Diamond Tolls/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX
PEOPLE who go down the Mississippi for fun generally fall overboard when they have been drinking too many rickeys or cocktails, a very few of which are too many on board an ordinary Mississippi River cruiser or shantyboat. The lower Mississippi is no place for fun. That is why serious people, men and women with temperaments and a livid scar of a past, get on so well with the flood and wind up with such joys as mere light and frivolous people never know in the world.
Delia was sitting in the Mahna shantyboat when Murdong rowed into hail. Mrs. Mahna, her husband, and Roy had gone back into the Peninsula to line a bee tree which Roy had suspected, and Mrs. Mahna wouldn't trust any male she ever knew to line a bee tree, in late October, when the honey is sure to be at the best.
They left Delia looking after the three boats. It is never good policy to leave a boat unguarded down the Mississippi. Something might happen to it.
"Hello," Delia heard a call, and she stepped out on the stern to look and answer.
The slight breeze carried her skirt against her figure, and when she looked at the stranger, her face wore an expression that did not injure the appearance of her countenance.
"I'm a stranger on the river," Murdong said to her. "I passed the mouth of the Ohio two or three days ago, and I don't know where I am now. I wondered if you couldn't tell me?"
"Don't know where you are?" Delia asked, smiling. "That's Yankee Bar up there, I believe, and that's Plum Point above it. There's a town over across there, opposite the point—Osceola."
"Thank you," Murdong said. "I never heard of any of those places before; I suppose they're somewhere! I was wondering, particularly, if that big ridge down there had a name?"
"Indeed it has," she smiled. "That's Fort Pillow—what's left of it. Mrs. Mahna said last night that the old fort is all gone; the river undercut it, and it caved in. It's two hundred feet high, and wave washed over Craighead Point and away back for miles. It stranded tons and tons of fish."
"So that's Fort Pillow." Murdong turned and rested his eyes on Chicksaw Bluffs No. 2.
"Mrs. Mahna you said?" he turned and asked. "I wonder if that's who Mrs. Haney and Jesse Haney were talking about the other night? I stopped there, in Putney's Bend."
"Why, yes! It must be—Mrs. Mahna dropped out of there the other day."
"They said I'd likely find the Mahnas down here somewhere," he remarked. "Are you—Miss Mahna?"
"No," Delia shook her head, and looked across at Craighead Point. "I'm just with them."
"My name is Murdong," he told her. "Out of the upper Mississippi—from Chicago. When will they be back—the Mahna?"
"They went out to line a bee tree—whatever that is! They take some molasses and corn starch and when a bee gets on the molasses they sprinkle the starch on it. When it flies away, they follow it—that's what Mrs. Mahna said."
"Well, there's nothing special for me to see her about," Murdong said, as though he were indifferent. "Perhaps I'd better drop on down."
"I've some maps here of the river," Delia suggested. "They'll show you right where you are. Won't you come aboard? I'll bring out the maps."
Murdong pulled the skiff to the stern, climbed on to the deck, and by the time his boat was fast, the young woman had returned with a book and a chair. She brought out another chair, immediately, and they sat down to look at the river maps together.
"Here we are," she said, "on Sheet No. 6"
"It's one hundred and seventy miles below Cairo! he exclaimed. "Is that all! Why, I thought"
"You thought you'd been down here for ages, and had travelled halfway around the world," she laughed.
"Yes—these are dandy maps. I want a set of them. I wonder where I could find some?"
"Some river town, I should say—Mendova? I don't know. It's my first trip down. These were on the boat."
Murdong looked at the Plum Point section, and then turned down stream, sheet after sheet.
"All that's ahead of me yet!" he mused. "I never knew what a river it was!"
"I had crossed it at Memphis and New Orleans," she said. "When I—when I could, I floated down it. There are index maps in the front."
