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Updated: May 19, 2025
The little cabin-boat, almost lost to view astern, rapidly gained, and as they ran down Beef Island chute, where the current is slow, they were overtaken. "Sho!" Parson Rasba cried aloud, "hit's Missy Carline, Missy Nelia, shore as I'm borned!" Terabon had known it for half an hour. He had been noticing river details, and he could not fail to recognize that little boat.
It might not have happened in a decade that he locate a fugitive within a hundred miles of Cairo, where the Forks of the Ohio is the jumping-off place of the stream of people from a million square miles. Rasba knew it. The fervour of the prophets was in his heart, and the light of understanding was brightening in his mind.
There she looked into the wan countenance and startled eyes of Jest Prebol. "Hit's Mister Prebol," Rasba said. "I know you have no hard feelings against him, and I know he has none against you, Missy Carline!" An introduction to a contrite river pirate, whom she had shot, for the moment rendered the young woman speechless. Prebol was less at loss for words.
"Why, of I don't know!" Terabon saw a new outlook on the question. "Did they go down?" "Yes, sir, I heard so. I don't care about my boat, typewriter, and duffle; what bothers me is my notebooks. Months of work are in them. If I could get them back!" "What can I do for you?" "I don't know I'm going down stream; it's down below, somewhere." "I need someone to help me," Rasba said.
What the Tug was to the Big Sandy, what the Big Sandy was to the Ohio, the Ohio was to the Mississippi. What he had looked to as the end was but the beginning, and Rasba was lost in the immensity of the river that was a mile wide, thousands of miles long, and unlike anything the mountain preacher had ever dreamed of. If this was the Mississippi, what must the Jordan be?
I 'low we uns'll git thar together, 'cordin' as we die. Look! This gem'men gives me bread an' meat; he quenches my thirst, too. An' I take hit out'n his hands. 'Peahs like he owns this boat!" "Yas, suh," someone affirmed. "Then I shall not shake hit's dust off my feet when I go," Rasba declared, sharply. Buck stared; Rasba did not look at even his shoes; Buck caught his breath.
"Now what the boys goin' to do when they make a haul?" Prebol demanded in great disgust of Parson Rasba. "Fust the planters shot up whiskey boats; then the towns went dry, an' now they closed up Palura's an' shot him daid. Wouldn't hit make yo' sick, Parson! They ain't no fun left nowheres for good sports." Rasba could not make any comment. He was far from sure of his understanding.
Then Rasba cast off his tow lines, ran the launch back to the fleet, and made it fast to the port bow of the big boat, so that it was part of the fleet, with its power available to shove ahead or astern. A big oar on the mission boat's bow and another one out from Prebol's boat insured a short turn if it should be necessary to swing the boats around either way.
Doctor Grell advised that Prebol go down to Memphis, to the hospital, so as to have an X-ray examination, and any special treatment which might be necessary. The wound was healing nicely, but it would be better to make sure. Rasba took counsel of Prebol.
Pads of cotton, and a bandage supplied the final need, and Rasba stretched his patient upon the cabin-boat bunk, then looked out upon the world to which he had drifted. It was still a vast river, coming from the unknown and departing into the unknown. He knew it must be the Mississippi, but he acknowledged it with difficulty. He did not ask the man about the bullet.
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