Possibly because of their terrified condition, resulting from the mate’s flow of language, but more probably because of their total indifference to consequences, they paid no attention whatever to a short, red-headed gentleman who might perhaps have been born in Ireland, and who came strolling from the direction of the boat’s barroom toward the single gangplank, now in use by the freight department.
Even as they paid no attention to him, he paid none to them, but approached the gangplank somewhat unsteadily, with the evident intention of going ashore. The mate’s attention for the moment was fixed on some point at the other side of the deck, or it is a moral certainty that he would have interposed language of sufficient strength to arrest the belated passenger’s progress.
As it happened, however, there was none to warn him of his danger, and he stepped in debonair fashion on the sloping gangplank, serenely unconscious of the fact that four huge darkies were coming behind him, bearing a case of goods on their shoulders that must have weighed something like a thousand pounds.
It is an open question whether they saw that he was in their way, but it is absolutely certain that they recognized no obligation on their part to shout a warning. On they came, jog-trotting along till they were only a single pace behind him, when he either tripped or slipped, and, staggering, seemed about to fall. Had he fallen and so tripped the rousters, the matter would have been serious indeed.
Just as he lost his balance, a sinewy hand was stretched forth from somewhere in the darkness, for it was late at night, and catching the tottering gentleman by the lapel of his coat, gave him such a mighty and overmastering yank that he darted forward on the double-quick for thirty or forty feet, and fell all in a heap on the levee. As he lay there, he was hopelessly undignified in appearance, but he was out of the path of the roustabouts.
Quite as if nothing whatever had happened, he looked up at his unknown preserver, who could now be seen indistinctly, and said in a conversational tone:
“Sure, Oi do be think (hic) thinkin’ the citizens o’ this (hic) this town is domned hard oop fer popu (hic) population. Does yez git ivery (hic) iverybody ashore, loike (hic) iverybody (hic) does yez—”
Here his voice trailed off to a murmur, and it seemed probable to the tall, powerful man who stood over him that he was likely to go to sleep where he lay if something were not done promptly. Promptness, however, was a prominent characteristic of Mr. Joseph Bassett, the sheriff of the county, and the stranger speedily arose, a wetter and a soberer man—likewise an angrier.
With these various considerations Joe Bassett was no whit concerned excepting that the fact of the stranger having been aroused made his own duty somewhat easier of performance. As the short man began sputtering in a peculiarly red-headed fashion, Joe calmly interrupted him.
“It’s ag’in the law, stranger, f’r any galoot f’m off’n a boat fer to go an’ git hisself killed on the levee in Arkansas City by a packin’-case or any other murderous weepin in the hands o’ roustabouts or anybody else. ’Pears to me you must be a stranger in these parts. Ever been into a town of any size afore?”