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Genevieve, one time, and you and Father went over into Missouri, hunting turkeys." "Remember you?" he exclaimed. "Why you of course! Mrs. Carline Nelia Crele!" She met his questioning gaze unflinchingly. "I know I can trust you," she said, simply. "If you'd known Gus Carline!" "I knew his father," Brankeau said. "I reckon as faithless a scoundrel as ever lived.
For a long time his finite mind was without inspiration, without understanding, and then he choked with terror and regret. He had beguiled himself into believing that it was his duty to take care of Nelia Crele, the fair woman of the river. He had believed only too readily that his duty lay where his heart's desire had been most eager. He sat there in dumb horror at the sin which had blinded him.
Nelia Crele could not possibly be regarded as an ordinary woman, as a mere commonplace, shack-bred, pretty girl. Down through the years had come a strain of effectiveness which she inherited in its full strength; she was as inexplicable as Abraham Lincoln.
What can it matter what such a trifling thing, such a mere atom, as himself does when he is to the worlds of less size than the smallest of living organisms in a drop of water? Nelia Crele looked around as she left the eddy and saw that her houseboat was but a trifle upon a surface containing hundreds of square miles.
"Say, Terabon, there's a lady down by the slough wants to get to talk to you." "Who ?" "She just dropped in to-night, Nelia Crele! She's into her boat down at the head of the sandbar, facing the switch willows. There's a little gasolene sternwheeler next below her boat." "She's dropped in? All right, boys, much obliged!" They separated.
Nelia Crele had laughed in her heart at Elijah Rasba as he sat there listening to her reading. She knew what she was doing to the mountain parson! She played with his feelings, touched strings of his heart that had never been touched before, teased his eyes with a picture of feminine grace, stirred his mind with the sense of a woman who was bright and who knew so much that he had never known.
The river had made Nelia Crele believe that she was in jeopardy from man; but it was a little hurricane, or, as the river people call them, cyclones, that menaced. Dire as was the confusion and imminent as was the peril, Nelia felt a sense of relief from what would have been harder to bear an attack by men.
"But she wouldn't dare She wouldn't go alone?" Carline choked. "Prob'ly not, a gal favoured like her," Old Crele admitted, without shame. "I 'low if she was a-picking, she'd 'a' had the pick." Cold rage alternated with hot fear in the mind of Gus Carline. If she had gone alone, he might yet overtake her; on the other hand, if she had gone with some man, he was in honour bound to kill that man.
Raunchin's what she needs!" They floated out of the current into the slow reverse eddy, and coming up close to Rasba's fleet, talked back and forth with him till a gleam of light through a window struck him clearly out of the dark. "Hue-e-e!" a shrill woman's voice laughed. "Hit's Rasba, the Riveh Prophet Rasba! Did yo' all git to catch Nelia Crele, Parson?"
"Yo' maw said he was a drinkin' man, an' I said to myse'f, from my own 'sperience.... Yo' set inside yeah, Nelia. I'll go down theh an' talk myse'f. We come near buyin' that bo't yistehd'y. Leave hit to me!" Nelia sat down in the shanty-boat, and waited. She had not long to wait. A tall, rather burly man returned with the woman, who introduced the two; "Mis' Crele, this is Frank Commer.
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