“It’s so!” Buck cried out. “Last night I was thinking that I’d wasted my life down here; years and years I’ve been a shanty-boater, drifter, fisherman, trapper, market hunter, and late years, I’ve gambled. I’ve 150 been getting in bad, worse all the while. The Prophet here, coming along, seemed to wake me up—the man I used to be—I mean. It wasn’t so much what you said, Parson, but your being here. Then I’ve been thinking all over again. I’ve an idea, boys, that when I go back up to-morrow I won’t be so sorry for what I’ve been, as glad that I didn’t grow worse than I did. It won’t be easy, boys—going back. I’m taking the old river with me, though. I’ve framed its bends and islands, its chutes and reaches, like pictures in my mind. Old Parson here, too, coming in on us the way he did, saying that this was hell, but he’d come here to live in it. That’s what waked me up, Parson! I could see how you felt. You’d never seen such a place before, but you said in your heart and your eyes showed it, Parson, that you would leave God’s country to help us poor devils. It’s just a point of view, though. I’m going right up to my particular hell, and I’ll look back here to this thousand miles of river as heaven. Yes, sir! But my job is up there—in that hell!”
So they talked, and always their thoughts were on the river channel, and their minds groping into the future.
When the Kate whistled way down at Bell’s Landing, Rasba took the two across to Caruthersville and bade them good-bye at the landing.
The Kate pulled out and Parson Rasba crossed to the three houseboats, two of them his own. He went in to see Prebol, who was lonesome and wanted to talk a little.
“What you going to do, Parson?” Prebol asked.
“I’d kind-a like to get to see shanty-boaters, and talk to them,” the man answered. “I wonder couldn’t yo’ sort of he’p me; tell me where I mout begin and where it’d he’p the most, an’ hurt people’s feelin’s the least? 151 I’d jes’ kind-a like to be useful. Course, I got to get you cured up an’ took cyar of first.”
“I cayn’t say much about being pious on Old Mississip’,” Prebol grinned, “but theh’s two ways of findin’ trouble. One’s to set still long enough, and then, again, you can go lookin’ fo’ hit. Course, yo’ know me! I’ve hunted trouble pretty fresh, an’ I’ve found hit, an’ I’ve lived onto hit. I cayn’t he’p much about doin’ good, an’ missionaryin’, an’ River Prophetin’.”
When Prebol’s voice showed the strain of talking Rasba bade him rest. Then he went over to the big boat, a gift that would have sold for $1,000. He looked at the crap table, the little poker tables with the brass-slot kitties; he stared at the cabinet of cards and dice.
“All mine!” he said.
He walked out on the deck where he could commune with the river, using his eyes, his ears, and the feeling that the warm afternoon gave him. The sun shone upon him, and made a narrow pathway across the rushing torrent. The sky was blue and cloudless. Of the cold, the wind, the sea of liquid mud, not one trace remained.