Little Lost Lambs, page 32
"This ain't what I want," he said.
Braddock's brain worked quickly. A half-second after the skipper's quiet words, the jeweler's hand darted to the money. Another hand, a heavy, muscled fist was before him.
Barclay thrust the bilis into his coat pocket. His broad face was tranquil, but a slow flush was spreading up from the throat.
"But you said—" Braddock's voice thrilled in his excitement..
"I said, Mr. Braddock, I was going to buy stock in the shipyard. So I am—the New York Ship Construction Company, that Mr. Mahoney mentioned, and the plant he showed me. Not that—" Barclay crumpled the worthless stock-certificate and tossed it on the floor.
He faced the two, his voice deepening as he spoke.
"Yes I'm going to buy a stock, one that's a good stock—and at the company's office—with half this money. I'll take the other half and give it to Matilda." He stepped toward Braddock, and the jeweler shrank back. "Fifteen year' I've traded with the godless islanders of the seas, and fifteen year' I've met every brand of scoundrels. I thought when I come here to my kind I'd have a square deal." He laughed shortly. "But it ain't any different here—"
Jim Mahoney's brain was a trifle slower than that of Braddock. But more dangerous. The swindler's hand went softly to his coat pocket.
Barclay had seen it, and knew what it meant. Wheeling swiftly, in spite of his bulk, he caught Mahoney's wrist before the hand could withdraw from the pocket. A jerk with two hundred pounds of bone and sinew behind it and the salesman was flung from his feet and crashed into the desk. He wavered vaguely on his knees, then slumped to the floor quietly, his head propped against the desk.
Then the skipper spoke to Braddock. He spoke quietly; but he had thought of what was going to say, and he had the vocabulary of a seaman to draw from, backed by a knowledge of Malay, Polynesian, and a lime-juicer's choicest language. When he had exhausted this, he returned to good American.
Braddock sat in his desk-chair, fumbling at his quivering cheeks. When Barclay had finished, he mustered his courage.
"I'll get the law on you!" he shrilled. "For unprovoked assault on my friend—"
Barclay laughed and turned toward the door.
"Your friend?" he asked mildly. "No, Mr. Braddock. Mahoney is a stranger. You didn't even know he was a stock-swindler, now, did you?"
And the captain's laughter echoed down the corridor.
I
IF YOU haven't been to Punta Arenas, the odds are more than a thousand to one you'll never go. I've been to Punta Arenas and you can name your own odds that I do not go again. It would be a safe bet.
If you don't know where Punta Arenas is—which is most likely the case—take a map of the world and put your finger on the southernmost city on Magellan Strait, at the tip of South America.
Sometimes it's called the jumping-off place of the world, maybe because there's nothing south of it except Tierra del Fuego, a waste land of snow, mountains, peat-bogs, an Argentine prison station and general unmitigated misery.
Only once did Tierra del Fuego attract the world's attention. Gold was found there a generation ago, in the beach barranca. It was washed by hand at first, and the yield was good; then companies were formed, machinery bought, stock sold, and the gold petered out. Most every week of my stay in Punta, the town newspaper had a notice of the winding-up of some sociedad aurifera.
A couple of the mines—those at Lenox Island and Slogget Bay—still show signs of life, and every now and then the gold rumor crops up. But the boom days are over.
I heard one disgruntled prospector say that the first conquistadores had got their gold by washing the black sand on the coast of Tierra del Fuego, and that there were no quartz veins. Some say otherwise. But the men who care to go into Tierra del Fuego after gold or anything else are few. Too many of the first rush of prospectors left their skeletons along the barranca. Cold, the four-hour days and the isolation of the waste land claimed them.
Captain Herrera of the prison camp at Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego once remarked to me that "when the Lord separated the land from the water, He forgot Tierra del Fuego."
Herrera used to make regular trips in the official launch from Ushuaia to Punta for supplies and mail; also to get his fill of drinks and a game of poker. That was how I came to know him. For an Argentine, he played a good poker hand. I liked him. He was square.
