Nobody was in sight ashore or aboard the boat, but a sound of quarreling came out violently through the open, glassless windows of the cabin. He could scarcely distinguish a word, but he almost immediately recognized one of the voices as that of Jackson Power.
He was startled and shocked. At least two other voices joined, but they were so intermingled that he could make out nothing. Then Jackson burst out clearly:
“I won’t do it. I ain’t had——”
“You cayn’t prove nothin’!” interrupted another.
“Then let him do it, ef he——”
The voices dropped again to confused wrangling. Once more they rose to angry exclamations and profanities. So fierce it grew that he expected to see a knot of fighting figures roll out of the cabin door, or to hear a crash of shooting. But again the altercation subsided, and comparative quiet ensued.
Still Lockwood sat his horse silently behind the willows, puzzled, but resolved to hear the last of it. But there was nothing more to hear. The rest of the conversation was inaudible; and in the course of fifteen minutes young Power came out of the cabin, jumped ashore, and made off up the bayou toward his home. He looked angry and greatly upset.
Lockwood was just about to ride away, when another man came out from behind a titi thicket near the mooring, where he might have been ambushed all the time, and quietly went aboard the boat. It was Hanna.
Again Lockwood listened. A mutter of low voices came from the house boat, but no words were distinguishable. Lockwood rode on after a few minutes of vain eavesdropping, but as he turned away he noted an object that gave him a sharper thrill than anything.
Whether it had merely escaped his notice before, he knew not; but hanging outside the stern wall of the cabin was a hunter’s horn of curved cow horn—the same sort of horn as Jackson had blown in reply on the night of the poker game. Lockwood began to see possible depths of intricacy in the situation which he had not suspected.