down. But she sat still and watched the _Antelope_, wishing her far
better speed in view of the letters she carried. So came thoughts of the
long telegraphic despatch to her father which Hugh must by this time
have written for her mother, as agreed between them, and which was to be
sent, in the morning, from Memphis.
The door opened and Mrs. Gilmore and "Harriet" came in.
"Well," softly inquired the actor's wife, "how do we come on?" and
Ramsey answered as softly, yet taking pains that Ned and Watson should
overhear:
"I've disgraced myself."
"Mmm!" mumbled old Joy in corroboration.
"What have you done now?"
"Nothing. I don't _do_ anything. Only said something, something so silly
I can't even apologize."
"To whom?"
"The baby elephant," said Ramsey and laughed a note or two. The door
opened again and Hugh's bell call was explained by the entrance of the
texas tender and another white-jacket, each bearing a large tray of cups
and plates, hot coffee, and hot toasted rolls and butter. She hadn't
dreamed she was so hungry.
Watson stared back from the wheel with grim pretence of surprise. "Who
sent that here?"
"Mr. Hugh Co'teney sawnt it, suh," said the tender, arranging the cups
on the bench. "Yass'm," he repeated to the grateful ladies, "Mr. Hugh,
yass'm."
"Oh! Mr. Hugh," replied Watson. "He must 'a' gave you the order before
he come up here this last time."
"Yass, suh, but say don't fetch it tell he ring."
"Six cups," counted the pilot, "six--You go down with Miss Hayle's
compliments to Mr. Courteney, and----"
"No-o-o-o!" sang Ramsey, running up the scale.
But Watson was firm. "Boy, you heard me, didn't you?"
Ned, with his eyes down on the bell, interposed: "Hold on, Wats', three
into one you can't. Hugh's in a confab with the senator and the
general."
Ramsey, eating like a hunter come home, suddenly stood. "Now look,
everybody, at the _Antelope_. She's right abeam. Ain't she abeam, Mr.
Watson?"
Watson drawled that she wasn't anything else, and Ramsey failed to see
that he saw her cast an anxious glance down to the bell and the
captain's chair beyond it.
L
"DELTA WILL DO"
In Horseshoe Cut-off the course was east. When Ned directed Ramsey's
sight to its upper end, where the flood came into view from the north,
she feared he would name the point it turned; but he forbore and she
gazed on the thin old moon off in the southeast.
"Make out yan bunch o' sycamores?" was his nearest venture. The
sycamores were on the point. Across the river where it ran concealed
beyond those sycamores--he went on to tell--at the up-stream end of a
low pencil stroke of forest between the head of the cut-off and the
eastern stars, was another turn, Friar's Point. But her interest in
points had faded, and whether friars abounded on that one or not she
took pains not to inquire.
Instead, she was about to ask the cause of a strange silvering in the
sky close over the black pencil stroke, when, as on Sunday, the morning
star sprang into view and cast its tremulous beam on the waters. She
gazed on the white splendor as genuinely enthralled as ever, though at
the same time her eye easily, eagerly took in the first clerk, the
senator, the general, and Hugh, standing about the captain's empty
chair. They loomed as dimly as the sycamores, yet when a fifth figure
drew near them she knew by his fine gait that it was the actor, relieved
from the captain's sick-room by "California" and the cub pilot. A
gesture from Hugh stopped him some yards off and he stood leaning on the
bell.
For the actor was their theme. This was plain to every one in the
pilot-house, the two waiters being gone. A remnant of the food was being
consumed by "Harriet" and Joy. All the others were observing, like
Ramsey, the morning star and the five men under it. Among her own and
Mrs. Gilmore's draperies Ramsey found that lady's hand. Except a few low
words between the pilots, conversation failed. Without leave-taking Ned
left. Presently here he was beneath, on the skylight roof, and now he
joined the actor. Ramsey let go the caressed hand and moved nearer to
Watson. While he and she gazed far up the stream, yet watched the six
men below, he repeated Ned's question.
"See that clump o' big sycamores a mite to lab-board o' where we're
p'inted?"
She didn't believe she did.
"Well," he persisted, "that's it."
"That's what?"
"Why," said Watson, whose only aim was to set her once more at ease,
"that's the p'int you----"
"Humph." She turned to the two ladies, who, with their eyes frankly
below, were counselling together. "Let's go down there ourselves," she
said, but they whispered on.
"Better not," put in Watson; "you can't help."