He turned to the small-scale index sheets showing the lower river in three sections, and the large-scale sheets plotted out on the river course, according to their numbers, No 1 at Cairo, No. 28 at New Orleans, No. 32 at the Passes, showing thirty miles or so to the sheet.
He studied the index sheets a few minutes, and tried to turn to the title page, but saw the inside of the cover. There was written a name, boldly:
"Rubert Gost"
"Why, that's" he began, but stopped short.
"Who is it?" she asked. "Really, I would like to know."
"If he's the man I think he is, I know him well," Murdong said. "I—perhaps he is a friend of yours?"
"Not in the least," she shook her head.
"He's White Collar Dan, one of the slickest thieves in the country," Murdong said. "I saw him at police headquarters in Chicago where they had him last winter for penny-weighting a jeweller"
"What is penny-weighting?"
"Why, generally speaking, it's substituting a paste for a diamond, or phony for a real goods ring, something like that. I remember, because I wrote an article about him. They couldn't prove it on him, though, and they had to let him go. He isn't here, is he? Perhaps I've talked too much."
"No, not at all. What did he look like?"
"Why, five feet ten, 160 pounds, black moustache, dark complexion, and brown eyes—nice-looking fellow, but slick. They say he's a strong-arm, too"
"Strong-arm?"
"Yes—hold up, or blackjacker."
"I wouldn't be surprised," the young woman admitted. "He looked it. You say you wrote about him? Are you a—a writer?"
"Eh?" Murdong ejaculated, and then glared at the deck a minute. "No, I'm not a writer. I used to think I was, but I know now I'm not. I'm a river rat now. Judging from what I've seen, being a river rat's enough for any man to be."
"Oh!" she observed, as though with feeling.
"Well?" he demanded, defiantly.
"I thought men were stronger—than that!"
"Than what?" he asked, wonderingly.
"From your remark, I presumed you were a quitter, and had run away—from something."
Murdong flushed, and then he laughed as his surprise yielded to the fact.
"Sure I did," he admitted, cheerfully. "That's what I'm down here for—to escape."
"And did you?" she asked, sweetly.
"N-n-no, not at first," he shook his head. "But when I passed the jumping-off place—I was all right then!"
"Isn't it strange—the Forks of the Ohio?" she shook her head, adding quickly: "That's the place you meant?"
"Yes," adding, "I couldn't help it—I would have gone crazy if I'd stuck to the job—I just had to let go I"
"I'm glad you said that," she startled him. "That's what I wanted to know. You see, I'm a stranger on the river, too. You live in that little skiff?"
"I cover it over with canvas at night—house it in. Those hoops stretch and hold the canvas up. I cook with those oil stoves. I've a pneumatic mattress—it's very comfortable! Sometimes a pirate tries to steal me, or something like that."
"Tries to steal you!" she interrupted. "You mean that?"
He told her about the river canoeman who cut the skiff loose.
"He thought no one was on board—but I fooled him!" he laughed. "Still, they'll steal almost anything down here, they say. It's a mean old river in some ways. You have to know how to take care of yourself! I took his gun away from him. Have you got one? You can have that"
"I—yes, I have one, thank you. They call guns 'The Law' down here."
"That's good!" he laughed. "The Law! Well, a revolver is the law. You travel down here for days, and hardly see a soul."
"And when you see people, you aren't sure they have souls," she smiled, uncertainly. "Here comes someone."
Mrs. Mahna bounded out of the woods, and her men-folks toiled after her.
"Hue-e!" she called. "We found that old bee tree, sure's your borned, and I bet there's Sho! Got a caller, eh?"
"Yes. Mr. Murdong," the young woman answered. "He stopped at the Haney boat in Putney Bend the other night. They were talking about you, and he dropped in to say 'Howdy'."
"You're welcome," Mrs. Mahna declared after she had scrutinized her visitor. "Out the Ohio?"
"No—upper Mississippi. I'm from Chicago. Probably I'll go clear down to New Orleans."
"In that skift? Why don't you get a shantyboat?"
