Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/206

 He kept away from towns; he landed in lonesome bends where no other shantyboat was in sight. He swung heavy curtains over the ordinary shades of his windows so that at night not a glimmer of light could go through. He lingered in his eddies till late in the morning, and when he landed it was after dark, so that no one could see him.

He had the feeling of a fugitive, or a guardian of great treasure; of a poet in the throes of inspiration—and night or day he packed his two automatics in their holsters out of sight but always in mind. Perhaps the river spirit laughed, perhaps it merely smiled—when a man runs away down the Mississippi to dodge responsibility and to go to the dogs, he is very apt to find himself loaded up with unheard-of burdens of soul and body.

Then he made a discovery which startled and exasperated him, while it gave him cause for worry and dread. He began to think that he was being watched, being followed, being scrutinized.

This was with reason, too, for sometimes he would see a flicker of a boat far up the river astern; sometimes he would see it ahead of him down a long reach; once or twice in the night he spied it floating down the current a few rods out from where he had found a little port against a steep bank under the shelter of a wooded bend.