Читать книгу Diamond Tolls - Raymond S. Spears - Страница 8

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Chapter 3

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CHAPTER III

A LITTLE white cabin-boat floated down the Ohio and swung around in the eddies where the green waters rubbed with the yellow of the Mississippi. On the bow, standing at the sweeps, was a slender, blue-eyed girl with wavy brown hair; she was tanned, and the light and wind caused her to squint ever so little. Apparently she was at her ease, as though she knew the river, but when she pulled the sweeps, she looked around uncertainly, as though wondering which way the boat would go.

When she was swinging down Putney Bend, she found herself approaching a number of other shantyboats moored along the river bank. She attempted to row straight to them, but Mrs. Mahna, an old river woman, called to her. What kind of a fool soft-paw was she, anyhow, trying to row against a reverse eddy current?

"Drop down to the foot of the eddy, an' float in!" Mrs. Mahna ordered. "Then float along up the bank an' land in, the way you'd orter!"

The young woman flushed under the river woman's ​scorn, but she did as she was told, and landed beside Mrs. Mahna's boat, and Mrs. Mahna took the girl's mooring lines and made them fast handily to the stakes which other shantyboaters had driven into the bank and left when they pulled out.

"If it's no offence, who all mout you be?" Mrs. Mahna asked in her politest river language.

"Delia," the girl answered.

"Delia?" Mrs. Mahna repeated, adding, "that's a lady's first name!"

"I'm a lady," Delia smiled, "and that's my first, last, and middle name."

"Sho!" Mrs. Mahna exclaimed, perplexed. Then the elder woman burst into a low chuckle, saying: "It's a good name, Delia is. It'll be plumb popular down Old Mississip', d'rectly Miss Delia, Mrs. Delia, and Delia! Yas, suh! I expect hit'll be a regular old tangle-tongue name!"

"What do you mean by that?"

"You're a pretty girl, and you're alone, and you're a soft-paw on the river," Mrs. Mahna observed, shrewdly. "But I expect you-all can take care of yourself, you look real handy, thataway. There's lots of girls come down Old Mississippi that can't take care of themselves, so they gets took care of, but you—sho! you make me think of Big Sue."

Delia's lips pursed doubtfully, and then they smiled ​without showing her pretty teeth. She asked, a minute later:

"Who was Big Sue?"

"She was one of those big brunettes, with brown eyes and long lashes," Mrs. Mahna explained, "and she made a real good living, into a skiff, selling whisky along in Plum Point and Fort Pillow and down thataway. Seems like she might of lived real nice, and owned a whisky boat and made a good bit of money, but she took to marrying and 'vorcing. You know what that does to a lady!"

Delia laughed aloud, showing her teeth. Mrs. Mahna looked at her in surprise. There wasn't anything at all funny in what she had said, and so she wondered what ailed Delia?

"Anybody'd know you was from up-the-banks!" Mrs. Mahna exclaimed, petulantly, "no feelings at all, laughing about Big Sue and her plumb foolishness!"

"Oh, I•meant no harm, Mrs.—Mrs.——"

"Mrs. Mahna. See that old feller up the bank, staring at you? Well, he's my husband. Don't forget that!"

Delia's eyes opened, and her mouth closed, tentatively.

"Well, why don't you laugh this time?" Mrs. Mahna demanded, with asperity. "When a lady warns you about taking her husband you want to smile!"

​Delia laughed aloud at that.

"Really, Mrs. Mahna!" she cried, "I want to laugh right. But I've not been long on the river——"

"I knowed it!"

"So I don't know what to—what to think!"

"It isn't the thinking that hurts down here," Mrs. Mahna shook her head. "It's the sayings that makes troubles. Going to trip clear down?"

"Oh, I think so. How far can you go down?"

"Clear to the jumping-off place!"

"Where's that?"

"For some, it's the forks of the Ohio," Mrs. Mahna declared, meaningly, continuing, "for some hit's Memphis, some hit's mouth of Old Arkansaw, and there's some goes to Vicksburg, and into Chaffelli! Down Chaffelli is the jumping-off place for most anybody!"

"How far is it to down Chaffelli?" Delia asked, breathlessly.

"Why, about seven hundred miles."

"And down Chaffelli—nobody comes back? Never?"

"Well, when a lady's dropped down Chaffelli, she ain't generally the same any more," Mrs. Mahna admitted.

"Seven hundred miles! It's an awful long ways!"

"You got all the time in the world to get there!" Mrs. Mahna observed.

​"You can't hurry, on the river!" Delia shook her head.

"You've learned that already?" Mrs. Mahna asked, shrewdly. "You can cut loose and float night and day, tied to drift when the wind blows, and seems like then you just poke along and poke along! It ain't best, on Old Mississip' to hurry, specially toward the jumping-off places!"

"No, perhaps not!" Delia shook her head, absently, looking up stream. The Mississippi was on the fall, and the green Ohio River water was pouring down the east side, along the great bend. On the near side, the Mississippi water looked dull yellow, for the sun was wrong to give it the colour of flowing gold.

