ng down in the shade, past the foot of the island dead still--never
saying a word.

CHAPTER XII

It must 'a' been close on to one o'clock when we got below the island
at last, and the raft did seem to go mighty slow. If a boat was to
come along we was going to take to the canoe and break for the
Illinois shore; and it was well a boat didn't come, for we hadn't ever
thought to put the gun in the canoe, or a fishing-line, or anything to
eat. We was in ruther too much of a sweat to think of so many things.
It warn't good judgment to put _everything_ on the raft.

If the men went to the island I just expect they found the camp-fire I
built, and watched it all night for Jim to come. Anyways, they stayed
away from us, and if my building the fire never fooled them it warn't
no fault of mine. I played it as low down on them as I could.

When the first streak of day began to show we tied up to a towhead in
a big bend on the Illinois side, and hacked off cottonwood branches
with the hatchet, and covered up the raft with them so she looked like
there had been a cave-in in the bank there. A towhead is a sand-bar
that has cottonwoods on it as thick as harrow-teeth.

We had mountains on the Missouri shore and heavy timber on the
Illinois side, and the channel was down the Missouri shore at that
place, so we warn't afraid of anybody running across us. We laid there
all day, and watched the rafts and steamboats spin down the Missouri
shore, and up-bound steamboats fight the big river in the middle. I
told Jim all about the time I had jabbering with that woman; and Jim
said she was a smart one, and if she was to start after us herself she
wouldn't set down and watch a camp-fire--no, sir, she'd fetch a dog.
Well, then, I said, why couldn't she tell her husband to fetch a dog?
Jim said he bet she did think of it by the time the men was ready to
start, and he believed they must 'a' gone up-town to get a dog and so
they lost all that time, or else we wouldn't be here on a towhead
sixteen or seventeen mile below the village--no, indeedy, we would be
in that same old town again. So I said I didn't care what was the
reason they didn't get us as long as they didn't.

When it was beginning to come on dark we poked our heads out of the
cottonwood thicket, and looked up and down and across; nothing in
sight; so Jim took up some of the top planks of the raft and built a
snug wigwam to get under in blazing weather and rainy, and to kee