GOOD NEWS
“Skip—Skippy, kid!” Tully called, shaking the boy to arouse him.
Skippy sat up, startled. Mugs barked blatantly.
“What’s up, huh? You look as if something’d happened—what’s the matter?”
Tully motioned him into the shanty where he lighted the lamp and sat
down.
“Can ye stand hearin’ somethin’ without faintin’?” he asked mirthlessly.
“I guess so,” the boy answered shaking his straight hair from off his
forehead. “But I hope it ain’t anything worse!”
“Better and worse, sorta,” Big Joe laughed ruefully. “But first so’s to
be aisin’ ye, kid—the _Davy Jones_ turned back, so she did, when she
reached the bay this mornin’. From what the boat tender told me, sure
must o’ put a little extra dose o’ the powder in the breather and she
started kickin’ up a rumpus a little sooner than ordinary, she did. So
the owner, bein’ a foxy guy, turned back when he heard that and saw the
storm clouds comin’ in from over the sea.”
“So the _Davy Jones_ ain’t in her locker then, huh? Gee, am I glad!”
“Sure, and she got back to the club, and the owner had somebody come
right away to be seein’ what was wrong.”
“Did they find out?”
“That they did, kid. He’s got the police on the case, and I think
they’ll be workin’ on me. But they ain’t got no evidence so they ain’t,
and besides, I took all me powder and threw it in the inlet tonight, so
I did.”
Skippy sat down at the table, his head in his hands.
“Gee, I was afraid something awful would come of it.”
“Now don’t ye be worryin’ too soon, kid. They’ll have to be goin’ some
to get me.... You can bet on that.”
“Gee, Big Joe, you don’t savvy. It’s the idea of gettin’ the coppers
suspectin’ me and sayin’ they expected sumpin’ like that from Toby
Dare’s kid. That’s what I couldn’t bear Pop to hear after he’s planned
better things for me. Gee, I couldn’t stand it!” Then: “Who owns the
_Davy Jones_, Big Joe, huh?” he demanded.
“Now that’s a funny thing,” Tully said. “The _Davy Jones_ is Crosley’s.
He bought her a week ago after he sold the _Minnehaha_. I s’pose that’s
why he played foxy whin the ingine wint wrong with the new one? If that
big sap boat tender had only tole me who owned her I’d niver....”
“Gee whiz, Big Joe, now I can see why Pop said these crooked rackets
don’t pay in the end. It’s account of that _if_. It’s always if this or
that didn’t happen everythin’ would be all right. But it never is. Oh,
gee, I’m not hoppin’ on you—maybe I’d been just like you if it wasn’t
that I’m sick and disgusted with crooked rackets already. Maybe it’s
because my mother came from a farm and so I’m not all river, huh?
Anyway, I know I don’t want any more of this business. I’m gonna be
straight I am. I learned a lesson today on that _Davy Jones_ business
an’ I mean it.”
“Me, too!” said Big Joe with all his old time swagger. “I was tellin’
meself comin’ back here that if I think up an aisy racket where the
coppers don’t get wise, I’ll be savin’ up a few grand an’ thin open up
one o’ thim hot dog stands in the country. Sure and the river won’t see
me at all, at all after that.”
Skippy laughed outright—for, boy that he was, he could see that Tully
would be Tully as long as the river flowed down to the sea.