Jest Prebol, sore and sick with his bullet wound, but more alarmed on
account of having sworn so much while a parson was dressing his injury,
could not sleep, and as he thought it over he determined at last to cut
loose and drop on down the river and land in somewhere among friends, or
where he could find a doctor. But the practised hand of Rasba had
apparently left little to do, and it was superstitious dread that
worried Prebol.
So the river rat crept out on the sandbar, cast off the lines, and with
a pole in one hand, succeeded in pushing out into the eddy where the
shanty-boat drifted into the main current. Prebol, faint and weary with
his exertions, fell upon his bunk. There in anguish, delirious at
intervals, and weak with misery, he floated down reach, crossing, and
bend, without light or signal. In olden days that would have been
suicide. Now the river was deserted and no steamers passed him up or
down. His cabin-boat, but a rectangular shade amidst the river shadows,
drifted like a leaf or chip, with no sound except when a coiling jet
from the bottom suckled around the corners or rippled along the sides.
The current carried him nearly six miles an hour, but two or three times
his boat ran out of the channel and circled around in an eddy, and then
dropped on down again. Morning found him in mid-stream, between two
wooded banks, as wild as primeval wilderness, apparently. The sun, which
rose in a white mist, struck through at last, and the soft light poured
in first on one side then on the other as the boat swirled around. Once
the squirrels barking in near-by trees awakened the man's dim
consciousness, but a few minutes later he was in mid-stream, making a
crossing where the river was miles wide.
He passed Hickman just before dawn, and toward noon he dropped by New
Madrid, and the slumping of high, caving banks pounded in his ears down
three miles of changing channel. Then the boat crossed to the other side
and he lay there with eyes seared and staring. He discovered a grave
stone poised upon the river bank, but he could not tell whether it was
fancy or fact that the ominous thing bent toward him and fell with a
splash into the river, while a wave tossed his boat on its way. He heard
a quavering whine that grew louder until it became a shriek, and then
fell away into silence, but his senses were slow in connecting it with
one of the Tiptonville cotton gins. He heard a voice, curiously human,
and having forgotten the old hay-burner river ferry, worried to think
that he should imagine someone was driving a mule team on the
Mississippi. For a long time he was in acute terror, because he thought
he was blind, and could not see, but to his amazed relief he saw a river
light and knew that another night had fallen upon him, so he went to
sleep once more.
Voices awakened him. He opened his eyes, and the surroundings were
familiar. He smelled iodine, and saw a man looking over a doctor's case.
Leaning against the wall of the cabin-boat was a tall, slender young man
with arms folded.
"How's he comin' Doc'?" the young man was saying.
"He'll be all right. How long has he been this way?"
"Don't know, Doc; he come down the riveh an' drifted into this eddy. I
see his lips movin', so I jes' towed 'im in an' sent fo' yo'!"
"Just as well, for that wound sure needed dressing. I 'low a horse
doctor fixed hit first time," the physician declared. "He'll need some
care now, but he's comin' along."
"Oh, we'll look afteh him, Doc! Friend of ourn."
"I'll come in to-morrow. It's written down what to do, and about that
medicine. You can read?"
"Howdy," Prebol muttered, feebly.
"He's a comin' back, Doc!" the young man cried, starting up with
interest.
"Well, old sport, looks like you'd got mussed up some?" the doctor
inquired.
"Yas, suh," Prebol grinned, feebly, his senses curiously clear. "Hit
don't pay none to mind a lady's business fo' her, no suh!"
"A lady shot you, eh?"
"Yas, suh," Prebol grinned. "'Peahs like I be'n floatin' about two mile
high like a flock o' ducks. Where all mout I be?"
"Little Prairie Bend."
"Into that bar eddy theh?"
"Yas, suh--the short eddy."
"Much obliged, Doc. Co'se I'll pay yo'----"
"Your friend's paid!"
"Yas, suh," Prebol whispered, sleepily, tired by the exertion and
excitement.
"Sleep'll do him good," the doctor said, and returned to his little
motorboat.
The young man went on board his own boat which was moored just below
Prebol's. As he entered the cabin, a burly, whiskered man looked up and
said:
"How's he coming, Slip?"
"Doc says he's all right. Jest said a woman shot him for tryin' to mind
her business, kind-a laughed about hit."
"Theh! I always knowed a man that'd chase women the way he done'd git
what's comin'. A woman'll make trouble quicker'n anything else on Gawd's
earth, she will."
"Sho! Buck, yo's soured!"
"Hit's so 'bout them women!" Buck protested.
"If a man'd mind his business, an' not try to mind their business,
women'd be plumb amusin'," Slip laughed.
"Wait'll yo've had experience," Buck retorted.
"Shucks! Ain't I had experience?"
"Eveh married?"
"No-o."
