117CHAPTER XIX
For long hours Parson Rasba endured the drifting sand and the biting wind which penetrated the weather-cracks in his poplar shanty-boat. It was not until near nightfall that it dawned on him that he need not remain there, that it was the simplest thing in the world to let go his hold and blow before the wind till he was clear of the sandblast.
He did haul in his anchor and float away. As he rode the waves and danced before the wind the clouds of sand were flung swiftly down upon the water, where the surface was covered with a film and a sheet of dust.
Standing at his sweeps, he saw that he was approaching the head of another sandbar, and as he felt the water shoaling under the boat he cast over the anchor and rode in clear air again. He was not quite without a sense of humour.
Shaking the dust out of his long hair and combing it out of his whiskers, he laughed at his ignorance and lack of resource. He swept the decks and floor of his cabin, and scooped the sand up with an ash shovel to throw overboard. A lesson learned on the Mississippi is part of the education of the future—if there is anything in the pupil’s head to hold a memory of a fact or experience.
Even though he knew it was his own ignorance that had kept him a prisoner in that storm, Parson Rasba did not fail to realize that his ignorance had been sin, and that his punishment was due to his absorption in the fate of a pretty woman.
Certainly after such a sharp rebuke he could not fail to return to his original task, imposed upon him because of his fault in bringing the feud fighters of his118home mountains together, untrained and unrepentant, to hear the voice of his pride declare the Word for the edification of sinners. Parson Rasba did not mince his words as he contemplated the joy he had felt in being eloquent and a “power” of a speaker from the pulpits of the mountain churches. The murdering by the feud fighters had taught him what he would never forget, and his frank acknowledgment of each rebuke gave him greater understanding.
While the gale lasted he watched the river and the sky. The wild fowl flying low, and dropping into woods behind him led to forays seeking game, and in a bayou a mile distant he drew down with deadly aim on one of a flock of geese. He killed that bird, and then as its startled and lumbering mates sought flight, he got two more of them, missing another shot or two in the excitement.
The three great birds made a load for him, and he returned to his boat with a heart lighter than he had known in many a day because it seemed to him a “sign” that he need not hate himself overmuch. The river consoled him, and its constancy and integrity were an example which he could not help but take to heart.
Gales might blow, fair weather might tempt, islands might interpose themselves in its way, banks and sandbars might stand against the flood, but come what might, the river poured on through its destined course like a human life.
He entertained the whimsical fancy, as his smallest goose was roasting, that perhaps the Mississippi might sin. In so many ways the river reminded him of humankind. He had stood beside a branch of the Mississippi which was so small and narrow that he could dam it with his ample foot, or scoop it up with a119bucket—and yet here it was a mile wide! In its youth it was subject to the control of trifling things, a stone or a log, or the careless handiwork of a man. Down here all the little threads of its being had united in a full tide of life still subject to the influences of its normal course, but wearing and tearing along beyond any power to stop till its appointed course was run.
Insensibly Parson Rasba felt the resources of his own mind flocking to help him. Just being there beside that mighty torrent helped him to get a perspective on things. Tiny things seemed so useless in the front of that overwhelming power. What were the big things of his own life? What were the important affairs of his existence?
He could not tell. He had always meant to do the right thing. He could see now, looking back on his life, that his good intentions had not prevented his ignorance from precipitating a feud fight.
“I should have taken them, family by family, and brought them to their own knees fustest,” he thought, grimly. “Then I could have helt ’em all together in mutual repentance!”
Having arrived at that idea, he shrugged his shoulders almost self-contemptuously. “I’m a learnin’. That’s one consolation, I’m a learnin’!”
And then Rasba heard the Call!
It was Old Mississip’s voice; the river was heaping duties upon him more and more. So far, he had been rather looking out for himself, now he recalled the houseboats which he had seen moored down the reaches and in the bends. Those river people, dropping down incessantly with the river current, must sometimes need help, comfort, and perhaps advice. His humility would not permit him to think that he could preach to them or exhort them.120
“Man to man, likely I could he’p some po’r sinner see as much as I can see. If I could kind of get ’em to see what this big, old riveh is like! Hit’s carryin’ a leaf er a duck, an’ steamboats an’ shanty-bo’ts; hit carries the livin’ an’ hit carries the daid; hit begrudges no man it’s he’p if he comes to it to float down a log raft er a million bushels of coal. If Ole Mississip’ll do that fo’ anybody, suttin’ly hit’s clear an’ plain that God won’t deny a sinner His he’p! Yas, suh! Now I’ve shore found a handle to keep hold of my religion!”
