XXVI—CAPTAIN HOLSTROM ET AL.
MY face was set to the West, to be sure, but my thoughts were traveling back over my shoulder to the East. I wish I could say that a lively sense of injury enabled me to put out of my mind Levant and everybody in Levant—box and dice! But I’m not much of a liar.
I do not propose to dwell on the bitterness which stuck in me day after day, along with softer sentiments. This narrative goes into a gallop at about this point and there is no time to be wasted on self-communings. However, if I do not mention my old home and the folks back there it must not be understood that the problem of my life ceased to go to bed with me, rise with me, and keep pace with me as I hurried through the day’s work. I obeyed Jodrey Vose’s counsel about giving bulletins of my progress west. After I had bought my railroad ticket and had counted up, I felt that I could not afford to take any chances on those strangers losing their interest in me. I needed a job almighty sudden after I landed in San Francisco.
On the last leg of the journey I was able to forecast the hour of my arrival and I suggested by wire that somebody meet me—knowing that my diver’s kit in its duck bag would be identification enough. This telegraph business was shooting arrows into the air and I would have welcomed a return message; I thought they ought to be able to guess closely enough to intercept me somewhere along the line. But, although no answer came, I had the comfortable feeling that they’d be likely to be on the lookout for me. And at last I got my first peek at Pacific waters.
Our train was hung up outside the yard over in Oakland while they opened our track to the ferry, and a chap I had chatted with more or less in the smoking-room on the trip, and who knew my business, rushed out, climbed down beside the roadbed, and scooped a tumblerful of water. He ran back into the car and dumped the water over me for a joke, and I’m so accustomed to water that the joke did not jar me. I took it as it was meant.
“I baptize thee in the name of the Pacific,” he said. “Now I hope the old dame will be good to you in your line.”
Well, whether she was or not depends on how one looks at those things.
I walked slowly through the ferry-house, hoping to be hailed, and stepped out on to the foot of Market Street into the old San Francisco of the days before the great calamity. In my right hand I tugged along the duck bag that was bulging with my diving equipment. In my left hand I had the rest of my earthly possessions in a grip which was about the size of a ten-cent loaf of bread. It was early evening, and all the lights were aglare.
There was a turn-table for the cable cars at the foot of Market Street. The cars were coming down in constant procession, and the turn-table was busy. It was a regular merry-go-round kind of an affair. It interested me, but it didn’t interest me so much that I had no eye for a girl who stood beside me at the edge of the thing. It seemed to me right then—fresh from a tedious train ride, where I’d been penned in with a frumpy set of women passengers—that I had never seen a prettier girl. She had her finger pointed at some one on the turn-table, and was saying “Father!” over and over, with a new inflection on the word every time she spoke it. Her finger traveled as the table revolved, and I was able to pick out father fight away. I was right-down sorry for that girl when I laid eyes on father. Father was grinning like a sculpin in deep water, and he was good and drunk, and he was evidently taking a joy ride on that turn-table.
It struck me right then, as a stranger, that San Francisco had a good trait pretty well developed; it was willing to let a man mind his own business as long as he didn’t make too much of a nuisance of himself. The street-car men did not push father off the turn-table, and two policemen took a look at him and went off about their business.
I took a good look at the man, too, when the turntable brought him near me and stopped to let a car on. He had a face about as square as the front of a safe, and his nose was the shape of a safety-lock knob, and was red. His pot-bellied body was set on legs like crooked wharf pilings. I had father sized up in a second. Double-breasted blue coat, cap of blue, with the peak pulled rakishly down over one eye, gray beard which radiated in spills from his chin like tiller spokes—he was a steamboat man, sure! I don’t know what in the devil possessed me to butt in and make certain—perhaps I wanted to start something so as to get a rise out of the girl. I’m not naturally fresh and you may be sure I was in no mood for a flirtation. I was crusted with Yankee reserve even when I was young. But that impish air of San Francisco was in my nostrils—did you ever sniff it? It makes your head buzz and your thoughts froth, and it takes hold of an Easterner as quickly as a stiff cocktail grabs a man who isn’t used to a mixed drink. You’ll do almost anything in San Francisco when the sparkle from that trade-wind gets into your lungs.
