Power steered toward the left bank, skirted it a little way, and ran in at a place where there seemed to be high and dry land. They scrambled ashore silently, with a sense of being checked. Two of the men groped for wood and lighted a smudge to keep off the mosquitoes. Tom sat down humped at the foot of a tree, his chin almost on his knees.
Lockwood was tired, hungry, overstrung, but he felt no need of either sleep or rest. He walked up and down in the darkness for some time, smoking intermittently, anxious only for light that they might go ahead. Flashes from his past misery and hatred passed over him, mixing feverishly with his visions of the future. He remembered the wonderful look Louise had given him; he remembered Hanna’s exultant, vindictive face. Both filled him with the same passion of action. He was boiling with exultation and vindictiveness himself.
“What was that you was sayin’ about havin’ a feud with Hanna up North?” Tom asked him suddenly. “Seems like he swindled you.”
“Swindled? He cleaned me out of everything I had in the world!” Lockwood cried. “It wasn’t a feud. I’ve just been trailing him to kill him. Hanna said I was under a false name, but it was only a guess. He didn’t know who I was.”
He poured out the whole story in passionate excitement, concealing nothing. The men came up from the smudge to listen. He did not care now who heard it. It was a relief to get the black flood off his heart. His audience listened in grave silence. They knew what blood-quarrels meant.
“Well, your time’s comin’ right close now to git him,” said Tom. “Seems like Hanna has done us all, but I reckon he’s done you wuss’n anybody. We’ve got to git Blue Bob, too. I cain’t think why young Jackson never told me that Bob was worryin’ him. None of us ever believed he had any hand in killin’ Jeff Forder, and it’s so long ago now that nobody’d have cared ef he had.”
“Yes, I reckon this puts Blue Bob off’n the river for good,” said Ferrell. “We’ve had more’n enough of that house boat hangin’ round Rainbow Landing.”
The excitement of the talk died out in feeble words and silences. Young Fenway was snoring, lying face down on pine needles. Lockwood felt of a sudden desperately weary, and lay down. He did not think he could sleep, but he slept. He roused two or three times from vague nightmares, and slept again, till he was awakened by Ferrell shaking his shoulder.
Within five minutes the boat was thudding down the river again. Daylight was in the air. The mist had vanished even before the dawn, and clung only in pale streaks on the water or lay white over the great swamps ashore. For half a mile they went straight downward, and then Tom steered across to investigate a creek mouth where a boat might lie hidden.
But there was nothing in it. Down they went again, sweeping around one after another of the vast curves of the river, empty always of life, looking as deserted as it must have looked when De Soto’s canoes first sailed it.