Raymond S. Spears

“ Lambers would curse if he didn't have sorghum with his bread.
Then again, needing entertainment, he would row up the eddy to Wilby's tent and tell Wilby to play his fiddle. Wilby, being peaceable, would play till his arm almost dropped off from the ache of sawing away. Lambers would walk into the motion-picture house at Forked Tree and see the play without paying the entrance fee, and neither the ticket seller, the ticket taker, nor even the town marshal would interfere with him.
Now a man like that is bad. ”

“ He had a big emicruiser launch and a skiff boat, with an outboard motor. He had a canoe, and he could pole the canoe standing up in it. Alp had seen him going down the eddy in the moonlight and made no mistake in calling Lambers a first-class riverman, if he was ad. Lambers had a thousand-dollar shanty-boat outfit, with not an honest dollar from the stakes in the banks to the anchor line over the stern of his cabin deck.
Every day or two Lambers would come down the river and say:
“Sold yo' shells yet, Alp?” ”

“ He went out and circled trying to find the boy's tracks, but there was none for him to follow. Alp Clime had gone! The fact settled heavily on the bully's consciousness. He felt that perhaps he had shown his intention too plainly. Appraising the tent and the outfit he reckoned that they were worth about two hundred dollars. A man could well afford to let two hundred dollars go to save probably two thousand dollars.
“The dad-blasted scoundrel!” Lambers grumbled. “He done left me lurchy!”
In his rage and disappointment Lambers tossed kerosene all over the tent, bedding, woodpile, and outfit. ”

“ Alp was daily heaping up shells and the daily shuck, adding hundreds of pounds, averaging a thousand pounds a day, made the pile thirty tons, instead of twenty.
“Pays a man to wait!” Lambers remarked cheerfully as he noticed the increase, “Why, ho law! Yo'all makes two thousand dollars a summer season! That's jes' the shells. Besides that, theh's slugs an' pearls—a four-hundred-dollar pearl, too!” ”

“ Shelling, trapping, shooting, fishing—lots of ways presented themselves to Bert for a reasonable living. His preference was to let the others do the work. His model was the gentlemen honeybees, the drones. ”

“ The shells boomed and clattered in the sheet-iron troughs.
“These are a fine line of shells, Alp!” the buyer said. “Glad you sorted out the pistol butts and fancies!, You've a ton of them—double rates on them, too! Hi-i! They're fine cutting shell! plenty large and running very nice in color——”
While he talked, the darkies forked the shells into the pan, where they were weighed in eighty-pound lots. They worked fast, but it was a long job, for there were a heap of shells in that pile. ”

“ Don't let any man swindle yo' out of it! I'm glad to pay you cash. I always pays cash. How'd they run, slugs and pearls?”
“Fair—good,” Alp said slowly, “I had one, four hundred dollars. It was stole. I had others though—three dollars an ounce for seeds, plenty of baroques, ard—I haven't said—but found a big one. It's a thousand-dollar one! I sold it, too, for that—Lawse!”
Coming down the river was Bert Lambers in his outboard motor skiff. He went on by, but looked sharply. He saw the buyer counting down twenties to Alp Clime. ”