"I wa'nt doin' nothing!" he explained, "I were jes' drappin' down, up above Buffalo Island, an' b'low Commerce, an' a lady shot me--bang! Ho law! She jes' shot me thataway. No 'count for hit at all." "A lady you knowed?" Rasba asked. "No suh! But she's onto the riveh, into a shanty-boat, purty, too, an' jes' drappin' down, like she wa'nt goin' no wheres, an' like she mout of be'n jes' moseyin'. I jes 'lowed I'd drap in, an' say howdy like, an' she drawed down an' shot--bang!" "Was she frightened?" "Hit were a lonesome reach, along of Powerses Island," the man admitted, whining and reluctant. "She didn't own that there riveh. Hain't a man no right to land in anywheres? She shot me jes' like I was a dawg, an' she hadn't no feelin's nohow. Jes' like a dawg!" "Did you know her?" "No, suh. We'd be'n drappin' down, an' drappin' down--come down below Chester, an' sometimes she'd be ahead, an' sometimes me, an' how'd I know she wouldn't be friendly? Ain't riveh women always friendly? An' theh she ups an' shoots me like a dawg. She's mean, that woman, mean an' pretty, too, like some women is!" Rasba wondered. He had been long enough on the Ohio to get the feeling of a great river. He saw the specious pleading of the wounded wretch, and his quick imagination pictured the woman alone in a vast, wild wood, at the edge of that running mile-wide flood. "Of co'rse!" he said, half aloud, "of co'rse!" "Co'rse what?" the man demanded, querulously. "Co'rse she shot," Rasba answered, tartly. "Sometimes a lady jes' naturaly has to shoot, fearin' of men." Rasba landed the two boats in at the foot of a sandbar, and made them fast to old stakes driven into the top of the low reef. He brought his patient some hot soup, and after they had eaten supper, he sat down to talk to him, keeping the man company in his pain, and leading him on to talk about the river, and the river people. In that first adventure at the Ohio's forks Rasba had discovered his own misconceptions, and the truth of the Mississippi had been partly revealed to him. What the Tug was to the Big Sandy, what the Big Sandy was to the Ohio, the Ohio was to the Mississippi. What he had looked to as the end was but the beginning, and Rasba was lost in the immensity of the river that was a mile wide, thousands of miles long, and unlike anything the mountain preacher had ever dreamed of. If this was the Mississippi, what must the Jordan be? "My name's Prebol," the man said, "Jest Prebol. I live on Old Mississip'! I live anywhere, down by N'Orleans, Vicksburg--everywhere! I'm a grafter, I am--" "A grafter?" Rasba repeated the strange word. "Yas, suh, cyards, an' tradin' slum, barberin' mebby, an' mebby some otheh things. I can sell patent medicine to a doctor, I can! I clean cisterns, an' anything." "You gamble?" Rasba demanded, grasping one fact. "Sho!" Prebol grinned. "Who all mout _yo'_ be?"