For a minute Elijah Rasba, as the Mississippi revealed itself to him,
contemplated a greater field for service than he had ever dreamed of.
Then, humbled in his pride at the thought of great success, he felt that
it could not be; for such an opportunity an Apostle was needed, and
Rasba's cheeks warmed with shame at the realization of the vanity in his
momentary thought.
He was grateful for the privilege of seeing the panorama that unrolled
and unfolded before his eyes with the same slow dignity with which the
great storm clouds boiled up from the long backs of the mountains of his
own homeland. He missed the elevations, the clustered wildernesses, and
ledges of stone against a limited sky, but in their places he saw the
pale heavens in a dome that was uninterrupted from horizon to horizon.
There seemed to be hardly any earth commensurate with the sky, and the
river seemed to be flowing between bounds so low and insignificant that
he felt as though it might break through one side or the other and fall
into the chaos beyond the brim of the world.
Instinctively he removed his hat in this Cathedral. Familiar from
childhood with mountains and deep valleys, the sense of power and motion
in the river appealed to him as the ocean might have done. He looked
about him with curiosity and inquiry. He felt as though there must be
some special meaning for him in that immediate moment, and it was a long
time before he could quite believe that this thing which he witnessed
had continued far back beyond the memory of men, and would continue into
the unquestionable future.
He floated down stream from bend to bend, carried along as easily as in
the full run of time. He looked over vast reaches, and hardly recognized
other houseboats, tucked in holes along the banks, as craft like his
own. The clusters of houses on points of low ridges did net strike him
as veritable villages, but places akin to those of fairyland.
All the rest of the day he dropped on down, not knowing which side he
should land against, and filled with doubts as to where his duty lay.
Once he caught up his big oars and began to row toward a number of
little shanty-boats moored against a sandbar, close down to a wooded
bank, only to find that the river current carried him away despite his
most muscular endeavours, so he accepted it as a sign that he should not
land there.
For a time Rasba thought that perhaps he had better just let the river
carry him whither it would, but upon reflection he remembered what an
old raftsman, who had run strands of logs down Clinch and Holston, told
him about the nature of rivers:
"Come a falling tide, an' she drags along the banks and all that's
afloat keeps in the middle; but come a fresh an' a risin' tide, an' the
hoist of the water is in the mid-stream, and what's runnin' rolls off to
one side or the other, an' jams up into the drift piles."
The philosophy of that was, for this occasion, that if Old Mississip'
was falling, Elijah Rasba might never get ashore, not in all the rest of
his born days, unless he stirred his boots. So catching up his sweep
handles he began to push a long stroke toward the west bank, and his
boat began to move on the river surface. Under the two corners of his
square bow appeared little swirls and tiny ripples as he approached the
bank and drifted down in the edge of the current looking for a place to
land.
Before he knew it, a big patch of woods grew up behind him, and when he
felt the current under the boat slacken he discovered that he had run
out of the Mississippi River and was in a narrow waterway no larger than
Tug Fork.
"Where all mout I be?" he gasped, in wonderment.
He saw three houseboats just below him, moored against a sandbar, with
hoop nets drying near by, blue smoke curling out of tin pipes, and two
or three people standing by to look at the stranger.
He rowed ashore and carried out a big roped stone, which he used as
anchor; then he walked down the bar toward the man who watched his
approach with interest.
"I am Elijah Rasba," he greeted him. "I come down out of Tug River; I am
looking for Jock Drones; he's down thisaway, somewheres; can yo' all
tell me whichaway is the Mississippi River?"
"I don't know him," the fisherman shook his head. "But this yeah is Wolf
Island Chute; the current caught you off of Columbus bluffs, and you
drifted in yeah; jes' keep a-floatin' an' d'rectly you'll see Old
Mississip' down thataway."
"It's near night," Rasba remarked, looking at the sun through the trees.
"I'm a stranger down thisaway; mout I get to stay theh?"
"Yo' can land anywhere's," the man said. "No man can stop you all!"
