The men were straggling back, talking loudly and excitedly in the darkness. As he ran down the stairs Lockwood met Tom on the gallery, hot, furious, defeated.  
“How is he?” asked Tom.
 
“Jackson’s not so bad,” returned Lockwood, “Think he’ll be all right. We’ve phoned for the doctor. Hanna got away?”
 
“Yes, in the motor boat. He was a-scootin’ down the bayou ’fore we could git near him. But we’ll git him!” He hesitated. “Reckon there’s all kinds of apologies comin’ to you, Lockwood. I’m mighty² sorry——”
 
“Sure, we’re all mighty sorry,” put in Postmaster Ferrell. “We never——”
 
“Never mind about that! I know where he’s gone,” said Lockwood instantly. “He’s after his friends—Blue Bob and the house boat, down the river. Can’t we get another motor boat?”
 
“Nearest motor boat’s at Foster’s Mills,” said Ferrell. “It’s eleven miles.”
 
“Get into the car!” cried Tom. “We can git there ’fore he does. Come on, Lockwood. Got a gun?”
 
Somebody handed him a revolver. He jumped into the front seat beside Tom. Three men piled into the rear—Jim Ferrell, the son of the postmaster, one of the Fenway boys who had played poker³ at that house, and a third man whom he did not know.
 
Tom drove at a reckless clip. Down the hill they went, over the creek⁴, up past the post office to the crossroads, and then turned south down a road that Lockwood had never before traveled. Leaning over, he sketched⁵ his story half breathlessly into Tom’s ear, the words jolted⁶ from his teeth by the speed of their travel.
 
“I dunno why that young fool didn’t tell me the fix he was in,” said Tom. “Between us, we’d have fixed⁷ Blue Bob. Hanna was playin’ us all for suckers, seems like.”
 
The road seemed to be following the river. Twice Lockwood caught a glimpse of the wide, black water. Halfway⁸, and a tire blew out. It took ten feverish⁹ minutes to place the spare one. They rushed through an endless swamp, where the road wound in short, dangerous curves, and then came in sight of Foster’s Mills—a little village of cabins and frame houses around the great sheds of the sawmills, all utterly¹⁰ dark.
 
Springing out, Tom rushed up to Foster’s own dwelling¹¹ and beat on the door. A window opened; there was a startled exclamation¹², and in two minutes Foster came out at a run, in shirt and trousers.
 
“Sure you-all can have the boat!” he exclaimed, starting toward the river. “Here, this way! I heerd something goin’ down the river with engines, I reckon not quarter of an hour ago.”
 
“A motor boat?” cried Lockwood.
 
“Mebbe. Sounded heavy for a motor boat, though. I didn’t look out, and it was too dark anyway to see nothin’.”
 
“Bob’s house boat, you bet!” exclaimed Ferrell.
 
“Never mind. She can’t make six miles an hour,” cried Lockwood.
 
“We’ll never find nothin’ in this dark—an’ there’s fog, too!” Tom murmured. “Well—come along!”
 
Packed together in the boat, they put out, with Power at the wheel. The glaring lights of the car on the landing went dim. There was a little mist lying low on the water, mixing with the darkness, making obscurity doubly blank. The river surged and gurgled about them almost invisibly, and overhead the stars looked few and lightless.
 
“Not a bit of use in this,” said Tom, after running a couple of miles. “We can’t see nothin’, and they’ll hear us comin’, and just lay up by the bank and let us go by.”
 
He stopped the engine. The boat drifted, and in the silence they all listened, but vainly, for the sound of another motor.
 
“But by daylight they’ll be all the way to Mobile,” Lockwood objected.
 
“I reckon not. I reckon they’ll be makin’ for the delta¹³. That’s where them river pirates always hides out,” said Fenway.
 
Power steered¹⁴ toward the left bank, skirted it a little way, and ran in at a place where there seemed to be high and dry land. They scrambled¹⁵ ashore¹⁶ silently, with a sense of being checked. Two of the men groped for wood and lighted a smudge to keep off the mosquitoes. Tom sat down humped at the foot of a tree, his chin almost on his knees.
 
