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 warnāt 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 wouldnāt set down and watch a camp fireā āno, sir, sheād fetch a dog. Well, then, I said, why couldnāt 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 uptown to get a dog and so they lost all that time, or else we wouldnāt be here on a towhead sixteen or seventeen mile below the villageā āno, indeedy, we would be in that same old town again. So I said I didnāt care what was the reason they didnāt get us as long as they didnāt.
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