CHAPTER II – THE NEW MATE

IN the morning the William Schmidt, Henry Smiley, Master, came in from Chicago and tied up across the pier from the Merry Anne.

Henry, Dick’s cousin, was a short, stocky, man, said to be somewhat of a driver with his sailors. He seldom had much to say, never drank, was shrewd at a bargain, and was supposed to have a considerable sum stowed away in the local savings bank. Though he was wanting in the qualities that made his younger cousin popular, he was daring enough in his quiet way, and he had been known, when he thought the occasion justified it, to run long chances with his snub-nosed schooner.

After breakfast Dick walked across the broad pier between the piles of lumber, and found Henry in his cabin. They greeted each other cordially.

“Sit down,” said Henry. “Did you come down through that nor’wester?”

Dick nodded.

“Have any trouble?”

“Oh, no. Lost some sleep – that’s all. You aren’t going down to the yards to-day, are you?”

“Yes – I think likely. Why?”

“I ‘ll go along with you. I’m ready to make another payment on the schooner. I’ve been thinking it over, and it strikes me I’m paying about three times what she’s worth. What do you think? Would it do any harm to have a little talk about it with the Cap’n? You know him better than I do.”

Henry shook his head. “I wouldn’t. He is too smart for you. He will beat you any way you try it, and have you thanking him before he is through with you. I have gone all over this ground before, you know. Of course he is an old rascal – but I don’t know of any other way you could even get an interest in a schooner. You see, you haven’t any capital. He will give you all the time you want, and I don’t know but what he’s entitled to a little extra, everything considered. But don’t say anything, whatever you do. You’ve got too good a thing here.”

“You think I ought to just shut up and let him bleed me?”

“He isn’t bleeding you. Just think it over, Dick. You are making a living, and you already have a quarter interest in your schooner. You couldn’t ask much more at your age. Have you heard from him yet, by the way?”

“No.”

“He spoke to me the other day about wanting to see you when you came in. There’s another order to come down from Spencer.”

“Where’s that?”

“Up in the Alpena country.”

“Lake Huron, eh? Oh – isn’t that where you went in the spring?”

“Yes, I’ve been there. An old fellow named Spencer runs a little one-horse mill, and he’s selling timber and shingles. And from what the Cap’n said, I don’t think he’d care if you brought along a little venture of your own. That’s the way I used to do, when I was paying for the Schmidt.”

“How could I do that?”

“Spencer will give you a little credit. You can stow away a few thousand feet, and clear twenty or thirty dollars. It helps along.”

“All right, I ‘ll try it. Are you sure the old man won’t care?”

“Oh, yes. He’s willing enough to do the square thing, so long as it keeps us feeling good and doesn’t lose him anything.”

“Say – there’s another thing, Henry. I fired Roche, up at Manistee.”

“Fired him?” Henry’s brows came together.

“Yes, I had to. I had stood him as long as I could.”

“I don’t know what the Cap’n will say about that.”

“I’d like to know what he can say. I was in command.”

“Yes, I know – of course you had a right to; but the thing is to keep on his good side. Suppose we go right down to the yards, and see if you can get your story in before Roche’s.”

“What does the Cap’n care about my men, I’d like to know!”

“Now, keep cool, Dick. Roche, you see, used to work for him, – I don’t know but what they’re related, – and it was because the Cap’n spoke to me about him that I recommended him to you when I did. And look here, Dick,” – Henry smiled as he laid a hand on his cousin’s shoulder, – “I’m a good deal older than you are, and you can take my word for it. Don’t get sour on things. Of course people will do you if they can; but it’s human nature, and you can’t change it by growling about it. You are doing well, and what you need now is to keep your eyes open and your mouth shut. Why should you want to hurry things along?”

A flush came over Dick’s face. “There’s a reason all right enough. You see, Henry, there’s a little girl not so very many miles from here – ”

“Oho!” thought Henry, “a little girl!” But his face was immobile, excepting a momentary curious expression that passed over it.

“Now don’t get to thinking it’s all fixed up, because it isn’t – not yet. But you see, I’ve been thinking that when I’ve got a little something to offer – ”

“There’s another thing you can take my word for, my boy,” said Henry, with a dry smile; “don’t get impetuous. Marrying may be all right, but it wants to be done careful.”