"I had thought of it," he admitted. "In bad weather I'm cramped under that canvas."
"Why don't you sell him yours, Delia?" Mrs. Mahna turned to the girl. "You got the gasolene—that'd do well for you. Better'n a shantyboat, because you can run or anchor or go anywheres."
"I hadn't thought" she turned questioningly to Murdong.
"It's that other boat," Mrs. Mahna declared. "Come on over and look at it! Won't do no hurt to look, for lookin' is cheap down here, long looks an' short looks all the same."
She sprang as agile as a goat aboard the gasolene, and Murdong and Delia followed, the girl accepting his hand to get across.
"Course she'll want some of the things," Mrs. Mahna declared. "But not the bed, or furniture, except maybe a chair, say. You can see it's a right tight boat, dry's a bone."
"How much?" Murdong asked.
Mrs. Mahna dodged behind, making frantic gestures with two fingers to the girl, who thought a moment before answering.
"It cost me in the water one hundred and thirty-five dollars. You can have it for that; I want to save my books and things"
"That's dirt cheap," Mrs. Mahna declared. "You'd never get that boat from me for less'n two hundred!"
"It's too cheap!" Murdong assented. "I'll pay $150."
"As you wish," Delia said, looking at him curiously. "Is that the way you do business—giving more than is asked?"
"I couldn't take advantage of any one," he explained. "I wish I could—I'd get farther, probably. But my conscience"
"Perhaps that spirit has its compensations," she suggested.
Mrs. Mahna looked as though the two were talking in an alien tongue. She wondered what they were driving at, but when Murdong counted down seven twenties and one ten-dollar bill, she saw that the deal had been properly consummated whatever the tongue they bargained in.
"I'll pack up," Delia said, and Murdong retreated to the Mahna boat, leaving the two women to do the moving.
Murdong was elated with his bargain. Travelling in the open skiff was not exactly tiresome, but the boat was too small for comfort when it rained and he lacked room to turn around in. He could hardly stand up, to say nothing of taking a step.
Mrs. Mahna returned after a time, and began to flax around getting supper. She had squirrels and ducks to roast, but everything was all ready to put into the oven, and shortly the odour of a game dinner filled the boat. Mahna and the youth were up the bank chopping up an ash sapling which they had discovered in a drift pile, and which was the best kind of firewood when one didn't want a coal fire's staying qualities.
Delia returned to the Mahna boat, and picked up the thread of conversation of Mrs. Mahna, who was telling Murdong about the river down below.
"Yes, suh!" she declared, "you trip down onct an' you hate the riveh, like's not. You get to go away, but bye and bye you feel hit a-drawin' you ag'in. You keep a-droppin' down, an' a-droppin' down—as you dream. Old Mississip' don't take hold cruel, but hit hangs on soft and strong. You'll quit Old Mississip' against your heart, yassuh."
"I don't want to quit it." Murdong shook his head. "I want to live on it. That's one reason I wanted a houseboat, so I would have a kind of a home"
"Hit's a real home," Mrs. Mahna declared. "I've lived up the bank some, but I never seen no mansion on the Bottoms that'd equal a little white shantyboat. Theh's work enough, takin' care of a shantyboat with two rooms. But I 'low I wouldn't take cyar of any house with forty-fifty, or ten-twelve rooms, not if 'twas give to me! If I have room to set, a bed that'll let me stretch, an' room to turn around in for a kitchen, I'm satisfied."
"But don't you get lonesome?" Murdong asked. "Never seeing people for weeks sometimes?"