Peace of mind had come to him, but not the peace of indolence and neglect. Far from that! He saw years of endless endeavour opening before him, but not with multitudes looking up to him as he stood, grand and noble, in the bright light of a thousand pulpits, circuit riding the earth. Instead, he would go to a sinning man here, a sorrowing woman there, and perhaps sit down with a little child, to give it comfort and instruction.
People were too scattered down the Mississippi to think of congregations. All days were Sunday, and for him there could be no day of rest. If he could not do big work, at least he could meet men and women, and he could get to know little children, to understand their needs. He knew it was a good thought, and when he looked across the Mississippi, he saw night coming on, but between him and the dark was sunset.
The cold white glare changed to brilliant colours; clouds whose gray-blue had oppressed the soul of the mountain man flashed red and purple, growing thinner and thinner, and when he had gazed for a minute at the glow of a fixed government light he was astonished by the darkness of night—only the night was filled with stars.121
Thus the river, the weather, the climate, the sky, the sandbars, and the wooded banks revealed themselves in changing moods and varying lights to the mountain man whose life had always been pent in and narrowed, without viewpoint or a sense of the future. The monster size of the river dwarfed the little affairs of his own life and humbled the pride which had so often been humbled before. At last he began to look down on himself, seeing something of the true relation of his importance to the immeasurable efforts of thousands and millions of men.
The sand clouds carried by the north wind must ever remain an epoch in his experience. Definitely he was rid of a great deal of nonsense, ignorance, and pride; at the same time it seemed, somehow, to have grounded him on something much firmer and broader than the vanities of his youth.
His eyes searched the river in the dark for some place to begin his work, and as they did so, he discovered a bright, glaring light a few miles below him across the sandbar at the head of which he had anchored. He saw other lights down that way, a regular settlement of lights across the river, and several darting firefly gleams in the middle of the stream which he recognized were boats, probably small gasolene craft.
In forty minutes he was dipping his sweep blades to work his way into the eddy where several small passenger craft were on line-ends from a large, substantial craft which was brightly lighted by lanterns and a big carbide light. Its windows were aglow with cheeriness, and the occupants engaged in strange pastimes.
“Come, now, come on, now!” someone was crying in a sing-song. “Come along like I said! Come along, now—Seven—Seven—Seven!”
Parson Rasba’s oar pins needed wetting, for the122strain he put on the sweeps made them squeak. The splash of oars down the current was heard by people on board and several walked out on the deck.
“Whoe-e-e!” one hailed. “Who all mout yo’ be?”
“Rasba!” the newcomer replied. “Parson Elijah Rasba, suh. Out of the Ohio!”
“Hi-i-i!” a listener cried out, gleefully, “hyar comes the Riveh Prophet after yo sinners. Hi-i-i!”
There was a laugh through the crowd. Others strolled out to see the phenomenon. A man who had been playing with fortune at one of the poker tables swore aloud.
“I cayn’t neveh git started, I don’t shift down on my luck!” he whined. “Las’ time, jes’ when I was coming home, I see a piebald mewl, an’ now hyar comes a parson. Dad drat this yeah ole riveh! I’m goin’ to quit. I’m gwine to go to Hot Springs!”
These casual asides were as nothing, however, to the tumult that stirred in the soul of Jock Drones, who had been cutting bread to make boiled-ham sandwiches for their patrons that night. His acute hearing had picked up the sound of the coming shanty-boat, and he had felt the menace of a stranger dropping in after dark. Few men not on mischief bent, or determined to run all night, run into shanty-boat eddies.
He even turned down the light a little, and looked toward the door to see if the way was clear. The hail relieved the tension of his mind strain, but only for a minute. Then he heard that answer.
“Rasba!” he heard. “Parson Elijah Rasba, suh. Out of the Ohio!”
In a flash he knew the truth! Old Rasba, whose preaching he had listened to that bloody night away up in the mountains, had come down the rivers. A parson, none else, was camping on the mountain fugitive’s123trail. That meant tribulation, that meant the inescapableness of sin’s punishment—not in jails, not in trial courts, not on the gallows, but worse than that!
“Come abo’d, Parson!” someone shouted, and the boats bumped. There was a scramble to make a line fast, and then the trampling of many feet, as the Prophet was introduced to that particular river hell, amid stifled cries of expectancy and murmurs of warning. Next to being raided by the sheriff of an adjacent county, having a river prophet come on board is the greatest excitement and the smartest amusement of the bravados down the river.
“Hyar’s the Prophet!” a voice shouted. “Now git ready fo’ yo’ eternal damnation. See ’im gather hisse’f!”
