"Why shouldn't I have?" Buck started up from shuffling and throwing a book of cards. "Look't me. If Jest Prebol's shot most daid by a woman, look't me. Do you know me--where I come from, where the hell I'm goin'? Yo' bet you don't. I've been shanty-boatin' fifteen years, but I ain't always been a shanty-boater, no, I haven't. Talk to me about women. When I think what I've took from one woman--Sho!" He stared at the floor, his teeth clenched and his strong face set. Slip stared. His pal had disclosed a new phase of character. Buck turned and glared into Slip's eyes. "I'll tell you, Slip, you're helpless when it comes to women. They've played the game for ten thousand years, practised it every day, wearing down men's minds and men never knew it. Read history, as I've done. Study psychology, 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.