Thurston of Orchard Valley Part 25

"Not quite so good as last one. I know 'Frisco. Great time at China Joe's, you an' me," murmured Black as he collapsed with his head upon the table. He was soon snoring heavily.

"Your climate has been too much for him," one of the men declared, when the saloon-keeper came in. "Say, hadn't you better help us heave him in some place where he can sleep, unless you'd prefer to keep him as an advertis.e.m.e.nt?"

Black was stored away with some difficulty, and two hours later he was wheeled on a baggage-truck into the station, where half the inhabitants of the settlement a.s.sembled to see him off. The big cars were already clanging down the track, when a tall man riding a lathered horse appeared among the scattered pines on the shoulder of the hill above the settlement. A bystander commented:

"Thurston's foreman coming round for some of his packages. As usual he's in an almighty hurry. That place is 'most as steep as a roof, and he's coming down it at a gallop."

The prospectors glanced at each other, and one of them said, "Lend me a hand, somebody, to heave our sick partner aboard."

Black was unceremoniously deposited upon the platform of the nearest car, where he sat blinking vacantly at the a.s.sembly, while the conductor, leaning out from the door of the baggage-car, looked back towards the rider who was clattering through a dust cloud down the street, as he asked: "Anybody else besides the tired man? Is that fellow yonder coming?"

"No," answered the prospector. "He's only wanting one of those cases you've just dumped out. Likes to fancy his time's precious. I know him."

The conductor waved his hand, the big bell clanged, and the train had just rolled with a rattle over a trestle ahead, when Mattawa Tom, grimed with thick red dust, flung himself down beside the agent's office.

"Has a dark-faced thief in a plug hat with two holes in the top of it, gone out on the cars?" he shouted, and the spectators admitted that such a person boarded the train.

"Why didn't you come in two minutes earlier, Tom?" one of them inquired. "He lit out with two strangers. Has he been stealing something?"

"He's been doing worse, and I'd have been in on time, but that I stopped ten minutes to help freighter Louis cut loose the two live oxen left him," said the foreman, breathlessly. "One wheel came off his wagon going down the Clearwater Trail, and the whole blame outfit pitched over into a ravine. There's several thousand dollars' worth of our boring machines smashed up, and Louis, who has pretty well split his head, is cussing the man who took the cotter out of his wheel hub."

The two prospectors were heartily tired of their charge by the time they pa.s.sed him off as the sick employe of an American firm, at the nearest station to the Washington border. When Black showed signs of waking up he was soothed with medicated liquor, and his guardians, who several times had high words with the conductor, at last unloaded him in a station hewn out of the forests encircling Puget Sound, where they managed to hoist him into a spring wagon. Black leaned against one of the men, for he was feeling distressfully ill. His head throbbed, his vision was hazy and his throat was dry. Blinking down at the rows of wooden houses among the firs, and the tall spars of vessels behind them, he said: "This isn't 'Frisco--not half big enough. Somebody made mistake somewhere. Say! Lemme out; I'm going back to the depot."

"You're coming along with us," was the decided answer. "Sit down at once before we make you."

Black slowly doubled up a still formidable fist, and grasping a rail, lurched to and fro unsteadily. "Lemme out 'fore I kill somebody.

Claim rightsh of British citizensh," he said.

"You'll get them if you're not careful," was the threat, and the speaker jerked Black's feet from under him. "I was told to remind you if you made trouble that a sheriff on this side of the frontier had some papers describing you. There's one or two patrolmen yonder handy."

"It was an accident," temporized Black, endeavoring to pull his scattered wits together.

"Juss so!" was the answer, given with a gesture of indifference. "I was only told a name for the patrolmen, and to remind you that a man, who knows all about it, has got his eye on you."

Black leered upon him with drunken cunning, then his face grew stolid, and he said nothing further until the wagon drew up in a by-street, before a door, hung across with quaint signboards of Chinese characters. The door opened and closed behind him when his companions knocked, and Black, who recognized a curious sour smell, choked out, "Gimme long drink of ice watah!"

