shadow of the nearest freight pyramid and flung themselves upon him. He
fought fiercely for a moment, and though he was more than doubly
outweighted, rose to his feet, striking out viciously and dragging his
assailants up with him. In the struggle the bundle dropped from his
belt, and Charlotte saw him kick it aside. The waiting negro caught it
deftly and vanished among the freight pyramids; whereupon one of the
attacking pair wrenched himself out of the three-man scuffle and darted
away in pursuit.
This left but a single antagonist for the fugitive, and Charlotte's
sympathies deserted her convictions for the moment. But while she was
biting her lip to keep from crying out, the fugitive stepped back and
held out his hands; and she saw the gleam of polished metal reflecting
the glare of the arc-light when the officer snapped the handcuffs upon
his wrists.
It was with a distinct sense of culpability oppressing her that she went
back to her aunt, and she was careful not to let the invalid see her
face. Fortunately, there was a thing to be done, and the transfer to the
other steamer came opportunely to help her to re-establish the balance
of things distorted.
She was sorry, but, after all, the man had only himself to blame. None
the less, the wish that some one else might have been his betrayer was
promising to grow later into remorseful and lasting regret when, with
her aunt, she left the _Belle Julie_, and walked up the levee to go
aboard the _Star of the North_.
XII
MOSES ICHTHYOPHAGUS
After suffering all the pangs of those who lose between the touch and
the clutch, Griswold had found the red-handkerchief bundle precisely
where it had been hidden; namely, buried safely in the deck-load of
sacked coffee on the engine-room guard.
It came to light in the final half-hour of the voyage, when he and his
mates were transferring the coffee to the main-deck, forward. It had not
been disturbed; and what had happened was obvious enough, after the
fact. After its hiding, arm's-length deep, in a cranny between the
sacks, some sudden jar of the boat had slightly shifted the cargo,
closing one cranny and opening another.
With the money once more in his possession he had a swift return of the
emotions which had thrilled him when he found himself standing on the
sidewalk in front of the Bayou State Security with the block of
bank-notes under his arm. Once more he was on fair fighting terms with
the world, and the star of hope, which had gone out like a candle in a
gust of wind at the discovery of his loss, swung high in the firmament,
shining all the more brightly for its long occultation.
As to the battle for the keeping which was probably awaiting him at the
St. Louis landing, the prospect of coming to blows, man-fashion, with
the enemy, was not wholly unwelcome. With all of his incompletenesses
this young rebel of life was no coward. If the New Orleans thief-takers
were waiting for him in the shadows of the great city's landing-place,
so be it; he would try to give them their money's worth: and an eager
impatience to be at it got into his blood.
The few necessary preliminaries were arranged while the _Belle Julie_
was backing and filling for the landing. Since to be taken with the
money in his possession was to give the enemy the chance of winning at
one stroke both the victory and the spoils, he made a confederate of the
negro whose part he had taken in the quarrel with M'Grath. The man was
grateful and loyal according to his gifts; and Griswold's need was too
pressing to stick at any trifle of unintelligence.
"Mose, you'll go ashore with me on the spring line," he said, when he
had found his man at the heel of the landing-stage.
"Yes, suh, Mars' Gravitt; dat's me, sholy."
"All right. You see this bundle. If anybody tackles me while we're
making fast, I'm going to drop it, and you must get it and run away. Do
you understand?"
The negro eyed the bundle suspiciously.
"Ain't no dinnymite, 'r nothin' er that sawt in hit, is dey, Cap'm?"
"No."
"Whut-all mus' I do when I's done tuk out wid hit?"
"Get away, first; then keep out of sight and hang around the levee for
an hour or two. If I don't turn up before you get tired, pitch the thing
into the river and go about your business. How much money does the
captain owe you?"
"Cap'm Mayfiel'? Shuh! he don't owe me nothin'. I done draw de las'
picayune dat was comin' to me yistiday--an' dat yaller nigger over
yonder got it in de crap-game, same as turrers."
Griswold put a twenty-dollar bill into the black palm, and when the crap
victim made out the figure of it by the glow of the furnace fires, his
eyes bulged. "Gorra-mighty!" he gasped; and would have given it back.
"No, keep it; it's yours. Do exactly as I have told you, and if I'm able
to keep my date with you, I'll double it. But if I don't show up,
remember--the bundle goes into the river just as it is. If you open it,
it'll conjure you worse than any Obi-man you ever heard of."
"No, _suh_! I ain't gwine open hit, Cap'm--not if dey's cunjah in hit;
no, suh!"
