“I wa’nt doin’ nothing!” he explained, “I were jes’ drappin’ down, up above Buffalo Island, an’ b’low Commerce, an’ a lady shot me—bang! Ho law! She jes’ shot me thataway. No ’count for hit at all.”
“A lady you knowed?” Rasba asked.
“No suh! But she’s onto the riveh, into a shanty-boat, purty, too, an’ jes’ drappin’ down, like she wa’nt goin’ no wheres, an’ like she mout of be’n jes’ moseyin’. I jes ’lowed I’d drap in, an’ say howdy like, an’ she drawed down an’ shot—bang!”
“Was she frightened?”
“Hit were a lonesome reach, along of Powerses Island,” the man admitted, whining and reluctant. “She didn’t own that there riveh. Hain’t a man no right to land in anywheres? She shot me jes’ like I was a dawg, an’ she hadn’t no feelin’s nohow. Jes’ like a dawg!” 34
“Did you know her?”
“No, suh. We’d be’n drappin’ down, an’ drappin’ down—come down below Chester, an’ sometimes she’d be ahead, an’ sometimes me, an’ how’d I know she wouldn’t be friendly? Ain’t riveh women always friendly? An’ theh she ups an’ shoots me like a dawg. She’s mean, that woman, mean an’ pretty, too, like some women is!”
Rasba wondered. He had been long enough on the Ohio to get the feeling of a great river. He saw the specious pleading of the wounded wretch, and his quick imagination pictured the woman alone in a vast, wild wood, at the edge of that running mile-wide flood.
“Of co’rse!” he said, half aloud, “of co’rse!”
“Co’rse what?” the man demanded, querulously.