belched up a stump, and gushed out again with double force. The watchers stood paralyzed until Furlong's sharp command aroused them:
“Quick! Four of you! Get in! Throw out this stump. Good! Now more bags. More bags! Jenkins, you and Bradley help lay them.”
Five men were now placing the sandbags and results began to show, like a coral atoll built up by insects that toil beneath the waves. As tier upon tier was added, a hollow tower arose from the bottom, encircling the geyser whose pent-up waters skimmed over its top.
“Colonel, what's that for?” a congressman inquired.
“He's confining the flow.” Clancy nodded approval. “By forcing a column of water to rise inside his levee, Grimshaw counterbalances the weight of the river outside. That checks the underground current, and retards internal caving.”
The puzzled lawmakers were struggling to comprehend this application of a familiar hydraulic principle when Grimshaw gave his abrupt order: “Three men! Quick! Jump on these sacks. Tramp 'em.”
He gave the command so curtly that the nearest three, a negro, a white boy, and Colonel Clancy himself, very promptly obeyed. They were the nearest three. Nobody smiled, not even Jessica, as the heavyweight officer went splashing round and round the ring like a well-trained circus horse.
“Tramp 'em tight!” Furlong emphasized the order, then laughed as he recognized his superior. “Oh! That's you, Colonel Clancy? Sorry I couldn't meet your steamer, but I'm busy.”
“So'm I,” the colonel grinned.
By dint of concerted effort their circular dam of sandbags had now grown shoulder high, and become almost impervious. Flow from the boil was perceptibly checked, and a clearer stream brought far less mud. Which meant that the internal erosion was less.
“Bully!” Furlong expressed his satisfaction. “Now, boys, I can leave you for a while. We've mighty near stopped the caving.”
When the drenched engineer waded out, Senator Rutherford maneuvered into position on his right flank, just as one of the sack bearers fell and dropped a bag. The man must have hurt himself against a stump, for he rolled over and did not rise.
“Pick up that bag!” Furlong gave the nearest man a shove. This bystander happened to be Senator Rutherford, who expected no violence to his person, when Furlong's powerful impetus sent him toppling into waist-deep water. Senators are not immune, and the engineer never glanced at ​his face as he repeated: “Pick that up! Put it there!”
Before the presidential possibility realized it, he found himself in the picturesque attitude of placing a bag on the ring that circled the sand boil, while his friends burst into applause.
“One moment, senator. Hold your pose.” The Associated Press reporter chuckled as he snapped his camera. “There! 'Our Next President Saving a Levee.' That ought to catch the Southern delegates.”
Their hilarity rasped on Jessica until she turned away and joined two senators who went climbing upward to observe the method of filling sacks.
Thick as men could be jammed together on the barge, whites and negroes worked side by side, shoveling sand into bags that other men immediately snatched away. Every shoveler had his helper, except one tall, thin, white-haired old gentleman who kept trying to hold open his sack with one hand, while he fumbled at a shovel with the other, making such a mess that the irritated Jessica squirmed as she eyed his awkwardness. Like her competent father she detested inefficient people.
Sack bearers filed on and filed off in a never-ending procession. They jostled her and didn't apologize. Dry dust blew into her face; black mud spattered the whiteness of her shoes, and sweaty smells offended the universe. The sun roasted Jessica outside, and she boiled within, furious at Furlong. That puttering old chap kept spilling sand on the floor until she couldn't keep her hands
“Allow me.” Jessica spoke peremptorily and caught the sack. “I'll hold this bag myself.”
“Oh. Thank you. I am very grateful.”
The courtly voice surprised her; it was so gentle, so deliciously modulated by soft inflections of the Southern speech. His slender fingers were rubbed raw with blisters; gray hair dabbled about his forehead; yet he stuck to his job like a gamecock—and Jessica admired grit. She felt rebuked, and no child of Joshua K. Faison ever made halfway amends. Old Josh himself always went the whole hog, or none. So after holding his second bag to be filled, Jessica rose from her knees and said positively: “Now, it's my turn.”
“Oh, no, my dear—you cannot do this.”
“I can.”
“But,” he protested, “you are a lady, and you——”
“And a long-distance swimmer, and a tennis champion. Just watch me qualify in this sack-filling tournament.”
Jessica always got what she wanted, and rarely wanted what she got. This time it was a long-handled shovel, with brawny blacks to set the pace.
“Queer,” the old gentleman looked up and mused aloud. “I have never seen you before. And surely I could not have forgotten.”