His kind intent did not keep the words from hurting. With a faint toss
she said:
"I hoped we might be some hindrance."
She laughed in her old manner, dropped her glance again on the two men
and the four, and hearkened. So did the two ladies beside her. They
could all see who spoke below and could hear each voice in turn, though
they could not catch what was said. The only sustained speeches were the
senator's. The general's interpellations were little regarded. The
silent pair at the bell heard everything of essential bearing.
The consciously belated senator had begun with rhetorical regrets for
the captain's and the commodore's illness and with paternal enthusiasm
for those on whom it had brought such grave new cares. His own
sympathetic share in their anxieties, he had hurried on to say, had
robbed him of sleep and driven him up here solely for this interview. On
the way he had chanced upon the general in the----
"Sssame ffframe of mind," the general had said, while the senator
pressed as straight on as the _Votaress_.
As far as the interests involved were private to this boat, he said, her
officers and owners were entitled to keep them so and to be let alone in
the management of them. But when that management became by its nature a
vital part of an acute public problem--a national political issue--he
felt bound, both as the Courteneys' private well-wisher and as a public
servant, to urge such treatment of the matter as its national importance
demanded. A spark, he said, might burn a city! A question of private
ownership not worth a garnishee might set a whole nation afire! The
arrival of Gilmore at the bell threw him into a sudden heat:
"My God! Mr. Courteney--Mr. clerk--_I_ shan't offer to lay hands on
_any_ man; not I. All _I_ ask is that you take yours off--of three. My
dear sirs, equally as your true friend and as a lover of our troubled
country I _beg_ you to liberate those citizens of the sovereign State of
Arkansas whom you hold in unlawful duress, and to hear before witnesses
the plea they regard as righteous and of national concern."
The sight of Ned joining Gilmore heated him again: "Gentlemen, if you
will do that, now, at once, you will save the fortunes of this superb
boat, her honored owners, and their fleet. If you don't you wreck them
forever before this day dawns. And you may--great heavens, gentlemen,
you _may_ see the first bloodshed of sectional strife."
"K-'tional ssstrife!" growled the general.
The clerk smiled. "Why, senator, those men don't go beyond Helena. They
leave us there, before sun-up."
"Precisely, sir! And if they're not set free before you enter Helena
Reach, or even pass Friar's Point, you may as well not free them at
all."
Hugh glanced at the clerk as if to speak. The clerk nodded and in the
pilot-house they saw Hugh begin:
"Mr. Senator, suppose we do that?"
"You would do me honor, sir, and yourselves more."
"Of course the watchmen of this boat watch."
As Hugh said this the cub pilot came from the captain's room with some
word to Gilmore, who, though yearning to stay, left him and Ned and
hastened back to the texas.
Meantime the senator: "I should hope so, sir. I hope every one on watch
watches, sir."
"They do. And so we know that you and the general know, perfectly, that
the same men who want those three released want Mr. Gilmore put ashore.
Is that your wish, too?"
"It is, sssir," put in the general while the senator did some rapid
thinking. Now he too replied:
"Mm--no, sir, it is not. And yet--yes, sir, it is."
"Then you would advise us to do that also?"
"I would advise you to do that also."
"Why?"
"Good Lord! my young friend, to save you! you, your father, grandfather,
boats, all, and Mr. Gilmore himself!"
"How about his wife?"
"And his wife. For her to be with him may help him if he goes. It can't
if he stays." The speaker had let his voice rise. The pilot-house group
caught his words. Also they saw the cub pilot detain Ned when he started
forward.
"Let's go down there ourselves," repeated Ramsey; but the parson's wife
had whisperingly laid both hands on the wife of the actor, and Ramsey
chafed to no avail.
The senator's voice dropped again. "Good God, sir, you know the longer
they're aboard the worse it will be for them, and they've got to go some
time or at Louisville a mob will burn the _Votaress_ to the water's edge
with them on her."
The two stared at each other, the senator's mind bewailing the loss of
each golden moment. The night was not too dark to show him the poker
face fitting its nickname insufferably. But not until its owner spoke
again did he frown--to hide an exultant surprise.
"They could leave their maid, you think, with Madame Hayle?" was Hugh's
astonishing inquiry. The senator had expected of him nothing short of a
grim defiance.
