Jim and I went to look more closely at a hill I'd seen when I first explored the island.
It was steep and covered with bushes, so it was a hard climb.
Almost at the top, we found a rock cave big enough for Jim to stand up in.
Jim suggested that we put all our gear in the cave and then hide the canoe among the willow branches on the shore.
"If anyone comes to the island," he said, "we can hide in the cave quickly and then no one will ever find us.
Besides," he reminded me, "the little birds said it's going to rain, and the cave will keep our things dry."
I thought this was a good idea, so we did it.
Then we built a fire outside the cave and cooked a fish and cornbread dinner.
We spread our blankets inside the cave for a carpet, and while we were eating dinner in there, it began to thunder and lightning.
The wind howled and the rain poured down, just as Jim had predicted.
"Jim, this is nice," I said. "I wouldn't want to be anywhere but here."
The river kept rising for over a week and finally flooded the banks.
The lower parts of the island were under a meter of water, and we paddled around them in our canoe.
At night, when no one could see us, we went out on the river.
One night, we caught a big lumber raft made of pine logs and hid it by the shore.
Another night, just before dawn, we saw a whole house floating down the river.
At daybreak, we paddled over to it and looked in the window.
We could see some furniture, some clothes hanging, and something that looked like a man lying on the floor.
We called to him, but he didn't move.
"He's not asleep," Jim said. "He's dead. You stay here, and I'll climb in and have a look."
After a minute, he called back to me to say that the man had been shot in the back.
He pulled some rags over him to hide him, and then he let me come in.
I didn't look at the dead man at all.
There were men's and women's clothes in the house, and useful things like candles and candlesticks, a tin cup, and fishing line and hooks.
By the time we piled everything in the canoe, the house had floated a long way down the river.
It took a lot of paddling to get back to the island.
After we got to shore, we carried everything back to our cave.
After breakfast, I wanted to talk about the dead man and how he came to be killed, but Jim didn't want to.
He said it would bring bad luck, and the dead man might even come back and haunt us.
But I couldn't help thinking about him, wondering who he was and why he was murdered.
We looked at the clothes we had taken and found eight dollars in coins sewed into the lining of the coat.
I told Jim that he was wrong to say we'd have bad luck because now we were having good luck.
But Jim just said that the bad luck was still coming. And he was sure right.
A few days later, I went into the cave while Jim was outside.
I found a rattlesnake in there and killed it.
I thought it would be funny to leave the snake curled up on Jim's bed as if it were still alive.
When bedtime came, Jim climbed into bed and gave a yell.
The dead snake's mate had crawled in beside it and had bitten Jim on the foot! I killed it with a stick.
Jim believed in old-fashioned ways to save yourself from a snake's poison.
He said I had to roast the snake and give him a piece of it to eat.
He also told me to make a bracelet from the snake's rattles and tie it around his wrist.
I did that too. I also brought him the whiskey jug to drink from because he was thirsty.
Jim's foot and leg swelled up and stayed that way for four days.
On the fifth day, he began to feel better and the swelling went down.
But Jim warned me, "Handling a snakeskin brings so much bad luck that we probably haven't come to the end of it yet."
The days passed by and the river went down to its normal level again.
I was beginning to get tired of staying on the island.
I wanted to go back to our town and see what was going on.
Jim told me that I should go at night and be very careful.
Then he got the idea that I should dress up as a girl.
I put on a dress and a sunbonnet that we had taken from the floating house.
Then he made me practice walking like a girl.
He said I had to stop lifting up my dress to get things out of my pants pocket.
I paddled over to town in the canoe and tied it up.
Nearby a light was shining in a shabby little house.
I peeked in the window and saw a middle-aged woman sitting at a table.
I thought I knew everyone in town, but I'd never seen this woman before. I knocked on the door.