The Way of the Mississippi

Front matter

By RAYMOND S. SPEARS Author of "Waltzing Coyotes," etc.

A NOVELETTE—COMPLETE IN THIS ISSUE

1. Toskin Buys a Pretty Shanty Boat

CHAPTER I. TOSKIN BUYS A PRETTY SHANTY BOAT.

A PALE blue shanty boat eddied down Muskrat Bend and drifted the mud against the mud bar just below Mendova. There it was held by the bottom for a day before any one noticed. Then the Sneak, a semicruiser belonging to the city police department swung down into the eddy, and Tappan, at the wheel, noticed that the shanty boat was neither moored to stakes nor anchored offshore.

When he entered the boat, as he did after hailing it, and not receiving an answer, he found lying on the bunk a dead man. The body was stark and cold, for murder had been done. Some one had shot the victim while he was sound asleep, apparently, through a window opposite the bunk.

Tappan knew the Mississippi as well as any one. He not only had the river police experience, but he had been third mate on a river steamer for years, and previous to that, he had been a rafter and towboat hand, and as a boy and young man he had lived on shanty boats with his father, an old river storeboater and fur buyer. He knew the river signs with any of them.

With his whistle, Tappan summoned Policeman Daker, who patrolled Front Street, from the near side of which Mendova Wharf was paved down to the current, and part of the paving was covered by the advancing mud bar of the point above town. Daker came running across the baked mud and with Tappan, made as close an examination of the shanty boat premises as possible, in order to learn what they could about the circumstances and also to ascertain the identity of the victim. Evidently everything had been taken which would help serve this purpose, indicating a robbery motive.

There was nothing in the boat to disclose any secrets. There was no scrap of new paper, not a bit of pencil writing on walls or in notebook, no photographs of girls or men. But a banjo standing in a corner was interesting. It was a small instrument, yet beautiful in make and tone, as Tappan found when he picked a bar of "Trip Me Down the River," finding the strings almost in perfect tune.

Tappen examined the fingers of the corpse, but there was no least mark on the tips to show that the victim was the banjo player. This fact led Tappan to scrutinize the instrument much more closely—but no name was written on the head, nor scratched on the rim or neck.

The victim of the murder was five feet, eight inches tall, with dark, wavy hair, dark complexion, dark brown eyes, of slender build and with no mark of real labor in his appearance. His clothes were all good, his coat and waistcoat hanging on a hook over the hunk, his trousers lying on a. chair, neatly folded to preserve the creases, and a shirt that must have cost at least twelve dollars was lying over the back of the chair.

In the waistcoat pocket was a thin, expensive watch: in the trouser pocket was some small change; two or three manicure tools were in a case, and the whole boat was permeated with a rather strong perfume, like musk in its weight, but floral rather than animal in its composition. Tappan sniffed this perfume over and over again, and added it to his memories.

The dead truck was sent for, and the body removed to the morgue: The evening Battle-Ax voiced the general impression that this was one of the unsolvable mysteries that are the peculiar type of the Mississippi from Cairo to the Passess—a river mystery which the Father of Waters would avenge in its own way.

Tappan, being a mere policeman, resigned the case to the city detective force, and finger-print experts photographed the stove lid handle, the pearl pocket knife blade, and a dozen other features that might show something on comparison with the collection of finger prints in the Bertillon Laboratory. But these revealed only prints of the victim's own fingers and thumbs.

There was in the kitchen, or galley, of the little boat plenty of material for the microscopic and photomicrography amusement and practice of the various department experts. It was noticeable that the man had black tea, as well as a fifty-five cent grade of coffee: he was stocked up with supplies for a long trip down the river, including a sack of flour in a moisture-proof tin can, good quality bacon and ham, a jar of sugar, jug of sorghum, and various things to eat. The detectives told what a lot of things they deduced from the various edibles and the appearance of the host. Tappan was not quoted at all.

But Tappan knew a good many things which his up-the-bank detective associates had overlooked. The hickory nuts in the bow hold were from the Columbus hickories; the boat was a beautifully built craft, with planed stringers., tongue-and~groove planking, roofing with matched board lining. and five by five inch timber for oar pins and mooring heads. The long sweeps for rowing the boat were beautifully balanced. and the hull, which was twenty-four feet long and seven feet wide, rowed like a skiff.