"They could--they can," replied both he and the soldier. "That'll
satisfy everybody." The general saw only the surface of the proposition
but the senator perceived in it all the opportunity their two modest
accomplices of the boiler deck asked. That pair and their adherents--not
followers--you wouldn't catch them leading--they and their gathering
adherents would construe the landing of the players as an attempt to
deliver them out of their hands and would undertake to seize and
maltreat the actor, at least, the moment he should be off the boat. That
they were likely to fail was little to the senator; there would be a
tumult, so managed as to bring Hugh to the actor's rescue, and in the
fracas Hugh was sure of a hammering he would not only never forget but
would discern that he owed, first and last, to him, the senator.
Hugh glanced at the clerk. "You had just recommended Delta Landing." The
clerk nodded and he turned back to the senator. "We'll be there inside
of half an hour."
"Delta will do," said the senator, his frown growing.
Hugh nodded to the clerk. The clerk looked over to Ned.
"Think Delta's above water?"
"Oh--eyes and nose out, Watson allows."
"Delta'll be all right," persisted the senator.
The clerk glanced up to the pilot-house. "Mr. Watson, we'll stop at
Delta, to put off a couple o' passengers."
"Yes, sir." The group at the pilot's back gasped at each other. Then
Ramsey gasped at him.
"Oh, what does that mean?" she demanded. But his gaze remained up the
river as he kindly replied:
"What it says, I reckon. Don't fret, ladies--when you don't know what to
do, don't do it."
"Ho-o-oh!" cried Ramsey, whisking away, "I will!"
"Lawd 'a' massy!" Old Joy sprang for the door, but Ramsey was already
out on the steps and scurrying down them. On the texas roof, however,
she took a wrong direction and lost time; slipped forward round the
pilot-house counting on steps which were not, and never had been, out
there. Returning she lost more by meeting old Joy in the narrow way
between the house and the edge of the texas roof, and when at length she
sprang away for the after end of the texas and the only stair she was
now sure of, whom should she espy bound thither ahead of her but Mrs.
Gilmore. In that order the three hurried down to the guards of the texas
and forward along them by its stateroom doors.
Meantime, out at the bell the clerk had left Hugh and privately sent Ned
and the cub pilot different ways. Hugh moved a pace or two aside to
observe the _Antelope_ out on their larboard quarter. The senator and
the general moved with him.
"She'll pass you again at Delta," remarked the senator. "You see,
general--you see, Mr. Courteney,--at Delta they" (the players) "can very
plausibly explain--there won't be more than two or three, if any, to
explain to--that they're running from the cholera and want to hail the
_Westwood_, which they won't more than just have time to do.
"She won't mind taking them," he babbled on, "already having the cholera
herself. Not many up-river boats would answer a hail from Delta, but she
will, for she'll see they're from this boat and that it's your wish.
There she comes round the bend now. Yes, Delta's a lot safer for 'em
than Helena with its wharf-boat and daylight crowd and those three
red-hots going ashore with 'em. On the _Westwood_ they can put up with
any yarn that'll carry 'em through. They're actors and used to that sort
o' thing."
Musingly Hugh broke in: "Counting all the chances, isn't there a touch
of cruelty in this, to the lady at least?"
"Oh, now, my young friend--" the senator began to rejoin, but two men
lounging by stopped to ask after the father and grandfather. They were
the second engineer and his striker, presently to go on watch.
Mrs. Gilmore, coming along the texas guards, met the cub pilot. He
perched on the railing to let her pass and a few strides farther on
began to do the same for Ramsey.
LI
LOVING-KINDNESS
Ramsey stopped and the boy's heart rose into his throat.
"Whe're you going?" she asked.
He pointed to a lighted door she had just come by.
"First mate's room," he said.
"To tell him what to do?"
"Yes'm." He slid along the rail to get by her, though hungry to linger.
"To do what?" she asked. "I know; to bring out John the Baptist and
those other two men?"
"Yes'm." He backed off, but the compelling power of interrogatory,
especially of hers, retarded him.
"To turn 'em loose?" she asked.
He smiled ruefully. "It looks like it."
"Not with their pistols on them?"
"Oh, no, he's got their pistols."
"How'd he get 'em?"
"Oh--friendly persuasion. He's fine at that. They'll get 'em
back--unloaded--when they land."
