orld. A water hyacinth--what was it? He could stamp one to a
smear on his deck, but a river of them no man could fight. He swore
the lilies had ruined his whisky-running years ago to the Atchafalaya
lumber camps; they blocked Grand River when he went to log-towing;
they had cost him thousands of dollars for repairs and lost time in
his swamp ventures.

Bareheaded under the semi-tropic sun, he glowered at the lily-drift.
Then he snarled at Crump to reverse the motor. Tedge would retreat
again!

"I'll drive the boat clean around Southwest Pass to get shut of 'em!
No feed, huh, for these cows! They'll feed sharks, they will! Huh, Mr.
Cowman, the blisterin' lilies cost me five hundred dollars already!"

The lone passenger smoked idly and watched the gaunt cattle
staggering, penned in the flat, dead heat of the foredeck. Tedge
cursed him, too, under his breath. Milt Rogers had asked to make the
coast run from Beaumont on Tedge's boat. Tedge remembered what Rogers
said--he was going to see a girl who lived up Bayou Boeuf above
Tedge's destination. Tedge remembered that girl--a Cajan girl whom he
once heard singing in the floating gardens while Tedge was battling
and cursing to pass the blockade.

He hated her for loving the lilies, and the man for loving her. He
burst out again with his volcanic fury at the green and purple horde.

"They're a fine sight to see," mused the other, "after a man's eyes
been burned out ridin' the dry range; no rain in nine months up
there--nothin' green or pretty in----"

"Pretty!" Tedge seemed to menace with his little shifty eyes. "I wish
all them lilies had one neck and I could twist it! Jest one head, and
me stompin' it! Yeh!--and all the damned flowers in the world with it!
Yeh! And me watchin' 'em die!"

The man from the dry lands smoked idly under the awning. His serenity
evoked all the savagery of Tedge's feud with the lilies. Pretty! A man
who dealt with cows seeing beauty in anything! Well, the girl did
it--that swamp angel this Rogers was going to visit. That Aurelie
Frenet who sang in the flower-starred river--that was it! Tedge
glowered on the Texan--he hated him, too, because this loveliness gave
him peace, while the master of the _Marie Louise_ must fume about his
wheelhouse, a perspiring madman.

It took an hour for the _Marie_ even to retreat and find steerage-way
easterly off across a shallow lake, mirroring the marsh shores in the
sunset. Across it the bayou boat wheez