The Red Book Magazine/Volume 5/Number 3/Capt. Bill Slocum, Retributor

By ROY E. NORTON

As the surrounding shadows of the August night deepened their enveloping itch on the waiting depths of the gigantic forest, covered the outlines of the crags behind us, and left us seated in a little island of camp-fire glow, my companion, Bill Slocum, ceased mending his moccasin and filled a recreative pipe.

“Men are like pipes,” he finally said. “Some are nice, fancy ones that break on the trail. Some char out and get thrown away. Some, clean and white, start out to destroy a world of unconquerable, yearly growing weeds, but get polished and take on color for a final resting place on a mantel; but they're all alike in the end, broken, used-up, and by and by gone. And no one cares where.”

I waited in silence, for I knew that more would follow when this gray-headed, grizzle-faced and square-jawed old adventurer was driven from his habitual taciturnity, spurred on by the easy-paced steeds of reminiscence. I waited because I knew that naught but mood could wrest from his lips another chapter from a life's history of turbulence in which all waters were not clear.

From our camp in the unfrequented and majestic Olympics we sat and watched the distant lights of Seattle, paying no heed to the palpitant little noises of night life that began to rustle and quiver, and murmur the doings of forest darkness.

In the remote black curtain a row of glittering points suddenly appeared, so distant and slow-moving that it took more than a glance to read the riddle of formation and understand that they were those of a Sound steamer, inward bound.

Bill, too, noticed it, and again broke silence.

“I bought a steamship once. Thought I'd go into the excursion business and be a shipping trust. Dreamed for a week that some day I'd transplant the old 'Bar-S' sign, I used to burn into the hides of wandering Texas steers, on to a nice blue flag that would float over all the Pacific water hole. But I didn't.”

“Run out of bunting?” I suggested, interrogatively.

“No; gold-bricked,” replied Bill, sententiously. “But I'm glad the way it happened.” Then, at intervals, “I never did much good for myself or any one else; but one thing I've had the pleasure to do was Wong Yet. If there's any stone sodded over the place where my blankets are finally tucked and the trail ends, I want cut into its features for a autobiography, 'Bill Slocum's under here—him that played even on Wong Yet.'”

Startled, I straightened myself and laughed at the recollection of a whimsical tale told me by Bill—long years before—of a smuggling adventure in China wherein he had been betrayed by a trusted Chinese partner, robbed of a mighty venture, forced to flee the Orient and had been enabled to return to Arizona only through the beneficence of the American consul at Bombay.

“Yes, I guess you remember,” grinned Bill; “but you don't know the last chapter—how I played the game of tag, until old Mrs. Chance rapped me on the shoulder and said, 'You're it.' And this time it was my steamer line coppered and the Wong Yet bet to win.

“After I sold the 'Holy Molly' mine down in Yavapai County for eighteen thousand cash, I felt pretty Russel Sageish. 'From this on, Bill,' says I, taking the great oath, 'you'll live like a gentleman, a capitalist and a conosser on grub. No more beans. Nothing too good for your palate.' And to make my pledge good, goes to San Francisco town, where nobody but a capitalist can afford to eat delicacies. I buys a new white Stetson, long-tailed coat, velvet vest and red tie, a few sparklers and a striped shirt before I gets tired of spending money, and then the fun really begins.

“One morning I goes by a place from which comes a hilarious noise like a Pueblo wedding or a Chinese funeral, and sees a lot of fellows inside putting nickels in slots and pipe stems in their ears.

“'What might them things be?' I asked a feller standing outside, wearing a giddy suit that looked like a camp-made checker board.

“'Oh—go to the devil!' he says, as contemptuous as the man that owns the railway station down at Beaver Flat, Arizony, when you ask him if the trains is running all right.

“I looked at him mournfully, my fingers feeling an attraction like a magnet towards my gun, to answer his ungenteel conversation. Then he slides into another place, and when I saw the sign, it reminded me that I had business in there too. It wasn't none of them newfangled names, 'Buffet' or 'Cafy,' but just that good old heart-warming sign to steer men onto the right path—'saloon.' So in I goes.

