Raymond S. Spears

“ Brones drank liquor to keep himself from catching cold, and the more he drank the more talkative he became. He began to boast that he was a rich man, but when Hill asked him where he got his wealth, he was shrewd enough not to say. He did say, however, that he had come out of the St. Francis. Hill guessed the rest. When Brones was stupefied, the shanty-boater discovered the little sack and saw the gem. He cackled a queer laugh. Replacing the pearl with a musket-ball, he carried Brones up the wharf to a pile of cotton-bales, and there left him asleep. ”

“ Singing as he worked, Mealin gathered in his stint of fifteen hundredweight of mussel-shells, and then hoisted his anchors to let the green current carry him down stream to his boiling-pan and tent. At the landing he shoveled the shells into the pan, built a fire under it, and then built another fire in his cook-stove. At this point he recalled the butterfly-shell, and brought it up to the tent, where a minute's contact with the stove opened wide the bivalve's shell. ”

“ Mealin returned to the Stillwater, and there bought a skiff to go down the river to Helena. While he was yet in sight of the shell-buyers' headquarters, word that he had made a find had passed to many an ear. In the twilight, two men slipped down the river in a dugout, pursuing. They had heard the pearl was worth ten thousand dollars, and they wanted it.
Bill Brones and Dan Petterson were old Mississippi "river-rats." They knew Mealin, and they believed he was more cowardly than themselves. ”