One of the "Push" told the bo'sun that there was a parson along there, with spectacles on, who would tie them up, and down the gangway went the crowd. Scholar perhaps need not have been so greatly vexed afterwards for having carried these men away. As they went down the gangway they woke to the fact that they were the only cattlemen left. The others, who had come aboard with them under Candlass's eye, had been more alert to note when the Mad Boss turned his back, and had already hastened off to amuse themselves before sailing. Great sizzling lights were by now lit above the wharf. Back in the shadows of the shed could be seen many tossing horns. Neither Candlass nor the Mad Boss interrupted them. Smithers was not about; perhaps he had gone home to supper. Outside the lath partition was a little new mob of dead-beats, and some of those going out recognized friends there and hailed them. There was a smell of docks, and of cattle, and of grain; there was much noise of iron gangways being run to and fro, cling-clang of locomotive bells, hiss of the new-lit lights. Things were all in just uncertain enough light for a man here and there to stub a toe on a stretched hawser. Overhead an exquisite pale blue, and fading pink, showed the aftermath of the day, high, far-off, serene.
CHAPTER III
Lamplight and daylight blent in the waterfront streets, and as the little crowd of men left the more open wharf front, where there was also some reflected last daylight from the docks and the river, a looker-on might have been touched deeply, seeing the quick-going day, the gathering shadows in the gulches of the streets, the lighting up of the saloons, and that knot of men, more homeless than sparrows, drifting across the twilight. And they were not of the bottom rung, at least not in their own estimation. A man in the uniform of the Salvation Army passed by, and that member of the "Push" who looked like a squat Mike, and whose name, it transpired, was Michael, turned to Scholar and commented: "I suppose the Salvation Army does some good in its own way—among the lowest classes." And again a few paces on, when one of the men in the rear broke out: "Here, where are you fellows going? What's the matter with this?" Michael looked over his shoulder and shook his head in dissent; and a little further still, as the man behind was still wanting to know what was the matter with the saloon in question: "We don't want to go in there," Michael said. "There ain't enough of us. That's a bad, low-down joint."
"Scared, are you?" jeered the other.
"There's a bad push goes in there," said Michael, "and you don't stand a show if you're not in the swing."
"Go on! What could they do?"
It would appear that Michael felt his powers of explaining inadequate.
"Mike," he said, "here's a fellow wants to know what they would do with him back there."
"What they would do to him, is it?" asked Mike. "It all depinds whether he feels in his pockuts and fetches out the nate money as if it was his last nickel."