So did their wives. There was "everything in it he wouldn't want there and nothing he would want."
He was doing the "brave thing," they all said, and the wives called it too brave. The brave thing, they thought, "ran a slim chance against Hayle's twins."
"My dear ladies," said the planter, "it runs the only chance he has. The brave thing is the only thing those two young fire-eaters have any respect for." He stopped short; Ramsey had overheard. Yet she kept a pretty front.
"Why do you call him 'that boy'?" she laughingly asked.
"Well, really, because," replied the planter, twinkling, "he's so much more than a boy. Don't you think so?"
She gave him a sidelong glance, twitched her curls, and looked down ashore. Her mother was there with the "boy's" grandfather. They were getting into a rickety hack. Now Hugh joined them from the Antelope, and they went whipping up the steep road across the face of the bluff and into the "stuck-up" Natchez atop the hill. She guessed their errand.
Meantime the Westwood had reached the wharf-boat, put her bridal pair aboard the Antelope, and backed out again so promptly that as the Antelope cast off and started after her she had rounded Marengo Bend and was showing only her smoke across Cowpen Point. And now reappeared Madame Hayle, the commodore, and Hugh, bringing with them—welcome sight—two sisters of charity. The moment they touched the lower deck the Votaress, with John Courteney on her roof, backed away, and soon, in the first bend above, any eye could plainly see the Westwood, still less than four miles off across country though eight by the river, with the Antelope four miles behind her and four ahead of the Votaress. Said the pilot, Ned, to Ramsey, pulling the wheel down to head into the crimson west:
"Four 'n' four's eight, ain't it? Used to be. Can't tell what'll change on this river. When Lake Concordia, over here in Louisiana, was part o' the river, an' Vidal's Island, in its middle, was in the river, this bend wa'n't jest eight mile' round, it wuz twenty. These are the bends. F'om here to Cairo we got to run one etarnal wriggle o' six hund'd 'n' eighty mile' to make three hund'd 'n' seventy."
"Oh, I'm glad of it! At least—ain't—ain't you?"
He shook his head: "Not this run." The supper bell rang and Ramsey fled, but he repeated: "No, not this run!" He turned and looked back upon Natchez bluff far behind the steamer's wake. "I wished every last Hayle on this blessed boat wuz off o' her an' 'top o' you!"