The Way of the Mississippi/Chapter 9

AD TOM and his fellows in their dull-shaded pirate craft floated down Scrub Grass Bend, and as the river current carried them wandering, a touch of a sweep enabled them to lose Toskin, the pleasant up-the-banker, in the gray gloom. They wanted no casual witnesses now. Passing Montgomery Chute they debated whether or not Rillard would run up into White River and through Arkansaw New Mouth by the cut off.

"He wouldn’t," Mad Tom declared. "Softpaws don’t play no riveh tricks like that. Besides, I don’t expect Dona 'd stand fo hit.”

Accordingly, they dropped on down toward Old Mouth, where they would find people of whom to make discreet or confidential inquiries. Mad Tom was snarling with anger against Rillard. Dona Voane would stand no nonsense from any man, but probably Rillard knew that. He must know it. She hadn’t killed him, so it stood to reason he was plumb sensible

"Likely he'll get one of them seventeen dollar 'n' fifty cent 'vorces," Mad Tom whined to himself, "an' prob'bly, account of him being a big feller, an' rich, an' respectable, an' all them kind of things, she'll marry 'im. Dona always did set a heap of store by men bein' decent. Ain't women the limit?"

Memory of his attack on Rillard was sunk deep in Mad Tom's consciousness. He was afraid, a fact that steadily made him cringe while he hated. The back of his neck still twitched and hurt where the big man's thumbing had so carelessly half paralyzed the river rat while hoisting him over the stern bumper of the concert boat, to toss him like a mongrel dog into the gray midnight eddy.

The ease with which the strong and competent man had done it was a dead weight of dread on the river rat's heart. Even thought of trickery from bushwhacking advantage made him tremble at the chance of a trip-up. The river rat shuddered as he realized that the man he hated, through sheer competence, would have an even chance against any kind of treachery. Courage walks with justified pride on a broad highway along the double barriers of hidden, skulking cravens, and each coward knows the confidence is with reason, warranted by the difference between a good man and a mean scoundrel.

Mad Tom feared the outcome, yet he pursued his intention. The pirates ran down the bank, slicked their way into Old River Mouth in a night mist, and, like cats, took their landings, separated by time and space, that chance observers might not know they had any interests in common. Thus they appeared among the dwellers of the shanty boat community, listening to what people said about one another.

Jim Taken heard all about Mad Tom's coming down the river, trying to court Dona Voane. Every one was talking about it. He passed the word to Mad Tom, who snarled at the exposure of his real feelings like a worm on a concrete sidewalk in the sun. The Jungle, Rillard's motor boat, did not appear. Mad Tom was perturbed. The powerful craft could easily turn to stem the current back to Helena, or Memphis.

"I'd ought 'a' thought of that!" he swore.

Then a fisherman who had been to Arkansaw City brought up word that he had met Dona Voane dropping down in the Mendova murder boat.

"She was smilin'-happy!" the fisherman declared to Mad Tom's sharp questioning. " Singing an' playin' her banjo—"

"Anybody with her on that boat?"

"I didn't get to see." The fisherman shook his head nervously.

"Why the blazes didn't yo' look?" Mad Tom cursed him. "You blamed fool—"

"I—I was afeared!" the fisherman replied. "That gal don' stan' no nonsense from any man!"

Mad Tom threw himself in his temper, and scurried away. He rounded up his pals, and over the table in his boat told them what had taken place.

"Why, hit's that Toskin picture feller! That scoundrel ain't reliable; he's treach'rous, he is! Look't how he come hit onto we uns! He jes' drapped out that night an' foun' her, an' now—now—"

Mad Tom frothed as he thought what was the natural sequence of events.

"Hit weren't Rillard," Mad Tom declared. "Dona jes'—jes' were took, stoled likely, by that smooth-actin' picture feller! An' I neveh s'pected 'im at all! Lawse—them still fellers—I tell you, the on'y way to do, 'gin yo' meet a still feller is plug 'im! Yas, suh!"

