Raymond S. Spears

“ Despite all efforts, crevasses occur and sometimes a mile or so of the levee is washed out, and must be rebuilt, like the break at Reelfoot through which Sibley Carruth and Jimmy Veraine rode to rescue the homesteaders in the Reelfoot Bottoms.
The levee-builders, when the spring tide came booming down, that memorable March, were too few to cope with the flood along the fourteen hundred and sixty-six miles of jeopardized bottom-lands; so sawmills were shut down, farm work was halted, logging-camps were deserted, and all efforts were diverted from private tasks to the common cause. ”

“ And they had to guard against treachery, too, for in times of peril and stress, with fortunes threatened and lives jeopardized, the men on a weakening levee have been known to seek to relieve the strain on their own side of the river, by breaking a strong levee opposite, shoveling through, or even blowing it up with dynamite. ”

“ Not all the workers could be spared for fighting at the levee, however. There must be rescuers to go out into the bottoms, to get those in imminent peril, to carry food to those marooned on house-tops or mounds, or ridges, and to swim or ferry thousands of heads of cattle, hogs, mules, and horses to the highlands. ”

“ There could be no idlers when the year’s income of thousands of square miles depended on the levee holding in the districts, protecting whole counties—the whole geographical division of river-bottoms. ”

“ Thousands of teams of mules and horses were brought, where the ground was firm enough to bear them, while on the levees where the weight of animals might weaken or disturb the top, the broad backs of men carried the burdens of cotton sacks filled with earth, to build up the bank, to stack around the boils, and sipe-holes or leaks and to partition off the areas of slough. ”

“ The property in abandoned houses, and the heaps of household and other goods, the live stock and the other portable property had to be protected against river pirates as well as against destruction by water. ”

“ Sib and Jimmy, are—They went over to the Reelfoot levee. It’s crevassed. They were asked to go there."
"Yes, sir. I understand. Come over to my boat. I’ve a good fire, and it’ll be right warm and comfortable. Stranger, a man cain’t exactly thank anybody—not right!—for this favor. A man thinks more about such things than he can talk."
"You’d have done it for me," Carruth reminded him.
"Yes—likely. River people are apt to carry good news, thataway. Sho! And they landed at New Madrid? ”