CHAPTER VI
THE Mississippi River drains several empires. The Trans-Missouri Prairie, the Corn, the Middle West, the Breast-Bone of the Continent, the Cotton, the Oil, are some of these empires. The river is itself an empire with treasures of pearls and a people of its own—the shantyboaters.
More than fifty thousand people live in floating river homes—houseboats varying in size from tiny tent-cabined skiffs to great show boats carrying half a hundred men, women, and children. These shantyboaters have their own floating stores, boarding houses, mission boats, sacred concerts, recluses, grafters, doctors, drifters, whisky boats and countless other up-the-bank phenomena as well as their own particular occupations. They are River Gypsies.
Some of them hardly ever come in contact with people on the river shores. They hide down lonesome bends, and lurk in old river lakes. Perhaps away back yonder, somewhere, some time, they did some meanness and a sheriff would be glad to trouble them for a reward. Others live in city eddies, or up a tributary moored permanently to the bank at some city, town, or sawmill, working for some company, but living on the river because it is cheap. Every fall a fleet of sports drift down the river in shantyboats or gasolene boats, hunting, fishing, roistering down for the fun of it, and some are always sports, but some few cease to be soft-paws with no river sense—incapable of learning anything—and falling into river ways, attaining to river society of up or down class.
The river people heard that a pretty girl going by the name of "Delia" had drifted out of the Ohio. The whisky gasolenes carried the gossip about Delia up and down. Within a month, old timers in Little Oklahoma above Eads Bridge were talking about her, and "Junker" Frest, with three tons of heavy copper, which he had salvaged from an old still house on the Lower Ohio, ceased his hurry to the Mendova market to make the acquaintance of Delia.
That copper was worth twenty cents anyhow, and maybe twenty-one at the Mendova Landing, and Frest estimated that when any river girl saw that copper, and learned that it hadn't cost a cent, she would sure be interested in so successful a grafter.
"I'll get twelve hundred dollars for it!" Frest figured to himself. "I got money in the Mendova Bank, and if that Delia girl's got any sense, she'll see I'm just the man she's lookin' for, even if she ain't going to stay on the river but a little while. I'll show a thousand dollars in cold cash. Hue-e! But she's shore a handsome gal! Why, 'f I'd a-knowed she was alone, that day she dropped down by my boat above Cairo, I'd cut right out an' interduced myself. Dad blest hit! Seems like a man's thicker-headed 'an a blue cat!"
Accordingly, hurrying down the river with his forty-foot shantyboat, towed by a four-horsepower open launch. Junker Frest pulled out of Putney Bend and tripping night and day, except to land in at New Madrid, Carruthersville, and other towns, to find out where Delia was when last heard of, he overtook the Delia-Mahna fleet tied in at the foot of Yankee Bar, where they were hunting.
He was surprised to see the gasolene cruiser hooked between the two shantyboats. It was a nice cruiser, but when he saw it last, a fellow of the name of Gost, but known, too, as White Collar Dan, said it wasn't for sale at any price. Gost was an old river man, himself, having tripped Upper, Lower, Missouri, Red, and Yazoo rivers, at one time and another, besides being an up-the-bank grafter.
"Hullo, Mrs. Mahna!" Frest greeted the noted river lady. "How do you hook?"
"Oh, fair to middlin', and not consequential, you might say. Hearn you wrecked a big stillery up the Ohio?"
"Yes, and it was a nice job, too"
"Much copper?"
"Oh, so-so, 'bout six thousand pounds."
"Sho! Ho-law! Six thousand pounds, an' copper ranging around twenty-three cents now—at the bank!"
"Twenty-three cents?" Frest exclaimed; "why, last I knew, it was only twenty-one, or dropping down to twenty. Why, that's—that's, let's see."
He drew out a pencil and began to figure.
"That's thirteen hundred and eighty dollars."
"Yes, sir—it ain't likely to hold there, though." Mrs. Mahna shook her head. "Them big mines'll begin to ship, and she'll drop again."
"I—I expect that's so." Frest shook his head. "See you're dropping down with Delia."
"Oh, yes. She's out with Roy, hunting squirrels"
"Roy's notlhing but a kid—fourteen, is all," Frest declared.
"Well, cayn't a gal travel with a kid if she wants to?" Mrs. Mahna asked with asperity. "Some little kids is lots safer for a young lady than any old buck—I expect they is!"
Frest flushed and blinked unhappily. Mrs. Mahna had an uncomfortable way of saying things to a river man.