The shanty boat was such a one as an old shanty boater would be apt to build. It had been carefully constructed, and there was not a drop of water in the hull, and the cabin was almost perfectly dust-tight—it could lie down the lee of a mile-long sand bar and the wind of a norther would hardly blow puffs of dirt through any crack or seam.

For several days the detectives worked up and down the water front and had Tappan take them up the river for miles, trying to find some one who had seen the boat, but the shanty boaters, fishermen, drifters and others up the bends and along the banks all denied any knowledge whatever of the boat. Two or three hundred people went to the morgue and viewed the victim. but not one betrayed any personal interest in the matter.

The autopsy revealed what post mortem operation usually do reveal in such affairs: the bullet had taken a certain course through sundry and divers wonderfully named parts, organs and cavities, and had lodged under the skin in the back, showing, as the coroner said, that the murderer had evidently stood over his victim and fired straight down into the sleeping man, but because the coroner and doctors said this, Tappan began to wonder if it were true.

The pale blue shanty boat was towed by the Sneak up into Fox River, and moored in the Wild Goose Nest, so called. This was a bend of Fox River, opposite Runway Street, where some willows and brush grew along the bank. Here many shanty boaters of a particular type landed in and pulled out from time to time. Few places were of more evil repute from the Missouri River forks to the Gulf of Mexico than the Wild Goose Nest. Above Ferry Street landing, however, was the Duck’s Nest, where perfectly reputable shanty boaters and sporting river trippers landed in.

The police department, having learned all there was to be found out about the shanty boat, which was absolutely nothing, and having photographed, measured and scrutinized it, turned the craft over to the custodian of city property, and about the time the body was turned over to the medical students the boat was offered for sale, since it was a nuisance to take care of it and an expense to have it watched. The ferryman, Jim Purple, consented to be the boat’s guardian, provided he didn’t have to touch it, or go aboard it

For nearly a month the Battle-Ax carried an advertisement that read;

HOUSE BOAT FOR SALE!

An elegant, well-built cabin boat is offered for sale to whom it may concern, for a very reasonable price; boat may be inspected at Goose Nest Bend in Fox River on application to Ferryman Purple. Custodian City Property.

No price was fixed, for it was felt that any price would be acceptable, though in ordinary circumstances the craft would have been worth five hundred to five hundred and fifty dollars, considering the outfit, supplies and all. But there was no bidder till after the story of the murder mystery had ceased to appear in even the Police Hints, where four lines was the maximum length.

Tappan continued to listen on the shanty boats for some stray river rumor that might help him. He would go to the boats of newcomers, and with the casual, uninquiring river manner, discourse on the stage of the water and the luck of the hunters—all the other things that are unleading questions for any one to speak about, and because he was a river man himself Tappan had many friends among the river people, and the pirates, river rats, and even some kinds of fugitives knew that he demanded only strict observance of Mendova's ordinances along the river front, but no one added anything to the things which he already knew about the dead man.

Then he had an interesting fact to report to the custodian of city property. Happening to be on Fox River at the ferry one day he found a young man standing on Pixie's float, looking up and down with wide-eyed interest. Tappan landed against the float, quite as though that had been his intention, and seeing his uniform, the young man walked up to him eagerly, asking:

"Isn’t the life in these house boats wonderful?"

"Yes, sir," Tappan replied, gravely and with sincerity. "There’s nothing more wonderful down thisaway than shanty boating."

"That’s just what I thought! My name is Toskin—Jerald Toskin. I am from New York, but this winter I said to myself that I would not endure the cold. My art course is ended, and I am coming down the Mississippi. I—ah—do you happen to know whether it is possible to purchase a house boat down here?"

"Why, yes—sometimes!" Tappan nodded, and his eyes turned down the bank of the Fox to where he saw the pale blue boat. "There’s one for sale now. It’s a nice tight boat, not too large, but just right for comfort."

"That blue boat is for sale?" Toskin cried eagerly. "Really? Why, it’s a perfect beauty! Did you ever see anything so appropriate for such a river bank as that house boat?"

"It kind of fits into the sceneries, for a fact," Tappan said.

"Who’d sell it?"

"Why—er—it’s city property; it belonged to a man who—well, he's through with it, and the city custodian has it in charge now."

