'I'm going to try,' replied Ticehurst. 'It will be quite enough of a victory for me to have come into Portland and go out with the same men I brought in.'
'It's never been done yet,' said Sedgwick, 'and if you get through you'll make a record.'
And the next day Ticehurst shifted his quarters from the ship to the Oregon Hotel in the city. He explained that he did so because he understood it would take some time to finish the cross suits then in progress.
'The man's a fool,' said Healy, rejoicing. 'We'll keep the Oriana here till she goes to pieces like a rotten scow on a mud-bank.'
But Ticehurst was no fool. He sent the Oriana down to Astoria to wait until the suits were done with, and was seen to be much occupied with legal matters all day long. At night he sat in the hall of the hotel and denounced Healy with much severity.
'I'll stay till I get his scalp,' said Ticehurst. But if he meant what he said it is odd that he reckoned up what he owed the hotel, and put the requisite amount of dollars in an otherwise almost empty portmanteau. It might also have seemed strange to Healy if he knew that his enemy went for a walk late that night and got as far as St. John's on the railroad to the north. There he boarded the last train to Kalama, that deserted township which once had a boom of which the bottom fell out, and went down the Columbia in the Telephone.
But Healy tumbled to the whole thing in the morning when it was found that Ticehurst had not slept in the hotel. The Portland authorities, at Healy's request, went down to Astoria next day bright and early, and boarded the Oriana. Mr. Williams, the chief mate, received them at the gangway.
'Where is the captain?'
'In Portland,' said Williams sourly. Treating the men according to Ticehurst's prescription was getting on his nerves.
'He skipped from Portland last night, and we believe him to be on board,' said the marshal.