Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/85

 thieves, yeggmen, absconders, little children, old maids, tormented wives, scandalized husbands, circus performers, actors, preachers, lawyers, and doctors have brought their troubles down from the empires and tossed them overboard at the forks of the Ohio.

Before he reached Putney Bend G. Alexander Murdong decided that he didn't care a damn, and he meant it. Pride of soul, perhaps the most uncomfortable pride in all humanity, had its fall.

"Guess I'll run in and see who those people are in the houseboats," Murdong decided. "Gee! I haven't shaved in two weeks. I bet I look like the devil, but what's the odds?"

What he saw was the little cluster of shantyboats along the bank at the head of the Putney Bend sandbar, in the eddy. This bend is, according to the map, only ten miles below the mouth of the Ohio. There and thereabouts people who float in shantyboats run inshore to land and catch their breath after passing the forks. It takes just about that ten miles to have it dawn on the tripper that he has at last entered the lower river, and is in the realm of the river, and out of the empires up the banks.

Behind the boat is what one flees from; ahead of the boat is one does not know what. It takes a little while, a day or two, to readjust one's mind to the fact that the jumping-off place has been passed, whether