Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/119

, while the two women washed and wiped the dishes, the talk turned to river gossip, and Mrs. Mahna talked about river trippers, all kinds of whom drop down the current past the Forks of the Ohio.

"You never know!" she declared. "Some'r scouting, feared of detectives, and some are 'lopers whose folks wouldn't let 'em marry, and some are wives hating their husbands, and som'r husbands whose wives are well shut of them. Men, women, children. Why, there was one boy dropped out of the Ohio, long in 1903-1904, who played poker like a genuine crook. He was just a boy, fourteen-fifteen years old. He pulled into my boat, one night, long of dusk. He laughed and talked, and when he 'lowed to pay me for a night's lodging, he pulled out a roll of bills; he had a thousand dollars then. I told him he was a fool and to drop back home with it! He laughed, 'I'll have five thou' 'gin I get to N'Orleans!' That's what he said. He had eighteen hundred out of Helena, and he never come by below—no, sir! Not without it was under water. Nobody that'd admit it had seen him. He showed his roll once too often. I'd sooner have an ounce of cocaine into me than let it be known I had a thousand dollars in my pocket down this old river."

"They'd hurt a woman?" Murdong asked.

"Yes! They'd kill their own mothers, some of