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​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.