"Oh, I don't know," Frest managed to retort. "Some river ladies teach soft-paws things they don't need to know!"
"Well, yes," Mrs. Mahna admitted. "Comes natural to an old hen to kind of look after the pullets. All that copper heavy? Lawse! I bet you paid twelve cents for it."
"No, I didn't." Frest grinned, cunningly. "All I done was pack it on board"
"Sho! Hit must of been in a dark bend?"
"That's just what it was—six thousand pounds, and all I done was lug it."
"All I got to say is, if I'd found six thousand pounds of copper, and the market was near twenty-three cents, I couldn't get to that market quick enough."
"I expect that's right," Frest admitted. "You going to drop right down—or be you hunting and traping along? You'n Delia?"
"We're just hunting table meat. We'll be to Mendova, if we have to trip nights and Sundays."
"Then I'll meet you folks there. I'll have a lot of money to give somebody a good rime," he hinted, winking craftily.
"You sure will." Mrs. Mahna shook her head, with admiration and an expression of cunning on her own countenance.
"Then I guess I won't stop here." Frest shook his head, meditatively. "You see the market might drop!"
"That's right," she approved. "Three cents a pound ain't to be sneezed at. Feller sold some copper down there for twenty-three cents; probably you know him, José Macrado?"
"Sure I know him. He a junker now?"
"No—just picked some copper up some'rs."
"Well, s'long." Frest backed out of the eddy, adding: "'Member me to Delia—I seen 'er above Cairo, droppin' down!"
"Yes, she was saying she seen some awful tough-lookin' fellers up there." Mrs. Mahna laughed, and Frest felt that he had been paid a fine compliment.
He went on down to Mendova, never tying line night or day. He ran into Shanty Boat Ridge, at the foot of Ferry Street, and sought the local wholesale junk buyers.
"Vat!" Mr. Isaacsten exclaimed. "Six thousand pounds! Mine Gott—vat you think I am? Vell, I pay you six dollars to haul all dat up to mine yard. It is too much! I can pay you but eighteen cents."
"Oh, come now, Isaacsten; when the market is twenty-four cents a pound! You think I don't know the quotations, don't you?"
"Twenty-four cents?" Isaacsten repeated. "I think you river people all go crazy wit' yourselfs. I don't pay no such price! Look! Here is the market price, as by the papers reported. Twenty cents. I make but two cents a pound, if I buy your load, and the six dollars for dray—you see, I make but one cent a pound, gross, and not that, maybe, when the market go down!"
Frest read the price list.
"But you gave José Macrado twenty-four cents"
"I did not so! I paid him twenty-one cents, and I lose money by it. It was block copper, from the smelters, two hundred pounds in fifty-pound blocks. Your stuff—it must be melted, and cast, and then perhaps it is dross! I give you nineteen cents, and I make not a cent"
"Like H—l you will!" Frest retorted, turning away.
"Oh, say, Mr. Frest! I vant your business, I make it twenty—I lose money! But I make it twenty. But that is all."
Frest hesitated, and finally he accepted twenty cents. Instead of three tons, however, he had only 5,120 pounds, which brought him $1,024 instead of more than thirteen hundred as he had dreamed. It made him feel poor indeed. Two days later, while he lingered at Mendova, waiting for Delia and her chaperon to drop in, junk copper went to twenty-two cents, and he cursed Mrs. Mahna.
"That damned woman lied to me!" he declared. "What'd she do that for?"
He was stunned by a thought. He stared at the water off the stern of his houseboat.
"Why, she—she done it just to get me to trip on down," he whispered. "Ain't that one of that danged old girl's tricks? She knowed—course she knowed, I 'lowed to make that girl Delia a good man. Oh, those blasted old river women! If 'twa'n't for them, Old Mississip'd be some comfort to live on—but they keep butting in and butting in, interfering with men's business. Shucks! Knowing her like I do, I bet—well, I bet when Delia gets to see me, and gets to know the liberal kind of a feller I'll be, buying her clothes and looking purty well dressed up myself! Old Mrs. Mahna be sunk in mid-channel. Delia 'n me'll make a great team if that old woman don't get her head full of notions. That makes twice she's spoiled me getting a nice wife, good lookin' an' so on—um-m. How'd she get that gasolene boat of Gost's? Something funny about that. If she bought it, she's rich. She ain't no common shantyboat lady lookin' for a man! I bet she's—sho! That's how come hit! I ain't heard of Gost being found daid or anything, but I bet that's how come hit! I ain't paid much 'tention to what's been talking around. I'll jes' get over into the whisky boat and listen where the listenin's easy and good."
