Terabon possessed a newspaper man's feeling of aloofness and detachment.
When he went afloat on the Mississippi at St. Louis he had no intention
of becoming a part of the river phenomena, and it did not occur to his
mind that his position might become that of a participator rather than
an observer.
The great river was interesting. It had come to his attention several
years before, when he read Parkman's "La Salle," and a little later
he had read almost a column account of a flood down the Mississippi.
The A. P. had collected items from St. Louis, Cincinnati, Memphis,
Cairo, Natchez, Vicksburg, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans, and fired
them into the aloof East. New York, Boston, Bangor, Utica, Albany, and
other important centres had learned for the first time that a
"levee"--whatever that might be--had suffered a cravasse; a steamboat
and some towbarges had been wrecked, that Cairo was registering 63.3 on
the gauge; that some Negroes had been drowned; that cattle thieves were
operating in the Overflow, and so on and so forth.
The combination of La Salle's last adventure and the Mississippi flood
caught the fancy of the newspaper man.
"Shall I ever get out there?" Terabon asked himself.
His dream was not of reporting wars, not of exploring Africa, not of
interviewing kings and making presidents in a national convention. Far
from it! His mind caught at the suggestion of singing birds in their
native trees, and he could without regret think of spending days with a
magnifying glass, considering the ant, or worshipping at the stalk of
the flowering lily.
He was astonished, one day, to discover that he had several hundred
dollars in the Chambers Street Savings Bank. It happened that the city
editor called him to the desk a few minutes later and said:
"Go see about this conference."
"You go to hell!" the reporter replied, smilingly, gently replacing the
slip on the greenish desk.
"T-t-t-t-t----" Mr. Dekod sputtered. There _is_ something new under the
sun!
Lester Terabon strolled forth with easy nonchalance, and three days
later he was in the office of the secretary of the Mississippi River
Commission, at St. Louis, calmly inquiring into the duties and
performance thereof, involving the efforts of 100,000 Negroes, 40,000
mules, 500 contractors, 10,000 government officials, a few hundred
pieces of floating plant, and sundry other things which Terabon had
conceived were of importance.
He had approached the Mississippi River from the human angle. He knew of
no other way of approach. His first view of the river, as he crossed the
Merchants Bridge, had not disturbed his equilibrium in the least, and he
had floated out of an eddy in a 16-foot skiff still with the
human-viewpoint approach.
Then had begun a combat in his mind between all his preconceived ideas
and information and the river realities. Faithfully, in the notebooks
which he carried, he put down the details of his mental disturbances.
By the time he reached Island No. 10 sandbar he had about resigned
himself to the whimsicalities of river living. He had, however,
preserved his attitude of aloofness and extraneousness. He regarded
himself as a visiting observer who would record the events in which
others had a part. It still pleased his fancy to say that he was
interviewing the Mississippi River as he might interview the President
of the United States.
But as Lester Terabon rowed his skiff back up the eddy above New Madrid,
and breasted the current in the sweep of the reach to that little
cabin-boat half a mile above the Island No. 10 light, his attitude was
undergoing a conscious change. While he had been reporting the
Mississippi River in its varying moods something had encircled him and
grasped him, and was holding him.
For some time he had felt the change in his position; glimmerings of its
importance had appeared in his notes; his mind had fought against it as
a corruption, lest it ruin the career which he had mapped out for
himself.
When the New Madrid fish-dock man told him to carry the warning that a
"detector" was hunting for a certain woman, and that the detective had
gone on down with some river fellows, his place as a river man was
assured. River folks trusted and used him as they used themselves.
Moreover, he was possessed of a vital river secret.
Nelia Crele, _alias_ Nelia Carline, was the woman, and they were both
stopping over at the Island No. 10 sandbar. He knew, what the fish-dock
man probably did not know, that the pursuer was the woman's husband.
"What'll I tell her?" Terabon asked himself.
With that question he uncovered an unsuspected depth to his feelings. It
was a dark, dull day. The waves rolled and fell back, sometimes the wind
seeming the stronger and then the current asserting its weight. With the
wind's help over the stern, Terabon swiftly passed the caving bend and
landed in the lee above the young woman's boat.
He carried some things he had bought for her into the kitchen and they
sat in the cabin to read newspapers and magazines which he had
obtained.
"I heard some news, too," he told her.
"Yes? What news?"
"The fish-dock man at New Madrid told me to tell the people along that a
detective has gone on down, looking for a woman."
"A detective looking for a woman?" she repeated.
"A man the name of Carline----"
"Oh!" she shrugged her shoulders. "Why didn't you tell me!"
He flushed. Almost an hour had elapsed since he had returned. He had
found it difficult to mention the subject.
"I did not tell you either," he apologized, "that I happened to meet Mr.
Carline up at Island No. 8, when I had no idea the good fortune would
come to me of meeting you, whose--whose pictures he showed me. I could
not--I saw----There was----"
"And you didn't tell me," she accused him.
"It seemed to me none of my affair. I'm a newspaper man--I----"
"And did that excuse you from letting me know of his--of that pursuit of
me?"
His newspaper impartiality had failed him, and he hung his head in doubt
and shame. She claimed, and she deserved, his friendship; the last
vestige of his pretence of mere observation was torn from him. He was a
human among humans--and he had a fervid if unexpected thought about the
influence and exasperation of the river out yonder.
"I could not tell you!" he cried. "I didn't think--it seemed----"
"You know, then, you saw why I had left him?"
