Chapter XXXII: A Prophet in the Wilderness 222 (10)

At any outer edge of civilization a joke may be as hard and practical as ship's bread, yet pass. Amid the general mirth and while Hugh pulled a bell cord which made no jingle down in the engine-room and had never before been observed by Ramsey, his reply was prompt and brief but too gently solemn for her ear; and when she got Mrs. So-and-so to repeat it to her it was merely to the effect that, though kangaroos were few on Kangaroo Point, she ought to see the wealth of horseshoes in Horseshoe Cut-off.

Oh, kind answer! that excused her frivolity by sharing it. Kind beyond her utmost merit. She did not say so, but she thought it, sitting dumb, in sudden tears, and burning with shame for her blindness to the hour's fearful realities. While Ned stepped to Watson's side to speak critically of the _Antelope_, now shining on their starboard bow, Hugh, near the door, dropped a quiet request to the two or three other occupants of the bench and they followed him out.

"Why do they go?" she asked, fancying them as much appalled at her as she herself was, and when the sweet lady could not enlighten her the pilots offered a guess that two had gone to relieve Mrs. Gilmore and her maid and that Hugh would presently join the first clerk by the bell.

"There he is now," said Ned, actually expecting her to rise and look down. But she sat still and watched the _Antelope_, wishing her far better speed in view of the letters she carried. So came thoughts of the long telegraphic despatch to her father which Hugh must by this time have written for her mother, as agreed between them, and which was to be sent, in the morning, from Memphis.

The door opened and Mrs. Gilmore and "Harriet" came in.

"Well," softly inquired the actor's wife, "how do we come on?" and Ramsey answered as softly, yet taking pains that Ned and Watson should overhear:

"I've disgraced myself."

"Mmm!" mumbled old Joy in corroboration.

"What have you done now?"

"Nothing. I don't _do_ anything. Only said something, something so silly I can't even apologize."

"To whom?"

"The baby elephant," said Ramsey and laughed a note or two. The door opened again and Hugh's bell call was explained by the entrance of the texas tender and another white-jacket, each bearing a large tray of cups and plates, hot coffee, and hot toasted rolls and butter. She hadn't dreamed she was so hungry.

Watson stared back from the wheel with grim pretence of surprise. "Who sent that here?"

"Mr. Hugh Co'teney sawnt it, suh," said the tender, arranging the cups on the bench. "Yass'm," he repeated to the grateful ladies, "Mr. Hugh, yass'm."

"Oh! Mr. Hugh," replied Watson. "He must 'a' gave you the order before he come up here this last time."

"Yass, suh, but say don't fetch it tell he ring."

"Six cups," counted the pilot, "six--You go down with Miss Hayle's compliments to Mr. Courteney, and----"

"No-o-o-o!" sang Ramsey, running up the scale.

But Watson was firm. "Boy, you heard me, didn't you?"

Ned, with his eyes down on the bell, interposed: "Hold on, Wats', three into one you can't. Hugh's in a confab with the senator and the general."

Ramsey, eating like a hunter come home, suddenly stood. "Now look, everybody, at the _Antelope_. She's right abeam. Ain't she abeam, Mr. Watson?"

Watson drawled that she wasn't anything else, and Ramsey failed to see that he saw her cast an anxious glance down to the bell and the captain's chair beyond it.

L

"DELTA WILL DO"

In Horseshoe Cut-off the course was east. When Ned directed Ramsey's sight to its upper end, where the flood came into view from the north, she feared he would name the point it turned; but he forbore and she gazed on the thin old moon off in the southeast.

"Make out yan bunch o' sycamores?" was his nearest venture. The sycamores were on the point. Across the river where it ran concealed beyond those sycamores--he went on to tell--at the up-stream end of a low pencil stroke of forest between the head of the cut-off and the eastern stars, was another turn, Friar's Point. But her interest in points had faded, and whether friars abounded on that one or not she took pains not to inquire.

Instead, she was about to ask the cause of a strange silvering in the sky close over the black pencil stroke, when, as on Sunday, the morning star sprang into view and cast its tremulous beam on the waters. She gazed on the white splendor as genuinely enthralled as ever, though at the same time her eye easily, eagerly took in the first clerk, the senator, the general, and Hugh, standing about the captain's empty chair. They loomed as dimly as the sycamores, yet when a fifth figure drew near them she knew by his fine gait that it was the actor, relieved from the captain's sick-room by "California" and the cub pilot. A gesture from Hugh stopped him some yards off and he stood leaning on the bell.

For the actor was their theme. This was plain to every one in the pilot-house, the two waiters being gone. A remnant of the food was being consumed by "Harriet" and Joy. All the others were observing, like Ramsey, the morning star and the five men under it. Among her own and Mrs. Gilmore's draperies Ramsey found that lady's hand. Except a few low words between the pilots, conversation failed. Without leave-taking Ned left. Presently here he was beneath, on the skylight roof, and now he joined the actor. Ramsey let go the caressed hand and moved nearer to Watson. While he and she gazed far up the stream, yet watched the six men below, he repeated Ned's question.

"See that clump o' big sycamores a mite to lab-board o' where we're p'inted?"

She didn't believe she did.

"Well," he persisted, "that's it."

"That's what?"

"Why," said Watson, whose only aim was to set her once more at ease, "that's the p'int you----"

"Humph." She turned to the two ladies, who, with their eyes frankly below, were counselling together. "Let's go down there ourselves," she said, but they whispered on.

"Better not," put in Watson; "you can't help."

His kind intent did not keep the words from hurting. With a faint toss she said:

"I hoped we might be some hindrance."

She laughed in her old manner, dropped her glance again on the two men and the four, and hearkened. So did the two ladies beside her. They could all see who spoke below and could hear each voice in turn, though they could not catch what was said. The only sustained speeches were the senator's. The general's interpellations were little regarded. The silent pair at the bell heard everything of essential bearing.

