Diamond Tolls/Chapter 13
CHAPTER XIII
OF THE coming and going of river people there is no end. Macrado knew that when they sold out their shantyboats at Mendova and left in the gasolene boat no one would know whether or not they went up or down river. He knew that when they had rounded the first bend their future would be lost to the minds of people, except in idle gossip, perhaps wondering around as to what they were up to. Shantyboaters would not take word up the bank that anything had happened, even if they knew that something had taken place.
The avarice of Junker Frest was well known from far up the Ohio down to New Orleans. He drove hard bargains for bottles, iron, rubber, bones, copper, brass, and a thousand other things that come to a junker, including old ropes, and new ropes declared to be old.
Frest saw ahead of him the chance of his life time: he saw that he had a chance to junk in diamonds. It was not a big chance, but by being bold for once in his life he might establish himself for all time as a man of ample wealth. He had cast his all on the throw of this chance—but he did not know that. Neither did he know that the dice were loaded against him. He thought he couldn't lose.
Macrado drove the boat and steered it while Frest took care of the cabin and prepared the meals. They stopped that evening in Veal Island Chute, and after supper they played cards over a folding table in the little cabin, which was not quite high enough for either one of them to stand erect, though Macrado was the taller, bulkier man of the two. They played late, Macrado grimly, Frest nervously.
Frest had never gone upon such an enterprise before. It was out of his line. Only the amount of the possible booty had lured him from his lowly system of depredations. The story of the stolen diamonds had taken firm hold on countless river minds, and countless pairs of eyes were on the lookout, as river rats and big fellows alike were gasping at the thought of such luck as getting them breaking their way.
Somehow, it would not be possible to tell just how, the impression had gone down the river that those diamonds of the Cincinnati mystery were somewhere on the river. Perhaps only two knew the fact for certain, but filtering minds had gathered from the river gossip, from the news of the papers, from strangers who had tripped out of the Ohio, and especially from that strange shooting episode in which had figured White Collar Dan—whose luck with diamonds was a river tradition, and whose specializing every one with ears had heard about—the tiny germs of truth, and fixed them.
Two of these minds were Frest's and Macrado's. They were acting on their suspicions. But Macrado had two minds in the matter. He was not lacking in imagination and the daring that takes a long chance; perhaps of all the river observers, he had determined upon taking the longest chance of all.
When the card game ended, and Frest was folding up the table to put it away, Macrado took the second step in his own private plan. With a leather slung-shot, wielded with a short, savage swing, he tapped Frest behind the right ear, felling him as a sledge fells an ox.
Then Macrado pulled out the horsehide money-belt which Frest wore, and in which he had gathered his savings from junking for years. Having searched the man's pockets, so that nothing of value could escape, Macrado dragged the unfortunate junker out into the cockpit, and having hoisted the anchor, steered out of the Chute up stream into the main channel of the river. Landing at a sandbar, Macrado scooped up two pails full of sand and backed out and steered across into the deep water opposite a caving bend.
There he made certain that Junker Frest would never return to disturb him as a corpse, by doing what river tradition says will keep a corpse on the bottom of the river. He filled the body with sand and buttoned an old overcoat tightly around it, and then cast it into the river tied in the tarpaulin on which he had performed his loathsome task. He threw overboard the knife that he used, and when he was done, there was not a speck or a fleck of any kind to betray his ghastly, perfectly premeditated horror.
He went on up the river then to meet Mrs. Mahna, Delia, White Collar Dan, or any one who might perchance inform him with regard to the mystery of the diamonds. White Collar Dan had the reputation of trailing a man for days, weeks, months, seeking opportunity to rob him. Jose Macrado entered upon his diamond-hunting career with a reputation as a mere careless, shiftless shantyboater, kind of a watermelon stealer and corn busker, who would work a few days in a sawmill to earn money to lounge down the river doing nothing for a few weeks.
No one, anywhere, had ever suspected José Macrado of harbouring the spirit of a cat waiting for a mouse—for Fortune to show him his prey; much less no one ever had suspected him of being desperate or vicious enough to do murder for his first step in a long, carefully laid development of plans.
No sooner was he rid of Frest than he reckoned the spoils of his venture. The motorboat was worth $300 anywhere, and Macrado had paid half of the cost. The boat was as nothing, however, to the money-belt. Frest had declared five or ten thousand dollars was not enough for any man, and Macrado had skillfully persuaded him to draw his money out of the bank. He now counted the money by light of a pocket flash while he steered the launch up midstream.