“Deacon Checkerboards was in there too, hears me order mine and pretty soon looks friendlier. 'Guess his dispepsy warmed up when he got something for it,' thinks I.

“'Were you in earnest about asking me what those were?' he says benevolently.

“'Yes,' I says. Then he tells me it's a funnygraft.

“Not to be outplayed because the limit on etiquette was too high, I orders up the tonic, and we gets sociable as a Sunday School picnic. I warms up as the dispepsy cure works, and tells him how I haven't been out of the hills or away from the cow country for many full hands of moons, and was now going to take life somnambulistically, and learn nothing but how to spend money. That seemed to interest him, and I for a moment suspicioned that he might offer himself as a mighty competent instructor.

“He was a real nice, sociable feller, who answered to the name of E. Hazard Greene. He took me back to the funnygraft parlors. He paid for that, and as far as I can recollect, that was the only extravagance he indulged in for my entertainment. I put the pipe stems in my ears and hears a feller who has just landed in New York and who was so happy over it he was singing to beatell.

“We wanders around for a while and lands up at the wharf, where I learns that this friend of mine is a steamboat man. Has Noah looking like a deck hand when it comes to navigation. Owns several fine steamers and wants to sell me one. Says he has one of them gilded palaces up in Seattle that could be run backwards and forwards, taking the idle rich to the Bremerton navy yards, where I could make a fortune without working any. It looked as pretty as a Mexican sombrero to me.

“But I wasn't so easy. I didn't take no chances on nothing since that time Wong Yet gold-bricked me, so I says, 'Say, I know the name of a feller up there, and I'll just write and ask him about it.'

“'About what?' says E. Hazard, indignant as a first-class hotel clerk.

“'Now, Haz,' says I—you notice I called him 'Haz'—'bizness is bizness,' says I, reproachfully, and then takes a lay-off to smooth his vaccinated feelings. 'All I want to know is that there is a boat there and that you've got the right to sell her.'

“That fazed him for a minute, but before I got my suspicions to working overtime, he agrees.

“Sure, sure,' says he, 'all you have to do, my friend, is to telegraph this acquaintance of yours. I'll go right along with you to an office and help send it.'

“We ambles up to the telegraph office in the Palace Hotel, where he accommodatingly writes out and sends to my friend this: 'Go to Meig's wharf and see if there is a boat there called the Arrow. Is she in first-class condition, and who owns her?'

“After seeking various diversions in the way of eats and drinks, we came back to the telegraph office in the afternoon, both feeling so affectionate that we didn't stand on ceremony, and I was calling him 'Hazzie' and he was slapping me on the back and carelessly calling me 'Bill,' or 'Old Sport.' Just like long-lost partners, and me with money rainbows painted in my brain until the northern lights would have looked like a ten-cent stereopticon show.

“I was in such a hurry to get busy at the steamboat business that I could hardly wait for him to open my answer for me. It read, 'Yes, Arrow still here. Fine boat, good condition. Owned by man now in San Francisco, named E. Hazard Greene.'

“'Honest, I hate to sell it for twelve thousand,' says Greene, as though about to copper the bet. And I had to tall mighty persuadin' to him to get him to separate for that, as it was about all I had left of my pile.

“'But he did finally, with a kind of reluctant O-Bill-why-do-you-do-me air, and I dragged him into the back end of a saloon to count over the money and give me a bill of sale for the aforesaid steamer Arrow, Meig's wharf, Seattle.

“On the way to Seattle was when I pictured my name hurdling over the range of time alongside Commodore Vanderbilt and other ship owners. Didn't wait to walk to a hotel when I fell off at Seattle, but skated across the railway switches to Meig's wharf and sasshayed in as though I owned it. 'Where you going?' says a fellow with a Pullman porter's cap—only it wasn't—on his horns.

