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Gaily she fed Prebol the delicate things which he was permitted to eat, then sat down with Rasba, her face to the light, and Prebol could watch her bantering, teasing, teaching Parson Rasba things he had never known he lacked. After supper she brought over a basket full of books, twenty volumes.
The idea that probably some men needed protection from women could not help but amuse while it exasperated them. "Prebol said," Rasba continued, "hit were a pretty woman, young an' alone. 'How'd I know? he asked. 'How'd I know she were a spit-fire an' mean, theh all alone into a lonesome bend? How'd I know?" "I 'low he shore found out," Mrs.
"Jes' a mountang parson, lookin' for one po'r man, low enough fo' me to he'p, maybe." Prebol made no reply or comment. His mind was grappling with a fact and a condition. He could not tell what he thought. He remembered with some worriment, that he had cursed under the pain of the dressing of the wound. He knew that it never brought any man good luck to swear within ear-range of any parson.
Her pistol was sign of her bravado, and her shots were the indication of her desperation. The memory of the wan face of Prebol brought down by her bullet was now an accusation, not a pride. Old Mississip' had received her gently in her most furious mood, but now that immense, active calm of vast power was working on the untamed soul which she owned.
The doctor said Prebol ought to go into the hospital for at least a week, and Terabon found Prebol's pirate friends, hidden up the slough on their boat, not venturing to go out except at night. They took the little red shanty-boat up the slough, and Prebol went to the hospital.
The pathetic courage of the woman who had shot Prebol appealed to him. The wounded man, wicked beyond measure, and the woman assailed, he realized, were like hundreds of other men and women whose shanty-boats he had seen down the Ohio River, and which lurked in bends and reaches on both sides of the Mississippi. "Give thyself no rest!" he read, and he obeyed.
Day was growing; from end to end of that vast, flowing sheet of water thousands upon thousands of old river people were taking a look at the Mississippi. Rasba carried a good broth over to Prebol for breakfast, and then returned to his cabin, having made Prebol comfortable and put a dozen of the wonderful books within his reach.
When he asked himself: "If this is the Mississippi, what must the Jordan be?" he found a perspective. Sitting there beside the wounded Jest Prebol, by the light of a big table lamp, he "wrestled" with his Bible the obscurities of which had long tormented his ignorance and baffled his mental bondage. The noises of the witches' hours were in the air.
When in the full tide of the sunshine he awakened, he went about his menial tasks, attending Prebol, cleaning out the boats, shaking up the beds, hanging the bedclothes to air in the sun, and getting breakfast. On Prebol's suggestion he moved the fleet of boats out into the eddy, for the river was falling and they might ground.
Prebol told how river rats sometimes stole hogs or cattle for food, and Rasba learned for the first time of organized piracy, of river men who were banded together for stealing what they could, raiding river towns, attacking "sports," tripping the river, and even more desperate enterprises.
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