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Updated: May 19, 2025
Wa'n't I tearin' an' rearin'! Well, I hoofed hit down to Columbus, an' I bought me a skift, count of me always havin' some money saved up." "I bet Vicksburg's a hundred mile!" Rasba mused. "A hundred mile!" the woman said with a guffaw. "Hit's six hundred an' sixty-three miles from Cairo to Vicksburg, yes, indeed. A hundred mile! I made hit in ten days, stoppin' along. I ketched it theh."
"Hit's easy to git shut of sin, away long in the beginnin'," Rasba bit his words out, "but when yo' git a long ways down into hit Ho law!" Prebol started, caught by surprise. Then both laughed together.
Dazed by the access of fortune, Rasba spent the mid-afternoon learning to run the 28-foot gasolene launch which was used to tow the big houseboat which would make such a wonderful floating church. It was a big boat only a little more than two years old. Buck had made it himself, on the Upper Mississippi, for a gambling boat.
He went out on the deck and closed the door on the light behind him; at first he could see nothing but black night. A little later he discovered boats coming down the river, eight or nine gleaming windows, and a swinging light hung on a flag staff or shanty-boat mast. As they drew nearer, someone shouted across the night: "Goo-o-o-d wa-a-a-ter thar?" "Ya-s-su-uh!" Rasba called back.
Terabon, remembering what he feared was irrevocably lost, knew that he had escaped disaster, and that the pile of notes which he had made only to be deprived of them were after all of less importance than that he should have suffered the deep emotion of seeing so much of his toil and time vanish. Here it was again Rasba might well wonder at that gathering and hoarding of trifles.
Prebol said, warningly, after a time: "Betteh hit that sweep a lick, Parson, she's a-swingin' in onto that bar p'int." A few leisurely strokes, the boats drifted away into deep water, and Rasba expressed his admiration. "Sho, Prebol! Yo' seen that bar a mile up. We'd run down onto hit." "Yas, suh," the wounded man grinned.
Rasba asked her to read to them after they had cleared up the dishes, and she took down the familiar volumes and read. Rasba sat with his eyes closed, listening. Terabon watched her face. She seemed to choose the pages at random, and read haphazardly, but it was all delight and all poetry.
Whatever Rasba meant, whatever the other listeners understood, Buck felt and broke beneath those statements which brought to him things that he never had known before. "He'll not shake the dust of this gambling dive from his feet!" Buck choked under his breath. "And this is how far down I've got!"
"Likely yo' didn't sleep well," Prebol suggested. "A man cayn't sleep days if he ain't used to hit." "Sleep days?" Rasba looked wildly about him. "Sho! When did I git to sleep, why, I ain't slept I Lawse!" Prebol laughed aloud. "Yo' see, Parson, yo' all cayn't set up all night with a pretty gal an' not sleep hit off. Yo' shore'll git tired, sportin' aroun'." "Sho!"
You have shown yourself to be a mere soak, a creature of appetite and vice, and with no redeeming mental traits whatever. I hate you, and worse yet, I despise you. Get a divorce get another woman the widow is about your calibre. But, I give you fair warning, leave me alone. I'm sick of men. Nelia. Elijah Rasba stalked homeward from the still in the dark, grimly and expectantly erect.
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