At his sincere tribute the girl laughed genuinely, resting on her shovel to confide: “We came on the commission steamer. I live in New York. I'm Jessica.”
“Jessica. Jessica.” He pronounced the syllables most exquisitely. “'In such a night did pretty Jessica——' Yes, yes, dear, the name suits you well. And you live in New York? People are so kind. Every stranger helps us during the high water.”
“Where do you live?” She kept him talking, just to hear the stately music of his tones.
“At Brookfield House.” His withered finger pointed. “You can see the gable—behind those trees. I'm Mr. Brookfield. It's a comfortable old place, and if this levee breaks we will be washed away.”
“This levee isn't going to break. We won't let it.”
In her wrath at Furlong, Jessica felt that she must do something; and she'd found her job, got interested in the old man, and stuffed bag after bag like Christmas stockings. When people were fighting to hold their levees such incongruous things happened that nobody noticed the stranger girl in white, handling her shovel like a man. Her gloves, thrown aside, were trampled in the sand. With a midday sun glittering down upon the river, it was hot work. Whew! She passed a grimy hand across her face, and Mr. Brookfield smiled at the smudge.
“Never mind a little dirt,” he said. “My daughters are coming presently to bring coffee for these men. You shall go home with us to wash your face and have dinner. That is, if we get a chance. Everybody works at night to save a levee.”
“Then it's all night for us,” she answered sturdily. “We're no quitters.”
The city girl shoveled manfully, and was having a very chummy time with her an​tique planter when somebody cried out from beside their barge.
“Levee's breaking! Levee's breaking!” a cry that stayed every hand, and stilled the throbbing of every heart.
“Levee's breaking!”
At that appalling shout their organized forces became a mob; the clocklike machine fell apart, while terrified men dropped everything and rushed to view the calamity. Whites and blacks came bounding up the slope. Some ran for the woods. Others stopped them. Mr. Brookfield looked over the gunwale, and his face went even paler as he saw what had occurred. To Jessica it seemed a very tiny crack, an almost imperceptible fissure that had opened on the levee's crest. But to an experienced eye it showed that the interior of their levee had caved. Its water-soaked foundations were melting—possibly from the sand boil—and the crown must fall. Then those mountainous waters would go roaring through the crevasse and overwhelm the lands.
Among the panicky mass that surged round the fissure, Jessica caught sight of Furlong. Her eyes met his. For the first time, and subconsciously, she began to understand. He had looked just like that on the night when he came home from France, and with shining eyes had told her what his comrades had accomplished. This huge embankment was Furlong's work, his accomplishment; it must mot be destroyed. The fullness of it all, the thrill of it came to Jessica, the sense of being alive, being a part of something real, and a glorious pride in Furlong's manhood when he raised his hand and shouted: “Listen, men!”
Every voice hushed; all eyes looked to him for guidance and for courage.
“Listen, men! We are going to hold this levee. Back to your places.”
Jessica's grip tightened on Mr. Brookfield's arm as she witnessed a marvel. By the power of one soul unafraid, out of panic came assurance, out of chaos came order. Magically the scattered parts of their machine fell together; the same file of sack bearers went trudging down the hill, and shovels grated methodically om the barge's floor.
“Colonel Clancy!” Furlong wheeled upon his superior, and Jessica heard him speak in a rush. “Kerrigan's quarter boat lies three miles below: us, on the other side. I need it here, with every foot of lumber, every sack and every man. Your steamer must go get it. If Kerrigan's tug is available he can do the towing, and you need not return. Hurry, colonel.”
Between these two men who realized the extremity of peril, there were no petty punctilios of rank, and very few words, before Clancy understood what was wanted, and waved for his guests to follow.
“All my crowd to the boat,” his big voice rose. “Everybody aboard. Where is Miss Faison?”
“Here!” Jessica answered roll call, then laid her lips close to Mr. Brookfield's ear and promised, “Never mind what he says. I'm coming back. Don't let anybody else have my job.”
From the barge to the levee the gangplanks were jammed with men. Impatient Jessica couldn't wait her turn, but planted a foot on the barge's gunwale and leaped for shore. It was a broader jump than she thought. Tottering, she gained the levee's brink where Furlong threw an arm around her, only for a moment, one of those luminous moments that make all things clear.
“I'm sorry, Jess,” he whispered. “When you first came, I——”
“Don't worry about me. I understand you—now.” Her eyes were all ashine with the joy of comprehension as she left Furlong to his task, and ran.