The consciously belated senator had begun with rhetorical regrets for the captain's and the commodore's illness and with paternal enthusiasm for those on whom it had brought such grave new cares. His own sympathetic share in their anxieties, he had hurried on to say, had robbed him of sleep and driven him up here solely for this interview. On the way he had chanced upon the general in the----

"Sssame ffframe of mind," the general had said, while the senator pressed as straight on as the _Votaress_.

As far as the interests involved were private to this boat, he said, her officers and owners were entitled to keep them so and to be let alone in the management of them. But when that management became by its nature a vital part of an acute public problem--a national political issue--he felt bound, both as the Courteneys' private well-wisher and as a public servant, to urge such treatment of the matter as its national importance demanded. A spark, he said, might burn a city! A question of private ownership not worth a garnishee might set a whole nation afire! The arrival of Gilmore at the bell threw him into a sudden heat:

"My God! Mr. Courteney--Mr. clerk--_I_ shan't offer to lay hands on _any_ man; not I. All _I_ ask is that you take yours off--of three. My dear sirs, equally as your true friend and as a lover of our troubled country I _beg_ you to liberate those citizens of the sovereign State of Arkansas whom you hold in unlawful duress, and to hear before witnesses the plea they regard as righteous and of national concern."

The sight of Ned joining Gilmore heated him again: "Gentlemen, if you will do that, now, at once, you will save the fortunes of this superb boat, her honored owners, and their fleet. If you don't you wreck them forever before this day dawns. And you may--great heavens, gentlemen, you _may_ see the first bloodshed of sectional strife."

"K-'tional ssstrife!" growled the general.

The clerk smiled. "Why, senator, those men don't go beyond Helena. They leave us there, before sun-up."

"Precisely, sir! And if they're not set free before you enter Helena Reach, or even pass Friar's Point, you may as well not free them at all."

Hugh glanced at the clerk as if to speak. The clerk nodded and in the pilot-house they saw Hugh begin:

"Mr. Senator, suppose we do that?"

"You would do me honor, sir, and yourselves more."

"Of course the watchmen of this boat watch."

As Hugh said this the cub pilot came from the captain's room with some word to Gilmore, who, though yearning to stay, left him and Ned and hastened back to the texas.

Meantime the senator: "I should hope so, sir. I hope every one on watch watches, sir."

"They do. And so we know that you and the general know, perfectly, that the same men who want those three released want Mr. Gilmore put ashore. Is that your wish, too?"

"It is, sssir," put in the general while the senator did some rapid thinking. Now he too replied:

"Mm--no, sir, it is not. And yet--yes, sir, it is."

"Then you would advise us to do that also?"

"I would advise you to do that also."

"Why?"

"Good Lord! my young friend, to save you! you, your father, grandfather, boats, all, and Mr. Gilmore himself!"

"How about his wife?"

"And his wife. For her to be with him may help him if he goes. It can't if he stays." The speaker had let his voice rise. The pilot-house group caught his words. Also they saw the cub pilot detain Ned when he started forward.

"Let's go down there ourselves," repeated Ramsey; but the parson's wife had whisperingly laid both hands on the wife of the actor, and Ramsey chafed to no avail.

The senator's voice dropped again. "Good God, sir, you know the longer they're aboard the worse it will be for them, and they've got to go some time or at Louisville a mob will burn the _Votaress_ to the water's edge with them on her."

The two stared at each other, the senator's mind bewailing the loss of each golden moment. The night was not too dark to show him the poker face fitting its nickname insufferably. But not until its owner spoke again did he frown--to hide an exultant surprise.

"They could leave their maid, you think, with Madame Hayle?" was Hugh's astonishing inquiry. The senator had expected of him nothing short of a grim defiance.

"They could--they can," replied both he and the soldier. "That'll satisfy everybody." The general saw only the surface of the proposition but the senator perceived in it all the opportunity their two modest accomplices of the boiler deck asked. That pair and their adherents--not followers--you wouldn't catch them leading--they and their gathering adherents would construe the landing of the players as an attempt to deliver them out of their hands and would undertake to seize and maltreat the actor, at least, the moment he should be off the boat. That they were likely to fail was little to the senator; there would be a tumult, so managed as to bring Hugh to the actor's rescue, and in the fracas Hugh was sure of a hammering he would not only never forget but would discern that he owed, first and last, to him, the senator.

Hugh glanced at the clerk. "You had just recommended Delta Landing." The clerk nodded and he turned back to the senator. "We'll be there inside of half an hour."

"Delta will do," said the senator, his frown growing.

Hugh nodded to the clerk. The clerk looked over to Ned.

"Think Delta's above water?"

"Oh--eyes and nose out, Watson allows."

"Delta'll be all right," persisted the senator.

The clerk glanced up to the pilot-house. "Mr. Watson, we'll stop at Delta, to put off a couple o' passengers."

"Yes, sir." The group at the pilot's back gasped at each other. Then Ramsey gasped at him.

"Oh, what does that mean?" she demanded. But his gaze remained up the river as he kindly replied:

"What it says, I reckon. Don't fret, ladies--when you don't know what to do, don't do it."

"Ho-o-oh!" cried Ramsey, whisking away, "I will!"

"Lawd 'a' massy!" Old Joy sprang for the door, but Ramsey was already out on the steps and scurrying down them. On the texas roof, however, she took a wrong direction and lost time; slipped forward round the pilot-house counting on steps which were not, and never had been, out there. Returning she lost more by meeting old Joy in the narrow way between the house and the edge of the texas roof, and when at length she sprang away for the after end of the texas and the only stair she was now sure of, whom should she espy bound thither ahead of her but Mrs. Gilmore. In that order the three hurried down to the guards of the texas and forward along them by its stateroom doors.