Rasba gathering himself! Jock could not help but take a peep. It was Rasba, gaunt, tall, his head up close to the shanty-boat roof and his shoulders nearly a head higher than the collars of most of those men who stood by with insolence and doubtful good humour.
“Which’d yo’ rather git to play, Parson?” someone asked, slyly. “Cyards er bones er pull-sticks?”
“I’ve a friend down yeah, gentlemen.” The Prophet ignored the insult. “His mother wants him. She’s afeared likely he mout forget, since he was jes’ a boy friendly and needing friends. He’s no runt, no triflin’ no-’count, puppy man, like this thing,” in the direction whence the invitation had come, “but tall an’ square, an’ honourable, near six foot, an’ likely 160 pounds. Not like this little runt thing yeah, but a real man!”
There was a yell of approval and delight.
“Who all mout yo’ friend be?” Buck asked, respectfully, seeing that this was not a raid, but a visit.
“Jock, suh, Jock Drones, his mammy wants him, suh!”
Buck eyed the visitor keenly for a minute. Someone124said they never had heard of him. Buck, who saw that the visitor was in mind to turn back, suggested:
“Won’t yo’ have a cup of coffee, suh? Hit’s raw outside to-night, fresh and mean. Give him a chair, boys! I’m friendly with any man who takes a message from a mother to her wandering son.”
A dozen chairs were snatched out to the stove, and when Parson Rasba had accepted one, Buck stepped into the kitchen. He found Slip,aliasJock Drones, standing with beads of sweat on his forehead. No need to ask the first question; Buck poured out a cup of coffee and said:
“What’ll I tell him, Slip?”
“I cayn’t go back, Buck!” Slip whimpered. “Hit’s a hanging crime!”
“Something may have changed,” Buck suggested.
“No, suh, I’ve heard. Hit were my bullet—I’ve heard. Hit’s a trial, an’ hit’s—hit’s hanging!”
“Sh-h! Not so loud!” Buck warned. “If it’s lawyer money you need?”
“I got ’leven hundred, an’ a trial lawyer’ll cost only a thousand, Buck! Yo’s a friend—Lawse! I’d shore like to talk to him. He’s no detector, Parson Rasba yain’t. Why, he’s be’n right into a stillhouse, drunk the moonshine—an’ no revenue hearn of hit, the way some feared. My sister wrote me. I want to talk to him, Buck, but—but not let them outside know.”
“I’ll fix it,” Buck promised, carrying out steaming coffee, a plate of sandwiches, and two big oranges for the parson.
He returned, filled up the trays for the others, and took them out. Soon the crowd were sitting around, or leaning against the heavy crap table, talking and listening.
“Yo’ come way down from the mountangs to find a125mammy’s boy?” someone asked, his tone showing better than his words how well he understood the sacrifice of that journey.
“Hit’s seo,” Rasba nodded. “I’m partly to blame, myse’f, for his coming down. I was a mountain preacher, exhorter, and I ’lowed I knowed hit all. One candlelight I had a congregation an’ I hit ’er up loud that night, an’ I ’lowed I’d done right smart with those people’s souls. But—but hit were no such thing. This boy, Jock, he runned away that night, ’count of my foolishness, an’ we know he’s down thisaway; if I could git to find him, his mammy’d shore be comforted. She’s a heap more faith in me’n I have, but I come down yeah. Likely I couldn’t do much for that boy, but I kin show I’d like to.”
“Trippin’ a thousand miles shows some intrust!” somebody said.
“I lived all my life up theh in the mountangs, an’ hit’s God’s country, gem’men! This yeah—” he glanced around him till his glance fell upon the card cabinet on the wall between two windows, full of decks of cards and packets of dice and shaker boxes—“this yeah, sho! Hit ain’t God’s country, gem’men! Hit’s shore the Devil’s, an’ he’s shore ketched a right smart haul to-night! But I live yeah now!”
Buck, who had been coming and going, had stopped at the parson’s voice. He did not laugh, he did not even smile. The point was not missed, however. Far from it! He went out, bowed by the truth of it, and in the kitchen he looked at Slip, who was sitting in black and silent consideration of that cry, carried far in the echoes.
“You’re one of us, Parson!” a voice exclaimed in disbelief.
“Yas, suh,” Rasba smiled as he looked into the man’s eyes, “I’m one of you. I ’low we uns’ll git thar together,126’cordin’ as we die. Look! This gem’men gives me bread an’ meat; he quenches my thirst, too. An’ I take hit out’n his hands. ’Peahs like he owns this boat!”
