Pierre Loti - "Ramuntcho"

Steele Rudd (Arthur Hoey Davis) - "On Our Selection"

Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne - "Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, V5"

Alfred de Musset - "The Confession of a Child of The Century"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: The Law of the Land

E >> Emerson Hough >> The Law of the Land




"Go tell the captain of this boat to come to me," said he.

"What do you mean? Who are you?" the clerk asked.

"I must see the captain," Eddring answered with a wave of the hand,
and again turned away. Perhaps it was the very stress of that moment
which finally indeed brought Captain Wilson of the _Opelousas Queen_
into the presence of his enigmatical passenger.

"Well, sir?" cried Wilson, as he approached, "what can I do for
_you?_"

"Captain Wilson," said Eddring, quietly, "I want to take your boat
off her regular run. I have got to get up the river, and I am afraid
the roads are wiped out."

The river-man's astonishment at this bade fair to end in explosion.
"My boat!" he ejaculated. "Quit my run?"

"Yes," said Eddring. "I'll explain to you later the necessity I have
for getting up the river quickly--and why it means that I have got
to have your boat."

"Have my boat!" said Wilson, his voice sinking into an inarticulate
whisper. "And me with mail, and passengers, and freight to leave from
Plaquemine to St. Louis! Have my boat! Have my----"

"Put your passengers off at Baton Rouge in the morning. Transfer your
mails there. Let everything get through the best it can. It can wait.
As for me, I can't wait; I must go through direct."

Wilson endeavored to look at him calmly. "If you talk that way to me
much longer," said he, "I'll say you're surely crazy."

"I'll see you about it in the morning," said Eddring, quietly. His
singleness of purpose had its effect. Captain Wilson abruptly turned
on his heel.

Meantime Miss Lady and Madame Delchasse had drawn apart in their own
excitement, exclaiming only against the fact that this boat, so far
from crossing the river, was now forging steadily upstream. Along the
distant bends there could be seen the black masses of shadow, picked
out here and there by the star-like points of the channel lights;
while the low banks of the western shore, dimly indicated by the
ferry lights, slowly slipped away.

"We are h'run away," cried Madame Delchasse. "It is not to Algiers.
Ah, my angel, what fortune I am here!" Miss Lady silently pressed her
hand, and they moved farther forward on the guards.

Eddring heard them talking, and knew the cause of their uneasiness.
He sat apart on the forward guards planning for a further attempt
with Captain Wilson, and planning also for another meeting which he
knew he might presently expect. He needed all his faculties at that
moment, as he sat with his back to the rail, and his eyes commanding
the approaches to the deck. He was waiting for what he knew would be
the most exacting situation he had known in all his life--the
encounter with Henry Decherd.

As for the latter, it had been his plan to absent himself from Miss
Lady until after the boat should have swung well into the up-stream
journey; then, he meant to do whatever might be necessary to carry
out his main purpose. Abduction, compulsion, force--none of these
things would have caused Henry Decherd to hesitate at this time of
desperation. Miss Lady's sudden desertion and flight to the ladies'
cabin disconcerted him. The sound of Eddring's voice and that of
madame filled him with dismay. He tried to compose himself, but found
his nerves trembling. Hurrying to the bar, he sought aid in a glass
of liquor. He knew there must be a reckoning. As he returned from the
bar he met Madame Delchasse with Miss Lady, and was obliged to speak.

"Madame, how did you come here?" he stammered. "Why, where is this
boat going?"

"It is not go to Algiers, no?" said madame, freezingly. "By this
time, Monsieur Decherd, I have expect mademoiselle to be at my 'ome."

"Why, we only wanted to run across the river together. We were coming
home," protested Decherd. "We did not know this was an up-river
boat."

Madame Delchasse drew herself up magnificently. "I, Clarisse
Delchasse," said she, "have arrive'. I shall take care of
mademoiselle." Decherd again began, but she interrupted him. "If it
is not for this stranger, this Mr. Eddrang," said madame, "I am not
here this moment to care for mademoiselle. What care have you take?
People would not talk, no? You to protect! Bah!" She slammed the
glass door of the cabin in his face.

Decherd stood irresolute, ill-armed in the injustice of his quarrel.
He had not a moment to wait.

"Decherd!" The voice was John Eddring's.

