style="font-size:15px;"> “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.”
Stenzenberger sat down again. Henry, whose outbreak against the evils of society had stirred up, apparently, some pet feeling of bitterness, now sat moodily looking at the table.
“It’s about Roche, Cap’n,” Dick went on. “I had to leave him at Manistee.”
“Why?”
“He drinks too much for me – I couldn’t depend on him a minute. He bummed around up there, and got himself too shaky to be any use to me.”
Stenzenberger, with expressionless face, chewed his cigar. “What did you do for a mate?”
“Came down without one.”
“Have you found a man yet?”
“No – haven’t tried. I thought you might have some one you could suggest.”
“I don’t know. You ‘ll want to be starting up to Spencer’s place in a day or so.” He chewed his cigar thoughtfully for a moment, then dropped his voice. “There’s a man right here you might be able to use. Do you know McGlory?”
“No.”
“You do, Henry?”
“Yes, he was my mate for a year.”
“Well,” said Dick, “any man that suited Henry for a year ought to suit me.”
“You ‘ll find him a good, reliable man,” responded Henry, in an undertone. “He has a surly temper, but he knows all about a schooner.”
“Well, – if he’s anywhere around here now, we could fix it right up.”
Stenzenberger looked around. The woman had slipped out. “Madge,” he called; “Madge, my dear.”
She entered as quietly as before.
“Come in, my dear. You know Cap’n Smiley, don’t you?”
No, she didn’t.
“That’s a fact. He’s never seen in sample rooms. He sets up to be better than the rest of us; but I say, look out for him. And here’s his cousin, another Cap’n Smiley, the handsomest man on the Lakes.” Dick blushed at this. “Sit down a minute with us.”
She shook her head, and waited for him to come to the point.
“Where’s that man of yours, my dear? Is he anywhere around?”
“What is it you want of him?”
“I want him to know our young man here. I think they’re going to like each other. You tell him we want to see him.”
She hesitated; then with a suspicious glance around the group left the room.
In a moment McGlory appeared, a short, heavy-set man with high cheek-bones, a low, sloping forehead, and a curling black mustache. He nodded to Stenzenberger and Henry, and glanced at Dick.
“Joe,” said the lumber merchant, “shake hands with Cap’n Dick Smiley. He’s the best sailor between here and Buffalo, and the only trouble with him is we can’t get a mate good enough for him. A man’s got to know his business to sail with Dick Smiley. Ain’t that so, Henry?”
“I guess that’s right.”
“And Henry tells me you’re the man that can do it.”
This pleasantry had no visible effect on McGlory. He was looking Dick over.
“I don’t know about that, Cap’n. I promised Madge I’d give up the Lake for good.”
“The Cap’n here,” pursued Stenzenberger, “is going to start to-morrow or next day for Spencer, to take on a load of timber and shingles.” His small brown eyes were fixed intently on the saloon keeper
