Little lost lambs, p.42
Little Lost Lambs, page 42
Dave glanced around cautiously and shook him by the shoulder.
"Say, you. Those two Spiggotties was dealing off the bottom of the pack. Get me? Watch your step next time."
Mr. John yawned and opened haggard, bloodshot eyes. His thin face was furtive, yet not bad-looking.
"My friends, my lad," he murmured, "Help me home, will you? Much obliged."
He smiled good-naturedly and tapped his head.
A fortune there, you know. Mus' be careful." Gripping Dave's shoulder, he walked through the saloon tolerably steadily. The boy looked for the Jamaica bar-keep, thinking to question him concerning Calbuco and his affairs. But the negro had been relieved and was no longer in the place.
"What sort of a guy is this Calbuco?" inquired Dave of his new companion as they passed out into the rain.
"Guy? Oh, a decent sort, a bit of all right"
Mr. John's voice was husky. Dave guessed that he was a sheep-herder is perhaps a propector, an educated man, now down on his luck.
Calbuco's shipping magnate—dragnet, that's the word. Hires men like a reg'lar dragnet." He stopped in the mud of street-crossing and scowled as if trying to focus his mind on something. "If he's hired you—may be dangerous, no end,"
Dave did not mind that especially. Twenty-two years of hard knocks had not altogether quenched his desire for adventure.
The two avoided a drenched police officer huddled in his cloak under one of the dim lamp-posts. Passing a small hotel on the shore, they saw the Norwegian explorers busied about their luggage on the veranda, heedless of the musk and uproar of the saloons and the quieter revelry in the plaza and at the one club in Punta.
He was startled when they reached the door of Mr. John's shanty to see the door flung open and the dark face of an Indian peering at them.
Dave's reaction was a swift move toward his revolver. Quickly as he acted, the figure at the door had darted aside and merged into the night before he could speak.
"Looks like a second-story man to me," he muttered; "only there ain't any second story."
Mr. John was peering after the fleeing form. Dave heard him chuckle. "Thousands of pounds right here in my head. That's what he missed. Mus' be careful——"
He stepped inside the shanty, and Dave heard clumsy fingers barring the door.
"Guess he's all right now," considered the boy, turning back toward the docks and his new ship. All told, he had passed an interesting evening. He had seen a poker-player–Calbuco—lay down a winning hand for no apparent reason. And he had seen another poker-player—Mr. John—borrow money to square his reckoning and at the same time carry what he called a fortune about with him. As for the Indian—a Patagonian thief was commonplace enough.
Some days later Dave was surprised to perceive that his new job was to be on an island at the western end of the strait. At least so it seemed to him. A whaleboat from the steamer rowed in to an immense black rock in mid-channel, and supplies from the boat were hauled up to the top of the rock by a long rope. Then Dave was hauled up.
"I'll try anything once," muttered Dave, when the Portuguese bosun failed to answer his question as to what was on the top of the rock. So, gripping a note from Calbuco, the boy was hoisted to the Evangelistas and the tender mercies of the keeper of the light.
Dave was quick of wit. Scarcely had he surveyed the top of the rock when he yelled for the whaleboat to come back. The sailors grinned up at him. The two keepers hardly looked at him as they checked off the supplies.
For the next month his domicile was several hundred yards of dank cliff-top, overgrown with moss, and a single bare cabin that he shared with two Chileans, the keepers, who could not speak English, and Who read the note from Calbuco with a grim smile.
The note said Dave was to be kept indefinitely.
"Calbuco was right," thought Dave. "This is a landmark, and 'most every ship in the strait heads for it, one way or the ether. Guess I'm shanghaied all right."
Before the first few days of the month had passed he saw why it was necessary to use strong measures to induce helpers to serve on the Evangelistas.
There was no boat attached to the light, because there was no place to moor a boat. The head keeper had a scrofulous disease; the other Chilean was suffering from melancholia, and deaf. He seldom heard a word spoken. In order to escape beatings he made the best of the matter, and worked for the two.
