Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/79

 name. They got handles to their names, but Delia—she's different!"

"Didn't Gost—that's his name, White Collar Dan Gost—tell how he was shot?" the hitherto silent shantyboater at the table asked.

"He's come to, they say, but he can't remember," Macrado said. "He was dropping down, he said, and next he knew, he was hog wallowing in the water. Well, he crawled out somewhere and next he knew, Sawbones was working on him, and the hospital nurse a-smoothing his pillow."

"Was he robbed?"

"That's a funny thing, too. He had more'n nine hundred in his pocket, but it wa'n't touched. Whisky Williams found it. You'd think if anybody went to the trouble of shooting him in a lonely bend, they'd took his money, anyhow, 'fore they threw him overboard."

"Well, that's the way on Old Mssissip'!" Frest shook his head. "You is, you ain't, and to Hell you go!"

"You bet. Let's liquor!" Macrado approved the sentiment.