“I was wondering where I’d see you again,” Terabon said. “Didn’t have a chance at New Madrid, saw you was in business, so I didn’t follow up none.”
“I was wondering if you had a line on that,” Despard said, doubtfully. “Y’know that woman you was staying with up on Island Ten Bar? Well, we got her man in here full’s a fish. Lookin’ for his woman, an’ he’s no good. Fell off the cabin, hit a spark in the back of the head when the water sucked when that steamboat went by this morning. He’d ought to go down to Memphis hospital, but—Well, we can’t take ’im. You know how that is.”
“Be glad to help you boys out any way I can,” Terabon said. “I’ll run him down.”
“Say, would you? We don’t want him on our hands,” the pirate explained. “We’d get to see you down b’low some’rs.”
“Sure, I would,” Terabon exclaimed. “Fact is, the woman said it’d be a favour to her, too, if I’d get him home. She’ll be dropping down likely. Darn nice girl, but quick tempered.”
“That’s right; quick ain’t no name for it. She plugged a friend of mine up by Buffalo Island––”
“Prebol? I heard about him. She was scairt.”
“She needn’t be, never again!” Despard grinned. “When a lady can handle a river Law like she does, us bad uns are real nice!”
Terabon laughed, and the two went into the cabin-boat where Carline lay on the bunk. Terabon ran his 175 hand around the man’s head and neck, found the lump near the base of the skull, found that the neck wasn’t broken, and made sure that the heart was beating—things a reporter naturally learns to do in police-station and hospital experience.
Jet brought the motorboat down to the stern of the cabin-boat, and the four carried Carline on board. They put him in his bunk, and Terabon, his skiff towing astern, steered out into the main current and soon faded down by Craighead Point Bar.