“Oh, they're saying that this fellow is a rich man that has a big smuggling system with agents all around the Lakes and dealers in the cities that are in his pay,—sort of a smuggling trust.”
“Sounds like a fairy story.”
“That's about what it is. The regular dealers have taken up the fight to protect their trade, and one or two of the papers in particular have put reporters on the case, and all that sort of thing. And as usual they're announcing just what they've done and what they're going to do. The old Foote is to make a tour of the Lakes, and look into every port. And if there is any Whiskey Jim, I 'll bet he's somewhere over in Canada by this time, reading the papers and laughing at 'em.” Captain Stenzenberger was seated in his swivel chair in his dingy little one-story office at the corner of the lumber yard. His broad frame was overloaded with flesh. His paunch seemed almost to rest on his thighs as he sat there, chewing an unlighted cigar in the corner of his mouth,—a corner that had been moulded around the cigar by long habit and that looked incomplete when the cigar was not there. His fat neck—the fatter for a large goitre—was wider than his cheeks, and these again were wider than his forehead, so that his head seemed to taper off from his shoulders. A cropped mustache, a tanned, wrinkled face and forehead, and bright brown eyes completed the picture. When his two captains came in, he rested his pudgy hands on the arms of his chair, readjusted his lips around the cigar, and nodded. “How are you, boys?” said he, in a husky voice. “Have a good trip?” This last remark was addressed to Dick.
“First part was bad, but it cleared up later.”
“Did you put right out into that storm from Manistee?”
“Yes—you see I had the wind behind me all the way down. Got to get a new small boat, though.”
The “Captain” did not press the subject. In return for the privilege of buying the schooner by instalments he permitted Dick to pay for the insurance, so the young man could be as reckless as he liked.
Dick now explained that he had come to make a payment, and the transaction was accomplished.
“Step over and have a drink, boys,” was the next formality; and the two stood aside while Stenzenberger got his unwieldy body out of the chair, put on his hat, and led the way out.
Adjoining the lumber yard on the west was a small frame building, bearing the sign, “The Teamster's Friend.” It had been set down here presumably to catch the trade of the market gardeners who rumbled through in the small hours of every morning. In the rear, backed up against a lumber pile, was a long shed where the teams could wait under cover while their drivers were carousing within. A second sign, painted on the end of this shed, announced that Murphy and McGlory were the proprietors of the “sample room and summer garden.” The three men entered, and seated themselves at a table. There was no one behind the bar at the moment, but soon a woman glanced in through the rear doorway.