nowed he wa'n't no good. I bet we hearn yo' was comin',
Parson. Whiskey Williams said they was a Hallelujah Singer comin' down
the Ohio--said he could hear him a mile. I bet yo' sing out loud
sometimes?"

"Hit's so," Rasba admitted. "I sung right smart comin' down the Ohio.
Seems like I jest wanted to sing, like birds in the posey time."

"Prebol shore should git to a doctor, shot up thataway. He didn't say
which lady shot him, Parson?" a woman asked.

"No; jes' a lady into an eddy into a lonesome bend." Rasba shook his
head. "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. 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."

"You found yo' man?"

"Shucks! Hit wa'n't the man I wanted, hit were my boat--a nice, reg'lar
pine an' oak-frame boat. I bet me I chucked him ovehbo'd, an' towed back
up to Memphis. Hit were a good $300 bo't, sports built, an' hits on the
riveh yet--Dart Mitto's got hit, junkin'. You'll see him down by
Arkansaw Old Mouth if yo's trippin' right down."

"I expect to," Rasba replied, doubtfully. Never in his life before had
he talked in terms of hundreds of miles, cities, and far rivers,

"Yo'll know that boat; he's went an' painted hit a sickly yeller, like a
railroad station. I hate yeller! Gimme a nice light blue or a right
bright green."

"Hyar comes anotheh bo't!" one of the men remarked, and all turned to
look up the chute, where a little cabin-boat had drifted into sight.

No one was on deck, and it was apparent that the Columbus banks had
shunted the craft clear across the river and down the chute, just as
Rasba himself had been carried. The shadow of the trees on the west side
of the chute fell across the boat and immediately brought the tripper
out of the cabin.

A shadow is a warning on wide rivers. It tells of the nearness of a