The River Prophet Part 28

"Everybody'd knowed it was Carline's, an' it wa'n't worth fixing over.

Hull not much good, and the motor's been abused some. We'll do better'n that."

They had rid themselves of an inc.u.mbrance. They had made an acquaintance who was making himself useful. They were considerably richer than they had been for some time.

"I'd like to drap into Mendova," Jet mused. "We ain't had what you'd call a time----"

"Let's kill some birds first," Gaspard suggested. "I got a hunch that Yankee Bar's a good bet for us for a little while. We da.s.sn't look into Memphis, 'count of last trip down. Mendova's all right, but wait'll we've hunted Yankee Bar."

The money burned in their pockets, but as they stood looking out at the long, beautiful Yankee Bar its appeal went home. For more than a hundred years generations of pirates had used there, and no one knows how many tragedies have left their stain in the great band around from Gold Dust Landing to Chickasaw Bluffs No. 1.

After dark they rowed over to the point and put out their decoys, dug their pits, screened them, and brushed over their tracks in the sand.

Then they played cards till midnight, turned in for a little sleep, and turned out again in the black morning to go to their places with repeating shotguns and cripple-killer rifles in their hands.

When they were in their places, and the river silence prevailed, they saw the stars overhead, the reflections on sand and water around them, and the quivering change as air currents moved in the dark--the things that walk in the night. They heard, at intervals, many voices. Some they knew as the fluent music of migrant geese flying over on long laps of their fall flight, but some they did not know, except that they were river voices.

Ducks flew by no higher than the tops of the willow trees up the bar, their wings whistling and their voices eager in the dark. The lurkers saw these birds darting by like black streaks, tempting vain shots, but they were old hunters, and knew they wanted at least a little light.

Over on the mainland they heard the noises of wilderness animals, and away off yonder a mule's "he-haw" reverberated through the bottoms and over bars and river.

For these things, if the pirates had only known it, they found the world endurable. Each in his own pit, given over to his own thoughts, they thrilled to the joy of living. All they wanted, really, was this kind of thing; hunting in fall and winter, fishing in the summer, and occasional visits to town for another kind of thrill, another sort of excitement.

But their boyhood had been pa.s.sed in privation, their youth amid temptations of appet.i.te and vice, and now they were hopelessly mixed as to what they liked, what they didn't like, what the world would do for them, and what they would do to the world. Weaklings, uneducated, without balance; habit-ridden, yet with all that miserable inheritance from the world, they waited there rigid, motionless, their hearts thrilling to the increasing music of the march of dawn across the bottoms of the Mississippi.

False dawn flushed and faded almost like a deliberate lightning flash.

Then dawn appeared, marking down the gray lines of the wilderness trees with one stroke, sweeping out all the stars with another brush, revealing the flocks of birds glistening against the sky while yet the earth was in shade. The watchers spied a score of birds, great geese far to the northward, coming right in line with them. They waited for a few seconds--ages long. Then one of the men cried:

"They're stoopin', boys! They're comin'!"

The wild geese, coming down a magnificent slant from a mile height, headed straight for Yankee Bar. Will birds never learn? They ploughed down with their wings folding, and poised. Their voices grew louder and louder as they approached.

With a hissing roar of their wings they pounded down out of the great, safe heights and circled around and inward. With a shout the three men started up through their masks and with levelled guns opened fire.

Too late the old gander at the point of the "V" began to climb; too late the older birds in the point screamed and gathered their strength. The river men turned their black muzzles against the necks of the young tail birds of the feathered procession and brought them tumbling down out of the line to the ground, where on the hard sand two of them split their b.r.e.a.s.t.s and exposed thick layers of fat dripping with oil.

The cries of the fleeing birds, the echoes of the barking guns, died away. The men shouted their joy in their success, gathered up their victims, scurried pack to cover, brushing over their tracks, and crouched down again, to await another flock.