He drained the cool draught that was brought him, then flinging himself on a pile of matting in a corner of a dim room, sank forthwith into slumber. He had intended to pretend to sleep, but to lie awake and think. His custodians, however, had arranged things differently, and Black's wits were not working up to their usual power.

Whenever railroad extension or mining enterprise provided high wages for all strong enough to earn them and crews deserted wholesale, seamen were occasionally shipped in a very irregular fashion from the ports of the Pacific slope. At the time Black was brought into one of the seaboard cities, the purveying of drugged and kidnaped mariners had risen to be almost a recognized profession.

It accordingly happened that when the unfortunate Black first became clearly conscious of anything again, he heard the gurgle of sliding water close beside his head, and, opening his eyes, caught sight of a smoky lamp that reeled to and fro, in very erratic fashion. Moisture dripped from the beams above him, and there was a sickly smell which seemed familiar. Black, who had been to sea before, decided that he caught the aroma of bilge water. Rows of wooden shelves tenanted by rec.u.mbent figures, became discernible, and he started with dismay to the full recognition of the fact that he was in a vessel's forecastle.

Somebody or something was pounding upon the scuttle overhead. A black gap opened above him, a rush of cold night wind swept down, followed by a gruff order:

"Turn out, watch below, and help get sail upon her. Stir round before I put a move on to you!"

Men scrambled from the wooden shelves growling as they did so. Two lost their balance on the heaving floor, went down headlong, and lay where they fell. When a man in long boots floundered down the ladder, Black sat up in his bunk.

"Now there's going to be trouble. Some blame rascals have run me off aboard a lumber ship," he said.

"Correct!" observed a man who was struggling into an oilskin jacket.

"You're blame well shanghaied like the rest of us, and as the mate's a rustler, you've got to make the best of it."

"h.e.l.lo! What's the matter with you? Not feeling spry this morning, or is it hot water you're waiting for?" the mate said, jerking Black out of his bunk as he spoke. "Great Columbus! What kind of a stiff do you call yourself? Up you go!"

Black went, with all the expedition he was capable of, and, blundering out through the scuttle, stood shivering on a slant of wet and slippery deck. A brief survey showed him that he was on board a full-rigged ship, timber laden, about to be cast off by a tug. There was a fresh breeze abeam. Looking forward he could see dark figures hanging from the high-pointed bowsprit that rose and dipped, and beyond them the lights of a tug reeling athwart a strip of white-streaked sea.

Mountains dimly discernible towered in the distance, and he fancied it was a little before daybreak. Bursts of spray came hurtling in through the foremast shrouds, and the whine and rattle of running wire and chain fell from the windy blackness overhead whence the banging of loosened canvas came to his ears. Glancing aloft he watched the great arches of the half-sheeted topsails swell blackly out and then collapse again with a thunderous flap. Somebody was shouting from the slanted top-gallant-yard that swung in a wide arc above them, but Black had no time for further inspection.

"Lay aloft and loose maintopsails! Are you figuring we brought you here to admire the scenery?" a hoa.r.s.e voice challenged.

Half-dazed and sullenly savage Black had still sense enough to reflect that it would be little use to expect that the hara.s.sed mate would listen to reason then. Clawing his way up the ratlines he laid his chest upon the main-topsail-yard and worked his way out to the lower end of the long inclined spar. Here, still faint and dizzy, he hung with the footrope jammed against his heel, as he felt for the gasket that held the canvas to the yard. Swinging through the blackness across a s.p.a.ce of tumbling foam he felt a horrible unsteadiness. There were other men behind him, for he could hear them swearing and coughing until a black wall of banging canvas sank beneath him when somebody roared: "Sheet her home!"

Then a hail came down across the waters from the tug. There was a loud splash beneath the bows, while shadowy figures that howled a weird ditty as they hove the hawser in, rose and fell black against the foam-flecked sea on the dripping forecastle. n.o.body had missed Black, who now sat astride the yard watching the tug, as the ship, listing over further and commencing to hurl the spray in clouds about her plunging bows, gathered way. The steamboat would slide past very close alongside, and he saw a last chance of escape. Moving out to the very yard-arm he clutched the lee-brace, which rope led diagonally downwards to the vessel's depressed rail. He looked below a moment, bracing himself for the perilous attempt.

