Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/153

 use trying to get acquainted with her!" Frest mused, half to himself.

"And when Mrs. Mahna gets through with her, she'll be plumb careless how she treats anybody," Macrado added; "I don't understand how she got the best of Dan."

They left Palura's and returned to their shantyboats on Poplar Slough. They went into the cleaner, neater boat belonging to Macrado, there to sit, thinking. "Luck neveh breaks the same way twict," Frest suggested. "You reckon them di'monds are on Old Mississip'?"

It was a blunt question to put there in the river night which had lately fallen. Macrado, though the question had been in his own mind unspoken, was startled by it. He looked over his shoulder and then at his fellow river man.

"I be'n wonderin'!" he admitted, "if they be! Lawse! Lawse! Theh's a hundred thousan' of them! Hit'd keep a man—three-four fellers all their borned days. No work. Neveh hongry. Livin' comfy! I worked hard for all I got to eat. I got to go to work now. I ain' shif'less—I work in log camps an' saw-mills and steamboats. Seems like I work all the time, an' all I got's this shantyboat."

"Same with me," Frest shook his head, glancing at Macrado sidelong, for Frest had sold three tons of