Without maps, without knowledge, without instinct, he might almost as well have been blind. His careless, ignorant glance swept the eight or nine miles of sh.o.r.eline of sandbar from above Island No. 10 clear down to the fresh sloughing above Hotchkiss's Landing, opposite the dry Winchester Chute--in which deep-draft gun-barges had been moored fifty years or so before. He did not even know it was Island No. 10, Donaldson's Point; he didn't know that he was leaving Kentucky to skirt Tennessee; much less did he dream that he was pa.s.sing Kentucky again. He looked at a shanty-boat moored at the foot of a mile-long sandbar; saw, without observing, a skiff against the bar just above the cabined scow.

His gaze discovered smoke, houses, signs of settlement miles below, and he quickened the beat of his motor to get down there.

He longed for people, for humanity, for towns and cities; and that was a big sawmill and cotton-gin town ahead of him, silhouetted along the top of a high bank. He headed straight for it, and found his boat inexplicably slowed up and rebuffed. Strangers on the river always do find themselves baffled by the big New Madrid eddy, which even power boats engage with difficulty of management. He landed at last against a floating dock, and found that it was a fish market.

Having made fast, he went up town and spent hours, till long after dark, buying supplies, talking to people, getting the lonesomeness out of his system, and making veiled inquiries to learn if anything had been heard about a woman coming down the Mississippi. He succeeded in giving the impression that he was a detective. In the restaurant he talked with a c.o.c.ky little bald-headed man all spruced up and dandyish.

"I'm from Pittsburgh," the man said. "My name's Doss, Ronald Doss; I'm a sportsman, but every winter I drop down here, hunting and fishing; sometimes on the river, sometimes back in the bottoms. I suppose, Mr.

Carline, that you're a stranger on the river?"

"Why, yes-s, down this way; I live near it, up at Gage."

"I see, your first trip down. Got a nice gasolene boat, though!"

"Oh, yes! You're stopping here?"

"Just arrived this morning; trying to make up my mind whether I'll go over on St. Francis, turkey-and deer-hunting, or get a boat and drop down the Mississippi. Been wondering about that."

"Well, say, now--why can't you drop down with me?"

"Oh, I'd be in the way----"

"Not a bit----"

"Costs a lot to run a motorboat, and I'd have to----"

"No, you wouldn't! Not a cent! Your experience and my boat----"

"Well, of course, if you put it that way. If it'd be any accommodation to you to have an old river man--I mean I've always tripped the river, off and on, for sport."

"It'd be an education for me, a great help!"

"Yes, I expect it would be an education, if you don't know the river."

Doss smiled.

They walked over to the river bank. An arc light cast its rays upon the end of the street, down the sloping bank, and in a light circle upon the rocking, muddy waters where the fish dock and several shanty-boats rested against the bank.

Doss whistled a little tune as he rested on his cane.

The front door of the third houseboat up the eddy opened and closed. A man climbed the bank and pa.s.sed the two with a basket on his arm.

"Come on down," Carline urged.

"Not to-night," Doss said. "I've got my room up at the hotel, and I'll have to get my stuff out of the railroad baggage room. But I'll come down about 10 or 11 o'clock in the morning. Then we'll fit up and drop down the river. Good-night!"

Doss watched Carline go down to the dock and on to his boat. Then he went up the street and held earnest confab with a man who had a basket on his arm. They whispered ten minutes or so, then the man with the basket returned to his shanty-boat, and within half an hour was back up town, carrying two suitcases, a gun case, and a duffle bag.

Doss went to the smaller hotel with these things and registered. He walked down to the river in the morning and noticed that the third shanty-boat had dropped out into the river during the night, in spite of the storm that was blowing up. He went down and ate breakfast with Carline, and the two went up and got Doss's outfit at the hotel. They returned to the motorboat, and, having laid in a supply of groceries, cast off their lines and steered away down the river.

"Yes, sir, we'll find that girl if it takes all winter!" the fish-market man heard Doss tell Carline in a loud voice.

That afternoon a man in a skiff came down the river and turned into the dock. As he landed, the fish-market man said to him:

Yes.

"If you see any lady coming down, tell her a detector is below, lookin'

fo' her. He's a cheap skate, into a motorboat--but I don't expect he'll be into hit long, 'count of some river fellers bein' with him. But he mout be bad, that detector. If you should see a nice lady, tell her."