“Yas, suh,” someone affirmed.
“Then I shall not shake hit’s dust off my feet when I go,” Rasba declared, sharply. Buck stared; Rasba did not look at even his shoes; Buck caught his breath. Whatever Rasba meant, whatever the other listeners understood, Buck felt and broke beneath those statements which brought to him things that he never had known before.
“He’ll not shake the dust of this gambling dive from his feet!” Buck choked under his breath. “And this is how far down I’ve got!”
Rasba, conscious only of his own shortcomings, had no idea that he had fired shot after shot, let alone landed shell after shell. He knew only that the men sat in respectful, drawn-faced silence. He wondered if they were not sorry for him, a preacher, who had fallen so far from his circuit riding and feastings and meetings in churches. It did not occur to him that these men knew they were wicked, and that they were suffering from his unintentional but overwhelming rebuke.
They turned away impatiently, and went in their boats to the village landing across the river; a night’s sport spoiled for them by the coming of a luck-breaking parson. Others waited to hear more of what they knew they needed, partly in amusement, partly in curiosity, and partly because they liked the whiskery fellow who was so interesting. At the same time, what he said was stinging however inoffensive.
“Game’s closed for the night!” Buck announced, and the gamesters took their departure. They made no protest, for it was not feasible to continue gambling127when everyone knows a parson brings bad luck to a player.
The outside lights were extinguished, and Buck brought Slip from the kitchen inside to Rasba.
“This is Slip,” Buck explained, and the two shook hands, the fugitive staring anxiously at the other’s face, expecting recognition.
“Don’t yo’ know me, Parson?” Slip exclaimed. “Jock Drones. Don’t yo’ know me?”
“Jock Drones?” Rasba cried, staring. “Why, Sho! Hit is! Lawse—an’ I found yo’ right yeah—thisaway!”
“Yassuh,” Jock turned away under that bright gaze, “but I’m goin’ back, Parson! I’m goin’ back to stand trial, suh! I neveh knowed any man, not a blood relation would think so much of me, as to come way down yeah to tell me my mammy, my good ole mammy, wanted me to be safe––”
“An’ good, Jock!” Rasba cried.
“An’ good, suh,” the young man added, obediently.
“I’d better go over and see our sick man,” Buck turned to Slip.
“A sick man?” Rasba asked. “Where mout he be?”
“In that other shanty-boat, that little boat,” Slip exclaimed. “We’ll all go!”
When they entered the little boat, which sagged under their combined weights, Slip held the light so it would shine on the cot.
“Sho!” Rasba exclaimed. “Hyar’s my friend who got shot by a lady!”
“Yes, suh, Parson!” Prebol grinned, feebly. “Seems like I cayn’t get shut of yo’ nohow, but I’m shore glad to see yo’. These yeah boys have took cyar of me great. Same’s you done, Parson, but I wa’nt your kind, swearin’ around, so I pulled out. Yo’ cayn’t he’p me much, but likely—likely theh’s some yo’ kin.”128
“I’d shore like to find them,” Rasba declared, smoothing the man’s pillow. “But there’s not so many I can he’p. Yo’ boys are tired; I’ll give him his medicine till to’d mornin’. Yo’d jes’ soon, Prebol?”
“Hit’d be friendly,” Prebol admitted. “Yo’ needn’t to sit right yeah––”
“I ’low I shall,” Rasba nodded. “I got some readin’ to do. I’ll git my book, an’ come back an’ set yeah!”
He brought his Bible, and looking up to bid the two good-night, he smiled.
“Hit’s considerable wrestle, readin’ this yeah Book! I neveh did git to understand hit, but likely I can git to know some more now. I’ve had right smart of experiences, lately, to he’p me git to know.”
129CHAPTER XX
Terabon possessed a newspaper man’s feeling of aloofness and detachment. When he went afloat on the Mississippi at St. Louis he had no intention of becoming a part of the river phenomena, and it did not occur to his mind that his position might become that of a participator rather than an observer.
The great river was interesting. It had come to his attention several years before, when he read Parkman’s “La Salle,” and a little later he had read almost a column account of a flood down the Mississippi. The A. P. had collected items from St. Louis, Cincinnati, Memphis, Cairo, Natchez, Vicksburg, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans, and fired them into the aloof East. New York, Boston, Bangor, Utica, Albany, and other important centres had learned for the first time that a “levee”—whatever that might be—had suffered a cravasse; a steamboat and some towbarges had been wrecked, that Cairo was registering 63.3 on the gauge; that some Negroes had been drowned; that cattle thieves were operating in the Overflow, and so on and so forth.
