|WEBSTER'S trunk went aboard the steamer early the following morning,
and at noon he entered a taxi with his hand baggage and was driven to
the levee where _La Estrellita_ lay tugging gently at her mooring lines.
Owing to the congestion of freight and traffic the chauffeur stopped his
cab a little distance from the gangplank, where Webster discharged him
with a liberal tip.
The latter, however, swung his passenger's bag and suitcase to the
ground, picked them up and started for the gangplank.
“Never mind my baggage, lad,” Webster called after him. “One of the deck
boys will care for it.” The chauffeur turned. “You've been very generous
with me, sir,” he answered, “so I think I had better carry your baggage
aboard. If you permit a deck boy to handle it, you merely have to give
another tip, and that would be sheer wanton waste. Why shouldn't I earn
the one you gave me?”
“I hadn't figured it out that way, son, so here's another half dollar
for being the only existing specimen of your species in captivity. My
stateroom is No. 34, upper deck, port side,” Webster answered, smiling.
The man took the tip eagerly and hurried toward the gangplank; the
quartermaster on duty shouldered a way for him and he darted aboard?
Webster followed leisurely. At the gangplank the purser's clerk halted
him, examined his tickets and punched them.
“Where is the other man?” he asked. “You have two tickets here.”
“Oh, that blamed valet of mine,” Webster answered, and glanced around as
if in search of that mythical functionary. “It would be like the stupid
fellow to miss the boat,” he added. “When he comes----”
Webster ceased speaking abruptly. He was looking straight into the
malevolent orbs of Pucker-eye, who was standing just behind the clerk at
the foot of the gangplank.
“I wonder if Popeye's around, also,” Webster thought, and he faced
about. Pop-eye was standing in back of him, leaning over the railing of
the gangway.
“Which is the valet?” the purser's clerk asked, scanning the names on
the tickets.
“Andrew Bowers.”
“All right, Mr. Webster,” the other answered, with that genial
camaraderie that seems inseparable from all of his calling. “When Andrew
comes I'll send him aboard.”
He started to pass the tickets back to Webster, but a detaining hand
rested on his arm, while a dark thumb and forefinger lifted the trailing
strips of tickets. Pucker-eye was examining them also.
He sent his elbow backward violently into Pucker-eye's midriff and shook
him off roughly.
“What do you mean, you black-and-tan hound?” he demanded. “Since when
did you begin to O. K. my work?”
Pucker-eye made no reply to this stern reproof. He accepted the elbow
with equanimity, and faced Webster with an evil smile that indicated
mutual recognition.
“Bueno,” he said, with such genuine satisfaction that Webster could not
help demanding:
“_Por que es bueno?_ (Why is it good?)”
“We meet the senor first in the teeket office. We meet the senor again
yesterday morning, no? After, we remember we have meet the senor in the
teeket office! _Quien sabe?_ The senor he ees sail on _La Estrellita_
for San Buenaventura, no?”
“So you came nosing around to see about it, eh? Doing a little plain
gumshoe work, I see.”
Pucker-eye bowed. By the simple exercise of courage and bad manners he
had looked at John Stuart Webster's ticket and was now familiar with his
name and destination.
The object of this solicitude had little difficulty in guessing the
reason behind it all, and he was not happy. He would have preferred that
the incident of their former meeting should not be held against him; he
wished most devoutedly that his part in the ruction in Jackson Square
on Sunday morning might have been forgotten by all concerned, and this
revival of the unpleasant episode was slightly disconcerting.
As a usual thing he was loth to interject himself in the affairs of
other people, and had a deep-seated animosity against those who did; he
would have preferred to round out his existence without having to take
into consideration the presence of a twin Nemesis. However, since the
fat was in the fire, so to speak, Webster felt that there was nothing
for him to do save brazen things out as best he could, so he glowered
darkly at Pucker-eye and said:
“Well, you scoundrelly cutthroat, what are you going to do about it? Try
a little of your knife work on me, I suppose?”
Pucker-eye did not answer, but his beady glance wavered and shifted
before the cool, contemptuous menace of Webster's blue eyes.
“Listen, _hombre_,” Webster continued. “I know your kind of people like
a nigger knows cologne. I know what you'd like to do to me in exchange
for what I did to you yesterday morning, but you take a tip from me and
don't try it, or one of these days they'll be walking slow behind you
and your _companero_, and you won't know it!”