Decherd turned. The silent watcher beside the rail had risen and was
coming straight toward him.




CHAPTER IX

THE ACCUSER


Henry Decherd paused under the steadfast gaze which met him.

"Decherd," said Eddring, simply, "I want to talk to you. Come and sit
down." They moved a pace or two forward, Eddring taking care that the
other should sit facing the light which streamed through the glass
doors of the cabin.

"Stop! Decherd, I wouldn't do that." Eddring glanced at the hand
which Decherd would have moved toward a weapon. Eddring's own hands
hung idly between his knees as he leaned forward in his chair.

"I would like to know what you mean by meddling in my affairs," began
Decherd. "You are interfering--"

"Yes," said a voice, soft but very cold, "I'm interfering. I am going
to spoil your chances, Decherd. Sit down." The man thus accosted
involuntarily sank back into a seat. Then a sudden rage caught him,
and he half-started up again. This time he saw something blue
gleaming dully in the idle hand which hung between Eddring's knees.

"Be careful," said the latter. "I told you not to do that. Sit down,
now, and listen." An unreasoning, blind terror seized Henry Decherd,
and in spite of himself, he obeyed.

"In the first place, Decherd," said Eddring, "I want to say that it
was not lucky for you when I got hold of your valise by mistake at
the Big House wreck--the time I found that list of claims, and the
little old book in French. I have studied all those things over
carefully, together with other things. I've been thinking a great
deal. That's why I am going to spoil your chances."

"Does she know?" whispered Decherd, hoarsely.

"No, she knows nothing about it at all. She doesn't know who she is--
not even why she happened to take the name of Louise Loisson."
Decherd gasped, but the cold voice went on. "You might have told her
some of these things. You might have told her who her real mother
was, and who her false mother. You might have given her a chance to
know herself. I don't fancy that you did. I don't think you told her
anything which did not serve your own purposes."

"We were going to be married," began Decherd.

"We are going to be married--"

"You _were,_ perhaps," said Eddring, "but not now. Oh, I don't
doubt that you are willing enough to marry Louise Loisson, and to
deceive her after your marriage as you did before. I don't doubt that
in the least."

"What business is it of yours?" said Decherd, now becoming more
sullen than blustering.

"I can't say that it was my business at all," said Eddring. "It's
accident, largely; and surely it was not your fault that I blundered
on these matters. It was rather fate, or the occasional good fortune
of the innocent. You covered up your trail fairly well; but a
criminal will always leave behind him some egotistical mark of his
crime, either by accident or by intent. You left marks all along your
trail, Decherd--there, there, keep quiet. I don't want to use force
with you. I'm not going to be the agent of justice. But it won't be
altogether healthy for the man on whose shoulders a great many of
these things are finally loaded. You were enterprising, Decherd, and
you were an abler man than I thought, far abler; but you undertook
too much.

"Now, here's a message from Colonel Blount," Eddring resumed. "It
looks as though things were coming pretty nearly to a show-down up
there. We are going to find out all about that. Incidentally, we are
going to find out everything about this poor girl here, whose name
and reputation only the mercy of God kept you from ruining this very
night." The two now sat looking each other fairly and fully in the
eye. For the first time in many years Henry Decherd recognized the
whip hand.

"I might as well tell you," said Eddring, "that I know about the old
Loisson estate--a great deal more than its lawful heiress does. I
know who paid the taxes on the lands. I know as well as you do about
the suit in the United States Supreme Court, where you won and lost
at the same time. In that case you proved your client, Delphine, to
be Indian, and therefore not French--in plain language, you proved
that she was the heiress of the Indian, Paul Loise, and therefore
could _not_ inherit certain valuable lands of which we both know.
Before you found yourself on that account forced to pin your faith to
the descendants of the French Comte de Loisson, you were willing to
use either line of descent, provided it made it possible for you to
get possession of these lands. You were willing to deal with a woman
of mixed blood, or with one of pure blood, of noble descent. Let me be
frank with you, Decherd. You were playing these girls one against the
other. It was Delphine against the descendants of the Comte de
Loisson--a delicate game; and you came near winning."

