For a minute Elijah Rasba, as the Mississippi revealed itself to him, contemplated a greater field for service than he had ever dreamed of. Then, humbled in his pride at the thought of great success, he felt that it could not be; for such an opportunity an Apostle was needed, and Rasba’s cheeks warmed with shame at the realization of the vanity in his momentary thought.

He was grateful for the privilege of seeing the panorama that unrolled and unfolded before his eyes with the same slow dignity with which the great storm clouds boiled up from the long backs of the mountains of his own homeland. He missed the elevations, the clustered wildernesses, and ledges of stone against a limited sky, but in their places he saw the pale heavens in a dome that was uninterrupted from horizon to horizon. There seemed to be hardly any earth commensurate with the sky, and the river seemed to be flowing between bounds so low and insignificant that he felt as though it might break through one side or the other and fall into the chaos beyond the brim of the world.

Instinctively he removed his hat in this Cathedral. Familiar from childhood with mountains and deep valleys, the sense of power and motion in the river appealed to him as the ocean might have done. He looked about him with curiosity and inquiry. He felt as though there must be some special meaning for him in that immediate moment, and it was a long time before he could quite believe that this thing which he witnessed had continued far back beyond the memory of men, and would continue into the unquestionable future.

He floated down stream from bend to bend, carried 51 along as easily as in the full run of time. He looked over vast reaches, and hardly recognized other houseboats, tucked in holes along the banks, as craft like his own. The clusters of houses on points of low ridges did net strike him as veritable villages, but places akin to those of fairyland.

All the rest of the day he dropped on down, not knowing which side he should land against, and filled with doubts as to where his duty lay. Once he caught up his big oars and began to row toward a number of little shanty-boats moored against a sandbar, close down to a wooded bank, only to find that the river current carried him away despite his most muscular endeavours, so he accepted it as a sign that he should not land there.

For a time Rasba thought that perhaps he had better just let the river carry him whither it would, but upon reflection he remembered what an old raftsman, who had run strands of logs down Clinch and Holston, told him about the nature of rivers:

“Come a falling tide, an’ she drags along the banks and all that’s afloat keeps in the middle; but come a fresh an’ a risin’ tide, an’ the hoist of the water is in the mid-stream, and what’s runnin’ rolls off to one side or the other, an’ jams up into the drift piles.”

The philosophy of that was, for this occasion, that if Old Mississip’ was falling, Elijah Rasba might never get ashore, not in all the rest of his born days, unless he stirred his boots. So catching up his sweep handles he began to push a long stroke toward the west bank, and his boat began to move on the river surface. Under the two corners of his square bow appeared little swirls and tiny ripples as he approached the bank and drifted down in the edge of the current looking for a place to land. 52

Before he knew it, a big patch of woods grew up behind him, and when he felt the current under the boat slacken he discovered that he had run out of the Mississippi River and was in a narrow waterway no larger than Tug Fork.

“Where all mout I be?” he gasped, in wonderment.

He saw three houseboats just below him, moored against a sandbar, with hoop nets drying near by, blue smoke curling out of tin pipes, and two or three people standing by to look at the stranger.

He rowed ashore and carried out a big roped stone, which he used as anchor; then he walked down the bar toward the man who watched his approach with interest.

“I am Elijah Rasba,” he greeted him. “I come down out of Tug River; I am looking for Jock Drones; he’s down thisaway, somewheres; can yo’ all tell me whichaway is the Mississippi River?”

“I don’t know him,” the fisherman shook his head. “But this yeah is Wolf Island Chute; the current caught you off of Columbus bluffs, and you drifted in yeah; jes’ keep a-floatin’ an’ d’rectly you’ll see Old Mississip’ down thataway.”

“It’s near night,” Rasba remarked, looking at the sun through the trees. “I’m a stranger down thisaway; mout I get to stay theh?”

“Yo’ can land anywhere’s,” the man said. “No man can stop you all!”

“But a woman mout!” Rasba exclaimed, with sudden humour. “Yistehd’y evenin’, up yonway, by the Ohio River, I found a man shot through into his shanty-boat. He said he ’lowed to land along of the same eddy with a woman, an’ she shot him almost daid!”

“Ho law!” the fisherman cried, and another man and three or four women drew near to hear the rest of the narrative. “How come hit?” 53

Rasba stood there talking to them, a speaker to an audience. He told of his floating down into the Mississippi, and of his surprise at finding the river so large, so without end. He said he kind of wanted to ask the way of a shanty-boat, for a poor sinner must needs inquire of those he finds in the wilderness, and he heard a groan and a weak cry for help.