“'Don't get gay with me,' I says, important like. 'I'm the man that has bought the big steamer Arrow, and here's the dockyments says I'm that lucky individual.'

“He reads 'em and lets out a few vocal cachinnations.

“'Steamer be blowed,' he says, after he'd gulped like a fish to catch wind. 'Come here.' And then he points out a boat about big enough for a sporting gent's watch charm, with nothing in it but one of them new-fangled 2x4 engines. You know the kind. One of them little launches that run around crazy like a water bug on a typhoid mill-pond.

“'Bunkoed, by Heavens, Bill!' says I, feeling so skinned up that I had a notion to chuck a pebble through the bottom of the Arrow just to see the 'big excursion steamer' sink.

“The boy with the cap showed signs of merriment until I hauled out my disappearing protector, and then he got sympathetic. Started in to give me advice, but I told him I'd go to a lawyer for that.

“The lawyer took 'most all the rest of my money for telling me that he reckoned I'd better let the matter drop, as E. Hazard Greene would probably get to Europe on his handicap before I could see the tape. Even then I thought of rounding him up and shooting him full of holes, but it took money to travel, and I was shy.

“Well, I laid around a few days, disconsolate and trying to sell the Arrow. I didn't get twelve thousand worth of fun out of her, but learned how to handle her. Then one day I heard how the Chinese get smuggled across into this free-for-all-but-Chinese country of ours, and as it was right in my line, decided to tackle the game.

“My being able to talk Chinese helped a lot, and pretty soon I was at it full tilt. The Arrow was all right for that graft. Fast and noiseless. I would go to Victoria or Vancouver, get a load of Chinks, cash in advance, run 'em out by night and land 'em down the Sound. Sometimes Tacoma, sometimes Port Townsend.

“Pretty quick money, too.

“I picks up a big bunch in Vancouver one day, and my eyes pretty nearly fell off when I see at the head of this party my amiable old-time friend Wong Yet. He doesn't know me from any other maverick, because I've let my beard grow till I look like a Mormon elder. Same old Wong Yet. Smiling like a variety actress and innocent as Mary's mutton.

“I don't let on that I can talk Chinese this time, and before long cuts my wisdom teeth on the fact that Wong has a duly signed certificate for himself so he can come in any time, but that he is going to double-cross me and the other Chinks by getting three hundred apiece out of them for the landing and expects to pay me only fifty.

“We had a mighty hard time to understand each other and make the deal, and I was scared to a yellow myself for fear some of the home talent would let slip that I could talk the language; but they didn't, and I got the job.

“Took pretty slick work to get 'em all part-way down the Sound that night, where we camped. Next night I ran 'em slow and pretty well up toward Seattle before we stopped in the woods for the night. While they were rolled up in their blankets back a piece from the cove, where I had the Arrow hidden through the daylight, I would sit like a Piute and listen to them talk about China, but couldn't learn that any of 'em was Wong's and my old gang—just a job lot he'd picked up on speculation, I reckoned.

“My first calculations had been to hand the whole parcel over to the officers after I got their coin, but I thought of what mother used to say, 'Honesty is its own reward,' so decided to land them all right. But I would have given something to know what Wong thought of one Bill Slocum, had he ever opened up on that interesting subject.

“Before ever he would take a snooze he would get off by himself, and I could tell from the way he occasionally felt his blouse where he had his money cached. That set me to thinking and I worked out a scheme.

“Well, next night I made two trips, both slow ones, and landed all Chinks but two up on Smith's cove, where I gave 'em all a fond fare-you-well. Had to explain in pigeon English that the launch was 'most broke down as a reason why I couldn't take 'em all in two trips, and pretend that it was by accident that Wong Yet and another Oriental that looked like him, but who didn't know a word of English, came last.

“When the dawn commenced to sneak up over the trees I got back for that pair. I ran the Arrow well out this time under slow speed, and all of a sudden commenced to cuss and jump and rare and shut her off.

“'Small—smalla?' gibbers old Wong as the screw stopped.

