Captain Scraggs Part 22

The honest McGuffey hung his head. "A little bit," he replied childishly.

"What d'ye call a little bit?"

"Three hundred dollars, Gib."

"Secured?"

"He gimme his note at eight per cent. The savin's bank only pays four."

"Is the note secured by endors.e.m.e.nt or collateral?"

"No."

"Hum-m-m! Strange you didn't say nothin' to me about this till I had to pry it out o' you, Bart. How about you?"

"Well, Scraggsy was feelin' so dog-goned blue----"

"The truth," Mr. Gibney insisted firmly, "the truth, Bart."

"Well, Scraggsy asked me not to say anythin' to you about it."

"Sure. He knew I'd kill the deal. He knew better'n to try to nick me for three hundred bucks on his danged, worthless note. Bart, why'd you do it?"

"Oh, h.e.l.l, Gib, be a good feller," poor McGuffey pleaded. "Don't be too hard on ol' Scraggsy."

"We're discussin' _you_, Bart. 'Pears to me you've sort o' lost confidence in your old shipmate, ain't you? 'Pears that way to me when you act sneaky like."

McGuffey bridled. "I ain't a sneak."

"A rose by any other name'd be just as sweet," Mr. Gibney quoted.

"You poor, misguided simp. If you ever see that three hundred dollars again you'll be a lot older'n you are now. However, that ain't none o' my business. The fact remains, Bart, that you conspired with Scraggsy to keep things away from me, which shows you ain't the man I thought you were, so from now on you go your way an' I'll go mine."

"I got a right to do as I blasted please with my own money,"

McGuffey defended hotly. "I ain't no child to be lectured to."

"Considerin' the fact that you wouldn't have had the money to lend if it hadn't been for me, I allow I'm insulted when you use the said money to give aid an' comfort to my enemy. I'm through."

McGuffey, smothered in guilt, felt nevertheless that he had to stand by his guns, so to speak. "Stay through, if you feel like it," he retorted. "Where d'ye get that chatter? Ain't I free, white, an' twenty-one year old?"

Mr. Gibney was really hurt. "You poor b.o.o.b," he murmured. "It's the old game o' settin' a beggar on horseback an' seein' him ride to the devil, or slippin' a gold ring in a pig's nose. An' I figured you was my friend!"

"Well, ain't I?"

"Fooey! Fooey! Don't talk to me. You'd sell out your own mother."

"Them's fightin' words, Gib."

"Shut up."

"Gib, you tryin' to pick a fight with me?"

"No, but I would if I thought I wouldn't git a footrace instead,"

Gibney rejoined scathingly. "Cripes, what a double-crossin' I been handed! Honest, Bart, when it comes to that sort o' work Scraggs is in his infancy. You sure take the cake."

"I ain't got the heart to clout you an' make you eat them words,"

Mr. McGuffey declared sorrowfully.

"You mean you ain't got the guts," Mr. Gibney corrected him.

"Bart, I got your number. Good-bye."

Mr. McGuffey had a wild impulse to cast himself upon the Gibney neck and weep, but his honour forbade any such weakness. So he invited Mr. Gibney to betake himself to a region several degrees hotter than the _Maggie's_ engine room; then, because he feared to linger and develop a sentimental weakness, he turned his back abruptly and descended to the said engine room.

On his part, Adelbert P. Gibney entered the cabin and glared long and menacingly at Captain Scraggs. "I'll have my time," he growled presently. "Give it to me an' give it quick."

The very intonation of his voice warned Scraggs that the present was not a time for argument or trifling. Silently he paid Mr.

Gibney the money due him; in equal silence the navigating officer went to the pilot house, unscrewed his framed certificate from the wall, packed it with his few belongings, and departed for Scab Johnny's boarding house.

"h.e.l.lo," Scab Johnny saluted him at his entrance. "Quit the _Maggie_?"

Mr. Gibney nodded.

"Want a trip to the dark blue?"

"Lead me to it," mumbled Mr. Gibney.

"It'll cost you twenty dollars, Gib. Chief mate on the _Rose of Sharon_, bound for the Galapagos Islands sealing."

"I'll take it, Johnny." Mr. Gibney threw over a twenty-dollar bill, went to his room, packed all of his belongings, paid his bill to Scab Johnny, and within the hour was aboard the schooner _Rose of Sharon_. Two hours later they towed out with the tide.

Poor McGuffey was stunned when he heard the news that night from Scab Johnny. When he retailed the information to Scraggs next morning, Scraggs was equally perturbed. He guessed that McGuffey and Gibney had quarrelled and he had the poor judgment to ask McGuffey the cause of the row. Instantly, McGuffey informed him that that was none of his dad-fetched business--and the incident was closed.