I played the game at Punta, although never before or since. There was nothing else to do except to speculate on the arrival of the occasional P. S. N. C. steamers, or listen to the phonograph at the club, or drink the American cocktails at the shore shanties.
It was at the Kosmos, the white-washed stone hotel on the shore where visiting scientists sometimes put up, that I first saw Tom McCarnie.
McCarnie was a six-foot Scotchman with a face from which all the life seemed to have been blotted out; his shoulders were wide and bent. He wore a suit of decent "blacks" as weather-stained as his countenance. I never have known a man who said as little. His age was probably near forty, but he looked fifty.
"He came from the Falklands in a skiff," the clerk told me. "One of the sheep men waiting for the next steamer."
McCarnie refused to be friendly. He had no friends in the town, and when he was not eating his meals at the Kosmos, he walked through the streets of Punta, staring at the two or three fashionable victorias belonging to the millionaires of the place—Punta has its rich men of the wool brand, and its elaborate dwellings, side by side with the corrugated iron shacks—or looking on at the card games of the club, the Cuerpo de Bomberos.
Few Scotchmen play poker. I never saw McCarnie take a hand until that evening Herrera arrived bent on amusement. In response to a note from the Argentine, I looked him up at the club.
Herrera and McCarnie were both sitting in at a five-handed game. The stakes were fairly high, even that early—jack-pots calling for five dollars from each man and a fifty-dollar limit. When he saw me the Argentine promptly cashed in his chips and gave up his place.
"We will see the town, Davis," he laughed, slapping me on the shoulder and shrugging his slender shoulders under the braid on his uniform. "My word! We will have an evening of gaiety."
He spoke good English and took pride in up-to-date slang. Out of hearing of the men at the table, he grimaced. Then I understood why he had been so willing to leave the game.
"Those two—bah!" He piloted me away by the arm. "Four times before you came they held threes to my two pair. They are—what you say?—sharp customers, undoubtedly. And I like not to play marked cards."
"Who?"
"Todd and Randall—Señor Todd and Señor Randall. They invite me to play with that McCarnie——"
I glanced back over my shoulder. The Scotchman had a good pile of chips in front of him, and his dark face was inscrutable. I guessed that he could take care of himself. Later, I heartily wished that I had tipped him off as to Herrera's warning.
We made the round of the shore shanties in the ever-present drizzle of rain, paid a call or two on Herrera's lady friends of officialdom and heard the gossip of four months ago told for the second time. It was a red-letter evening for my friend from Ushuaia, but I had long since grown tired of the routine gaiety of Punta.
Herrera, though, would not turn in. He sat on my cot, smoked the last of my American cigarets and talked incessantly about himself. He noted that I was curious about McCarnie and craftily included the Scotchman in his remarks. The captain seemed to know everything that went on in the three-cornered world of Tierra del Fuego, the Falklands and Punta.
"McCarnie worked like one fiend, Davis, my friend," he informed me volubly, thereby earning himself another half hour of wakefulness, "for the F. I. C.Santa Maria. I know not why a man should work like such ——, taking care of sheep, unless it is for a woman. What will we not do for a woman, my friend Davis?" "
He was silent for a second, ruminating on this interesting thought.
"McCarnie must be married," he decided, twirling his mustache regretfully, because he is the owner of a daughter. But his sheep he has sold, and I have heard from the Falkland Islands Company that he returns to his Scotland."
I appropriated the remaining cigarets, while Herrera sighed at this evidence of lack of confidence in himself.
"Look here, Herrera," I observed, realizing that McCarnie must be in funds if he had sold out his sheep ranch, "we ought to warn the man that Todd and Randall are crooked!"
"Crooked? Ah, yes." He shrugged his shoulders, having that cat-like aversion to discomfort that is peculiar to the Latin race. "But it rains, and why should you become wet because of a man you know not?"
It was true that McCarnie had confined his remarks to me to a morose "gude evening, Mr. Davis," and "it wull be a fine morning." But he had not spoken at all, so far as I could observe, to any one else in Punta, and I dislike Todd.
