"The devil couldn't scare 'em with his tail red-hot."
At that the father laughed gratefully.
"They'd ought to be in some trade where pluck," the Californian went on, "is the whole show. They'd ought to be soldiers. As plain up-and-down fighters for fight'n's sake, commodore, they'd hit it off as sweet as blackstrap!"
The truth smote hard but the parent feigned a jovial inappreciation. If that was so they had made a "most damnable misdeal," he laughed, having settled down in Natchez together, "too soft on each other to marry and as tame as parrakeets"; Julian as county sheriff, his brother a physician.
The Californian silently doubted the tameness. Abruptly, though in tones of worship, he inquired after Madame Hayle.
Madame just then was at home, on the plantation at Natchez. Yes, she and Ramsey often made trips with Gideon on that Paragon which they had gone up the river to come down on, in '52. The Paragon, wonderfully preserved, was still in the "Vicksburg and Bends" trade and happened then to be some forty-eight hours ahead of the Enchantress and nearing New Orleans. Madame and her daughter now and then spent part of the social season in the great river's great seaport, which was—"bound to be the greatest in the world, my boy," said Gideon. But Ramsey——
When Ramsey became the topic, even "California," while the father boasted, had to hold on, as he would have said, with his teeth to keep from being blown away. Her "one and only love" was the river! She "knew it like a pilot" and loved it and the whole life on it not merely for its excitements, variety, and outlook on the big world.
"That is to say——for its poetry," prompted "California."
"Yes, not for that only but just as much for its prose, by Mike! Why, my boy, that's all that's kept her single!"
"Except!" said the Californian softly, but Gideon pressed on. "And single, now, I reckon, she'll always be. Why, sir, not a day breaks but she knows, within an hour's run, the whereabouts of every Hayle boat alive."