THE ABDUCTION OF BLACK CHRISTY
These were weighty reasons why Christy Black, whose comrades reversed
his name and called him Black Christy instead, remained in Thurston's
camp as long as he did. Although a good mechanic, he was by no means
fond of manual labor, and he had discovered that profitable occupations
were open to an enterprising and not over-scrupulous man. On the
memorable night when Thurston fished him out of the river, his rescuer
had made it plain that he must earn the liberal wages that were
promised to him. As a matter of fact, Black had made the most of his
opportunities, and in doing so had brought himself under the ban of the
law during an altercation over a disputed mineral claim.
Black, who then called himself by another name, disappeared before an
inquiry as to how the body of one of the owners of the claim came into
a neighboring river. Only one comrade, and a mine-floating speculator,
who stood behind the humbler disputants, knew or guessed at the events
which led up the fatality. The comrade shortly afterwards vanished,
too, but the richer man, who had connived at Black's disappearance,
kept a close hand on him, forcing him as the price of freedom to act as
cat's-paw in risky operations, until Black, tired of tyranny, had been
glad to tell Thurston part of the truth and to accept his protection.
The man from whose grip he hoped he had escaped was the one who had
helped Leslie out of a difficulty.
Black Christy found, however, that a life of virtuous toil grew
distinctly monotonous, and one morning, when Mattawa Tom's vigilance
was slack, he departed in search of diversion in the settlement of Red
Pine, which lay beyond the range. He found congenial society there,
and, unfortunately for himself, went on with a boon companion next
morning to a larger settlement beside the railroad track. He intended
to complete the orgie there, and then to return to camp. Accordingly
it happened that, when afternoon was drawing towards a close, he sat
under the veranda of a rickety wooden saloon, hurling drowsy
encouragement at the freighter who was loading rock-boring tools into a
big wagon. He wondered how far his remaining dollar would go towards
assuaging a thirst which steadily increased, and two men, who leaned
against the wagon, chuckled as they watched him. The hands of one of
the men were busy about the brass cap which decorated the hub of the
wheel, but neither Black nor the teamster noticed this fact. Black had
seen one of the men before, for the two had loafed about the district,
ostensibly prospecting for minerals, and had twice visited Thurston's
camp.
It was a pity Black had absorbed sufficient alcohol to confuse his
memory, for when the men strolled towards him he might have recognized
the one whose hat was drawn well down. As it was, he greeted them
affably.
"Nice weather for picnicking in the woods. Not found that galena yet?
I guess somebody in the city is paying you by the week," he observed
jocosely.
"That's about the size of it!" The speaker laughed. "But we've pretty
well found what we wanted, and we're pulling out with the Pacific
express. There don't seem very much left in your glass. Anything the
matter with filling it up with me?"
"I'm not proud," was the answer. "I'm open to drink with any man
who'll set them up for me." When the prospector called the bar-tender,
Black proceeded to prove his willingness to be "treated."
Nothing moved in the unpaved street of the sleepy settlement, when the
slow-footed oxen and lurching wagon had lumbered away. The sun beat
down upon it pitilessly, and the drowsy scent of cedars mingled with
the odors of baking dust which eddied in little spirals and got into
the loungers' throats. The bar-tender was liberal with his ice,
however, and Black became confidential. When he had assured them of
his undying friendship, one of the prospectors asked:
"What's a smart man like you muling rocks around in a river-bed for,
anyway? Can't you strike nothing better down to the cities?"
"No," declared Black, thickly. "Couldn't strike a job nohow when I
left them. British Columbia played out--and I had no money to take me
to California."
"Well," said the prospector, winking at his comrade, "there is
something we might put you on to. The first question is, what kin you
do?"
According to Black's not over-coherent answer, there was little he
could not do excellently. After he had enumerated his capabilities,
the other man said:
"I guess that's sufficient. Come right back with us to 'Frisco and
we'll have a few off days before we start you. This is no country for
a live man, anyway."
Black nodded sagaciously and tried hard to think. He was afraid of
Thurston, but more so of the other man connected with the Enterprise
Company. In San Francisco he would be beyond the reach of either, and
the city offered many delights to a person of his tastes with somebody
else willing to pay expenses.
"I'll come," he promised thickly. "So long as you've got the dollars
I'll go right round the earth with either of you."
"Good man!" commended the prospector. "Bring along another jugful,
bar-tender."
The attendant glanced at the three men admiringly, for the speaker was
plainly sober, and he knew how much money Black had paid him. He went
back to his bottles, and there was nobody to see the other prospector,
who had kept himself in the background, pour something from a little
phial beneath his hand, into Black's liquor.
"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
advertisement?"
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 assembled 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 assembly, 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 passed 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
recumbent 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."
"Hello! 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 hoarse voice challenged.
Half-dazed and sullenly savage Black had still sense enough to reflect
that it would be little use to expect that the harassed 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 space 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. Nobody 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 pass 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 lust 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 ashore
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 nobody 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--nobody 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.