The combination of La Salle’s last adventure and the Mississippi flood caught the fancy of the newspaper man.
“Shall I ever get out there?” Terabon asked himself.
His dream was not of reporting wars, not of exploring Africa, not of interviewing kings and making presidents in a national convention. Far from it! His mind caught at the suggestion of singing birds in their native trees, and he could without regret think of spending days with a magnifying glass, considering the ant, or worshipping at the stalk of the flowering lily.130
He was astonished, one day, to discover that he had several hundred dollars in the Chambers Street Savings Bank. It happened that the city editor called him to the desk a few minutes later and said:
“Go see about this conference.”
“You go to hell!” the reporter replied, smilingly, gently replacing the slip on the greenish desk.
“T-t-t-t-t––” Mr. Dekod sputtered. Thereissomething new under the sun!
Lester Terabon strolled forth with easy nonchalance, and three days later he was in the office of the secretary of the Mississippi River Commission, at St. Louis, calmly inquiring into the duties and performance thereof, involving the efforts of 100,000 Negroes, 40,000 mules, 500 contractors, 10,000 government officials, a few hundred pieces of floating plant, and sundry other things which Terabon had conceived were of importance.
He had approached the Mississippi River from the human angle. He knew of no other way of approach. His first view of the river, as he crossed the Merchants Bridge, had not disturbed his equilibrium in the least, and he had floated out of an eddy in a 16-foot skiff still with the human-viewpoint approach.
Then had begun a combat in his mind between all his preconceived ideas and information and the river realities. Faithfully, in the notebooks which he carried, he put down the details of his mental disturbances.
By the time he reached Island No. 10 sandbar he had about resigned himself to the whimsicalities of river living. He had, however, preserved his attitude of aloofness and extraneousness. He regarded himself as a visiting observer who would record the events in which others had a part. It still pleased his fancy to say that he was interviewing the Mississippi River131as he might interview the President of the United States.
But as Lester Terabon rowed his skiff back up the eddy above New Madrid, and breasted the current in the sweep of the reach to that little cabin-boat half a mile above the Island No. 10 light, his attitude was undergoing a conscious change. While he had been reporting the Mississippi River in its varying moods something had encircled him and grasped him, and was holding him.
For some time he had felt the change in his position; glimmerings of its importance had appeared in his notes; his mind had fought against it as a corruption, lest it ruin the career which he had mapped out for himself.
When the New Madrid fish-dock man told him to carry the warning that a “detector” was hunting for a certain woman, and that the detective had gone on down with some river fellows, his place as a river man was assured. River folks trusted and used him as they used themselves. Moreover, he was possessed of a vital river secret.
Nelia Crele,aliasNelia Carline, was the woman, and they were both stopping over at the Island No. 10 sandbar. He knew, what the fish-dock man probably did not know, that the pursuer was the woman’s husband.
“What’ll I tell her?” Terabon asked himself.
With that question he uncovered an unsuspected depth to his feelings. It was a dark, dull day. The waves rolled and fell back, sometimes the wind seeming the stronger and then the current asserting its weight. With the wind’s help over the stern, Terabon swiftly passed the caving bend and landed in the lee above the young woman’s boat.132
He carried some things he had bought for her into the kitchen and they sat in the cabin to read newspapers and magazines which he had obtained.
“I heard some news, too,” he told her.
“Yes? What news?”
“The fish-dock man at New Madrid told me to tell the people along that a detective has gone on down, looking for a woman.”
“A detective looking for a woman?” she repeated.
“A man the name of Carline––”
“Oh!” she shrugged her shoulders. “Why didn’t you tell me!”
He flushed. Almost an hour had elapsed since he had returned. He had found it difficult to mention the subject.
“I did not tell you either,” he apologized, “that I happened to meet Mr. Carline up at Island No. 8, when I had no idea the good fortune would come to me of meeting you, whose—whose pictures he showed me. I could not—I saw––There was––”
“And you didn’t tell me,” she accused him.
“It seemed to me none of my affair. I’m a newspaper man—I––”
“And did that excuse you from letting me know of his—of that pursuit of me?”
His newspaper impartiality had failed him, and he hung his head in doubt and shame. She claimed, and she deserved, his friendship; the last vestige of his pretence of mere observation was torn from him. He was a human among humans—and he had a fervid if unexpected thought about the influence and exasperation of the river out yonder.
“I could not tell you!” he cried. “I didn’t think—it seemed––”
“You know, then, you saw why I had left him?”133
“Liquor!” he grasped at the excuse. “Oh, that was plain enough.”
