"I certainly have," answered George, emphatically. "I am contented here and should be glad to stay, but you won't let me. You have broken every promise you made me in Brownsville."
"George," said Uncle John, earnestly, "every word that Mr. Gilbert has written you about me and my doings is false—utterly false."
"I have never caught him in a lie, and I don't believe he knows how to tell one," said George, with great spirit. "At any rate, I am going down there as soon as this trip is ended, to satisfy myself of the truth of what I have heard."
"Very well," replied Uncle John, indifferently. "If that is your determination, you are at liberty to act upon it as soon as you please. If I get through my business at St. Louis in time, I shall be glad to go with you. Young man," he added, mentally, "you are not going back to Texas."
"I don't know whether I want him to travel with me or not," thought George, as his uncle arose and walked out of the cabin. "Something tells me that I shall be safer if I go alone. His desire to keep me away from Texas, makes me all the more determined to go there."
Having given his uncle time to get out of the way, George left the cabin and turned toward Mr. Black, whom he found looking down at the deck in a brown study. "George," said he, in a low tone, "I have been looking for it for a long time, and it has come at last. I have made many a trip on this old tub, and every time I thought I had made my last one—that before I should be employed to handle her wheel again, something would happen to her. I have seen the sign, and I predict that this is her last trip!"
"What do you mean?" said George, drawing a chair into such a position, that he could look into Mr. Black's face when he sat down.
The pilot turned about, and after running his eye around the boiler deck, directed George's attention to a gentlemanly-looking passenger who was dressed in black, and wore a white neckcloth. "I see him. He's a gambler, I suppose," said George, who knew that these gentry, during their trips up and down the river, assume all sorts of disguises to assist them in fleecing the unwary.
"No, he isn't; and that's the worst of it," exclaimed Mr. Black. "If he belonged to that class, the old Sam Kendall would be safe enough, for she has carried an army of them, first and last. He's a preacher, and he brought a gray horse aboard with him."
George, who knew the saying among rivermen, that a minister and a gray horse would sink any boat that ever floated, jumped to his feet with an exclamation of impatience.