"You can't count on the sea to befriend you this time, Captain. Better git yer ark alongside the wharf; fur we're goin' to hev the Columbia runnin' up stream to-night, sure as you're born."
"Hullo! Is that you, Joe Chillis? What brought you to town in this kind o' weather? And what do you know about the tides?—that's my business, I calculate."
"Mebbe it is; and mebbe a bar pilot knows more about the tides nor a mountain man. But there'll be a rousin' old tide to-night, and a sou'wester, to boot; you bet yer life on that!"
"I'll grant you thet a mountain man knows a heap thet other men don't. But I'll never agree thet he can tell me anything about my business. Take a drink, Joe, and then let's hear some o' your mountain yarns."
"Thankee; don't keer ef I do. I can't stop to spin yarns, tho', this evenin'. I've got to git home. It won't be easy work pullin' agin the tide an hour or two from now."
"What's your hurry?" "A story—a story!" "Let's make a night of it." "O, come, Joe, you are not wanted at home. Cabin won't run away; wife won't scold." "Stop along ov us till mornin';" were the various rather noisy and ejaculatory remarks upon Chillis's avowed intention of abandoning good and appreciative company, without stopping to tell one of his ever-ready tales of Indian and bear fighting in the Rocky Mountains thirty years before.
"Why, you ain't goin' out again till you've shaken off the water, Joe. You're dripping like a Newfoundland;" said Captain Rumway, as Chillis put down his empty glass, and turned toward the door, which he had entered not five minutes before. This thoughtfulness for his comfort, however, only meant, "Stay till you've taken another drink, and then maybe you will tell us a story;" and Chillis knew the bait well enough to decline it.
"Thankee, Captain. One bucketful more or less won't make no difference. I'm wet to the skin now. Thank ye all, gentlemen; I've got business to attend to this evenin'. Have any of you seen Eb Smiley this arternoon?"—looking back, with his hand on the door-knob. "I'd like to speak to him afore I leave, ef you can tell me whar to find him."
"You'll find him in there," answered the bar-tender, crooking his thumb toward a room leading out of the saloon, containing a tumbled single-bed and a wooden settee, besides various masculine bijouterie in the shape of boots, old and new, clean and dirty; candle and cigar ends; dusty bits of paper on a stand, the chief ornament of which was a black-looking derringer; coats, vests, fishing-tackle; and cheap prints, adorning the walls in the wildest disregard of effect—except, indeed, the effect aimed at were chaos.
Into this apartment Chillis unceremoniously thrust himself through the half-open door, frowning as darkly as his fine and pleasant features would admit of, and muttering to himself, "Damme, I thought as much."