Raymond S. Spears

“ V I wallowed back through the mud, and found that Shellback Creek had lifted my boats off their skids in the spring flood.
I had had my fill of the old home town, and it was time I tripped away again. I wasn't satisfied—perhaps no human ever is. The pretty girl I had known was now a handsome woman, and I had found that she filled a bigger place in my heart than ever. Reck was going into the background, however, and that would never do—not even in my thoughts.
There was a whisper, a hint of something in the air. People who live in villages know the sensation. ”

“ At the same time, it added a bit to the ache in my own heart; but she mustn't know that.
On Sunday afternoon, Reck came down to my shanty-boat, drew a chair up to the table, pulled a cigarette-case out of his pocket, and we smoked together. We talked about things generally, but nothing particularly.
Any bitterness I had felt was all gone. When a roan has lived on the Big Muddy, watching that wide flood roll by, careless of everything but keeping on its own job, the unimportance of human affairs in the universe comes home. ”

“ Nobody has any idea how it stirs a man up, thinking about a creek full of shells, and nobody shucking them. I held off quite a while, and then one day I sold my shanty-boat, put my duffle into the big launch, and breasted the spring tide for Shellback Creek. ”

“ There are good souls who know that a ten-cent-store trinket, with the heart, is worth more than diamonds.
Tom's wife kind of wiped her eye as she took that nubbin of a trick out of a clamshell, knowing that I'd picked it up shucking shells. The mounting—a sort of twisted wire, probably nickel-plated—reminded her of the days when I made up little trinkets at my father's jeweler's lathe and bench, to give around to the girls, the way country-town boys do. ”

“ I could not imagine myself doing anything but look up at Cora. She, in her splendid womanhood, could pity me, blame me, despise me, loathe me—I deserved anything she choose to give me. For that matter, so did Reck. A man should be grateful if a woman like Cora bothers so much as to have any opinion of him!
IV My boat was in the most out-of-the-way place I could put it, but when the word went around old acquaintances came down to find me. After my day's work I would sit down on the bank, or in the cabin, and talk to them. ”

“ SHELLING and pearling are linked close together in the lives of a lot of us shanty-boaters. Up-the-bankers sort of give us the once-over and then the go-by. Naturally, people generally don't know any more about us than they do about any one else that isn't joined to them by being married, or related, or in business, church, or society together. ”

“ Probably I could have forced five dollars more a ton out of them, for there was a good run of fancy shells in the lot, but I felt too good to spoil the buyer's feelings. He didn't know where the shells came from, and I didn't tell him.
I went back to Little Blue Creek, and, catching a nice little cloudburst, I dropped down the current into the main river, to start my fall trapping on two otter and seven full-grown mink, when furs were away up and going higher.
I haven't said anything about the by-products of shelling. Everybody knows that fresh-water clam-shells contain pearls. ”

“ Louis that year of 1915-1916, and carried seven hundred dollars' worth of skins into the market, at the prices fur was bringing in those days. The next spring, early, I towed up Little Blue Creek, fighting the current with my six-horse-power launch motor, and tied to the bank at what they called the Swamp Eddy, a long still-water.
What notion took me to this creek or this eddy I don't know. A shanty-boater never does know why he goes anywhere like that. ”

“ Tom had all the old store now. Upstairs, where there had been renters in the old days, he had three men repairing shoes. He had had the nerve to start a mail-order shoe-repairing business. The R. F. D. man brought in boots, shoes, and slippers that needed stitches and patches, and the next day the carrier took away everything all fixed up. ”

“ I sold out my outfits to old men; and I was glad afterwards that I did, for the old boy who bought my traps and stretching-boards made a good thing on the fur season. The other fellow bought himself a little farm with three pearls and a summer's shells. ”