"Eveh have a lady sic' yo' onto some'n bigger'n yo' is?"
"No-o; reckon I pick my own people to scrap."
"Theh! That shows how much yo' don't know about women. Never had no
woman yo' 'lowed to marry?"
"Huh! Catch me gittin' married--co'se not."
"Sonny, lemme tell yo'; hit ain't yo'll do the catchin', an' hit won't
be yo' who'll be decidin' will yo' git married. An' hit won't be yo'
who'll decide how long yo'll stay married, no, indeed."
"Peah's like yo' got an awful grouch ag'in women, Buck."
"Why shouldn't I have?" Buck started up from shuffling and throwing a
book of cards. "Look't me. If Jest Prebol's shot most daid by a woman,
look't me. Do you know me--where I come from, where the hell I'm goin'?
Yo' bet you don't. I've been shanty-boatin' fifteen years, but I ain't
always been a shanty-boater, no, I haven't. Talk to me about women. When
I think what I've took from one woman--Sho!"
He stared at the floor, his teeth clenched and his strong face set.
Slip stared. His pal had disclosed a new phase of character.
Buck turned and glared into Slip's eyes.
"I'll tell you, Slip, you're helpless when it comes to women. They've
played the game for ten thousand years, practised it every day, wearing
down men's minds and men never knew it. Read history, as I've done.
Study psychology, as I have. Go down into the fundamentals of human
experience and human activities, and learn the lesson. Fifteen years
I've been up and down these rivers, from Fort Benton to the Passes, from
the foothills of the Rockies to the headwaters of Clinch and Holston in
the Appalachians. Why? Because one woman sang her way into my heart, and
because she tied my soul to her little finger, and when she found that I
could not escape--when she had--when she had--What do you know about
women?"
Slip stared at him. His pal, partner in river enterprises, an old river
man, who talked little and who played the slickest games in the slickest
way, had suddenly emerged like a turtle's head, and spoken in terms of
science, education, breeding--regular quality folks' talk--under stress
of an argument about women. And they had argued the subject before with
jest and humour and without personal feeling.
Buck turned away, bent and shivering.
"I 'low I'll roast up them squirrels fo' dinner?" Slip suggested.
"They'll shore go good!" Buck assented. "I'll mux around some hot-bread,
an' some gravy."
"I got to make some meat soup for that feller, too."
"Huh! Jest Prebol's one of them damned fools what tried to forget a
woman among women," Buck sneered.
At intervals during the day Slip went over and gave Prebol his medicine,
or fed him on squirrel meat broth; toward night they floated their
35-foot shanty-boat out into the eddy, and anchored it a hundred yards
from the bank, where the sheriff of Lake County, Tennessee, no longer
had jurisdiction. In the late evening Slip lighted a big carbide light
and turned it toward the town on the opposite bank.
Pretty soon they heard the impatient dip of skiff oars, a river
fisherman came aboard, and stood for a minute over the heater stove,
warming his fingers. He soon went to the long, green-topped crap table
in the end of the room, and Slip stood opposite, to throw bones against
him. A tiny motorboat crossed a little later; and three men, two heavy
set and one a slim youth, entered, to sit down at one of the little
round tables and play a game.
One by one other patrons appeared, and soon there were fourteen or
fifteen. Slip and Buck glided about among them quietly, their eyes
alert, their hats drawn down over their eyes, taking a hand here,
throwing bones there, poking up the coal fire, putting on coffee, making
sandwiches, every moment on the _qui vive_, communicating with each
other by jerks of the hand, lifting of shoulders, or the faintest of
whisperings.
A jar against the side of the boat sent one or other of the two out to
look, to greet a newcomer or to fend off a drift log. A low whistle from
the stern took Buck through the aisle between the staterooms to the
kitchen where a rat-eyed little man waited him on the stern deck,
"Lo, Buck! I'm drappin' down in a hurry; I learn yo' was heah. Theh's a
feller drapping down out the Ohio; he's lookin' fo' a feller name of
Jock Drones--didn't hear what for. Yo' know 'im?"
"Nope, but I'll pass the word around."
"S'long!"
"Jock Drones--huh!" Buck repeated, turning into the lamp-lit kitchen
where Slip was sniffing the coffee pot.
"Friend of mine just stopped," Buck whispered. "There's a detective
coming down out of the Ohio. Told me to pass the word around. He's after
somebody by the name of Drones, Dock or Jock Drones."
Slip started, turned white, and his jaws parted. Buck's eyes opened a
little wider.
"S'all right, Slip! Keep your money in your belt, to be ready to run or
swim. It's a long river."
Slip could not trust himself to speak. Buck, patting him on the
shoulder, went on into the card room and closed the kitchen door behind
him, drawing the aisle curtains shut, too, so that no one would go back
until Slip had recovered his equilibrium.