I did not refrain from pressing the trigger of the revolver while aiming it at Christy’s head on account of the debt of obligation which weighed me down. I knew enough about an engine to make myself useful, and I worked hard for all the information I obtained. Still I considered myself indebted to him for the opportunities he had afforded me; and, if he had not chosen to be a villain, I am quite sure I should always have felt grateful to him, even while I paid in hard work for every scrap of knowledge I obtained from him.
Christy and my father were quite intimate; though, as the steamer in which he served always lay nights and Sundays at the lower end of the lake, they had not been together much of late years. He had recommended my father for the position he then held in the flour mills. I know that my father felt under great obligations to him for the kind words he had spoken in his favor, and had often urged me to help him all I could, encouraging me by the hope that I might, by and by, get a place as engineer on a steamboat.
The engineer of the Ruoara—for this was the name of the steamer in which we had gone down to Ucayga—was a strange man in some respects. He made a great deal of the service he had rendered to my father and to me, and very little of the service we had rendered to him, for my father had often made him little presents, often lent him money, and had once, when the mills were not working, run his steamer for him a week, while he was sick, without any compensation. I never thought Christy had any cause to complain of either of us. But I dislike this balancing of mutual obligations, and only do it in self-defence; for it is the kindness of the heart, and the real willingness to do another a favor, which constitute the obligation, rather than what is actually done. “And if ye do good to them that do good to you, what thank have ye? For sinners also do even the same.”
Christy was a man who always believed that the world was using him hardly. He was unlucky, in his own estimation. The world never gave him his due, and everybody seemed to get the better of him. Though he had good wages, he was not worth any money. He spent his earnings as fast as he got them; not in dissipation, that I am aware of, but he had a thriftless way of doing business. He never could get rid of the suspicion that the world in general was cheating him; and for this reason he had an old grudge against the world. On the passage to Ucayga he discoursed in his favorite strain with my father when he learned his errand. The unhappy man seemed to think that it was unjust to him for one in the same calling to have twenty-four hundred dollars in cash, while he had not a dollar beyond his wages.
The engineer of the steamer had not pluck enough to resent and resist injustice. Perhaps he thought that, in introducing my father to his situation, he had been the making of him, and that he was therefore entitled to the lion’s share of his savings for five years. Whatever he thought, he had deliberately formed his plan to rob my father of his money, and had actually succeeded in his purpose. Christy knew the weak point of his intended victim, and had plied him with whiskey till he was in a situation to be operated upon with impunity. I think my father wanted to drink again, and had sent me for the tobacco so that I should not see him do so.
My father afterwards told me that he recalled the movements of Christy when he took the pocket-book from him, though he thought nothing of them at the time.
“Ralph, you are a good fellow—the best fellow out! Let’s take one more drink,” said Christy, as reported by my father.
“I’m a good fellow, Christy, and you’re another,” replied the victim. “Just one more drink;” and my father, in his maudlin affection for his friend, had thrown his arms around his neck, and hugged him.
During this inebriated embrace Christy had taken the money from his pocket. After he had poured out the liquor, he found that his pocket-book was gone. The discovery paralyzed him; but his head was too much muddled at first to permit him to reason on the circumstances. He remembered that he had felt the pocket-book only a few minutes before; and, as soon as he could think, he was satisfied that his companion had robbed him, for the simple reason that no one else had been near him. He was ashamed of his own conduct. He was conscious that he had drunk too much, and that this had been the occasion of his misfortune.
I do not know what Christy’s plan was, or how he expected to escape the consequences of his crime. He had easily shaken my father off, and made his escape. However hardly the world had used him, he was certainly more severe upon himself than his tyrant had ever been; for when a man commits a crime, he treats himself worse than any other man can treat him. I could not fathom the villain’s plan in running away with the locomotive. I doubt whether he had any purpose except to escape from immediate peril, and thus secure his ill-gotten prize.