“Whoe-e-e!” one hailed. “Who all mout yo’ be?”
“Rasba!” the newcomer replied. “Parson Elijah Rasba, suh. Out of the Ohio!”
“Hi-i-i!” a listener cried out, gleefully, “hyar comes the Riveh Prophet after yo sinners. Hi-i-i!”
There was a laugh through the crowd. Others strolled out to see the phenomenon. A man who had been playing with fortune at one of the poker tables swore aloud.
“I cayn’t neveh git started, I don’t shift down on my luck!” he whined. “Las’ time, jes’ when I was coming home, I see a piebald mewl, an’ now hyar comes a parson. Dad drat this yeah ole riveh! I’m goin’ to quit. I’m gwine to go to Hot Springs!”
These casual asides were as nothing, however, to the tumult that stirred in the soul of Jock Drones, who had been cutting bread to make boiled-ham sandwiches for their patrons that night. His acute hearing had picked up the sound of the coming shanty-boat, and he had felt the menace of a stranger dropping in after dark. Few men not on mischief bent, or determined to run all night, run into shanty-boat eddies.
He even turned down the light a little, and looked toward the door to see if the way was clear. The hail relieved the tension of his mind strain, but only for a minute. Then he heard that answer.
“Rasba!” he heard. “Parson Elijah Rasba, suh. Out of the Ohio!”
In a flash he knew the truth! Old Rasba, whose preaching he had listened to that bloody night away up in the mountains, had come down the rivers. A parson, none else, was camping on the mountain fugitive’s 123 trail. That meant tribulation, that meant the inescapableness of sin’s punishment—not in jails, not in trial courts, not on the gallows, but worse than that!
“Come abo’d, Parson!” someone shouted, and the boats bumped. There was a scramble to make a line fast, and then the trampling of many feet, as the Prophet was introduced to that particular river hell, amid stifled cries of expectancy and murmurs of warning. Next to being raided by the sheriff of an adjacent county, having a river prophet come on board is the greatest excitement and the smartest amusement of the bravados down the river.