“They hear me?”
“You’re the one that lost the pocketbook.”
“When do you take me back?”
“Now. Tonight.”
“Why can’t she be searched now and I get my pocketbook back and that’s all I want anyhow without me having to go clear on back to Rio Vista?”
“Did you explain her that, captain?”
“I’ve explained it till I’m tired. Madame, they got laws in this country and nobody gets searched on my boat till they’re under arrest and I see the papers. This company is not taking chances on a case that rests on the look somebody has got on their face. Did you ever see the look on your face?”
“I say she took it.”
“Then charge her.”
She didn’t answer, and the captain said: “Madame, will you kindly make up your mind one way or the other, so I can get out of here like I was supposed to do three hours ago? We’ve been all afternoon fooling around with you, looking up officers and neglecting everything else, and I ask you, for God’s sake, will you kindly hatch a chicken or get the hell off the nest?”
“You stop talking to me like that.”
“Then say something.”
“If I charge her do they search?”
“And haul you back.”
“I charge her.”
It was up to me to get out, because a nearly naked man in her bed wasn’t doing her any good. I opened the door on a crack and looked, but they were all over the saloon, not only the girl, the captain, the deputy, and the woman, but twenty or thirty passengers with drinks in their hands listening. I closed the door and went to the window. Nobody was out there, but it was so small I wondered if I would get stuck, like a pig under a gate. But it was my only chance, so I stuck my head out, got an arm through, and commenced to squirm. I’m six feet three, but I thought I had grown to eight yards from the skin I left on that sill and the rip I gave one leg, where it swung against a raw screw that was sticking out of one of the bedposts where the knob was missing. Finally I was out, and I wasn’t one second too soon, because when my rump hit the deck a light showed, and when I raised up to peep they were in there.
They went through her trunk and the pillows on the bed and the mattress and bedclothes, and then the deputy said: “Very well, young woman, I’ll leave you here with the maid, and deputize her to search your person.”
Then the men went out, and the maid stepped over to search. She was a big blonde girl that looked like a Swede. And the woman that lost the pocket-book stepped over to watch, her lips pulled in and her chin pushed out, and the breath whistling through her nose. But then my heart gave a bump. Because the way those black eyes were narrowed down to two little slits, and the way those thick red lips were twisted up, I knew there wasn’t going to be any searching, not by this pair. The maid knew it too, because she backed off and began to chatter something about her not being responsible in any way, she was just deputized by the officer. And the woman knew it too, when that smack hit one side of her face like a pistol shot, and the curls were jerked off the other side so hard the hat and wig came with them, and she standing there screaming, as bald as a coot. When the deputy came in with the captain and some men, he backed off from those hard eyes too. “And maybe you think you can search me?”
“Miss, I’m not required to use force, and I’ve no intention of doing it. I’m required to warn you, however, that whatever you say and do can be used against you, and if you refuse to submit to search, that fact will no doubt be most interesting to a jury. Beyond denying you the freedom of the boat, which I had intended to give you, and locking you in this stateroom, I won’t go into the matter any further.”
“You mean you can’t.”
“Have it any way you like, miss.”
“But he can.”
She walked over to the captain, switching her hips. “Because he’s pretty. And because I can’t have things used against me. Because I’se pretty too, and can’t have myself put in any jail.” She raised her hands above her head and looked up at him. It was the first I had seen her smile, and I hated it she was smiling at him, not me, and letting him feel all over her breasts and hips and legs, and even lifting her dresses so he could search her better. Outside, the passengers were laughing and yelling dirty stuff, and every word a stab into my heart, that had been beating so hard before because I was proud of her. At last it was done, and they were all gone, except that the captain looked her in the eye on his way out, and said he’d drop by if he had time, and she said please do. I thought I ought to say good-bye to her, and thank her for saving my life, but couldn’t make myself do it. I slunk down the stairs to the freight deck, and went over the side the way I came aboard, and swum across to the shack.
I was climbing out on my little plank landing before I felt that throb in my throat. Because there was my boat, the oars tucked under the seats, and all I had to do was jump in and I’d be alongside that steamer in a minute. I think I did it in half a minute. I threw the painter over the same rail she had used for the bucket, vaulted over to the freight deck, and ran up the stairs. Nobody noticed me that I could see. The deckhands were all in the bow, rolling freight off the pier, and the passengers were at the rail watching them, or else in the bar, having a drink. She was lying down, reading a paper, when I called, but she jumped up and came to the window. “I was wondering where you’d got to.”
“I’ve been getting my boat. Come on. Hurry.”
She dragged her trunk over, and I lifted it out the window. It was one of those little leather ones that fit nice in the stagecoaches. Then she got her black cape and I took it, and leaned out the window so I could pull her through. We slipped down the stairway and I helped her in the boat. As I lowered the trunk, a bell rang in the engine room. It seemed a year before I could cast off the painter, grab the oars, and dig. As I shot away, the wheel began to turn. I was headed upstream, because the current had swung me that way, but I didn’t take time to turn. I kept on going, past the steamer’s bow, and shot under the next pier. She was in the stern, but now she moved up beside me, and we sat there, and held our breath, and watched. The steamer was pointed upstream too, because they always come in against the current, and she kept on that way until she was pretty close to the bridge. Then a hawser lifted out of the water, and you could hear the deckhands grunt as they began pulling it in. She came around till we could almost have touched her, then she was pointed downriver, and the wharfmaster threw the hawser off the piling, and another bell rang in the engine room. We got some spray in our faces, and almost before you could believe it there was nothing but lights going downriver while the band played Oh! Susanna.
We laughed. Then we laughed again, and I put my arm around her and she let me. Then she came close and kissed me and I kissed back and I knew I loved her and she had to be mine.
2
“What do I do now?”
“Your family live here?”
“My family’s dead.”
“Where did you figure to go from the boat?”
“To a hotel.”
“You can’t do that now. They’ll be looking for you.”
“What you trembling about?”
“I got a shack.”
“Must be cold there, the way you shake.”
“You could come in there.”
“With you?”
“It’s not much, but you’d be hidden.”
“What’s your name?”
“Roger. Roger Duval.”
“You from Louisiana?”
“The name’s French, but I’m from Maryland.”
“Morina’s my name. Morina Crockett.”
“You talk like Louisiana.”