Lockwood was tired, hungry, overstrung, but he felt no need of either sleep or rest. He walked up and down in the darkness for some time, smoking intermittently¹⁷, anxious only for light that they might go ahead. Flashes from his past misery¹⁸ and hatred¹⁹ passed over him, mixing feverishly²⁰ with his visions of the future. He remembered the wonderful look Louise had given him; he remembered Hanna’s exultant²¹, vindictive²² face. Both filled him with the same passion of action. He was boiling with exultation²³ and vindictiveness²⁴ himself.
 
“What was that you was sayin’ about havin’ a feud²⁵ with Hanna up North?” Tom asked him suddenly. “Seems like he swindled you.”
 
“Swindled? He cleaned me out of everything I had in the world!” Lockwood cried. “It wasn’t a feud. I’ve just been trailing him to kill him. Hanna said I was under a false name, but it was only a guess. He didn’t know who I was.”
 
He poured out the whole story in passionate²⁶ excitement, concealing²⁷ nothing. The men came up from the smudge to listen. He did not care now who heard it. It was a relief to get the black flood off his heart. His audience listened in grave silence. They knew what blood-quarrels meant.
 
“Well, your time’s comin’ right close now to git him,” said Tom. “Seems like Hanna has done us all, but I reckon he’s done you wuss’n anybody. We’ve got to git Blue Bob, too. I cain’t think why young Jackson never told me that Bob was worryin’ him. None of us ever believed he had any hand in killin’ Jeff Forder, and it’s so long ago now that nobody’d have cared ef he had.”
 
“Yes, I reckon this puts Blue Bob off’n the river for good,” said Ferrell. “We’ve had more’n enough of that house boat hangin’ round Rainbow Landing.”
 
The excitement of the talk died out in feeble words and silences. Young Fenway was snoring, lying face down on pine needles. Lockwood felt of a sudden desperately²⁸ weary, and lay down. He did not think he could sleep, but he slept. He roused two or three times from vague nightmares, and slept again, till he was awakened²⁹ by Ferrell shaking his shoulder.
 
Within five minutes the boat was thudding down the river again. Daylight was in the air. The mist had vanished even before the dawn, and clung only in pale streaks³⁰ on the water or lay white over the great swamps ashore. For half a mile they went straight downward, and then Tom steered across to investigate a creek mouth where a boat might lie hidden.
 
But there was nothing in it. Down they went again, sweeping³¹ around one after another of the vast curves of the river, empty always of life, looking as deserted³² as it must have looked when De Soto’s canoes first sailed it.
 
“They’ve sure made for the delta,” he heard repeated more than once.
 
They had lost time in zigzagging³³ investigations³⁴ from one shore to another, and it was still more than half an hour before they actually came in sight of the low swamps of the delta itself, where the Tombigbee River joined the Alabama, both streams splitting into a multiplicity of channels, bayous, creeks³⁵, flowing sometimes in opposite directions, through a wild tangle³⁶ of swamp. Few white men claimed to know the delta, and few men had explored it except some half-wild negro hunters, and the house boat men who made a refuge of its intricacies.
 
The river swept away to the west in a great curve. A second channel split away, possibly at one time the main channel of the ever-shifting river. It was a crooked³⁷, deep, sluggish³⁸ backwater now, flowing between white, dead timber, and a jungle of titi, black gum, and bay tree. Tom surveyed it dubiously³⁹.
 
“Blue Bob’ll shore get off the main channel,” said Fenway. “Looks like this is just his place.”
 
He steered into the shallow of the swamp. Fog still seemed to linger here, with a heavy, malarial⁴⁰ smell. Great curtains of gray, Spanish moss⁴¹ hung over the rotting channel. Blackened snags of cypress⁴² thrust up from the bottom, and mosquitoes attacked them in clouds, with the worse-biting yellow-flies.
 
No boat was anywhere in sight. A little farther a second channel seemed to open, but it extended only a hundred feet, and ended in a mud bank where half a dozen snakes aired themselves. The tortuou............