," Doss declared, with finality.

Doss had seen her. By that time a thousand shanty-boaters had heard
about that girl's one shot of deadly accuracy. The woman folks on a
thousand miles of reach and bend had had a bad example set before them.
Doss himself felt an anger which was impotent against the woman who had
shot Jest Prebold down. Probably other women would take to shooting,
right off the bat, the same way. He despised that idea.

Carline, doubtful as to whether his wife was being insulted,
congratulated, or described, gazed at the photograph. The more he
looked, the more exasperated he felt. She was a woman--what right had
she to run away and leave him with his honour impugned? He felt as
though he hadn't taught her her place. At the same time, when he looked
at the picture, he discovered a remembrance of his feeling that she was
a very difficult person to teach anything to. Her learning always had
insulted his own meagreness of information and aptness in repartee. Next
to not finding her, his big worry had become finding her.

They steered down the river without great haste. Doss studied the
shanty-boats which he saw moored in the various eddies, large and small.
Some he spoke of casually, as store-boats, fishermen, market hunters,
or, as they passed between Caruthersville and the opposite shore, a
gambling boat. Even the river pirate, gloating over his prey, and
puzzled only as to the method of making the most of his victim, could
not penetrate the veil which it happened the Mississippi River
interposed between them and the river gambling den--for the moment.
There is no use seeking the method of the river, nor endeavouring to
discover the processes by which the lives of thousands who go afloat
down the Mississippi are woven as woof and warp in the fabric of river
life and river mysteries. The more faithful an effort to select one of
the commonest and simplest of river complications, the more improbable
and fanciful it must seem.

Doss, in intervals when he was not consciously registering the smile of
good humour, the generosity of an experienced man toward the chance
visitor, and the willingness to defer to the gentleman from Up the Bank,
brought his expression unconsciously to the cold, rough woodenness of
blank insensitiveness--the malignance of a snapping turtle, to mention a
medium reptilian face. A whim, and the necessity of delay, led Doss to
suggest that they take a look up the Obion River as a likely