Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/29



LITTLE white cabin-boat floated down the Ohio and swung around in the eddies where the green waters rubbed with the yellow of the Mississippi. On the bow, standing at the sweeps, was a slender, blue-eyed girl with wavy brown hair; she was tanned, and the light and wind caused her to squint ever so little. Apparently she was at her ease, as though she knew the river, but when she pulled the sweeps, she looked around uncertainly, as though wondering which way the boat would go.

When she was swinging down Putney Bend, she found herself approaching a number of other shantyboats moored along the river bank. She attempted to row straight to them, but Mrs. Mahna, an old river woman, called to her. What kind of a fool soft-paw was she, anyhow, trying to row against a reverse eddy current?

"Drop down to the foot of the eddy, an' float in!" Mrs. Mahna ordered. "Then float along up the bank an' land in, the way you'd orter!"

The young woman flushed under the river woman's 23