LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

on the bow of the boat, sitting there as she had been sitting when she drifted out of the Ohio. She at last observed that the boat astern was coming nearer, for she could see it plainly with her unassisted eyes. As night drew near, the boat drew up within a mile, and Delia, watching both shores ahead, sought for a little shantyboat town where she could land in among people.

      She had passed Hickman, and the river had turned wild below there. Woods grew to the very bank of the river, so that midstream was open, but her course down stream crowded into a bend that grew ever gloomier and darker, and the shantyboats which she discovered under the high, caving banks were in singles. She knew better than to run in beside a lone shantyboat!

      A dread, which is a part of the Mississippi's training of the soul, filled her thoughts. With sunset near, a strange little chill swept over the river. Real danger menaced! The gasolene boat drawing down nearer ​and nearer, after holding aloof all day long—Delia realized that her hour of trial was at hand.

      "I knew it!" she whispered to herself, "I expected this. Now I mustn't flinch!"

      A long, straight reach ran for miles down ahead of her. With her glasses she searched both shores, and saw only a scattered shantyboat or two. It was a wide, wild river, and wherever she ran in, she would be dependent upon her own resources. She could expect no help in that lonesome reach of woods and sandbars.

      She dared not float in the night. There were terrors in midstream which she dreaded more than the questionable and gloomy bank. So she landed at the foot of a long, narrow sandbar, in a wide, almost currentless eddy. She made fast with her bow lines to the limbs of a snag that lay half in and half out of the water where her bow bumped against them.

      She prepared supper, though she felt that she never would be able to eat another meal in the coming of night. As she cooked, the gasolene cruiser swung by under power, cut across into the eddy below her, and then floated up toward her boat in the slow eddy current.

      In the pit sat a man whom she could see plainly now. He was busied getting his own supper in the galley on a gasolene stove. She watched him from ​behind her windows; nothing in his appearance or motions or manœuvres added to her confidence.

      The boat landed against the bank only fifty yards distant. The man threw an anchor over the stern and then ran a bow line up the bank to a stake which he drove. Watching him nervously, she saw that this was an excellent thing, and resolved herself to remember it, and moor her own craft in that way. It would serve better than to have a spar plank against the bank to keep the boat from pounding.

      An old river man, the gasolene boat navigator was quickly in shape for the night. The dark had come. The reach was as lonesome as any from Cairo to Mendova. The last Delia saw of him in the fading twilight that followed sunset was his side-long glances in the direction of her boat.

      She lighted her lamp and after a little thinking she left the doors unlocked. She felt that the attack would come either from the bow or stern, and she thought that she would be able to escape if the opposite door was not fastened.

      She waited, growing calm the while. The actual presence of the great danger for a river woman, especially for such a pretty girl as she was, seemed to calm her. She sat in the low rocking chair which she had brought for comfort, where she could read, mend, and just sit.

      ​Sure enough, she heard footsteps along the sloping bank and felt the sagging of the boat as the man walked up the gangplank and stepped upon the bow of her little houseboat.

      "Hello, girlee!" he hailed, pushing open the door, and stepping into the room.

      She crouched in the low chair, her hands against her bosom. She glared up into his eyes with an expression which bade him pause, but he did not heed it.

      "Hello, girlee!" he repeated, turning to close the door. He walked across the room toward another chair, adding, "I thought I'd come visiting, knowing you wouldn't mind!"

      As he reached to the back of the other chair she drew her automatic pistol and fired.

      "Agrrah!" he grunted, and then with a cry he backed away, saying: "You've shot me! Damn you, you've shot me!"

      He turned, and seeing the stern door swinging partly open, he dashed toward it, flung it wide, and leaped from the deck. After the splash she heard him floundering away from the boat.

      She stood surprised by what she had done. It was unbelievable, incredible. She had been attacked by a man, and she had driven him from her! She had not been obliged to flee from him!

      ​"Why, it was easy," she said to herself. "All I did was just—shoot!"

      She patted the automatic pistol as though it had been a glove or a scarf. She let the cocked hammer down, and put another cartridge into the case, to take the place of the one she had fired.

      "Is that all there is to it?" she asked herself, and then she laughed lightly and aloud.

      The secret of Old Mississipp' was hers! She had discovered it, and she laughed with delight at the discovery she had made. There was nothing to it but keep her mouth closed and shoot—shoot quick and straight!

      She locked the doors now and sat down to think it all over. She tried to read, but reading was less exciting, less exacting, less true than just thinking. All the romances of the world, all the news items, all the learned essays were as nothing compared to the unmatched adventure through which she had gone that night.

      She had saved herself from that visitor who waited to call in the dark. She gave no thought to the question of what had become of him. That was immaterial. Nothing had happened to her; that was the idea uppermost in her mind.

      She sat there, with the automatic pistol in her lap, stroking it with a rare tenderness and affection.

      ​"My dear sweet!" she called it, and then as she found new ideas, she gave it the appellation so familiar down Old Mississip': "This is law! This is law and I administer it!"

      Delia looked into the mirror which hung against the cabin wall. She saw her cheeks were a little flattened, and her colour was dulled, but the fire in her eyes was of a different kind than any she had ever seen in them before. It was a cold, grim fire. It seemed to her as though all the lightness and gaiety had departed from her heart for ever more. Yet she was not dissatisfied. Far from it!

      Never was she so perfectly certain that she was right, and that she had done well as at this moment when she stood any man's equal in any man's game.

      She could not think of resting, of trying to go to sleep. She had too much on her mind to let go in stupid repose and somnolence. She had made the greatest discovery in the world. A man had declared:

      "Damn you! You've shot me!" and then had turned and fled from her.

      Sweeter words no man had ever addressed to a woman, she thought, repeating them over and over again. How silly, how uninteresting, how utterly inconsequential were the countless things other men had addressed to her, compared to that choking compliment by that strange and desperate river man, ​who had damned her and then fled staggering from her—hard hit and preferring the open door to the river rather than approach her, even to get to the river bank.

      She looked at herself in the mirror, and remembered the look on the faces of the river women whom she had seen up the river the previous night, women whom she had envied, even to their colourless skins and grim, knowing eyes. Something about those women stirred her deeply. They possessed so many things that a young and pretty girl, tripping down Old Mississip' for the first time, could not possess. There was a poise, an independence, a certain erectness which Delia wondered if she would ever possess.

      She was startled with delight when she saw in her own countenance that same expression now. It had never been in her eyes and face before. She had always felt hunted, and she had always been hunted—but now she was neither hunted nor afraid. She had met a man on his own grounds and driven him reeling backward, cursing, whipped, and glad to escape into the coiling river if only thereby he could find his way from her presence!

      A

Скачать книгу