"Shucks!" the river woman snorted. "Me lonesome? Sometimes I boot Roy an' the Old Man up the bank, I get so sick 'n tired of so much people around. And then I get to know trippers that's going down. Hyar's you, out of Chicago, and hyar's Delia, out'n the Ohio! Here to-day, gone to-morrow, maybe. Like's not when I see you down to Arkansaw Old Mouth come Christmas I'll have seen twenty-forty—a hundred strangehs. Never two alike, never the same thing happening twict. I just friendly along, and don't care. Blow high, blow low. You see what I mean? I couldn't stand hit, living up the bank, where you always see the same lady next door, the same old storekeepers, same old street. Take it down here, and a man ain't the same twict, even. Feller come down two years ago, name of Det Bettin; next time he was Fur Walkin, an' next I knowed he was feller name of Gost. Never twict alike! That keeps it int'restin'!"
"I should think it was. Gost, you said Gost?"
"Yeh! Rubert Gost, most impudent whelp I eveh seen in all my borned days, wearin' diamonds fit to kill! Graftin' all the way down. A mean scoundrel clear through. He's up to Hickman into a hospital now. So darn mean somebody plugged him—an' he'd ought to have been killed!"
"Shot!" Murdong exclaimed. "How did that happen?"
"No one knows; Whisky Williams found him circlin' around on the long sandbar above Slough Neck some'rs—shot through, an' out'n his head."
Murdong was surprised by the recurrence of this story at this place. He recalled, now, what Mrs. Haney and Jesse had told him about Delia, and he realized only now that he was really in the midst of the stories that were in the making down the river.
The five sat down to supper—a most excellent, smoking meal, fragrant with roasted game, a big heap of brown bread, onion-gravy dressing, and hot bread. Little was said during the meal, but afterward, while the two women washed and wiped the dishes, the talk turned to river gossip, and Mrs. Mahna talked about river trippers, all kinds of whom drop down the current past the Forks of the Ohio.
"You never know!" she declared. "Some'r scouting, feared of detectives, and some are 'lopers whose folks wouldn't let 'em marry, and some are wives hating their husbands, and som'r husbands whose wives are well shut of them. Men, women, children. Why, there was one boy dropped out of the Ohio, long in 1903-1904, who played poker like a genuine crook. He was just a boy, fourteen-fifteen years old. He pulled into my boat, one night, long of dusk. He laughed and talked, and when he 'lowed to pay me for a night's lodging, he pulled out a roll of bills; he had a thousand dollars then. I told him he was a fool and to drop back home with it! He laughed, 'I'll have five thou' 'gin I get to N'Orleans!' That's what he said. He had eighteen hundred out of Helena, and he never come by below—no, sir! Not without it was under water. Nobody that'd admit it had seen him. He showed his roll once too often. I'd sooner have an ounce of cocaine into me than let it be known I had a thousand dollars in my pocket down this old river."
"They'd hurt a woman?" Murdong asked.
"Yes! They'd kill their own mothers, some of them. Lawse! But not every one's mean thataway. There's some down here like you—paying more'n they's asked to pay. But everybody wants to keep his eyes open, take a sharp look at a stranger every time, and not take chances with those that's crooks in the eye of them. You get to know a crook down Old Mississip'! You can tell 'em by their eyes."
Thus they talked, Mrs. Mahna being speechmaster, as she declared, adding:
"Somebody's got to talk. If I didn't you'd jes' set and think."
At nine o'clock, or a little later, Murdong rose to depart.
"You don't mind if I leave my boat where it is to-night?" he asked.
"Not at all," Mrs. Mahna answered.
Murdong started to leave, and the little visit broke up for the night. He found that Delia had taken only a few of the furnishings. She had left chairs, cooking utensils, oil stove, curtains, and even dishes, and several books. He thought the books must have been overlooked, but left the subject for the morning.
He pulled his skiff up to the stern of the cabin-boat, and brought all his own outfit on board. He locked it by the chain which had been clamped to the bow ring.
Lighting his gas-flame light, he sat down to read. A little later he was surprised to hear a knock on the cabin door, and when he opened it, Delia stood there.
"I would like to talk to you for a little while," she said. "You were speaking of Gost"
"Certainly!" he exclaimed. "Come in—or"
"No, I'm a river girl. It doesn't matter—I'll come in."