HE newspaper reports showed undiminished anxiety behind the levees, from Cairo to the Gulf. Everywhere hosts of men were fighting against the peril, which in some places grew more and more imminent, until, as at Reelfoot levee, the crevasse opened the way to disaster from which the people had hoped to protect themselves by enormous expenditure in heaping up banks of earth.
At Reelfoot, Sibley Carruth and Jimmy Veraine had won their way into the news by being first to go through the gap and rescuing the people in the immediate sweep of the torrent released from the main flood. The next day it was recorded that Kalas had requisitioned the river youths’ launch, and enlisted them to carry him down the river just ahead of the flood crest, to give the fighters along the line the benefit of his unrivaled river lore and experience.
Kalas had stopped at Tiptonville to consult with the captain of the National Guard company stationed there; he was spoken of as having stopped at Caruthersville, with the result that certain unsavory saloons had been closed so that honest lives need not be imperiled by the insanities due to liquor.
Knowing that Sibley and Jimmy were with Kalas, the Carruths were able to keep track of their son, through published reports of what the great engineer was doing, they were proud that Sibley’s ability to assume responsibility had won him notice and opportunity. When they were feeling reasonably safe about Sib the following news caused them new uneasiness:
"Mercy!" Mrs. Carruth exclaimed, when Mr. Carruth had read the account aloud, "I’d almost forgotten about Jep and the baby! The idea of those boys trying to take care of a baby, anyhow! You’d think Jep would want to be rid of the little thing. He must be a perfectly dear boy, to want to take care of it! I hope he doesn’t get into any real trouble!"
"I’d better write to Mr. Veraine," Mr. Carruth said thoughtfully. "And I’m not sure but that we’d better go down there and take a hand in that matter ourselves. Why, they’ll run our cabin-boat clear down to New Orleans if we don’t stop them! If I’d been sure about the boat’s being at New Madrid, I’d have gone down there, of course. But, the way things are, I know the New Madrid people don’t want strangers coming in, making more mouths to feed, and more beds to furnish. I wonder where Jep will go."
"I wish we could find out whose baby it is they’ve found. I haven’t heard anything about a baby being missing," Mrs. Carruth observed.
"Oh, there have been a good many children separated from their parents." Mr. Carruth shook his head. "The boys just left the baby to Jep, so they could do rescue work. And Jep won’t give the baby up to any one."
"He’s grown fond of him, taking care of him," said Mrs. Carruth. "It often happens that way. People who take care of babies for parents find they love them as much as the parents do."
Boys were an enigma to Mrs. Carruth. She professed not to understand them at all. Sibley possessed for his mother the attraction not only of a good son, but of a fascinating puzzle, or rebus. How many boys would be interested in Mississippi River Commission Reports, and would pore over the "Summary of Cost" of a revetment, "Cost per Unit Statement," "Material per Unit Expended"?
She had worried a good deal lest Sibley should grow up in ignorance, because he lived on a shanty-boat and attended no school; but she had found time to teach him to read, write, and study. Without urging, he had accumulated an enormous fund of information about the river.
The government workers crossing the river, back and forth, heaving leads and signaling with flags from the banks, sending the tin cans afloat with markers on them, squinting through surveying instruments, measuring caving banks, and making notes in yellow-backed books about everything that was done, seemed to Sibley wonderfully endowed human beings, who were learning to know the Mississippi River, and who would at last shackle the mighty torrent in the service of mankind.
As Sibley talked about these things with his mother, his face would light up at the wonder of some one man’s idea going out to hundreds and thousands of other people, resulting at last in holding a river bend against the encroachments of the sawing current, or in converting the whole current of the upper Mississippi into a force to furnish power for machinery, to run cars, to supply cities with light—as at Keokuk.
"Mamma!" Sibley had asked, "was it an awful man who thought of it first?"