"Had trouble with the police, an' they shot him daid into his own dance floor--and Mendova's no good no more!"

"Now what the boys goin' to do when they make a haul?" Prebol demanded in great disgust of Parson Rasba. "Fust the planters shot up whiskey boats; then the towns went dry, an' now they closed up Palura's an' shot him daid. Wouldn't hit make yo' sick, Parson! They ain't no fun left nowheres for good sports."

Rasba could not make any comment. He was far from sure of his understanding. He felt as though his own life had been sheltered, remote from these wild doings of murders and shanty-boat-fleet dances and a congregation a.s.sembling in a gambling boat handed to him for a mission!

He could not quite get his bearings, but the books blessed him with their viewpoints, as numerous as the points of the compa.s.s. He could not turn a page or a chapter without finding something that gave him a different outlook or a novel idea.

They landed in late on Monday at Mendova bar, just above the wharf. Up the slough were many shanty-boats, and gaunt dogs and floppy buzzards fed along the bar and down the wharf.

Groups of men and women were scattered along both the slough and the river banks, talking earnestly and seriously. Rasba, bound up town to buy supplies, heard the name of Palura on many lips; the policemen on their beats waltzed their heavy sticks about in debonair skilfulness; and stooped, rat-like men pa.s.sing by, touched their hats nervously to the august bluecoats.

When Rasba returned to the boat, he found a man waiting for him.

"My name is Lester Terabon," the man said. "I landed in Sat.u.r.day, and went up town. When I returned, my skiff and outfit were all gone--somebody stole them."

"Sho!" Rasba exclaimed. "I've heard of you. You write for newspapers?"

"Yes, sir, and I'm some chump, being caught that way."

"They meant to rob you?" Rasba asked.

"Why, of----I don't know!" Terabon saw a new outlook on the question.

"Did they go down?"

"Yes, sir, I heard so. I don't care about my boat, typewriter, and duffle; what bothers me is my notebooks. Months of work are in them. If I could get them back!"

"What can I do for you?"

"I don't know--I'm going down stream; it's down below, somewhere."

"I need someone to help me," Rasba said. "I've a wounded man here who has a doctor with him. If he goes up to the hospital or stays with us, I'll be glad to have you for your help and company."

"I'm in luck." Terabon laughed with relief.

Just that way the Mississippi River's narrow channel brought the River Prophet and the river reporter together. Terabon went up town and bought some clothes, some writing paper, a big blank notebook, and a bottle of fountain-pen ink. With that outfit he returned on board, and a delivery car brought down his share of things to eat.

The doctor said Prebol ought to go into the hospital for at least a week, and Terabon found Prebol's pirate friends, hidden up the slough on their boat, not venturing to go out except at night. They took the little red shanty-boat up the slough, and Prebol went to the hospital.

Rasba, frankly curious about the man who wrote for newspapers for a living, listened to accounts of an odd and entertaining occupation. He asked about the Palura shooting which everyone was talking about, and when Terabon described it as he had witnessed it, Rasba shook his head.

"Now they'll close up that big market of sin?" he asked. "They've all scattered around."

"Yes, and they scattered with my skiff, too, and probably robbed Carline of his boat----"

"Carline! You know him?"

"I came down with him from Yankee Bar, and we went up to Palura's together. I lost him in the shuffle, when the big cop killed Palura."

"And Mrs. Carline, Nelia Crele?" Rasba demanded.

"Why--I--they said she'd landed in. She's gone, too----"

"You know her?"

"Why, yes--I----"

"So do I. Those books," he waved his hand toward the loaded shelves, "she gave them all to me for my mission boat!"

Terabon stared. He went to the shelves and looked at the volumes. In each one he found the little bookmark which she had used in cataloguing them:

Nelia Carline, A Loved Book.

No. 87

A jealous pang seized him, in spite of his reportorial knowledge that jealousy is vanity for a literary person.

"I 'low we mout 's well drop out," Rasba suggested. "Missy Crele's down below some'rs. Her boat floated out to'd mornin', one of the boys said."

CHAPTER x.x.x

Carline had discovered his wife in the excitement at Palura's, and with the cunning of a drunken man had shadowed her. He followed her down to Mousa Bayou, and saw her go on board her cabin-boat. He watched, with more cunning, to see for whom she was waiting. He had in his pocket a heavy automatic pistol with which to do murder.

He had seen killing done, and the thing was fascinating; some consciousness that the policeman had done the right thing seemed now to justify his own intention of killing a man, or somebody.

Disappointment lingered in his mind when the lights went out on board Nelia's boat, and for a long time he meditated as to what he should do.

He saw skiffs, motorboats, shanty-boats pulling hastily down the slough into the Mississippi. It was the Exodus of Sin. Mendova's rect.i.tude had a.s.serted its strength and power, and now the exits of the city were flickering with the shadows of departing hordes of the night and of the dark, all of whom had two fears: one of daylight, the other of sudden death.

Their departure before his eyes, with darkened boats, gave Carline an idea at last. He wanted to get away off somewhere, where he could be alone, without any interruption. Bitter anger surged in his breast because his wife had shamed him, left him, led him this any-thing-but-merry chase down the Mississippi. A proud Carline had no call to be treated thataway by any woman, especially by the daughter of an old ne'er-do-well whom he had condescended to marry.

He had always been a hunter and outdoor man, and it was no particular trick for him to cast off the lines of Nelia's boat and push it out into the sluggish current, and it was as easy for him to take his own boat and drop down into the river. He brought the two boats quietly together and lashed them fast with rope fenders to prevent rubbing and b.u.mping--did it with surprising skill.

The Mississippi carried them down the reach into the crossing, and around a bend out of sight of even the glow of the Mendova lights. Here was one of those lonesome stretches of the winding Mississippi, with wooded bank, sandbar, sky-high and river-deep loneliness.

Carline, with alcoholic persistency, held to his scheme. He drank the liquor which he had salvaged in the riotous night. He thought he knew how to bring people to time, especially women. He had seen a big policeman set the pace, and the sound of the club breaking skull bones was still a shock in his brain, oft repeated.

The sudden dawn caught him by surprise, and he stared rather nonplussed by the sunrise, but when he looked around and saw that he was in mid-stream and miles from anywhere and from any one, he knew that there was no better place in the world for taming one's wife, and extorting from her the apologies which seemed to Carline appropriate, all things considered, for the occasion.

The time had arrived for action. He rose with dignity and b.u.t.toned up his waistcoat; he pulled down his coat and gave his cravat a hitch; he rubbed a tentative hand on the lump where the pirates had b.u.mped him; he scrambled over the side onto the cabin-boat deck, and entered upon the scene of his conquest.

He found himself confronted by Nelia in a white-faced, low-voiced fury instead of in the mood he had expected. She wasn't sorry; she wasn't apologetic; she wasn't even amiable or conciliatory.

"Gus Carline! Drunk, as usual. What do you mean by this?"

"S'all right!" he a.s.sured her, flapping his hands. "Y're m'wife; I'm your husban'! S'all right!"

She drew her pistol and fired a bullet past him.