The three months that followed were the most harrowing of McGuffey's life. Captain Scraggs knew his engineer would not resign while he, Scraggs, owed him three hundred dollars; wherefore he was not too particular to put a bridle on his tongue when things appeared to go wrong. McGuffey longed to kill him, but dared not. When, eventually, the railroad had been extended sufficiently far down the coast to enable the farmers to haul their goods to the railroad in trucks, the _Maggie_ automatically went out of the green-pea trade; simultaneously, Captain Scraggs's note to McGuffey fell due and the engineer demanded payment. Scraggs demurred, pleading poverty, but Mr. McGuffey a.s.sumed such a threatening att.i.tude that reluctantly Scraggs paid him a hundred and fifty dollars on account, and McGuffey extended the balance one year--and quit.

"See that you got that hundred and fifty an' the interest in your jeans the next time we meet," he warned Scraggs as he went overside.

Time pa.s.sed. For a month the _Maggie_ plied regularly between Bodega Bay and San Francisco in an endeavour to work up some business in farm and dairy produce, but a gasoline schooner cut in on the run and declared a rate war, whereupon the _Maggie_ turned her blunt nose riverward and for a brief period essayed some towing and general freighting on the Sacramento and San Joaquin. It was unprofitable, however, and at last Captain Scraggs was forced to lay his darling little _Maggie_ up and take a job as chief officer of the ferry steamer _Encinal_, plying between San Francisco and Oakland. In the meantime, Mr. McGuffey, after two barren months "on the beach," landed a job as second a.s.sistant on a Standard Oil tanker running to the West Coast, while thrifty Neils Halvorsen invested the savings of ten years in a bay scow known as the _Willie and Annie_, arrogated to himself the t.i.tle of captain, and proceeded to freight hay, grain, and paving stones from Petaluma.

The old joyous days of the green-pea trade were gone forever, and many a night, as Captain Scraggs paced the deck of the ferryboat, watching the ferry tower loom into view, or the scattered lights along the Alameda sh.o.r.e, he thought longingly of the old _Maggie_, laid away, perhaps forever, and slowly rotting in the muddy waters of the Sacramento. And he thought of Mr.

Gibney, too, away off under the tropic stars, leading the care-free life of a real sailor at last, and of Bartholomew McGuffey, imbibing "pulque" in the "cantina" of some disreputable cafe. Captain Scraggs never knew how badly he was going to miss them both until they were gone, and he had n.o.body to fight with except Mrs. Scraggs; and when Mrs. Scraggs (to quote Captain Scraggs) "slipped her cable" in her forty-third year, Captain Scraggs felt singularly lonesome and in a mood to accept eagerly any deviltry that might offer.

Upon a night, which happened to be Scraggs's night off, and when he was particularly lonely and inclined to drown his sorrows in the Bowhead saloon, he was approached by Scab Johnny, and invited to repair to the latter's dingy office for the purpose of discussing what Scab Johnny guardedly referred to as a "proposition."

Upon arrival at the office, Captain Scraggs was introduced to a small, fierce-looking gentleman of tropical appearance, who owned to the name of Don Manuel Garcia Lopez. Scab Johnny first pledged Captain Scraggs to absolute secrecy, and made him swear by the honour of his mother and the bones of his father not to divulge a word of what he was about to tell him.

Scab Johnny was short and to the point. He stated that as Captain Scraggs was doubtless aware, if he perused the daily papers at all, there was a revolution raging in Mexico. His friend, Senor Lopez, represented the under-dogs in the disturbance, and was anxious to secure a ship and a nervy sea captain to land a shipment of arms in Lower California. It appeared that at a sale of condemned army goods held at the a.r.s.enal at Benicia, Senor Lopez had, through Scab Johnny, purchased two thousand single-shot Springfield rifles that had been retired when the militia regiments took up the Krag. The Krag in turn having been replaced by the modern magazine Springfield, the old single-shot Springfields, with one hundred thousand rounds of 45-70 ball cartridges, had been sold to the highest bidder. In addition to the small arms, Lopez had at present in a warehouse three machine guns and four 3 inch breech-loading pieces of field artillery (the kind of guns generally designated as a "jacka.s.s battery," for the reason that they can be taken down and transported over rough country on mules)--together with a supply of ammunition for same.

"Now, then," Scab Johnny continued, "the job that confronts us is to get these munitions down to our friends in Mexico. You know, as well as anybody, Scraggs, that while our government makes no bones of selling a lot o' retired rifles an' ammunition, nevertheless it's goin' to develop a heap o' curiosity regardin'

what we do with 'em. If we're caught sneakin' 'em into Mexico we'll spend the rest of our lives in a Federal penitentiary for bustin' the neutrality laws. All them rifles an' the ammunition is cased an' in my bas.e.m.e.nt at the present moment--and the government agents knows they're there. But that ain't troubling me. I rent the saloon next door an' I'll cut a hole through the wall from my cellar into the saloon cellar, carry 'em through the saloon into the backyard, an' out into the alley half a block away. I'm watched, but I got the watcher spotted--only he don't know it. Our only trouble is a ship. How about the _Maggie_?"