Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/142

 Gost awakened him at dawn.

"Cut us loose!" Cost said. "We want to trip down! We got to find that girl. We'll stop in down below, somewheres, and ask along. They know she went past Carruthersville, they said there at Hickman sandbar. They're all talking about her, and they've given me the ha-ha, getting shot up! They don't know the right of it, though. They wonder how she got my gasolene boat, and all that. They think we were pals, and that she was huffy about something, and just rowed it and shot me up. Let 'em think what they please. I don't care!"

They floated down, early and late. Gost knew every bar and bend. He pointed to a hundred features, and told Urleigh what they meant. He indicated the point at Slough Landing where a man was killed; showed the soft-paw where Island Ten Bar lay golden yellow under the sunshine; he pointed out where Dancing Laura was run over the stem of a big houseboat when Clarence Pauley chased her with a butcher knife, and where Picking Joe picked her up and tripped away down the river with her.

Urleigh had never known there was a river people till he heard White Collar Dan relate the traditions of the shantyboat towns.

"Right along here," Dan said, "in that Point Pleasant Eddy, there was a man and his wife lived