There were hundred, fifty, twenty, and ten-dollar bills in the hoard. He counted them slowly, with considerable difficulty, for Macrado was not educated or used to handling large sums of money. When he had counted the money, so many hundred-dollar bills, so many fifties, so many twenties and tens, he added up the amount with a pencil on a stick of wood—the pencil had been Frest's for similar service in arithmetic. He read the figures with satisfaction, $8,640.
"It'd cost a man two dollars a week to live," he reckoned, and he worked a sum in life right there. The money would last, at that rate, more than four thousand weeks, or about eighty years.
The discovery dazzled Macrado for a time. He could not believe that he had more money than he would need for his own life, even should he live to be a hundred years of age. He had lived long on meagre supplies—far more meagre than one would believe. He had known hunger and privation. He had found old clothes in a river drift pile better than any he had to wear. He had had slim pickings so long that two dollars a week was ample to his mind—for a little while.
Then he saw himself cutting a good figure—wearing suits of clothes costing fifteen or sixteen dollars; he imagined himself wearing a three-dollar hat just as though he were used to it; he looked at his unmated shoes, and swore that he would get a good pair of shoes if he had to pay five dollars for them.
"That money'd never done that old scoundrel any good, anyhow," he said, his mind reverting to Junker Frest, who had worked through painful years gathering bones and old rubber and bottles on the sandbars in order that Macrado might have a fortune!
"Sho! He said five-ten thousand wa'n't 'nough for a man," Macrado sniffed, and his glance turned to search the other end of the boat.
The river night was star-flecked. The shadows looked ominous along the caving bank side. There were shapes out over the sandbar opposite which Macrado had seen before, but their significance he had never known till this hour. Frest had gone to join the procession that marches up and down the current of the Mississippi, and the shapes often leave the procession to dance on the wide sandbars, and any one might see them.
Macrado, when he had counted the money, replaced it in the money-belt and started to strap it around him, but the belt was cold and clammy. At the touch of the damp leather against his skin, he shuddered. He almost forgot to steer, and the first he knew the motorboat was cutting across the current. He straightened it up for the government channel light up the bend, and turned to glance into the night over his shoulder. No matter which way he turned, the face of Junker Frest was just withdrawing from view, and yet so slowly that he had a side-long vision of that shrunken, eagle-billed countenance with shrewd little eyes—eyes that accused him while they seemed to be amused.
Macrado did not mind the accusation, but the amusement was ominous, and grew more and more hateful as the night proceeded. He ran his boat into an open eddy and anchored it. He ventured at last to light a lantern in the cabin. He sat down there, thinking. He took note and stock of himself, and of his possessions.
"Now I needn't be afraid of bein' hongry," he told himself, over and over again. His conscience was not entirely accusing with regard to what he had done.
"If I hadn't killed him, like's not I'd be'n killed up myself by that old scoundrel," he thought, with truth. "I'd never knowed he had that money if he hadn't said ten thousand wasn't enough."
He dared not turn out his light to go to sleep. He found but fitful slumber in the cabin. When the sunshine of morning followed the dawn, he was able to go to sleep, and toward noon he awakened moderately refreshed. After breakfast and a pot of strong black coffee he wondered at his nervousness and strapped the money-belt around him without a qualm.
He went on up the river, still undetermined what he would do. He needed time to think; luck had broken his way, with some assistance, and he could not make up his mind what he ought to do. His mind was about equally divided between relief from worry about his future meals and the threat which hung over him—not quite banished from the background of his thoughts.
"When you've killed a man," he admitted to himself, "you ain't safe. You never know when something'll break wrong. But nobody knowed what we 'lowed to do. Not a whisper to anybody. Not without he said sunthin'. He mout of said sun thin' to the bank; I hadn't thought of that."
He had sunk the evidence of his crime in the depths of a river bend, where a crime is little apt to return in court evidence, but he had not counted on the fact that he himself would know all about it. Knowing about it, he could see places and ways where the crime might perhaps be revealed. Of course, he recalled murders which had been carefully hidden, but which had risen up to terrify the perpetrators and convict them even before men.
He steered up the river, but looked back down the reaches and bends frequently. It seemed to him as though someone might be pursuing. He was not sure that a swift sheriff's boat would not suddenly swing up in chase of him. The idea of that dead man returning to the surface, his reason told him, was preposterous; but his fears told him that it was possible. A man had been killed up Arkansas River once, and sunk with a chilled steel plow; the body and plow were recovered three hundred miles down the Mississippi. Macrado had seen the plow. A man recalls such things when he is himself menaced by an untoward revelation.
"I'm satisfied," he told himself. "I got enough money now. I don't need any more money. I'll jes' live on this. Sho! I plumb forgot those diamonds he was going afteh! He 'lowed to get them."
There was something reasonable in the chance of finding those diamonds. Macrado could see nothing to interfere with his continuing on the adventure alone. In fact, he had schemed to continue the venture alone.
"It'll give me sunthin' to think about 'sides that" he decided.
"That" loomed large in his mind. It meant the means by which he was relieved of hunger and poverty and worry, about where next he would find a place to sleep. His idea of bliss had been escape from the petty subject of pennies and dimes and nickels—two bits wasn't much to him now.
"I'll know how to spend my money," he told himself; "I'll spend it cyarful. I won't take no chances about hit. Mebby I'll buy a little farm som'rs an' settle down. That'd be plumb comfort. Hit'd s'prise some, hearin' José Macrado had bought a farm. No-'count José a planter. Sho! Course, they might think sunthin' if they knowed me'n the Junker's gone off together. They'd sure think sunthin'. Nobody must know I got money—not for a long time. No, suh!"
He spent another terrible night alone in his cabin in a little eddy under the gloom of a wilderness. He had lived up and down the river, night like day to him. Now night was full of horror. He dared not put out his light; he did not know what attack might be made upon him if he let the light burn. He covered the ports, and stuffed the cracks around the door—but he was sure some splinter of a light beam shone through to betray him. He knew it in his heart, just as he dreaded in his heart a discovery of what he had done. Nevertheless, in his worst fears he declared to himself:
"I'd do hit all oveh ag'in. Hit ain't no worse'n what I be'n through, hongry and sleepin' out in sleet an' snow, like a dog."
And yet he wished that he could have thought of some easier way of getting the money.
"If I'd on'y jes robbed 'im, an' left him to squawk what I'd done—I mout of gone some'rs. I could of gone down into Chaffelli. They say you cayn't find a steamboat that gets lost down in theh."
He longed for companionship now; he thought that if he could find someone to keep him company, he would forget his spectre; at least, he would not be afraid of it, and he could sleep in the dark.
"Old Frest 'lowed he could get that gal," he remembered. "Sho! I'm rich—I got lots of money. Likely she'd friendly with me. She's a great looker, they say. I'd be kind an' gentle—an' if she's got them diamonds—Lawse! What a time we'd get to have, sportin' around!"
He cut loose his boat and started up stream in the midnight, hurrying to find Delia, whom he understood was at Yankee Bar, or around there somewhere, with Mrs. Mahna and her family. He knew Mrs. Mahna, who had befriended him in his poverty days.
"I'll shine up to Mrs. Mahna, and let on I'm somebody, an' can take cyar of myself," he decided. "I won't act like I care a whoop about that gal. Likely Delia'll be kinda skittish and offish till she gits to know what kind of a feller I am. I'm all right; all I eveh needed was some clothes an' a bit of slickin' up. I'll stop in to one of them plantation commissaries and buy some clothes and fixings. A feller's kinda got to dress up, tell he gets hitched up to one of them proud an' high-steppin' ladies."
As good as his thoughts, he lavished eighteen dollars on hat, shoes, clothes, and shirts. Every cent he spent seemed to wrench his soul, which was not yet tuned to his affluence. As he had known, he was not so bad looking when he was dressed up. All he ever had needed were a few good clothes.
Thus he was prepared for what a shantyboater told him was the mooring place of the Mahnas and some other boats, up in the bend above Fort Pillow Bluffs, about a mile or so below Yankee Bar.
Sure enough, there were other boats along the eddy—nearly a dozen of them. A shantyboat town had formed there—one of those ephemeral little floating settlements where is made so much of the river traditions. Macrado was disappointed. He had hoped to find the object of his hopes alone with the Mahnas. If she was there, probably a dozen men'd be willing to marry her.
"Anyhow," Macrado reflected, "I've got money; that's what'll count."