"But a woman mout!" Rasba exclaimed, with sudden humour. "Yistehd'y
evenin', up yonway, by the Ohio River, I found a man shot through into
his shanty-boat. He said he 'lowed to land along of the same eddy with a
woman, an' she shot him almost daid!"
"Ho law!" the fisherman cried, and another man and three or four women
drew near to hear the rest of the narrative. "How come hit?"
Rasba stood there talking to them, a speaker to an audience. He told of
his floating down into the Mississippi, and of his surprise at finding
the river so large, so without end. He said he kind of wanted to ask the
way of a shanty-boat, for a poor sinner must needs inquire of those he
finds in the wilderness, and he heard a groan and a weak cry for help.
"I cyard for him, and he thanked me kindly; he said a woman had shot him
when he was trying to be friendly; a pretty woman, young and alone.
Co'rse, I washed his wound and I linimented it, and I cut the bullet out
of his back; law me, but that man swore! Come night, an' he heard say I
was a parson, he apologized because he cursed, and this mo'nin' he'd
done lit out, yas, suh! Neveh no good-bye. Scairt, likely, hearin' me
pray theh because I needed he'p, an' 'count of me being glad of the
chanct to he'p any man in trouble."
"Sho! Who all mout that man be, Parson?"
"He said his name were Jest Prebol----"
"Ho law! Somebody done plugged Jest Prebol!" one of the women cried out,
laughing. "That scoundrel's be'n layin' off to git shot this long time,
an' so he's got hit. I bet he won't think he's so winnin' of purty women
no more! He's bad, that man, gamblin' an' shootin' craps an' workin' the
banks. Served him right, yes, indeedy. But he'd shore hate to know a
parson hearn him cussin' an' swearin' around. Hit don't bring a gambler
any luck, bein' heard swearin', no."
"Nor if any one else hears him; not if he thinks swearin' in hisn's
heart!" Rasba shook his head gravely. "How come hit yo' know that man?"
"He's used down this riveh ten-fifteen years; besides, he married my
sister what's Mrs. Dollis now. Hit were a long time ago, though, 'fore
anybody knowed he wa'n't no good. I bet we hearn yo' was comin',
Parson. Whiskey Williams said they was a Hallelujah Singer comin' down
the Ohio--said he could hear him a mile. I bet yo' sing out loud
sometimes?"
"Hit's so," Rasba admitted. "I sung right smart comin' down the Ohio.
Seems like I jest wanted to sing, like birds in the posey time."
"Prebol shore should git to a doctor, shot up thataway. He didn't say
which lady shot him, Parson?" a woman asked.
"No; jes' a lady into an eddy into a lonesome bend." Rasba shook his
head. "A purty woman, livin' alone on this riveh. Do many do that?"
"Riveh ladies all do, sometimes. I tripped from Cairo to Vicksburg into
a skift once," a tall, angular woman said. "My man that use to be had
stoled the shanty-boat what I'd bought an' paid for with my own money. I
went up the bank at Columbus Hickories, gettin' nuts; I come back, an'
my boat was gone. Wa'n't I tearin' an' rearin'! Well, I hoofed hit down
to Columbus, an' I bought me a skift, count of me always havin' some
money saved up."
"I bet Vicksburg's a hundred mile!" Rasba mused.
"A hundred mile!" the woman said with a guffaw. "Hit's six hundred an'
sixty-three miles from Cairo to Vicksburg, yes, indeed. A hundred mile!
I made hit in ten days, stoppin' along. I ketched it theh."
"You found yo' man?"
"Shucks! Hit wa'n't the man I wanted, hit were my boat--a nice, reg'lar
pine an' oak-frame boat. I bet me I chucked him ovehbo'd, an' towed back
up to Memphis. Hit were a good $300 bo't, sports built, an' hits on the
riveh yet--Dart Mitto's got hit, junkin'. You'll see him down by
Arkansaw Old Mouth if yo's trippin' right down."
"I expect to," Rasba replied, doubtfully. Never in his life before had
he talked in terms of hundreds of miles, cities, and far rivers,
"Yo'll know that boat; he's went an' painted hit a sickly yeller, like a
railroad station. I hate yeller! Gimme a nice light blue or a right
bright green."