Decherd passed a hand across his forehead, now grown clammy, but he
could see no method either of attack or of escape, for the cold gray
eye still held him, and the blue barrel hung steady beneath the idle
hand, as the same steel-like voice went on:

"I will just go over the proof once more, Decherd," said Eddring,
"and see if we don't look at it about alike. For instance, if
Delphine is Indian, she isn't white. Uncle Sam's Supreme Court says
she's Indian. That's record, that's evidence. Take the two girls, one
of noble blood, the other of questionable descent, and they are
together equal, _in posse_, as we will say, to these valuable lands.
Do you follow me? Oh, give up thinking of your gun. I'll kill you if
you move your hand.

"Very well, then, my friend, it comes simply to a case of
cancelation. No matter what you have told or promised either, there
can be but one heiress. Mark out one girl, and the other is equal to
that estate, we'll say. You yourself marked out Delphine when you
proved her to be of Indian descent. That leaves Miss Lady as the
heiress of the estate of the Comte de Loisson, doesn't it, Decherd?

"It leaves, also, two ways of getting the estate. You could marry the
girl, or kill her. You might possibly get a tax-title in the latter
case; if you killed the girl the tax-title would mature in your name.
You may count that string as broken. Mrs. Ellison, we will say,
wanted your paramour, Delphine, canceled, and wanted also to put the
remaining claimant out of sight. Then, as mother of this heiress--
the false mother, as you and I know--she thought that she would
inherit the lands--and you.

"That was Mrs. Ellison's plan--a very ignorant plan. Then the simple
matter of a marriage--or of no marriage--between Mr. Henry Decherd
and this Mrs. Alice Ellison, would enable them comfortably to share
this estate. That was the way Mrs. Ellison wanted it, perhaps. But
you preferred to marry the true claimant, and get rid of Mrs.
Ellison. That was your plan. You wanted to cancel every possible
claimant except Miss Lady, and then you wanted to force Miss Lady
into a marriage with you. Do I make myself clear to you, Mr. Decherd?
And do I make myself clear that this country isn't big enough for
both of us? Keep quiet now. You've come to your show-down right here.

"Meantime, it was part of your scheme, as I now see, to keep Miss
Lady away from her friends, to poison her against those friends. You
had to live, and you were a lawyer, or a sort of a lawyer. You got
hold of these judgment claims against the railroad which discharged
me. You told this girl that I stole those claims. You know you lied.
For a time you deluded this poor girl, poisoning her mind, killing
her nature with your deceit. None the less, you left behind you open
proofs, ready-made for your own undoing. Why, this very name, this
stage name of Louise Loisson, was banner enough to bring her real
friends to her side. But you didn't know, did you, Mr. Decherd, that
I had read the little book, and that I knew the Loisson history? I
said it was by chance I found the book. I am ready now to say it was
by fate--by justice. It's like the fetish mark on the church-door--
that negro church in the woods--like the sign on Delphine's
handkerchief. Guilt always leaves a sign. Justice always finds some
proof.

"Now, I have a message from Colonel Blount. Here it is. He says,
'Louise Loisson our Miss Lady.' He has found out something, too, at
the other end of the line, hasn't he, Decherd? Notice, he says, 'our
Miss Lady.' She is ours, not yours. I am going to take her along with
me, back to the Big House, and to her friend, Colonel Blount. He
says, 'Watch out for Decherd.' I am watching out for him. He also
says that they have caught the leader who has been making all the
trouble up there in the Delta, near the Big House plantation."

"Delphine!" gasped Decherd, from tightened lips, a pale horror now
written on every feature. "Has she talked?"

"Yes, Delphine! You were able to guess that, were you, Decherd? Thank
you. You were right. I do not know whether or not Delphine has
talked. But whether she has or not, there will presently be no chance
for you. You are at the end of your string, Decherd.

"And now, get up," said Eddring to him sharply, rising. "Get up, you
damned hound, you liar, you thief, you cur. This boat's not big
enough for you and me. The world will be barely big enough for a
little while, if you're careful. We are not afraid of you, now that
we know you. Go back to Mrs. Ellison, if you like. You can't go back
to Delphine now, and you can't speak to Miss Lady again. She is
_our_ Miss Lady. You can't stay on this boat tonight, where that
girl is."

"So you--you're trying to cut in?" began Decherd.

Eddring did not answer.

