Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/108

 The slight breeze carried her skirt against her figure, and when she looked at the stranger, her face wore an expression that did not injure the appearance of her countenance.

"I'm a stranger on the river," Murdong said to her. "I passed the mouth of the Ohio two or three days ago, and I don't know where I am now. I wondered if you couldn't tell me?"

"Don't know where you are?" Delia asked, smiling. "That's Yankee Bar up there, I believe, and that's Plum Point above it. There's a town over across there, opposite the point—Osceola."

"Thank you," Murdong said. "I never heard of any of those places before; I suppose they're somewhere! I was wondering, particularly, if that big ridge down there had a name?"

"Indeed it has," she smiled. "That's Fort Pillow—what's left of it. Mrs. Mahna said last night that the old fort is all gone; the river undercut it, and it caved in. It's two hundred feet high, and wave washed over Craighead Point and away back for miles. It stranded tons and tons of fish."

"So that's Fort Pillow." Murdong turned and rested his eyes on Chicksaw Bluffs No. 2.

"Mrs. Mahna you said?" he turned and asked. "I wonder if that's who Mrs. Haney and Jesse Haney