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It would have to be a pretty small individual who could force his way through that window; and yet Thad's fears induced him to observe it with considerable apprehension. But the night passed without any alarm. If strangers landed on the deck of the shanty-boat while the young owners slept, they failed to make their presence known. Morning came at last.
If it was an old river man, the boat would drop into some little eddy at Caruthersville or down below; but a stranger on the river would likely shoot across into the gamblers' eddy tempted, perhaps, by the three boats already there. The boat drew swiftly near, and as it ran down, the navigator rowed to make the shanty-boat eddy.
At midnight, the heavens cleared, with a cold north wind; the early morning atmosphere was nipping, and we were glad of the shelter of the tent during breakfast. The river fell eight inches during the night, and on either bank is a muddy strip, which will rapidly widen as the water goes down. Below us, twenty rods or so, moored to the boulder-strewn shore, was a shanty-boat.
Menard always did have strange clients, and it was nothing new to see a shanty-boat land in and some man or woman walk up to his corner office and sit down to tell him in legal confidences things more interesting to know than any one not of his curiosity and sympathy would ever dream.
She had gone to him as naturally as she would have gone to a decent father or a wise mother. She took from him his neatly written receipt, but with the feeling that it was superfluous. In a little while she returned to the shanty-boat and dropped out of the eddy on her way down the river.
"A purty woman, livin' alone on this riveh. Do many do that?" "Riveh ladies all do, sometimes. I tripped from Cairo to Vicksburg into a skift once," a tall, angular woman said. "My man that use to be had stoled the shanty-boat what I'd bought an' paid for with my own money. I went up the bank at Columbus Hickories, gettin' nuts; I come back, an' my boat was gone.
Doss went to the smaller hotel with these things and registered. He walked down to the river in the morning and noticed that the third shanty-boat had dropped out into the river during the night, in spite of the storm that was blowing up. He went down and ate breakfast with Carline, and the two went up and got Doss's outfit at the hotel.
Add to these the luxury of plenty of snuff with which to rub her dainty gums, with the promise of tobacco enough to keep her pipe always full, and it will be hard to find among this class a fair one with sufficient strength of mind to resist such an offer; so she promises to keep house for him as long as the shanty-boat holds together. Her embarkation is characteristic.
I thote ev'ry feller on th' river knew thet yere why, ol' Hawkins, his wife's brother's buried in Alton to-day, 'n' th' neighbors done gwine t' th' fun'ral. Whar your shanty-boat been beached, thet ye ain' heared thet yere?" As the sun neared the horizon, we tried other places below, with no better success; and two miles above Alton, Ind.
An hour before sunset, while skirting the Indiana shore, I passed a little village called Batesville, and soon after came to the mouth of a crooked creek, out of which, borne on the flood of a freshet, came a long, narrow line of drift stuff. Just within the mouth of the creek, in a deep indenture of the high bank, a shanty-boat was snugly lashed to the trees.
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