“Maybe,” said Tommie, catching at straws, “she drifted away.”
“That’s what I thought first,” said George, “but she couldn’t. She was anchored fast. If she had, why she could have put back. What’s the good of supposing, when the thing’s clear as paint. He was boss of the ship, the Chinks always looked to him for orders, they’d do whatever he told them, and when he went aboard last night and told them to knock off the shackles and drop the anchor chain, they wouldn’t grumble. If they thought anything, they’d think it was part of some move in the game and we were in it. We’ve made several big mistakes, but the biggest was letting that guy be boss.”
“Well, he was boss, anyhow,” said the ingenuous Hank. “He was the best man of us three in the practical business and I’m not saying he wasn’t the best in brains. He couldn’t run straight, that’s all; if he could he might have been President by this.”
They all sat silent for a minute, then George sprang to his feet.
“Breakfast,” said George.
Not another word was spoken of Candon. It was as though he had been expelled from their minds as from their society.
But they could not expel the situation he had created. Though the Wear Jack was no use for taking them back to San Francisco, it could have taken them somewhere—anywhere from that beach where the fume of the sea and the sun and the silence and desolation and the blinding sands and mournful cliffs had already begun to tell upon them now that the place was a prison. Then there were the Mexicans to be thought of. If those men whom they had kicked and man-handled and robbed of their booty were to return with a dozen others, what would happen? How could two men and a girl put up any sort of fight? And the dreadful thing was Tommie. Tommie, who had stuck to them because she was a brick, who, to save them from a ridicule almost as bad as disgrace, had insisted on going on. If she had turned back, she might have been safe at Los Angeles now instead of here. This thought hit Bud almost as badly as Hank.
It did not seem to hit Tommie at all. There were moments during the preparation of breakfast when the throat muscles of the redoubtable T. C. made movements as though she were swallowing down the recollection of Candon, but, the meal once begun, she seemed herself again.
As they ate, they discussed the situation in all its bearings. They had provisions enough for three weeks, according to Hank’s calculations. He suggested that they should hang on just there for a day or two, and then, if nothing turned up in the way of a ship, that they should “hike” down the coast towards the town “that fellow” had spoken of.
“What was the name of it?” asked George.