“So that’s what Keedy done as quick as he got down coast to a port, hey? Cleaned us out of what he could lug, and then sent them critters here to finish the job. He probably thinks he is going to make a clear field here for himself by strapping us for every cent, and then setting the customs on to us as soon as he can drop another ‘hot rock’ into their hat so as to raise us out.”
“Don’t those men feel bound in any way after taking money from us?” I asked him.
“They feel bound till the next fellow gets to ’em, my son. Do you see what we have got cut out for us? By the jumped-up Judy, we’ve got to get that gold—and we’ve got to keep ahead of everybody else in getting that gold, because them custom-house blood-suckers are going to stick to the juiciest crowd. I don’t know what kind of an outfit Keedy proposes to bring back here, but he has got twenty thousand dollars in his fist, and a man can do a lot of business on charters with twenty thousand dollars. And we haven’t got a sou markee.”
He stamped into the wheel-house, shaking his fist above his head, and I walked up and down the upper deck, thinking some thoughts which I do not care to call back to mind.
XXXII—PER MISTER MONKEY
AS she had done many times in those days of gloom and doubt, the girl came out of her state-room and walked with me. Her companionship was a consolation. She looked up at me from under her tousle of curls and swung along by my side with an easy air of comradeship.
The word “comradeship” best expresses our attitude toward each other. After that explosion of her feelings on board the lighter, when she had kissed me in front of the whole bunch, she had coated herself with just a little ice, and my Yankee reserve and sensitiveness detected it. It was as though she had hinted to me that I would be a cad to presume further because she had taken a woman’s interest in my misfortune. In fact, she had dropped a few words in regard to women making fools of themselves when they are too frightened to know what they are doing.
Furthermore, she stuck to that knickeroocker costume of hers, and I found myself forgetting half the time that she was a girl, for she clambered about over the truck aboard the old Zizania as no girl in skirts could, and never needed a hand on her trips to and from the lighter. She wore those clothes with such frank assurance that the garb was the only suitable one for the circumstances, with such lack of self-consciousness, that after a few days it really seemed as if the other men had forgotten that we had a girl aboard.