"Hyar comes anotheh bo't!" one of the men remarked, and all turned to
look up the chute, where a little cabin-boat had drifted into sight.
No one was on deck, and it was apparent that the Columbus banks had
shunted the craft clear across the river and down the chute, just as
Rasba himself had been carried. The shadow of the trees on the west side
of the chute fell across the boat and immediately brought the tripper
out of the cabin.
A shadow is a warning on wide rivers. It tells of the nearness of a
bank, or towhead, or even of a steamboat. In mid-stream there is little
need for apprehension, but when the current carries one down into a
caving bend and close to overhanging trees or along the edges of short,
boiling eddies, it is time to get out and look for snags and
jeopardies.
Seeing the group of people on the sandbar, the journeyer, who was a
woman, took the sweeps of her boat and began to work over to them.
"Hit handles nice, that bo't!" one of the fishermen said. "Pulls jes'
like a skift. Wonder who that woman is?"
"I've seen her some'rs," the powerful, angular woman, Mrs. Cooke, said
after a time. "Them's swell clothes she's got on. She's all alone, too,
an' what a lady travels alone down yeah for I don't know. She's purty
enough to have a husband, I bet, if she wants one."
"Looks like one of them Pittsburgh er Cincinnati women," Jim Caope
declared.
"No." Mrs. Caope shook her head. "She's off'n the riveh. Leastwise, she
handles that bo't reg'lar. I cayn't git to see her face, but I seen her
some'rs, I bet. I can tell a man by hisns walk half a mile."
In surprise she stared at the boat as it came nearer, and then walked
down to the edge of the bar to greet the newcomer.
"Why, I jes' knowed I'd seen yo' somers! How's yer maw?" she greeted.
"Ho law! An' yo's come tripping down Ole Mississip'! I 'clare, now, I'd
seen yo', an' I knowed hit, an' hyar yo' be, Nelia Crele. Did yo' git
shut of that up-the-bank feller yo' married, Nelia?"
"I'm alone," the girl laughed, her gaze turning to look at the others,
who stood watching.
"If yo' git a good man," Mrs. Caope philosophized, "hang on to him.
Don't let him git away. But if yo' git somebody that's shif'less an' no
'count, chuck him ovehbo'd. That's what I b'lieve in. Well, I declare!
Hand me that line an' I'll tie yo' to them stakes. Betteh throw the
stern anchor over, fo' this yeah's a shallows, an' the riveh's eddyin',
an' if hit don't go up hit'll go down, an'----"
"Theh's a head rise coming out the Ohio," someone said. "Yo' won't need
no anchor over the stern!"
"Sho! I'm glad to see yo'!" Mrs. Caope cried, wrapping her arms around
the young woman as she stepped down to the sand, and kissing her. "How
is yo' maw?"
"Very well, indeed!" Nelia laughed, clinging to the big river woman's
hand. "I'm so glad to find someone I know!"
"You'll know us all d'rectly. Hyar's my man, Mr. Caope--real nice
feller, too, if I do say hit--an' hyar's Mrs. Dobstan an' her two
darters, an' this is Mr. Falteau, who's French and married May, there,
an' this feller--say, mister, what is yo' name?"
"Rasba, Elijah Rasba."
"Mr. Rasba, he's a parson, out'n the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy, comin'
down. Miss Nelia Crele, suh. I disremember the name of that feller yo'
married, Nelia."
"It doesn't matter," Nelia turned to the mountain man, her face
flushing. "A preacher down this river?"
"I'm looking for a man," Rasba replied, gazing at her, "the son of a
widow woman, and she's afraid for him. She's afraid he'll go wrong."
"And you came clear down here to look for him--a thousand, two thousand
miles?" she continued, quickly.
"I had nothing else to do--but that!" he shook his head. "You see,
missy, I'm a sinner myse'f!"
He turned and walked away with bowed head. They all watched him with
quick comprehension and real sympathy.