Printed in the U. S. A.

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CONTENTS

I.[The End of a Trail]
II.[Respite]
III.[Power’s Luck]
IV.[A Misfire]
V.[The Woods Rider]
VI.[The Meeting]
VII.[’Possum and Poker]
VIII.[New Forces]
IX.[Pascagoula Oil]
X.[Tangled Trails]
XI.[The Warning]
XII.[Crisis]
XIII.[Open War]
XIV.[The Last Chance]
XV.[The Fog]
XVI.[The Pay Car]
XVII.[Counterplot]
XVIII.[Resurrection]
XIX.[The Labyrinth]
XX.[Deep Water]

RAINBOW LANDING
CHAPTER I
THE END OF A TRAIL

The boat was late in leaving the Mobile wharf. Dusk fell as it wallowed noisily and slowly up against the current of the Alabama River, under the great bridge, past Hurricane and the lumber mills. The shores ceased to be cleared. Swamps and forests gathered on each shore, dense jungles of cypress and gum and titi, that belted almost the whole course of the river from Mobile to Selma.

Lockwood ate an intensely indigestible supper in the saloon in the company of the dozen or so passengers, mostly silent, malarial-looking up-river farmers. Afterwards there was nothing whatever to do. The passengers smoked for an hour or two on the forward deck, talking in a gentle drawl of cotton and hogs and turpentine, and then vanished to their berths.

It was not much like the old days, when the river boats ran from Mobile to Montgomery crowded with passengers, carrying cotton and slaves and quick-fingered, hair-trigger gamblers; when wine flowed at a gorgeous bar, and rich planters gambled bales of cotton on a single poker hand. The Alabama almost rivaled the Mississippi in those days, and competing boats raced in a flare of pitch smoke, occasionally piling up on a sand bar and blowing up their boilers. But improved roads and motors had killed the river. The few remaining boats ran irregularly and slowly, decadent, slovenly, dejected, carrying only low grade passengers and freight, or those whose destination lay outside the range of railroads or gasoline.

Long before nine o’clock the decks were cleared. Lockwood sat up for half an hour longer, and then went to his stateroom himself, in sheer boredom. It was hot there and close, and there were mosquitoes in spite of the screened window, but he undressed, lay down, smoked, tried to read, and tried to sleep.