"They're to read!" she told him. "Listen," and she began to read--poetry, prose at random.

The Prophet did not know, he had never been trained to know--as few men ever are trained--how to combat feminine malice and spoiled power. He listened, but not with averted eyes. Prebol, himself a spectator at a scene different from any he had ever witnessed, was still enough more sophisticated to know what she was doing, and he was delighted.

By and by the injured man drifted into slumber, but Rasba gave no sign of flagging interest, no traces of a mind astray from the subject at hand. He felt that he must make the most of this revelation, which came after the countless revelations which he had had since arriving down the river. There was a fear clutching at his heart that it might end; that in a moment this woman might depart and leave him unenlightened, and unable ever to find for himself the unimaginable world of words which she plucked out of those books and pinned into the great vacant s.p.a.ces of his mind which he had kept empty all these years--not knowing that he was waiting for this night, when he should have the Mississippi bring into his eddy, alongside his own mission boat, what he most needed.

He sat there, a great, pathetic figure, s.h.a.ggy, his heart thumping, taking from this trim, neat, beautiful woman the riches which she so casually, almost wantonly, threw to him in pa.s.sing.

The corridors of his mind echoed to the tread of hosts; he heard the rumblings of history, the songs of poets whose words are pitched to the music of the skies, and he hung word pictures which Ruskin had painted in his imagination.

Fate had waited long to give him this night. It had waited till the man was ready, then with a lavish hand the storehouses of the master intellects of the world were opened to him, for him to help himself.

Nelia suddenly started up from her chair and looked around, herself the victim of her own raillery, which had grown to be an understanding of the pathetic hunger of the man for these things.

It was daylight, and the flood of the sunrise was at hand.

"Parson," she said, "do you like these things--these books?"

"Missy," he whispered, "I could near repeat, word for word, all those things you've said and read to me to-night."

"There are lots more," she laughed. "I want to do something for your mission boat, will you let me?"

"Lawse! Yo've he'ped me now more'n yo' know!"

She smiled the smile that women have had from all the ages, for she knew a thousand times more than even the Prophet.

"I'll give you a set of all these books!" she said; "all the books that I have. Not these, my old pals--yes, these books, Mr. Rasba. If you'll take them? I'll get another lot down below."

"Lawd G.o.d! Give me yo' books!"

"Oh, they're not expensive--they're----"

"They're yours. Cayn't yo' see? It's your own books, an' hit's fo' my work. I neveh knowed how good men could be, an' they give me that boat fo' a mission boat. Now--now--missy--I cayn't tell yo'--I've no words----"

And with grat.i.tude, with the simplicity of a mountain parson, he dropped on his knees and thanked G.o.d. As he told his humility, Prebol wakened from a deep and restful sleep to listen in amazement.

When at last Rasba looked up Nelia was gone. The books were on the table and he found another stack heaped up on the deck of the mission boat.

But the woman was gone, and when he looked down the river he saw something flicker and vanish in the distance.

He stared, hurt; he choked, for a minute, in protest, then carried that immeasurable treasure into his cabin.

CHAPTER XXV

Renn Doss, the false friend, saw the danger of the recognition of the firearms by Carline. The savage swing of a half pound of fine shot braided up in a rawhide bag, and a good aim, reduced Carline to an inert figure of a man. "Renn Doss" was Hilt Despard, pirate captain, whose instantaneous action always had served him well in moments of peril.

The three men carried Carline to a bunk and dropped him on it. They covered him up and emptied a cupful of whiskey on his pillow and clothes. They even poured a few spoonfuls down his throat. They thus changed him to what might be called a "natural condition."

Then, sitting around the stove, they whispered among themselves, discussing what they had better do. Half a hundred possibilities occurred to their fertile fancies and replete memories. Men and women who have always led sheltered lives can little understand or know what a pirate must understand and know even to live let alone be successful.

"What's Terabon up to?" Despard demanded. "Here he is, drappin' down by Fort Pillow Landing, running around. Where's that girl he had up above New Madrid? What's his game? Coming up here and talking to us? Asking us all about the river and things--writin' it for the newspapers?"

"That woman's this Carline's wife!" Jet sneered.

