A Deal in Wheat and Other Stories of the New and Old West Part 12

"Well, Mr. Ryder," began Hardenberg. "We called around to see if you had anything fer us this morning. I don't mind telling you that we're at liberty jus' now. Anything doing?"

Ryder fingered his beard distressfully. "Very little, Joe; very little."

"Got any wrecks?"

"Not a wreck."

Hardenberg turned to a great map that hung on the wall by Ryder's desk.

It was marked in places by red crosses, against which were written certain numbers and letters. Hardenberg put his finger on a small island south of the Marquesas group and demanded: "What might be H. 33, Mr.

President?"

"Pearl Island," answered the President. "Davidson is on that job."

"Or H. 125?" Hardenberg indicated a point in the Gilbert group.

"Guano deposits. That's promised."

"Hallo! You're up in the Aleutians. I make out. 20 A.--what's that?"

"Old government telegraph wire--line abandoned--finest drawn-copper wire. I've had three boys at that for months."

"What's 301? This here, off the Mexican coast?"

The President, unable to remember, turned to his one clerk: "Hyers, what's 301? Isn't that Peterson?"

The clerk ran his finger down a column: "No, sir; 301 is the Whisky s.h.i.+p."

"Ah! So it is. I remember. _You_ remember, too, Joe. Little schooner, the _Tropic Bird_--sixty days out from Callao--five hundred cases of whisky aboard--sunk in squall. It was thirty years ago. Think of five hundred cases of thirty-year-old whisky! There's money in that if I can lay my hands on the schooner. Suppose you try that, you boys--on a twenty per cent. basis. Come now, what do you say?"

"Not for _five_ per cent.," declared Hardenberg. "How'd we raise her?

How'd we know how deep she lies? Not for Joe. What's the matter with landing arms down here in Central America for Bocas and his gang?"

"I'm out o' that, Joe. Too much compet.i.tion."

"What's doing here in Tahiti--No. 88? It ain't lettered."

Once more the President consulted his books.

"Ah!--88. Here we are. Cache o' illicit pearls. I had it looked up.

Nothing in it."

"Say, Cap'n!"--Hardenberg's eye had traveled to the upper edge of the map--"whatever did you strike up here in Alaska? At Point Barrow, s'elp me Bob! It's 48 B."

The President stirred uneasily in his place. "Well, I ain't quite worked that scheme out, Joe. But I smell the deal. There's a Russian post along there some'eres. Where they catch sea-otters. And the skins o'

sea-otters are selling this very day for seventy dollars at any port in China."

"I s'y," piped up Ally Bazan, "I knows a bit about that gyme. They's a bally kind o' Lum-tums among them Chinese as sports those syme skins on their bally clothes--as a mark o' rank, d'ye see."

"Have you figured at all on the proposition, Cap'n?" inquired Hardenberg.

"There's risk in it, Joe; big risk," declared the President nervously.

"But I'd only ask fifteen per cent."

"You _have_ worked out the scheme, then."

"Well--ah--y'see, there's the risk, and--ah--" Suddenly Ryder leaned forward, his watery blue eyes glinting: "Boys, it's a _jewel_. It's just your kind. I'd a-sent for you, to try on this very scheme, if you hadn't shown up. You kin have the _Bertha Millner_--I've a year's charter o'

her from Wilbur--and I'll only ask you fifteen per cent. of the _net_ profits--_net_, mind you."

"I ain't buyin' no dead horse, Cap'n," returned Hardenberg, "but I'll say this: we pay no fifteen per cent."

"Banks and the Ruggles were daft to try it and give me twenty-five."

"An' where would Banks land the scheme? I know him. You put him on that German cipher-code job down Honolulu way, an' it cost you about a thousand before you could pull out. We'll give you seven an' a half."

"Ten," declared Ryder, "ten, Joe, at the very least. Why, how much do you suppose just the stores would cost me? And Point Barrow--why, Joe, that's right up in the Arctic. I got to run the risk o' you getting the _Bertha_ smashed in the ice."

"What do _we_ risk?" retorted Hardenberg; and it was the monosyllabic Strokher who gave the answer:

"Chokee, by Jove!"

"Ten is fair. It's ten or nothing," answered Hardenberg.

"Gross, then, Joe. Ten on the gross--or I give the job to the Ruggles and Banks."

"Who's your bloomin' agent?" put in Ally Bazan.

"Nickerson. I sent him with Peterson on that _Mary Archer_ wreck scheme.

An' you know what Peterson says of him--didn't give him no trouble at all. One o' my best men, boys."

"There have been," observed Strokher stolidly, "certain stories told about Nickerson. Not that _I_ wish to seem suspicious, but I put it to you as man to man."

"Ay," exclaimed Ally Bazan. "He was fair nutty once, they tell me. Threw some kind o' bally fit an' come aout all skew-jee'd in his mind. Forgot his nyme an' all. I s'y, how abaout him, anyw'y?"

"Boys," said Ryder, "I'll tell you. Nickerson--yes, I know the yarns about him. It was this way--y'see, I ain't keeping anything from you, boys. Two years ago he was a Methody preacher in Santa Clara. Well, he was what they call a revivalist, and he was holding forth one blazin'

hot day out in the sun when all to once he goes down, _flat,_ an' don't come round for the better part o' two days. When he wakes up he's _another person;_ he'd forgot his name, forgot his job, forgot the whole blamed shooting-match. _And he ain't never remembered them since._ The doctors have names for that kind o' thing. It seems it does happen now and again. Well, he turned to an' began sailoring first off--soon as the hospitals and medicos were done with him--an' him not having any friends as you might say, he was let go his own gait. He got to be third mate of some kind o' dough-dish down Mexico way; and then I got hold o' him an'

took him into the Comp'ny. He's been with me ever since. He ain't got the faintest kind o' recollection o' his Methody days, an' believes he's always been a sailorman. Well, that's _his_ business, ain't it? If he takes my orders an' walks chalk, what do I care about his Methody game?

There, boys, is the origin, history and development of Slick d.i.c.k Nickerson. If you take up this sea-otter deal and go to Point Barrow, naturally Nick has got to go as owner's agent and representative of the Comp'ny. But I couldn't send a easier fellow to get along with. Honest, now, I couldn't. Boys, you think over the proposition between now and tomorrow an' then come around and let me know."

And the upshot of the whole matter was that one month later the _Bertha Millner_, with Nickerson, Hardenberg, Strokher and Ally Bazan on board, cleared from San Francisco, bound--the papers were beautifully precise--for Seattle and Tacoma with a cargo of general merchandise.

As a matter of fact, the bulk of her cargo consisted of some odd hundreds of very fine lumps of rock--which as ballast is cheap by the ton--and some odd dozen cases of conspicuously labeled champagne.

The Pacific and Oriental Flotation Company made this champagne out of Rhine wine, effervescent salts, raisins, rock candy and alcohol. It was from the same stock of wine of which Ryder had sold some thousand cases to the Coreans the year before.

II

"Not that I care a curse," said Strokher, the Englishman. "But I put it to you squarely that this voyage lacks that certain indescribable charm."