She glanced forward after Mrs. Gilmore, and he sprang away. As the
actor's wife neared the captain's door it opened and Gilmore himself
came out, closing it after him warily. Either the captain was worse,
Ramsey guessed, or the actor had received some startling message, so
grave and hurried were the players. They moved several paces away and
stepped down to the hurricane-deck. She let them converse a moment
alone. At the same time the second engineer, his striker, and Ned passed
close and went below. Now Ramsey advanced, addressing the pair in a
smothered voice:
"It's monstrous! It shan't be! It shan't be done! You shan't go!" The
signal for landing tolled. She stopped short.
But the cause of her silence was Hugh Courteney, close before her. Mrs.
Gilmore tried to draw her back but she stood fast, repeating to him
savagely: "It shan't be! It shan't be done! You shan't do it!"
Again she ceased, as the senator and the general appeared, not with Hugh
though from his direction, but, like Ned and his fellows, bound below.
With a side step she brought them to a stand, saying once more to them:
"It shan't be! It shan't be done! You shan't----"
Both Hugh and Gilmore lifted a hand. There was a reply on the lips of
each, but Hugh's remained unuttered. He glanced to the actor, saying:
"Tell it."
The actor told. "It is not going to be done," he said. "No owner of this
boat, no officer, has ever promised, ordered, or intended it."
Ludicrously, from the well of the neighboring stair, the heads of
Hayle's twins rose and remained gazing. Fortunately for the dignity of
the moment they escaped the eye of Ramsey, who, on highest tiptoe, while
the actor still spoke, was piping incredulously:
"The clerk said it!--two passengers!--to go ashore!"
"He might have said five," Hugh gravely answered, while the senator and
the general blazed with astonishment.
"Five," he repeated directly to the senator; "the three whose release
you demanded and those two scamps you made league with a bit ago on the
boiler deck."
The senator was a conflagration. "Sir, I cannot find----!"
"Words?" Hugh softly interrupted. "That's fortunate. If you do you'll be
landed on the next island."
He turned away and moved to the edge of the roof. Ramsey stared at the
three and fell back to the Gilmores, whose manner, as they returned
half-way to the sick-room, was more grave and hurried than before. The
engine bells were jingling, the wheels stopped. At the roof's edge, well
forward of Hugh, appeared the first clerk, giving commands. The shore
trees glided spectrally into the firelight of the steamer's torch
baskets. A solitary man stood on the bank. The morning star was fading
into the daybreak. In the pilot-house Watson pulled his bell-ropes to
back and to stop again, while veiled in its lingering dusk between him
and the parson's wife "Harriet" stood at a closed window, a vigilant
watcher of every movement below.
With the usual deck-hand on its outer end the stage hung half its length
over the narrowing water. On its inboard half, attended at one side by
the first mate and at their backs by a knot of white-jackets with hands
and arms full of baggage, waited the exhorter, his two champions, and
the sporting pair, outwardly well content, however large or dark the
retributions they were inwardly promising themselves. The twins had come
up from the stair, meeting the senator and the general and holding them
in a close counsel that kept the four scowling. These things the maid at
Watson's side noted so intently as almost to forget him and the lady
next her. She marked the actor go once more into the captain's room, the
Californian come out to Mrs. Gilmore and Ramsey, and the three move
toward Hugh with old Joy in their wake. Before they had quite reached
him he turned and addressed the actor's wife. She drew back
apologetically, the Californian doing the same, but by word and sign
seemed to bid Ramsey stay and speak for her.
As if to himself, but really to the two beside him, Watson murmured:
"Right you air, Mr. Hugh Courteney."
"How is he right?" asked the lady, though she most likely, and the maid
certainly, understood.
"He's telling her," said the pilot, "that it'll simplify matters for her
and her husband and this girl here to sort o' keep out o' the limelight
a spell."
The surmise seemed good, for Mrs. Gilmore and "California" took stand
where the great chimney on that side hid them from forecastle and shore,
while they still could see Hugh and Ramsey conversing, she pleadingly,
he with few words, mostly negatives. Ned came back into the pilot-house.
The parson's wife moved from Watson toward him to ask in undertone why
the landing was being made so slowly. The boat seemed to hover and
hesitate. Watson, at the wheel, talked on, pretending not to notice that
the maid was his only listener.
