"Hit's so," Rasba admitted. "I sung right smart comin' down the Ohio. Seems like I jest wanted to sing, like birds in the posey time." "Prebol shore should git to a doctor, shot up thataway. He didn't say which lady shot him, Parson?" a woman asked. "No; jes' a lady into an eddy into a lonesome bend." Rasba shook his head. "A purty woman, livin' alone on this riveh. Do many do that?" "Riveh ladies all do, sometimes. I tripped from Cairo to Vicksburg into a skift once," a tall, angular woman said. "My man that use to be had stoled the shanty-boat what I'd bought an' paid for with my own money. I went up the bank at Columbus Hickories, gettin' nuts; I come back, an' my boat was gone. Wa'n't I tearin' an' rearin'! Well, I hoofed hit down to Columbus, an' I bought me a skift, count of me always havin' some money saved up." "I bet Vicksburg's a hundred mile!" Rasba mused. "A hundred mile!" the woman said with a guffaw. "Hit's six hundred an' sixty-three miles from Cairo to Vicksburg, yes, indeed. A hundred mile! I made hit in ten days, stoppin' along. I ketched it theh." "You found yo' man?" "Shucks! Hit wa'n't the man I wanted, hit were my boat--a nice, reg'lar pine an' oak-frame boat. I bet me I chucked him ovehbo'd, an' towed back up to Memphis. Hit were a good $300 bo't, sports built, an' hits on the riveh yet--Dart Mitto's got hit, junkin'. You'll see him down by Arkansaw Old Mouth if yo's trippin' right down." "I expect to," Rasba replied, doubtfully. Never in his life before had he talked in terms of hundreds of miles, cities, and far rivers, "Yo'll know that boat; he's went an' painted hit a sickly yeller, like a railroad station. I hate yeller! Gimme a nice light blue or a right bright green." "Hyar comes anotheh bo't!" one of the men remarked, and all turned to look up the chute, where a little cabin-boat had drifted into sight. No one was on deck, and it was apparent that the Columbus banks had shunted the craft clear across the river and down the chute, just as Rasba himself had been carried. The shadow of the trees on the west side of the chute fell across the boat and immediately brought the tripper out of the cabin. A shadow is a warning on wide rivers. It tells of the nearness of a bank, or towhead, or even of a steamboat. In mid-stream there is little need for apprehension, but when the current carries one down into a caving bend and close to overhanging trees or along the edges of short, boiling eddies, it is time to get out and look for snags and jeopardies. Seeing the group of people on the sandbar, the journeyer, who was a woman, took the sweeps of her boat and began to work over to them. "Hit handles nice, that bo't!" one of the fishermen said. "Pulls jes' like a skift. Wonder who that woman is?"