A Deal in Wheat and Other Stories of the New and Old West Part 14

"How about the loot?" objected Strokher. "If one of those hands gets between decks he might smell--a sea-otter, now. I put it to you he might."

"My son," said Hardenberg, "I've handled A.B.'s before;" and that settled the question.

During the first part of the run down, Nickerson gloomed silently over the schooner, looking curiously about him, now at his comrades' faces, now at the tumbling gray-green seas, now--and this by the hour--at his own hands. He seemed perplexed, dazed, trying very hard to get his bearings. But by and by he appeared, little by little, to come to himself. One day he pointed to the rigging with an unsteady forefinger, then, laying the same finger doubtfully upon his lips, said to Strokher: "A s.h.i.+p?"

"Quite so, quite so, me boy."

"Yes," muttered Nickerson absently, "a s.h.i.+p--of course."

Hardenberg expected to make Juneau on a Thursday. Wednesday afternoon Slick d.i.c.k came to him. He seemed never more master of himself. "How did I come aboard?" he asked.

Hardenberg explained.

"What have we been doing?"

"Why, don't you remember?" continued Hardenberg. He outlined the voyage in detail. "Then you remember," he went on, "we got up there to Point Barrow and found where the Russian fellows had their post, where they caught sea-otters, and we went ash.o.r.e and got 'em all full and lifted all the skins they had----"

"'Lifted'? You mean _stole_ them."

"Come here," said the other. Encouraged by Nickerson's apparent convalescence, Hardenberg decided that the concrete evidence of things done would prove effective. He led him down into the 'tween-decks. "See now," he said. "See this packing-case"--he pried up a board--"see these 'ere skins. Take one in y'r hand. Remember how we found 'em all in the cellar and hyked 'em out while the beggars slept?"

"_Stole_ them? You say we got--that is _you_ did--got somebody intoxicated and stole their property, and now you are on your way to dispose of it."

"Oh, well, if you want to put it thataway. Sure we did."

"I understand----Well----Let's go back on deck. I want to think this out."

The _Bertha Millner_ crept into the harbour of Juneau in a fog, with s.h.i.+ps' bells tolling on every side, let go her anchor at last in desperation and lay up to wait for the lifting. When this came the Three Crows looked at one another wide-eyed. They made out the drenched town and the dripping hills behind it. The quays, the custom house, the one hotel, and the few s.h.i.+ps in the harbour. There were a couple of whalers from 'Frisco, a white, showily painted pa.s.senger boat from the same port, a Norwegian bark, and a freighter from Seattle grimy with coal-dust. These, however, the _Bertha's_ company ignored. Another boat claimed all their attention. In the fog they had let go not a pistol-shot from her anchorage. She lay practically beside them. She was the United States revenue cutter _Bear._

"But so long as they can't _smell_ sea-otter skin," remarked Hardenberg, "I don't know that we're any the worse."

"All the syme," observed Ally Bazan, "I don't want to lose no bloomin'

tyme a-pecking up aour bloomin' A.B.'s."

"I'll stay aboard and tend the baby," said Hardenberg with a wink. "You two move along ash.o.r.e and get what you can--Scoovies for choice. Take Slick d.i.c.k with you. I reckon a change o' air might buck him up."

When the three had gone, Hardenberg, after writing up the painfully doctored log, set to work to finish a task on which the adventurers had been engaged in their leisure moments since leaving Point Barrow. This was the counting and sorting of the skins. The packing-case had been broken open, and the scanty but precious contents littered an improvised table in the hold. Pen in hand, Hardenberg counted and ciphered and counted again. He could not forbear a chuckle when the net result was reached. The lot of the skins--the pelt of the sea-otter is ridiculously small in proportion to its value--was no heavy load for the average man.

But Hardenberg knew that once the "loot" was safely landed at the Hongkong pierhead the Three Crows would share between them close upon ten thousand dollars. Even--if they had luck, and could dispose of the skins singly or in small lots--that figure might be doubled.

"And I call it a neat turn," observed Hardenberg. He was aroused by the noise of hurried feet upon the deck, and there was that in their sound that brought him upright in a second, hand on hip. Then, after a second, he jumped out on deck to meet Ally Bazan and Strokher, who had just scrambled over the rail.

"Bust. B-u-s-t!" remarked the Englishman.

"'Ere's 'ell to pay," cried Ally Bazan in a hoa.r.s.e whisper, glancing over at the revenue cutter.

"Where's Nickerson?" demanded Hardenberg.

