“Now don’t ye be worryin’ too soon, kid. They’ll have to be goin’ some to get me.... You can bet on that.”
“Gee, Big Joe, you don’t savvy. It’s the idea of gettin’ the coppers suspectin’ me and sayin’ they expected sumpin’ like that from Toby Dare’s kid. That’s what I couldn’t bear Pop to hear after he’s planned better things for me. Gee, I couldn’t stand it!” Then: “Who owns the Davy Jones, Big Joe, huh?” he demanded.
“Now that’s a funny thing,” Tully said. “The Davy Jones is Crosley’s. He bought her a week ago after he sold the Minnehaha. I s’pose that’s why he played foxy whin the ingine wint wrong with the new one? If that big sap boat tender had only tole me who owned her I’d niver....”
“Gee whiz, Big Joe, now I can see why Pop said these crooked rackets don’t pay in the end. It’s account of that if. It’s always if this or that didn’t happen everythin’ would be all right. But it never is. Oh, gee, I’m not hoppin’ on you—maybe I’d been just like you if it wasn’t that I’m sick and disgusted with crooked rackets already. Maybe it’s because my mother came from a farm and so I’m not all river, huh? Anyway, I know I don’t want any more of this business. I’m gonna be straight I am. I learned a lesson today on that Davy Jones business an’ I mean it.”
“Me, too!” said Big Joe with all his old time swagger. “I was tellin’ meself comin’ back here that if I think up an aisy racket where the coppers don’t get wise, I’ll be savin’ up a few grand an’ thin open up one o’ thim hot dog stands in the country. Sure and the river won’t see me at all, at all after that.”
Skippy laughed outright—for, boy that he was, he could see that Tully would be Tully as long as the river flowed down to the sea.
CHAPTER XXX
BEASELL
Next day, life in the Basin flowed once more in familiar channels. Tully trod the decks watching for the unwelcome police and puffing furiously on his cigarettes. Skippy sprawled in the rickety easy chair, playing with the dog and calling out to Mrs. Duffy some words of cheer when the occasion required. And when sunset came and the law had not put in its appearance they had supper noisily together.
Tully stretched out in his bunk after the meal had been cleared away. He looked at peace with the world. Skippy, watching him out of the corner of his eye, wondered what new racket he was planning now. And he didn’t rest until he had asked the big fellow point blank.
“Me racket for a while, kid,” Tully said amiably, “is to be keepin’ ye from gettin’ gloomy and sad. Whin I’m sure that Crosley ain’t set the coppers on me trail thin I’ll be turnin’ around—see? Right now I’m stickin’ close to the Minnie M. Baxter, so I be.”