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location was a dangerous one, locked between two mighty rivers. With the Ohio on one side and the Mississippi on the other, the city had had to protect itself from innumerable floods and annual high water. Hence the great sea wall built of concrete.
    Abe Foster came to a place where there was a sloping rock wall, which might have been a former steamboat landing. He edged the houseboat in and tied up. Milly had on her good dress, ready to go to town. But Daddy said no, there wasn’t time. The sky had become cloudy and he was afraid of rough weather ahead.
    “I’ll get my rope and supplies at the Boat Store and be right back,” he said. “I want to get down to Wickliffe early. There’s a good harbor at the mouth of Mayfield Creek.”
    “Buy us a book of river maps,” said Mama.
    “Who wants a map?” asked Daddy. “I can’t read it.”
    “Well, I can,” said Mama, “and I like, to know where we’re going.”
    Milly took off her good dress, disappointed. When Daddy came back with the rope, he brought the big yellow book of Lower Mississippi River Maps, put out by the United States Army Engineers. He tossed it into Mama’s lap, and Mama got out her glasses to look at it. Patsy looked, too. Map No. 1 showed Mound City and Cairo. Patsy followed their day’s course with her finger. She found Wickliffe and Mayfield Creek a few miles below.
    Soon the houseboat was moving again, drifting lazily on the current, no power needed. The clouds had lifted a little and the river was still placid. The Fosters passed by a group of shanty-boats, some beached in a grove of cottonwoods and others afloat along the river bank. They came to Cairo Point, where towboats and dozens of barges were tied up. Cairo Point was a towboat terminal. Here barges of coal, grain and minerals were transferred to other routes for continued hauls up or down the Mississippi, Missouri, Illinois or Ohio rivers.
    “Where does the Ohio River end and the Mississippi begin?” asked Patsy. “How can you tell?”
    “The water from the Missouri is yellow and muddy,” said Mama. “It brings a lot of mud with it and dumps it into the Mississippi above St. Louis. The Missouri has always been called the Big Muddy. The Ohio just flows gently into the Mississippi, then gradually the water gets muddier and the current swifter, and you know you are in the Mississippi.”
    The sky grew cloudy again, and they began to notice the change. The river was no longer the placid Ohio. Driftwood sailed past on a speedier current. The wind began to blow up choppy waves. Daddy stayed in the cabin boat behind, controlling the course of the houseboat. He had to steer carefully along the dangerous Wickliffe shore.
    Mama and Patsy kept on studying the river map. Patsy saw that all the islands were numbered, starting at Cairo and going south.
    “I’m going to count all the islands as we go along,” she said.
    “That’ll be a hard job,” said Mama. “Many of them are missing, some are washed away or joined to the mainland. The river keeps changing its banks all the time, but the state lines never change.”
    Daddy seemed to know where he was going without looking at a map. Before long he nosed the boat into a little cove at the mouth of Mayfield Creek, below Wickliffe. Just in time, too. The lines were all made fast and Daddy was washing up on the back porch, when the downpour came. It made a heavy tattoo on the flat tar-paper roof of the houseboat.
    Mama had a pot of coffee on the stove and had started supper. She fixed baked pork and beans, mashed potatoes and iced tea. The houseboat rocked on the waves, but it was snug and cozy inside. It felt just like home.

CHAPTER III
Mayfield Creek
    “B UT I THOUGHT WE’D keep going,” said Patsy, “and not stop till we got to New Orleans.” Mama laughed.
    “Nobody said anything like that.”
    “And here all we did was to cross the river over to Kentucky,” the girl went on.
    “You never can tell what you’ll do on the