He caught Decherd by the collar, wrenched the revolver from his
pocket and pushed him down the stair, then dragged him along the
lower deck. They passed a line of sleeping deck-hands too stupid to
observe them. Dragging astern of the boat, high between the two long
diverging lines of the rolling wake, there rode a river skiff at the
end of its taut line.

"Those lights below are at the ferry, eight miles from town," said
Eddring. "Get into the boat."

"For God's sake, can't you get them to slow down?" whined Decherd;
but Eddring shook his head. Decherd let himself over the rail of the
lower deck, and for an instant the strained line bade fair to hold
his weight. Then his feet and legs dropped into the water as he and
the boat approached. Desperately he clambered on, and so fell panting
and dripping into the bow of the skiff. A moment later the boat and
its huddled occupant dropped back into the night, tossing in the wake
of the churning wheels.

From above there came pouring down the somber flood of Messasebe,
bearing tribute of his wilderness, in part made up of broken,
worthless and discarded things.

Eddring gazed after the disappearing boat. He was relaxed, silent,
worn. The grip of a great loneliness seized upon him. What had he
gained? Why had he interfered? The world about him seemed void and
vacant. He felt himself, no less than the other man, a worthless and
discarded thing--a bit of flotsam on the flood of fate.




CHAPTER X

THE VOYAGE


"As to the law, Captain Wilson," said Eddring, to the master of the
_Opelousas Queen_ the following morning, as he sat in the cabin;
"I'm a lawyer myself, and I want to tell you, the law is a strange
thing. It will, and it won't. It can, and it can't. It does, and it
doesn't. It's blind, crosseyed and clear-sighted all at the same
time. It offers a precedent for everything, right or wrong. Now, as
you say, it is unlawful for us to stop the delivery of these mails. I
know it--big penalty for non-delivery. But let's talk it over a
little."

The _Opelousas Queen_ was now plowing steadily up-stream, far
above Baton Rouge, meeting the crest of the greatest flood she had
ever known in all her days upon the turbid waterway. Her master now,
surly but none the less interested, out of sheer curiosity in this
strange visitor, sat looking at him without present speech.

"Are you a married man, Captain Wilson?" said Eddring. "Have a cigar
with me, won't you?"

"What difference is it to you?" said Wilson, waving aside the
courtesy.

"Yes; but _are_ you?"

"Wife died six years ago," said Wilson, gruffly. The muscles ridged
up along his jaw as he closed his lips tightly.

"Any children?" said Eddring.

"Daughter, eighteen years old; and a beauty, if I do say it."

"I reckon you love her some, don't you, Captain? Thought a heap of
your wife, too, maybe, didn't you?"

Wilson half-rose, one hand upon his chair back, as he pounded on the
table in front of him with the other. "Now look here, Mister Who-
ever-you-are, I've stood a lot of foolishness from you already," said
he, "but those are my matters, and not yours. Get on out of here."
Yet Eddring only looked at him smiling, and into his eyes there came
a flash of pleasure.

"I'm mighty glad to hear you say those very words, Captain," said he;
"because now I know you'd do anything in the world to help a good
girl out of trouble, or to keep her out of it. Now, about the law.
I'm sure, Captain, you believe in the higher law--the supreme law--
the chivalry of the southern man, don't you?" Wilson waved him away
again, but still gazed at him curiously. "Now listen, Captain,"
Eddring persisted.

"I am listening," blurted out Wilson. "Say, man, if I had your nerve,
and what I know about poker on this river, I'd own the country."

"But listen--"

"No. I just want to set here and admire you a few minutes before I
tell the deck-hands to throw you into the river."

"Captain," said Eddring, pulling up his chair, "after I'm done with
what I have on hand, you may throw me into the river, if you like. I
don't think it will make much difference. But now, don't you think
you're running this boat. The real commander of this boat, Captain
Wilson, is the supreme law of this land--that law under which the
gentlemen of the South are bound at any time and all times to give
courtesy and comfort to a woman when she needs them." Wilson looked
at him mutely, the muscles on his jaw straining up again. He jerked
his head toward the aft state-rooms with a gesture of query. Eddring
nodded.

"She's a beauty, too," said Wilson, sighing. "Reminds me of my own
wife, the way she used to look--the way my own girl looks now.
You're a lucky man."

"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.