"Johnnie was a good sort, and he'd made a few dollars in the tea business, and so maybe ought to 'a' been happy. But he wasn't. There was an old Chinaman, and not too old either, who'd married a Finn woman came off a wrecked Norwegian bark. They ran a laundry together, and by'n'by they came on to Frisco and ran a laundry there. And Johnnie followed them. A good woman, and she died leaving a well-grown little girl, and by'n'by the old fellow he figures he's made enough and goes back to have a look at China. But no sooner there than he learns he won't live very long, and he writes Johnnie of it, or maybe it was the girl did, her and Johnnie having been always about three-quarters in love with each other. And Johnnie he cruises over to China, and the old fellow, savvying how things are, says all right, marry, and they get married, and he gives 'em his blessing and lays down and dies. A good old scout, Johnnie said, and I guess he was.
"Well, everything's fine, only Johnnie wants to come back and live in the United States, and the girl too. She was sixteen years old when she left California, and a woman's life in the United States looked a lot better to her than in this land of one-half her ancestors. So she and Johnnie takes a steamer to Vancouver, and they get there all right; but not till they got there did either of them happen to think that they were foreigners and barred as Chinese from coming into the United States. Which was a pity, they being pretty white and so strong for everything American. Anyway, Johnnie writes to Trumbull, my old boss, to see what he could do, and after ten days or so Durks happens along and bumps into Johnnie and is surprised as you please to see him, and Johnnie tells him his story, and Durks tells him not to worry about that—that he'd smuggle him and his wife across in a schooner he'd just bought. They would take a little coast steamer and meet her a few hours up the coast, and then across the sound to Seattle—'twould be the easiest thing ever you see.
"And there they were, Johnnie and his wife, and when he got that far in his story Johnnie stops and looks up at the sky most mournful-like. Springtime it was, mind you, and fine weather, with the sun shining and the waters of the inlet rolling up on the rocks gentle-like, and the first of the birds were up from the south and singing and chirping, and, I s'pose, nesting overhead—a bran'-new spring day in a piny grove on a pretty little island off the coast of British Columbia, when anybody should 'a' been happy, 'specially with a new young wife.
"'Well, what's wrong—what you so blue about?' I asks Johnnie when he'd got through squinting up the tree branches to the sky.
"And he tells me how after his wife was aboard the steamer which 'd brought 'em to this place she sees Durks and tells Johnnie how Durks came near kidnapping her one time—before she went back to China with her father. Her father and Durks had a terrible row over it. Her father near killed Durks with a hatchet. And now here was Durks turning up in this accidental way; too accidental altogether—for Durks. He would steal her or something, and once he got her into San Francisco they could be swallowed up with her. Huh—a Chinese row, the police would say, and not bother too much. Not like stealing an American girl. 'And if he gives me over to the police, I am not an American citizen—out of the country I must go,' winds up Johnnie.
"Terrible downcast is Johnnie Sing, but I stands him on his feet and tells him to cheer up. Durks was head of the expedition, yes, and paying the bills, yes; but me, Alec Corning, was skipper of the Hattie. 'Go down and tell your little wife that everything'll be all right,' says I—'that Alec Corning'll be on the job. Where is she?'
"'She is here,' he says, and whistles, and out from the brush steps a cute little girl dressed like a man, and with a hard hat to make her look all the more like a man. Johnnie lifted the little hat, and under it she has a lot of yellow-ash hair coiled up where a reg'lar Chinaman 'd have only a black pigtail.
"'Don't let on to Durks either of you ever saw me in your life,' I advises 'em, 'and when it's time to go aboard the vessel you go.'
"And they went aboard with what Durks says was bales of hemp; and we put out that night in open water, and next day threading inside passages so far as we could. Another night and another morning found us in Puget Sound, and there on a little neck of land on the American shore we hoisted our load of hemp onto a little, rough-made wooden pier. A narrow-gauge track ran up from the pier, and standing on the track was a hand flat car.
"'Now,' says Durks, 'I will pay off" these men, so they won't be hanging around and possibly talking too much before we get clear.' And he did—- ten dollars to the hands and fifteen to the cook, and a silver dollar all around for car-fare. And they went ashore, he telling them where they would find a little branch station about a mile up the road to take them to Seattle. And so we got through with them.