"Why, yes-s, down this way; I live near it, up at Gage." "I see, your first trip down. Got a nice gasolene boat, though!" "Oh, yes! You're stopping here?" "Just arrived this morning; trying to make up my mind whether I'll go over on St. Francis, turkey-and deer-hunting, or get a boat and drop down the Mississippi. Been wondering about that." "Well, say, now--why can't you drop down with me?" "Oh, I'd be in the way----" "Not a bit----" "Costs a lot to run a motorboat, and I'd have to----" "No, you wouldn't! Not a cent! Your experience and my boat----" "Well, of course, if you put it that way. If it'd be any accommodation to you to have an old river man--I mean I've always tripped the river, off and on, for sport." "It'd be an education for me, a great help!" "Yes, I expect it would be an education, if you don't know the river." Doss smiled. They walked over to the river bank. An arc light cast its rays upon the end of the street, down the sloping bank, and in a light circle upon the rocking, muddy waters where the fish dock and several shanty-boats rested against the bank. Doss whistled a little tune as he rested on his cane. The front door of the third houseboat up the eddy opened and closed. A man climbed the bank and passed the two with a basket on his arm. "Come on down," Carline urged. "Not to-night," Doss said. "I've got my room up at the hotel, and I'll have to get my stuff out of the railroad baggage room. But I'll come down about 10 or 11 o'clock in the morning. Then we'll fit up and drop down the river. Good-night!" Doss watched Carline go down to the dock and on to his boat. Then he went up the street and held earnest confab with a man who had a basket on his arm. They whispered ten minutes or so, then the man with the basket returned to his shanty-boat, and within half an hour was back up town, carrying two suitcases, a gun case, and a duffle bag. Doss went to the smaller hotel with these things and registered. He walked down to the river in the morning and noticed that the third shanty-boat had dropped out into the river during the night, in spite of the storm that was blowing up. He went down and ate breakfast with Carline, and the two went up and got Doss's outfit at the hotel. They returned to the motorboat, and, having laid in a supply of groceries, cast off their lines and steered away down the river. "Yes, sir, we'll find that girl if it takes all winter!" the fish-market man heard Doss tell Carline in a loud voice. That afternoon a man in a skiff came down the river and turned into the dock. As he landed, the fish-market man said to him: Yes. "If you see any lady coming down, tell her a detector is below, lookin' fo' her. He's a cheap skate, into a motorboat--but I don't expect he'll be into hit long, 'count of some river fellers bein' with him. But he mout be bad, that detector. If you should see a nice lady, tell her." "You bet!" the skiff man, who was Lester Terabon, exclaimed. CHAPTER XIX