Chapter II

“That’s the sort of chap a woman had made of him. I’ve heard it said a woman is the making of a chap, it’s true, if she’s a good woman she’ll make a man of a fool, and if she’s bad she’ll make a fool of any man, seems to me. Jinny Slade was bad. I’ve got instincts about things and maybe that’s what made me so down on the business from the first—them mulberry eyes of hers rose my bristles, somehow or another, but now she’d fixed him there was no use talking.

“They took up housekeeping in Francis Street over the laundry, and not wishing to mix up in their hymeneal bliss, I didn’t see much of Buck for a month or more. The _Greyhound_ was out of dock and I brought her over to her moorings at Tiburon, and I’d sit here just as I’m sitting now, time and again, thinking of old times and the fool Buck was making of himself, for we’d lost the cargo a trader had promised us and our business was going to smash.

“One day I was leaning on the rail fishing with a hand line for want of something better to do when a guy comes along in a boat—Newall was his name—he’d known us for a couple of years, casual, and he’d just put off from an Oregon boat that lay anchored a bit out.

“‘How’s Buck?’ says he, resting on his oars.

“‘Buck’s married,’ I says. ‘Married this month and more.’

“‘Well, I wish him luck,’ says Newall, ‘and who’s the lady?’”

I tells him.

“‘Holy Mike,’ he says. ‘Jinny Slade—what made him do it?’

“I told him I didn’t know unless it was the devil, and then I asked what he knew about the party.

“‘Well,’ says Newall, ‘I’m a cautious man and I’m not going to lay myself open to no law court actions for deffination of character. I’m not going to say nothing about the woman except that she oughta been flung into the bay two years ago with a sinker tied to her middle, and then you wouldn’t have saved her first husband which she poisoned as sure as my name’s Dan Newall, no, nor the men she ruined in that gambling joint she run in Caird Street with a loaded r’lette wheel that’d stay put wherever you wanted by the pressin’ of a button under the table, run by a Chink it was with her money.

“‘In with the crimps she was, and if I had a dollar for every sailor-man she’s helped to shanghai I’d buy a fishin’ boat and make my fortune out of catchin’ the crabs that are feedin’ on the corpses of the men that’s drowned themselves because of her.

“‘Laundry,’ he says, ‘a laundry s’big as from here to Porte Costa, with every Chink in California workin’ overtime for a month wouldn’t wash the edges of her repitation—and Buck’s married her; strewth, but he’s got himself up to the eyes. What sort of blinkers were you wearin’ to let him do it?’

“‘I don’t know,’ I says, ‘alligator hide I should think was the sort he was wearing, anyhow. Question is what am I to do now?’

“‘Take a gun and shoot him,’ says Newall, ‘if you want to be kind to him.—Has she got any money out of him?’

“‘I don’t know,’ I says.

“‘Been married to him a month,’ he goes on. ‘She’ll have every jitney by this—well, if you’re set on trying to do somethin’ for him, get the last of his money from him if he’s got any and hide it in a hole for him before she kicks him out plucked naked.’”

Off he rowed, and pulling up my line I left the _Greyhound_ to the Kanaka watchman and took the ferry over to ’Frisco.

The laundry was banging away, the Chinks all hard at work, Mrs. Slade wasn’t home, over at St. Jo for the day, so the forewoman said, but Buck was in and upstairs, and up I went.

They’d got a fine sitting-room on the first floor with plush-covered chairs and brand new old-fashioned looking furniture and a bowl of goldfish in the window and pictures in big gold frames on the walls.

Buck was sitting in an easy chair reading a paper and smoking a cigar.

“Hullo,” he says, “here’s a coincidence, for I was just coming over to Tiburon to see you.”

“Oh, were you?” says I. “Wits jump sometimes and here I am on the same job. How’s the world using you, Buck?”

I tried to be as light-hearted as I could, but it was hard work. Buck had gone off in looks, and it was plain to see things weren’t going easy with him, you can always tell when a chap has something on his mind, and whilst he was getting out drinks I sat putting my thoughts together and only waiting to begin. I’d fixed to do a big grab, and get ten thousand dollars out of him as a loan to hide away for him against the time he got the kick out, plucked naked, as Newall had said.

He pours the whisky.

“Buck,” I says, taking the glass. “I’ve come to ask a favour of you. I want a loan.”

“How much?” asks Buck.

“Well,” I said, “I’ve ten thousand dollars of my own, as you know, and I’ve been offered a big opportunity of making a hundred thousand. Safe as houses. I want ten thousand to put with mine, I wouldn’t ask you to risk yours if I wasn’t risking mine.”

“What’s the spec.?” he asks.

“Can’t tell you that,” I said—“I’m under promise, but you know me and I give you my word of honour your money is as safe as if it was in your pocket—safer.”

“Well, I’d do it if I could,” he says, “you know me and that I’m not lying when I speak, but I can’t, haven’t got it.”

“But, Buck,” I says, “why, only a month ago you had thirty thousand dollars in the bank.”

Buck nods and goes on. “I haven’t got it to put my hand on,” he says. “My wife is keeping it for me. She says what with those New York banks going bust last spring and one thing and another, banks aren’t safe and she wants to invest it, she’s over at St. Jo to-day looking at some property.”

“Where’s she got the money?” I asks.

“In that safe,” says he.

Sure enough there was a big iron safe in the corner of the room half hid by a screen.

Seeing how the land lay, I said no more, and he changed the subject, going back to what he was saying when I first came in, how that he had been coming to see me that afternoon about a matter of business.

