“You boys just let me alone,” he said. “Me lose? Lucky Cochran? Not by the mill by the damsite. Why—say!—I’m still winner by nigh onto four hundred dollars. Can’t beat that, kin you?”
They exhorted him for his own protection to stop and call his four hundred an ample winning. He appeared to ponder it, and then blurted: “But what’s a feller to do when he’s out on the fust vacation he’s had for more’n forty year, if he can’t play a few keerds—huh? Here! Tell you what me’ll and you’ll do! We’ll go in and play penny ante and cut them fellers out. What say?”
The partners flatly refused this proffered amusement, remembering that Mr. Cochran would have them completely at the mercy of his interminable, unquenchable drawl. Anxious as they were to protect him, they thought the price in self-sacrifice too great, and found difficulty enough, as it was, to finally shake him off.
Something went amiss in the engine room, and for a couple of hours the steamer hove to, lolling gently, on a gentle sea. It was conducive to sleep, although rendering it certain that their landing in San Francisco must be made late at night. The partners were awakened by the supper gong and on arriving at the table discovered that not only Lucky Cochran, but the two card sharps, were not to be seen. Nor did they appear in the smoke room afterward, and as the hours passed, the partners began to be apprehensive. They made inquiries of the deck steward, and learned that he had served sandwiches and coffee to three gentlemen who were now playing cards in one of the deck cabins, which he pointed out, and the partners promptly retired to the rail in wrath and disgust.
“I’m through!” declared David. “Let ’em trim him for all I care.”
“That goes for me, too,” Goliath snorted.
Lights became visible, and passengers crowded the decks waiting for the first big spread of glowing points that would open out after the ship had rounded the Golden Gate. Luggage had all been packed and stewards were bringing out and heaping up piles of traveling impedimenta. And then what the partners had expected, happened. A very gloomy man came through the crowd, stumbled into contact with them, and said: “Well, what do you think of that! You was right about them two fellers bein’ regular cheaters and crooks!”
“Got you, did they?” David inquired sarcastically. “Well, it’s your own fault. We did all we could to pry you loose from ’em, and it serves you darned well right.”
“Yep. And the fact is if you hadn’t talked so much they’d never have gone after you the way they did,” Goliath added. “Did they get all that twenty thousand dollars you was blowin’ about?”
“Not all of it,” said Cochran dolefully. “I got enough to get back home on, anyhow. My luck didn’t altogether leave me, but—”