Raymond S. Spears

“ Word that Columbiana and a sport, or a soft-paw, had been arrested in a fifty-foot Point Pleasant-built shanty-boat with all the Duck and Deer stock on board was another fine bit of live gossip. Among some of the women, the fact that Columbiana had always held herself aloof and refused to marry any man and had shot no less than three persistent admirers—all easy, and no one fatally—they resented as a criticism on their own conduct and ideas. ”

“ I ain’t no faith in nobody that acts iggerant; mebby they is iggerant, an’ mebby they’s jes’ reg’lar pirates. But yo’ take a smart Alec, an’ yo’ know he’s iggerant, because he plays smarty.”
Thus they discussed, professed and recorded during the interim of the capture and escape of Columbiana and that sporting soft-paw, Caroost. When the river-people learned of or witnessed the escape of the two while handcuffed together in the Mendova police patrol-boat, leaving Chief Clumb standing up the bank swearing through the cadences of a complete repertoire of profanity, there was great joy. ”

“ Tavell Love declared, “if they dump Clumb out, that’ll bust up Mendova. You know how it is down in Memphis now—all dried up so they’ve begun to tell how extravagant people is about drinking so much coffee, and it’s bad for the nerves. Well, now ’f Mendova——”
“I don’t cyar if old Clumb gits his and they’s forty of them reform cops put in,” Red Tid sniffed. “I don’t have to ast any man fer a drink. I come from the mountangs, an’ I can make mine, an’ I’ll do it but what I have my liquor. It don’t do no man any good, goin’ without his liquor. ”