Raymond S. Spears

“ Not a sound, not a motion, except wreathing wisps and rags of fog, and coiling surface waters, broke the dark and gloom. When he doused the flash Murdong felt as though the skies might fall down upon him. A more awesome gloom he had never felt before in his life. It fairly seemed to smother—it even gave him a sensation of being crushed.
There did not seem to be anything he could do to escape. He could not tell which was up, down, or toward the banks. Now that he had disposed of his pirate he felt a chill gathering upon him, prickling his skin with goose pimples. ”

“ The New York gem trade has long since learned that a salesman carrying from $50,000 to $250,000 worth of gems needs to slip away from his home store in the night, like a thief, and to scout from centre to centre like a spy in the land of the enemy, telling no man his business, suspecting even little children and hating especially beautiful women and good fellowmen.
So Obert Goles vanished from Maiden Lane, and apparently no one missed the shadow that never stood in the way of the least sparkle in a diamond or clouded the lustre of a pearl. ”

“ With the wind roaring through the trees overhead, and rolling up the waves on the river so that it was not possible for a boat without power to float out even as far as the current, Murdong was indeed trapped in a lonesome bend.
Gost was in a hurry, but he knew better than to make haste. He must make sure that he was safe—that he could make his own getaway undiscovered and without danger of being captured. No matter how lonesome a bend may seem, one must take a look at it first. ”

“ Questions of ethics do not trouble beyond the jumping-off place.
He rejoiced in the sweetness of the trust reposed in him by the river lady fair, whose spiritual presence overwhelmed his muse and prevented him from putting even into prose the galloping wonder of the adventure which was now his, although he did not label the varying incidents adventure, and would not know till long afterward that the Mississippi commonplaces were wonderful. The river was like a fairy-kingdom where one in enchantment regards the most extraordinary events as the most commonplace and merely interesting. ”

“ He dared not miss so good a scene as the men and women dancing—men with the mark of Cain in their eyes; women who looked as though they had experienced a thousand adventures; and music which possessed a strange and melancholy undertone, themes that were more pathetic than the people themselves.
Urleigh ventured to dance a set or two, and to waltz, trot, and eddy-step under the tutelage of one of the women, who was not old but who was very, very wise. ”

“ He dined at his leisure, and while he dined the warm sunshine dissipated the fog, which broke into gray floating islands upon the surface of the river, finally lifting and bursting into thin air.
G. Alexander Murdong sighed in a comforting frame of mind. He had fled from the turmoil and hurry and excitement of crowded, unresting humanity—beaten and hating himself more than he hated the people whose standards he could not satisfy. ”

“ Real danger menaced! The gasolene boat drawing down nearer and nearer, after holding aloof all day long—Delia realized that her hour of trial was at hand.
"I knew it!" she whispered to herself, "I expected this. Now I mustn't flinch!"
A long, straight reach ran for miles down ahead of her. With her glasses she searched both shores, and saw only a scattered shantyboat or two. It was a wide, wild river, and wherever she ran in, she would be dependent upon her own resources. She could expect no help in that lonesome reach of woods and sandbars. ”

“ He floated out of the Mendova landing and down the river. Something of the sweetness seemed to have vanished from the atmosphere of the Mississippi, but it had gained in romantic interest.
"Where else in the world would a man find five hundred diamonds in a shantyboat?" Murdong asked himself.
From now on, like a diamond salesman, he lurked along, keeping at a distance from other shantyboaters, and having nothing to do with other river people. He kept away from towns; he landed in lonesome bends where no other shantyboat was in sight. ”

“ Frest saw ahead of him the chance of his life time: he saw that he had a chance to junk in diamonds. It was not a big chance, but by being bold for once in his life he might establish himself for all time as a man of ample wealth. He had cast his all on the throw of this chance—but he did not know that. Neither did he know that the dice were loaded against him. He thought he couldn't lose.
Macrado drove the boat and steered it while Frest took care of the cabin and prepared the meals. ”

“ One touch had awakened his soul, one kiss had elevated him to heights of which he had dreamed, toward which he had struggled in vain through jungle fastnesses—now he breathed deep with satisfaction. His mind dwelt upon the sheer beauty of mighty torrent, and a skyline that did not imprison the soul struggling against the bars of limitation and crowds and haste and efficiency.
Just so Murdong found himself a part of the atmosphere of Old Mississip'. He felt as much a river man as any old-timer ever felt. ”

“ He had the feeling of a fugitive, or a guardian of great treasure; of a poet in the throes of inspiration—and night or day he packed his two automatics in their holsters out of sight but always in mind. Perhaps the river spirit laughed, perhaps it merely smiled—when a man runs away down the Mississippi to dodge responsibility and to go to the dogs, he is very apt to find himself loaded up with unheard-of burdens of soul and body. ”

“ DELIA was captain, Urleigh was the crew. They were bound down Old Mississip' trying to find Murdong, who was carrying a treasure perhaps without knowing it, and who was being pursued by one of the deadliest of river menaces—a strong-arm diamond specialist of a thief.
There was nothing else they could do—humanity demanded it. They swung down reaches and bends, their glasses turned incessantly toward the banks. Many little white shantyboats fooled them, and they ran in to inquire, only to be disappointed. ”

“ The discovery dazzled Macrado for a time. He could not believe that he had more money than he would need for his own life, even should he live to be a hundred years of age. He had lived long on meagre supplies—far more meagre than one would believe. He had known hunger and privation. He had found old clothes in a river drift pile better than any he had to wear. He had had slim pickings so long that two dollars a week was ample to his mind—for a little while. ”

