Free 6 Miles With Courage by Thomas LaCorte Page B

tops were illuminated by the moon. It is beyond these treetops that he first saw it. There was a towering gush of black smoke rising up from the river in a frightful manner.
    “What could that be?” Ryan said with a puzzled look.
    Then came an unexpected loud shrill of a whistle sending shivers up Ryan’s spine. It was somehow connected to the monstrous cloud but he had no idea what was about to emerge from around the river bend. Any second it would appear.
    He stood frozen with fear as a mechanical pounding and thumping noise began to build and the light of a burning fire lit up the river bend. Whatever was coming around the bend was smoking and on fire. It was whistling and making god-awful noises.
    Around the bend and floating across the top of the water came a fire breathing dragon! Well that’s what Ryan first thought anyway. When the whistle blew he saw the white steam telling him it was a steam boat.
    “ Wow! Will you look at that?” Ryan said, “I wonder if that’s the one Mom and Dad took on the dinner cruise for their anniversary?” 
    It was closing fast on Ryan’s camp and the details of this replica were astonishing. The black smoke was from a genuine coal burning steam generating boiler. The loud noise came from the piston driven and rear centered paddle wheel. The fires burning above the wheel house and on the sides were pine logs in iron baskets used to light-up the river. No level of detail was spared.
    As it approached some of the people became visible. The men in their long coats and top hats and the women in the long frilly dresses were lined up all along the balcony of the tri -level steamer. Inside the dimly lit interior Ryan could hear a bass drum and a brass band.
    The thought of getting their attention crossed Ryan’s mind for only a moment before he let it go. The boat was going the wrong way!
    There was too much noise for anybody to hear him and no dinner boat—with its many passengers—was going to stop in the middle of nowhere, not for him, not for anybody. The only thing he could do was admire it.
    There was a man with a long pole at the bow. He was staring into the water looking for logs and high tree branches. He was shouting things up to the man standing outside the wheel house and he in turn was shouting things to the man inside the wheel house who was steering the boat. There were men with pails of water by the fires.
    As the boat passed directly in front of Ryan’s camp—at a distance of a hundred feet— it looked enormous like a floating club house. It passed with a loud noise but Ryan could hear every word they were saying as they tried to speak above the pulsating engines. Someone said that they were going to be arriving at a landing not far ahead to let a passenger off. In one window there were people dancing and in another window a person was packing clothes into suit cases getting ready to disembark at the landing. Painted down the side of the boat in large letters was its name, “ The Alligator.”
    After the boat passed Ryan watched as the water streamed down the paddlewheel as it churned up the muddy water. The boat having a hull on each side of the paddlewheel gave Ryan an idea. From a distance each hull looked like a log and the paddlewheel reminded him of the feet of a swimmer, kicking in the water.
    “That’s it!” he said, “That’s how I’ll cross the river, with a log under each arm and kicking my feet.” With the initial excitement of the steam boat now gone he set-out to put his plan into action.
    He was so excited he could hardly contain himself. He pranced around the fire looking off into the darkness trying to spot two suitable logs. After a while he settled down by the fire, and after watching the soothing flames for quite some time, he decided it would be far better and much safer to get them in the morning.
    He picked up the backpack to move it aside and felt something pinned to the lining. It was a round metal object.
    Peeling the lining back