Meantime, out at the bell the clerk had left Hugh and privately sent Ned and the cub pilot different ways. Hugh moved a pace or two aside to observe the _Antelope_ out on their larboard quarter. The senator and the general moved with him.

"She'll pass you again at Delta," remarked the senator. "You see, general--you see, Mr. Courteney,--at Delta they" (the players) "can very plausibly explain--there won't be more than two or three, if any, to explain to--that they're running from the cholera and want to hail the _Westwood_, which they won't more than just have time to do.

"She won't mind taking them," he babbled on, "already having the cholera herself. Not many up-river boats would answer a hail from Delta, but she will, for she'll see they're from this boat and that it's your wish. There she comes round the bend now. Yes, Delta's a lot safer for 'em than Helena with its wharf-boat and daylight crowd and those three red-hots going ashore with 'em. On the _Westwood_ they can put up with any yarn that'll carry 'em through. They're actors and used to that sort o' thing."

Musingly Hugh broke in: "Counting all the chances, isn't there a touch of cruelty in this, to the lady at least?"

"Oh, now, my young friend--" the senator began to rejoin, but two men lounging by stopped to ask after the father and grandfather. They were the second engineer and his striker, presently to go on watch.

Mrs. Gilmore, coming along the texas guards, met the cub pilot. He perched on the railing to let her pass and a few strides farther on began to do the same for Ramsey.

LI

LOVING-KINDNESS

Ramsey stopped and the boy's heart rose into his throat.

"Whe're you going?" she asked.

He pointed to a lighted door she had just come by.

"First mate's room," he said.

"To tell him what to do?"

"Yes'm." He slid along the rail to get by her, though hungry to linger.

"To do what?" she asked. "I know; to bring out John the Baptist and those other two men?"

"Yes'm." He backed off, but the compelling power of interrogatory, especially of hers, retarded him.

"To turn 'em loose?" she asked.

He smiled ruefully. "It looks like it."

"Not with their pistols on them?"

"Oh, no, he's got their pistols."

"How'd he get 'em?"

"Oh--friendly persuasion. He's fine at that. They'll get 'em back--unloaded--when they land."

She glanced forward after Mrs. Gilmore, and he sprang away. As the actor's wife neared the captain's door it opened and Gilmore himself came out, closing it after him warily. Either the captain was worse, Ramsey guessed, or the actor had received some startling message, so grave and hurried were the players. They moved several paces away and stepped down to the hurricane-deck. She let them converse a moment alone. At the same time the second engineer, his striker, and Ned passed close and went below. Now Ramsey advanced, addressing the pair in a smothered voice:

"It's monstrous! It shan't be! It shan't be done! You shan't go!" The signal for landing tolled. She stopped short.

But the cause of her silence was Hugh Courteney, close before her. Mrs. Gilmore tried to draw her back but she stood fast, repeating to him savagely: "It shan't be! It shan't be done! You shan't do it!"

Again she ceased, as the senator and the general appeared, not with Hugh though from his direction, but, like Ned and his fellows, bound below. With a side step she brought them to a stand, saying once more to them:

"It shan't be! It shan't be done! You shan't----"

Both Hugh and Gilmore lifted a hand. There was a reply on the lips of each, but Hugh's remained unuttered. He glanced to the actor, saying: "Tell it."

The actor told. "It is not going to be done," he said. "No owner of this boat, no officer, has ever promised, ordered, or intended it."

Ludicrously, from the well of the neighboring stair, the heads of Hayle's twins rose and remained gazing. Fortunately for the dignity of the moment they escaped the eye of Ramsey, who, on highest tiptoe, while the actor still spoke, was piping incredulously:

"The clerk said it!--two passengers!--to go ashore!"

"He might have said five," Hugh gravely answered, while the senator and the general blazed with astonishment.

"Five," he repeated directly to the senator; "the three whose release you demanded and those two scamps you made league with a bit ago on the boiler deck."

The senator was a conflagration. "Sir, I cannot find----!"

"Words?" Hugh softly interrupted. "That's fortunate. If you do you'll be landed on the next island."

He turned away and moved to the edge of the roof. Ramsey stared at the three and fell back to the Gilmores, whose manner, as they returned half-way to the sick-room, was more grave and hurried than before. The engine bells were jingling, the wheels stopped. At the roof's edge, well forward of Hugh, appeared the first clerk, giving commands. The shore trees glided spectrally into the firelight of the steamer's torch baskets. A solitary man stood on the bank. The morning star was fading into the daybreak. In the pilot-house Watson pulled his bell-ropes to back and to stop again, while veiled in its lingering dusk between him and the parson's wife "Harriet" stood at a closed window, a vigilant watcher of every movement below.

With the usual deck-hand on its outer end the stage hung half its length over the narrowing water. On its inboard half, attended at one side by the first mate and at their backs by a knot of white-jackets with hands and arms full of baggage, waited the exhorter, his two champions, and the sporting pair, outwardly well content, however large or dark the retributions they were inwardly promising themselves. The twins had come up from the stair, meeting the senator and the general and holding them in a close counsel that kept the four scowling. These things the maid at Watson's side noted so intently as almost to forget him and the lady next her. She marked the actor go once more into the captain's room, the Californian come out to Mrs. Gilmore and Ramsey, and the three move toward Hugh with old Joy in their wake. Before they had quite reached him he turned and addressed the actor's wife. She drew back apologetically, the Californian doing the same, but by word and sign seemed to bid Ramsey stay and speak for her.

As if to himself, but really to the two beside him, Watson murmured: "Right you air, Mr. Hugh Courteney."

"How is he right?" asked the lady, though she most likely, and the maid certainly, understood.

