This was rich!
“Lucky he didn’t hit you on the head, and take the boat, too!” Doss grinned.
“I suppose so.”
“Yes, sir! Lots of mean men on this river, they play 139 any old game. They say they’re preachers, or umbrella menders, or anything. Every once in a while some feller comes down, saying he’s off’n some magazine. They come down in skiffs, mostly. It’s a great game they play. Everybody tells ’em everything. If I was going to be a crook, I bet I’d say I was a hist’ry writer. I’d snoop around, and then I’d land—same’s that feller landed on you. Get much?”
“Two—three hundred dollars!”
The little man laughed in his throat. He handled the boat like a river pilot. His eyes turned to the banks, swept the sandbars, gazed into the coiling waters alongside, and he whispered names of places as he passed them—landings, bars, crossings, bends, and even the plantations and log cuttings. He named the three cotton gins in Tiptonville, and stared at the ferry below town with a sidelong leer.
Carline would have been the most astonished man on the Mississippi had he known that nearly all his money was in the pockets of his guest. He babbled on, and before he knew it, he was telling all about his wife running away down the Mississippi.
“What kind of a boat’s she in?” Doss asked.
“I don’t know.”
“How do you expect to find her if you don’t know the boat?”