"Where'll I find the city custodian?"

"I'm his representative, in a way; this is my beat—Fox River, and the Mendova water front; that's the police launch."

"Well, I want that boat. How much is it?"

"It didn't cost less than five hundred and fifty dollars to build and outfit it; it's for sale for seventy-five dollars cash."

"I'll take it! I'll pay you now?"

"Yes, sir—I'll give you a receipt, too," Tappan answered.

Toskin drew a billfold and handed Tappan a fifty, a twenty, and a five dollar bill. Tappan wrote out a receipt, and then took the young man and his suit case down to the boat. Tappan unlocked the door and they entered. The cabin, despite all that had been on board and the investigations, still was permeated with the perfume.

"Why, that's blended attars!" Toskin sniffed. "Isn't it lovely! Did it—was it a woman's?"

"Not as anybody knows of." Tappan shook his head. "Just some shanty boater who dropped in, and—and got his."

"It's just what I've been dreaming about!" Toskin cried. "I'm delighted! You see, Mr. Tappan, I've just finished an art course in New York. For years and years I've longed for the day when I should be able to float with the current down the Mississippi River. There are possibilities down here for an artist—there's an atmosphere, a spirit, which if I could only catch and fix it—um-m! I've been, mostly, an illustrator. I earned considerable in the advertising fields. Now—a dream I've had is come true!"

"Yes, sir, I expect." Tappan nodded. "It's a nice boat!"

"I have some things at the Union Station, and I'll have them brought down here—"

"I'll get them for you," Tappan said, "if they're checked—"

"That 'd be very kind! Here they are—sir."

Tappan left the man on the shanty boat and went to the landing, where he telephoned to the Union Station, giving the numbers of the checks, and within twenty minutes an express truck arrived with three trunks. Tappan was unusually generous in the matter; the fact was, he didn't want Toskin hiring a darky express drayman to bring trunks to that shanty boat, around which there had already grown up a tradition.

Putting the trunks onto the Sneak, he dropped down to the boat and handed them onto the stern deck. Toskin dragged them through the galley into the main cabin easily, despite their weight. He was a slender, graceful young man, with a pallid countenance, nervous energy and gray-green eyes of large and emerald luster. Tappan observed the strong reaction of the trunks to the energetic grip—here was a healthy youth, as well as a temperamental one.

Tappan showed the boat's fine points with river pride. There was as well found a galley-kitchen-pantry as ever floated old Mississip', he explained, and he showed the oil stove, the stores of supplies, the tableware and the built-in sleeping car berth, or bunk. From this had been removed all the bedding, but otherwise, Tappan said, it was the finest kind of an outfit

"Probably they took the bedding for something or other," Tappan remarked, and Toskin said it didn't matter, for he very much preferred to supply his own bedding. He went with Tappan uptown, bought a mattress, sheets, blankets, and everything he needed, including fresh food supplies.

Within three hours of his arrival at Ferry Street, Jerald Toskin was housed and equipped, and so great was his joy that he cast off the lines and floated slowly down Fox River toward the Mississippi, with the Sneak a little way behind, and Tappan scowling and making covert gestures toward the shanty boaters of both the Duck's Nest and Wild Goose Nest localities, who had come forth to see Policeman Tappan's sale of that murder boat to the softpaw who had three trunks with him!

And they saw the little craft emerge from the bayou river into the broad Mississippi, turn half around in the swirl and then edge out into the main current where Tappan held back, leaving the stranger to row with his sweeps down into the long, lonely bends of the Delta land.

"Ho, law! I wouldn't be in that theh softpaw’s shoes, not fo' seven millyun dollars!” Jim Purple voiced the river sentiment, tentatively, when Tappan returned up Fox to hear what people would say.

"He'll get to know old Mississip'—that's what he wants!" Tappan grinned.

2. Just Naturally Sentimental

CHAPTER II. JUST NATURALLY SENTIMENTAL.

THE river spirits are talking to-night," Denton Rillard remarked to the young lady on the stern of the the sacred concert boat Whispering Shoals. "I wish I could understand what they are saying!"

"You—you mean that?" she exclaimed with an odd little break in her voice, and he felt her shiver through the telegraphy of her hand on his elbow.