"He's telling her," said the pilot, "that it'll simplify matters for her and her husband and this girl here to sort o' keep out o' the limelight a spell."

The surmise seemed good, for Mrs. Gilmore and "California" took stand where the great chimney on that side hid them from forecastle and shore, while they still could see Hugh and Ramsey conversing, she pleadingly, he with few words, mostly negatives. Ned came back into the pilot-house. The parson's wife moved from Watson toward him to ask in undertone why the landing was being made so slowly. The boat seemed to hover and hesitate. Watson, at the wheel, talked on, pretending not to notice that the maid was his only listener.

"A man," he drawled, "gets to hear a right smart chance with his eyes, in a pilot-house. Puts two an' two together a lot more'n he does when he's a-usin' his y-ears. Now she's a-beggin' him"--meaning Ramsey and Hugh--"not to drop them fellows ashore. Partly that's for the fellows' own sakes, but likewise it's also for the play-actors, because they're generous, like her, and because, no less, it's a-putt'n' the play-actors themselves in a right funny fix with the rest o' this vain world, to make five Jonahs on their account. But she's a-barkin' up the wrong stump an' she knows it. She knows there's somebody else's account they're bein' put off for; somebody she's as friendly to as what he is, and which for their sakes--his and hern--if for no other--I'm as friendly to as what they air. Provid'n', however, that that somebody is as friendly to them, every way, as what I am." He turned sharply. "Is she?"

And "Harriet" looked straight into his eyes and said inaudibly: "Yes."

As the glance of both returned to the scene below she was mindful that Ned had not yet quite satisfied the query of the lady at his elbow, why the wheels of the _Votaress_ were turning barely enough to keep her from drifting.

"You see the _Antelope_?" he asked.

She saw the _Antelope_, once more ahead, swan-white in the new daylight on a great breadth of water which she had earlier heard him tell Ramsey was Montezuma Bend.

"And you see the _Westwood_ down yonder. Well, when she gets up there we'll stop killin' time. But why we're killin' it--ask the clerk--or guess. It's dead easy."

Not given to guessing, she dropped her eyes again on the various groups beneath with Hugh and Ramsey central among them and did not even see that Hugh was answering the same riddle from Ramsey.

"Because if we keep these men aboard a few minutes longer," he was saying, "there'll be no way for them to reach Helena before noon to-morrow, when we'll be----"

"'Way beyond Memphis," said the river-wise Ramsey.

"Yes."

"And they can't send any troublesome word up the river that can overtake us," she ventured on, and he assented.

"And may I tell the Gilmores that's as much for Phyllis as for them?"

"I wish you would--and then would go to your rest."

"Humph," she faintly soliloquized and with no other rejoinder remained looking down on the stage, as he did. It was so near the bank at last that the men waiting on its inner end moved a step or two forward.

"Why are all those five put off together?" she asked.

"Because," he replied in his absent manner, "the gamblers will try to keep the other three quiet."

"Mr. Hugh, you'll be off watch now soon, won't you?"

"Yes." (Still no lifting of eyes by either.)

"And then you'll nurse your father, won't you?"

"I cannot! I'm too ignorant."

"Then what will you--shall you--do?"

"Just stay--on watch."

She stood a moment more, comforted to be on watch with him and thinking sadly of all there was to be on watch for. Then she heard Julian softly call her name. Without looking his way she started back for Mrs. Gilmore and the gold hunter, but the brother overtook her.

"Ramsey." She faced him. "Ramsey"--his tone was thin--"when you were talking just now with that pusillanimous whelp, and neither of you looking at the other, did he say anything of a confidential nature?"

His scrutiny read confirmation in her fearless eyes. When she would have spoken her utterance failed and, unable to do anything else half so well, she laughed.

"You can still do that!" His hint was of Basile.

"A little," she tinkled again, though her eyes ran full.

"Ramsey, did he--over there--just now--that reptile--say anything--tender?"

She flared rose-red, gazed down ashore, dropped her voice to a key he had never heard, and said, wondering why she said it: "Mr. Courteney is a gentleman."

She tried to lift her eyes to the inquisitor, but her irrepressible twitter came again and she had to turn away to the big chimney. He clinched his teeth.

"Sis," he half whispered as she began to go, "listen." She glanced back. "Sis, you may snigger at us all day or ten days; you may listen to him for a year or for ten; but, no matter what we swore to last night, the day you accept Hugh Courteney's hand we'll kill him if we're alive."

Old Joy flinched and moaned but Ramsey stared at him benumbed. She caught no rational grasp of his meaning; only stood and with immeasurable speed and a kind of earthquake sickness, in the space of one long breath, dreamed his words over and over. She felt neither fright nor horror, as she would as soon as thought could clear. Yet one word shed light, quickened her inner vision and gave it a reach, a forward range, it had never known. "Ten years," he had said, and for the first time in her life, as one might come suddenly into some vast possession, she took the future into her present by years instead of days.

"Jule," called Lucian, from between the senator and the general. Julian glanced back and Ramsey started off. But she stopped again with a fresh shock as a high-pitched yell rose from the shore below. There the exhorter, stepping from the stage to the ground, had poured his voice into the woods and now turned to the boat and let loose his tongue:

"I'm the hewolf an' wilecat o' th' 'Azoo Delta! I'm the alligatoh an' snappin' turkle o' the Arkansass! I'm the horn-ed an' yalleh-belly catfish o' the Mississip'! Glory, hallelu'! the sunburnt, chill-an'-feveh, rip-saw, camp-meetin', buckshot, kickin'-mule civilization whah-in I got my religion is good enough fo' me, all high-steppin', niggeh-stealin' play-actohs an' flounced and friskin', beau-ketchered Natchez brick-tops to the contrary notwithstayndin'! For I'm a meek an' humble follower o' the Lawd Gawd A'mighty, which may the same eternally an' _ee_-sentially damn yo' cowa'dly soul, you stump-tail' little Hugh Co'teney up yandeh with yo' Gawd-fo'sakened, punkin face an' yo' sawed-off statu'e!"

