"Captain Wilson, I don't figure in this thing personally at all. But now I'll tell you the whole story, and let you decide for yourself."
He went on speaking slowly, evenly, gently, impersonally, telling what had been the case of Miss Lady upon the very night preceding; telling how great was the stress of events at the head of the Delta, very far away, and impossible now of access. He made no offer of pecuniary reward, but stated his case simply and asked his auditor to put himself in his own position.
As he spoke, the chair of Captain Wilson began to edge toward his own. In the eyes of the old steamboat man there came a glisten strange to them. His hand unconsciously reached out. "Stop!" he roared. "Give me your hand. The boat is yours! Of course she is."
Eddring was silent, for there came a lump in his own throat, as he felt Wilson's assuring hand clap him on the shoulder.
"You're what I call a thoroughbred," said the latter. "Man, can you play poker? You certainly can make a pair of deuces look like a full house. Get up an' shake hands. You're right. The boat's yours. Uncle Sam can wait — the whole damned North American continent can wait — "
Eddring rose and took him by the hand.
"Well, that's my case, Captain," said he. "We've both one errand, and that's to protect the white people of the Delta; and to get hold of the truth which will put this girl where she belongs. Public necessity is the greatest of all laws; unless it be the unwritten and general law which I know you've respected all your life."
"Well, man — " Wilson broke into an uproarious laugh, "you certainly are the yellow flower of the forest. It's mighty seldom I've laid down to a line of talk, but I ain't ashamed to do it now. Here's the boat, and we'll run her express, as soon as we can get rid of the mail and passengers up above. Any river-man knows what levee-cutting means, and what it means if the niggers get out of hand. I'll take you in — why, I know Cal Blount myself — and I couldn't look my own daughter in the face again if I didn't do just what you say."
Chapter XI. THE WILDERNESS
Between the cities of Memphis and Vicksburg there lies a great battle-ground. It has known encounters between red men and red, between red men and white, and has known the shock of arms when white has been arrayed against white. Most of all, it is a battle-ground yet to be, whereon perhaps there shall be waged a conflict between white and black. Always, too, it will be the battle-ground between civilized man and the relapsing savagery of nature; between man and the wilderness; between the white race and great Messasebe, Father of the Waters.
Father Messasebe is, after all, but weakly bound to the ways of commerce. His voice is always for the wild; his wish is for the ancient ways. Here in the far wild country — a part of which even to- day is a more trackless and a less known wilderness than any in the heart of our remotest mountain ranges — the great river reaches out a thousand clutching fingers for his own, claiming it as a home even now for his savagery; asking it, if not for a wild red race, then for the black one which may one day prove its savage successor.
Here is the reekingly rich soil of the great Delta — that name not meaning the wide marshes of the actual mouth of the Mississippi, but the fat accumulated soil of centuries caged in by that long, incurving dam of the hills which, far inland from the current of the swift water-way, begins at the head of the vast body of tangled Yazoo lands, and drops down, pinching in at the base of a great "V," where the bluffs converge near Vicksburg. These hills spreading out on either side hold in their wide arms an empire, the richest and most fertile land, though perhaps still the least known, of any to be found in this America. They hold also a population little understood; a people bold, undaunted, American. These arms of the hills hold also a vast problem; the problem of black and white, less settled to-day than it has been at any time these one hundred years.
Here in this land, more than two hundred miles in length and half as much in width, Father Messasebe extends his fingers. Sluggish bayous run across the waste as their fancy leads them, their current depending upon the whim of the river, or perhaps on that of the streams from the hill country which constitutes the great dam of the Delta. The crooked Yazoo is marked on the maps as crossing almost from the north to the south of this wilderness; yet the Yazoo can scarce claim a bed all its own, for it passes through many ancient bayous, and is fed by many of the old "hatchees" which the canoes of the red man explored long ago. Upon one side of the Yazoo comes the Sunflower, deep cut into the fathomless loam; yet sometimes the Sunflower is reversed in current; and the Sunflower and the Hushpuckenay may be one stream or two; and the latter may run as the levees say, or as the floods dictate; while above them both, at the head of the Yazoo, are bayous and "passes" which make a water-way once continuous from the great river into its lesser parallel.
Messasebe sometimes flows peacefully through channels marked out for him by man, yet this is but his whim; for a thousand years are as naught to the Maker of Messasebe, and Messasebe therefore may bide his time. But when the sport of the floods begins, and the currents are reversed, and the streams hurry down with cross tributes from the hills, and the wild waters have forgotten all control — then is when Messasebe the Mighty grasps and clutches with his wide fingers, and exults as of old in his wilderness!
Here in the heart of the Delta lay the Big House, a dot on the face of things; having, however, its problems, personal or impersonal, small and great. As John Eddring knew, there was trouble at the Big House now. The hours passed slowly enough on the journey up the turbulent flood of the great river. The railways were in places gone for miles. All that Eddring could do was to get by steamer as nearly as possible opposite the Big House plantation, and then win through by small boat as best he might, across the overflow.
Even the most diligent makers of maps can not keep pace with Father Messasebe. Along its southernmost course there are thousands of arms and lakes and bayous where for a time the river ran until it tired, and sought new scenes, new ways across the forests and cane-brakes. The charts may show you that this river is the boundary of a certain state; but who shall tell where or what that boundary may be? Who can trace the filum aquae of the most erratic and arrogant river in all the world? The river is not now as it was ten years ago, nor the same to-day as it will be ten years hence. Channel and cut-off and island and main current go on in their juggling, and will do so when generations shall have been forgotten. When the floods are out, and when Messasebe is at his ancient game, there is no channel; there is no map, no chart; there is a wilderness.
It was across this watery wilderness that John Eddring and his ally, Captain Wilson, urged their way on the wildest journey ever known even in the mad times of this great river. In a half-delirium which set aside all reason and all reckoning, the bow of the sturdy boat was driven against the down-coming seas, opening up one after another of the channel marks; parting one after another of the massed groups of shadows; churning round bend after bend, faster and faster, day and night, until, far up in the welter of the new waters, she forsook all charts and guides in the fury of her quest, and steamed forward in her own fashion, black smoke belching continually from her flues, and the pant of her fuming engine bidding fair to tear out the inadequate covering of her sides. Pilot and captain let go all track of the miles behind, looking only at those ahead. They got contempt for ordinary dangers. So, pushing her way on, against and across currents, shaving the bends, essaying every cut-off, the boat in her strange race hurried on, running express for the purposes of justice, and in the cause of the permanency of society.
At last they were far up the river, above the mouth of the Arkansas, and opposite the great swamps which lie between the Arkansas and the White upon the western side; so that now the greater portion of the journey was well-nigh done. Eddring and Wilson, both haggard with fatigue, stood on the bridge together and gazed out over the watery prospect.
"This overflow means millions in losses to the planters in the
Delta," said Wilson. Eddring nodded.
"If levee-cutters started this flood up in Tullahoma,