"Well, there is--the worst kind of conjure this old world has ever
known. But it won't hurt you if you don't meddle with it. Keep your wits
about you and be ready to grab it and run. Here we go."
The pilot had found his wharfage and was edging the _Belle Julie_ up to
it. The bow men paid out slack, and Griswold and the black, dropping
from the swinging stage, trailed the end of the wet hawser up to the
nearest mooring-ring. Though haste in making fast is the spring-line
man's first duty, Griswold took a fraction of a second to look around
him. The mooring-ring lay fair in the mock noonday of electric light,
and there was no cover near it save a tarpaulined pyramid of sugar
barrels. Up the levee slope the way was open to the one-sided
river-fronting street; and beyond the tarpaulin-covered sugar were more
freight pyramids, with shadowy alleys between them.
Satisfied with what he saw, Griswold bade the negro keep watch and knelt
to knot the hawser in the ring. The line was water-soaked and stiff, and
in the momentary struggle with it his caution relaxed its eyehold on the
pyramid of sugar barrels. The lapse was hardly more than a glance aside,
but it sufficed. While the negro sentinel was stammering, "L-l-lookout,
Mars' Cap'm!" the trap was sprung.
In deference to the up-coming passengers from the _Belle Julie_, the two
man-catchers tried to do their job quietly. But Griswold would not have
it so, and he was up and had twisted himself free when a blow from a
clubbed pistol drove him back to his knees. Half stunned by the
clubbing, he still made shift to spring afoot again, to drop his
handkerchief bundle and kick it aside, and to close with his assailants
while the negro was snatching up the treasure and darting away among the
freight pyramids. After that he had but one thought; to keep the two
plain-clothes men busy until the negro had made his escape. Even this
proved to be a forlorn hope, since the smaller of the two instantly
broke away to give chase, while the other stepped back, spun his weapon
in air, and levelled it.
Rage-blinded as he was, Griswold knew that the levelled pistol meant
surrender or death. In the fine battle-frenzy of the moment he was on
the verge of accepting the alternative. Life and the love of it were
merged in a fierce desire to rush Berserk-mad upon the weapon and the
man behind it, and his muscles were hardening for the spring when he
chanced to look past the levelled weapon to the _Belle Julie_; to the
saloon-deck guard where a solitary, gray-coated figure stood clinging to
a stanchion and looking on with what agonies of soul none might know.
Like a flash of revealing light it came to him that the death which
would be the lesser of two evils for him would brim a life-long cup of
trembling for the woman whose duty it had been to betray him, and he
thrust out his wrists for the manacles.
Quite naturally, the upflash of self-abnegation gave birth to renewed
hope; and when his captor had handcuffed him and was walking him toward
a closed carriage drawn up before the nearest saloon in the
river-fronting street, he ventured to ask what he was wanted for.
"You'll find that out soon enough," was the curt reply, and nothing more
was said until the carriage was reached and the door had been jerked
open. "Get in!" commanded the majesty of the law, and when the door was
slammed upon the captive, the plain-clothes man turned to the driver, a
little wizened Irishman with a face like a shrivelled winter apple.
"What time does that New Orleans fast train pull out?"
Griswold heard the reply: "Sivin-forty-five, sorr," and something in the
thin, piping voice gave him fresh courage. Through the open window of
the carriage he saw his captor glance at his watch and begin an
impatient sentry-beat up and down under the electric transparency
advertising the particular brand of whiskey specialized by the saloon.
He was evidently waiting for his colleague to bring in the negro, and
time pressed.
While he looked, Griswold was conscious of a curious change creeping
into heart and brain. From typifying himself as an escaping criminal the
psychological objective was slowly but surely becoming the subjective.
He _was_ a criminal. The conclusion brought no self-accusation, no
prickings of conscience. On the contrary, it swept the ground clear of
all the ethical obstructions, leaving only a vast subtlety and
furtiveness, the sly ferocity of the trapped animal.
Through half of the sentry-beat the big man's back was turned:
Griswold's eyes measured the distance, and the new subtlety weighed the
chances of a cautious opening of the carriage door, a tiger spring to
the pavement, and a battering out of the man's brains with the
handcuffs. There were few passers: it might be done.
It was not because it was too cold-blooded that he put the suggestion
aside. It was rather because the man-catcher himself suggested another
expedient. The spring evening was raw and chilly, and the open doors of
the saloon volleyed light and warmth and a beckoning invitation.