Thus Junker Frest made up his mind to get out and move around in society. Take it where a man is thrifty and attends to business and don't trouble other people in their business, he loses track of things. Frest had lost track of things, except that he happened to hear that Delia was dropping down, and he recognized her as the girl on the Ohio, who was just the kind of a girl he wanted to marry, but whom he never dreamed at that time was alone on her shantyboat, supposing of course her man was inside sleeping while she watched ahead.
"If I'd only knowed she was alone," Frest grimaced. "You bet she'd never passed out the Forks 'thout a good man. No, you bet!"
The Klondike happened to be the whisky boat lying in at Shanty Boat Ridge, opposite Ferry Street. Frest, having put most of his money into the Mendova Bank—a wise precaution—went down the Ridge to the Klondike that evening and having treated the white men once around, sat at one of the tables, where two other river men were at their ease, smoking and contemplating filled little gill glasses.
"Hello, Macrado," Frest grinned. "See you sold some block copper."
"Oh, yes—out the Upper River—fell off a train, those blocks did."
Macrado grinned, thoughtfully. "See you salved a still house!"
"Yes—nice lot of heavy copper," Frest admitted. "I come down not tying a line. Anything new along?"
"Why, yes. There's something funny about one of those old river grafters, fellow name of White Collar Dan. Know him?"
"I don't remember. Who is he?"
"He rubs the banks. Any kind of graft, but he sells phony a lot, and he's off the river, too—Chi, an' N'York an' Boston. Down East, and helling all around. He come out of the Ohio in a nice gasolene cruiser, dull painted like an old shantyboater would have it, so's you couldn't see it to 'ell an' gone. Well, next anybody knowed, he turned up on the long, narrow sandbar above Slough Neck. You know, in the Reach there. He was shot through and through the right side, broke the fourth rib, coming and going both. He was crazy, and Whisky Williams found him. He took him to Hickman Hospital, and there he is. Getting well. Course, somebody got him for his boat. Who do you think it was?"
"Why, I—I couldn't know," Frest replied, his face hot with wonder.
"Well, I don't know who shot him, but the Mahnas and that soft-paw girl, Delia, has got White Collar Dan's boat, and him an old river man! I tell you, shantyboaters is talking now! All but Mrs. Mahna. She ain't saying a word. I stopped in with them one night last week, above Plum Point in the Chute of Canadian Reach Island. Number twenty-six, is it?"
"Twenty-six and twenty-seven," Frest identified the island. "Get to talk to them any?"
"Why—sorta. Delia and the men folks didn't talk none much. Mrs. Mahna talked, course she talked! You know how she is. I'd kinda liked to talk to that gal a bit. She's a looker all right. Mrs. Mahna talked fish, hunt, trap, trippin', and the devil knows what all. Not a word about Delia or that cruiser. Made me kind of mad, and I pulled out. They'll bust up in a row. Then somebody'll get to talk to that girl. She ain't no common soft-paw, you can bet on that!"
Thus there were mysteries and mysteries in this matter of Delia.
"Mostly, girls take a name with a handle to it," Frest mused. "She ain't nothing but Delia!"
"That's one thing makes me think she's no common girl," Macrado suggested. "Take Kid Russel, now, or Eyes Brolah, or Big Sue Cairn, or any of those girls. You know their last names, anyhow—or some name. They got handles to their names, but Delia—she's different!"
"Didn't Gost—that's his name, White Collar Dan Gost—tell how he was shot?" the hitherto silent shantyboater at the table asked.
"He's come to, they say, but he can't remember," Macrado said. "He was dropping down, he said, and next he knew, he was hog wallowing in the water. Well, he crawled out somewhere and next he knew, Sawbones was working on him, and the hospital nurse a-smoothing his pillow."
"Was he robbed?"
"That's a funny thing, too. He had more'n nine hundred in his pocket, but it wa'n't touched. Whisky Williams found it. You'd think if anybody went to the trouble of shooting him in a lonely bend, they'd took his money, anyhow, 'fore they threw him overboard."
"Well, that's the way on Old Mssissip'!" Frest shook his head. "You is, you ain't, and to Hell you go!"
"You bet. Let's liquor!" Macrado approved the sentiment.