"Old boy, no. Suppose it should work out as you plan. You leave us at Natchez; that's easy. You live there a week, a month, free with your gold and making friends--of the sort gold makes. You get into a political quarrel with the twins--nothing easier--and in a clear case of your own self-defence the two are:--

"'--Laid in one grave.

Sing tooralye,' etc."

"Wouldn't that be poetic justice? and ain't I a poet?"

"Undoubtedly. Then by miracle you come off scot-free."

"Not essential. I take my chances."

"Still, you have that hope; freedom is sweet. More-over, miracle of miracles, what you did it for is never guessed. But, my dear fellow, there are two who'd never need to guess. Like us they'd know and that knowledge would sunder them forever. They'd never willingly look into each other's faces again."

"Nnn-o. No, course they wouldn't. I seen that from the jump but I sort o' hoped you'd maybe know some way to get round that; it being the only real difficulty."

"Sorry, but I don't. Odd how narrow-minded one's friends can be, but when they are--what can we do?"

"Yes, that's so.... Mr. Gilmore, you're not narrow-minded; I've got a poem----"

It was there Hugh entered. But it was there, too, that Watson made a move in his modest part of the game.

With his eyes out ahead down the chute they were entering--"If any one,"

he drawled, "wants to see a scandalous fine moonlight picture of this river, one they'll never forget, the best place from whence to behold it is the texas roof, down here, out for'ard o' the chimneys."

"If Captain Hugh would go with us," pensively said Mrs. Gilmore, "we'd all go." And soon the pilots were alone.

"Now," growled the younger, with his gaze down there on Ramsey, "don't that beat you? Her making California stay so's Cap'n Hugh can't pair off with her!"

"Be easy," said Watson; "that's according to Hoyle. Don't shoot till they settle.... There. Now I'll go down and take care of California. By cracky! run smooth or run rough, I believe it's going to go this time."

LX

ONCE MORE HUGH SINGS

Between that great eastward bend nearly opposite the mouth of the Arkansas, which in later years was cut off and is now, or was yesterday, Beulah Lake--between it and Ozark Island below--a white-jacket came up from the pa.s.senger deck far enough to show his head to the watchman above and warily asked a question.

"Six," was the reply. "Including me--seven."

The inquirer ran wildly down again, but the _Enchantress_ sped on through the glorious moonlight as though he scarcely mattered. On the texas roof Mrs. Gilmore sat with "California," her husband with Watson, Hugh with Ramsey. But only the last two were out on its forward verge.

Mrs. Gilmore had found it cool there and with the others had drawn back a few steps, into the pleasant warmth of the chimneys. For average pa.s.sengers the evening was far gone, but not for players, pilots, Californians, or lovers--of the river.

A mile or so farther on, the white-jacket reappeared and, gliding by all others to reach his captain, said, with mincing feet and a semicircular bow, while presenting a tray of six, not seven, sherry cobblers:

"Sev'l gen'lemen's comp'ments, an' ax, will Mis' Gil'----"

"What gentlemen? Who?"

"Sev'l gen'lemen, ya.s.suh. Dey tell me dess say, sev'l gen'lemen. Sev'l gen'lemen ax will Mis' Gilmo' have de kin'ness fo' to sing some o' dem same songs she sing night afo' las' in de ladies' cabin an' las' night up hyuh.... Ya.s.s'm, whiles dey listens f'om de b'ileh deck."

"Has my father gone to bed?" asked Ramsey.

"No'm, he up yit. He done met up wid dese sev'l gen'lemen an' find dey old frien's--callin' deyse'v's in joke Gideon' Ban'--an' he talkin'

steamboats wid 'em----"

The speaker t.i.ttered as Ramsey inquiringly extended her arms out forward and crossed her wrists. "Ya.s.s'm," he said, "hin' feet on de front rail, ya.s.s'm."

It seemed but fair that Mrs. Gilmore, to meet the compliment generously, should sing at the very front of the hurricane roof, just over the forward guards of the boiler deck. But Ramsey and Hugh kept their place.

Ramsey wanted to be near the sky, she explained, when songs were sung on the water by moonlight, and eagerly spoke for two or three which her friend had sung of old on the _Votaress_ to spiritualize the "acrobatics" of the Brothers Ambrosia.

The singer's voice was rich, trained, and mature, and her repertory a survival of young days--nights--before curtains and between acts: Burns, Moore, Byron, and Mrs. Norton, alternating with "The Lavender Girl,"

"Rose of Lucerne," "Dandy Jim o' Caroline," and "O Poor Lucy Neal." And now she sang her best, in the belief that while she sang the pair up between her and the pilot-house were speaking conclusively. Let us see.

"Ramsey," said Hugh, and waited--ten seconds--twenty.

Well, why should he not? In eight years and a half there were ten million times twenty seconds and she had waited all of them. At length she responded and the moment she did so she thought she had spoken too promptly although all she said was, "Yes?"

"The hour's come at last," said Hugh.

"What hour?--hour to name that boat?"

"Yes, to name that boat. Only not that first. Ramsey, I've told your father all I ever wanted to tell you."

"Humph!" The response was so nearly in the manner of the earlier Ramsey, "the Ramsey he had begun with" and whom she remembered with horror, that she recognized the likeness. The further reply had been on her tongue's end, that to tell her father only that could not have taken long, or some such parrying nonsense; but now it would not come. She felt her whole nature tempted to make love's final approach steep and slippery, but again without looking she saw his face; his face of stone; his iron face with its large, quiet, formidable eyes that could burn with enterprise in great moments; a face set to all the world's realities, and eyes that offered them odds, asking none. So seeing she knew that if she answered with one least note of banter she would make herself an object of his magnanimity, than which she would almost rather fall under his scorn--if he ever stooped to scorn. Suddenly she remembered the deadlock and was smitten with the conviction that these exchanges were love's last farewell. Now it was hard to speak at all.

"What was it you told him?"

"I told him how long I'd loved you, and why."

"We both love the river so," murmured Ramsey in a voice broken by the pounding of her heart.

"Yes. I told him that, for one thing. And I told him how gladly I would have asked for you long ago had I not seen myself, as you so often saw me on the _Votaress_----"

"Condemned to inaction," she softly prompted; for if this was farewell a true maiden must speed the parting.

"Yes."

"By an absolute deadlock," she murmured on. "My father sees it. He knows it's one yet and must always be one."

"No, a lock but not a deadlock. It's a lock to which your brothers do not hold the key."

The pounding in her breast, which had grown better, grew worse again.

"Who holds it?"

"Your father. I have just told him so. At no time would I have hesitated to ask for you if the key had been with your brothers. I would have got a settlement from them, sink or swim, alive or dead. I believe in lover's rights, Ramsey, and I'll have a lover's rights at any risk or cost that falls only on me. Those old threats--yes, I know how fiercely they are still meant--and they have always had their weight; but they've never of themselves weighed enough to stop me. I've held off and endured, waiting not for a change of heart in your brothers, but for an hour counselled, Ramsey, by my father on his dying bed."

"What hour? Hour of strongest right? strongest reason?"