e oven while she caught up the
six-quart coffee pot with the other.

"I ain't got no patience with them women that don't feed their men!" she
declared. "About all men want's a full stomach, anyhow, an' if you could
only git one that wa'n't lazy, an' didn't drink, an' wasn't impedent,
an' knowed anything, besides, you'd have something. Ain't that so,
Nelia?"

"Oh, indeed yes," Nelia cried, from the fullness of her experience,
which was far less than that of the hostess.

After they had eaten, they went from the kitchen into the sitting room,
where Rasba turned to Nelia.

"You came down the river alone?" he asked.

"Yes," she admitted.

"I wonder you wouldn't be scairt up of it--nights, and those lonesome
bends?"

"It's better than some other things." Nelia shook her head. "Besides,
you've come alone down the Ohio yourself."

He looked at her, and Mrs. Caope chuckled.

"But--but you're a woman!" Rasba exclaimed.

"Suppose a mean man came aboard your boat, and--and tried to rob you,"
Nelia asked, level voiced, "what would you do?"

"Why, course, I'd--I'd likely stop him."

"You'd throw him overboard?"

"Well--if hit were clost to the bank an' he could swim, I mout."

Nelia and the Caopes laughed aloud, and Rasba joined in the merriment.
When the laughter had subsided, Rasba said:

"The reason I was asking, as I came by the River Forks I found a little
red boat there with a man on the cabin floor shot through----"

"Dead?" Nelia gasped.

"No, just kind of pricked up a bit, into one shoulder. He said a lady
shot him because he 'lowed to land into the same eddy with her."

"But--where----?" Nelia half-whispered. "Where did he go?"

"Hit were Jest Prebol," Mrs. Caope said. "You was tellin' of him,
Parson."

"Hit were Prebol," Rasba nodded, "an' he shore needed shooting!"

"Yas, suh. That kind has to be shot some to make 'em behave
theirselves," Mrs Caope exclaimed, sharply. "If it wa'n't fer ladies
shootin' men onct in awhile, down Old Mississip', why, ladies couldn't
git to live here a-tall!"

"And women, sometimes, don't do men any good," Rasba mused, aloud, "I've
wondered right smart about hit. You see, a parson circuit rides around,
an' he sees a sight more'n he tells. Lawse, he shore do!"

The two women glared at him, but he was studying his huge hands, first
the backs and then the calloused palms. He was really wondering, so the
two women glanced at each other, laughing. The idea that probab