The gamblers sprang to hush him but the two "Arkansas killers" stepped between and while the _Votaress_, backing out into the wake of the _Westwood_, left the one pair insisting and the other protesting, the exhorter settled the issue by breaking into song:

"'Though num'r-ous hosts uv migh-tye foes,
Though airth an' hell, my way op-pose,
He safe-lye leadns my soudl aa-logn:
His lov-ign-kide-ness, oh, how strogn!
His lov-ign-kide-ness! lov-ign-kide-ness!
His lov-ign-ki-i-i-ide-ness, oh, how strogn!'"

LII

LOVE RUNS ROUGH BUT RUNS ON

Turning east in the upper arm of Saint Francis Bend, with the mouth of Saint Francis River just swinging out of sight astern and Helena an hour's run behind, the _Votaress_ faced the rising sun.

Before the eyes of Hugh and Ramsey it soared gloriously into a sky reddened not by presage of rain but by the smoke of the _Antelope_ and _Westwood_. The intervening shore and waters glowed and quivered in exquisite tints that renewed the world's youth and quite ignored all human, especially all young human, troubles. Suddenly it lighted up the black chimneys and scapes and white pilot-houses of the two boats ahead, as, a league or so apart, they came doubling back northwest, up Walnut Bend, to save in Bordeaux Chute the wide circuit of Bordeaux and Whiskey Islands, to hurry on round the long north-and-south loop of Council Bend and so have done with one of the most tortuous forty miles of the Mississippi.

We mention these things because Hugh and Ramsey were students of them, now and then together but never quite comfortable so, and now and then apart but never quite comfortable so. Everywhere the boat's people were awake. On the freight deck the crew squatted in circles, eating from tubs. Away aft on the roof, from their quarters in the far end of the texas, the whole flock of white-jackets had risen like gulls and were down in the cook-house, pantry, and cabin rattling the crockery till it echoed in every waking stomach. Already the _Votaress's_ divine breath smelt of coffee, real coffee--_chaud comme l'enfer et noir comme le diable--smelt_ of it, as, we fear, we shall never smell it again in this trust-ridden world. It was Ned's watch at the wheel. Watson and his cub had turned in. So had the first clerk. So had the twins, the senator, the general. Few of us, at that hour, not having slept, are skylarks.

Yet the actor and the Californian still held vigil by the captain's bed. Joy still hovered after her "young missy," and "Harriet" after Mrs. Gilmore and the parson's wife. Ramsey and "Harriet" betrayed a vivid interest in each other, a wonderfully generous thing on the maid's part, Ramsey thought, the two being who they were. The commodore was better, but the captain was not, and together or apart Hugh and Ramsey were more consciously the prisoners, albeit the undaunted prisoners, of care and sorrow than of anything else. When their feeling for the river's lore drew them, by a spiritual gravitation, to a common centre--to learn, for instance, that Council Bend and Council Island were named for one of those historic "confabs" between the white man and the red which shouldered the red brother once and forever away from the sunrise and across the great river--that centre of gravity was the captain's chair, their tutor the first mate.

Under the circumstances we hardly need begrudge a line or two more to tell how, as far back as Delta, the _Votaress_ had begun to meet the Louisville Saturday evening packets and to receive and return their special salutes. One was a Hayle boat and one a Courteney. Such moments were refreshing. Inquiry and information flowed through them as naturally and beguilingly as a brook through a meadow and gave Hugh opportunity to contemplate incidentally the play of air and light in Ramsey's curls without her having the slightest suspicion of him!--gave her chances to ply him with questions in autobiography and social casuistry and to enjoy keenly the ridiculous majesty of his eyes and voice, while the two dear chaperons talked apart as obliviously as if she were merely asking him how deep the whiskey was in Whiskey Chute.

In the long run from Commerce to Norfolk came breakfast. Commerce was another case of infant-city still-birth, Norfolk was less. Breakfast, double-ranked, stoop-shouldered, mute: beefsteak and fried onions its solar centre, with hot rolls for planets; Hugh at the ladies' table, the first clerk at the gentlemen's. Then the boiler deck, toothpicks, cigars, breezes, armchairs, spittoons, the sad news of the two deaths up-stairs, the ugly news of the five passengers set ashore and the reason thereof. Men spat straight and hard as they heard or told the latter item, yet with tacit unanimity awaited the re-emergence of the still secluded senator, general, and twins.

By Hugh's unsmiling forethought Madame Hayle, Ramsey, and the Gilmores breakfasted in the pilot-house. With "Harriet" close to her elbow, Ramsey ate at a window, standing, to watch the gliding shores and floods and privily cross-examine, again in autobiography and at printing-press speed, the willing maid-servant. At Island Fifty-Two another boat, the _Shooting Star_, streamed by. At a plantation and wood-yard the _Votaress_ paused to restock with dairy and kitchen-garden supplies and to lash to her either side a thirty-cord wood flat, and now swept on with the foam twenty feet broad at the square front of each while the deck-hands trotted aboard under their great shoulder loads by one narrow hook plank and came leaping back for more, and the loaders and pilers chanted and chorussed:

"Oh, Shan-a-do'e, I loves yo' daught-eh--
Ah! ha! roll-in' riveh!--
Oh, ef she don't love me she'd ought teh--
Ah! ha!... bound away!... faw de wile ... Mis-'ou-ree!"

