CHAPTER XVIII BAD NEWS

Skippy had food and plenty of it during the next month. Big Joe saw to that though it kept him away from the barge many hours at night, hours when he lived in mortal fear that the boy would develop a “bad throat” and be seriously sick before he could get back.

Skippy’s “bad throat” had become a veritable bugaboo to Tully and though he had no definite idea of what it was, the fear of its recurrence stalked every hour that he spent away from the boy. And when he did return he would tiptoe into the silent shanty and up to the boy’s bunk, sighing with relief to find him sleeping quietly. Then, when he had made sure there was no sign of the pinched look and feverish cheek, he would climb into his own bunk with a light on his face that would have surprised his rough comrades.
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Skippy saw this light on Tully’s face one early morning. He saw it from under half-opened lids and it made him glad until he noticed the quick look of concern that passed over the man’s tanned brow.

“What’s up, Big Joe?” he asked anxiously.

“So it’s awake ye be?” Big Joe returned nervously. “Well now I was just lookin’ and seem’ if ye was all right. Sure an’ the weather’s gittin’ cold and all and I got wonderin’ how the throat was. I bought a new stove what’ll give ye lots o’ heat—it’s comin’ in the mornin’.”

“Gee whiz!” Skippy said gratefully, then: “You sorta looked worried.”

Big Joe turned his back and started to undress.

“I’ve got to be tellin’ ye sometime, kid—I—listen....”

“You’ve heard about Pop, huh?” Skippy sat up.

“Yes—they....”

“They what?” said Skippy anxiously.

“They turned down the appeal. But don’t be takin’ on about it, Skippy. Sure an’ next year we’ll be diggin’ up new evidence. Now....”

“I ain’t gonna take on, Big Joe, honest I ain’t,” said Skippy bravely. “On accounta you I ain’t. You been so good—all the money you spent tryin’ to get Pop free. An’ now—well, maybe if I don’t hope about it sumpin’ll happen, sometime.”
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“Sure now that’s bein’ a good kid, takin’ it so aisy like. We’ll be tryin’ agin like I said. Some time Marty Skinner’ll get over his crazy notion that iverybody in Brown’s Basin’s agin him and that Toby did the job. Sure he hates iverybody here so much I hear he’s got Buck Flint to agree to buy the whole inlet. And thin he’ll be drivin’ us squatters out, so he will.”

“But he can’t do that!” Skippy protested indignantly. “He can’t drive me outa the Minnie M. Baxter ’cause it’s Pop’s home—gee, the only home we got. I gotta stay here till—well, when I leave it, I’ll know I ain’t got any hope that he’ll come back.”

“And don’t I be knowin’ how ye feel, kid? But if Skinner’s put it in Buck Flint’s head that the inlet’s a good buy and the deal goes through, he’ll be orderin’ us out and we’ll be likin’ it. Buck ain’t a bad egg, but Skinner’s runnin’ the works and what he says goes, so it does. Now if he tells us to beat it I’m wonderin’ who’ll be towin’ a barge out o’ this mud whin she’s settled. Why, it’d take a derrick, so it would, an’ even then it’d be a chance.”

Skippy was deeply affected by this news. He could not sleep because of it and long after Big Joe was snoring comfortably he rolled and tossed in his bunk. Then, after a time, he thought of what Tully had said about the barges being too deeply settled in the mud to get them out, and he was so curious about it that he got up to see for himself.
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He bundled himself up and slipped out onto the deck in the cold, damp air of an early fall morning. It was not yet dawn but the deep black of night had gone and Brown’s Basin lay silent in a dark gray mist.

Skippy leaned far over aft where the Minnie M. Baxter was settled deepest in the mud. Up forward, the slinking waters of the inlet gurgled plaintively against the keel at high tide. Big Joe was right, he decided with sinking heart; it would take a derrick and more to pull the barge out of her muddy berth.

As he started to step back he noticed a tarpaulin to his right which seemed to be covering some bulky objects. Something that Big Joe had brought aboard, he thought, and curiously he raised one end of it. One glimpse told him enough.
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They were stolen ships’ supplies, things that his father had told him a river pirate could easily dispose of to some unscrupulous ship captain. Skippy knew instantly how they had come there and he turned on his heel and had started back for the shanty when a searchlight suddenly fell full upon him.

He crouched out of its glare and needed but to look hastily up the inlet to see that it was the police boat bearing down upon the Minnie M. Baxter.