"Why didn't you ask me, if you cared to know?" said George, in reply. "You ordered me ashore without taking the trouble to make any inquiries. I think that settles him," added the young pilot, mentally. "I have frightened him, judging by the looks of his face."
Yes, the clerk was "settled," but not in the way that George supposed. As we know, this young man, when he came up the river on the General Quitman, six months before, had lost at the gambling-table a thousand dollars of the money he had collected for his employer. If he could have induced George to give Mr. Black's pocket-book to him, he could have replaced that money, and had something left for himself; but he failed in this and got himself into trouble the moment he reached St. Louis. His employer promptly discharged him from the lucrative position he held, and gave him his choice between refunding the sum he had lost and standing an action for embezzlement. Of course, he preferred to return the money, but it was only after infinite trouble that he succeeded in raising it, his father, to whom he first applied, refusing to aid him in any way. When at last he procured the help he needed, it was through representations as to his financial standing that would hardly have borne investigation in a court of law. He was also obliged to make promises that he could not keep, and to give a note that he could not meet when it became due. He had agreed to return the money he had borrowed in three months, with a heavy interest added. How he was going to fulfil that agreement was a problem over which he had often racked his brain, and to assist him in finding a way out of his troubles, and to make his mind clearer, he regularly and frequently sought the aid of something stimulating which the barkeeper fixed up for him. He had at last arrived at the conclusion that there was no way in which he could extricate himself from the difficulties with which he was surrounded, and he had almost made up his mind that he would not return with the boat to St. Louis—that he would abscond somewhere along the river and leave his creditors to whistle for their money. This was the way the clerk was situated on the night that he and George Ackerman sat at the supper-table in the cabin of the Telegraph; and we have been thus particular in describing it in order that the reader may readily understand what happened afterward.
"Now, here's a kettle of fish," soliloquised the clerk, twisting uneasily about on his chair. "This fellow knows me, and worse than that, he is going down the river with us. I wonder if he knows old Richardson? If he does, I must either get him off the boat or make a friend of him; for if he should take it into his head to tell what happened on board the Quitman, I should lose this berth as sure as I am a living man."
The clerk did not linger as long at the table as he usually did, and neither did he again speak to George. He seemed to be thinking busily, and the expression on his face indicated that the subject upon which he was meditating was not an agreeable one. But at length he assumed a more cheerful look, and as he arose from the table, he said to himself—
"I think I had better let him stay and try to make a friend of him. If I can only do that, I can put myself square with the world once more, and at the same time take revenge on him for getting me into this scrape. For he is the one that is to blame for it. Why didn't he hand over that pocket-book when I offered him a reward for it? My first hard work must be to get on his blind side—make him believe that I am trying to reform, and all that. He is one of those pious fellows who neither drink nor smoke, and I must go to work at him in a pious way."
Just then, the young pilot sauntered out of the cabin, and turned toward his chair on the guard; but when he saw that another close by it was occupied by the clerk, who was smoking a cigar, he walked in another direction. He did not like Murray—that was the clerk's name—and he did not want to have anything to do with him. It would have been well for him, if he had held to this resolution; but he allowed himself to be talked out of it, and it required something that came pretty near being a tragedy, to straighten matters out for him.
"Don't go away mad," said Murray, when he saw George moving off toward the other side of the boat. "Since we are to be shipmates for one trip at least, let's be sociable. Sit down here and talk to a fellow."
The young pilot could not well refuse. He sat down in his old place, and of course, put his feet upon the rail. All the men and boys who sat on the guards made it a point to do that.
"I didn't recognise you when I first saw you," said the clerk, "but I knew you as soon as you spoke about that pocket-book. Most fellows would have taken the reward I offered you, and got themselves into trouble by it. I didn't know you were a cub. You were not attached to the Quitman, were you?"
"No; but I made a bargain with Mr. Black during the trip, and I have been with him ever since," replied George.