The fellow grinned--the kind of grin that is composed of equal parts
of ferocity and knowledge of superior strength. That grin did more to
disconcert Webster than the knowledge that he had earned for himself two
bloodthirsty and implacable enemies, for Pucker-eye was the first of
his breed that Webster had ever seen smile under insult. That cool smile
infuriated him.
Pucker-eye took out a cigarette case, selected a cigarette, and
presented the case to Webster. His bad manners in selecting his
own cigarette first was deliberate, as Webster knew. It was the
Latin-American's method of showing his contempt.
“We shall meet again, Meester Webstaire,” he said. “May I offer the
senor a cigarette for the--what you Americans call--the keepsake? No?”
He smiled brightly and closed his puckered eye in a knowing wink.
Webster took his tickets from the purser, folded them, placed them in
his pocket and for a few seconds regarded Pucker-eye contemptuously.
“When we meet again, you scum,” he retorted quietly, “you shall have no
difficulty in remembering me. You may keep your cigarette.”
His long, powerful right arm shot out; like a forceps his thumb and
forefinger closed over Pucker-eve's rather flat nose; he squeezed, and
with a shrill scream of agony Pucker-eye went to his knees.
Still holding the wretch by his proboscis, Webster turned quickly in
order that his face might be toward Pop-eye.
“Pop-eye,” he said, “if you take a hand in this, I'll twist your nose,
too, and afterward I'll throw you in the river.”
He turned to Pucker-eye.
“Up, thou curious little one,” he said in Spanish, and jerked the
unhappy rascal to his feet. The latter clawed ineffectually at the
terrible arm which held him, until, presently discovering that the
harder he struggled the harder Webster pinched his nose, he ceased his
struggles and hung limply, moaning with pain and rage in the grip of the
American.
“Good!” Webster announced, slacking his grip a little. With his left
hand he deftly extracted a hair from each flank of the screaming
little scoundrel's scant moustache, and held them before the latter's
tear-filled eyes.
“My friend,” he said gently, “mark how the gringo gives his little dark
brother a lesson in deportment. Behold, if I have given thee a souvenir
of our meeting, I also have taken one. By this pinched and throbbing
nose shall I be remembered when I am gone; by these hairs from thy rat's
moustache shall I remember thee. Go, and thrust not that nose into a
gringo's business again. It is unsafe.”
He released Pucker-eye, nodded brightly to the purser's clerk and
quartermaster, who, spellbound and approving, had watched him mete out
retribution according to his code, and went aboard, just as an
assistant steward came hurrying along the deck beating a lusty solo on a
triangle--the signal for all non-passengers to go ashore.
Webster made his way through the crowd to his room, looked in, saw that
his baggage was there, and walked around on the starboard side to join
in the general farewell of all on board to the crowd on the levee.
At the shore end of the gangplank Pucker-eye and Pop-eye still waited.
The unfortunate Pucker-eye was weeping with pain and futile rage and
humiliation, but Webster noticed that Pop-eye's attention was not on
his friend but upon each passenger that boarded the ship, of which there
were the usual number of late arrivals. As each passenger approached,
Pop-eye scanned him with more than casual interest.
Webster smiled. “Looking for that valet they heard me talking about,” he
reflected. “Pop-eye, you're a fine, capable lad. I thought you had the
brains of the two. You're not going away until you've had a chance to
size up the reinforcements at my command, are you?”
Promptly at one o'clock the captain mounted the bridge and ordered the
gangplank drawn ashore. The breastline was cast off; with a long-drawn
bellow from her siren the wheel of _La Estrellita_ commenced to churn
the muddy water and her bow swung gently outboard, while the stern line
acted as a spring. With the stern line slackened and cast overboard the
vessel pushed slowly out into the stream where the current caught her
and swung her in a wide arc. Webster watched Pucker-eye and Pop-eye
leave the landing arm in arm. Pop-eye was sporty enough to wave at him,
and Webster, not to be outdone in kind, waved back.
He lighted a cigar and leaned over the rail as the steamer, gathering
speed, swept down river.
“Good-bye, you golden fizz and chicken gumbo,” he called, as the city
receded and the low, wooded shores below the city came into view. He had
forgotten Pucker-eye and Pop-eye in the flood of poignant regret that
swept over him at the memory of the peerless Antoine!