The foam and the swift wooding-up gave an illusion of speed to the boat herself, and in what seemed no time at all the empty scows were dropping away astern; but it was farewell for good and all to the _Westwood_, the _Antelope_. And now Cat Island, its bend, its chute; Cow Island, its bend, its chute; Horn Lake, a prehistoric loop of twelve miles, reduced to three by Horn Lake Bend----

"Come, Ramsey." The call smote like a buffet. Memphis was almost in sight. In the southwestern corner of Tennessee, just above Tennessee Chute and the northwestern corner of Mississippi, was the fourth of the Chickasaw Bluffs. On it sat Memphis, a city with churches, banks, and the "electromagnetic telegraph." Its twelve thousand people of that day are a hundred and thirty-five thousand now and have taken in almost out of remembrance the small settlement of Pickering, or Fort Pickering, on the down-stream end of the bluff, where the _Votaress_ that beautiful morning landed and laid to rest Madame Marburg, the bishop, and Basile.

Aboard the _Votaress_, as in Tennessee Chute she faced again the morning sun, two scenes were enacted at the same time. One took place below, on the fore-castle; the other above and just aft of it, on the boiler deck. In the lower there was but a single pine box, in the upper there were two. In the lower stood the black-gowned priest, the two white-bonneted, gray-robed sisters, Otto Marburg alone, and here a mass of immigrants and there a majority of the crew. The upper scene included all the cabin passengers--ladies seated--and half the boat's family. In fulfilment of Basile's wish Hugh read: "I am the resurrection and the life." By Hugh's invitation, given beforehand, the senator delivered a eulogy on the bishop and added such tender praises of the boy, whom every one had liked so early and so well, and gilded them with such delicate allusions to the heroism of his mother, that few eyes were dry. The very twins wept, though there was a touch of rage in their tears. By choice of the parson's wife and sweetly led by her, they sang: "I would not live alway." With streaming eyes Ramsey remembered how yearningly the poor lad had clung to this dear earth, and she could only sit silent and modestly wonder how anybody, under any fate that left them power to sing at all, could sit there--stand there--on that boat, that river, in the splendor of that sun, the beauty of that landscape, and call life a "few lurid mornings."

A third scene occurred as the boat, facing westward, reached the head of President's Island, fairest island in all the river, and coming into full view of Memphis, a short league beyond, tolled her solemn bell and landed at Pickering. Others on the lower deck besides Madame Marburg had passed away in the night but had either been laid under the wet sands of the water's edge in some wild grove down-stream or were not quite in time, so to speak, for this landing. Contemplated from each deck by a numerous gathering and from the pilot-house by Watson, Mrs. Gilmore, and "Harriet," a small procession followed the priest and the three boxes--borne by white-jackets--ashore and out of sight where a small wooden church spire, inland behind the bluff, peered over its crest. Madame Hayle leaned on Julian's arm, Ramsey on Lucian's, Hugh walked with Marburg, the senator with the general, the first clerk with Ned, the Californian with the cub pilot. By and by they returned, outwardly unburdened, and the moment the last tread, the Californian's, was on the stage, Watson's bells jingled and the _Votaress_ swung out and moved up to the Memphis wharf-boat. But there Hugh, the first clerk, the steward, and the doctor went up into town, and it was a long hour before they reappeared and the black smoke billowed again from her chimneys and she backed out and started up and away around "Paddy's Hen and Chickens."

The "family of that name"--to quote Watson--were a group of four islands so entitled from earliest flatboat days, clustered in the river, just above the town. Since that day two of the chicks have flown, or grown, to the mainland, and the mother bird is now merely the "Old Hen" with one "Chicken Island," while "Poor Paddy," we are told, "works on the railway."

In its first forty leagues above Memphis the river went--has gone--still goes--through more violent writhings than in any like part of its whole course, running almost twenty crazy miles to make two sane ones--made finally, in the republic's hundredth year, by Centennial Cut-off. On an average there was an island for every four miles of river, or, say, three for every hour of the _Votaress's_ progress, and in this high water she was running all their chutes. A great resource such incidents were, on that particular day, to Ramsey. At any moment when conversation needed to be started, stopped, or turned, here was her chance. Some of the islands covered many square miles, contained large plantations, and had names as well as numbers. Island Forty, reached about ten o'clock, was also Beef Island. Number Thirty-eight, which they began to pass half an hour later, was Brandywine Island. To pass Island Thirty-five on its short side at full speed took half an hour, and Forked-Deer Island, which kept the boat flying up a narrow chute from half-past two till three o'clock, was old Twenty-seven and Twenty-six grown together.

Now, these things are geography rather than history. But for at least two souls aboard the _Votaress_ they were more history than geography. History--they were life! the outer frame of life so really lived that for those two souls it would be history thenceforth to life's end. And here comes in some pure philosophy from the two pilots: to wit, that if you turn any old maxim over you will always find another truth on its other side. They reached this conclusion, through Ned's remarking that the course of true love never runs smooth.

"That," said Watson, "depends. It depends a lot on who they air that's a-takin' the course. Ef they're the right ones, a real for-true pair, sech as the wayfarin' man though a pilot kin see _air_ a pair, like----"

"Two gloves," said Ned.

"Yass, or galluses--I misdoubt ef there's anything in the world that'll run so smooth through and over and around and under so much cussed roughness as what true love will."

The remark was justified before their eyes. The two whom they contemplated, outwardly so unlike, were in their essence so of a kind that they belonged each to each as simply and patently as the first human pair. They saw it so themselves. Society about them was strangely primitive--a "clapboard civilization," the actor named it to his wife at their pilot-house point of view--and the "for-true" pair in sight below them took frank advantage of its conditions to appropriate and accept each other as simply and completely as if these weird conditions--with their Devil's Elbow, Race-ground, Island, Tea-table, and Back-oven--were a veritable Eden as Eden was before the devil got in. Without a note of courtship or coquetry love ran ever more and more smoothly, growing hourly and receiving each accession as we have seen the Mississippi receive Red River--merely by deepening its own flow--but, unlike the Mississippi, gaining in transparency as it gained in depth and power.