So I dragged the protesting Herrera to the club. We found a crowd around the table where Todd and the Scotchman sat.
McCARNIE had been losing heavily and the fifty dollar limit had been raised to the sky. His harsh face was flushed, and he fumbled the cards. Like most inexperienced men, his losses had affected him and weakened whatever skill he might have had at the game. In this condition it was useless for him to bluff. The cards, too, were running against him.
I watched several hands without detecting what particular deviltry Todd was up to. Todd was a bald man, past middle age, with alert, furtive eyes and clothes that showed American tailoring. What his nationality was, I don't know.
Many in Punta stayed there at that time because no extradition treaties could get at them. Todd, and I suspect Randall, was of this breed. He got hold of money somehow whenever he needed it—shady gambling, smuggling ventures—profitable because Punta was a free port—or speculation in the unstable Chilean currency.
He was one of those men described as living by their wits. His was a dirty kind of life, yet he had excellent manners, was a glib talker and attached himself to the wealthy of Punta.
"Better call it a day and cash in," I advised McCarnie. He turned a pair of fierce eyes upon me.
"I'll thank ye, Mr. Davis, to let me mind my own affairs!"
That was the answer I got, and it naturally kept me quiet until the end of the game, which came quickly. Randall dealt.
McCarnie looked at two pair—kings up on tens—and made it a hundred to come in. Todd was the only one who stayed with him and Todd raised fifty without looking at his hand.
"I've a hunch," he grinned at Herrera.
"Undoubtedly," admitted that gentleman coldly. "So did I—and I played no more."
McCarnie's fresh card didn't help his two pair any. Todd took three new ones and scowled. The Scotchman tried to force out his opponent baldly and found that Todd had three deuces. That hand cost him a thousand.
Five minutes later Randall filled a straight from the inside and took the remainder of the chips from McCarnie, who held three queens. Todd had dealt.
"This time the ladies don't win, McCarnie," he grinned, leaning back in his chair. The onlookers shuffled away through the smoky room. It was late, even for Punta.
The pleasure of the evening—watching others hazard wealth—was over for the drifters who had no money and for those who had wanted to sleep before spending more.
"How much did you lose?" I asked McCarnie.
He pushed a gnarled hand across his eyes, and I saw his fingers were quivering. The lines in his dour face were deeper than usual. He did not answer.
"Seventy-five hundred and forty dollars he lost," Todd informed me.
Todd never lost a chance to ingratiate himself with me, but I wanted none of his friendship.
"Didn't know a Jock ever to play poker before."
"No," gibed Randall. "He'll keep to sheep after this, all right."
Todd broke off to watch Herrera. That debonair individual was examining the pack of cards they'd been using, feeling the corners for pricks or nail marks. He paid particular attention to the aces and face cards.
Todd drained the remnant of drink in his glass and looked around vainly for the steward, who was asleep.
"What the —— are you doing?" he asked.
"That is for me to know and you to find out," responded the Argentine promptly.
Herrera had once heard me say that and liked the phrase. He held a card to the light and tossed it down with a shrug. Randall blinked heavy, blood-shot eyes uneasily, but Todd sprang nimbly to his feet, his features sharp as those of a cornered rat.
"You say we cheated, Herrera? You say that?"
The handsome Argentine rolled himself a cigaret and lit it, winking profoundly at the smoke-puff. Todd's shrill voice had been too self-righteous.
"Either," said Herrera, "you and Señor Randall had the good luck of the devil, or—" his dark eyes went amiably from one to the other of the poker players—"McCarnie had devilish bad luck. What made you think I suspect you of cheating, Todd, my would-be friend?"
That individual scowled, then forced a grin, finding the talk unpleasant. He vented his surliness on McCarnie. Taking a Chilean bank-note from his pocket—one for a few pesos—he placed it before the silent Scotchman.
"To pay your way back to the F. I. C, Jock. Better leave a gentleman's game to gentlemen." He chuckled at his own wit, being more than slightly drunk. "Goo'-night, Jock. Get some more money, and by —— we'll take you on again—way a gentleman should."
