“She don’t wear di’monds on a steamboat, I reckon,” put in Mrs. Berridge. “Them I have seen on deck ginerally don’t look no better ’n--’n--me.”
“But you are a good-looker, ennyways, Mrs. Berridge,” said the jockey, and he paid her the tribute of another facetious wink.
“But the woman would carry her di’monds in her trunk or hand-bag,” suggested the shanty-boater.
“Horace Dean ain’t aboard, eh? Let us have the men’s names,” said the smith. He was turning the matter over exactly as if he had it in some raw material on the anvil before him, striking it here and there, testing its malleability, shaping it to utility.
“Oh, well, there’s one of the Ducies, the fellow that has been abroad so long--registers from Lyons, France. Adrian Ducie.”
The younger Berridge turned half around from the table, chewing hard to clear his mouth before he spoke impressively: “One of the Ducies? Now you are coming to the Sure-enoughs! They used to own Duciehurst. They did for a fack. Finest place in Mississippi; in the world, I reckon.”
“But, used to be ain’t now, by a long shot,” said Jorrocks, the shanty-boater, sustaining the intention of the investigation. “No Ducie nowadays would be worth a hold-up.”
“Rising thirty, I reckon,” replied the jockey.
“You dunno--you ain’t seen his teeth,” said Mrs. Berridge. “That’s the way you jockeys jedge of age.” She could be facetious, too.
“Then there’s old Colonel Kenwynton?” said Connover.
“He has got a deal of fight left in him yet,” observed Binnhart, reflectively. “He would put up a nervy tussle.”
“Yes, sir,” corroborated the shanty-boater, with emphasis. “The devil himself will have a tough job when he undertakes to tow old Jack Kenwynton in.”
“There are several other men, names I don’t know--dark horses,” said the jockey seriously, seeing at last the trend of the discussion.
Binnhart was slowly, thoughtfully, shaking his head. “A good many men, I misdoubts. Then there are the captain and the clerks and the mate, but they would all be took by surprise, an’ mos’ likely without arms.”
“An’ then there’s another man, besides,” suggested the elder Berridge. A certain wrinkled anxiety had corrugated the bedraggled limpness of his countenance and he was obviously relieved by the effect of the computation of the odds.