"That's it," answered the colonial. "That's where it's 'ell. Listen naow. He goes ash.o.r.e along o' us, quiet and peaceable like, never battin' a eye, we givin' him a bit o' jolly, y' know, to keep him chirked up as ye might s'y. But so soon as ever he sets foot on sh.o.r.e, abaout faice he gaoes, plumb into the Custom's orfice. I s'ys, 'Wot all naow, messmite? Come along aout o' that.' But he turns on me like a bloomin' babby an s'ys he: 'Hands orf, wretch!' Ay, them's just his words. Just like that, 'Hands orf, wretch!' And then he nips into the orfice an' marches fair up to the desk an' sy's like this--we heerd him, havin' followed on to the door--he s'ys, just like this:

"'Orfficer, I am a min'ster o' the gospel, o' the Methodis'

denomineye-tion, an' I'm deteyined agin my will along o' a pirate s.h.i.+p which has robbed certain parties o' val-able goods. Which syme I'm pre-pared to attest afore a no'try publick, an' lodge informeye-tion o'

crime. An',' s'ys he, 'I demand the protection o' the authorities an'

arsk to be directed to the American consul.'

"S'y, we never wyted to hear no more, but hyked awye hot foot. S'y, wot all now. Oh, mee Gord! eyen't it a rum gao for fair? S'y, let's get aout o' here, Hardy, dear."

"Look there," said Hardenberg, jerking his head toward the cutter, "how far'd we get before the customs would 'a' pa.s.sed the tip to _her_ and she'd started to overhaul us? That's what they feed her for--to round up the likes o' us."

"We got to do something rather soon," put in Strokher. "Here comes the custom house dinghy now."

As a matter of fact, a boat was putting off from the dock. At her stern fluttered the custom house flag.

"b.i.t.c.hed--b.i.t.c.hed for fair!" cried Ally Bazan.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'ERE'S 'ELL TO PAY!"

From a drawing by Lucius. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k _Courtesy of Collier's Weekly_.]

"Quick, now!" exclaimed Hardenberg. "On the jump! Overboard with that loot!--or no. Steady! That won't do. There's that dam' cutter. They'd see it go. Here!--into the galley. There's a fire in the stove. Get a move on!"

"Wot!" wailed Ally Bazan. "Burn the little joker. Gord, I _can't,_ Hardy, I _can't._ It's agin human nature."

"You can do time in San Quentin, then, for felony," retorted Strokher as he and Hardenberg dashed by him, their arms full of the skins. "You can do time in San Quentin else. Make your choice. I put it to you as between man and man."

With set teeth, and ever and again glancing over the rail at the oncoming boat, the two fed their fortune to the fire. The pelts, partially cured and still fatty, blazed like crude oil, the hair crisping, the hides melting into rivulets of grease. For a minute the schooner reeked of the smell and a stifling smoke poured from the galley stack. Then the embers of the fire guttered and a long whiff of sea wind blew away the reek. A single skin, fallen in the scramble, still remained on the floor of the galley. Hardenberg s.n.a.t.c.hed it up, tossed it into the flames and clapped the door to. "Now, let him squeal," he declared. "You fellows, when that boat gets here, let _me_ talk; keep your mouths shut or, by G.o.d, we'll all wear stripes."

The Three Crows watched the boat's approach in a silence broken only once by a long whimper from Ally Bazan. "An' it was a-workin' out as lovely as Billy-oh," he said, "till that syme underbred costermonger's swipe remembered he was Methody--an' him who, only a few d'ys back, went raound s'yin' 'scrag the "Boomskys"!' A couple o' thousand pounds gone as quick as look at it. Oh, I eyn't never goin' to git over this."

The boat came up and the Three Crows were puzzled to note that no bra.s.s-b.u.t.toned personage sat in the stern-sheets, no harbour police glowered at them from the bow, no officer of the law fixed them with the eye of suspicion. The boat was manned only by a couple of freight-handlers in woolen Jerseys, upon the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of which were affixed the two letters "C.H."

"Say," called one of the freight-handlers, "is this the _Bertha Millner?"_

"Yes," answered Hardenberg, his voice at a growl. "An' what might you want with her, my friend?"

"Well, look here," said the other, "one of your hands came ash.o.r.e mad as a coot and broke into the house of the American Consul, and resisted arrest and raised h.e.l.l generally. The inspector says you got to send a provost guard or something ash.o.r.e to take him off. There's been several mix-ups among s.h.i.+ps' crews lately and the town----"

The tide drifted the boat out of hearing, and Hardenberg sat down on the capstan head, turning his back to his comrades. There was a long silence. Then he said:

"Boys, let's go home. I--I want to have a talk with President Ryder."

THE s.h.i.+P THAT SAW A GHOST

Very much of this story must remain untold, for the reason that if it were definitely known what business I had aboard the tramp steam-freighter _Glarus_, three hundred miles off the South American coast on a certain summer's day, some few years ago, I would very likely be obliged to answer a great many personal and direct questions put by fussy and impertinent experts in maritime law--who are paid to be inquisitive. Also, I would get "Ally Bazan," Strokher and Hardenberg into trouble.