"Sure! An' here's Terabon an' here's Carline. Terabon don't talk none about that woman--nor about Carline," Dock grumbled.

"I bet Terabon would be sorry none if Carline hyar dropped out. Y' know she's Old Crele's gal," Jet said. "Crele's a good feller. Sent word down to have us take cyar of her, an' Prebol, the fool, didn't know 'er, hadn't heard. Look what she give him, bang in the shoulder! That old Prophet'll take cyar of him, course. See how hit works out. She shined up to Terabon, all right."

"I 'low I better talk to him," Despard suggested. "Terabon's a good sport. He said, you' know, that graftin' and whiskey boatin', an'

robbin' the bank wa'n't none of his business. He said, course, he could write it down in his notes, but without names, 'count of somebody might read somethin' in them an' get some good friend of his in Dutch. He said it wouldn't be right for him to know about somebody robbin' a commissary, or a bank, or killin' somebody, because if somebody like a sheriff or detective got onto it, they might blame him, or somethin'."

"I like that Terabon!" Jet declared. "Y'see how he is. He says he's satisfied, makin' a fair living, gettin' notes so's he can write them magazine stories, an' if he was to try to rob the banks, he'd have to learn how, same's writin' for newspapers. An' probably he wouldn't have the nerve to do it really, 'count of his maw and paw bein' the kind they was. He told me hisself that they made him go to Sunday school when he was a kid, an' things like that spoil a man for graftin'. Stands to reason, all right, the way he talks. I like him; he knows enough to mind his own business."

"He's comin' up to-night to go after geese on the bar. We'll talk to him. He'll look that business over, level-headed. That motorboat any good?"

"Nothin' extra. He's got ready money, though, I forgot that," Despard grinned, walking over to the hapless victim of his black-jack skill.

The three divided nearly thirteen hundred dollars among them. The money made them good humoured and they had some compa.s.sion for their prisoner.

One of them noticed that a skiff was coming up from Fort Pillow Landing, and fifteen minutes later Terabon was talking to Despard on the snag to one p.r.o.ng of which was fastened the line of Carline's motorboat.

"I was wondering where I'd see you again," Terabon said. "Didn't have a chance at New Madrid, saw you was in business, so I didn't follow up none."

"I was wondering if you had a line on that," Despard said, doubtfully.

"Y'know that woman you was staying with up on Island Ten Bar? Well, we got her man in here full's a fish. Lookin' for his woman, an' he's no good. Fell off the cabin, hit a spark in the back of the head when the water sucked when that steamboat went by this morning. He'd ought to go down to Memphis hospital, but--Well, we can't take 'im. You know how that is."

"Be glad to help you boys out any way I can," Terabon said. "I'll run him down."

"Say, would you? We don't want him on our hands," the pirate explained.

"We'd get to see you down b'low some'rs."

"Sure, I would," Terabon exclaimed. "Fact is, the woman said it'd be a favour to her, too, if I'd get him home. She'll be dropping down likely.

Darn nice girl, but quick tempered."

"That's right; quick ain't no name for it. She plugged a friend of mine up by Buffalo Island----"

"Prebol? I heard about him. She was scairt."

"She needn't be, never again!" Despard grinned. "When a lady can handle a river Law like she does, us bad uns are real nice!"

Terabon laughed, and the two went into the cabin-boat where Carline lay on the bunk. Terabon ran his hand around the man's head and neck, found the lump near the base of the skull, found that the neck wasn't broken, and made sure that the heart was beating--things a reporter naturally learns to do in police-station and hospital experience.

Jet brought the motorboat down to the stern of the cabin-boat, and the four carried Carline on board. They put him in his bunk, and Terabon, his skiff towing astern, steered out into the main current and soon faded down by Craighead Point Bar.

"I knowed he'd be all right," Despard declared. "He'll take him down to Memphis, and out of our way. I'd 'a' hated to kill him; it ain't no use killin' a man less'n it's necessary. We got what we was after. Course, if we'd rewarded him, likely we'd got a lot, but it ain't safe, holdin'

a man for rewards ain't."

"That boat'd been a good one to travel in," Jet suggested.