Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/39



ELIA floated down the crossing and sat on the bow of her little shantyboat, with her elbows on her knees and her knuckles under her chin. Her face, so far as the passing birds could have seen, was expressionless. Her eyes looked frankly at the swirling eddies and watched ahead to see that the boat kept in midcurrent.

"So this is Old Mississippi," she told herself. "This is where people come when they really want to forget and be forgotten? This is where you make your own law, and where you don't just give a—give a damn for anything! Well, it looks it."

She smiled whimsically. She sat up straight, and filled a good pair of lungs with sweet air. She raised her chin with a pert, saucy toss of her head. She looked at her palms, and saw there the little roughening, inevitable accompaniment of pulling fourteen-foot shantyboat oars. She looked at the backs of her hands.

"My hands are bare!" she smiled to herself with satisfaction. "And I'm free! I've nothing to bother about, now—just my own thinking!" 33