“Yes,” Nelia smiled a hard smile. “I’m the woman who shot Prebol above Buffalo Island—I had to.”
“You did right; men always respect a lady if she don’t care who she shoots,” Larry cried, enthusiastically. “Wish you’d get my wife to learn how to shoot. She’s gun shy!”
So Nelia coaxed the little wife to shoot, first the 22-calibre repeating rifle and then the pistol. When Nelia had to go down they parted good friends and Larry thanked her, saying that probably they would meet down below somewhere.
“You’ll make Caruthersville,” Larry told her. “There’s a good eddy on the east side across from the town. There’s likely some boats in there. They’ll know, perhaps, if the folks you are looking for are around. There’s an old river man there now, name of Buck. He’s a gambler, but he’s all right, and he’ll treat you all right. He’s from up in our country, on the Ohio. Hardly anybody knows about him. He was always a dandy fellow, but he married a woman that wasn’t fit to drink his coffee. She bothered the life out of him, and—well, he squared up. He gave her to the other fellow with a double-barrelled shotgun.”
When Nelia ran down to the gambling boat and found Parson Rasba there, she enjoyed the idea. Certainly 167 the River Prophet and the river gambler were an interesting combination. She was not prepared to find that Buck had taken his departure and that Parson Rasba was converting the gambling hell into a mission boat. Least of all was she prepared when Parson Rasba said with an unsteady voice:
“Theh’s a man sick in that other boat, and likely he’d like to see somebody.”
“Oh, if there’s anything I can do!” she exclaimed, as a woman does.
He led the way to the brick-red little boat, the like of which could be found in a thousand river eddies. She followed him on board and over to the bed. There she looked into the wan countenance and startled eyes of Jest Prebol.
“Hit’s Mister Prebol,” Rasba said. “I know you have no hard feelings against him, and I know he has none against you, Missy Carline!”
An introduction to a contrite river pirate, whom she had shot, for the moment rendered the young woman speechless. Prebol was less at loss for words.