Captain Stenzenberger’s lumber yard was a few miles away, at the Chicago city limits. As the two sailors left the pier to walk up to the railway station, Dick was glad to change the subject for the first one that came into his head. “What do you suppose the Foote has been doing here this week, Dick? I heard she put in Tuesday or Wednesday.”

“Looking for Whiskey Jim, I suppose.”

“Oh, are they on that track again?”

“Haven’t you seen the papers?”

“No – not for more than a week.”

“Well, it’s quite a yarn. From what has been said, I rather guess it’s the liquor dealers that are stirring it up this time. There is a story around that he has been counterfeiting the red-seal label on their bottles. I think they’re all off the track, though. Anybody could tell ‘em that there’s no such man. Every time a case of smuggling comes up, the papers talk about ‘Whiskey Jim,’ no matter if it’s up at the straits or down on the St. Lawrence.”

“But what’s the trouble now?”

“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.

Stenzenberger smiled broadly on her, and winked. “How d’ do, Madge,” he said. “Can’t you give us a little something with a smile in it, – one o’ your smiles maybe now?”

She was a tall woman, with a full figure and snapping eyes, – attractive, in spite of a crow’s-foot wrinkle or so. She returned the smile, wearily, and said, “I ‘ll call Joe, Mr. Stenzenberger.”

“You needn’t do that now, Madge. Draw it with those pretty hands of yours, there’s a dear.”

So she came in behind the bar, wiping her hands on her apron, and quietly awaited their orders.

“What ‘ll it be, boys?”

Dick suggested a glass of beer, but Henry smiled and shook his head. “You might make it ginger ale for me.”

“I don’t know what to do with that cousin of yours,” said Stenzenberger to Dick. “He’s a queer one. I don’t like to trust a man that’s got no vices. What are your vices, anyhow, Smiley?”

Henry smiled again. “Ask Dick, there. He ought to know all about me.”

Stenzenberger looked from one to the other; then he raised his foaming glass, and with a “Prosit” and a stiff German nod, he put it down at a gulp.

“Been reading about the revenue case?” Henry asked of his superior.

“I saw something this morning.”

“I’ve been quite interested in it. Billy Boynton told me yesterday that they had searched his schooner. It’s a wonder they haven’t got after us if they’re holding up fellows like him. Do you think they ‘ll ever get this Whiskey Jim, Cap’n?”

“No, they talk too much. And they couldn’t catch a mud-scow with that old side-wheeler of theirs.”

“Guess that’s right. The Foote must have started in here before the Michigan, and she’s thirty years old if she’s a day. The boys are all talking about it down at the city. I dropped around at the Hydrographic Office after I saw Billy, and found two or three others that had been hauled over. It seems they’ve stumbled on a pipe-line half built under the Detroit River near Wyandotte, and there’s been a good deal of excitement. There’s capital behind it, you see; and a little capital does wonders with those revenue men.”

Stenzenberger was showing symptoms of readiness to return to his desk, but Henry, who rarely grew reminiscent, was now fairly launched.

“They can’t get an effective revenue system, because they make it too easy for a man to get rich. It’s like the tax commissioners and the aldermen and the legislators, – when you put a man where he can rake off his pile, month after month, without there being any way of checking him up, look out for his morals. And where they’re all in it together, no one dares squeal. It’s a good deal like the railway conductors.

“You remember last year when the Northeastern Road laid off all but two or three of its old conductors for stealing fares? Well, it wasn’t a month afterward that one of the ‘honest’ ones came to me and hired the Schmidt to carry a twelve-hundred-dollar grand piano up to Milwaukee, where he lives. He had reasons of his own for not wanting to ship by rail. No, sir, it wouldn’t be hard for me to have sympathy with an honest thief that goes in and runs his chances of getting shot or knocked on the head, – that calls for some nerve, – but these fellows that put up a bluff as lawmakers and policemen and revenue officers and then steal right and left – deliver me!”

“Well, boys, I guess I ‘ll have to step back. I’m a busy man, you know. Have another before we go?”

“One minute, Cap’n,” said Dick. “There’s something I want to talk over with you, if you can spare the time.”