“Naw!” The river-man looked sidelong at Joe, and bit off a chew from a plug of tobacco. “Soon’s Bud gits well enough to help me, we aims to float down to Choctaw Bluffs.”
“I saw you up here a week or so ago. How did you get back?” said Joe.
“Naw, you didn’t. Ain’t never been by yere before,” returned the man quickly. “We been up by Peach Tree, and we’re goin’ to Choctaw.”
“Going down to the River Island?” Joe asked casually.
“No, sir! Too many rough charackters there. They says Blue Bob uses the River Island this spring.”
Joe had often heard of this same Blue Bob, notorious among the houseboat men, whose evil reputation had spread all along the river, from Montgomery to Mobile. Blue Bob, with a gang of disreputable associates, ran a large houseboat, combining a sort of small piracy with occasional selling of illicit whisky. He stole hogs and cattle along the river; he had been concerned in several shooting affrays, and had been several times arrested but had always been lucky enough to get off with nothing more than a fine.
It struck Joe that it might have been Blue Bob who had robbed the turpentine orchard, for the River Island was not more than thirty miles down the river. They had been almost within sight of it, in fact, on the recent bee-hunt. But he hardly thought that the lazy, shiftless figure before him, evidently a prey to hookworms and malaria, had had anything to do with the thefts. The stealing in the turpentine woods had been energetic and laborious, involving a good deal of hard work. All the same, he felt that the black houseboat would bear watching, until “Bud” got over his chills and fevers.
He offered to get the boatman some quinine, which was declined, and he rode away with a careless good-by. For half a mile up the shore he proceeded, finding no traces of any other boat, until he was checked by an impenetrable swamp, and he turned back into the pine woods again.
The wagons had taken a load of gum-barrels up to the camp that day, where a charge was to be run in the still. But only a part had been taken; eight or ten partly full barrels still stood in the orchard, and Joe felt increasingly uneasy about them as the day went on. He determined to spend another night in the woods and guard them himself.
He rode up to camp for supper, however, when the negroes ceased work and found the still just cooling from its recent charge. The upper orchard as well as the river tract had been dipped within the last few days. Negroes were still barreling up the hot rosin, and he counted nearly twenty barrels of turpentine on the plank platform beside the road, ready for hauling down to the steamboat. A great row of rosin barrels stood near the still, and Wilson told him that they were going to run another charge after supper.