“'Him sclew bleak,' I said in my best pigeon English and kept on jumping up and down like a locoed steer. Then, to make the play good and strong, I swears like I was terrified of being caught, and kept it up for an hour while the daylight came filtering out and boats began to 'most run us down in the Sound.

“Wong swore at the boat in English and then cussed my honorable ancestors in Chinese, while the other feller was huddled up in a limp heap like a batch of wet buckskin and expecting every minute that it was all off. Finally, when I knew I couldn't land 'em without attracting attention, unless I ran into the cove again, I pretends to get the breakage fixed and starts her up.

“Before we rounded the point by West Seattle and came in view of the city, I watched my chance until there wasn't a boat in sight, then makes one good, quick lunge at Wong Yet. I didn't mean to hurt him bad, but took no chance, and before he could make a move cracked him one on top of his conspiracy tank that sent him off to sounder sleep than dope had ever furnished.

“The other Chink looked like a full-blown stampede into the water, until I threw the muzzle of my gun toward him.

“'Don't leave me so unceremoniously,' says I, for the first time speaking in Chinese. 'I need your company, and besides, you ain't going to get hurt. You're my friend.'

“He looked kind of skeptical as to what kind of a friend I might be, but decided to stay with the ship.

“All this time I was mighty busy going through Mr. Wong and succeeded in attaching myself to a nice fat wallet, which I afterward found had nearly eight thousand in it.

“Then I explains to this other yellow boy about the double cross on price and my old score with Wong. 'All I want,' says I, 'is for you to have a lapse of memory. Take a dose of what parlor English and my old friend Webster call 'juxtaposition of names.' Your name is Wong Yet from now until you leave America or sell your certificate and go back home. You never saw this bucko until we fished him out of the Sound. You are to put the others on when you meet them, and they never saw or heard of him before!

“You see, I knew this would carry out, because Chinese is a revengeful sort of cattle, and as soon as they found that Wong had been giving them the merry nudge on the price to be paid me they would all join the drummers to play even on him.

“Then I dumps my old friend Wong overboard and fishes him in again, wet, blinking and wondering what had happened. He asked the other Chink about it, but the other feller was very reticent. He wasn't burning up with elucidations about that time, but looked as if he would like to take a crack at Wong himself.

“When Wong claps his hand on his blouse and finds his wallet gone, he lets out a roar, but grew meek and orderly when he examined the front elevation of my Colts.

“At full speed I ran the Arrow smack-bang in front of the customs inspector's office. He was loafing on the wharf, trying to pick a filling out of his tooth with his pocket knife.

“'Got a case here for you,' yells I. 'Picked up a Chink out here on a log. Think he was trying to beat his way in. Better see if he's got papers.'

“'Liar!' shrieks Wong.

“'Shut up,' says the burly customs. And then, 'Who's the other one?' jerking his thumb towards the other heathen.

“'Oh, he's all right. Works for me. I carry his papers so he won't lose 'em,' I says, passing up the certificate as I talked. 'His name's Wong Yet.'

“The officer looks at 'em and returns 'em to the other chap, who grins, bids me good-bye in Chinese, and walks off up the wharf.

“Aided by sharp teeth and a bad disposition, Wong Yet kept the officer and me pretty busy for a minute, till we got him in a patrol wagon and off to the jail house.

“Next day I appeared against him, and the day after, as a China-bound steamer cast off her lines and swung out into the stream, I waved my fist at the mournfullest looking Chink I ever saw, who stood huddled up in the steerage as if he had no friends, no money and no ancestors.

“Bong swar,' I called out, and then in Chinese, 'Tata, my old pal, Wong Yet. I'm old Bill Slocum. Do you remember the good times we had in China before you bunkoed me out of my coin? You still owe me a few thousand taels, but I'll call it square.'

“And then, for fear of other Wongs and Greenes, I sewed my money to my shirt, and hit the steel trail for Arizona again, presenting, before I did so, one nice, big, fat excursion steamer, the Arrow, to a friend of mine who tended bar for a living.”