Griswold's gift, prostituted to the service of the changed point of
view, bade him read in the red face, the loose lip, and the bibulous
eyes the temptation that was gripping the plain-clothes man. "Wait,"
whispered the colorless inner voice; "wait, and be ready when he goes in
to get the drink he has promised himself he will never again be weak
enough to take while he is on duty. It won't be long."
Griswold waited. By a careful contortion of the manacled hands, which
seemed suddenly to have become endowed with the crafty deftness of the
hands of a pickpocket, he found his working capital in a pocket of the
short-sleeved coat. It had been diminished only by the hundred dollars
put into John Gavitt's hands, and the twenty he had given the negro. He
wished he might have had a glimpse of the little Irish cabman's face.
Since he had not, he made two hundred dollars of the money into a
compact roll and put the remainder back into the inner pocket.
It was only a minute or two after this that the red-faced man's
impatience blossomed into the thirst that will not be denied, and he
went into the saloon to get a drink, first putting the cabman on guard.
"Get down here and keep an eye on this dicky-bird," he ordered. "Slug
him if he tries to make a break."
But the cabman hung back.
"I'm no fightin' man, sorr; an', besides, I don't dare lave me harrses,"
he objected. But the officer broke in angrily.
"What the devil are you afraid of? He's got the clamps on, and couldn't
hurt you if he wanted to. Come down here!"
The little Irishman clambered down from his box reluctantly, with the
reins looped over his arm. When he peered in at the open window of the
carriage the big man had passed beyond the swinging screens of the
saloon entrance and Griswold seized his opportunity quickly.
"What's your job worth, my man?" he whispered.
The cabman snatched a swift glance over his shoulder before he ventured
to answer.
"Don't yez be timptin' a poor man wid a wife an' sivin childer hangin'
to um--don't yez do it, sorr!"
Griswold, the brother-keeping, would have thought twice before opening
any door of temptation for a brother man. But the new Griswold had no
compunctions.
"It's two hundred dollars to you if you can get me away from here before
that red-faced drunkard comes back. Have a runaway--anything! Here's the
money!"
For a single timorous instant the cabman hesitated. Then he took the
roll of money and crammed it into his pocket without looking at it.
Before Griswold could brace himself there was a quick _whish_ of the
whip, a piping cry from the driver, and the horses sprang away at a
reckless gallop, with the little Irishman hanging to the reins and
shouting feebly like a faint-hearted Automedon.
Griswold caught a passing glimpse of the red-faced man wiping his lips
in the doorway of the saloon as the carriage bounded forward; and when
the critical instant came, he was careful to fall out on the riverward
side of the vehicle. It was a desperate expedient, since he could not
wait to choose the favorable moment, and the handcuffs made him
practically helpless. Chance saved the clumsy escape from resulting in a
speedy recapture. When he tumbled out of the lurching carriage he was
hurled violently against something that figured as a wall of solid
masonry and was half stunned by the concussion. None the less, he had
wit enough to lie motionless in the shadow of the wall, and the hue and
cry, augmented by this time to a yelling mob, swept past without
discovering him.
When it was safe to do so, he sat up and felt for broken bones. There
were none; and he looked about him. The wall of masonry resolved itself
into a cargo of brick piled on the levee side of the street, and obeying
the primary impulse of a fugitive, he quickly put the sheltering bulk of
it between himself and the lighted thoroughfare.
The next step had to be resolutely thought out. How was he to get rid of
the handcuffs? Any policeman would have a key, and there were doubtless
plenty of locksmiths in St. Louis. But both of these sources of
assistance were out of the question. Whom, then? The answer came in one
word--M'Grath. On a day when the up-river voyage was no more than fairly
begun, one of the negroes in the crew had procured a bottle of bad
whiskey. To pacify him the mate had put him in irons, using two pairs of
handcuffs for the purpose. Therefore, M'Grath must have a key.
But would M'Grath do it? That remained to be seen; and since hesitation
was no part of Griswold's equipment, he covered the fetters as well as
he could with a scrap of bagging, and walked boldly down the levee and
aboard the _Belle Julie_, falling into line with the returning file of
roustabouts.
The mate was at the heel of the foot-plank, and he saw at once what the
scrap of sacking was meant to hide.
"Hello, there, Gavitt!" he called, not less gruffly than of yore, but
without the customary imprecation; "What are ye doing with thim things
on?"
Griswold told a straight story, concealing nothing: not even the
detective's refusal to tell him what he was arrested for.
