"She's dropped in? All right, boys, much obliged!"

They separated.

But when Terabon searched along the slough for Nelia's boat he did not find it, and to his amazed anger he found that the gasolene boat in which he had arrived was also gone, as well as his own skiff and all his outfit.

"Darn this river!" he choked. "But that's a great story I sent of the killing of Palura!"

CHAPTER XXVIII

Nelia Crele had laughed in her heart at Elijah Rasba as he sat there listening to her reading. She knew what she was doing to the mountain parson! She played with his feelings, touched strings of his heart that had never been touched before, teased his eyes with a picture of feminine grace, stirred his mind with the sense of a woman who was bright and who knew so much that he had never known. At the same time, there was no malice in it--just the delight in making a strong man discover a strength beyond his own, and in humbling a masculine pride by the sheer superiority of a woman who had neglected no opportunity to satisfy a hunger to know.

She knew the power of a single impression and a clear, quick getaway.

She left him dazed by the fortune which heaped upon him literary cla.s.sics in a dozen forms--fiction, essays, history, poetry, short stories, criticism, fable, and the like; she laughed at her own quick liking for the serious-minded, self-deprecatory, old-young man whose big innocent eyes displayed a soul enamoured by the spirited intelligence of an experienced and rather disillusioned young woman who had fled from him partly because she did know what a sting it would give him.

So with light heart and singing tongue she floated away on the river, not without a qualm at leaving those books with Rasba; she loved them too much, but the sacrifice was so necessary--for his work! The river needed him as a missionary. He could help ease the way of the old sinners, and perhaps by and by he would reform her, and paint her again with goodness where she was weather-beaten.

It is easy to go wrong on the Mississippi--just as easy, or easier, than elsewhere in the world. The student of astronomy, gazing into the vast s.p.a.ces of the skies, feels his own insignificance increasing, while the magnitude of the constellations grows upon him. What can it matter what such a trifling thing, such a mere atom, as himself does when he is to the worlds of less size than the smallest of living organisms in a drop of water?

Nelia Crele looked around as she left the eddy and saw that her houseboat was but a trifle upon a surface containing hundreds of square miles. A human being opposite her on the bank was less in proportion than a fly on the cabin window pane. Then what could it matter what she did? Why shouldn't she be reckless, abandoned, and live in the gaiety of ages?

She had read thousands of pages of all kinds with no guide posts or moral landmarks. A picture of dangerous delights had come into her imagination. Having read and understood so much, she had not failed to discover the inevitable Nemesis on the trail of wrongdoing, as well as the inevitableness of reward for steadfastness in virtues--but she wondered doubtfully what virtue really was, whether she was not absolved from many rigid commandments by the failure of the world to keep faith with her and reward her for her own patience and atone for her own sufferings.

It was easy, only too easy, on the surface to feel that if she wanted to be gay and wanton, living for the hour, it was no one's affair but her own. She fought the question out in her mind. She fixed her determination on the young and, in one sense, inexperienced newspaper man whose ambitions pleased her fancy and whose innocence delighted her own mood.

He was down the river somewhere, and when she landed in at Mendova in the late twilight she saw his skiff swinging from the stern of a motorboat. Having made fast near it, she quickly learned that he had gone up town, and that someone had heard him say that he was going to Palura's.

Palura's! Nelia had heard the fascination of that den's ill-fame. She laughed to herself when she thought that Terabon would excuse his going there on the ground of its being right in his line of work, that he must see that place because otherwise he would not know how to describe it.

"If I can catch him there!" she thought to herself.

She went to Palura's, and Old Mississippi seemed to favour her. She found another woman who knew the ropes there and who was glad to help her play the game. From a distance Nelia Crele discovered that Terabon was with Carline, her own husband. She dismissed him with a shrug of her shoulders, and told her companion to take care of him.

Nelia, having plagued the soul of the River Prophet, Rasba, now with equal zest turned to seize Terabon, careless of where the game ended if only she could begin it and carry it on to her own music and in her own measure.

They had it all determined: Carline was to be wedged away with his friend, a cotton broker that Daisy--Nelia's newfound accomplice--knew, and Terabon was to be tempted to "do the Palace," and he was to be caught unaware, by Nelia, who wanted to dance with him, dine with him under bright lights, and drink dangerous drinks with him. She knew him sober and industrious, good and faithful, a decent, reputable working man--she wanted to see him waked up and boisterous, careless for her sake and because of her desires.

