The River Prophet Part 15

Dawn, following false dawn, saw him pa.s.sing New Madrid, still rowing impatiently, his eyes staring down the wild current, past a graveyard poised ready to plunge on the left bank, and then down the baffling crossing at Point Pleasant and through the sunny breadths up to Tiptonville, half sunk in the river, only to fall away toward Little Cypress--and still no sight of the lost cabin-boat.

In mid-afternoon, weary and worn by sleeplessness and expectancy, he pulled his boat into the deadwater at the foot of an eddy and having thrown over his stone anchor, sadly entered his cabin and, without prayer, subsided into sleep.

If he dreamed he was not awakened to consciousness by his visions. He slept on in the deep weariness which followed the wakefulness that had continued through a night of undiminished anxiety into a day of doubt and increasing despair. It had not occurred to him, in his simplicity, that the young woman would escape from him. The shadow and the gloom next to the bank on either side had not suggested his pa.s.sing by the object of his intention. His thought was that she must have gone right on down stream, though he might have divined from his own condition that she, too, long since must have been weary.

He awakened some time in the morning, after twelve hours or so of uninterrupted slumber. He turned out into the fascinating darkness of early morning on the Mississippi. A gust of chill wind swept down out of the sky, rippling the surface and roaring through the woods up the bank.

The gust was followed by a raw calm and further blanketing of the few stars that penetrated the veil of mist.

He had in mind the further pursuit of Nelia, and hauling in his anchor he pulled out into mid-current and then by lamp-light prepared his breakfast. While he worked, he discovered that dawn was near, and at lengthening intervals he went out to look ahead, hoping to see the object of his pursuit. Perhaps he would have gone on down to New Orleans, only it is not written in Mississippi weather prophecies that the tenor of one's way shall be even.

He heard wind blowing, and felt his boat bobbing about inexplicably. He went out to look about him, and in the morning twilight he discovered that the whole aspect of the Mississippi had changed. With the invisible sunrise had come an awe-inspiring spectacle which excited in his mind forebodings and dismay.

First, there was the cold wind which penetrated his clothes and shrivelled the very meat of his bones. The river's surface, which he had come to regard as a shimmering, polished floor, was now rumpled and broken into lumpy waves, like mud on a road, and the waves broke into dull yellow foam caps. There was not a light gleam on the whole surface, and dark shadows seemed to crawl and twist about in the very substance of the heavy and turgid waters.

Rasba stared. Born and trained in mountains, where he remembered clear streams of pale, beautiful green, catching reflections of white clouds and clean foliage, with only occasional patches of sullen clay-bank wash, he refused to acknowledge the great tawny Mississippi at its best, as a relation of the streams he knew. Certainly this menacing dawn reminded him of nothing he had ever witnessed. Waves slapped against his boat, waves which did not conceal, but rather accentuated, the sullen and relentless rush of the vast body of the water. While the surface leaped and struggled, wind-racked, the deeps moved steadily on. Elijah saw that his boat was being driven into a river chute, and seizing his sweeps, he began to row toward a sandbar which promised shoal water and a landing.

He managed to strike the foot of the bar, and threw out his anchor rock.

He let go enough line to let the boat swing, and went in to breakfast.

While he was eating, he noticed that the table turned gray and that a yellowish tinge settled upon everything. When he went out to look around, he found that the air was full of a cloud that filled his eyes with dust, and that a little drift of sand had already formed on the deck of his boat, gritting under his feet. The cloud was so thick that he could hardly see the river sh.o.r.es; a gale was blowing, and a whole sandbar, miles long, was coming down upon him from the air. The sandbar, when he looked at it, seemed fairly to be running, like water.

Parson Rasba remembered the storms of biblical times, and better understood the wrath that was visited upon the Children of Israel.

He dwelt in that storm all that day. He shut the door to keep the sand out, but it spurted through the cracks. He could see the puffing gusts as they burst through the keyhole, and he could hear the heavier grains rattling upon the thin, painted boards of his roof. His clothes grayed, his hands gritted, his teeth crunched fine stone; he pondered upon the question of what sin he had committed to bring on him this ancient punishment.

For a long time his finite mind was without inspiration, without understanding, and then he choked with terror and regret. He had beguiled himself into believing that it was his duty to take care of Nelia Crele, the fair woman of the river. He had believed only too readily that his duty lay where his heart's desire had been most eager.

He sat there in dumb horror at the sin which had blinded him.

"I come down yeah to find Jock Drones for his mother!" He reminded himself by speaking his mission aloud, adding, "And hyar I've be'n floating down looking for a woman, looking for a pretty woman!"

And because he could remember her shoes, the smooth leather over those exquisite ankles, Parson Rasba knew that his sin was mortal, and that no other son of man had ever strayed so far as he.

No wonder he was caught in a desert blizzard where no one had ever said there was a desert!

"Lord G.o.d," he cried out, "he'p this yeah po'r sinner! He'p! He'p!"

CHAPTER XVI

Jock, _alias_ "Slip," Drones, was discovering how small the world really is. Like many another man, he had figured that no one would know him, no one could possibly find him, down the Mississippi River, more than a thousand miles from home. Having killed, or at least fought his man in a deadly feud war, he had escaped into the far places. His many months of isolation had given him confidence and taken the natural uneasiness of flight from his mind.