In the swiftness of her flight, Jessica distanced a field of puffing senators, and left the long-legged congressmen far behind her. Two dense black columns were already pouring upward from the steamer's smokestacks. She sprang aboard, raced through the cabin, flung a few things into her trunk, and had slammed down the lid when she heard Colonel Clancy give the order, “Get under way.”
A bell jangled. Deck hands were pulling in their stage plank; and before anybody could stop her, before anybody knew what she meant to do, a white figure flashed along the lower deck and Jessica leaped ashore.
“Oh, colonel! Colonel Clancy!” she yelled back. “Please throw down my trunk—little black trunk. In my stateroom.”
“Get aboard, Miss Faison!” the colonel ordered. “We are leaving.”
“Go on,” she answered. “Throw down my trunk.”
Wheels began to revolve, and the steamer was trembling when Senator Rutherford first sighted Jessica standing on the levee. He leaned over the guards and beckoned wildly.
​“Come back, Jessica. Come back. You'll get left.”
“I'm already left. Make the porter hurry with my trunk.”
“Then I'll have to get off too.”
“Suit yourself,” she laughed.
“What shall I do?” The senator appealed to Colonel Clancy.
“Do something,” the officer replied. “Get off. Or stay aboard. Do it now.”
Rutherford couldn't leave the daughter of so important a constituent as Joshua K. Faison. He turned and went running through the cabin. Along the carpeted floor to stateroom No. 5, a presidential possibility left his trail of muddy tracks, grabbed a suit case, toilet articles, pajamas, trousers, and dry shoes. Rushing back with both arms full, he spilled socks and toothbrushes and razor strops; he stumbled down the stairway, and leaped onto the levee beside Jessica's trunk. There the steamer left him.
It never pays a presidential possibility to get riled. He is supposed to hold his temper under any and all circumstances. That's what makes him possible. One of his dry shoes dropped into the water. He fished it out with dignity and decorum. Then the girl laughed.
“Jessica,” he choked as he demanded, “what do you mean by such an infernal caper?”
From behind a grimy window of the shanty boat Elvira Huckens eyed the curious behavior of these city folks. It tickled Elvira to see how grittily that gal toted her own skillet, stood square up to the huffy man and told him in his teeth, “I'm going to stay here and see this thing through.”
Senator Rutherford had twice stampeded a national convention, yet for all his fiery eloquence poured upon her, he failed to budge Miss Faison.
“It's done now,” she said calmly. “Help me with this trunk.”
Help her with a trunk? Help her where? There was no taxi, no baggage wagon. With both arms full, Rutherford glared at the heavy trunk, glanced at the long hot levee, and mopped his face.
“Never mind!” Jessica snapped. “Don't trouble yourself. I'll get what I want, right here.”
Like a terrier scratching for rats the girl burrowed into her trunk, throwing out lingerie and fripperies behind her, until she dug up a pair of riding breeches, strong boots, and a shirt.
“There! That's all I need.” She had abandoned her rifled trunk and started toward the main levee, when Elvira's voice warned her from within the shanty boat:
“Better not leave sech a scatteration o' yo' things,” and Jessica recognized the same girl that she had noticed when their steamer first tied up.
“Thank you. They'll be safe,” she answered.
“Dunno.” Elvira appeared on deck, shaking her head. “Water riz nigh two foot yistiddy. By night it's liable to run plumb over the top o' this here levee.”
“Couldn't you let me throw my clothes on your boat?”
“Reckin so.”
In a jumble the city girl raked up her belongings, like armfuls of hay, and tossed them aboard the fisher craft, while Elvira's gingham figure moved down the gangplank to the levee.
“Mebbe you wants me to take keer o' yo' trunk?” she questioned.
“Oh! If you would! Thanks. And please let me go into your boat and change my clothes—please!”
“You're more'n welcome.”
The shanty boat's dingy interior reeked of fish and tar as Jessica bent low to enter. There she tossed her hat on a bunk, stepped out of her draggled skirt, then sat down and stripped off shoes and stockings.
“Would you care to have these clothes? And the hat?” she inquired sweetly. “I'm sorry they are so muddy.”
“I mought buy yo' hat,” Elvira considered the purchase. “But this here skirt's too all-fired skimpy. An' white stockings makes me feel too naked.”
After Jessica had made her change into a tan-colored shirt, riding breeches of Bedford cord, boots and belt, she stood erect before Elvira, the amazed and shocked Elvira.
