“Steamboat comin’,” remarked Abe. A long, mournful whistle-blast came up the river, and they saw a man, at work in a stump-filled clearing, suddenly drop his plow handles and run down to the shore. He leaped in the air, waving his hat frantically as the tall stacks and shining upper works of the craft appeared around the bend. His horses eyed the approaching monster with alarm, snorted, reared, and would have dashed off if the plow had not buried itself and anchored them. The steamer passed within a dozen yards of the flatboat and they read her name, _Amazon_, in gilded letters across her paddle-boxes. The big wheels thrashed and churned with a mighty uproar as the vessel forced her way up against the current at all of four or five miles an hour. The foamy wake that rolled out from her paddle-wheels caught the _Katy Roby_ at an awkward angle and made her pitch like a steer. Bracing his feet, Abe pulled on the oars with all his strength to keep the craft from swinging sidewise. A roar of laughter went up from the deck of the _Amazon_ where two or three of the crew were gathered. “Hold her, bean-pole!” shouted one of them. Abe dropped the oars, picked up a four-foot stick of firewood, and sent it whirling after the steamer, already many yards away. He threw so hard and so true that the billet bounced off the rail a foot from the fellow’s head, and the steamboat men retreated hastily. Abe grinned as he handled the sweeps again. “I’m willin’ to take their wash,” he said, “but not their sass.” That night, when Allen was tuning up his banjo, Tad went aft to lie by the steering-oar with Abe. He looked at the long, easy frame of the backwoods youth and thought of that morning’s wrestling-match. “Jiminy, but you’re strong!” he said, admiringly. Abe shifted his position, looking off at the low stars. “That’s nothin’!” he said gruffly. “I was born big. There’s no credit in that. What I’d like is to be able to sing an’ play the banjo like Allen. I can’t carry a tune any more’n a crow. Or I’d like to go to an academy like you. I bet you’ve read a power o’ books!” Tad was truthful. “Not such a terrible lot,” he said. “They’ve got a whole library full at school, but when you have to read them, there’s no fun in it.” “Gee,” murmured Abe, and was silent for a little. Then he turned toward the younger boy, his rugged, homely face serious in the starlight. “I couldn’t git much schoolin’, back whar we lived on Little Pigeon,” he said. “But I’ve read some--books like the Life o’ Washington, an’ the Fourth Reader an’ the Bible, an’ _Æsop’s Fables_, an’ the Laws of Indiana, an’ _Pilgrim’s Progress_, an’ _Robinson Crusoe_, an’ the Almanac. Guess I’ve read about all the books I could borrow from any one ’round Gentryville.