Pirates have infested the Mississippi from the earliest days. The
stranger on the river cannot possibly know a pirate when he sees one,
and even shanty-boaters of long experience and sharp eyes penetrate
their disguises with difficulty. How could Gus Carline suspect the
loquacious, ingratiating, and helpful Renald Doss?
Lonely; pursued by doubts, ignorance, and a lurking timidity, Carline
was only too glad to take on a companion who discoursed about all the
river towns, called river commissioners by their first names, knew all
the makes of motors, and called the depth of the water in Point Pleasant
crossing by reading the New Madrid gauge.
He relinquished the wheel of his boat to the dapper little man, and fed
the motor more gas, or slowed down to half speed, while he listened to
volumes of river lore.
"You've been landing along down?" Doss asked.
"All along," Carline replied, "everywhere."
"Seen anybody?"
"I should say so; there was a fellow come down pretending to be a
reporter. He stopped over with me, got me full's a tick, and then robbed
me."
"Eh--_he_ robbed you?"
"Yes, sir! He got me to drinking heavy. I like my stew a little, but he
fixed me. Then he just went through me, but he didn't get all I had, you
bet!"
This was rich!
"Lucky he didn't hit you on the head, and take the boat, too!" Doss
grinned.
"I suppose so."
"Yes, sir! Lots of mean men on this river, they play any old game. They
say they're preachers, or umbrella menders, or anything. Every once in a
while some feller comes down, saying he's off'n some magazine. They come
down in skiffs, mostly. It's a great game they play. Everybody tells 'em
everything. If I was going to be a crook, I bet I'd say I was a hist'ry
writer. I'd snoop around, and then I'd land--same's that feller landed
on you. Get much?"
"Two--three hundred dollars!"
The little man laughed in his throat. He handled the boat like a river
pilot. His eyes turned to the banks, swept the sandbars, gazed into the
coiling waters alongside, and he whispered names of places as he passed
them--landings, bars, crossings, bends, and even the plantations and log
cuttings. He named the three cotton gins in Tiptonville, and stared at
the ferry below town with a sidelong leer.
Carline would have been the most astonished man on the Mississippi had
he known that nearly all his money was in the pockets of his guest. He
babbled on, and before he knew it, he was telling all about his wife
running away down the Mississippi.
"What kind of a boat's she in?" Doss asked.
"I don't know."
"How do you expect to find her if you don't know the boat?"
"Why--why, somebody might know her; a woman alone!"
"She's alone?"
"Why--yes, sir. I heard so."
"Good looker?"
Without a word Carline handed the fellow a photograph. Doss made no
sign. For two minutes he stared at that fine face.
"I bet she's got an awful temper," he half whispered.
"She's quick," Carline admitted, fervently.
"She'd just soon shoot a man as look at him," Doss added, with a touch
of asperity.
"Why--she----" Carline hesitated. He recalled a day in his own
experience when she took his own shot gun from him, and stood a fury,
flaming with anger.
"Yes, sir, she would," Doss declared, with finality.
Doss had seen her. By that time a thousand shanty-boaters had heard
about that girl's one shot of deadly accuracy. The woman folks on a
thousand miles of reach and bend had had a bad example set before them.
Doss himself felt an anger which was impotent against the woman who had
shot Jest Prebold down. Probably other women would take to shooting,
right off the bat, the same way. He despised that idea.
Carline, doubtful as to whether his wife was being insulted,
congratulated, or described, gazed at the photograph. The more he
looked, the more exasperated he felt. She was a woman--what right had
she to run away and leave him with his honour impugned? He felt as
though he hadn't taught her her place. At the same time, when he looked
at the picture, he discovered a remembrance of his feeling that she was
a very difficult person to teach anything to. Her learning always had
insulted his own meagreness of information and aptness in repartee. Next
to not finding her, his big worry had become finding her.
They steered down the river without great haste. Doss studied the
shanty-boats which he saw moored in the various eddies, large and small.
Some he spoke of casually, as store-boats, fishermen, market hunters,
or, as they passed between Caruthersville and the opposite shore, a
gambling boat. Even the river pirate, gloating over his prey, and
puzzled only as to the method of making the most of his victim, could
not penetrate the veil which it happened the Mississippi River
interposed between them and the river gambling den--for the moment.
There is no use seeking the method of the river, nor endeavouring to
discover the processes by which the lives of thousands who go afloat
down the Mississippi are woven as woof and warp in the fabric of river
life and river mysteries. The more faithful an effort to select one of
the commonest and simplest of river complications, the more improbable
and fanciful it must seem.
Doss, in intervals when he was not consciously registering the smile of
good humour, the generosity of an experienced man toward the chance
visitor, and the willingness to defer to the gentleman from Up the Bank,
brought his expression unconsciously to the cold, rough woodenness of
blank insensitiveness--the malignance of a snapping turtle, to mention a
medium reptilian face. A whim, and the necessity of delay, led Doss to
suggest that they take a look up the Obion River as a likely hiding
place. Of course, Doss knew best, and they quit the tumbling Mississippi
for the quiet wooded aisle of the little river.
When they emerged, two days later, Augustus Carline could well thank his
stars, though he did not know it, that he was still on the boat. All
unconscious of the real nature and habits of river rats he had given the
little wretch a thousand opportunities to commit one of the many crimes
he had in mind. But he developed a reluctance to choose the easiest one,
when from hint after hint he understood that a mere river piracy and
murder would be folly in view of the opportunity for a more profitable
stake which a man of means offered.
As he steered by the government boat which was surveying Plum Point
bars, Doss showed his teeth like an indignant cat. Five or six miles
below he offered the supine and helpless Carline the information:
"There's Yankee Bar. We'll swing wide and land in below, so's not to
scare up any geese or ducks that may be roosting there."
Eagerly Doss searched through the switch willows for a glimpse of the
setback of the water beyond the bar. Away down in the old eddy he
discovered a shanty-boat, and to cover his involuntary exclamation of
satisfaction he said:
"Shucks! There's somebody theh. I hoped we'd have it to ourselves but
they may be sports, too. If they are, we'll sure have a good time. Some
of these shanty-boaters are great sports. We'll soon find out!"
He steered into the eddy and the two men stepped out on the flat boat's
deck to greet them.
"Seems like I've seen them before," Doss said in a low voice; "I believe
they're old timers. Hello, boys! Hunting?"
"Yes, suh! Lots of game. Sho, ain' yo' Doss, Ren Doss?"
"You bet. I knew you! I told Mr. Carline, here, that I knew you, that
I'd seen you before! I'm glad to see you boys again. Catch a line
there."
No doubt about it, they were old friends. In a minute they were shaking
hands all around, then went into the shanty-boat, and they sat down in
assorted chairs, and Doss, Jet, and Cope exchanged the gossip of a river
year.
Carline's eyes searched about him with interest, and the three men
watched him more and more openly. When he walked toward the bow of the
boat, where the slope of the yellow sand led up to the woods of Flower
Island, one of them casually left his seat and followed.
Carline looked at the stand of guns in the cabin corner and started
with surprise. He reached and picked up one of them to look at it.
"Why," he shouted, "this is my shot gu----"
No more. His light went out on the instant and he felt that he was
suspended in mid-air, poised between the abyss and the heavens.