THE DUFFYS
They borrowed a kicker from one of the summer colonists and set out for
home just before noon. Skippy was too overwhelmed to speak until long
after they left the beach and Tully sat tragic and silent at the wheel.
“We might’s well look agin,” he murmured brokenly, as he headed the boat
toward the Channel. “Just so’s to be makin’ sure.”
“Might’s well,” Skippy echoed. Then: “Gee, do you think maybe he was
blowin’ the siren?”
“That he must o’ done. He must o’ been blowin’ it like mad.”
They spent half the afternoon chugging up and down the Channel and
passed several craft, government and otherwise, which had heard the
warning that the Inland Beach guards had passed along. Finally they
decided to return home and with bowed heads found their way out of the
treacherous waters.
“Sure if the coast guards ain’t found him, we won’t—not if we be stayin’
there all night,” said Tully mournfully. “Kid, don’t ye be jumpin’ on
me, now. If ye knew what I been through since ... since.... I been
blowin’ a siren in distress five hun’erd times, so I have, and five
hun’erd times, I been in that _Davy Jones_ callin’ me lungs out for help
an’ no help come! I’ve sunk with her too—oh shiverin’ swordfish ... kid,
I ain’t nothin’ but a plain....”
“Don’t say it, Big Joe,” said Skippy, moved to the depths of his soul
with pity. “Gee, don’t I know! You wouldn’t have done it a-purpose.”
“No. ’Tis right ye be there.” Tully looked beaten.
They chugged on up the river and seemed to pass everyone they knew.
Inspector Jones and his men bobbed by in the trim harbor launch waving a
cheery greeting to Skippy and eyeing Tully with obvious suspicion.
Skippy was grateful for the silent inlet and the warm throaty bark that
Mugs gave as he scrambled aboard the barge. He looked at the dog, winced
a little at his faithful canine eyes and took him up in his arms. He
couldn’t do to Mugs what they had done to that unknown man on the _Davy
Jones_.
He sprawled in a rickety arm chair on deck while the sun sank slowly in
the west. The whole horizon was a blaze of scarlet, then gold, then
purple and at last it faded into leaden colored clouds. Big Joe was
calling him in to supper.
Skippy looked down in the crook of his arm at the sleeping dog. Supper?
He didn’t want any—he never wanted to eat while that man on the _Davy
Jones_ lay in Watson’s Channel. He couldn’t do it to Mugs.
Tully got tired of waiting and came out on deck. After one glance at
Skippy’s tragic face he got his hat, pulled it down over his head and
left the barge while the boy watched him go with a constricted feeling
in his throat. And though he wanted with all his heart to call Big Joe
back, he knew that he could never again sit opposite him at the table
with a dead man between them.
Dusk settled over the inlet and through the shadows came Mrs. Duffy. Her
cheery smile was conspicuous by its absence just then and her cheeks
looked tear-stained and haggard. Skippy forgot the dead man in the _Davy
Jones_—he was all concern for this kindly neighbor who had helped nurse
him back to health.
Hadn’t Skippy heard? Mrs. Duffy sobbed a little, then bravely smiled
through her tears. She had to be strong and brave—other wives and
mothers in the Basin were getting used to the experience of seeing their
menfolk taken in by the long arm of the law. And now Mr. Duffy had been
added to that number.
What had he done? No more than other river folk had done before him. But
it was forbidden by the law and there you were. And the excuse that they
had to live and eat carried no weight in the courts of the land. Neither
did the courts care that a rich and unscrupulous Josiah Flint had lured
these men into his vicious employ at starvation wages only to leave them
unwanted and ostracized from honest employment upon his untimely death.
And Mr. Josephus Duffy, obeying that primal law of the survival of the
fittest, was to be jailed for five years because he stole when
employment was denied him. Five years of punishment for bringing food
home to his family!
Skippy’s young heart was bursting with sympathy. Wrapped up in his own
and his father’s concerns he had been vaguely conscious of his
neighbors, the Duffys of the _Dinky O. Cross_. Squatters like himself,
he had been aware that they came and went, but that was all. Now they
became suddenly real and vivid to him—the Duffys, father and mother, and
their two children, minus the father now.
“And wouldn’t Skinner give him nothin’ at the Central havin’ two kids
like you got?” he asked sympathetically.
“Skinner’d push men in prison before he’d help ’em get a decent job,”
the good woman said with a jerk of her head. “He said he’s goin’ to
clean all us scum out of this Basin—ain’t you heard?”
Yes, Skippy had heard only too well. He leaned over and timidly touched
the woman’s work-worn hands, pledging his slim, manly self as an aid and
comfort to herself and her two unfortunate children. In gratitude, she
hugged the boy to her breast and hurried back to the _Dinky O. Cross_ to
put her young ones to bed.
Skippy cherished that embrace; it was the only maternal affection he had
ever known. His eyes shone into the darkness with the joy of it and he
hugged Mugs still closer in his arms and spent some time in reflecting
on why he was so happy when he was so sad.
Josiah Flint and Marty Skinner rose up before his eyes. He was beginning
to realize what sorrow they had brought to the river people—_his
people_! A fellow feels things like that when he’s going on thirteen.
Thirteen! Skippy looked up into the starlit sky and blinked. Mugs’ even
breathing was like the whisper of the breeze blowing about his head. And
he went to sleep planning how he could save the menfolk of the Basin
from future prison life. He would see that the boys went to school as he
himself had wanted to do so badly and he would see that they got decent,
honest wages so that they could live as other people did in houses with
pretty gardens....
Tully found him still asleep when he came back at midnight.