logy, as I have. Go down into the fundamentals of human
experience and human activities, and learn the lesson. Fifteen years
I've been up and down these rivers, from Fort Benton to the Passes, from
the foothills of the Rockies to the headwaters of Clinch and Holston in
the Appalachians. Why? Because one woman sang her way into my heart, and
because she tied my soul to her little finger, and when she found that I
could not escape--when she had--when she had--What do you know about
women?"

Slip stared at him. His pal, partner in river enterprises, an old river
man, who talked little and who played the slickest games in the slickest
way, had suddenly emerged like a turtle's head, and spoken in terms of
science, education, breeding--regular quality folks' talk--under stress
of an argument about women. And they had argued the subject before with
jest and humour and without personal feeling.

Buck turned away, bent and shivering.

"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.

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