“And he says he’s a sinner himself,” Nelia repeated, when she returned on board her cabin-boat in the sheltering safety of Wolf Island chute, with Mamie Caope, Parson Rasba, and the other shanty-boaters within a stone’s toss of her.

Till she was among them, among friends she trusted, she had not noticed the incessant strain which she endured down those long, grim river miles. Now she could give way, in the privacy of her boat, to feminine tears and bitterness. Courage she had in plenty, but she had more sensitiveness than courage. She was not yet tuned to the river harmonies.

Something in Rasba’s words, or it was in his voice, or in the quick, full-flood of his glance, touched her senses.

“You see, missy, I’m a sinner myse’f!”

What had he meant? If he had meant that she, too, was a sinner, was that any of his business? Of course, being a parson—she shrugged her shoulders. Her thoughts ran swiftly back to her home that used-to-be. She laughed as she recalled the deprecatory little man who had preached in the church she had occasionally attended. She compared the trim, bird-like perspicuity and wing-flap gestures of Rev. Mr. Beeve with the slow, huge turn and stand-fast of Parson Rasba.

She was glad to escape the Mississippi down this little chute; she was glad to have a phrase to puzzle over instead of the ever-present problem of her own future and her own fate; she was glad that she had drifted in on Mrs. Mame Caope and Jim and Mr. Falteau and Mrs. Dobstan and Parson Rasba, instead of falling among those other kinds of people. 72

Mrs. Caope was an old acquaintance of her mother who had lived all her life on the rivers. She was a better boatman than most, and could pilot a stern-wheel whiskey boat or set hoop nets for fish.

“If I get a man, and he’s mean,” Mrs. Caope had said often, “I shift him. I ’low a lady needs protection up the bank er down the riveh, but I ’low if my cookin’ don’t pay my board, an’ if fish I take out’n my nets ain’t my own, and the boat I live in ain’t mine—well, I’ve drapped two men off’n the stern of my boat to prove hit!”

Mrs. Caope had not changed at all, not in the years Nelia could recall, except to change her name. It was the custom, to ask, perfectly respectfully, what name she might be having now, and Mrs. Mame never took offence, being good natured, and understanding how hard it was to keep track of her matrimonial adventures, episodes of sentiment but without any nonsense.

“Sho!” Mrs. Caope had said once, “I disremember if I couldn’t stand him er he couldn’t stand me!”

Nelia, adrift in her own life, and sure now that she never had really cared very much for Gus Carline, admitted to herself that her husband had been only a step up out of the poverty and misery of her parents’ shack.

“You see, missy, I’m a sinner myse’f!”

Her ears had caught the depths of the pathos of his regret and sorrow, and she pitied him. At the same time her own thoughts were ominous, and her face, regular, bright, vivacious, showed a hardness which was alien to it.

Nelia went over to Mrs. Caope’s for supper, and Parson Rasba was there, having brought in a wild goose which he had shot on Wolf Island while going about his meditations that afternoon. Mrs. Caope had the goose sizzling in the big oven of her coal range—coal from 73 Pittsburgh barges wrecked along the river on bars—and the big supper was sweeter smelling than Rasba ever remembered having waited for.

Mrs. Caope told him to “ask one of them blessin’s if yo’ want, Parson!” and the four bowed their heads.

Jim Caope then fell upon the bird, neck, wings, and legs, and while he carved Mrs. Caope scooped out the dressing, piled up the fluffy biscuits, and handed around the soup tureen full of gravy. Then she chased the sauce with glass jars full of quivering jellies, reaching with one hand to take hot biscuits from the oven while she caught up the six-quart coffee pot with the other.

“I ain’t got no patience with them women that don’t feed their men!” she declared. “About all men want’s a full stomach, anyhow, an’ if you could only git one that wa’n’t lazy, an’ didn’t drink, an’ wasn’t impedent, an’ knowed anything, besides, you’d have something. Ain’t that so, Nelia?”

“Oh, indeed yes,” Nelia cried, from the fullness of her experience, which was far less than that of the hostess.

After they had eaten, they went from the kitchen into the sitting room, where Rasba turned to Nelia.

“You came down the river alone?” he asked.

“Yes,” she admitted.