“ Then he hired a mere youth who seemed a treasure and who was the fastest man to fill the glasses, the surest man with the change, the swiftest man at making a landing, and the quickest one to make his getaway. This man was true and faithful, apparently, and he went forth into the cotton fields, and brought down whole crews of pickers to patronize his bar. The very excellence of the man made his bitterness the greater, now that he recalled what had happened.
One day, as they were dropping down a bend going from landing to landing, Storit's fight went out. ”

“ Although Murdong had gone on by, she did not learn it for a day. Thus she was sitting reading newspapers which she had purchased when there swung into the eddy a motorboat which she recognized even out of the corner of her eyes. It was Macrado's boat, and Gost was at the wheel. Urleigh was sitting back in the cockpit watching her from under the brim of his gray felt hat.
She knew their purpose instantly. They were on the trail of the diamonds. They would not rest until they knew the truth about them. ”

“ The boat was equipped with three hundred feet of new half-inch handy line coiled dry under the cot; the inch bow and stem mooring lines had hooks under the wide eaves of the bow and stern, on the walls; an anchor, with one hundred and fifty feet of inch line, rested in a locker on the stern, to swing in an eddy or hold the boat off the banks against the strain of the bow lines—as the gasolene marauder had hauled off his boat.
The more accustomed Delia became to river living, the more she was satisfied with her boat. ”

“ A paddle was cutting the water, and through the skiff were occasional bumps, as craft struck craft—slight shocks, but perfectly apparent to the skiff man, though his pneumatic mattress was a shock absorber.
Soon Murdong divined what had happened. One of the river sneak thieves had slipped into the stern of Mrs. Haney's boat and cut loose the dangling skiff, thinking it was unoccupied. The pirate had no idea any one was in the skiff. The situation struck Murdong as humorous. ”

“ This Yankee Bar eddy barbecue was not lacking in its sub-rosa interest and excitement. It was a sort of coming-out party for Delia, the girl whom Mrs. Mahna had chosen to chaperone, but who had proved sufficient to herself in the now admitted encounter with White Collar Dan—than whom none seemed so crestfallen as when he stumbled out and took his place at the driftboard tables to dine with the others. ”

“ He must needs sit awake when he might have been sleeping.
Morning began at last to diffuse light through the fog. The surface of the water became visible, and the dawn swept by, followed almost instantly by sunshine skipping across the top of the bank, light raining down through mist in white sheets.
Murdong, now hungry after his adventure and his vigil, rolled back the canvas covering his boat, took down the hickory hoops, and brought out his two little pump-jet blue-flame oil stoves. Putting them on the footboard, he lighted one and put on his coffee percolator. ”

“ He read the accounts of the famous diamond mystery wherein a diamond salesman had sallied forth with more than one hundred thousand dollars' worth of gems, and disappeared from under the eyes of detectives and the world that knew him.
Murdong shivered when he thought what happened to men who pack around a fortune in gems. His poetic instinct prevented him from knowing which way to turn. These might be the gems—they might not be. ”

“ No one touched an oar, and the eddyings swung the boats around and around, and carried them first toward one shore, then toward the other.
Not a breath of wind was stirring, and the sun shone down with caressing warmth. Hardly ever did a sound fret the silence, but at noon far and wide shrieked the whistles of cotton gins back on the bottoms, and somewhere in the distance—miles and miles away—rumbled the hoarse voice of some great sawmill with a battery of boilers feeding the growling horn. ”

“ Urleigh admitted.
"What did he say about the shooting?"
"He said he had been taking coke—snow—and he was dippy. He said he just went aboard your boat, to make a social call, so to speak, and you shot him, careless-like, smiling. He said if only you had acted frightened, he wouldn't have thought anything about it. He made up his mind that you had played him, somehow, and coaxed him to follow you and brought him aboard, just so you could have an excuse to shoot him."
"He thought I had flirted with him!" she exclaimed. "Aren't men fools, anyhow—I mean about women!" ”

“ DELIA entered the cabin that had been her own, and closing the door behind her, drew a chair up to the table on which she rested her elbow, letting her sun-browned hand and forearm hang over the edge.
She stared into nothingness for a time, and then she began in a low voice:
"You're not a river man. You only just arrived on the river. ”

“ Thus Junker Frest made up his mind to get out and move around in society. Take it where a man is thrifty and attends to business and don't trouble other people in their business, he loses track of things. Frest had lost track of things, except that he happened to hear that Delia was dropping down, and he recognized her as the girl on the Ohio, who was just the kind of a girl he wanted to marry, but whom he never dreamed at that time was alone on her shantyboat, supposing of course her man was inside sleeping while she watched ahead. ”

“ 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 for good or evil. Right there, where thousands and tens of thousands of river trippers had landed in, Murdong answered to the spirit of the river, which makes one look askant down stream, and with calm questioning up stream. ”

“ Thus Storit lived in tatters and rags, a glittering-eyed human reptile at one time and a whipped cur at another. He was a little man of shrunken figure and shrunken mind, but in the late years he also had been a feeble-minded man in addition to his paucity of ideas and narrowness of vision—feeble in the sense that at times he had no control over himself, clouded by visions and streaks of perversity, during which periods he acted but without knowing what he did, nor could he remember what took place during those spells. ”