“Seen you take that first picture out, Steve.” The deep red that had darkened Steve’s face and swelled the veins on his great neck receded now, leaving his china-blue eyes staring out of a white and stricken face.
“I never did! I never did!”
Julie sat up, clutching her wrapper at the throat. She laughed shrilly. “What would he want to steal my picture for! His own wife’s picture. Likely!”
“So nobody in this town’d see it, Julie,” said Windy, mildly. “Listen. Fifty years piloting on the rivers you got to have pretty good eyesight. Mine’s as good to-day as it was time I was twenty. I just stepped down from the texas to warn you I see Pete coming along the levee with Ike Keener. Ike’s the sheriff. He’ll be in here now any minute.”
“Let him,” Andy said, stoutly. “Our license is paid. Sheriff’s as welcome around this boat as anybody. Let him.”
But no one heard him; no one heeded him. A strange and terrible thing was happening. Julie had sprung from her bed. In her white nightgown and her wrapper, her long black hair all tumbled and wild about her face, a stricken and hunted thing, she clung to Steve, and he to her. There came a pounding at the door that led into the show-boat auditorium from the fore deck. Steve’s eyes seemed suddenly to sink far back in his head. His cheek-bones showed gaunt and sharp as Julie’s own. His jaw was set so that a livid ridge stood out on either side like bars of white-hot steel. He loosened Julie’s hold almost roughly. From his pocket he whipped a great clasp-knife and opened its flashing blade. Julie did not scream, but the other women did, shriek on shriek. Captain Andy sprang for him, a mouse attacking a mastodon. Steve shook him off with a fling of his powerful shoulders.
“I’m not going to hurt her, you fool. Leave me be. I know what I’m doing.” The pounding came again, louder and more insistent. “Somebody go down and let him in—but keep him there a minute.”
No one stirred. The pounding ceased. The doors opened. The boots of Ike Keener, the sheriff, clattered down the aisle of the Cotton Blossom.
“Stop those women screeching,” Steve shouted. Then, to Julie, “It won’t hurt much, darling.” With incredible swiftness he seized Julie’s hand in his left one and ran the keen glittering blade of his knife firmly across the tip of her forefinger. A scarlet line followed it. He bent his blond head, pressed his lips to the wound, sucked it greedily. With a little moan Julie fell back on the bed. Steve snapped the blade into its socket, thrust the knife into his pocket. The boots of Sheriff Ike Keener were clattering across the stage now. The white faces clustered in the doorway—the stricken, bewildered, horrified faces—turned from the two within the room to the one approaching it. They made way for this one silently. Even Parthy was dumb. Magnolia clung to her, wide-eyed, uncomprehending, sensing tragedy though she had never before encountered it.
The lapel of his coat flung back, Ike Keener confronted the little cowed group on the stage. A star shone on his left breast. The scene was like a rehearsal of a Cotton Blossom thriller.