Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/90

 "Humph!" Mrs. Haney sniffed, "hear him talk! If men'd mind their own business, same as women tries to do, hit'd be plumb peaceable in every reach and bend from here to N'Orleans, and you know it, Jesse Haney!"

"Oh, shucks, Maw! What's the use of arguing about men and women! I get plumb sick and tired hearing which ain't responsible."

"Yes, sir! And you men folks'll get a darned sight sicker and tireder 'fore you get done with it, too," Mrs. Haney declared, vehemently, whereupon the men both laughed.

It was thus that Murdong was transformed from recusance to toleration. His nonconformity drifted easily and without shock into river ways of talking and thinking.

He smoked a silent pipe with Jesse and Mrs. Haney, and then, while Jesse held the lantern, he spread the canvas cover over the hoops and pumped up his pneumatic couch. Then having bid Jesse good-night, he turned in to sleep, his boat swinging and swaying on the end of a twenty-foot line made fast to the starboard stern timberhead of the Haney shantyboat.

He did not go to sleep immediately. Lying there, he gave his imagination free play with the pictures conjured up by his talk with the river people. He wondered, more than anything else, what kind of a