“I wonder you wouldn’t be scairt up of it—nights, and those lonesome bends?”

“It’s better than some other things.” Nelia shook her head. “Besides, you’ve come alone down the Ohio yourself.”

He looked at her, and Mrs. Caope chuckled.

“But—but you’re a woman!” Rasba exclaimed.

“Suppose a mean man came aboard your boat, and—and tried to rob you,” Nelia asked, level voiced, “what would you do?” 74

“Why, course, I’d—I’d likely stop him.”

“You’d throw him overboard?”

“Well—if hit were clost to the bank an’ he could swim, I mout.”

Nelia and the Caopes laughed aloud, and Rasba joined in the merriment. When the laughter had subsided, Rasba said:

“The reason I was asking, as I came by the River Forks I found a little red boat there with a man on the cabin floor shot through––”

“Dead?” Nelia gasped.

“No, just kind of pricked up a bit, into one shoulder. He said a lady shot him because he ’lowed to land into the same eddy with her.”

“But—where––?” Nelia half-whispered. “Where did he go?”

“Hit were Jest Prebol,” Mrs. Caope said. “You was tellin’ of him, Parson.”

“Hit were Prebol,” Rasba nodded, “an’ he shore needed shooting!”

“Yas, suh. That kind has to be shot some to make ’em behave theirselves,” Mrs Caope exclaimed, sharply. “If it wa’n’t fer ladies shootin’ men onct in awhile, down Old Mississip’, why, ladies couldn’t git to live here a-tall!”

“And women, sometimes, don’t do men any good,” Rasba mused, aloud, “I’ve wondered right smart about hit. You see, a parson circuit rides around, an’ he sees a sight more’n he tells. Lawse, he shore do!”

The two women glared at him, but he was studying his huge hands, first the backs and then the calloused palms. He was really wondering, so the two women glanced at each other, laughing. The idea that probably some men needed protection from women could not help but amuse while it exasperated them. 75

“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. Caope spoke up, tartly, and Nelia looked at her gratefully. “Hit takes a bullet to learn fellers like Jest Prebol—an’ him thinkin’ he’s so smart an’ such a lady killer. I bet he knows theh’s some ladies that’s men killers, too, now. Next time he meets a lady he’ll wait to be invited ’fore he lands into the same eddy with her, even if hit’s a three-mile eddy.”

“Theh’s Mrs. Minah,” Jim Caope suggested.

“Mrs. Minah!” Mrs. Caope exclaimed. “Talk about riveh ladies—theh’s one. She owns Mozart Bend. Seventeen mile of Mississippi River’s her’n, an’ nobody but knows hit, if not to start with, then by the end. She stands theh, at the breech of her rifle, and, ho law, cayn’t she shoot! She’s real respectable, too, cyarful an’ ’cordin’ to law. She’s had seven husbands, four’s daid an’ two’s divorced, an’ one she’s got yet, ’cordin’ to the last I hearn say about it. I tell you, if a lady’s got any self-respect, she’ll git a divorce, an’ she’ll git married ag’in. That’s what I say, with divorces reasonable, like they be, an’ costin’ on’y $17.50 to Mendova, or Memphis, er mos’ anywheres.”

“How long—how long does it take?” Nelia asked, eagerly.

“Why, hardly no time at all. You jes’ go theh, an’ the lawyer he takes all he wants to know, an’ he says come ag’in, an’ next day, er the next trip, why, theh’s yo’ papers, an’ all for $17.50. Seems like they’s got special reg’lations for us shanty-boaters.”

“I’m glad to know about that,” Nelia said. “I thought—I never knew much about—about divorces. 76 I thought there was a lot of—of rigmarole and testimony and court business.”

“Nope! I tell yo’, some of them Mendova lawyers is slick an’ ’commodatin’. Why, one time I was in an awful hurry, landin’ in ’long of the upper ferry, an’ I went up town, an’ seen the lawyer, an’ told him right how I was fixed. Les’ see, that wa—um-m––Oh, I ’member now, Jasper Hill. I’d married him up the line, I disremember—anyhow, ’fore I’d drapped down to Cairo, I knowed he’d neveh do, nohow, so I left him up the bank between Columbus an’ Hickman—law me, how he squawked! Down by Tiptonville, where I’d landed, they was a real nice feller, Mr. Dickman. Well, we kind of co’ted along down, one place an anotheh, an’ he wanted to git married. I told how hit was, that I wasn’t ’vorced, an’ so on, but if he meant business, we’d drap into Mendova, which we done. He wanted to pay for the divorce, but I’m independent thataway. I think a lady ought to pay for her own ’vorces, so I done hit, an’ I was divorced at 3 o’clock, married right next door into the Justice’s, an’ we drapped out an’ down the riveh onto our honeymoon. Mr. Dickman was a real gentleman, but, somehow, he couldn’t stand the riveh. It sort of give him the malary, an’ he got to thinking about salmon fishin’ so he went to the Columbia. We parted real good friends, but the Mississippi’s good ’nough for me, yes, indeed. I kind of feel zif I knowed hit, an’ hit’s real homelike.”

“It is lovely down here,” Nelia remarked. “Everything is so kind of—kind of free and easy. But wasn’t it dreadful—I mean the first time—the first divorce, Mamie?”

“Course, yes, course,” Mrs. Caope admitted, slowly, with a frown, “I neveh will forget mine. I’d shifted my man, an’ I was right down to cornmeal an’ bacon. 77 Then a real nice feller come along, Mr. Darlet. I had to take my choice between a divorce an’ a new weddin’ dress, an’ I tell you hit were real solemocholy fer me decidin’ between an’ betwixt. You know how young gals are, settin’ a lot by dresses an’ how they look, an’ so on. Young gals ain’ got much but looks, anyhow. Time a lady gits experience, she don’t set so much store by looks, an’ she don’t have to, nohow. Well, theh I was, with a nice man, an’ if I didn’t divorce that first scoundrel where’d I be? So I let the dress go, an’ mebby you’ll b’lieve hit, an’ mebby yo’ won’t, but I had $18.97, an’ I paid my $17.50 real reg’lar, an’ I had jest what was left, $1.47, an’ me ready to bust out crying, feelin’ so mean about marryin’ into an old walking skirt.

“I was all alone, an’ I had a good notion to run down the back way, an’ trip off down the riveh without no man, I felt so ’shamed. An’ theh, right on the sidewalk, was a wad of bills, $99 to a penny. My lan’! I wropped my hand around hit, an’ yo’ should of seen Mr. Darlet when he seen me come walking down, new hat, new dress, new shoes, new silk stockings—the whole business new. I wa’n’t such a bad-lookin’ gal, afteh all. That taught me a lesson. I’ve always be’n real savin’ sinct then, an’ I ain’t be’n ketched sinct with the choice to make of a ’vorce er a weddin’ dress. No, indeed, not me!”

Parson Rasba looked at her, and Nelia, her eyes twinkling, looked at the Parson. Nelia could understand the feelings in all their minds. She had her own viewpoint, too, which was exceedingly different from those of the others. The strain of weeks of questioning, weeks of mental suffering, was relieved by the river woman’s serious statement and Parson Rasba’s look of bewilderment at the kaleidoscopic matrimonial 78 adventuring. At the same time, his wonder and Mrs. Caope’s unconscious statement stirred up in her thoughts a new questioning.

When Nelia returned on board her boat, and sat in its cabin, a freed woman, she very calmly reckoned up the advantages of Mrs. Caope’s standards. Then seeing that it was after midnight, and that only the stars shone in that narrow, wooded chute, she felt she wanted to go out into the wide river again, to go where she was not shut in. She cast off her lines and noiselessly floated out and down the slow current.

She saw Parson Rasba’s boat move out into the current behind her and drift along in the soft, autumn night. Her first thought was one of indignation, but when a little later they emerged into the broad river current and she felt the solitude of the interminable surface, her mood changed.

What the big, quizzical mountain parson had in mind she did not know. It was possible that he was a very bad man, indeed. She could not help but laugh under her breath at his bewilderment regarding Mrs. Caope, which she felt was a genuine expression of his real feelings. At the same time, whatever his motive in following her, whether it was to protect her—which she could almost believe—or to court her, which was not at all unlikely, or whether he had a baser design, she did not know, but she felt neither worry nor fear.

“I don’t care,” she shook her head, defiantly, “I like him!”