“So you know Blue Bob,” he remarked, overtaking the girl after some fifty yards.  
“Know him! I reckon so! I’ve always known him, I think, and I’ve dreaded¹ and hated that man all my life.”
 
The trail ended suddenly at a cut-over slash², growing up again with bushy small pines and scrub oak. Away to the left a strip of the Alabama showed greenish and reddish. Below them, down in the hammock land Lockwood saw a squalid wooden shanty³ in a small clearing. A woman was apparently⁴ cooking at a fire in the yard. Louise checked her horse and sat looking over the landscape, but evidently she was not thinking of it.
 
“How mamma and I dreaded it when Bob’s house boat came down the river, in the old days!” she exclaimed bitterly. “The boys were always going aboard it. There was always drinking and gambling⁵ and fighting; and one terrible night——”
 
She stopped, and turned her eyes on the dilapidated pine cabin with its acre of growing corn.
 
“That’s the sort of place we used to live in. Do you wonder that I don’t want to go back to it?” she said intensely.
 
Lockwood looked at the paintless pine shanty, roofed with small rough-split boards, curled up with the weather. It probably had three rooms; a wide open passage, or “dog-trot,” extended from front to rear. A crumbling⁶ chimney of stone and mud rose at one end. The clearing, with its corn and ragged⁷ garden was fenceless, and a wild jungle of mixed peach trees, rose bushes, and blackberry canes⁸ blocked the front of the yard.
 
He looked back at Louise’s flushed face. Her constraint⁹ had dropped suddenly away; the episode of the snake and the meeting with the river pirate had broken up the ice.
 
“There’s no danger of having to go back to that,” he said.
 
“I don’t know. I’m frightened,” she said somberly.
 
“Tell me,” he ventured, “did your brother repeat to Hanna what I said about the oil investment?”
 
“Yes. Tom told him,” she answered reluctantly.
 
“Hanna was furious, I suppose.”
 
“Not furious. He was—well, coldly indignant. He said that we could have our money back any time we wanted to draw out of the oil investment. He said nothing more before me. But I know he said something about you to papa and the boys. Well, you saw for yourself that there was a difference. Do you really think that oil speculation¹⁰ is dangerous?”
 
“I can’t judge. I certainly never heard of any oil wells around Pascagoula.”
 
“But it’s being kept quiet—not to let the public in, they say,” she pleaded anxiously.
 
“Oil borings can’t be kept secret. There has to be heaps of heavy machinery¹¹, a derrick built, gangs of men. It’s conspicuous¹² a mile away. All I say is, that I do hope that before going any deeper your father will get a report from some good business firm in Mobile.”
 
Louise sighed.
 
“It was just like that!” she said, pointing again at the squatter’s cabin. “There were just three rooms, and only one fireplace. We cooked outdoors mostly, but it was often freezing cold in the winter. There was wood all around us, but we never had enough to burn. The boys always forgot to cut it. Papa and Tom worked sometimes on the river or in the turpentine camps, and they planted an acre or two of corn, but all they took any interest in was hunting and trapping and fishing. They used to go away down into the delta¹³ sometimes for weeks.
 
“We always had plenty of rabbits and sweet potatoes and squirrels, but that was all. I don’t think I ever tasted milk. There never was any money. I had hardly clothes enough for decency¹⁴. But there was money for whisky. Not that the boys were ever cruel or even unkind. You can see how they are now. But we used to hear them come home down the river at night, drunk and shouting and firing their pistols——”
 
She stopped with a shudder¹⁵, and then broke out again.
 
“There was one awful night, three years ago. It was a drinking and gambling carouse¹⁶ on Blue Bob’s boat, and a man was killed. Nobody ever knew who did it, but Bob left the Alabama River for nearly a year after that. I wish he had never come back. Jackson was on the boat that night, but he never told us anything about it. Men don’t tell women about such things. But the women know all the same, and have to carry the weight of them.”
 
She was flushed and shaking, and she winked¹⁷ to keep the tears back. Lockwood had never seen her so moved. It tortured him, but he was afraid to try to comfort her.
 
“Don’t think of those miseries¹⁸. You’re safe from all that now,” he reminded her again.
 