Mad Tom cut loose and went on down the river. Dona, on Toskin's boat, was below somewhere. On the instant, thought of Rillard's fine motor boat dropped from the anxious pirate's mind. Comanche and Caprice took no part in the proceedings. They merely served the grub, cleaned the boats, and by grunts or snickers indicated their understanding of what they were told to do.

At Arkansaw City they landed in one boat away up at the head of the three-mile eddy; the other, cruising down the edge of the channel current, swung in at the foot of the eddy and ran over to make fast to the great log raft which was spiled and anchored there for the sawmills. Mad Tom cast his scowling gaze across the fleet of anchored and moored shanty and motor boats in the landing, but the Mendova murder boat was not there.

In five minutes, from the Cunis photograph boat, he learned that she had laid in the eddy two nights while the girl transacted business up the bank. Then she had swung clear again and dropped down the river. She was alone.

Never in his life had Mad Tom had so amazing and relieving a reversal of ideas. Dona Voane had come all clear and honorable. She was shut of the motor boat up-the-banker and of that picture-making, harmless kid. He took the photographer's word, laughed, and both boats soon swung away down the river full tilt.

"All I ask now is meetin' Dona face to face, fair an' square, down some lonesome bend!" Mad Tom laughed. "Hi-i! I bet shell marry me plumb grateful—"

It was time to celebrate. He knew now that old Mississip' was meaning right by him. What more would a man ask? Certainly a river pirate asks no better friend than the river, with its night, its dark bends, its fogs and its byways. Mad Tom ran into 'Go-Lang Island Chute, where Bisko's still-boat did an all-river trade, and Bisko readily sold the pirates four jugs right out of the ground, where they had been buried better than two months. It was moonshine of tremendous proof. In their anxieties and scurrying, the pirates had missed many opportunities to liquor up. Now, with everything propitious, they opened a jugful, the aroma of which killed a fly that incautiously alighted on the top, with the cork out.

They served the river-drip in water glasses. Yet, after a round, Mad Tom called a halt.

"Hold on!" he ordered. "Likely we better go easy!"

It was river instinct, for as he turned to look up the river, they saw a motor boat coming down. It drove past nearly half a mile distant, and Mad Tom recognized it at a mile easily. The Jungle had run by, with whatever that might portend. The pirate suitor of Dona Voane went into a rage. He cursed his own companions, blaming them for the stop at Bisko's river tiger, though he had himself proposed it. Now, his advantage lost, he made haste to overtake the girl again. Thus his confidence and dejection had all his life alternated, with senseless bursts of anger at each change of mind.

"You fools!" he cursed his people, and piling into his own open launch, with spray hood up, and his own bits of property, he deserted them all without explanation or good-by. This was his mood. He would, they surmised, show up again somewhere along the line when he needed them. He had taken one of the jugs, and as he drove at full speed, he took sip by sip, claiming to stand it when he drank it sensibly as well as any man.

He ran into the shanty boat colony on the bank at Greenville. He soon knew all he wanted to know, all there was to know. Dona had tripped past, plowing right along down with an outboard motor over the stern of the Mendova boat. The Jungle was two days behind her, and a night ahead of Mad Tom, who was dazed by the fact of the outboard motor on the shanty boat. She could beat the current in that well-shaped craft by three to five miles an hour. The Jungle was a swifter craft by far than his own launch. If the sports went night and day he was hopelessly lost astern, but knowing sports, he suspected they wouldn't run nights, being afraid of the dark in that river of questionable shadows.

Thinking it over, he knew what Dona Voane was now doing. The death of her mother made it imperative that she clear up the questions of the property, the amount of which he could only guess. The fortune was considerable, dating back through years of river saving and river trade. Those Voane women always had known how to take care of what they owned, a fact that in no way detracted from Doana's charm.

Fortune favored him well, as he supposed. A brisk south wind sprang up, tossing waves against the current and throwing his launch about. The shanty boat could make no headway against that storm. No river woman would want to ride in such a gale as as he kept on plowing down, driving in the current, in long, lonely and wild Lake Providence Reach he saw across a sand bar the familiar outline of the Mendova boat. It was a Two-Way Chute, and just outside anchored in deep water was the Jungle.