Since leaving Memphis this love without courtship or coquetry had grown under the effulgence of Madame Hayle's immediate presence like a grain-field in sunshine. On her return from the triple burial, through sheer exhaustion, she had fainted away. Borne upstairs by the physician's command and allowed the roof but forbidden the lower deck for twenty-four hours, she had let Mrs. Gilmore and "Harriet" assume her pious task turn about, going and coming by after stairs. And so love grew on. But so did hate, so did craft, all three, to borrow the figure, going and coming by the after stairs of general intercourse.

LIII

TRADING FOR PHYLLIS

This afternoon was cooler than any of the three before it.

Change of latitude, assuredly; but also a sky half blue, half gray, and a brisker air. Yet for that small minority of the ladies, who rather craved than feared the sunlight, the boat's roofs--since custom debarred them from the boiler deck--were still its most inviting part. After a few modifications of dress a very pleasant refuge those roofs were, although when the boat's course led her into the wind it was good to shut a sash or two if you were in the pilot-house, or to draw your chairs into the lee of something if on the open deck. Madame Hayle, urged by all to seek repose in her stateroom, said to Hugh and the Californian, behind one of the chimneys:

"Me, I fine it mo' betteh to breathe on that deck than to bleach in that cabin."

Her presence was to the Californian's advantage also, in his desire to be near Ramsey, and indeed the same was true of the two younger clerks and the cub pilot. And this advantage was heightened by the fact that there were such definite things to be considered wherever two or three came together. The need to keep up the passengers' spirits was as real as ever and a number of resources for doing it required to be discussed. Ramsey mentioned the unidentified man with the cornet but found no seconder. His "Life on the Ocean Wave" was thought hardly convincing and his "Bounding Billow, Cease thy Motion" seemed to clash with the sentiment for an ocean life and to suggest uncomfortable symptoms. Undaunted, she tried again. Through Basile she had early discovered three striplings of the circus ring, the "Brothers Ambrosia." Their true name, her cross-examination had revealed, was Vinegar. In star-spangled tights they would give some real "acrobatics," then some "aerial globe dancing," equally star-spangled and even more up-side-down, and finally a bit of "miraculous walking" on champagne bottles set upright on the dining-table. This proposition was accepted without audible dissent, only the parson's wife not voting. Then the Californian spoke for a self-styled "young gent" and "amateur professor" who had eagerly volunteered to "take everybody's breath away" by the magic of his tricks with hats, handkerchiefs, and cards, and to "throw them into convulsions" with his "evening cat fight among the chimney-pots." But "Beware the laugh that sours overnight," Mrs. Gilmore said, and the decision was prompt, Madame Hayle voicing it, that as convulsions could be brought on and breath taken away by the cholera itself the young gent, through "California," be gratefully requested to await a situation either less desperate or more so.

The gold hunter admitted the wisdom of this action, though his humble spirit felt acutely its discrediting reflection on himself, especially when--with only the kindest meaning--Ramsey laughed. He bravely kept his pain to himself and said nothing to disown the "amateur professor." With a brief aside to Hugh, to which Hugh nodded, he slipped away to the lower deck and for nearly two hours made his nursing skill so valuable to "Harriet" among the immigrants that her fearless mind overlooked the main object of his stay; which was to defend her from any stratagem of the twins and others, that Marburg might not detect in time or might be unable to cope with. At length, puzzled to know why Mrs. Gilmore did not appear, he was leaving, when at the foot of the narrow stair under the kitchen he met Lucian coming down. They stopped. He smiled. "Howdy!" he said.

Lucian stood silent.

"Can't come down here, you know," said the gold hunter, and instantly Lucian was white hot.

"Who tells you," he drawled, "what I may or may not do?"

"Who? oh--just a little black dog."

"Black--_what?_"

"You heard. He's a funny little cuss; like you, a trifle puny. Has coughin' fits. Coughs six times each fit. Spits up a chunk o' lead ev'y time he coughs. Want to see him?"

Lucian's unaffrighted eyes blazed down, though his reply was as if to himself. "Great God! if my brother----"

"Oh," kindly said the Californian, "he ain't fur off. Go, get him. I'll follow you, lock-step."

Lucian turned and went, the speaker adding as he followed close:

"Ladder's no place for scienced fighting, you know."

They found Julian, evidently waiting, on the passenger guards just forward of the pantry gangway. But before words could be exchanged the cub pilot came along by way of the main staircase, escorting the physician from the lower deck. The latter passed on up the wheel-house steps to the roof, but the "cub" hung back. "California" faced him.

"What's the fraction? The captain?"

The youth nodded. His inquirer waved him away.

"All right. I'll come. You go on." The boy complied.

Julian had swelled for encounter, but a warning look from Lucian checked him and he let the Californian speak first.

"Here," said the gold-digger, "I'm fixed. You're not. True, I could loan you the twin to mine, but----"

Julian's lip curled. "'But'--you're not hungry to fight."

"Oh, other things being equal, I have an appetite! Yes, sir-ee, Bob Hoss-Fly, and a red dog under the wheelbarrow! But"--smiling again--"let's do things in scientific order. You two claim that you Hayle folks own that forty-year-old white gal down-stairs which you call a runaway niggeh, and which we'll allow she is one. Well, I'll buy you two's share in her--providing I can buy the rest of her from your two ladies up-stairs--and fight you afterward or not as the case may require. Now, what'll you take for your said two shares, right here, cash down, gold; not dust but coin, New Orleans Branch Mint? Going at--what do I hear?"