“I don’t know. We ought to be. We ought to be so happy, with all the money and comfort. Mamma died before she ever saw it. Safe? With all this reckless spending? Neither papa nor the boys will listen to anything I say. Women don’t know anything about money, of course. But I’m ten times as wise as they are. Ten thousand dollars seems something with no end to it to them. Do you know, I’ve let them give me diamonds, expensive jewelry¹⁹, because I knew they could be turned back into cash again if the need came. I did hope that you could make friends with Tom and Jackson, so that they would take advice from you; but now Mr. Hanna seems to have turned them all against you.”
 
“I expect he has. Never mind,” said Lockwood. “I’ll bring pressure on Mr. Hanna soon.”
 
“What sort of pressure?”
 
“A sort he’ll understand. Don’t lose your nerve, Miss Louise. You won’t have to go back to the swamps.”
 
“Of course, for myself, I could always go back to the city again and earn my living.”
 
“You won’t have to do that either. Trust me. It’ll all come out right.”
 
She looked at him in a perplexed²⁰ way, pathetic, like a puzzled child, and sighed deeply again.
 
“You’re encouraging. But I don’t see what you can do, really. Unless you kill Mr. Hanna,” she added, smiling.
 
“That would be one way,” Lockwood agreed gravely.
 
“I didn’t mean that, of course!” Louise cried, shocked. “You didn’t think that I really meant it?”
 
“Of course not. Neither did I. But Hanna will trip himself up sooner or later. Do what you can to check the spending, and I want to be kept posted as to how things are going. How can you let me know? I don’t suppose I’d be a welcome visitor at your house. You ride often, don’t you? Can’t I go with you again? I can always take an hour off, and if I could meet you any time, morning or evening——”
 
“Oh, I’m afraid—I’m afraid I couldn’t!” exclaimed Louise, obviously startled at the suggestion, and coloring hotly. She stooped over the reins²¹, looked at her wrist watch.
 
“It’s almost noon,” she cried. “Goodness! I must go home this minute.”
 
She turned her horse and started back at a fast canter along the trail.
 
She kept well ahead and dropped only casual words over her shoulder till they reached the main road. The noon sun beat down fiercely. The yellow dust wavered up like flames around the horses’ hoofs²². Here she pulled up, and turned back to him.
 
“Please don’t come any farther,” she said nervously²³. “You really have made me feel lots more encouraged. The worst of it was that I never could talk about these things to anybody. And—and I do ride sometimes. I think—I might have to go down the road over the bridge across the bayou—not to-morrow—perhaps the next evening—right after supper——”
 
“Watch for me on the bridge if you do,” said Lockwood, as she almost broke down in confusion.
 
She gave him a quick smile and rode off without a word of good-by. He watched her moving figure through the dust until she was out of sight beyond the creek²⁴ swamp, and then he proceeded more slowly toward the turpentine camp. He was both elated and uneasy, with such a sense of tingling²⁵ delight in his heart as he had never expected to feel again.
 
Directly after supper, on the second day afterwards, he was waiting in the saddle on the bayou bridge. He waited a quarter of an hour before he saw Louise riding slowly down the slope.
 
“What news? Anything?” he questioned.
 
“Nothing changed. Everything the same,” she answered. She did not seem to want to talk about it this evening. There was an hour and a half of daylight left, and they rode slowly down the soft road through the turpentine pines.
 
They saw nobody but a couple of negroes with mule²⁶ teams. Louise did not appear depressed²⁷; on the contrary she was in nervously high spirits, ready to chatter²⁸ lightly. The big issues were dropped. They talked of trifling²⁹ matters, of their likes and dislikes, intimate and personal things. They exchanged reminiscences of the motor shop in New Orleans; Louise told amusing incidents of her childhood up the river. Those old days had not been all bad, it seemed. That ride brought them into closer personal touch than anything before, Lockwood felt; but it was too short. Dusk seemed to fall like an evil magic, and they turned back. Lockwood stopped on the bridge where they had met, and he watched Louise fading up the road through the twilight³⁰.
 
That was the first of four such rides—once more in the evening, once on the afternoon of a day when heavy sudden rain had driven the wood negroes in, and all the clay roadsides glitt............