So I tipped father the wink.
“Give her the jingle when she starts again,” I said.
I was right in my guess. He crooked his forefinger, reached down, and yanked empty air.
“Clang!” he barked. In a few seconds the turntable began to revolve again. Father gave me as silly a grin as I ever saw on a grown-up man’s face. “Yingleyingle—yingle!” he yelled in falsetto. And away he went!
I never got a more awful look from a pretty girl than I got from that one when I turned and caught her eyes. There was nothing shrinking or bashful about her when she was mad, so I found out then and there.
“You fool! You have started him all over again.”
“He seemed to be well started before I came along, miss.” It was that confounded air that was making me reckless and saucy.
“Clang!” yelped father, coming around again. “Yingle—yingle—yingle! Pull in them port fenders and mouse that anchor; we’re going outside this trip.”
“Just see the fool notion you have gone and put into him when he was all ready to come along with me!” she blazed. She knocked her little knuckles together in as fine a state of temper as I ever viewed spouting in a female. She turned suddenly and drove one of her fists against a man whom I had not noticed till then. He was tall—as long as the moral law, as we say East—as thin as a pump-handle, and he had a tangle of gray whisker and beard on top of him that made him look like a window-mop. He fell down when she hit him. She kicked him with the point of a little shoe, and he came up, unfolding in sections like a carpenter’s two-foot rule.
“Slap this man’s face, Ike, and send him along about his business,” she commanded.
But he only teetered and grinned and drooled, and winked at me over her shoulder.
“Oh, you are only another drunken fool!” she raged; and she stretched on tiptoe, and beat his face with the flat of her hand. “You have stood here without putting up a finger to help me get him off that turn-table, where he’s disgracing himself. I wonder whether there are any real men left in San Francisco!” She was in such a state of mind that I was mighty ashamed by then, I tell you that!
I dropped my baggage and took off my hat.
“I don’t know much about San Francisco and the real men, miss,” I told her, “for I’ve been in town only about five minutes. I reckon it makes an Easterner dizzy to be rushed in and dropped here. I didn’t mean to make trouble for you. Seeing that I’ve made it, I’ll unmake it if I can. Do you want your father—saying it is your father—brought off that turn-table?”
“No!” she snapped, still spiteful and all worked up. “I want you to think up something else for him to do on there as soon as he gets tired of doing what you suggested.”
Well, it was up to me to butt into that affair still farther—I could see that. I couldn’t sneak off and leave that girl feeling that way about me. I hopped on to the moving turn-table, took father by the arm, and told him his daughter wanted him to come along. He braced himself and shook loose.
“Nossir,” said he. “I’ve paid my money, and I’ll stay aboard till I get to where I’m bound.”
“Look here, you are not getting anywhere, man. You are only riding around and around, making a show of yourself, and there’s your nice daughter waiting for you.”
“It’s no place for a daughter—going where I’m going. Daughter ought to be in bed.” And then he braced himself back still farther, and—well, I suppose I’ll have to call it “singing” in order to describe the sound:=
````"I’m bound for the foot of Telegraph Hill,
`````To the Barbary Coast so gay.
````I’m starting there for a peach of a tear—fill
`````’Em up all round—hooray!”=
I took hold of his arm once more, and it was some arm.
“Look here,” he snarled, squinting at me, “I don’t know who you are, but I’ll let you know who I am blamed quick.”
I don’t know just what he might have done to me if he had been sober—but he wasn’t sober. I was, and my line of work had made me lithe and quick. I snapped my man before he had time to open his mouth, and ran him off that turn-table and presented him to his daughter with my compliments. He kicked and thrashed around in a logy style, and I kept him circling so that he could not get foothold, on the same principle that you keep a boa-constrictor from hooking his tail around a tree.
“Where will you have him delivered, miss?” I asked, as politely as I could.
“Father, you come along with me this instant!” she cried. “We don’t want strangers interfering in our affairs any longer.” She said that to him for my benefit.
“I don’t mean to be interfering, miss,” I pleaded. “I only want to square myself for being thoughtless and starting trouble for you—more trouble, I mean.”
