Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/110

 "Here we are," she said, "on Sheet No. 6"

"It's one hundred and seventy miles below Cairo! he exclaimed. "Is that all! Why, I thought"

"You thought you'd been down here for ages, and had travelled halfway around the world," she laughed. "Yes—these are dandy maps. I want a set of them. I wonder where I could find some?"

"Some river town, I should say—Mendova? I don't know. It's my first trip down. These were on the boat."

Murdong looked at the Plum Point section, and then turned down stream, sheet after sheet.

"All that's ahead of me yet!" he mused. "I never knew what a river it was!"

"I had crossed it at Memphis and New Orleans," she said. "When I—when I could, I floated down it. There are index maps in the front."

He turned to the small-scale index sheets showing the lower river in three sections, and the large-scale sheets plotted out on the river course, according to their numbers, No 1 at Cairo, No. 28 at New Orleans, No. 32 at the Passes, showing thirty miles or so to the sheet.

He studied the index sheets a few minutes, and tried to turn to the title page, but saw the inside of the cover. There was written a name, boldly: