# Diamond Tolls/Chapter 15

CHAPTER XV
A RIVER barbecue is where the shantyboaters laugh, dance, and sing, but more than anything else, they exchange ideas, duel for the sweethearts, and sometimes succeed in trading for other men's wives. The trades are not all ill-natured, at that, for it is a matter of authentic tradition that such a swap was made mutually satisfactory all around by the addition of a side of bacon as "boot," when one river lady was regarded as slightly fairer than the other. It was said, too, that both men paid for the necessary divorces, a cost of seventeen dollars and fifty cents, at certain river towns being the prevailing rate, and weddings to suit.
This Yankee Bar eddy barbecue was not lacking in its sub-rosa interest and excitement. It was a sort of coming-out party for Delia, the girl whom Mrs. Mahna had chosen to chaperone, but who had proved sufficient to herself in the now admitted encounter with White Collar Dan—than whom none seemed so crestfallen as when he stumbled out and took his place at the driftboard tables to dine with the others.
​Delia, like the other women, did her share in serving the good things to eat and drink, which ranged from roast meats to pies and from filtered river water to raging strong drink supplied in a burst of generosity and good fellowship by the whisky boat—Hule's, as it happened.
Music for the dancing followed from two fiddles, banjo, several guitars, accordeon, and a talking machine or two. The dance was on the Sacred Concert Boat, as the theatre boat was called. It lasted far into the night, but Delia, after watching the river men and women dance a while in their rough and careless way, declared that she could not possibly dance, not even if she tried—not like that.
Nevertheless, she did a notable thing, for she permitted Urleigh, the companion of White Collar Dan, to take her to the supper tables where the cold remnants of the evening feast were stacked up. She allowed him to place a chair for her, and to pour her a cup of coffee from the big pot simmering over the live coals in the mudroast hole.
Urleigh, long enraptured with the newspaper business of gathering news, had found a good deal more than traces and facts in the story of the diamonds which he was following down. He had White Collar Dan's story in part—so far as Delia was concerned and fortune, or rather Delia, favoured him when he sought ​her out and endeavoured to worm another fragment from her.
It was just as plain to him, now, that White Collar Dan was hunting down the river for the lost Goles diamonds, and he knew from the girl's veiled statement to Dan that she had captured the diamonds when she seized the motorboat. Macrado's ejaculation had seemed to clear up that phrase. Now he wanted to know if those diamonds had really been thrown overboard. Already he had gathered material for the greatest two-page gem story he had ever seen or heard of, and he lacked but some few hints about this mysterious young woman who taunted her pursuer with the information that she had tossed his loot—a hundred thousand dollars' worth of gems—into the Mississippi.
So Urleigli set about getting an interview, willy-nilly, from the young woman. He prided himself with his fine manner and his irresistible craft. He had the stage all ready and he was sipping coffee with her, but he hesitated as to how he should frame his opening questions.
At that point, as he hesitated, she rolled her eyes up and asked:
"When did you leave Cincinnati, Mr. Urleigh?"
"Eh—about three-four weeks ago."
"I was surprised when you pulled into the eddy ​here with that—that man Gost; I heard he had a man of the name of Urleigh with him, but I had no idea it was the Cincinnati newspaperman of whom I had heard so much—and whose perfectly ridiculous writings had so often amused me in the newspapers. Dear me—the world is small, isn't it?"
"Eh?" Urleigh choked, reaching around to stare into her countenance on the lighted side.
"Oh—and now you don't remember me?" she sighed with mock resignation.
"Who—who are you?" he demanded.
"You don't know?" she asked, banteringly and yet with an undernote of eagerness.
"When did I see you?" he parried.
"You know," she smiled, as she rose to stroll along the bank. "I wondered, at first, whether you were after me, or after the diamonds. I'm glad it's only the diamonds. Good-night!"
She shook his hand briefly, and ran down the bank and out on the Mahna boat gang-plank, and thence into her gasolene boat cabin. Urleigh stood there staring after her.
"Evidently," he considered, half aloud, "very evidently, there are news stories of which I never even dreamed—who is she that she would think I might be following her down—and where the devil did I see her?"
​He searched his mind for memories of women, fair and great and interesting. He was surprised at the multitude whom he knew by sight and sound. This Delia girl—he puzzled with a half-awakening sense of memory. He recalled her voice, and it suggested other voices. Yet he could not place a name or a fact with that voice, to recall it.
He went on down to the concert boat, to see the dancing again. He was already up to his neck in the novelty of the shantyboat life, He could see columns and columns of articles about these floating people. He dared not miss so good a scene as the men and women dancing—men with the mark of Cain in their eyes; women who looked as though they had experienced a thousand adventures; and music which possessed a strange and melancholy undertone, themes that were more pathetic than the people themselves.
Urleigh ventured to dance a set or two, and to waltz, trot, and eddy-step under the tutelage of one of the women, who was not old but who was very, very wise. She led him up and down the two-set hall, and as he was agile on his feet, he made an impression on the crowd. Her man, who was playing fiddle, kept shouting:
"Shake yer legs, boy! Shake 'em! That gal theh can outdance any gal I know of in them fancy steppin's. Shake up, boy! Get to it. You all's the ​fustest dangdest man as I eveh seed could keep up with 'er. Get to it, now—whoe-e-e!"
Urleigh, who had no desire to risk trouble, was glad the husband felt that way about it. Other husbands that night were not so complaisant. Already there was a subdued and ominous anxiety, bad tempers having been stirred by the generosity of the whisky boater and the recklessness of lone men. Trouble was not far away, and Mrs. Mahna, peacemaker at large, was going about, shaking her fists in the faces of some men, and pleading with others, and shaking her fingers in the countenances of rash young women.
Having obtained what experience he desired in that way, Urleigh returned to the bank and started up to his own boat, where Gost was lying, dead tired and weak, unable to stand much roistering around. As he went along, he was surprised to see the dark shape of a boat out in the eddy. As he looked, the boat gathered headway and pushed across the eddy toward the current of midstream and the black gloom of the far shore.
He did not know the boat, not recognizing the shape. He decided that it was one of the gasolenes that had dropped in for the play, and was now taking its departure. As there were eight or ten motorboats in, he did not give the subject thought.
On board his boat he found Gost dreaming and ​tossing in his sleep. Gost was mumbling, as he had mumbled a good deal the past two or three nights. He had left the hospital too soon, and the river was not thoroughly agreeing with him.
"She's got 'em!" Gost muttered, "nobody'd throw 'em oveh! She's got 'em! I bet I get 'em back, if I burn her feet off!"
Urleigh gave the sick man some medicine which quieted him. Then he filled in his notebook with the work of the day which he had found intensely strange and interesting. All day long he had seemed to be on the brim of a volcano about to become active—yet the river people had somehow evaded conflict and trouble.
He, too, went to sleep at last, and it was late when he awakened. Gost was just getting up. When they looked out on the shantyboat town only two or three people were abroad. Everyone was sleepy, and looked it.
Urleigh walked along the bank and at Mahna's boat he stopped. The girl Delia's motorboat was no longer moored alongside it. He looked up and down the bank, wondering why she had changed her berth. As he stood there, Mrs. Mahna stepped out on the deck
"Well, looks like she'd give you the slip, don't it?"
"Give me the slip?" he repeated.
​"I could see you two fellers worrited her," Mrs. Mahna grinned, "and I wa'n't s'prised to find she'd cast off and beat away. What you going to do about it, hey?"
"It is none of my business what she does," Urleigh declared, nettled by the river woman's hints and questions.
"Well, all I got to say is, she's a darned bright girl, and it's 'button, button, who's got the button!' I bet you you don't ketch her er ketch Murdong, either. Hue-e! I tell you, I bet them two's the slickest pair ever twisted slickers at their own game. She'll give you cards an' spades an' beat you, she'n that feller."
"Oh, Murdong isn't so much."
"Ain't he? Ain't he? That shows you don't know 'im. They tried to fool me, but them two's slick—slicker'n all the rest put together. You fellers ain't slick. You'll never get them, not into a shantyboat."
"No? Perhaps we don't want them."
"Shucks! You cayn't fool me. Jes' as Macrado said, you're s'prised she throwed them diamonds overboard."
"Oh, no! Not a bit surprised—that's a regular lady's trick, throwing diamonds overboard. Just like Miss Desbrow, especially."
​"That her name? Desbrow? Sho! I bet I'd get to find out. Where's she from, mister?"
"Up the Ohio."
"I know that—which place?"
"Oh, it isn't my secret to tell you. Didn't she say?"
"Well, I done the best I knowed how for her. I expect she can take cyar of herse'f all right. She seemed right innocent an' quiet, but, gee whiz! that gal's got spirit."
Urleigh knew that Delia had pulled out about 2:30 a. m., and he knew that she had headed down stream. He was nonplussed by the turn of events. When he returned to the cabin-boat he told Gost that DeHa had slipped away in the night.
"Course she did!" Gost exclaimed. "Didn't I know she'd make her getaway? That fool Macrado talking thataway—I'd ought to kill him, the fool! Now there'll be a chase after her down Old Mississip', pirates and beaus and sports and crooks and all kinds of danged fools. Lawse! Wa'n't that Macrado a fool? Well, we got to cut out, too. We got to get down the riveh. I want a motorboat. This slow poking down in the current ain't no way. Shucks! I mout of knowed. Help me up. Lawse! We got to get a motorboat so's we can hurry. We got to hurry, I tell you."
​Gost was querulous and weak, but he did not forget and raise his voice so that other river men would hear him. His voice was hardly more than a whisper, but it was distinct, and his meaning seemed plain. He stumbled up the gang-plank and along the bank crest, leaving Urleigh who turned to getting a meal—breakfast, luncheon—he did not know what to call it. He had forgotten to wind his watch, and he did not know the time.
Already some of the shantyboats were working out into the eddy, preparing to trip on down the river. It was clear that the shantyboat town was breaking up. The merrymakers of the previous days were now going forth to make up for their play, each after his own mind. Only the lazy sports and those who need not wonder where their next meals would be found lazied there for the day after.
A motorboat steered up the eddy about an hour after Gost's departure with Gost and Macrado in it. The boat was the one in which Macrado had run into the eddy, and when the two men entered the shantyboat, Gost exclaimed in short, breathless sentences:
"Mac' here'll swap boats. He's sick of a motorboat. He don't like it. He says he'll trade cheap. I told 'im you owned this boat, and he 'lowed it'd suit him. Gasolene costs money, it does. What d'ye say? Trade? Just a hundred to boot's, all."
​"I can't do it," Urleigh shook his head. "I'm about broke. This boat took a lot of my money."
"Hell! I didn't know that!" Gost exclaimed, and Macrado seemed disappointed, a fact that Gost observed, as he continued: "Can you raise twenty-five? Eh? Look'n see—it's important——"
Urleigh thought a minute, and then he drew out a billfold. In the fold were three bills, a ten, two fives, and a one.
"I kin make it up!" Gost declared, going into the galley, and rattling the cooking ware. He returned with eighty dollars in bills.
"We'll trade!" he cried, eagerly, and Urleigh found himself in another river deal which he did not quite understand.
Gost would not wait. In a few minutes the few things on board that they wanted on the motorboat were transferred, including Urleigh's suitcase and clothes. The two partners jumped into the motorboat, shoved off, and with the motor running, started by Cost, they steered down the eddy into the current and headed toward Fort Pillow. When they were out of hearing Gost turned to Urleigh and grinned.
"This boat'll sell anywhere for four hundred if it's painted. We'll make money on it. Macrado 'lowed two-fifty for that shantyboat. That's trading, that is. But we could sink this old boat and never ​know it, 'fore we get through with this job we're on. You know, now, what it is, don't you?"
"The diamonds?" Urleigh asked.
"You bet! I wasn't asleep last night when you was gallivantin' with the girls. I seen you sweetenin' Delia. Good! You got a game to work, now. See? I want a chanct at that boat of her'n, see? She said she throwed the diamonds overboard, but she's crazy if she thinks I'd fall for that. Why them diamonds'd make a girl crazy. Look't—what you got to do is take her up town in Mendova, see? Then I'll get to look—see, in her boat—I know it, every nook and joint."
"That'd be a very nice game for a reputable newspaperman to play," Urleigh suggested, thoughtfully.
"You bet! It's fifty-fifty, you'n me, on them diamonds, now. I don't forget you took care of me, sick's I was, and the way you done."
Urleigh did not demur. The Mississippi soon suggests to the wayfarer that its ways are not the ways of other empires. He wondered that his conscience did not trouble him at the mere thought of playing such a trick on Delia. Somehow he felt as though she had laughed at him the previous night. He wanted a chance to laugh at her now. For that reason he did not immediately deny the surface feasibility of Gost's scheme.
​Gost had divined the girl's destination accurately. When they ran into Poplar Slough, her motorboat was moored at the foot of Ferry Street, and she was sitting in the cockpit reading a newspaper—and a pretty figure she made of it, too.