"You bet!" the skiff man, who was Lester Terabon, exclaimed.

CHAPTER XIX

For long hours Parson Rasba endured the drifting sand and the biting wind which penetrated the weather-cracks in his poplar shanty-boat. It was not until near nightfall that it dawned on him that he need not remain there, that it was the simplest thing in the world to let go his hold and blow before the wind till he was clear of the sandblast.

He did haul in his anchor and float away. As he rode the waves and danced before the wind the clouds of sand were flung swiftly down upon the water, where the surface was covered with a film and a sheet of dust.

Standing at his sweeps, he saw that he was approaching the head of another sandbar, and as he felt the water shoaling under the boat he cast over the anchor and rode in clear air again. He was not quite without a sense of humour.

Shaking the dust out of his long hair and combing it out of his whiskers, he laughed at his ignorance and lack of resource. He swept the decks and floor of his cabin, and scooped the sand up with an ash shovel to throw overboard. A lesson learned on the Mississippi is part of the education of the future--if there is anything in the pupil's head to hold a memory of a fact or experience.

Even though he knew it was his own ignorance that had kept him a prisoner in that storm, Parson Rasba did not fail to realize that his ignorance had been sin, and that his punishment was due to his absorption in the fate of a pretty woman.

Certainly after such a sharp rebuke he could not fail to return to his original task, imposed upon him because of his fault in bringing the feud fighters of his home mountains together, untrained and unrepentant, to hear the voice of his pride declare the Word for the edification of sinners. Parson Rasba did not mince his words as he contemplated the joy he had felt in being eloquent and a "power" of a speaker from the pulpits of the mountain churches. The murdering by the feud fighters had taught him what he would never forget, and his frank acknowledgment of each rebuke gave him greater understanding.

While the gale lasted he watched the river and the sky. The wild fowl flying low, and dropping into woods behind him led to forays seeking game, and in a bayou a mile distant he drew down with deadly aim on one of a flock of geese. He killed that bird, and then as its startled and lumbering mates sought flight, he got two more of them, missing another shot or two in the excitement.

The three great birds made a load for him, and he returned to his boat with a heart lighter than he had known in many a day because it seemed to him a "sign" that he need not hate himself overmuch. The river consoled him, and its constancy and integrity were an example which he could not help but take to heart.

Gales might blow, fair weather might tempt, islands might interpose themselves in its way, banks and sandbars might stand against the flood, but come what might, the river poured on through its destined course like a human life.

He entertained the whimsical fancy, as his smallest goose was roasting, that perhaps the Mississippi might sin. In so many ways the river reminded him of humankind. He had stood beside a branch of the Mississippi which was so small and narrow that he could dam it with his ample foot, or scoop it up with a bucket--and yet here it was a mile wide! In its youth it was subject to the control of trifling things, a stone or a log, or the careless handiwork of a man. Down here all the little threads of its being had united in a full tide of life still subject to the influences of its normal course, but wearing and tearing along beyond any power to stop till its appointed course was run.

Insensibly Parson Rasba felt the resources of his own mind flocking to help him. Just being there beside that mighty torrent helped him to get a perspective on things. Tiny things seemed so useless in the front of that overwhelming power. What were the big things of his own life? What were the important affairs of his existence?

He could not tell. He had always meant to do the right thing. He could see now, looking back on his life, that his good intentions had not prevented his ignorance from precipitating a feud fight.

"I should have taken them, family by family, and brought them to their own knees fustest," he thought, grimly. "Then I could have helt 'em all together in mutual repentance!"

Having arrived at that idea, he shrugged his shoulders almost self-contemptuously. "I'm a learnin'. That's one consolation, I'm a learnin'!"

And then Rasba heard the Call!

It was Old Mississip's voice; the river was heaping duties upon him more and more. So far, he had been rather looking out for himself, now he recalled the houseboats which he had seen moored down the reaches and in the bends. Those river people, dropping down incessantly with the river current, must sometimes need help, comfort, and perhaps advice. His humility would not permit him to think that he could preach to them or exhort them.

"Man to man, likely I could he'p some po'r sinner see as much as I can see. If I could kind of get 'em to see what this big, old riveh is like!