Mad tom cursed as he laughed, and swung wide to land at the head of Willow Bank to lie in wait for the coming of dusk. Luck favoring a man plays pretty tricks, and Mad Tom realized that he was able at last to clean up on this whole matter.

He could see that probably Rillard and Toskin were being polite as they played their hands. That was their game, which must make Dona laugh. He would show them, he would show her, too, and when night at last fell he knew all there was needful for him to know, for from the willows he had watched the boats.

All three had taken advantage of the gale to hunt wild geese on the outside bars. Dona had taken them over the sand and they had spread out on Quacking Towhead, hiding in pits dug in the switch willows. The geese were coming down as though they expected the wind to change into a cold northern storm. From his hiding place Mad Tom saw the hunters drop nine geese, of which Dona, in the middle blind, killed five, Rillard two, and Toskin two.

The hunters didn't wait for the night flight, but strolled together with the bird wings flapping in the gale as they walked around the south side of the bar, keeping out of the sand clouds running upwind. Dona would roast a goose, and she would serve it, with nobody but two up-the-bankers to appreciate it.

After dark he dropped silently down the Stem Chute to Two-Way, keeping close by the caving sand bar on the west side, where the current was gnawing the island. Even night has its shadows on the river, and Mad Tom ever sought the darkest.

He had no plan; he had merely rage and desire to urge him on; Rillard, Toskin, and Dona, with their boats, were now in a desolation of river back water. With luck still favoring him, he would be shut of the two men, and Dona, admiring his prowess as well as overwhelmed by his cunning masterfulness, would be his prize. She and her mother had been rich, and now their money would be his, too.

"Sho!" he whispered. "I won't have to work er take chances any more."

They were on board the shanty boat. The south wind blew the odor of the baked goose up the chute to smite his nostrils. He was jealous of those two men, eating that delicious meat. He threw out a light mud-hook and swung his launch up tight against the low sand bank, a hundred yards from the cabin boat.

He ran his hands over his shotgun, rifle and pistol holsters, wondering on which to depend. Finally he took the shotgun to crawl up on the bank and work his way down the sand through the thick growth of switch willows to where he could listen in on the merriment.

Keen as were his ears, few words and no sentences reached his interpretative faculties. He could not tell what they were talking about. He knew in his heart, however, that every advantage was his. The skill of the two visitors was drawn up on the sand just below the shanty boat. The two would come out of the front door and walk down the sand ten yards to their craft when on their way to the Jungle.

"Then I'll get 'im!" he chuckled to himself.

He opened his shotgun to make sure there were shells in it. Those shells contained twelve buckshot each, and there were five shells in the weapon. What two scoundrels could escape a fusillade of sixty lead bullets the size of peas? Mad Tom knew it couldn't be done.

"I mustn't hit her," he assured himself. "She'd be mad if I wounded her, she sure would."

He shook his head, remarking:

"A riveh lady neveh does stand fo' any gittin' shot herself!"

Accordingly, he allowed to be perfectly sure that the girl was all clear of the shot before he opened on the two men.

"She'll be plumb proud, havin' that big motor cruiser fo' a honeymoonin'," he mused. "Shucks! That man Rillard's no 'count—"

The river rat hesitated, lowering his eyes. The twinge was still in the back of his neck where Rillard had gripped and thumbed him. For that insult, for the ducking, for all that had happened Rillard deserved to die, and must. Toskin was no 'count, and treacherous, taking up with Dona Voane, after knowing all about Mad Tom's intending to marry her honorable. The lurker hoped the two wouldn't have a falling out with each other, the way men do sometimes, playing for a girl thataway.

"I want to take cyar of the both of 'em!" Mad Torn clicked his teeth. "I want to ferget the looks of that las' feller I killed—Lawse! How them faces do come back. Hit's dark, an' to-night I cain't see no faces—I cain't see how they look."

How long he was there Mad Tom could not tell. Time drags, yet the anticipated moment arrives before its time in such a place. He heard the diners suddenly start from their chairs. He heard an exclamation. He heard laughter, and then the front door of the cabin boat was suddenly thrown wide open as he glared, his hands gracing his shotgun.