CHAPTER XXXI MOONLIGHT

Skippy waited until Tully was fast asleep that night, then he crept stealthily out of the shanty with the dog skipping and sniffing at his heels. He was careful to close the door softly behind him; he wanted to be alone.

It was a different Skippy that trod those decks, a new and older Skippy, who looked about the lumbering old barge through his father’s eyes. It did not seem possible to him that Skinner could so ruthlessly order him away from the only home he had. Yet he realized that not many hours hence he would not even have that home.

He went forward and, getting to his knees, leaned far over and stared down at the trickling waters of the muddy inlet lapping against the hull. The dog, thinking him to be playing, jumped about with a soft whine to draw his master’s attention.
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Skippy tumbled him about for a while, then climbed down with him into the borrowed kicker that was anchored alongside the barge.

“We’re gonna take one last cruise out and back in the inlet again—see, Mugs? I’ve just gotta see how the Minnie M. Baxter’s gonna look when I think of her afterwards. I don’t want to forget it’s where I lived with two of the best pals I’ll ever have, outside of Pop. Gee, Mugs, maybe it’s silly to feel so over a barge,” he confided to the attentive puppy, “but I gotta feel that it’s sumpin’ I must think a lot of. Every time I’ve visited Pop, he’s asked me how was the Minnie M. Baxter. Just like as if she was a human being, he asked about her! So I love her on accounta my Pop. He’s proud of her because she was so hard to get and because he decided to quit Ol’ Flint and be honest so’s I’d have a better chance.”

He started the kicker after this long confidence and steered it with one hand, putting his free arm about the dog. And as if cherishing the whispered confidences and affection, the animal cuddled close and remained perfectly still while the boat crept out to the mouth of the river.
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As they turned back, a full moon broke through some dark clouds and shone brilliantly down upon the Basin. Skippy looked at the mellow, silver light gleaming over the grouped barges and he gazed in wonder at the fairyland that the moon made of the sordid colony. The dust at once became a shimmering film of silver and the washlines strung from shanty to forward deck contained fluttering bits of laundry that stirred flippantly in the soft night breeze.

Skippy’s heartstrings tightened at the sight of it—he loved it all. His honest nature cried out against the injustice of turning all these people out of their homes. For that is just what it amounted to—no more and no less. Skinner knew that there wasn’t a man in the Basin who could afford to have his barge lifted out of the mud. They would have to face it, he realized—they were people condemned!

He steered the boat farther on until he caught sight of the moonlight gleaming across his own shanty. Its shimmering rays picked out in bold relief the now dulled letters, Minnie M. Baxter, and he thought of a late afternoon when he and his father had looked on those same letters so new and shining, shining in the last brilliant rays of a dying sun.
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He turned away from these reflections with heavy heart only to have his attention drawn to a boat, floating about the bow of the kicker. As he leaned forward to see it better, the dog growled ominously.

Skippy drew back instantly, gasping with horror. He sat stark still for a moment, as cold as ice and unable to take his eyes away from the battered face and body of a man he had seen in robust health but a few hours before.

That man was Beasell, Marty Skinner’s lieutenant, and he appeared lifeless.