“Perhaps a woman could forgive liquor,” she suggested, thoughtfully, “but not—not stupidity and indifference. He never disturbed the dust on any of the books of his library. Oh, what they meant my books mean to me!”
She turned and stared at her book shelves.
“Suppose you hadn’t found books?” he asked, glad of the opportunity for a diversion.
“I’d be dead, I think,” she surmised, “and one day, I did deliberately choose.”
“How was that?”
“Get your notebook!” she jeered. “I thought if he was going to rely on the specious joys of liquor I would, and tried it. It was a blizzard day last winter. He had gone over to see the widow, and there was a bottle of rum in the cupboard. I took some hot milk, nutmeg, sugar, and rum. I’ve never felt so happy in my life, except––”
“With what exception?” he asked.
“Yesterday,” she answered, laughing, “and last night and to-day! You see, I’m free now. I say and do what I please. I don’t care any more. I’m perfectly brazen. I don’t love you, but I like you very much. You’re good company. I hope I am, too––”
“You are—splendid!” he cried, almost involuntarily, and she shivered.
“Let’s go walking again, will you?” she said. “I want to get out in the wind; I want to have the sky overhead, a sandbar under my feet, and all outdoors at my command. You don’t mind, you’d like to go?”
“To the earth’s end!” he replied, recklessly, and her gay laugh showed how well he had pleased her mood.
They kept close up to the north side of the bar because134down the wind the sand was lifting and rolling up in yellow clouds. They went to Winchester Chute, and followed its winding course through the wood patch. There was a slough of green water, with a flock of ducks which left precipitately on their approach. They returned down to the sandbar, and pressed their way through the thick clump of small willows into the switch willows and along the edge of the unbroken desert of sand. They could see the very surface of the bar rolling along before the wind, and as they walked along they found their feet submerged in the blast.
But when they arrived at the boat night was near at hand, and the enveloping cold became more biting and the gloom more depressing.
Just when they had eaten their supper together, and had seated themselves before the fire, and when the whirl and whistle of the wind was heard in the mad music of a river storm, a motorboat with its cut-out open ploughed up the river through the dead eddy and stopped to hail.
Jim Talum, a fisherman whose line of hoop nets filled the reach of Island No. 9 for eight or ten miles, was on his way to his tent which he had pitched at the head of Winchester Chute.
He tramped aboard, and welcomed a seat by the fire.
“’Lowed I’d drap in a minute,” he declared. “Powerful lonesome up on the chute where I got my tent. Be’n runnin’ my traps down the bank, yeah, an’ along of the chute, gettin’ rats. Yo’ trappin’?”
“No, just tripping,” Terabon replied. “I was down to New Madrid this morning.”
“I’m just up from there. Ho law! Theh’s one man I’d hate to be down below. I expect yo’ve hearn tell of them Despard riveh pirates? No! Well, they’ve come drappin’ down ag’in, an’ they landed into New135Madrid yestehd’y evenin’. Likely they ’lowed to raid some commissary down b’low—cayn’t tell what they did ’low to do. But they picked good pickin’s down theh! Feller come down lookin’ fo’ a woman, hisn’s I expect. Anyhow, he’s a strangeh on the riveh. He’s got a nice power boat, an’ likely he’s got money. If he has, good-bye! Them Despards’d kill a man for $10. One of ’em, Hilt Despard’s onto the bo’t with him, pretendin’ to be a sport, an’ they’ve drapped out. The rest the gang’s jes’ waitin’ fo’ the wind to lay, down b’low, an’ down by Plum P’int, some’rs, Mr. Man’ll sudden come daid.”
The fisherman had been alone so much that the pent-up conversation of weeks flowed uninterruptedly. He told details; he described the motorboat; he laughed at the astonishment the man would feel when the pirates disclosed their intentions with a bullet or knife; and he expected, by and by, to hear the story of the tragedy through the medium of some whiskey boater, some river gossip coming up in a power boat.
For an hour he babbled and then, as precipitately as he had arrived, he took his departure. When he was gone, Nelia Crele turned to Terabon with helpless dismay. Augustus Carline was worthless; he had been faithless to her; he had inflicted sufferings beyond her power of punishment or forgiveness.
“But he’s looking for me!” she recapitulated, “and he doesn’t know. He’s a fool, and they’ll kill him like a rat! What can I do?”
Obviously there was nothing that she could do, but Lester Terabon rose instantly.
“I’d better drop down and see if I can’t help him—do something. I know that crew.”
“You’ll do that for me!” her voice lifted in a cry of thankfulness. “Oh, if you would, if you would. I136couldn’t think of his being—his being killed, trying to find me. Get him; send him home!”
“I’d better start right down,” Terabon said, “it’s sixty or seventy miles, anyhow. They’ll not hurry. They can’t, for the gang’s in a shanty-boat.”
She walked up to him with her arms raised.
“How can I thank you?” she demanded. “You do this for me—a stranger!”
“Why not, if I can help?” he asked.
“Where shall I see you again?”
He brought in his book of river maps, and together they looked down the tortuous stream; he rested the tip of his pencil on Yankee Bar below Plum Point.
“It’s a famous pirate resort, this twenty miles of river!” he said. “I’ll wait at Fort Pillow Landing. Or if you are ahead?”
“We’ll meet there!” she cried. “I’ll surely find you there. Or at Mendova—surely at Mendova.”
She followed him out on the bow deck.
“Just a minute,” she whispered, “while I get used to the thought of being alone again. I did not know there were men like you who would rather do a favour than ask for kisses.”
“It isn’t that we don’t like them!” he blurted out. “It’s—it’s just that we’d rather deserve them and not have them than have them and not deserve them!”
She laughed. “Good-bye—and don’t forget, Fort Pillow!”
“Does a man forget his meals?” he demanded, lightly, and with his duffle packed low in his skiff he rowed out into the gray river and the black night.
Having found a lee along the caving bank above New Madrid he gain-speeded down the current behind the sandbar, but when he turned the New Madrid bend he pulled out into mid-river and with current and137wind both behind him, followed the government lights that showed the channel.
He had expected to linger long down this historic stretch of river with its Sunk Lands of the New Madrid earthquakes, with its first glimpse of the cotton country, and with its countless river phenomena.
“But Old Mississip’ has other ideas,” he said to himself, and miles below he was wondering if and when he would meet the girl of Island No. 10 again.
138CHAPTER XXI
Pirates have infested the Mississippi from the earliest days. The stranger on the river cannot possibly know a pirate when he sees one, and even shanty-boaters of long experience and sharp eyes penetrate their disguises with difficulty. How could Gus Carline suspect the loquacious, ingratiating, and helpful Renald Doss?
Lonely; pursued by doubts, ignorance, and a lurking timidity, Carline was only too glad to take on a companion who discoursed about all the river towns, called river commissioners by their first names, knew all the makes of motors, and called the depth of the water in Point Pleasant crossing by reading the New Madrid gauge.
He relinquished the wheel of his boat to the dapper little man, and fed the motor more gas, or slowed down to half speed, while he listened to volumes of river lore.
“You’ve been landing along down?” Doss asked.
“All along,” Carline replied, “everywhere.”
“Seen anybody?”
“I should say so; there was a fellow come down pretending to be a reporter. He stopped over with me, got me full’s a tick, and then robbed me.”
“Eh—herobbed you?”
“Yes, sir! He got me to drinking heavy. I like my stew a little, but he fixed me. Then he just went through me, but he didn’t get all I had, you bet!”
This was rich!
“Lucky he didn’t hit you on the head, and take the boat, too!” Doss grinned.
“I suppose so.”
“Yes, sir! Lots of mean men on this river, they play139any old game. They say they’re preachers, or umbrella menders, or anything. Every once in a while some feller comes down, saying he’s off’n some magazine. They come down in skiffs, mostly. It’s a great game they play. Everybody tells ’em everything. If I was going to be a crook, I bet I’d say I was a hist’ry writer. I’d snoop around, and then I’d land—same’s that feller landed on you. Get much?”
“Two—three hundred dollars!”
The little man laughed in his throat. He handled the boat like a river pilot. His eyes turned to the banks, swept the sandbars, gazed into the coiling waters alongside, and he whispered names of places as he passed them—landings, bars, crossings, bends, and even the plantations and log cuttings. He named the three cotton gins in Tiptonville, and stared at the ferry below town with a sidelong leer.
Carline would have been the most astonished man on the Mississippi had he known that nearly all his money was in the pockets of his guest. He babbled on, and before he knew it, he was telling all about his wife running away down the Mississippi.
“What kind of a boat’s she in?” Doss asked.
“I don’t know.”
“How do you expect to find her if you don’t know the boat?”
“Why—why, somebody might know her; a woman alone!”
“She’s alone?”
“Why—yes, sir. I heard so.”
“Good looker?”
Without a word Carline handed the fellow a photograph. Doss made no sign. For two minutes he stared at that fine face.