"Liquor!" he grasped at the excuse. "Oh, that was plain enough."
"Perhaps a woman could forgive liquor," she suggested, thoughtfully,
"but not--not stupidity and indifference. He never disturbed the dust on
any of the books of his library. Oh, what they meant my books mean to
me!"
She turned and stared at her book shelves.
"Suppose you hadn't found books?" he asked, glad of the opportunity for
a diversion.
"I'd be dead, I think," she surmised, "and one day, I did deliberately
choose."
"How was that?"
"Get your notebook!" she jeered. "I thought if he was going to rely on
the specious joys of liquor I would, and tried it. It was a blizzard day
last winter. He had gone over to see the widow, and there was a bottle
of rum in the cupboard. I took some hot milk, nutmeg, sugar, and rum.
I've never felt so happy in my life, except----"
"With what exception?" he asked.
"Yesterday," she answered, laughing, "and last night and to-day! You
see, I'm free now. I say and do what I please. I don't care any more.
I'm perfectly brazen. I don't love you, but I like you very much. You're
good company. I hope I am, too----"
"You are--splendid!" he cried, almost involuntarily, and she shivered.
"Let's go walking again, will you?" she said. "I want to get out in the
wind; I want to have the sky overhead, a sandbar under my feet, and all
outdoors at my command. You don't mind, you'd like to go?"
"To the earth's end!" he replied, recklessly, and her gay laugh showed
how well he had pleased her mood.
They kept close up to the north side of the bar because down the wind
the sand was lifting and rolling up in yellow clouds. They went to
Winchester Chute, and followed its winding course through the wood
patch. There was a slough of green water, with a flock of ducks which
left precipitately on their approach. They returned down to the sandbar,
and pressed their way through the thick clump of small willows into the
switch willows and along the edge of the unbroken desert of sand. They
could see the very surface of the bar rolling along before the wind, and
as they walked along they found their feet submerged in the blast.
But when they arrived at the boat night was near at hand, and the
enveloping cold became more biting and the gloom more depressing.
Just when they had eaten their supper together, and had seated
themselves before the fire, and when the whirl and whistle of the wind
was heard in the mad music of a river storm, a motorboat with its
cut-out open ploughed up the river through the dead eddy and stopped to
hail.
Jim Talum, a fisherman whose line of hoop nets filled the reach of
Island No. 9 for eight or ten miles, was on his way to his tent which he
had pitched at the head of Winchester Chute.
He tramped aboard, and welcomed a seat by the fire.
"'Lowed I'd drap in a minute," he declared. "Powerful lonesome up on the
chute where I got my tent. Be'n runnin' my traps down the bank, yeah,
an' along of the chute, gettin' rats. Yo' trappin'?"
"No, just tripping," Terabon replied. "I was down to New Madrid this
morning."
"I'm just up from there. Ho law! Theh's one man I'd hate to be down
below. I expect yo've hearn tell of them Despard riveh pirates? No!
Well, they've come drappin' down ag'in, an' they landed into New Madrid
yestehd'y evenin'. Likely they 'lowed to raid some commissary down
b'low--cayn't tell what they did 'low to do. But they picked good
pickin's down theh! Feller come down lookin' fo' a woman, hisn's I
expect. Anyhow, he's a strangeh on the riveh. He's got a nice power
boat, an' likely he's got money. If he has, good-bye! Them Despards'd
kill a man for $10. One of 'em, Hilt Despard's onto the bo't with him,
pretendin' to be a sport, an' they've drapped out. The rest the gang's
jes' waitin' fo' the wind to lay, down b'low, an' down by Plum P'int,
some'rs, Mr. Man'll sudden come daid."
The fisherman had been alone so much that the pent-up conversation of
weeks flowed uninterruptedly. He told details; he described the
motorboat; he laughed at the astonishment the man would feel when the
pirates disclosed their intentions with a bullet or knife; and he
expected, by and by, to hear the story of the tragedy through the medium
of some whiskey boater, some river gossip coming up in a power boat.
For an hour he babbled and then, as precipitately as he had arrived, he
took his departure. When he was gone, Nelia Crele turned to Terabon with
helpless dismay. Augustus Carline was worthless; he had been faithless
to her; he had inflicted sufferings beyond her power of punishment or
forgiveness.
"But he's looking for me!" she recapitulated, "and he doesn't know. He's
a fool, and they'll kill him like a rat! What can I do?"
Obviously there was nothing that she could do, but Lester Terabon rose
instantly.
"I'd better drop down and see if I can't help him--do something. I know
that crew."
"You'll do that for me!" her voice lifted in a cry of thankfulness. "Oh,
if you would, if you would. I couldn't think of his being--his being
killed, trying to find me. Get him; send him home!"
"I'd better start right down," Terabon said, "it's sixty or seventy
miles, anyhow. They'll not hurry. They can't, for the gang's in a
shanty-boat."
She walked up to him with her arms raised.
"How can I thank you?" she demanded. "You do this for me--a stranger!"
"Why not, if I can help?" he asked.
"Where shall I see you again?"
He brought in his book of river maps, and together they looked down the
tortuous stream; he rested the tip of his pencil on Yankee Bar below
Plum Point.
"It's a famous pirate resort, this twenty miles of river!" he said.
"I'll wait at Fort Pillow Landing. Or if you are ahead?"
"We'll meet there!" she cried. "I'll surely find you there. Or at
Mendova--surely at Mendova."
She followed him out on the bow deck.
"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.