"Aha!" thought the senator. He was right, after all. He had felt confident that these men, treated by Hugh as they had been, would privately "have it in for him"; that they would be glad of any safe chance to "get away with him"--not so utterly as to imperil their necks, yet not too lightly for their spiritual comfort the rest of their days--and that they saw their chance just where he saw his.

"Ye-es?" He mused. They let him muse. The exhorter, he reflected, having picked up the trail and opened the cry--trail which the headlong twins had so witlessly overrun--these older dogs were on it hot; trail of the Gilmores and "Harriet." Somewhere on that trail the captain's son would show up, and when the game should be treed they would be able, in the general mix-up, to "go and see Hugh" and "cook his goose."

The musing ceased. "You mean the actor?"

The pair warmed up. "Yes, sir-ee, him. _That_ fellow's making a mistake we might help you to handle. G.o.d! sir, he's a n.i.g.g.e.r-stealer. His wife has got a stolen n.i.g.g.e.r wench with her now. Had her these ten years.

Save _him_. Save _them_."

"Our friend John the Baptist suggests that," began the senator.

"Adzac'ly!" was the facetious affirmation. "Smelt 'em out at the show.

That's how come the mate has locked him up."

The senator stiffened. "Oh, you must be mistaken!"

"Want to bet? Pull out. Go you a thousand they've jugged him and them two Arkansas killers. Yes, sir, to stay jugged till they leave us, at Helena."

"Who!--have done that?"

"Same as you're thinking; they; them; him; that believes he's bossing the boat--which maybe he is."

"Where is he?"

"Up on the roof, with a select few, both s.e.xes."

"Gentlemen, he must let them go at once!"

"Senator, not with money, but just on your word, you sort o' bail 'em out. If they cut up, n.o.body'll blame you."

"I'll do it! We don't want an owner of the finest boat on Southern waters to have any part in _that sort_ of mistake, whatever his youth."

"Youth!" (Profanity.) "That boy's forty year' old. Oh, he's all right; if he thinks he'd ought to protect every galoot on his boat, why, maybe he'd ought. What you know is that that white n.i.g.g.e.r's _got_ to be took away from them two barnstormers instanter and restored back to her own Hayle folks. That's a mistake you ain't never got to ask n.o.body's leaves to save n.o.body from."

"You don't mean to-night?" Capital disguise for eagerness--the cigar.

The senator puffed. The pair puffed.

"We mean now; when the right men can be woke up and the others--and the ladies--sleep on. Now, straightaway, while the shouter's still aboard--and the two shooters. If we wa'n't sporting men we'd like to sit into that game ourselves. Maybe we can if it's kept--dignified."

"Even if there's resistance?"

"Who'll resist? The boat's people? Only thing they da.s.sen't resist.

Couldn't never run another trip on this river. Resist! Couldn't ever resist, any time; but now? Look at their fix. Sweet time to set everybody a-kicking like steers. Bishop dead, chief Dutch woman ditto, that nice young Hayle boy that they took away from us when he wanted to stay like a man, ditto----"

"Oh, not dead? My G.o.d! I hadn't heard that."

"No, it ain't been properly advertised. But Hamlet knows it--I mean your actor. The way him and his wife--or lady--are buzzing around, you'd think they was the undertakers. Maybe they are. _He_ won't resist. He knows how well resistance would suit you--oh, not yourself, no more'n us, but--the crowd; men like them three that's locked up and must be turned loose first thing. He knows if he lifts a finger, or so much as gives anybody any of his lip--and maybe anyhow--he'll be took ash.o.r.e and lost in the woods, first time we stop to bury some more Dutch; say daybreak."

"Ah, but we mustn't let that happen, either."

"Oh, no! we mustn't let that happen, either."

"Well"--the senator put on a bustling frown--"I'll see Hugh. I wish--I wonder if that Californian has----"

"Put up his shutters? No, he's on the roof. Why?"

"He might help wake up the right men, as you say."

One of the pair, without rising, tapped the senator caressingly.

"You--let--California--sweat. Trust in Providence. The right men'll get woke up somehow, beginning with the general. That right?... All gay, but don't you take no California in yourn to-night."

"No? Very well. But--I wonder if you gentlemen really recognize the seriousness of this affair."

"Look a-here, senator, you go up-stairs and save Mr. Innocence from running his boat into this mistake." The sleek pair rose, evidently to begin their part.

The senator rummaged his mind for a word that would give him creditable exit but had to hurry off without it. Turning, the two exchanged a calm gaze and one luxurious puff, which meant that the "old sucker's" use of them would suit them exactly. They rummaged for no words; had no more need for words than two leopards.

Before falling to work they glanced out over the flood. This was Horseshoe Cut-off. Kangaroo Point was just astern in the west. Yonder ahead, under the old moon, came Friar's Point. In these hundred miles between Napoleon and Helena they were meeting one by one the Sat.u.r.day evening boats out of Saint Louis. Now one came round the upper bend, four days from Cincinnati. They knew her; the Courteneys' fine old _Marchioness_. The young _Votaress_ swept by her saluting and saluted like the belle of a ball, a flying vision of luxury, innocence, and joy.

XLVIII

"CALIFORNIA"

Under the benign stars, as we have said, Hugh hastened from Basile to his father.

Those were the same heavenly lights with which only two nights earlier he and that father had so tranquilly--and the dead boy's sister so airily--communed. With a hand yet on the door that he was leaving, and while his distress for what had befallen in this room brought a foreboding of what might impend in the other, he felt the chiding of that celestial benignity and was dimly made to see its illimitable span and the smallness of magnifying the things we call trouble.

All the more, then, a melting heart for the tearful mother and sister, to whom no word of this could be said; but a stout heart, stouter than he knew where to find, for whatever was yet in store. Also a preoccupied good-by to sweet companionship. Nay, a mind too preoccupied for any good-by to any companionship for the remainder of this voyage, if not forever. It was humiliating to have even so much thought of such a kind at such a time; yet suppress it as he might, he could not wholly stifle it, even at his father's door.

Three hours later the senator, coming up in search of him, gradually discovered the presence of more people than he was looking for or cared even to find awake--being who they were. At the top of the steps he told the watchman sleeplessness had driven him up here for fresh air. It is but human to explain to a watchman.

But how was the captain? And how was the commodore?

The commodore was doing well enough, but the captain--the watchman shook his head with the wisdom of a doctor.

The seeker after fresh air, eager to move on, yet loath to imply that the air about a watchman was stale, said, with a glance at the stars, that here was quiet.

But the watchman begged to differ. Never by starlight had he seen so busy a hurricane-deck. Just now there was a lull but it was the first in three hours. Preparations here, preparations there, for the dead, for the living, the sick, the well; such a going and coming of cabin-boys, of chambermaids, of the immigrant they called Marburg, the Hayles' old black woman, the texas tender, the mud clerk, the actor and his wife, her servant girl----

"And others," prompted the senator. "What doing?"

A hundred things. The actor's wife had got Miss Hayle into funeral black from her own stage "warrobe," and the young man Marburg had brought up, for Madame Hayle, one of his deceased mother's mourning gowns, "a prodigious fine one." It did not fit but the actor's wife and her maid were altering it while they kept watch where Basile lay and while Madame Hayle resumed her cares on the lower deck.

And who was caring for the commodore?