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So Terabon sat by the stove, writing. He wrote for more than an hour everything he could remember, with the aid of his pencilled midnight notes, about that long run down. With his maps before him he recognized the bends and reaches, the sandbars and islands which had loomed up in the dark.

As Terabon, Carline, and the cotton broker came along, they saw a tall, broad-shouldered, smooth-shaven policeman in uniform standing where the lights showed him up. "Watch your pocketbooks!" the policeman called softly to the patrons. "Watch your change; pickpockets, short-changers, and card-stackers work the unwary here! Keep sober look out for knock-out drops!"

Terabon and Nelia saw that they had given him another pleasure, and Rasba was happy to know that he would always be able to visit such places, and add to his own store of literature, when he had read the books which he had, as he would do, page by page, and word by word, his dictionary at hand. Magazines and newspapers had little interest for him.

"When a lady can handle a river Law like she does, us bad uns are real nice!" Terabon laughed, and the two went into the cabin-boat where Carline lay on the bunk.

"Why can't a man enjoy himself and have a good time, and not and not " "Have a headache the next day?" Terabon finished the sentence with a grave face. "That's it. I'm not what you'd call a hard drinker; I like to take a cocktail, or a whiskey, the same as any man. I like to go out around and see folks, talk to 'em, dance you know, have a good time!" "Everybody does," Terabon admitted.

Terabon saw Palura writhing, twisting, and working his way among the fighting mass. He heard a sharp bark: "Back, boys!" Four or five men stumbled back and two rolled out of the way of the feet of the policeman. It flashed to Terabon what had been done.

Three days she had read that heap of notes in loose-leaf file which Terabon had written. She had read the lines and between the lines, facts and ideas, descriptions and reminiscence, dialogue and history, statistics and appreciation of a thousand river things, all viewpoints, including her own. She knew, now, how wicked she was.

It was a woman, a young woman, with bright eyes, grace, dignity and much curiosity. "I didn't mean to disturb you," she apologized. "I was just wondering what on earth you could be doing!" "Oh, I'm writing making notes " "Yes. But here!" "I'm a newspaper writer," he made his familiar statement. "My name is Lester Terabon. I'm from New York. I came down here from St. Louis to see the Mississippi."

"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.

The traveller waited. He looked across the current to the bluffs now passing up stream, Columbus and all. "I don't suppose you find very much to write about, coming down?" Carline changed his mind. For answer Terabon drew his skiff alongside and reached for his typewriter. As he began to write, he said: "I write everything down big or little. A man can't remember everything, you know."