CHAPTER XIV
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. Seems like I've been on it for ages—centuries!"
Her face looked as though she was suffering from a hurt.
"Can't I help you? You said" Murdong began, eagerly.
"Yes—you see, I'm desperate. I thought down here I'd escape from everything—everyone! But here you are."
"Me—what!" Murdong gasped, amazed.
"Yes—you! What are you following me down for? What do you mean by it? You have no business dropping in here, taking up with me!"
"Why—I had no idea—I—you seemed—I thought"
"If men only could understand women!" she sighed, hopelessly, and real tears started in her eyes.
"If my presence is objectionable"—Murdong stood up and bowed—"I'll take my skiff and my departure"
"Take your shantyboat—and go! It's your boat," she said, and though she said it vehemently, Murdong discovered an undertone in her voice that was pleading.
"Certainly I'll go!" he said. "I'm sorry to have my presence so disagreeable to—to so fair a river personage."
He bowed, and she flushed.
"Oh! You don't understand," she choked, "it isn't—it's"
"Whatever it is, we'll not discuss it," he told her. "It is sufficient to me to know that my departure will bring relief to you."
She rose from her chair and turned to the door. He followed with instinctive politeness. On the bow deck she hesitated as she confronted the high-raised cabin of her gasolene. He sprang to place a chair for her. As she stepped to the seat, she stopped, having accepted his proffered hand.
"You don't know how good you are to me," she whispered, and before he knew it she had kissed him squarely and wonderfully upon his lips.
Then she sprang aboard her own boat, and remarked:
"I'll cast your lines off."
As good as her word, she let the lines go, one by one. He coiled them, under her low-voiced directions, and in a minute the pretty cabin-boat was clear. Before it floated clear, however, she dropped on her hands and knees, leaning over the four-inch high pipe railing around the motorboat's cabin and caught his hands in hers.
"Take care of yourself, will you? Don't trust anybody. And hide—hide all the way down the river. Be ready to shoot—and if Gost comes, don't wait; kill him! Promise me you'll kill him if he follows you?"
"Anything to please you, lady mine!" he whispered, gallantly. "Anything for another one of those—of those delicious"
"Sure!" she laughed under her breath, and this kiss was not all one sided, by any means. Then she whispered: "In January I'll meet you at Salem Landing, or down Spanish Moss Bend."
Then Delia released him, and the shantyboat floated out in the eddy, and past the sterns of the motorboat and of the Mahna shantyboat.
"Hello, you!" Mrs. Mahna's voice demanded. "You pullin' out?"
"Yes, Mrs. Mahna," Murdong replied; "I'm no good, and when I make a mistake, I take my departure p. d. q. Good-night!"
"Good-night!"
"And forgive me my sins, fair Delia," he called out, contritely.
"You're a beast!" she retorted. "I can forgive your prompt departure, however!"
Deha stood on the motorboat cabin for a few minutes, and then entered the cabin, which she had made sweet and clean, and which now had the perfume and sanctity of a lady's bower. She turned on the cabin lights supplied by storage batteries, and sat down with a book in her lap, as though to read.
"He's a good boy!" she said to herself. "I wonder what he would think if he knew why I drove him down the river with that cabinboat?"
She smiled, and her face became serious, then smiling again, as she saw the humorous and the deadly phases of the affair.
"Oh, I wish he would take my warning seriously!" she whispered over and over to herself. "If only men would understand. He's such a dear boy. I could almost love him—doing just what I begged him to do, and not asking one question. I'm glad I thought to kiss him. He seemed so surprised. Some men might think it was perfectly natural, because they are beasts. But he was really surprised—and he meant that last one. I know he did. Not a word; he just floated away because I asked him to. His name is Murdong. I mustn't forget that."
She tried to read a story of romance and adventure, but it seemed dull to read when she had such memories and thoughts and was living such an adventure herself. A hail from Mrs. Mahna interrupted her reverie:
"I kinda suspected that feller," Mrs. Mahna declared. "One of those smoothy-woothy sort of fellers. If you hadn't sent 'im pikin', I 'lowed I'd go visitin' with a shot gun, an' then he'd git, you bet!"
