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He was down the river somewhere, and when she landed in at Mendova in the late twilight she saw his skiff swinging from the stern of a motorboat. Having made fast near it, she quickly learned that he had gone up town, and that someone had heard him say that he was going to Palura's. Palura's! Nelia had heard the fascination of that den's ill-fame.
Nelia Crele, alias Nelia Carline, was the woman, and they were both stopping over at the Island No. 10 sandbar. He knew, what the fish-dock man probably did not know, that the pursuer was the woman's husband. "What'll I tell her?" Terabon asked himself. With that question he uncovered an unsuspected depth to his feelings. It was a dark, dull day.
"I never knew the old girl was as lively as that!" he told himself, and having tasted a feast, he could not regard the Widow Plosell as more than a lunch, and a light lunch, at that. Nelia had been easily traced to Chester. Beyond Chester the trail seemed to indicate that Dick Asunder had eloped with her, but ten days later Asunder returned home with a bride whom he had married in St. Louis.
"Two ladies is mostly safe down thisaway." "My name's Nelia Crele. We used to live up by Gage, on the Bottoms " "Sho! Co'se I know Ole Jim Crele, an' his woman. My name's Mrs. Tons. We stopped in thah 'bout six weeks ago. I hearn say yo'd yo'd married right well!" "Umph!" Nelia shrugged her shoulders, "Liquor spoils many a home!"
"Say, boys, do you know if Terabon and Carline landed here to-night?" "We just landed in," one answered. "I don't know." "Going up town?" "Yes " "I want to know about them " "Hit's Nelia Crele!" one exclaimed. "That's right. Hello, boys Despard Jet Cope!" "Sure! When'd you land?" "Late this evening; I was up to Palura's when " "That ain't no place fo' a lady."
Having rid herself of the leering river rat, Nelia Crele trembled for a time in weak dismay, the reaction from her tense and fiery determination to protect herself at all costs.
When Nelia ran down to the gambling boat and found Parson Rasba there, she enjoyed the idea. Certainly the River Prophet and the river gambler were an interesting combination. She was not prepared to find that Buck had taken his departure and that Parson Rasba was converting the gambling hell into a mission boat.
I 'low a lady needs protection up the bank er down the riveh, but I 'low if my cookin' don't pay my board, an' if fish I take out'n my nets ain't my own, and the boat I live in ain't mine well, I've drapped two men off'n the stern of my boat to prove hit!" Mrs. Caope had not changed at all, not in the years Nelia could recall, except to change her name.
Her later experience, her reading, had taught her that society and the law also held with the principle, if not the manner of her primitive method, for obtaining her rights to separate support. When Carline awakened, Nelia was gone. Nelia had departed that morning, one of the servants said. The girl did not know where she had gone.
I can tell a man by hisns walk half a mile." In surprise she stared at the boat as it came nearer, and then walked down to the edge of the bar to greet the newcomer. "Why, I jes' knowed I'd seen yo' somers! How's yer maw?" she greeted. "Ho law! An' yo's come tripping down Ole Mississip'! I 'clare, now, I'd seen yo', an' I knowed hit, an' hyar yo' be, Nelia Crele.
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