“You ain't aimin' to wear them pants?” The fisher girl doubted her own bulging eyes,
“Certainly. Skirts get in my way.”
“They shows yo' legs scan'alous plain.”
“Oh! Do they? But those sacks must be filled, and I can't work in a dress.”
Before Miss Faison bounded away she snatched up a silver mirror from her trunk, and gave it to Elvira with such a smile of thanks that the fisher girl accepted both. Then Jessica, in breeches, went racing along ​the levee while Elvira commented to herself, “Gee! Them city gals sho do ack perculiar.”
The night of a thousand hours had passed, a night of toil, of anxiety and of dread. Dawn broadened upon a waste of ravening waters; the brilliant Southern stars grew dim, and a file of ghostly men took shape again, men who all night long had climbed up and down the levee's slope, bearing sandbags from the barge.
All night long this procession had marched in front of Jessica, snatching up her sacks faster than she could fill them. On, on they moved, one phantom giving place to another—another. Over the levee's rim, out of the swamp they came; back into the swamp they vanished, to come and come again. Those vast black spaces beyond the embankment seemed peopled by ever-tramping specters of the damned, devouring sacks, sacks, sacks, more sacks, more sacks, more sacks. All night long the girl in brown breeches had knelt on the barge's floor, her sleeves rolled up and white arms bare. Sleepily she held each sack's mouth gaping open for the shovel, and struggled to keep her head from nodding. Mr. Brookfield had succumbed to utter weariness and slept on a pile of empty bags, while grouchy Rutherford still glared at her grumpily from his seat upon a nail keg.
Suddenly the girl's head lifted with a jerk, as out of the monotonous tramping she recognized a step, Furlong's step, that through the slaving hours she had come to listen for. Many times had Furlong looked in upon her, as the tireless engineer looked in upon everybody else, with a cheery nod and a hand that ever so lightly touched her shoulder.
“Well?” She glanced up.
“We've saved our levee.” He sank on a sandbag, and she saw the exhaustion that he concealed from others.
“I'm so thankful!” Jessica answered fervently
“So am I—for the sake of these indomitable people. But, Jess, you are worn out.”
“No such thing,” with the same little toss of the same little stubborn head.
“I just wanted to sit down here and talk with you a minute—we may not have another minute for a month. Listen, Jessica, you and the senator are leaving here at once and——”
“No, we are not.”
“Yes, you are. Mr. Brookfield's car will put you in Vicksburg by ten o'clock, to rejoin the boat.”
“But I don't want to rejoin the boat.” She shook her head. “I want to stay here, with you, until this water goes down.”
“No, Jess; that's not fair to you, or to dad. My work here is done when this levee is absolutely safe. Then I'll come back to New York. You and the senator are starting now, in five minutes. All right, senator.” He roused the sleeper. 'We are ready.”
Through the mists of early morning two shadowy brown figures walked side by side along the crest of the levee at Boggy Bayou. They seemed to be men. Both wore breeches. Both were muddy, and happy. They were leaving the barge and the sack bearers behind. Ahead of them, somewhere in the gloom, an automobile kept honking. At their heels limped a presidential possibility with his gripsack.
“Here's our car, senator.” Furlong helped Rutherford into the auto, keeping Jessica beside him to the very last.
“Now don't forget, Jess,” he impressed it upon her. “Tell Colonel Clancy what's happened here. Tell him that when the levee began to cave we built our bulkheads across the top, inside and out, filling in between with gravel. It's standing firm. And the flow from the sand boil is reduced to almost nothing.”
Then ex-Major Grimshaw of the A. E. F. stepped back a pace and smiled as he touched his hat brim in mock salute:
“Attention, Courier Faison! You shall bear the news of victory. Report to Colonel Clancy that we have plenty of material, with twelve hundred well-organized men. And by the grace of God we'll hold this line.”
The trim brown figure stood before him very stiffly until he whispered: “Good-by, Jess. I'm sorry you traveled such a distance for this unsatisfactory visit.”
“Unsatisfactory? Oh, Furlong, can't you see how happy I am? And how proud of you? I never loved you in New York, not as I love you—now.”
Contrary to all regulations ex-Major Grimshaw half smothered his courier, and with most unmilitary salutes sent the moist-eyed Jessica speeding on her way.
“Oh, Jess,” he shouted after her, “I won't forget to send your trunk.”
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1946, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 77 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse