But there were sudden voices on the wind, calling here, calling there. Colonel Kenwynton heard his own name, but he did not respond. He only sought to detain his old comrade in his endearing clasp. The younger man was the stronger. Treherne wrested himself away, though not without repeated efforts, seized the paddle, pushed off the dug-out, and in a moment was lost in the gloom, for the moon was down, mists were rising from the low-lying borders of a bayou delta, and the frail craft was invisible on the face of the waters.
Colonel Kenwynton was not devoid of a certain kind of policy. He rallied his composure, realizing that the Captain of the steamboat had been alarmed by his absence on this precarious spot which the sound of his voice had betrayed, and before the emissaries sent out to seek him had reached the old man he had determined on his line of conduct. He maintained a studied reticence, the more easily since Treherne’s presence had not been observed to excite curiosity and he himself was in a state of exhaustion and cold that precluded more than a shivering gasp in reply to questions. For he was determined to take counsel within himself before he indulged in explanations. He said to himself that he could better afford misconstruction of his conduct as some fantastic freak of drunkenness than run the risk of divulging the interests of another man to his possible detriment,—this man, who had so obviously, so appealingly suffered. He steeled himself in this, although he loved the approval, or rather the admiration, of his fellows, and he felt that his position in some sort forfeited it, not being aware how thoroughly established he was as a public favorite, so that, indeed, he could hardly incur reprobation.
“Ain’t the old Colonel game—must have been tight as a drum last night,” the Captain said to the clerk. “He was making the tow-head fairly sing when I heard him, luckily enough.”
Then to the Boots, who was looking from one to the other of the miry shoes into which he had thrust each hand: “Take his clothes and get them dried and pressed and see that you are careful about it. Colonel Kenwynton shall have the best service aboard as long as I have a plank afloat.”
He had no plank afloat now, high and dry as the Cherokee Rose was on the sand-bar, but his meaning was clear, and Colonel Kenwynton’s gear, despite its strenuous experience, seemed improved by this careful handling when once more donned, and he strode out, serene and smiling, into the outer air.
“How the old fellows stand their liquor—a body would think he was never overtaken in his life.”
The Captain possessed the grace of reticence. None of the passengers had any inkling of the incident of the previous night, either as Colonel Kenwynton knew it, or in the interpretation which the Captain had placed upon it.
CHAPTER IV
If the patience, the concentration, the tireless endurance with which Jasper Binnhart awaited the return of the stranger, could have been applied to any object of worthy endeavor commensurate results must have ensued. It was necessarily, even in his own estimation, a fantastic expectation to learn from him aught of value concerning the treasure hidden at Duciehurst during the Civil War. If the stranger really had knowledge of the place of its concealment it was not likely that he would divulge it, since this would require the division of the windfall. But, he argued speciously, the man might need assistance, which probably explained his singular mission to the stranded Cherokee Rose to confer with Colonel Kenwynton. This confirmed the impression of the Berridge family that there was something eccentric, inexplicable about him. What he needed in such an enterprise was not a man of seventy-five, as soft as an old horse turned out to grass, but a master mechanic, such as himself, indeed, a man accustomed to the use of tools, with the dexterity imparted by constant work and the strength of muscles trained to endurance. The Colonel! Why he would be as inefficient as a baby. But perhaps only his advice was desired. Binnhart wished again and again that it had chanced that he could have seen the stranger first. More than once he despondently shook his round bullet head, with its closely cropped black hair,—as sleek as a beaver’s, from his habit of sousing it into the barrel of water where he tempered his steel,—as he sat on one of the steps of the rude flight that led to the door of the semi-aquatic dwelling of the water-rat’s family, and gazed across the darkling river at the orange-tinted lights of the Cherokee Rose, lying high and dry on the bar. It was a pity for Colonel Kenwynton to be let into the secret at all. If the stranger had any right to possess himself of the hidden money he could boldly hire laborers and go to the spot in the open light of day. If his right were complicated or dubious, and this was most likely, or why had it lain so long unasserted, the old Colonel would clamp down on it with both feet. The Colonel had highflown antiquated ideas, unsuited to the world of to-day; Binnhart had heard him speak in public. He talked about honor, and patriotism, and fair-dealing in politics, and such chestnuts, and, although the people applauded, they were secretly laughing at him in their sleeves. No, no! Binnhart shook his head once more. It was a thousand pities to bring old Kenwynton into it at all; nothing he knew was of any value nowadays,—except the Colonel did know how a horse should be shod, and the proper care of the animal’s feet; people said he used to own fine racers in his rich days. If Colonel Kenwynton returned with the stranger there might be trouble. The old man was a hard proposition. He seemed to think himself a Goliath, and would certainly put up a stiff fight on an emergency. “I’d rather see him come back with any three men than the old Colonel,” Binnhart concluded ruefully.
This was the hour of the night when a mist began to rise, and the orange-tinted lights from the steamer’s cabin glimmered faintly through the haze. Binnhart became apprehensive that he might not discern the tiny craft in the midst of the great river, struggling across its intricate braided currents, and thus the stranger return unaware, or perhaps give him the slip altogether. He rose and took his way down the successive terraces to the verge of the water. He must needs have heed not to walk into the river, for silent as the grave it flowed through the deep gorge of its channel, and but for some undiscriminated sense of motion in the dark landscape one might never know it was there.