"A man," he drawled, "gets to hear a right smart chance with his eyes,
in a pilot-house. Puts two an' two together a lot more'n he does when
he's a-usin' his y-ears. Now she's a-beggin' him"--meaning Ramsey and
Hugh--"not to drop them fellows ashore. Partly that's for the fellows'
own sakes, but likewise it's also for the play-actors, because they're
generous, like her, and because, no less, it's a-putt'n' the play-actors
themselves in a right funny fix with the rest o' this vain world, to
make five Jonahs on their account. But she's a-barkin' up the wrong
stump an' she knows it. She knows there's somebody else's account
they're bein' put off for; somebody she's as friendly to as what he is,
and which for their sakes--his and hern--if for no other--I'm as
friendly to as what they air. Provid'n', however, that that somebody is
as friendly to them, every way, as what I am." He turned sharply. "Is
she?"
And "Harriet" looked straight into his eyes and said inaudibly: "Yes."
As the glance of both returned to the scene below she was mindful that
Ned had not yet quite satisfied the query of the lady at his elbow, why
the wheels of the _Votaress_ were turning barely enough to keep her from
drifting.
"You see the _Antelope_?" he asked.
She saw the _Antelope_, once more ahead, swan-white in the new daylight
on a great breadth of water which she had earlier heard him tell Ramsey
was Montezuma Bend.
"And you see the _Westwood_ down yonder. Well, when she gets up there
we'll stop killin' time. But why we're killin' it--ask the clerk--or
guess. It's dead easy."
Not given to guessing, she dropped her eyes again on the various groups
beneath with Hugh and Ramsey central among them and did not even see
that Hugh was answering the same riddle from Ramsey.
"Because if we keep these men aboard a few minutes longer," he was
saying, "there'll be no way for them to reach Helena before noon
to-morrow, when we'll be----"
"'Way beyond Memphis," said the river-wise Ramsey.
"Yes."
"And they can't send any troublesome word up the river that can overtake
us," she ventured on, and he assented.
"And may I tell the Gilmores that's as much for Phyllis as for them?"
"I wish you would--and then would go to your rest."
"Humph," she faintly soliloquized and with no other rejoinder remained
looking down on the stage, as he did. It was so near the bank at last
that the men waiting on its inner end moved a step or two forward.
"Why are all those five put off together?" she asked.
"Because," he replied in his absent manner, "the gamblers will try to
keep the other three quiet."
"Mr. Hugh, you'll be off watch now soon, won't you?"
"Yes." (Still no lifting of eyes by either.)
"And then you'll nurse your father, won't you?"
"I cannot! I'm too ignorant."
"Then what will you--shall you--do?"
"Just stay--on watch."
She stood a moment more, comforted to be on watch with him and thinking
sadly of all there was to be on watch for. Then she heard Julian softly
call her name. Without looking his way she started back for Mrs. Gilmore
and the gold hunter, but the brother overtook her.
"Ramsey." She faced him. "Ramsey"--his tone was thin--"when you were
talking just now with that pusillanimous whelp, and neither of you
looking at the other, did he say anything of a confidential nature?"
His scrutiny read confirmation in her fearless eyes. When she would have
spoken her utterance failed and, unable to do anything else half so
well, she laughed.
"You can still do that!" His hint was of Basile.
"A little," she tinkled again, though her eyes ran full.
"Ramsey, did he--over there--just now--that reptile--say
anything--tender?"
She flared rose-red, gazed down ashore, dropped her voice to a key he
had never heard, and said, wondering why she said it: "Mr. Courteney is
a gentleman."
She tried to lift her eyes to the inquisitor, but her irrepressible
twitter came again and she had to turn away to the big chimney. He
clinched his teeth.
"Sis," he half whispered as she began to go, "listen." She glanced back.
"Sis, you may snigger at us all day or ten days; you may listen to him
for a year or for ten; but, no matter what we swore to last night, the
day you accept Hugh Courteney's hand we'll kill him if we're alive."
Old Joy flinched and moaned but Ramsey stared at him benumbed. She
caught no rational grasp of his meaning; only stood and with
immeasurable speed and a kind of earthquake sickness, in the space of
one long breath, dreamed his words over and over. She felt neither
fright nor horror, as she would as soon as thought could clear. Yet one
word shed light, quickened her inner vision and gave it a reach, a
forward range, it had never known. "Ten years," he had said, and for the
first time in her life, as one might come suddenly into some vast
possession, she took the future into her present by years instead of
days.
"Jule," called Lucian, from between the senator and the general. Julian
glanced back and Ramsey started off. But she stopped again with a fresh
shock as a high-pitched yell rose from the shore below. There the
exhorter, stepping from the stage to the ground, had poured his voice
into the woods and now turned to the boat and let loose his tongue: