Leaving my companion, still insensible, to the care of the tobacconist, I dashed up the street in pursuit. My footfalls echoed along the deserted thoroughfare like rifle-shots, so I hastily discarded my boots and continued the chase in socks.
Rather to my surprise I soon came in sight of the three figures in front, who had now dropped into a leisurely walk. This confidence in their security for some reason angered me the more, and in the deep shadows of a wall I crept nearer and drew the revolver from my pocket.
I had never shot a man in my life, and for the first time I experienced the dread of doing this in cold blood. Then I remembered my companion’s gaunt figure prone on the pavement, and the fact that but for a packet of cigarettes I should have certainly shared the same fate. I fired—low down.
The men scattered like startled rabbits; two darted down by-streets on opposite sides of the road, while the third took an abrupt seat on the pavement and examined his leg, evidently more concerned about his wound than the chances of escape.
As I rushed down the turning to the left I sighted my second quarry scrambling over a mound of bricks; he turned and saw me at the same instant, and then began a chase and obstacle race combined under conditions that are probably unique. Over mounds of sand, lime, and broken brick; through mazes of scaffolding, barrels, planks, and wheelbarrows, pools of muddy water, and quagmires of soft mortar we went. My bootless feet were soon battered and bruised, but the fever of the chase was in my veins, and as long as my quarry was in sight I felt incapable of abandoning the pursuit.
The fugitive was now hardly thirty feet ahead, and I dashed after him round a corner of scaffolding, confident that I had run him to earth; and I did, but not in the way expected. He had crouched low just round the corner, and, unable to stop myself, I fell headlong over his body. It was an old trick, and I scrambled to my feet anathematizing myself for a fool, but my man had vanished. With slightly cooler blood and a bruised head I had just decided to leave matters where they stood, when I heard a gentle rasping, and looked up to find him clinging to a scaffold-pole above my head. I could see his white face looking down at me.
“What are you going to do about it?” he demanded, breathlessly.
“Come down and you’ll see,” said I, sternly.
When at last we stood facing each other, however, I found myself at a loss. He was a mere boy, with a wizened, old-young face and cunning eyes that took me in from hatless head to socked feet with a callous insolence that rather appealed to me. What was I going to do about it? The police of San Francisco were either asleep or smoking cigarettes in more salubrious quarters of the city; and it was next to impossible to give him in charge, so I took the law into my own hands.
“Hand over what you took,” said I, “and you shall go.”