He wouldn’t say what the business was, but he wanted my help and he wanted it that night. He also wanted the boat of the _Greyhound_ brought over to Long Wharf.

“Just bring her over yourself,” said he. “No, we don’t want help, just you and me will manage it, and bring the mast and sail and some grub, never mind what I want her for, I’ll tell you later, it’s a paying business, as you’ll find.”

With that I took my leave of him and hiked off back to Tiburon, for the day was getting on and I had none too much time to get things together.

I was bothered and that’s the truth; Buck had gone off, wasn’t the same chap, and by his manner when he asked me to meet him with the boat, I knew it wasn’t pleasure sailing he was after. I near scratched the top off my head thinking what he could be wanting with that boat, but it was beyond me and I gave it up. Taute was the name of the Kanaka, same chap we had with us when we did that gun-running job down at Taleka, and when I got back to the _Greyhound_ I set Taute to work, getting some grub together and a new spar for a mast as the old one was sprung. Then, getting along for evening, I rowed over to Long Wharf. Long Wharf was pretty busy just then, what with wheat ships cleaning up before towing to Berkley for cargo and Oregon timber ships and such. There was a schooner lying there belonging to a chap I knew, so I just tied up to her channel-plates and crossed over on to the wharf where I sits on a bollard kicking my heels and waiting for Buck.

Along he comes just on dark, and without a word he follows me across the deck of the schooner into the boat.

Tell you I felt queer. We’d sailed pretty close to the wind together me and him, gun-running and what not, but this job seemed different, sort of back-door business with the harbour police or the Fish Patrol waiting to lay for us if we hitched up on it anywhere. I’d been used to blue water doings and big things and it got my goat to feel we were after something small and shady. It wasn’t small by any means, but, anyhow, that’s how I felt. But I said nothing, taking the oars and Buck taking his place in the stern sheets. Then we pushed off, Buck steering and making as if he was layin’ a course for Oakland. A few cable lengths out we took the wind and put up the mast, and, Buck taking the sheet, off we set still laying as if we were bound for Oakland. I’d sooner be out anywhere than in the lower bay after dark, what between them dam screeching ferry boats and the motor launches and such. Every monkey in ’Frisco with brass enough seems to have some sort or another of a launch or yacht and to spend his natural trying to run folks down. We were near cut into twice, seeing we had no light, but after a while, getting off the main track and Buck shifting his helm, we got along better.

He was steering now laying straight for Angel Island. We passed Racoon Straits and kept on, the breeze freshening hard and the boat laying over to it. The sky was clear and a big moon was coming over the hills. Wonderful fine the bay is a night like that, with all the lights round showing yellow against the moon and ’Frisco showing up against Oakland.

However, we weren’t out to admire the view and we held on, at least Buck did, till we were near level, as far as I could make out, with Reeds and aiming for Red Rock, the wind holding well. We passed a Stockton boat and an old brig coming down from Benicia or somewhere up there. Then away ahead and coming along square as a haystack I sighted a Chinese junk. Buck let go the sheet and, lighting a lantern he’d brought with us, ran it up.

“What are you doing that for?” I asked him.

“Show you in a minute,” says Buck. “Give us the boat-hook.”

I handed it along and he told me to have the oars handy and then we sat whilst the junk came along at a six-knot clip, boosting the water and the great eyes in the bow of her showing in the moonlight as if they were staring at us, but not a soul to be seen or a light on deck.

She snored along to starboard of us not more than ten yards away, black as thunder against the moon, and she was showing us her stern when something went splash over her side, followed by something else as if two chaps had gone a dive, one after the other.

On top of that and almost at once a Holmes light was thrown over and went floating along, blazing and smoking and showing a man’s head squatting beside it.

“Man overboard,” I says.

“Row,” says Buck.

I turned my head as I rowed and saw the junk going along as if nothing had happened, and then I saw the thing in the water wasn’t a man’s head but a buoy. We closed with the buoy and Buck grabs it with the boat-hook and brings it on board. It had a rope tied to it and he hauls it in, hand over hand, till up came a bundle done round with sacking. He hooks it over the gunnel and into the boat.

“That’s done,” said he.

“It is,” said I.

I didn’t say a word more. We got the sail on her and put her on the starboard tack, heading straight for Angel Island.

Then we shoved through Racoon Straits. It was getting along for morning now and I felt stiff and beat, with no heart in me or tongue to tell Buck what I was thinking of him for dragging me into a business like this, only praying we might get out of it without being overhauled.

We had Tiburon lights to starboard now and a bit to port the riding light of the old _Greyhound_, when, all of a sudden, we see a light running along towards us and heard the noise of a propeller like a sewing machine in a hurry.

“Police boat,” says Buck.

My heart rose up and got jammed in my throat, and I hadn’t more than swallowed it down when they were alongside of us, and there was Buck sitting in the stern sheets with the bundle under his legs, and a chap in the police boat playing a lantern on him.

Then the chap laughed.

“Oh, it’s only you, Buck,” says he. “What are you out for this time of night?”

“Smuggling opium,” says Buck.

The chap laughed. He was Dennis, well known to us both, and he shut his lantern and gave us the news that he was after some Chink smugglers who had their quarters at Valego and, fearing their shop was to be raided, were due to run some stuff into Tiburon that night according to his information.

“Well, we’ve just come down from San Quenton,” says Buck, “and I didn’t sight anything, only a big junk that passed us, making as if she was going to Oakland—Good luck to you.”

Off they went and five minutes after we were tying up to the _Greyhound_.