Hunger drove them to their cabin-boat within an hour. They had thought they wanted to get some more birds, but in fact they knew they had enough. They went over to their boat, cooked up a big breakfast, and sat around the fire smoking and talking it over. They chattered like boys.

They were gleeful, innocent, harmless! But only for a time. Then the hunted feeling returned to them. Once more they had a back track to watch and ambushes to be wary of. They wanted to go to Mendova, but again they didn't want to go there. They didn't know but what Mendova might be watching for them, the same as Memphis was. Certainly, they determined, they must go to Mendova after dark, and see a friend who would put them wise to actual conditions around town.

They took catnaps, having had too little sleep, and yet they could not sleep deeply. They watched the shanty-boats which dropped down the river at intervals, most of them in the main current close to the far bank, and often hardly visible against the mottled background of caving earth, fallen trees, and flickering mirage. Their restlessness was silent, morose, and one of them was always on the lookout.

Despard himself was on watch in the afternoon. He sat just inside the kitchen door, out of the sunshine, in a comfortable rocking chair. Two windows and the stern door gave him a wide view of the river, sandbars and eddy. It seemed but a minute, but he had fallen into a doze, when the splash of a shanty-boat sweeps awakened all the crew with a sudden, frightened start. Whispers, hardly audible, hailed in alarm. The three, crouching in involuntary doubt and dismay, glared at the newcomer.

It was a woman drifting in. Apparently she intended to land there, and the three men stared at her.

"His wife!" Despard said with soundless lips. The others nodded their recognition.

Mrs. Carline had run into the great dead eddy at the foot of Yankee Lower Bar, turned up in the slow reverse eddy of the chute, and was coming by their boat at the slowest possible speed.

Despard pulled his soft shirt collar, straightened his tie, hitched his suspenders, put on his coat, walked out on the stern deck, and, after a glance around, seemed suddenly to discover the stranger.

"Howdy!" he nodded, touching his cap respectfully, and gazing with flickering eyes at the woman whose marksmanship ent.i.tled her to the greatest respect.

"Howdy!" she nodded, scrutinizing him with level eyes. "Where am I?"

"Yankee Bar. Them's Chickasaw Bluffs No. 1."

"Do you know Jest Prebol?"

"Yessum." Despard's head bobbed in alarmed, unwilling a.s.sent.

"I thought perhaps you'd like to know that he's getting along all right."

"I bet he learnt his lesson," Despard grimaced.

"What? I don't just understand."

"About bein' impudent to a lady that can shoot--straight!"

A flicker moved the woman's countenance, and she smiled, oddly.

"Oh, any one is likely to make mistakes!"

"Darn fools is, Miss Crele. And you Old Crele's girl! He might of knowed!"

The other two stepped out to help enjoy the conversation and the scenery.

"You know me?" she demanded.

"Yessum, we sh.o.r.e do. My name's Despard--Jet here and Cope."

She acknowledged the introductions.

"I've friends down here," she said, with a little catch of her breath.

"I was wondering if you--any of you gentlemen had seen them?"

"Your man, Gus Carline an' that writin' feller, Terabon?" Jet asked, without delicacy. Her cheeks flamed.

"Yes!" she whispered.

"Terabon took him down to Mendova or Memphis," Despard said. "Carline was--was on the cabin and the boat lurched when the steamboat pa.s.sing drawed. He drapped over and hit a spark plug on the head!"

"Was he badly hurt?"

"Not much--kind of a lump, that's all."

She looked down at Fort Pillow Bluff. The pirates awaited her pleasure, staring at her to their heart's content. They envied her husband and Terabon; they felt the strangeness of the situation. She was following those two men down. She was part of the river tide, drifting by; she had shot Prebol, their pal, and had cleverly ascertained their knowledge of him while insuring that they had fair warning.

Her boat drifted down till it was opposite them, and then, with quick decision, she caught up a handy line, and said: