The River Prophet Part 13

He started the motor, straightened the boat out and steered into mid-stream, looking uncertainly from side to side.

"There's no telling," he said, "not about anything."

"On the river no one can tell much about anything!" Terabon a.s.sented.

"You're just coming down, I suppose, looking for hist'ries to write?"

"That's about it. I just sit in the skiff, there, and I write what I see, on the machine: A big sandbar, a flock of geese, a big oak tree just on the brink of the bank half the roots exposed and going to fall in a minute or a day--everything like that!"

"I bet some of these shanty-boaters could tell you histories," Carline said. "I tell you, some of them are bad. Why, they'd murder a man for ten dollars--those river pirates would."

"No doubt about it!"

"But they wouldn't talk, 'course. It must be awful hard to make up them stories in the magazines."

"Oh, if a man gets an idea, he can work it up into a story. It takes work, of course, and time."

"I don't see how anybody can do it." Carline shook his head. "There's a man up to Gage. He wants to write a book, but he ain't never been able to find anything to write about. You see, Gage ain't much but a little landing, you might say."

"Chester, and the big penitentiary is just below there, isn't it?"

"Oh, yes!"

"I'd think there might be at least one story for him to write there."

"Oh, he don't want to write about crooks; he wants to write about nice people, society people, and that kind, and big cities. He says it's awful hard to find anybody to write about."

"You've got to look to find heroes," Terabon admitted. "I came more than a thousand miles to see a shanty-boat."

"You di-i-d? Just to see a shanty-boat!" Carline stared at Terabon in amazement.

In spite of Terabon being such a queer duck he made a good companion. He was a good cook, for one thing, and when they landed in below Hickman Bend, he went ash.o.r.e and killed three squirrels and two black ducks in the woods and marsh beyond the new levee.

When he returned, he found a skiff landed near by on the sandbar.

Carline was talking to the man, who had just handed over a gallon jug.

The man pulled away swiftly and disappeared down the chute. Carline explained:

"He's a whiskey pedlar; a man always needs to have whiskey on board; malaria is bad down here, and a fellow might catch cold. You see how it is if a man don't have some whiskey on board."

"I understand," Terabon admitted.

After supper Carline decided that there was a lot of night air around, and that a man couldn't take too many precautions against that deadly river miasma whose insidious menace so many people have ignored to their great cost. As for himself, Carline didn't propose to be taken bad when he had so universal a specific, to take or leave alone, just as he wanted.

Terabon, having put up the hoops of his skiff and stretched the canvas over them, retired to his own boat and spent two hours writing.

In the morning, when he stirred out, he found Carline lying in the engine pit, oblivious to the night air that had fallen upon him, protected as he was by his absorption of the sure preventive of night air getting him first. The jug was on the floor, and Terabon, after a little thought, poured out about two and a half quarts which he replaced with distilled water from the motorboat's drinking bottle. Then he dropped down the chute into the main river to resume his search for really interesting "histories."

The river had never been more glorious than that morning. The sun shone from a white, misty sky. It was warm, with the slight tang of autumn, and the yellow leaves were fluttering down; squirrels were barking, and a flock of geese, so high in the air that they sparkled, in the sunshine, were gossiping, and the music of their voices rained upon the river surface as upon a sounding board.

Terabon was approaching Donaldson's Point, Winchester Chute, Island No.

10, and New Madrid. An asterisk on his map showed that Slough Neck was interesting, and sure enough, he found a 60-foot boat just above Upper Slough Landing, anch.o.r.ed off the sandbar. This was a notorious whiskey boat, and just below it was a flight of steps up the steep bank. No plantation darky ever used those steps. He would rather scramble in the loose silt and risk his neck than climb that easy stairway--yes, indeed!

Terabon, drifting by, close at hand, gazed at the scene. From that craft Negroes had gone forth to commit crime; white men had gone out to do murder, and one of them had rolled down those steps, shot dead. On the other side of Slough Neck, just outside of Tiptonville, there was a tree on which seven men had been lynched.

He pulled across to the foot of Island No. 10 sandbar, to walk up over that historic ground, and to visit the remnants of Winchester Chute where General Grant had moored barges carrying huge mortars with which to drop sh.e.l.ls into the Confederate works on Island No. 10.

He hailed a shanty-boat just below where he landed, and as the window opened and he saw someone within, he asked:

"Will you kindly watch my skiff? I'm going up over the island."

"Yes, glad to!"

"Thank you." He bowed, and went upon his exploration.

It was hard to believe that this sandbar, grown to switch willows which increased to poles six or seven inches in diameter, had once been a big island covered with stalwart trees, with earthworks, cannon, and desperate soldiers. Its serene quiet, undulating sands and casual weed-trees, showing the stain of floods that had filled the bark with sediment, proved the indifference of the river to fleeting human affairs--the trifling work of human hands had been washed away in a spring tide or two, and Island No. 10 was half way to the Gulf by this time.

Terabon returned to his skiff three or four hours later, and taking up his typewriter, began to write down what he had seen, elaborating the pencil notes which he had made. As he wrote he became conscious of an observer, and of the approach of someone who was diffident and curious--a familiar enough sensation of late.

He looked up, started, and reached for his hat. It was a woman, a young woman, with bright eyes, grace, dignity--and much curiosity.

"I didn't mean to disturb you," she apologized. "I was just wondering what on earth you could be doing!"

"Oh, I'm writing--making notes----"

"Yes. But--here!"

"I'm a newspaper writer," he made his familiar statement. "My name is Lester Terabon. I'm from New York. I came down here from St. Louis to see the Mississippi."

"You write for newspapers?" she repeated.

She came and sat down on the bow deck of his skiff, frankly curious and interested.

"My name's Nelia Crele," she smiled. "I'm a shanty-boater. That's my boat."

"I'm sure I'm glad to meet you," he bowed, "Mrs. Crele."

"You find lots to write about?"

"I can't write fast enough," he replied, enthusiastically, "I've been coming six weeks--from St. Louis. I've made more than 60,000 words in notes already, and the more I make the more I despair of getting it all down. Why, right here--New Madrid, Island 10, and--and----"

"And me?" she asked. "Did you stop at Gage?"

"At Stillhouse Island," he admitted, circ.u.mspectly. "Mr. Crele there said I should be sure and tell his daughter, if I happened to meet her, that her mother wanted her to be sure and write and let her know how she is getting along."

"Oh, I'll do that," she a.s.sured him. "I was just writing home when you landed in. Isn't it strange how everybody knows everybody down here, and how you keep meeting people you know--that you've heard about? You knew me when you saw me!"

"Yes--I'd seen your pictures."

"Mammy hadn't but one picture of me!" She stared at him.