Now someone was coming down the Mississippi inquiring for Jock Drones! A detective, as relentless, as sure as a bullet in the heart, was coming.

He might even then be lurking in the brush up the bank, waiting to get a sure drop. He might be dropping down that very night. He might step in among the players, unnoticed, unseen, and wait there for the moment of surprise and action.

Slip's mind ransacked the far places of which he had heard: Oklahoma, the Missouri River, California, the Mexican border, Texas. Far havens seemed safest, but against their lure he felt the balance of Buck's comradeship.

Caruthersville had a sporting crowd with money, lots of money. The people there were liberal spenders, and they liked a square game better than any other sport in the world. The boat was making good money, big money. The two partners had only to break even in their own play to make a big living out of the kitty in the poker tables, and there was always a big percentage in favour of the boat, because Buck and Slip understood each other so well. Slip's share often amounted to more in a week than he had earned in two years up there in the mountains felling trees, rafting them in eddies, and tripping them down painfully to the sawmills. These never did pay the price they were advertised to pay for timber, and one had to watch the sealers to see that they didn't short the measure in the under water and goose-egg good logs.

He remembered Jest Prebol, who was lying shot through in the boat alongside, and he went over to the boat, lighted the lamp, and sat down by the wounded man. Prebol was a little delirious, and Slip went over on his own boat, and called Buck out.

"We got a sick man on our hands," he whispered. "Ain't Doc Grell come oveh yet?"

"Come the last boat," Buck said, and called the doctor out.

"Say, Doc, that sick feller out here, will you look't him?"

Doctor Grell went over to the boat. He looked at the wounded man, and frowned as he took the limp wrist. He tried the temperature, too, and then shook his head.

"He's a sick man, Slip," he said. "Thought he was coming all right last night. Now----"

He looked at the wound, and gazed at the great, blue plate around the bullet hole.

"He's bad?" Slip said, in alarm. "Poison's workin', Doc?"

"Mighty bad!"

There was nothing for it. Doctor Grell's night of pleasure had turned into one of life-saving and effort. He sent Slip over to drag away one of the young men from his game, and they rigged up two square trunks and a waterproof tarpaulin into an operating table. Then, as Slip was faint and sick, the two drove him back to the gambling boat, while they, the graduate and the student, entered upon a gamble with a human life the stake.

Of that night's efforts, fighting the "poison" with the few sharp weapons at their command--later reinforced by a hasty trip across the river to get others--the two need never tell. While they worked, they could hear at intervals the shout of a winner in the other boat. In moments of perfect quiet they heard the quick rustling of shuffled cards; they heard the rattling of dice in hard, m.u.f.fled boxes; they heard, at intervals, the rattling of stove lids and smelt the soft-coal smoke which blew down on them from the kitchen chimney. Slip, not forgetful of them, brought over pots of black coffee and inquired after the patient. He found the two men paler on each visit, and stripped down more and more, till they were merely in their sweaty undershirts.

Toward morning the wind began to blow; it began to grow cold. The noises on the neighbouring boat grew fainter in the low rumble of a stormy wind out of the northwest, and the shanty-boat lifted at intervals on a wave that rolled out of the main current and across the eddy, making their operating room even more unstable.

Under their onslaught the death which was taking hold of Jest Prebol was checked, and the river rat whose life had been forfeited for his sly crimes became the object of a doctor's sentiment and belief in his own training.

Long after midnight, when some few of the patrons of the games had already taken their departure, the doors opened oftener and oftener, letting the geometrical shaft of the yellow light flare out across the waters, and the grotesque shadows of those who departed stood out against the night and waters as the men shivered in the wind and bent to feel their way into the boats.

After dawn Doctor Grell and his a.s.sistant, peaked and white, limp with their tremendous effort, and shivering with exhaustion of mind and body, walked out of the little shanty-boat, up to the big one, sat down with Buck and Slip to breakfast, and then took their own course across the ruffled and tumble-surfaced river.

"I 'low he'll pull through," Doctor Grell admitted, almost reluctantly.

"He's in bad shape, though, with the things the bullet carried into him, but we sure swabbed him out. How'd the game go to-night, boys?"

"Purty good." Buck shook his head. "Tammer sure had luck his way--won a seventy-dollar pot onct."

"I sure wanted to play," Grell shook his head, "but in my profession you aren't your own, and you cayn't quit."

"We owe you for it," Buck said. "He's our friend----"

"And he's ourn, too," Grell declared, "so we'll split the difference. I expect it was worth a hundred dollars what we two did to-night. That'll be fifty, boys, if it's all right."

"Yes, suh," Slip said, handing over five ten-dollar bills, and Grell handed two of them to his companion, who shook his head, saying:

"Nope, Doc! Ten only to-night. My first fee!"

"And you'll never have a more interesting case," Grell declared. "No, indeed! You'll see cases, come you go to college, but none more interesting, and if we've pulled him through, you'll never have better reason for satisfaction."

The two got into a little motorboat and went bounding and rocking in the wind and waves toward the town behind the levee on the far bank. The two gamblers watched the little boat rocking along till it was but a black fleck in the midst of the weltering brown waters.