"She needn't be, never again!" Despard grinned. "When a lady can handle a river Law like she does, us bad uns are real nice!" Terabon laughed, and the two went into the cabin-boat where Carline lay on the bunk. Terabon ran his hand around the man's head and neck, found the lump near the base of the skull, found that the neck wasn't broken, and made sure that the heart was beating--things a reporter naturally learns to do in police-station and hospital experience. Jet brought the motorboat down to the stern of the cabin-boat, and the four carried Carline on board. They put him in his bunk, and Terabon, his skiff towing astern, steered out into the main current and soon faded down by Craighead Point Bar. "I knowed he'd be all right," Despard declared. "He'll take him down to Memphis, and out of our way. I'd 'a' hated to kill him; it ain't no use killin' a man less'n it's necessary. We got what we was after. Course, if we'd rewarded him, likely we'd got a lot, but it ain't safe, holdin' a man for rewards ain't." "That boat'd been a good one to travel in," Jet suggested. "Everybody'd knowed it was Carline's, an' it wa'n't worth fixing over. Hull not much good, and the motor's been abused some. We'll do better'n that." They had rid themselves of an incumbrance. They had made an acquaintance who was making himself useful. They were considerably richer than they had been for some time. "I'd like to drap into Mendova," Jet mused. "We ain't had what you'd call a time----" "Let's kill some birds first," Gaspard suggested. "I got a hunch that Yankee Bar's a good bet for us for a little while. We dassn't look into Memphis, 'count of last trip down. Mendova's all right, but wait'll we've hunted Yankee Bar." The money burned in their pockets, but as they stood looking out at the long, beautiful Yankee Bar its appeal went home. For more than a hundred years generations of pirates had used there, and no one knows how many tragedies have left their stain in the great band around from Gold Dust Landing to Chickasaw Bluffs No. 1. After dark they rowed over to the point and put out their decoys, dug their pits, screened them, and brushed over their tracks in the sand. Then they played cards till midnight, turned in for a little sleep, and turned out again in the black morning to go to their places with repeating shotguns and cripple-killer rifles in their hands. When they were in their places, and the river silence prevailed, they saw the stars overhead, the reflections on sand and water around them, and the quivering change as air currents moved in the dark--the things that walk in the night. They heard, at intervals, many voices. Some they knew as the fluent music of migrant geese flying over on long laps of their fall flight, but some they did not know, except that they were river voices.