"Mercy! I should think that would hurt worse than any toothache!"
"Maybe it did, ma'am. But at least it disthracted his attention from the tooth itself. That rattlesnake, I kilt in a swamp near Vicksburg. Me and me wife was young then, and we'd borrowed a skiff, an' rowed out to hunt pond-lilies. Mary would go in the bog, walkin' on the big tufts of rushes. Her little feet were that light she didn't sink at all. But the first thing I heard she gave a little squeal, an' there she stood, perched on a tuft, and not three feet away, curled up on a log, was that great shinin' serpent. Just rockin' himself easy, he was, makin' ready to strike. An' strike he would. Only"—the small twinkling face grew grim—"only I struck first."
"And the little white glove?"
The old pilot beamed.
"Sure, I hoped ye'd notice that, miss. That glove points to the proud day f'r me! It was the summer of '60. I was pilotin' the Annie Kilburn, a grand large packet, down to Saint Louis. We had a wonderful party aboard her. 'Twas just the beginnin' of war times, an' 'twould be like readin' a history book aloud to tell ye their names. Did ever ye hear of the Little Giant?"
"Of Stephen A. Douglas, the famous orator? Why, yes, to be sure. Was he aboard?"
"Yes. A fine, pleasant-spoke gentleman he was, too. But 'tis not the Little Giant that this story is about. 'Twas his wife. Ye've heard of her, sure? Ah, but I wish you could have seen her when she came trippin' up the steps of me pilot-house and passed the time of day with me, so sweet and friendly. Afterward they told me what a great lady she was. Though I could see that for meself, she was that gentle, and her voice so quiet and low, and her look so sweet and kind. I was showin' her about, an' feelin' terrible proud, an' fussy, an' excited. I was a young felly then, and it took no more than her word an' her smile to turn me foolish head. An' I was showin' her how to handle the wheel, and by some mischance, didn't I catch me blunderin' hand in the frame, an' give it a wrench that near broke every bone! I couldn't leave the wheel till the first mate should come to take me place. And Madame Douglas was that distressed, you'd think it was her own hand that she was grievin' over. She would tear her lace handkerchief into strips, and bind up the cut, and then what does she do but take her white glove, an' twist it round the fingers, so's to keep them from the air, till I could find time to bandage them. I said not a word. But the minute her silks an' laces went trailin' down the hurricane ladder, I jerked off that glove an' folded it in my wallet. An' there it stayed till I could have that frame made for it. And in that frame I've carried it ever since, all these long years.
"Those were the grand days, sure," he added, wistfully. "Before the war, we pilots were the lords of the river. I had me a pair of varnished boots, an' tight striped trousers, an' a grand shiny stove-pipe hat, an' I wouldn't have called the king me uncle. It's sad times for the river, nowadays." He looked away up the broad, tumbling yellow stream. "Look at her, will ye! No river at all, she is, wid her roily yellow water, an' her poor miry banks, an' her bluffs, all washed away to shiftin' sand. But wasn't she the grand stream entirely, before the war!"
Marian looked at the framed river-chart above the wheel. She tried to read its puzzle of tangled lines. The old man sniffed.