covered with tin tobacco signs and ancient circus posters. Usually, only
one man met the launch at each landing, the merchant, a democrat in his
shirt-sleeves and without a tie. His voice was always a flat, weary
drawl, but his eyes, wrinkled against the sun, usually held the
shrewdness of those who make their living out of two-penny trades.

At each place the red-headed peanut-buyer slogged up the muddy bank and
bargained for the merchant's peanuts, to be shipped on the down-river
trip of the first St. Louis packet. The loneliness of the scene embraced
the trading-points, the river, and the little gasolene launch struggling
against the muddy current. It permeated the passengers, and was a
finishing touch to Peter Siner's melancholy.

The launch clacked on and on interminably. Sometimes it seemed to make
no headway at all against the heavy, silty current. Tump Pack, the white
captain, and the negro engineer began a game of craps in the negro
cabin. Presently, two of the white drummers came in from the white cabin
and began betting on the throws. The game was listless. The master of
the launch pointed out places along the shores where wildcat stills were
located. The crap-shooters, negro and white, squatted in a circle on the
cabin floor, snapping their fingers and calling their points
monotonously. One of the negro girls in the negro cabin took an apple
out of her lunch sack and began eating it, holding it in her palm after
the fashion of negroes rather than in her fingers, as is the custom of
white women.

Both doors of the engine-room were open, and Peter Siner could see
through into the white cabin. The old hill woman was dozing in her
chair, her bonnet bobbing to each stroke of the engines. The youngish
man and the girl were engaged in some sort of intimate lovers' dispute.