She put her hand against me and pushed me away from her father—no, I can hardly say that I was pushed away. That hand was too little to push a man of my size. But the gesture of pushing was enough for me. I let him loose. She reached for his ear, but he dodged away, cantering like a cart-horse, and whooped that he was bound for the “Barbary Coast.” The human belay-ing-pin with the oakum topknot followed, plainly relishing the fact that the procession had started. The girl took a few steps in pursuit, and then she stopped and began to cry. She had grit—I had seen that—but after a girl gets about so mad she has to cry on general principles.
“Look here,” I told her, “I’m a stranger, all right, but you need a man’s help right now. I’ll help for every ounce that’s in me if you’ll say the word. But I’m a Yankee and I need to be asked.”
“He has a lot of money in his pockets,” she sobbed. “He must pay out that money to-morrow morning. He will be butchered and robbed where he’s going. I never saw him so silly and obstinate before. His head has been turned by some good luck which has come to him. He—”
“I haven’t got time to listen to details, miss. He’s getting out of sight. I’ve got to work quick. I’m square and decent and honest, and I’m mighty sorry for the scrape you are in. Do you want me to chase that father of yours for you?”
“Yes,” she gasped; “yes, I do.”
“About all I’m worth in the world is in that bag there. It’s my diving-dress. I’ve got to leave it.”
“Your name is Sidney!” she cried, her eyes opening wide on me. “You’re the man we came to meet!”
So, after all, I had butted in on my reception committee! “And that’s Captain Holstrom?” I demanded, pointing up the street.
“Yes! Yes! Hurry, sir. I will watch your bag! I will stay here. Hurry, sir! He has gone up Market Street, but he’ll turn to the right pretty soon. That’s the way to the horrible Barbary Coast.”
I patted her shoulder—I couldn’t help it. She looked up at me through her tears. And off I hiked, leaving my earthly possessions in charge of a girl whom I had met for the first time less than ten minutes before.
Of course, I knew what every one knows, whether he has been in San Francisco or not, that Market Street cuts straight across the city from bay to ocean. But at just what street on the course Captain Rask Holstrom proceeded to port his helm and swing to starboard blessed if I had the least idea. I didn’t know the name of another street in the city. I knew what the Barbary Coast was in San Francisco. I had read descriptions of its dance-halls, its dens, its haunts of iniquity, and its dangers. And here I was, galloping straight toward it before the creases of a railroad journey across the continent were out of my clothes. That is to say, I hoped I was galloping toward it, for I wanted to catch father for that nice girl. Captain Holstrom was out of sight among the crowds on that long Market Street before I had started the chase. I didn’t dare to run too fast.
San Francisco, as I have said, seemed to be inclined to let a man tend to his own business, but I didn’t want to provoke some ass to start a “stop thief” yell behind me. I craned and peered ahead as I trotted on. I stopped for a moment at the head of streets which led away to the right—the girl had said he would turn to the right—but I caught no glimpse of a bobbing blue cap nor of a lofty thatch of grizzled beard and whisker.
I took a chance after a while, for Market Street showed ahead an upward slope and I couldn’t spot my man there. I turned off to the right, and hurried. I didn’t know what street I was on. I came to a square at last where there were a statue and a fountain, and there were large buildings on the right. I ran across the square, and the next moment I realized that I was in Chinatown—and I had read of that part of San Francisco, too. I knew then that I was headed toward the Barbary Coast all right, having a memory of what I had read. But in a few minutes I was lost in a maze of narrow streets which traveled up and down the little hills. I was peering and goggling here and there. I must have looked like a tourist trying to do Chinatown in record time. I came into a street or alley that was roofed—and I came out again, for it seemed to be closed in at the upper end. By that time I realized that not only had I lost Capt. Rask Holstrom, but that I had also succeeded in losing myself—a rather silly predicament for a young man who so boldly offered himself as knight errant to a damsel in distress.
I stood still and wiped sweat out of my eyes, and addressed a few pregnant remarks to myself on the subject of a man’s making a fool of himself for a woman. However, I had a mighty good reason of my own for wanting to meet up with Captain Holstrom—and to safeguard that money of his, for I hoped to rake some of it down in wages.