She just felt wicked, wanted to be wicked, and didn't care how wicked she might be. She counted, however, without the bonds which the Mississippi River seems at times to cast around its favourites--the Spirit of the river which looks after his own.

She had not even seen Policeman Laddam standing at the main entrance of the notorious resort, for Daisy had taken her through another door. She went to the exclusive "Third," and from there emerged onto the dancing floor just as Palura ostentatiously went forth to drive Laddam away, or to kill him.

Daisy checked her, for the minute or two of suspense, and then the whole scene, the tragedy, was enacted before her gaze. She was not frightened; she was not even excited; the thing was so astonishing that she did not quite grasp its full import till she saw Palura stumbling back, shot again and again. Daisy caught her arm and clutched it in dumb panic, and when the policeman calmly bent the cohorts of the dead man to his will and carried away his victims, Daisy dragged Nelia away.

Then Daisy disappeared and Nelia was left to her own devices.

She was vexed and disappointed. She knew nothing of the war in Mendova.

Politics had never engaged her attention, and the significance of the artistic killing of Palura did not appear to her mind. She was simply possessed by an indignant feminine impatience to think that Terabon had escaped, and she was angry when she had only that glimpse of him, as with his notebook in hand he raced his pencil across the blank pages, jotting down the details and the hasty, essential impressions as he caught them.

She heard the exodus. She heard women sobbing and men gasping as they swore and fled. She gathered up her own cloak and left with reluctant footsteps.

She realized that she had arrived there just one day too late to "do"

Palura's. The fugitives, as they scurried by, reminded her of some description which she had read of the Sack of Rome; or was it the Fall of Babylon? Their sins were being visited upon the wicked, and Nelia Crele, since she had not sinned, could not thrill with quite the same terror and despair of the wretches who had sinned in spite of their consciences, instead of through ignorance or wantonness. She took her departure not quite able to understand why there had been so much furore because one man had been killed.

She was among the last to leave the accursed place, and she saw the flight of the ones who had delayed, perhaps to loot, perhaps having just awakened to the fact of the tragedy. She turned toward Mousa Slough, and her little shanty-boat seemed very cool and bare that late evening. The bookshelves were all empty, and she was just a little too tired to sleep, just a little too stung by reaction to be happy, and rather too much out of temper to be able to think straight and clearly on the disappointment.

Mendova had been familiar in her ears since childhood; she had heard stories of its wildness, its gayeties, its recklessness. Impression had been made upon impression, so that when she had found herself nearing the place of her dreams, she was in the mood to enter into its wildest and gayest activities; she had expected to, and she had known in her own mind that when she met Terabon she would be irresistible.

At last she shuddered. She seemed to hear a voice, the river's voice, declare that this thing had happened to prevent her seeking to betray herself and Terabon, not to mention that other matter which did not affect her thought in the least, her husband's honour.

The idea of her husband's honour made the thing absurd to her. There was no such thing as that honour. She had plotted to get Carline out of the way now that she heard he was clear of the pirates. On second thought, she was sorry that she had been so hasty in returning to the boat, wishing that she had followed up Terabon.

She walked out onto the bow deck, and standing in the dark, with her door closed, looked up and down the slough. A dozen boats were in sight.

She heard a number of men and women talking in near-by boats, and the few words she heard indicated that the river people had a pretty morsel of gossip in the killing of Palura.

She heard men rustling through the weeds and switch willows of the boatmen's pathway, and she hailed; she was now a true river woman, though she did not know it.

"Say, boys, do you know if Terabon and Carline landed here to-night?"

"We just landed in," one answered. "I don't know."

"Going up town?"

"Yes----"

"I want to know about them----"

"Hit's Nelia Crele!" one exclaimed.

"That's right. h.e.l.lo, boys--Despard--Jet--Cope!"

"Sure! When'd you land?"

"Late this evening; I was up to Palura's when----"

"That ain't no place fo' a lady."

She laughed aloud, as she added, "I was there when Palura was killed by the policeman."

"Palura killed a policeman!" Despard said. "He's killed----"

"No, Palura was killed by a policeman. Shot him dead right on the dance-hall floor."

The pirates choked. The thing was unbelievable. They came down to the boat and she described the affair briefly, and they demanded details.

They felt that it would vitally affect Mendova. They whispered among themselves as to what it meant. They learned that a policeman had been stationed in front of the notorious resort and that that policeman had done the shooting during a fight with waiters and bouncers and with Palura himself.