The River Prophet Part 21

"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?"

"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 because down 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 New Madrid 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. I couldn'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.