"You better take you time, dropping down!" Mrs. Mahna warned. "If you 'low to stay on the riveh, you had. The further down you gets, the meaner it is! I tell you that!"

"It's nothing to what I've left behind." The young woman shook her head, and Mrs. Mahna nodded with satisfaction.

"Some don't know what meanness is till they—till after they's drapped over the jumping-off place!" Mrs. Mahna suggested.

"You think I don't know?" Delia asked, level eyed and with a certain little hardness in her tone, recognized by any woman of experience.

​"I 'low you know," Mrs. Mahna shook her head, sympathetically. "You can call the forks of the Ohio the jumping off-place—lots does. After passing the forks nothing matters—much."

In this way Delia became one of the river people. Who she was, where she was from, where she had lived, were problems for the old ladies to gossip about. But these matters of the past were not all there was to talk about Delia. She had her own present place on the river.

She remained in Putney Bend only over night. In mid-morning she dropped out of the eddy and floating up with the current pulled out into the Old Mississip' which carried her down stream in an autumn sunshine on a breathless day.

Mrs. Mahna watched her till the boat was out of sight down the crossing and over the sandbar. She voiced the river thought:

"I sure hate to see a girl like that dropping down; seems like there's something mean, when you think of what she's going to meet up with down there—folks that won't care, and men that are bad, careless, and no 'count!"

The girl's boat was hardly out of sight when a gasolene cruiser which had moored above Putney Bend landing along the switch-willow bars backed out into the river and straightened away down stream. That ​cruiser passed within fifty or sixty yards of the shantyboats at the landing, and Mrs. Mahna took a sharp look at it.

The man in the cockpit at the steering wheel was a tall, dark-featured fellow, whose shoulders were slightly stooped and who glanced sideways at the shantyboats, passing Mrs. Mahna with a contemptuous look. His boat swung down the crossing under hardly more than steerage way, the man looking ahead with a pair of binoculars.

"I don't like his looks," Mrs. Mahna declared. "He's one of those slick sports; he knows what he is about. He steered with one hand, and he rolled his eyes sideways—like a mean dog. He's no good on this river! But he knows the water. What's he dropping down after Delia for? Oh, I know the looks of those scoundrels! I've seen 'em dropping down, trailing some widow's daughter, or looking for another man's wife! I've seen that feller before—some'rs—I can't place 'im!"

Her husband, discreet and trained by long experience, ventured no suggestion. Her son, a grinning youth, rolled his eyes down the river, already dreaming of rescuing fair damsels from sleek pirates. Mrs. Haney, who lived in a little blue boat twenty yards up the eddy, hearing the remark, answered Mrs. Mahna:

​"That Delia lady you're worrying about—I seen her cleaning a nice blue-barrelled pistol last night, and trying the hang of it."

"She was!" Mrs. Mahna cried in amazement. "Oh, goody! I was afraid! I've seen so many girls dropping down that didn't know what they needed to have, first of all!"

"Oh, well! You dropped down, and I dropped down, and there's lots of others dropped down——"

"And more died than lived, after they passed the jumping-off place!" Mrs. Mahna declared with asperity.

"I guess so," Mrs. Haney admitted. "It takes some roughing to get to be an old river lady, eh, Mrs. Mahna?"

"You bet," Mrs. Mahna chuckled. "When you-all going to drop down, Mrs. Haney?"

"I ain't got to think yet, but in a day or two, I expect. I just got to tar my roof again; that canvas is worn bad, and then I want to get to stop in Memphis where Jess's goin' into the Government boats."

"Then you ain't going to Arkansaw Old Mouth?"

"Not directly. No. I don't like that lower river——"

"Shucks! If you just take care of yourself, that lower river's just as good as up around here, and I don't know but what it's better!" Mrs. Mahna ​declared. "Take it up here, and you ain't thinking nothing, and first you know, something does happen. Down b'low, you're watching all the while, and you're all ready when anything does happen. That's why I say folks is better off down b'low than up here. Up here, you gets careless!"

"Yes, that's so," Mrs. Haney admitted. "But I don't know, I never cared much down b'low. You see, I'm out the Ohio, myself, and I kind of like the Upper Bottoms. Hit's purty lonesome down b'low. I bet that Delia girl'll think so 'fore she sees the last of this little old world of ourn! She's no river girl; notice her hands? They was slim and smallish——"

"Some girls pulls a good stroke with little hands——"

"But she didn't! She kind of crabbed them sweeps, and she swung into the head of the eddy 'stid of the foot. That dark feller—she'll keep a droppin' down, and droppin' down. She found us here, and she'll likely land into New Madrid shantyboat town, and then down to Carruthersville, and so on. Some day the wind'll take her into a lonesome bend, and then she'll have a visitor. Feller into a gasolene launch, with dark eyes and dark moustache—I bet she remembers her happy little home then."

"She's got that gun."

"She'd better use it first and ask no questions ​afterward," Mrs. Haney sniffed. "A man can talk to her—that's the worst of it! There's mighty few young girls a man can't talk to. Take us old timers——"

"We does the talking ourselves," Mrs. Mahna laughed.