"Why not?" he answered lightly. "You—a river girl—don’t you believe in such things?"

"I was just wondering about you-all," she evaded. "I've been—I've been looking out there myself!"

No two people ever see all the same things tripping down the Mississippi, it is said. Yet there is no doubt that it frequently happens there are many witnesses to a strange phenomenon. These two, Rillard—a sportsman out of the Ohio—and Dona Voane, a river girl, were on a quite common footing for he had said, at least indicated, the coming to his ears of the low, undulating whisperings where keenest of ears must have felt only silence if they were without reverence, or at least belief.

It was black night, but the darkness was shaded; the river itself was shimmering dusky gray while the trees on the banks were blacker, and the sky was faintly pale. A sound suddenly rained upon them from the sky. It was a flock of wild geese migrating southward, and their a-lonking, their trembling, tinkling-bell voices, fell to the Bottoms in a shower that passed by in a minute or two. Probably a score of birds were in the invisible flock—great, beautiful creatures, lettering the heights, perhaps above the clouds and riding the skies to the light of the stars.

From within the huge craft there sounded human music that seemed far away, and the deck beneath the feet of the two began to throb and spring to the dancing in the great cabin. A whiff of pungent wood smoke caught their nostrils as a current of air came swirling over the roof and around them. The long, heavy stern line which led out to the bank, against which the bow of the hull pressed, strained as a water wave heaved through the dead eddy and raised them.

"You’re cold?" he asked quickly. "Permit me—"

"Not cold! Not cold!" she whispered. "Listen!"

A splash miles away, where some bank was lumping off before the wear of the current, a little suckling gurgling, as jets of river current disputed the way, a faint whinnying, as muskrats discoursed down the bank—a number of diverse and readily recognized noises broke the silence that brooded; but she shivered, and he shivered, to the urge of another whole series of voices that were not, perhaps, of the vibrant air.

They drew nearer together, perhaps quite unconsciously; his right arm slipped around her waist under the wrap that was over her shoulders. She did not resist him, when he discovered what he had done, and dared reach with his other arm to draw her to him. No whispering river voices disturbed them in that sudden, unexpected moment. She gave him such a kiss as a river girl knows how to give, possibly no better or more to it than other kisses, but the environment was a bit thrilling, a bit overcoming—

Then, as things happen on the Mississippi in the particular eddies of the river people, a door in the cabin was thrown wide open, and one of those lamps with concave mirror reflectors threw a great rectangle of light right out to where the two were standing. They stood revealed like a love scene, and instantly a man charged along the bright flare, cursing hoarsely.

"Mad Tom—my God!" the girl choked.

No frail man, this one, who had listened with her in the cool of the night white they sat a set or two of the dances on the boat! With one hand Rillard gently set the girl to one side into the darkness of the door's shadow, and stepping back one stride he caught the slender Mad Tom in his stride, and with a tremendous heave lifted him up and headlong over the stern bumper out over the water.

There, for an instant, Mad Tom sprawled in mid-air, like a speared bullfrog, and then, still froglike, he straightened out to his full length, with his hands arrowed above his head, curved, and dived beautifully, as any river rat would instinctively do, with hardly a splash—a veritable otter plunge into the eddy.

Except for the girl's low, terrorized gasp, not a word or sound had been raised. When, a minute later, some one working in the galley came into the corridor store room and found the door wide open, she closed it and left the two again on the stern deck. The girl, in the meanwhile, had dragged Rillard into the shadow, and was whispering in his ears:

"It's Mad Tom! Oh—he'll kill you now! He's bad—that man!"

"Won't he drown?" Rillard asked, wonderingly and with dread.

"Drown! Drown, that scoundrel! He swam the Mississippi a hundred times! He'll swim a hundred yards underwater. You can't drown him. Oh, you can't kill him!"

She broke into a panic of soundless sobbings and shudderings. Rillard, who had come down the Mississippi for no such adventure as this, took her in his arms and sought to comfort her.

"Don't stay, go away—go home!" she gasped. "When he comes you'll not know it—and the first you'll know, you'll be daid—daid!"

"But what ails him?" he asked, still stupidly undivining.

"It's me!" she said fiercely. "He's hounded me down the Missouri from the Yellowstone—and I hate him! Oh, I despise him—and I'm afraid—afraid! "

"Well, I'm not," Rillard said quietly. "We'll go in and dance, won't we?"