The spendthrift pair stared on each other, thinking with all their might. But they failed to think that on the deck above them, in group with Mrs. Gilmore, Hugh, the parson's wife, Ramsey, and old Joy, the ownership of Phyllis was being fully set forth by their mother to their own whilom champions the senator and the general, or that Ramsey was about to be sent down to the stateroom of the mother and daughter for documentary evidence.

"What do I hear?" repeated the Californian, watching his own hands as the right drew double-eagles from his belt and stacked them in the left.

Eagerly asking themselves what might be their tempter's motive, the pair thought primarily of the white slave's well-preserved beauty and the rarity of women in the far West. With that came a stinging remembrance of her glaring Hayle likeness and then of their father's old scheme--averted by their mother--to sell the girl forever out of sight and reach. And then came the pleasanter thought that at any rate here was a chance to put this daredevil at odds with the hated Gilmores as well as with their own mother and sister, the Courteneys, and all the Courteney clan. Till now they had felt that, if only for self-respect and good standing, they must recover their property, seize Phyllis on the spot, if they could possibly command the backing to do it. But this was now very doubtful. Something had happened to the senator's mind, while the general was but his echo and the element called "others" was strangely sluggish. And, finally, or rather, first and last, the brothers were thrilled with the prodigal's lust for ready money. So far they saw and no farther, but so far so good; here seemed to be an unguarded opening in the enemy's line--to use a phrase the great valley was one day to know by heart--and the warier of the pair ventured in. Said Lucian:

"We're Uncle Dan's sole legatees."

"Then name your price for her, lock, stock, and barrel."

"Want to take her only to Kentucky, or to California?"

"Californy--maybe Oregon."

"To keep house for you--single gentleman?"

"Yes, sir."

"When do you expect to come back?"

"Never."

The questioner glanced back to his brother. Both were gratified to note that the bargain would work no relief to Hugh or the Gilmores, but Julian wanted better assurance that it would not free a runaway slave or make her a lawful wife. He turned abruptly, and so it happened that all three failed to see Ramsey, in dark attire and with Joy close behind, emerge an instant from the pantry gangway and shrink again into it. On the return from her stateroom to the roof, for mere variety, she had taken this direction. Said Julian as he turned:

"You're a Kentuckian, sir. Henry Clay man?"

"No. Only don't allow anything said again' him."

"Abolitionist?"

"No, sir-ee." The emphasis was sprightly.

The twins looked at each other once more. Julian nodded.

"One thousand dollars," said Lucian....

Let us go back a step or so and up to the hurricane-deck. We have named Hugh as in the group about Madame Hayle; but he went and came. In his absences the matrons debated the Phyllis matter as it involved the Gilmores, trying to find some way not to leave it an undivided burden on Hugh and the _Votaress_. It was on one of his quiet reappearances, reporting his father "easier," that Ramsey put in:

"Mom-a, the senator's a lawyer. Send for him--and the general--and talk them over to our side. You can do it. You can talk anybody into anything! You always could!"

Madame Hayle and Hugh looked at each other very much as the twins were doing about that time on the guards next below, and Hugh said:

"I will go bring them."

"Ah, if you please, yass, go."

He brought them and they were among madame's auditors when later she said, addressing her words wherever they fitted best, so that even old Joy got her share:

"Had it not have been for Phylliz, Dan Hayle, he wouldn' neveh took that troub' to wride that will. But I insiz' he shall wride it, biccause--Phylliz. Tha'z all. An' biccause Phylliz he wrode it. But he say to me----"

"When was this?" inquired the senator.

"Tha'z when those twin' make him thad visit, Walnut Hill'. He say: 'W'ad uze to you if I make my laz' will? I give any'ow everything to those twin'.' An' tha'z biccause" (to old Joy) "thad chile w'ad die----"

"Drownded," murmured the nurse. "Ayfteh dat transpiah he take a shine to ev'y man-chile he git his ahm aroun'."

Madame resumed: "An' I say to him: 'Give all the rez' to who' you want, but Phylliz--to me.' 'No!' he say, 'you, you'll put her free!'"

"Why didn't he want her set free?" asked Ramsey.

"An' you are there--an' silend! I forgod you!"

"Why didn't he want her set free?" insisted the forgotten.

"Ah!" said the mother to the senator as though the inquiry were his, "Dan, he seem' to thing tha'z a caztigation on him. An' he say: 'Neveh mine, I figs thad so she can'd be free pretty soon.' An' me, I thoughd he leave her to those twin' till I'm reading the will."

Ramsey stood up elatedly. "I know what he did! I see it!"

But as her mother chidingly murmured her name she reflected the maternal dignity and accepted a bunch of keys.

"Go, if you please, ad my room," said madame, "open----"

"Your little trunk, and pop-a's tin box inside," the girl interrupted, but deferentially caught herself again and with the corner of an eye felt about for Hugh. But Hugh had gone back to his father and thence to the deck next below.

"Yass. You fine there manny pape'. One is mark'--you'll see. Fedge me thad. 'Tis the h-only tha'z blue."

Ramsey sped away over skylights and down a back stair.

The senator spoke: "Who were that will's executors?"

"Ah, of co'se, my 'usban', Capitan Hayle, al-lone."

"The heirs, I dare say, have seen it?"

The lady smiled. "Not at all. Biccause h-anybody can see it if he want, nobody eveh want, an' leaz' of all those twin' when they are getting everything. Nobody speak abbout Phylliz, biccause Phylliz is su'pose drown', an' drown' peop' they don' count."

In the stateroom Ramsey knelt, opened the trunk, then the tin box, and then, despite old Joy's reprehending moan, the document itself.

"I knew it!" she whispered elatedly, relocking the box and trunk. "I guessed right!"