With that the two went off. Herrera swore, then yawned and pulled at me good-naturedly to go back to the Kosmos. Then the Scot lifted gloomy eyes and gazed thoughtfully at Herrera.
"Man," he cried gruffly, "d'ye mean they two played a crooked game?"
"Undoubtedly, McCarnie." Herrera shrugged his shoulders. "The cards do not seem to be marked, but there are other ways."
McCarnie lurched to his feet, and from his black scowl. I thought he meant to seek a reckoning with the departed gamesters, so, realizing that such action would be disastrous under the circumstances, I told him there was nothing he could do unless the fraud was proved, which I knew was impossible now.
"Mr. Davis came here in the rain for only one reason—to warn you, McCarnie," grumbled Herrera.
"Why did you play with Todd?" I asked curiously.
But the Scot would not say. His hands gripped the table tightly, and there was a look in his unlovely face of a parent bereaved of a child.
"Santa Maria!" observed Herrera as the two of us trudged back through the rain, "a Scotchman loves his silver. I remember now that when McCarnie sold his ranch to the F. I. C. he said, as his reason, that he must have money to take back with him to Scotland."
"Why?" I asked.
"How should I know?"
"He has a family?"
"A daughter—lucky man! A letter was sent him, they say, and he sold his sheep before the shearing—a bad time."
Two things that Herrera said did not jibe with the character of Tom McCarnie as I sized him up. A Scotchman, of his age and shrewdness, was not apt to play American poker for high stakes, or to sell out his property at an unfavorable time—unless he had to have money. And, since McCarnie could not need it for himself in the Falklands, it must be for his daughter. I didn't know why and I don't yet. McCarnie never told.
II
WITH the bank-note Todd had tossed him, McCarnie paid his reckoning at the Kosmos. He took off the small satchel of his belongings. Where he stayed then, I could not learn. Several times I saw him walking the waterfront, but he always turned the other way when he saw me coming.
The skiff went back to the islands, but McCarnie did not go with it. The up-coast steamer he had planned to take came, hove-to off Punta and puffed away while half the town watched—among the watchers McCarnie.
The sight of his shambling figure in the black suit became common around the docks, and once I saw him barter two handfuls of mussels from a native boatman for a copper coin.
It was the day after that, and rainy as usual, that McCarnie came to my room in the Kosmos. I asked him to sit down and take some of my tobacco. He did neither. He stood, fumbling at his coat.
"Mr. Davis, man!" he blurted out, "wull ye be lending me enough to buy an outfit? Ye'll hae my bag for surety."
He glared uncomfortably. I guess it was the first time he had asked for a loan. His pride hurt him sorely.
"How much and for how long, McCarnie?" I inquired.
"Four pound, 'till next summer."
"What kind of an outfit can you buy in Punta for twenty dollars?" Not much of a one, I knew.
" 'Twill do nicely, Mr. Davis."
I tried another tack, wishing to get at the man's story.
"McCarnie, you want to go back to Scotland to your daughter, don't you?"
"Oh aye. She'll be needing me."
"At once?"
"Oh aye. No doot. But I must have the money."
Now I couldn't lend him enough for the trip back. He knew that, and my questioning had touched his pride in a sore spot.
"Man!" he cried, "I'm no askin' ye for charity. Ye have the worrd o' Tom McCarnie that the four pound will be paid back wi' the interest."
That was a bitter thrust.
"McCarnie," I laughed, "I'll gladly let you have the twenty dollars, only I thought—" I hesitated— "that Captain Herrera might have a job——"
"No, Mr. Davis. I'll be doing a bit of prospecting."
"Where?" I asked, counting out the the money.
"Yonder." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of Tierra del Fuego.
That was all he would say. I reflected that as it was then late summer the winter season would soon drive McCarnie back to Punta.
I was wrong. The snow and the cold came and the mists settled down on Magellan Strait. The few white men who had sheep on the Tierra del Fuego side of the strait came over to winter in Punta. No one else came from Fireland. No one, that is, except the pleasure-seeking Herrera from Ushuaia.
Ill