“I cyard for him, and he thanked me kindly; he said a woman had shot him when he was trying to be friendly; a pretty woman, young and alone. Co’rse, I washed his wound and I linimented it, and I cut the bullet out of his back; law me, but that man swore! Come night, an’ he heard say I was a parson, he apologized because he cursed, and this mo’nin’ he’d done lit out, yas, suh! Neveh no good-bye. Scairt, likely, hearin’ me pray theh because I needed he’p, an’ ’count of me being glad of the chanct to he’p any man in trouble.”

“Sho! Who all mout that man be, Parson?”

“He said his name were Jest Prebol––”

“Ho law! Somebody done plugged Jest Prebol!” one of the women cried out, laughing. “That scoundrel’s be’n layin’ off to git shot this long time, an’ so he’s got hit. I bet he won’t think he’s so winnin’ of purty women no more! He’s bad, that man, gamblin’ an’ shootin’ craps an’ workin’ the banks. Served him right, yes, indeedy. But he’d shore hate to know a parson hearn him cussin’ an’ swearin’ around. Hit don’t bring a gambler any luck, bein’ heard swearin’, no.”

“Nor if any one else hears him; not if he thinks swearin’ in hisn’s heart!” Rasba shook his head gravely. “How come hit yo’ know that man?”

“He’s used down this riveh ten-fifteen years; besides, he married my sister what’s Mrs. Dollis now. Hit were a long time ago, though, ’fore anybody knowed 54 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.” 55

“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 bank, or towhead, or even of a steamboat. In mid-stream there is little need for apprehension, but when the current carries one down into a caving bend and close to overhanging trees or along the edges of short, boiling eddies, it is time to get out and look for snags and jeopardies.

Seeing the group of people on the sandbar, the journeyer, who was a woman, took the sweeps of her boat and began to work over to them.

“Hit handles nice, that bo’t!” one of the fishermen said. “Pulls jes’ like a skift. Wonder who that woman is?”

“I’ve seen her some’rs,” the powerful, angular woman, Mrs. Cooke, said after a time. “Them’s swell clothes she’s got on. She’s all alone, too, an’ what a lady travels alone down yeah for I don’t know. She’s purty enough to have a husband, I bet, if she wants one.”

“Looks like one of them Pittsburgh er Cincinnati women,” Jim Caope declared. 56

“No.” Mrs. Caope shook her head. “She’s off’n the riveh. Leastwise, she handles that bo’t reg’lar. I cayn’t git to see her face, but I seen her some’rs, I bet. I can tell a man by hisns walk half a mile.”

In surprise she stared at the boat as it came nearer, and then walked down to the edge of the bar to greet the newcomer.

“Why, I jes’ knowed I’d seen yo’ somers! How’s yer maw?” she greeted. “Ho law! An’ yo’s come tripping down Ole Mississip’! I ’clare, now, I’d seen yo’, an’ I knowed hit, an’ hyar yo’ be, Nelia Crele. Did yo’ git shut of that up-the-bank feller yo’ married, Nelia?”

“I’m alone,” the girl laughed, her gaze turning to look at the others, who stood watching.

“If yo’ git a good man,” Mrs. Caope philosophized, “hang on to him. Don’t let him git away. But if yo’ git somebody that’s shif’less an’ no ’count, chuck him ovehbo’d. That’s what I b’lieve in. Well, I declare! Hand me that line an’ I’ll tie yo’ to them stakes. Betteh throw the stern anchor over, fo’ this yeah’s a shallows, an’ the riveh’s eddyin’, an’ if hit don’t go up hit’ll go down, an’––”

“Theh’s a head rise coming out the Ohio,” someone said. “Yo’ won’t need no anchor over the stern!”

“Sho! I’m glad to see yo’!” Mrs. Caope cried, wrapping her arms around the young woman as she stepped down to the sand, and kissing her. “How is yo’ maw?”

“Very well, indeed!” Nelia laughed, clinging to the big river woman’s hand. “I’m so glad to find someone I know!”

“You’ll know us all d’rectly. Hyar’s my man, Mr. Caope—real nice feller, too, if I do say hit—an’ hyar’s Mrs. Dobstan an’ her two darters, an’ this is Mr. 57 Falteau, who’s French and married May, there, an’ this feller—say, mister, what is yo’ name?”

“Rasba, Elijah Rasba.”

“Mr. Rasba, he’s a parson, out’n the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy, comin’ down. Miss Nelia Crele, suh. I disremember the name of that feller yo’ married, Nelia.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Nelia turned to the mountain man, her face flushing. “A preacher down this river?”

“I’m looking for a man,” Rasba replied, gazing at her, “the son of a widow woman, and she’s afraid for him. She’s afraid he’ll go wrong.”

“And you came clear down here to look for him—a thousand, two thousand miles?” she continued, quickly.

“I had nothing else to do—but that!” he shook his head. “You see, missy, I’m a sinner myse’f!”

He turned and walked away with bowed head. They all watched him with quick comprehension and real sympathy.