"Oh, he's all right, Mrs. Mahna," Delia exclaimed, impatiently. "Probably I'll catch him again down the river. He's real nice."
"Wha-a-at!" Mrs. Mahna cried.
"Yes, real nice; you see, he's young and—good. I was afraid if I didn't send him away, you might think something."
"Well, I de-clare!"
"I hated to do it, so I sent him packing."
"Gracious!" Mrs. Mahna commented. "You are a queer one. You looking out for the looks down Old Mississip'? Sho!"
"Oh, a lady cannot be too careful," Delia answered.
"My lan'! What'd you come down the river for, if it wasn't to get to a place where you wouldn't have to be careful, an' could do as you please?"
"Why, that's so! Of course—I didn't think—you'd never say anything, or any one."
"You bet! And even if we did talk, what dif'rence would it make—down here? It ain't like it is up the bank. That's a real nice-lookin' young feller, too—if you cared about him."
"I do care a great deal about him, Mrs. Mahna—but I just couldn't help it. I had to send him away."
"Well, cook your goose to suit yourself—that's all I got to say."
Mrs. Mahna subsided, and Delia retired to the little stateroom, and in the dark of her bunk she sighed and smiled and chuckled.
"Dear old woman!" she thought. "Looking after me like that. And wasn't he sweet, behaving the way he did—not knowing, but going just to please me, just not to hurt my feelings. I wonder what the poor boy is thinking about, floating down that dark Fort Pillow Bend. If he'll only be careful. Oh, if anything should happen to him, I'd feel as though I'd killed him. But I was afraid—so afraid!"
The following day other boats began to drop into the Yankee Bar eddy, and tied into the bank. Some were old river people, who enjoyed the company, and they knew that Mrs. Mahna would keep things going in any shantyboat town of which she was president. Other boats drew in for purposes of their own—a gambler boat, whisky boat, a little showboat, and three or four parties of sports hunting and rowdying down the river bent upon fun and devilment.
Among the rest, José Macrado blew up the river all dressed up fit to kill, in a nice little gasolene launch and spending money, though none had ever known him to spend money before. Mrs. Mahna had seen the day when he was so hungry that he begged like a dog—but people are up and people are down in the river. If she saw anything, or thought anything, she did not say a word to any one—not about Macrado. She had enough to talk about without prying into the affairs of other people.
Nothing would do, Mrs. Mahna declared, but they must have a barbecue, with wild turkey, roast goose, pig, beef, game pies, and all kinds of things. Accordingly, the hunters chose sides and went forth to slay what they could, up and down the river in the gasolenes. Some hunted at night, and they brought their prey in dressed and skinned, ready to cook, but no questions were asked about that. It would not be minding one's own business, asking where the "boys" caught their pork or killed their beef.
Through the turmoil and effort of the river women preparing for the feast and merry-making Delia moved doing her own share. She set her face as firmly against the sly looks as against the pointed hints of the men and women who would have been glad to see her showing what she could do in the way of "matching men" as the game was called. She would not smile on the ardent attentions of Macrado, and she faced down the gayest of the sports, who was gallant till Delia's scorn drove him in confusion from the scene, surprised that a river girl could resist him.
All these affairs were but introductory to the day of the barbecue, which fell upon a Thursday. In the morning another cabin-boat drifted into the foot of the eddy and floated up the line, looking for a place to tie in. A stranger sport was at the sweeps, handling them, but not so the man who sat on a chair against the cabin telling the soft-paw what to do and where to land in.
"Sho!" Mrs. Mahna exclaimed, "I know that feller; where'd I see him?"
"Of course you know him," Delia whispered in a low voice. "That's White Collar Dan—Rubert Gost—the man you've been talking and thinking about—the man you dropped down to save me from."
"I'll shoo 'im out," Mrs. Mahna declared, emphatically. "I'll have the boys—they'll"
"No! Don't!" Delia shook her head. "You keep him here. He's fooled and he's mean, and—let it go!"