The tug was close abreast of the ship's forecastle now, evidently waiting with engines stopped until the vessel should pa.s.s her. The crew was still heaving in the cable or loosing the top-gallants, and froth boiled almost level with the depressed rail. Black was a poor swimmer, but he could keep his head above water for a considerable time. If the tug did not start her engines within the next few seconds she must drive close down on him. Otherwise--but filled with the hope of escape and the l.u.s.t for revenge Black was willing to take the risk.

He hooked one knee around the brace, gripped it between his ankles and slackened the grip of his hands. The topsails slid away from him, the spray rushed up below, his feet struck the rail, and the next moment he was down in utter blackness and conscious of a shock of icy cold water.

He rose gasping and swung around, buffeted in the vessel's eddying wake. There was no shouting on board her, and, with a choking cry, he struck out for the black shape of the tug, now only a short distance away. Somebody heard and flung down a line. He clutched at it and, by good fortune, grasped it. Head downward he was drawn on board by the aid of a long boathook, and hauled, dripping, before the skipper.

"Did you fall or jump in?" asked the skipper.

"I jumped," confessed Black, putting a bold face on it, and the master of the towboat laughed.

"Shanghaied, I guess!" he said. "Well, I don't blame you for showing your grit. The master of that lumber wagon is a blame avaricious insect! He beat us down until all we got out of him will hardly pay for the coal we used--that's what he did. So if you slip ash.o.r.e quietly when we tie up, he'll think you pitched over making sail, and I'll keep my mouth shut."

Accordingly it happened that next morning Black, who had left the wooden city before daylight to tramp back to the bush, sat down to consider his next move.

"There's one thing tolerably certain, Black Christy's drowned, and he'll just stop drowned until it suits him," he decided. "Next, though he's not over fond of it, there's lots of work for a good carpenter in this country and newspapers are cheap. So when it's worth his while to strike in with the Thurston Company and get even with the other side he'll probably hear of it."

He laughed a little as he once more read the message on a strip of pulpy paper somebody had slipped into his pocket.

"You are going to China for your health, and you had better stop there if you want to keep clear of trouble."

Black Christy got upon his feet again and departed into the bush, where he wandered for several weeks, building fences and splitting shingles for the ranchers in return for food and shelter, until he found work and wages at a saw-mill.

Shortly after he was employed at the mill, the director who held Leslie's receipt sat in his handsome offices with the Englishman. A newspaper lay open on the table before him, and the director smiled as he read, "Ship, _Maria Carmony_, timber laden for China, meeting continuous headwinds after sailing from this port, put into Cosechas, Cal., for shelter, and her master reported the loss of a seaman when making sail in the Straits of San Juan. The man's name was T. Slater, and must have been a stranger, as n.o.body appears to have known him in this city."

"Those fellows haven't managed it badly," he commented. "Anyway, there's an end of him."

"They told me they had some trouble over it, and I gave them fifty dollars extra," said Leslie. "They used the hint you mentioned--said it worked well. But the two men are always likely to turn up, unfortunately."

"It wouldn't count," the other answered confidently. "You will have to bluff them off if they do. Deny the whole thing--n.o.body would believe them--it's quite easy. It would have been different with that confounded Black, for he would have had Thurston's testimony. The joke of the whole thing is, that although he knew I held evidence which would likely hang him with a jury of miners, it's tolerably certain Black never did the thing he was wanted for."

Thus, the two parties interested remained contented, and only Thurston was left bewildered and furious at the loss of a witness who might be valuable to him. Moreover, the destruction of machinery which, having been made specially for Thurston, in England, could not be replaced for months. And not once did it ever occur to his subordinate, English Jim, that he himself had furnished the clue which led to the abduction of the missing man.