"Half his pirate crew are on board. They'd murder you—shoot you down like a dog if they knew. They'd be'n out here, hunting you, if they'd known! He'll be ashore—he'll whistle them out, and they'll—"

"No, he won't!" Rillard interrupted her. "When I lifted him I thumbed his neck. Did you see him throw his head back? That's when he felt it, after he'd straightened for his dive. He may never come up—or he may float an hour!"

"You—you—"

"Ju-jued 'im!" Rillard chuckled shortly. "Suppose—if he doesn't come back?"

"Oh, I'll be glad—I'll be glad! He told me, now that we're down on the lower river, he'd have me!"

"The lower river?"

"It's below the jumping-off place that's why—that's why I came out here oh, I wanted—I had to have some one to help me! The mission boat's down below he'd sworn to take me there to marry me! But—but you—you—"

"I fixed him?"

"I hope he's daid!"

"I don't!" he gasped. "I never killed a man—'

"Mad Tom's killed a sight of men! I feared 'im! I feared 'im!"

"Well, let's go dance, then—"

"You've a gun?"

"Oh, yes—a twelve gauge—"

"You've no—no pocket gun?"

"No!"

"Wait!" she whispered, and left him. In two minutes she returned, to reach a belt around his waist, and buckle it on. It was quite three inches wide, folded over and sewed leather, and on his right aide, where it fitted like bark on a tree, was a flat, open-top holster of the quick-draw man. In the holster was a heavy revolver.

"Why—what—" he said.

"Daddy's!" she replied. "Before somebody killed him! We're trippin' down alone, mamma an' I! Wear hit, strangeh! If he's daid, that Mad Tom, yo'll likely not be mistrusted. But if he ain't—an' there's no real killin' that kind, not by drownin', there ain't!"

"My dear, I—you see, I'm—"

"A softpaw. Suttinly!" She understood. "Yo' don't know. But, strangeh, when you come a-mixin' up into these yeah riveh things—Lawse, Lawse! I knowed those riveh spirits was a-talkin' somethin big! Hit's jes' begun, I know hit is. An' those wild geese coming down the sky wind, talkin' while they come! Hit all means somethin'—yes, indeed! Betteh get up the bank, suh; you've had fair warnin' an' now's yo' chance!"

"Things don't happen that way," he exclaimed in amazed disbelief. "It's nothing but a little scrap!"

"A little scrap down thisaway—sho! Lots die in them, softpaw! How come hit you drapped into this eddy to-night? How come hit you came down the bar, and saw me? How come hit you laughed a-dancing? They all saw you, strangeh, standing tall an' handsome—proud and high-spirited. Yes, indeed. There's a many prettier than I be, but—but hyar we be an' old Mississip's done been talking to us! The spirits are laughing—times are picking up down the reaches and bends."

Her voice was low, sweet, gentle and full of the same kind of music he recognized in the song of the wild geese—he wondered what unpoetic scoundrel first called their voice "honking"? She was jeering him, while she told him the things that made him wonder at himself. His own conscience, too, was taunting him. There appeared before his vision a young woman's face, her eyes flaming, her cheeks white with anger, her lips excoriating him for his faithlessness to her. But here he was, as this river girl was reminding him, all tangled up in the meshes of a river scandal.

"I—didn't mean anything," he gasped with sudden realization. "I—I—"

"Shucks! " she exclaimed. "Come a night like this, and old Mississip's ha'nts a-talking—why, any one is plumb sure to be sentimental. I'd forget and you'd forget—yes, indeedy. I wouldn't think anything. But not Mad Tom! Ho, law— he's bad, that man! Murder was in his heart, because I was here with you, and not with him. I'm just warning you—"

"And—and I haven't hurt your feelings?" he asked.

"Not at all!" she answered, dryly. "It's just the way of old Mississippi—that's all!"

"It's enough."

"Yes, indeedy—you'll think so if Mad Tom ain't daid!"

"And you're—you're just a river girl?"

"That's a heap to be, strangeh—a riveh girl! I've been up the bank—I spent five years in particular Hades, being educated. I know my books, if that's what you mean. But it seems like—seems as though I hadn't stepped on our shanty boat deck when things began to happen. Hit's ol' Mississip'!"

