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Updated: May 25, 2025
And the small craft of his brain suddenly awakened coolly above his heat. Why, yes! Why hadn't he thought of it? He swung the stubby nose of the Marie more easterly in the hot, windless dusk. After a while the black deckhand looked questioningly up at the master. "We're takin' round," Tedge grunted, "outside Au Fer!" The black stretched on the cattle-pen frame.
Tedge had been setting himself for what he knew he should do. The smaller man had his jaw turned as he stared at the suffering brutes. And Tedge's mighty fist struck him full on the temple. The master leaned over the low rail to watch quietly. The man who wished to save the cattle was there among them.
"Yeh'll not make it. Better keep up the port shore. I cain't see nothin' but lilies east'ard worlds o'flowers comin' with the crevasse water behind 'em." He dipped a finger to the water, tasted of it, and grumbled on: "It ain't hardly salt, the big rivers are pourin' such a flood out o' the swamps. Worlds o' flowers comin' out the passes " "Damn the flowers!" Tedge arose, shaking his fist at them.
He opened his eyes to see a necklace of opalescent jewels gathering about his neck; he tore at it and the phosphorescent water gleamed all about him with feathery pendants. And when his head thrust above water, the moment's respite had allowed the skiff to straggle beyond his reach. Tedge shouted savagely and lunged again and about his legs came the soft clasp of the drifting hyacinth roots.
Tedge was a master-hand among the reefs and shoals, even if the flappaddle Marie had no business outside. But the sea was nothing but a star-set velvet ribbon on which she crawled like a dirty insect. And no man questioned Tedge's will. Only, an hour later, the engineman came up and forward to stare into the faster-flowing water. Even now he pointed to a hyacinth clump. "Yeh!" the master growled.
He would beat them deep water was here in the pass, and he would swim mightily far beneath the trailing roots he would find the man with the boat yet and hurl him to die in the hyacinth bloom. He opened his eyes in the deep, clear water and exulted. He, Tedge, had outwitted the bannered argosies. With bursting lungs he charged off across the current, thinking swiftly, coolly, now of the escape.
A little flurry of sparks drove over the spot he fell upon, and then a maddened surge of gaunt steers. Tedge wondered if he should go finish the job. No; there was little use. He had crashed his fist into the face of a shrimp-seine hauler once, and the fellow's neck had shifted on his spine and once he had maced a woman up-river in a shantyboat drinking bout Tedge had got away both times.
He rolled over the bow, knee-deep in the warm inlet water, and dragged the skiff through the shoals. Crump jammed an oar in the sand; and warping the headline to this, the three trudged on to the white dry ridge. Tedge flung himself by the first stubby grass clump. "Clean beat," he muttered. "By day we'll pass 'em.
Then he snarled at Crump to reverse the motor. Tedge would retreat again! "I'll drive the boat clean around Southwest Pass to get shut of 'em! No feed, huh, for these cows! They'll feed sharks, they will! Huh, Mr. Cowman, the blisterin' lilies cost me five hundred dollars already!"
Rogers tried to turn to the oar athwart, and awkwardly he stumbled. The oar seemed like a roll of thunder when it struck the gunwale. And instantly a hoarse shout arose behind him. Tedge's voice Tedge had not slept well. The gaunt cattle burning or choking in the salt tide, or perhaps the lilies of Bayou Boeuf anyhow, he was up with a cry and dashing for the skiff. In a moment Rogers saw him.
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