She followed him out on the bow deck.
“Just a minute,” she whispered, “while I get used to the thought of being alone again. I did not know there were men like you who would rather do a favour than ask for kisses.”
“It isn’t that we don’t like them!” he blurted out. “It’s—it’s just that we’d rather deserve them and not have them than have them and not deserve them!”
She laughed. “Good-bye—and don’t forget, Fort Pillow!”
“Does a man forget his meals?” he demanded, lightly, and with his duffle packed low in his skiff he rowed out into the gray river and the black night.
Having found a lee along the caving bank above New Madrid he gain-speeded down the current behind the sandbar, but when he turned the New Madrid bend he pulled out into mid-river and with current and 137 wind both behind him, followed the government lights that showed the channel.
He had expected to linger long down this historic stretch of river with its Sunk Lands of the New Madrid earthquakes, with its first glimpse of the cotton country, and with its countless river phenomena.
“But Old Mississip’ has other ideas,” he said to himself, and miles below he was wondering if and when he would meet the girl of Island No. 10 again.