Sure enough, Urleigh and the man Deha had shot had arrived in the shantyboat town. They drifted past the Mahna shantyboat with the gasolene cruiser occupied by Delia alongside. The diamond specialist gazed at the cruiser steadily and with lowering brows.
"Hello, Mr. Man!" Mrs. Mahna burst out upon him, from the stern of her boat. "You can land up above that yeller boat if you want!"
"Thank you!" Urleigh raised his hat. "I'll try it."
A space above the yellow boat was forty or fifty feet wide, and Urleigh easily landed against the bank, bow on. He ran out the starboard bow and stern lines and made them fast to a snag limb. Then he hauled the port lines taut on stakes which he drove with an ax. Last he drove a stake at the bow, and pushed the gang-plank against it, and, lashing the plank rope to a cleat on the bow, bumped. Thus the boat was held on the bank, but sparred off, too.
"You're getting right handy with the lines," Gost approved. "It's a good part of a man's business to know how to moor a shantyboat down thisaway."
Gost started up the bank, weakly, and Urleigh had to lend him a hand as he climbed the steep dirt bluff. As they emerged upon the level of the bottoms Delia strolled that way, her arms swinging, and her face impressive, looking every way but toward the new arrivals.
On all sides the observers, men, women, and children, stopped their work or play. In a breath they heard or felt the tenseness of the incident which was now breaking—Delia, the beautiful stranger, about to meet the river man whom she had so casually shot, or was at least believed to have shot, none knowing exactly what had happened.
Urleigh, uninformed as yet, turned and discovered the strikingly impressive young woman. As he turned, she looked him in the eye, and with a glance appraised him. Gost, wetting his lips, turned and faced her. He glanced to right and left, to see what was the attitude of the other spectators, and under the sharp glances which he met, he quailed a little—weak as he was from his wound.
Delia walked up till she was within ten feet of the man and then she stopped suddenly, speaking sharply:
"Has your visit here anything to do with me?" she demanded.
Gost, whose mind worked in anything but direct lines, stopped where he stood and looked at the ground searching for something to answer, as it seemed. She waited a minute, while he gathered his breath, but she grew impatient.
"If you have anything to say to me, say it," she ordered. "I shot you, you scoundrel, and you know it. I'll shoot you again, too—and you'd better know that. What do you want?"
"You—you got my—my"
"Say it," she exclaimed, as he hesitated, "say what you have on your mind, if you dare! Don't talk about any trifling, no-account thing. Say what you are really thinking. If you dare, say it."
Gost wet his lips. He had suffered much as a result of his previous encounter with this young woman. He knew, as the other spectators surmised, that she would shoot him where he stood, like a dog—and they would approve of it, because she was a tall, angry, and good-looking girl. He had not counted on this reception. He had expected the girl to be afraid, and keep out of his way, and give him a chance to get his bearings and renew old alliances—but nothing of the kind. He could not meet her on the grounds that she had chosen.
"Just for your satisfaction," she smiled, relaxing her indignant poise, "just to let you know what's what, the business that brought you here is ended. I haven't possession of what you are after. Not at all. I knew you would never rest till you learned about them. I threw them overboard—every one!"
"You—you" he began.
"Don't you call me any names," she ordered. "I won't stand for it from you or from any man."
Gost swallowed and blinked. He turned and staggered toward the top of the bank. He would have fallen down into the river if Urleigh had not caught and helped him on board the boat and into the cabin.
Macrado, standing a few yards distant, let his jaw drop as the girl spoke, and staring at her, his tongue worked wonderingly for a moment. She turned and saw him.
"Lawse, gal!" he gasped. "Did yo' all throw them di'monds ovehboard?"
Two score of river people within hearing started up tense and eager, for their minds had long dwelt upon that treasure.
"Did I?" she repeated, scowling at him. "May I ask what diamonds, and if I did, is it any business of yours what I did with them?"
Macrado flushed and retreated.
"You fellers better get to mind your own business," Mrs. Mahna called after him, "you darned fools!"