ge that for one minute.

"Don't yell at me!" Jimmy complained. "How can I get Captain Simmons mad
if you get me mad first? Have a heart, will you?"

But Pigtail Anne refused to budge. Even when the _Natchez Belle_ loomed
so close to the shantyboat that it blotted out the sky she continued to
crowd her brother, preventing him from holding up the frog and making
Captain Simmons squirm.

But Jimmy got the newspaper anyway. Captain Simmons had a keen insight
into tomboy psychology, and from the bridge of the _Natchez Belle_ he
could see that Pigtail was making life miserable for Jimmy.

True--Jimmy had no respect for packet boats and deserved a good
trouncing. But what a scrapper the lad was! Never let it be said that in
a struggle between the sexes the men of the river did not stand shoulder
to shoulder.

The paper came sailing over the shining brown water like a white-bellied
buffalo cat shot from a sling.

Pigtail grabbed it before Jimmy could give her a shove. Calmly she
unwrapped it, her chin tilted in bellicose defiance.

As the _Natchez Belle_ dwindled around a lazy, cypress-shadowed bend
Pigtail Anne became a superior being, wrapped in a cosmopolitan aura. A
wide-eyed little girl on a swaying deck, the great outside world rushing
straight toward her from all directions.

Pigtail could take that world in her stride. She liked the fashion page
best, but she was not above clicking her tongue at everything in the
paper.

"Kidnap plot linked to airliner crash killing fifty," she read. "Red Sox
blank Yanks! Congress sits today, vowing vengeance! Million dollar
heiress elopes with a clerk! Court lets dog pick owner! Girl of eight
kills her brother in accidental shooting!"

"I ought to push your face right down in the mud," Jimmy muttered.

"Don't you dare! I've a right to see what's going on in the world!"

"You said the paper was for Uncle Al!"

"It is--when I get finished with it."

Jimmy started to take hold of his sister's wrist and pry the paper from
her clasp. Only started--for as Pigtail wriggled back sunlight fell on a
shadowed part of the paper which drew Jimmy's gaze as sunlight draws
dew.

_Exciting_ wasn't the word for the headline. It seemed to blaze out of
the page at Jimmy as he stared, his chin nudging Pigtail's shoulder.

NEW FLYING MONSTER REPORTED
BLAZING GULF STATE SKIES

Jimmy snatched the paper and backed away from Pigtail, his ey