The River Prophet Part 22

"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 and wind 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.

CHAPTER 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--_he_ robbed 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 play any 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 pa.s.sed 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.

"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 pa.s.sed between Caruthersville and the opposite sh.o.r.e, 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 not penetrate 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 he offered 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!"