Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/235

 advantage of him. The scoundrel had slept in his skiff, under a canvas tarpaulin, and when Storit had the skiff actually in his possession, what did that lurking scoundrel do but hold him up in the fog, and try to shoot him.

Storit had told the man a good story, or something, he could not recall just what. The man had been thrown off his guard, Storit remembered, and Storit escaped into the fog and paddled away out of sight. It was that might he had heard the river spirits laughing, and when he had time to think it over, that laugh heartened Storit up considerably.

Accordingly, paddling up the river to where he had hidden his rag-house shantyboat, he started down the river in pursuit of the man who had played on him the scurvy trick of sleeping in a skiff. He followed that man down, waiting his chance and biding his time. Fortune favoured him with a bag of cob corn which had fallen off a river steamer, and a lot of canned goods which had rolled up on a sandbar from a wreck. He even had been able to catch a wounded goose and find two or three ducks which had been lost by hunters.

The man he was following tried to fool him by getting into a shantyboat in the eddy at Yankee Bar. Storit almost got him there, but just when he was ready to nab him at the next venture ashore the fellow slipped out into the eddy and went on down the