“Going clear down?”
“You mean––?”
“N’Orleans?”
“Why, I hadn’t thought much about it.”
“The Lower River’s pretty bad.” Disbon looked up from cleaning his repeating shotgun. “My first trip was out of the Ohio and down to N’Orleans. I wouldn’t recommend to no woman that she go down thataway, not alone. Theh’s junker-pirates use up from N’Orleans, and, course, there’s always more or less meanness below Cairo. Above St. Louis it ain’t so bad, but mean men draps down from Little Klondike.”
“I haven’t made up my mind,” Nelia said, adding, with a touch of bitterness, “I don’t reckon it makes so much difference!”
“Lots that comes down feel thataway,” Mrs. Disbon nodded, with sympathy, “Seems like some has more’n their share, and some considerable less!”
Nelia remained there three days, for there was good company, and a two-day rain had set in between midnight 42 and dawn on the following morning. There was no hurry, and she was going nowhere. She had the whole family over to supper the second night, and she ate two meals or so with them.
The other shanty-boat, about a hundred yards down stream, was an old man’s. He had a soldier’s pension, and he lived in serene restfulness, reading General Grant’s memoirs, and poring over the documents of the Rebellion, discovering points of military interest and renewing his own memories of his part in thirty-odd battles with Grant before Vicksburg and down the line with the Army of the Potomac.
Nelia could have remained there indefinitely, but restlessness was in her mind, as long as she had so much money on board her little shanty-boat. Disbon knew so many tales of river piracy that she saw the wisdom of settling her possessions, either at Cairo or Memphis, whichever should prove best.