But he told his gossips down below that Mista Quin had got a white woman up from San Francisco. Indeed he did not know that Jenny was no more than a quarter-breed Siwash, though he wondered at her knowing so much Chinook, of which Sam himself was very ignorant, though he savvied even how to do hair.
The world of the little Shack-Town by the Mill believed that Jenny had really fled with Shipman Jack and Pete got very drunk again that night.
VIII
"The Siwash'll be on Jack's tracks," said the Men of the Mill, "for sure he'll be after him, hyak koolie! What the thunder did the little klootchman see in Jack! Oh, hell, he warn't nothin' but a special kind of sea hobo, boys, allers on the go: a blanket-stiff at sea, that's what. And drink—we should say so! And mean, oh, there ain't words! If Pete runs into him——"
Pete wanted blood, that's a fact, but when a man wants blood and gets liquor the blood stays unshed unless the victim is right handy. That is also a fact, all wool, and a yard wide.
Another fact was of great importance, and that is that Pete owed the Mill dollars instead of the Mill owing him any, and to get across to Victoria in the Island took silver, t'kope chikamin, in the shape of dollars. And Pete couldn't swim, not so much as a hundred yards. He was no Fish Indian. And the Straits are some miles across.
Pete woke out of his drunk early in the morning and saw three facts in the light of dawn, saw them come out of the darkness and stand up before him, just as the Mill did and the tin-roofed shining Cannery across the River, where Chinamen wallowed in shining salmon for Eastern consumption. Pete saw the array of facts and at the back of his Indian brain he had a notion of destiny, as they all have. Jenny had run: he had "halo dolla," and it was a long swim across the Straits of Georgia, in spite of all the islands a man might rest at.
"She hyu bad klootchman," said Pete. "I no care one damn. I take another by-by. She too much pletty, no sit down, klatawa with Jack."
There wasn't a drink for Pete that morning, but he lighted a fire and made some "caupy" or coffee.