"Why don't you leave it?"

"As to that, I love it! It's born in me, bred in me—I left it with my feet a-dragging, and I stepped light—yes, indeed, coming back! But you—Mad Tom 'll hound you down if he's daid, and he'll hound you down if he's alive!"

"I think I'll go down to New Orleans," he said decisively.

"Don't say I didn't warn you." She shrugged her shoulders. "When you go through that door, step quick! Mad Tom may be there on the bank, waiting to get a shot at you—and remember, suh, you've a gun of your own now!"

"And for that I'm a thousand times obliged to you. I'm sorry if—"

"That's all right—if you hadn't done what you did, I just 'lowed I'd have to do hit myse'f. No man takes me to the mission boat to be married till I'm ready. No, indeedy! Lawse, I was just mad myself, wishing he'd know—know—strangeh! I'd kiss you again if—if—"

"I wish I could tell you what it meant to me—"

"I 'low I understand; you've a girl back home, I bet, and—"

"How'd you know?"

"Sho!" She laughed lightly. "You called me Corilla—and my name is Dona Voane. Now, let's go in and dance again—and listen for a whistle up the bank."

It was supper time, and as they entered, the music ceased while the couples sorted themselves out for the eating. Planks laid along carpenters' horses served for tables, and every one sat on boxes, or chairs, or folding stools, while steaming coffee was poured into a great variety of cups, from plain tin to nicked Chinese and Japanese ware. Roast coon, roast duck, roast pork, and a dozen kinds of hot bread, sweet and spud potatoes—there was plenty to eat, and great appetites waited to enjoy what was had.

There was a hush, however, when Rillard sat down with Dona Voane, and with courtesy, brought to her plate the things she desired to eat. Some of the men grinned, but some glared about with sudden quickness of observation. It was sensational, this moment.

"Say, Pete, where's Tom-Tom Maiton?" a shrill, feminine voice startled the sudden quiet.

"Jes' what I was wondering," Pete Davlo replied with a grin.

All the spectators turned to gaze at Rillard, the sport, and Dona, who were apparently quite oblivious to the interest taken in them. Their indifference was just a little too obvious.

"Where's Mad Tom?" a whisper rippled around the big kitchen-dining room. "Who's seen Mad Tom—Tom Maiton?"

Two men scrambled up, and with covert glances at Rillard went around the table ends, through the concert-dance hall, and in the quiet their quick footsteps sounded loudly as they drummed up the landing stage to go along the bank to their boat. They were pals of Mad Tom.

They returned a few minutes later, having been heard whistling and calling around. Their faces were dark with anger and suspicion. 5ne of them stopped, and looking steadily at Dona, demanded:

"Say, Dona, did you-all see him?"

"Who?" She looked up quickly. "Who'd I see?"

"Tom-Tom Maiton?"

"Why, yes; he was here. I saw him prancin' around, same's always. Stepping light and throwing himself, just like he thought he was somebody."

"’Course—'course!" the man exclaimed, startled by the tone. "We all saw him, but where'd he go?"

"I don't know, Jim Taken, unless he was scairt out!"

"Wha—what! Mad Tom scairt of anybody! Why, that man—"

"I beg your pardon," Rillard interrupted rising to his feet, "there's your chair over there, and yours, Mr. Man, is right yonder! The ladies are sure missing your company!"

The two river men, standing together, opened their mouths and their eyes. Then, with sudden clicking of teeth and squinting of eyes, they dropped their hands, but Rillard was before them. He drew the big-mouthed revolver which Dona had handed him, and with a careless flourish beckoned the two once more to the seats where they belonged.

"Go talk to your own friends, you men," Rillard suggested softly. "Mad Tom has gone swimming, and if he comes back, you tell him for me that after this he'd better mind his own business, and all his pack of river rats. Is that perfectly plain?"

"Gone swimmin'—gone a-swimmin'! Mad Tom's daid?" Jim gasped. "Lawse, strangeh! I—we meant no 'fense, suh!"

"That's all right, boys; we're all friends; there's no need of being mean or having trouble. I'm a softpaw. I believe you call it, but where I came from no man ever talks to a lady, or looks at a lady, the way you looked at Miss Voane. Just tell her you're sorry, and it 'll be all right."