“I bet she’s got an awful temper,” he half whispered.140
“She’s quick,” Carline admitted, fervently.
“She’d just soon shoot a man as look at him,” Doss added, with a touch of asperity.
“Why—she––” Carline hesitated. He recalled a day in his own experience when she took his own shot gun from him, and stood a fury, flaming with anger.
“Yes, sir, she would,” Doss declared, with finality.
Doss had seen her. By that time a thousand shanty-boaters had heard about that girl’s one shot of deadly accuracy. The woman folks on a thousand miles of reach and bend had had a bad example set before them. Doss himself felt an anger which was impotent against the woman who had shot Jest Prebold down. Probably other women would take to shooting, right off the bat, the same way. He despised that idea.
Carline, doubtful as to whether his wife was being insulted, congratulated, or described, gazed at the photograph. The more he looked, the more exasperated he felt. She was a woman—what right had she to run away and leave him with his honour impugned? He felt as though he hadn’t taught her her place. At the same time, when he looked at the picture, he discovered a remembrance of his feeling that she was a very difficult person to teach anything to. Her learning always had insulted his own meagreness of information and aptness in repartee. Next to not finding her, his big worry had become finding her.
They steered down the river without great haste. Doss studied the shanty-boats which he saw moored in the various eddies, large and small. Some he spoke of casually, as store-boats, fishermen, market hunters, or, as they passed between Caruthersville and the opposite shore, a gambling boat. Even the river pirate, gloating over his prey, and puzzled only as to the method of making the most of his victim, could not141penetrate the veil which it happened the Mississippi River interposed between them and the river gambling den—for the moment. There is no use seeking the method of the river, nor endeavouring to discover the processes by which the lives of thousands who go afloat down the Mississippi are woven as woof and warp in the fabric of river life and river mysteries. The more faithful an effort to select one of the commonest and simplest of river complications, the more improbable and fanciful it must seem.
Doss, in intervals when he was not consciously registering the smile of good humour, the generosity of an experienced man toward the chance visitor, and the willingness to defer to the gentleman from Up the Bank, brought his expression unconsciously to the cold, rough woodenness of blank insensitiveness—the malignance of a snapping turtle, to mention a medium reptilian face. A whim, and the necessity of delay, led Doss to suggest that they take a look up the Obion River as a likely hiding place. Of course, Doss knew best, and they quit the tumbling Mississippi for the quiet wooded aisle of the little river.
When they emerged, two days later, Augustus Carline could well thank his stars, though he did not know it, that he was still on the boat. All unconscious of the real nature and habits of river rats he had given the little wretch a thousand opportunities to commit one of the many crimes he had in mind. But he developed a reluctance to choose the easiest one, when from hint after hint he understood that a mere river piracy and murder would be folly in view of the opportunity for a more profitable stake which a man of means offered.
As he steered by the government boat which was surveying Plum Point bars, Doss showed his teeth like an indignant cat. Five or six miles below he142offered the supine and helpless Carline the information:
“There’s Yankee Bar. We’ll swing wide and land in below, so’s not to scare up any geese or ducks that may be roosting there.”
Eagerly Doss searched through the switch willows for a glimpse of the setback of the water beyond the bar. Away down in the old eddy he discovered a shanty-boat, and to cover his involuntary exclamation of satisfaction he said:
“Shucks! There’s somebody theh. I hoped we’d have it to ourselves but they may be sports, too. If they are, we’ll sure have a good time. Some of these shanty-boaters are great sports. We’ll soon find out!”
He steered into the eddy and the two men stepped out on the flat boat’s deck to greet them.
“Seems like I’ve seen them before,” Doss said in a low voice; “I believe they’re old timers. Hello, boys! Hunting?”
“Yes, suh! Lots of game. Sho, ain’ yo’ Doss, Ren Doss?”
“You bet. I knew you! I told Mr. Carline, here, that I knew you, that I’d seen you before! I’m glad to see you boys again. Catch a line there.”
No doubt about it, they were old friends. In a minute they were shaking hands all around, then went into the shanty-boat, and they sat down in assorted chairs, and Doss, Jet, and Cope exchanged the gossip of a river year.
Carline’s eyes searched about him with interest, and the three men watched him more and more openly. When he walked toward the bow of the boat, where the slope of the yellow sand led up to the woods of Flower Island, one of them casually left his seat and followed.
Carline looked at the stand of guns in the cabin corner143and started with surprise. He reached and picked up one of them to look at it.
“Why,” he shouted, “this is my shot gu––”
No more. His light went out on the instant and he felt that he was suspended in mid-air, poised between the abyss and the heavens.