“I ’low I’ll roast up them squirrels fo’ dinner?” Slip suggested.
“They’ll shore go good!” Buck assented. “I’ll mux around some hot-bread, an’ some gravy.”
“I got to make some meat soup for that feller, too.”
“Huh! Jest Prebol’s one of them damned fools what tried to forget a woman among women,” Buck sneered. 63
At intervals during the day Slip went over and gave Prebol his medicine, or fed him on squirrel meat broth; toward night they floated their 35-foot shanty-boat out into the eddy, and anchored it a hundred yards from the bank, where the sheriff of Lake County, Tennessee, no longer had jurisdiction. In the late evening Slip lighted a big carbide light and turned it toward the town on the opposite bank.
Pretty soon they heard the impatient dip of skiff oars, a river fisherman came aboard, and stood for a minute over the heater stove, warming his fingers. He soon went to the long, green-topped crap table in the end of the room, and Slip stood opposite, to throw bones against him. A tiny motorboat crossed a little later; and three men, two heavy set and one a slim youth, entered, to sit down at one of the little round tables and play a game.
One by one other patrons appeared, and soon there were fourteen or fifteen. Slip and Buck glided about among them quietly, their eyes alert, their hats drawn down over their eyes, taking a hand here, throwing bones there, poking up the coal fire, putting on coffee, making sandwiches, every moment on the qui vive, communicating with each other by jerks of the hand, lifting of shoulders, or the faintest of whisperings.
A jar against the side of the boat sent one or other of the two out to look, to greet a newcomer or to fend off a drift log. A low whistle from the stern took Buck through the aisle between the staterooms to the kitchen where a rat-eyed little man waited him on the stern deck,
“Lo, Buck! I’m drappin’ down in a hurry; I learn yo’ was heah. Theh’s a feller drapping down out the Ohio; he’s lookin’ fo’ a feller name of Jock Drones—didn’t hear what for. Yo’ know ’im?” 64
“Nope, but I’ll pass the word around.”