In the first month he counted five clear days. For the rest, fog, rain, and hail, and always wind. Sometimes the spray filled the air so that he could hardly breathe outside the house. By persistent questioning he found that he was expected to serve indefinitely, as the deaf Chilean was "sick." Also that vessels called irregularly every two or three months—no oftener.
In the fog he could hear the sirens of passing craft and on a clear day could glimpse an occasional coaster or lime-juicer slouching along. These, naturally, gave the Evangelistas a wide berth.
Dave set his jaw and waited, perched on the platform by the light. The cold ate into his slim body, and the desolation worked on his mind.
"And the dirty, sneaking heathens unlimbered my artillery," he muttered to himself.
His revolver had been deftly removed in the whaleboat when he started to climb the rope to the cliff-top.
He knew that he would he given no opportunity to leave the Evangelistas when the next supply-boat came. And that might be two months. So Dave waited for three things—clear weather, an English or American vessel, and daylight. Meanwhile he thought about benevolent Calbuco, and the way that the Portuguese had tricked him.
These three things never happened as he hoped.
But at the end of five weeks he saw the schooner. it was a dirty-looking craft moving down the coast toward the strait, half visible in the brief twilight.
Within half an hour of sighting the vessel and marking its course Dave had descended ostentatiously into the cabin where the two keepers sat smoking, and had slipped out when darkness closed in. He had reached the edge of the rock and clambered down as far as there was foothold. Overhead the beam of the light shot out against the black sky.
Dave strained his eyes until he could make out the lights of the schooner: then he stripped off coat and shoes and jumped—as he had often jumped from the iron piers of the lower West Side, when swimming in the Hudson.
Half-way to the schooner he was exhausted. But his shouts had attracted attention. A boat put out.
Dave told the Chilean captain that he had drifted out of the strait in a whaleboat and lapsed into unconsciousness. This was because he had no desire to be questioned further,
He was tying on the after-deck at the time, a lantern beside him, and from under his eyelids he saw a strange thing. A child stood talking to the skipper, a young girl in a gray cloak of a kind that seemed vaguely familiar to Dave.
She bent over him until a strand of long, black hair touched his throat. Her face seemed the hue of gold, and her eyes were black as the night itself. Dave could feel her breath warm against his cheek.
That was how he met Señorita Clara.
He learned her name the next day, also that she was a passenger on the Chilote, bound for Punta. When the skipper would have set him to waiting on table Dave rebelled, vowing to himself that he would work for no more Chileans. Aloud he said:
"I am Señor Calbuco's huilliche. You sabe that, capataz mio?"
The Spanish language was nearly a closed book to the boy, but he possessed the gift of making himself understood as well as making friends.
I am going to Señor Calbuco's house," observed the young girl in good English as the skipper turned away with a shrug,
Dave surveyed her voluminous gray garments, her delicate olive face and dark eyes, and wondered if she were not Calbuco's daughter. Having leisure now for conversation and some one to talk to, he questioned her as the two snatched a brief blessing of sunlight on the poop-deck. And he learned the reason for her somber dress and her invincible shyness that would not let her talk with him unless the captain was near by
Clara was not quite seventeen. She had been left by her father in a Catholic seminary for four yeas, up the coast at Ancud. Now her father had sent for her, and she had been put in charge of the captain, a good Catholic. Her mother, a Spaniard, had been dead for many years. Had Dave seen her father in Punta?
"Sure, I saw him."
"He is a very fine man. He has become rich."
"That's what I heard," admitted Dave. His quarrel was not with the daughter of Calbuco, if Clara was Calbuco's daughter.
She smiled and showed him the letter she had received. It had come at Christmas, she said, when she had been very lonely.
Reluctantly Dave glanced at the missive.
DEAREST CLARA:
I have made arrangements with our friends in Ancud for you to come to Punta. We can leave Punta very soon because I have made a fortune for you. Then we will go home. I have located a claim that I have called after your mother—the Isabella. It is so rich that gold can be washed by hand on the barranca—but you do not understand such things. I am living now in a big white house on the plaza that you will like.
The name signed to the letter was Señor Juan. On the envelope Dave saw an inscription:
From John Bruce, Cuerpo do Bomberos, Punta Arenas.
"Is your father an Englishman?" asked Dave. "Ain't he got gray eyes?" And he added; "Why are you going to Calbuco's?"
"That is where my father is staying, with his friend Señor Calbuco."
It was all quite clear. Bruce had left his daughter with the nuns at Ancud while he tried his luck in Punta at sheep-herding or prospecting. He had been carrying in his head the secret of the location of the mining claim, the Isabella, that was so rich in gold, when Dave had encountered him. And Calbuco was Bruce's friend.
But the Portuguese was by no means Dave's friend.
During the slow run along the tide-beset strait, between barren mountains, Clara spent much of her time on deck watching the circling condors, and the distant snow-peaks. She smiled at everything and every one, including Dave.
The boy was even more shy than she, until the girl persuaded him to tell her about the great city of New York, where the haciendas were like the cliffs of Magellan and a railroad ran on a bridge through the streets. Dave was homesick for the rattle of the Elevated at Chatham Square.
She confided in him that John Bruce had wandered with her after the death of her mother to Bermuda. and Valparaiso, and that they had been very poor. One morning she threw him a kiss, and the boy's heart swelled in his chest:
"She's a good-looker, all right," he thought, "even if she is part dago." And he took Clara Bruce into the select circle of his friends, to be admired and fought for.
Clara had assured him that John Bruce would meet her at the jetty at Punta. But Dave, peering from the break of the poop when they reached the jetty, saw that a large woman with a velvet hat and expensive furs approached the girl on the dock, and took her to a waiting carriage. The woman, the captain of the schooner informed him, was the wife of Señor Calbuco.
Whereupon Dave shadowed the carriage through the few streets of the town to a granite house fronting the central plaza. Then he trotted back to the saloon where his Jamaica friend was to be found.
"You got a gun?" he whispered. "Lend it to me."
"Hindeed not," returned the barkeep.
"Listen, Jamaica," wheedled Dave, "I got to have a gun. I'll pay you ten dollars for it."
"'Ave you the ten dollars, Hamurrica?" grinned the black. And as Dave assured him that the money would be forthcoming within two days he grinned the more. "Ow did ye get hoff the Evangelistas?"
Jamaica's conscience had troubled him. He had meant to warn Dave to steer clear of Calbuco, but he had not been able to find him.
Calbuco, the black admitted, was a fish hawk—the kind of hawk that waited until a patient sea-bird had secured a fish, and then bullied its victim into giving up the prize. So Jamaica confided under his breath, adding that Calbuco had been driven out of Rio not so long ago.
"Look here!" demanded Dave. "Tell me, where's John Bruce?"
The Jamaican polished a tumbler in silence and glanced warily at the saloon door. Conflicting emotions crossed his dusky face.
"'E's gorn awye. Been gorn a week."
Dave shook his head.
"Nix. He was waiting for his girl. He's in Punta, and I've got to find him."
"You won't find 'im. Hi sye, don't ye know when ye're bloomink well off?Take my word for hit—leave the bleeding place on the P.S.N.C. steamer, with the Norwegians, my lad." The negro's voice dwindled to a shrill whisper, "Calbuco hain't gorn on yer looks. 'E don't like to be spied on when 'e's at 'is little games, with Pedro and 'is mate."
"Pedro and Manuel are Calbuco's men?" Dave thought quickly. Maybe I know more'n you think, rummy. See if I don't! Calbuco wants to do Bruce outer his mine, see? He stacks the Britisher up against a set of cheaters until Bruce owes him a heap of coin. Get me? Meanwhile the Spiggotties slip an Indian into Bruce's shack to look for information. Bruce is made to sell out to them, and then—"
"That's where you're mistaken, my lad. Mr. Bruce refused to sell 'is claim, and 'e did for the Hindian right and proper. 'Oo cares? They 'ad him jailed for that, but 'e wouldn't give in."
"And now he's missing—hey?"
The negro nodded cautiously.
"Look here, Jamaica, you're a good guy. Bruce's girl is here, and Calbuco has her."
"Han English lydy?"
"Sure." Dave strained a point. "She's a lady, all right. And that's more'n Mrs. Calbuco is."
Jamaica was profoudly disturbed. He had been born under the British flag, and an Englishwoman as sacrosanct in his eyes. A few words from him assured the American that the Calbuco woman had kept a house of bad repute in Rio de Janeiro before migrating to Punta, and that many of her associates had found lodging in the white house on the plaza. So Dave got his gun, a blunt-nosed .32.
Not so worse," he thought.
That evening Señor Calbuco was entertaining friends at cards in a quiet room opening upon the balcony of his fine house. The balcony, by the way, ran clear around the building, and was shaded by the branches of a large tree.
The Portuguese, who was in excellent humor, had just announced to his friend the alcalde that he held three queens against two pair for the alcalde. And he was raking in the pot when another man spoke.
"If you are interested in mining claims, my friend Calbuco, I can tell you what we learned during our examination of the Tierra del Fuego shore near the western end of your strait."
It was one of the Norwegians, a giant of a man with merry blue eyes. His name was Walstrom, and he had come with his companion to pay Calbuco for the guides the Portuguese got them—at a price.
Walstrom and Quensel were not playing; they had been interested for some time in certain sounds resembling the sobbing of a woman not far away. They were too polite to ask questions.
"Yes," agreed Calbuco, "you were saying that you saw——"
Here he was interrupted quite abruptly by the sight of a blue revolver pointed at his head front the open French window that gave access to the balcony.
"Put up your hands, all of you," urged Dave Thornton. "Back away from the table to the other side of the room."
They did so—Pedro and Manuel and Calbuco and the alcalde and another man. Walstrom and Quensel uttered a forceful oath and sat still. They were by no means afraid. Moreover, the intruder did not seem to be looking at them.
"Fifty dollars, Calbuco,"
Dave moved cautiously forward to the table.
"That's what you owe me for one month's work, I'll collect it myself from your pile, see?"
Watching them the while, Dave sorted out with his fingers a number of silver dollars and bank-notes.
The stout alcalde spluttered something in Spanish about thieves.
"Keep your hands up like I said, Spiggotty," Dave advised him. "Now, Cal-bum, you lied to me. You robbed an American citizen of his gun. That's right, ain't it? Well, I'm telling you that you have a lot more coming to you. Don't forget that. Stop wiggling your hands, Pedro—I ain't talking to you."
Dave pocketed the money and moved back toward the window,
"Tell your friends to turn around, Calbuco, and look at the wall. You do it, too."
Walstrom and Quensel looked at each other and grinned involuntarily. There was something humorous in the sight of five grown men plastered against the wall.
When they glanced at Dave again they saw only the double windows closing softly.
Pedro's knife hurtled across the room and through a glass pane. The Chilean was not a coward. Drawing a revolver, he slipped to the window and looked out into the darkness.
Manuel darted from the room toward the stairs. The alcalde, after a discreet interval, left to summon his police.
Calbuco wiped his brow; then he smiled.
"He will not get away. gentlemen, It will be impossible for him to leave Punta if he escapes from the house. He is a fool. You heard him threaten me?"
"He seemed," acknowledged Walstrom, who had no great fancy for Calbuco's type, and had been forced to pay high for his peons, "to mean what he said."
The Norwegians noticed that the woman was no longer sobbing.
A moment later Señorita Clara Bruce was startled when she saw the dark figure of a man enter the window of her room that opened upon the balcony. The night had brought real fear upon her—a fear that was no less real because she could not put it into words.
She had not been able to see her father. Instead, she was locked in her room and the wife of Calbuco had scolded her. Calbuco himself had told her that John Bruce was drinking; that he was a dishonest man; and that she must help them to make him give up some mine he had stolen.
It was quite a surprise to discover that the man who had come into her room in the dark was the young American she had met on the schooner, and Clara stopped crying, to huddle down farther into the bedclothes