M'Grath was smiling grimly when the tale was finished. "And did he let
ye come back to collect yer day-pay, then?" he asked, ironically.
"Hardly. He shoved me into a cab and then went into a saloon to get a
drink. While he was gone, the horses ran away and I got out," said
Griswold, still adhering to the exact facts.
"Ye'd ought to find that cabby and buy him a seegyar," was the mate's
comment. "So ye legged it, did ye?"
"Yes; when I got a show. But I can't get these things off."
This time M'Grath's smile was a grin.
"I'll bet ye can't. They ain't made f'r to come off. Never mind; peg
along afther me. You did be doing me a good turn wan black night, and
I'm not forgetting it."
He led the way up to his quarters in the texas, and telling Griswold to
wait, went down on his knees to rummage in the locker beneath the berth.
"I've got a couple o' pair av thim things in here, somewhere, and maybe
the key to 'em will fit yours," he went on, adding: "What's become av
Mose?"
Again Griswold told the exact truth.
"The last I saw of him he was making a run for it up the levee, with one
of the plain-clothes men chasing him."
M'Grath found his handcuffs and tried the key in those upon Griswold's
wrists. It fitted.
"Now ye're fut- and hand-loose, I'll say to ye what I wouldn't say to a
cripple. If ye've been telling me the truth, 'tis only the half av it.
What have ye been doing, Gavitt?"
Griswold smiled. "Toting cargo on the _Belle Julie_, since you've known
me. You'd swear to that, wouldn't you?"
"But before that?"
"Loafing around New Orleans for a month or two."
The big mate pushed him to a seat on the after berth and sat down
opposite.
"Because ye fished me out o' the river whin ye had good cause to lave me
be, I'll tell ye a thing or two for the good av yer soul. Thing number
wan is that ye're not Gavitt; ye're no more like him than I am. Let that
go, an' come to thing number two; ye've been up to some deviltry. How do
I know? Because, at the last landing below this a little man comes
aboard an' spots you. Is that all? It is not. Whin the _Belle Julie_
swings in, he's the first man off, making a clane jump av a good tin
feet from the engine-room guards. I saw 'im."
Griswold nodded and said, "I was wondering how they came to place me so
easily. This fellow knew I would be one of the two to carry out the
spring line?"
"He did, f'r I told him."
"Meaning to get me pulled?"
"Meaning nothing but wanting to be rid av the bothering little man. He
said he was a friend av yours, and didn't care to be speaking to ye
while ye was mixing with the naygurs. But that's all over and gone.
What'll ye be doing next?"
Griswold took a leaf out of the past. Safety in a former peril had grown
out of a breakfast deliberately eaten in a café next door to the Bayou
State Security.
"What would I do but finish my job on the _Julie_?" he said, pushing the
theory to its logical conclusion.
The mate shook his head. "Ye needn't do that; the cops might be coming
down here and running you in again. How much pay have ye drawn?"
"Not any."
M'Grath took a greasy wallet from his pocket and counted out a
deck-hand's wages for the trip.
"Take this, and I'll be getting it back from the clerk. It might not be
good f'r ye to show up at the office. Where's yer hat?"
"It was lost in the shuffle out yonder at the mooring-ring."
The mate found an old one of his own, together with a long-tailed coat,
much the worse for wear.
"Do you be taking these. They'll not be so likely to pick you up before
ye can get up-town if ye look a little less like a hobo."
Griswold suffered a sudden return to the meliorating humanities.
"I've been calling you all the hard names I could lay tongue to,
M'Grath, and there have been times when I would have given the price of
a good farm for the privilege of standing up to you on a bit of green
grass with nobody looking on. I take it all back. You say you haven't
forgotten: neither will I forget, and maybe my turn will come again,
some day."
"Go along with you," growled the rough-tongued Irishman, whose very
kindness had a tang of brutality in it. "If you're coming across the
naygur, Mose, anywhere, sind him back and tell him I'll see that he gets
real money f'r helping us unload. Off with ye, now, whilst they're
catching up with yer runaway cab."
Griswold went leisurely, as befitted his theory, and upon reaching the
levee, turned aside among the freight pyramids in search of his
confederate. Now that there was time to recall the facts he feared that
the negro had been taken. He had secured but a few yards' start in the
race, and his pursuer was a white man, able to back speed with
intelligence. Griswold had a sickening fit of despair when he
contemplated the possibility of failure with the goal almost in sight;
and the reaction, when he stumbled upon the negro skulking in the
shadows of a lumber cargo, was sharp enough to make him faint and dizzy.
The negro did not recognize him at first and was about to run away when
Griswold shook off the benumbing weakness and called out.
"T'ank de good Lawd! is dat you-all, Cap'm Gravitt? I's dat shuck up I
couldn' recconize my ol' mammy! Tek dishyer cunjah-bag o' yourn 'fo' I
gwine drap hit. Hit's des been _bu'nin'_ my han's ev' sense I done tuk
out wid it!"
Griswold took the handkerchief bundle, and the mere touch of it put new
life into him.
"Where is the fellow who was chasing you, Mose?" he asked.
"I's nev' gwine tell you dat; no, suh. Las' time I seed him, he's des
t'arin' off strips up de levee after turrer fellah."
"What other fellow?"
The negro laughed and did a double shuffle at the mere recollection of
it.
"Hi-yah! Turrer fellah is de fellah what done tuk my job. Hit was des
dis-a-way: when I t'ink dat white man gwine catch me, sho_ly_, I des
drap down in de darkes' cawneh I kin fin'; dat's what I done, yas, suh.
He des keep on agoin', _spat, spat, spat_, an' when he come out front de
_Gineral Jackson_ over yondeh, one dem boys what's wukkin' on her, _he_
tuk out, an' dat white man des tu'n hisself loose an' mek his laigs go
lak he gwine shek 'um plum off; yas, sah!"
Griswold suffered another lapse into the humanities when he saw the list
of participants in his act growing steadily with each fresh
complication, and he said, "I'm sorry for that, Mose."
"Nev' you min' 'bout dat, Cap'm. Dat boy he been doin' somepin to mek
him touchous, 'less'n he nev' tuk out dat-a-way, no, suh!"
"Maybe so. Well, we can't help it now. Here is the other twenty I
promised you."
"T'ank you, suh; t'ank you kin'ly Cap'm. You-all's des de whites' white
man ev' I knowned. You sholy is."
"What are you going to do with yourself, now?" Griswold inquired.
"Who, me? I's gwine up yondeh to dat resteraw an' git me de bigges'
mess o' fried fish I kin hol'--dat's me; yas, suh."
"M'Grath says he'll pay you levee wages if you'll come back to the boat
and help get the cargo out of her."
"Reckon I ain't gwine back to de _Julie_: no, suh. Dat'd be gittin' rich
too fas' for dis niggeh. Good-night, Cap'm Gravitt; an' t'ank you
kin'ly, suh."
Griswold went his way musing upon the little object-lesson afforded by
the negro's determination. Here was a fellow man who was one of the
feeblest of the under dogs in the great social fight; and with money
enough in hand to give him at least a breathing interval, his highest
ambition was a mess of fried fish.
The object-lesson was suggestive, if not specially encouraging, and
Griswold made a mental note of it for further study when the question of
present safety should be more satisfactorily answered.
XIII
GRISWOLD EMERGENT
Half an hour or such a matter after the hue-and-cry runaway from the
curb in front of the saloon two doors above, Mr. Abram Sonneschein,
dealer in second-hand clothing and sweat-shop bargains, saw a possible
customer drifting across the street, and made ready the grappling hooks
of commercial enterprise.
The drifter was apparently a passenger from some lately arrived
steamboat; but even to the trained eye of so acute an observer as Mr.
Sonneschein he presented difficulties in the way of classification. Only
temporarily, however. The long-tailed coat and the wide-brimmed, soft
felt hat were the insignia of the down-river, back-country planter, and
the merchant drew his conclusions accordingly.
"My, my! Rachel," he remarked to his helpmate behind the counter. "See
dis chay from de backvoods across der street coming! Maype ve could sell
him some odder t'ings to go vit dot coat, ain'd it? Come right in,
_mein_ frient; dis is der blace you vas looking for," this last to the
drifter, with a detaining finger hooked persuasively into a buttonhole
of the long-tailed coat.
So much for the grappling. But the possible customer was not to be
landed so easily. Twice and yet once again he broke away from the
detaining finger; and when at last he finally allowed himself to be
drawn into the garish, ill-smelling little shop, he proved to be
discouragingly indifferent and hard to please in the matter of prices,
hanging back and taking refuge in countrified reticence when Mr.
Sonneschein's eloquence grew pathetically pressing.
"I did think maybe I'd buy me a suit of clothes," he admitted, finally,
drawling the words to make his speech fit the countrified rôle, "but
there isn't any hurry. I reckon I'll wait a spell and look around and
see what kind of fashions they're wearing now."