Part 11 (2/2)
”'It's _she_,' says he, gaspin' as though shot hard.
”'Wot!' cries Hardenberg, sort of mystified, 'Oh, I'm sure a-dreamin'!
he says, just that silly-like.
”'An' the mugs we've got!' says Strokher.
”An' they both sets to swearin' and cussin' to beat all I ever heard.
”'I can't let her see me so bunged up,' says Hardenberg, doleful-like, 'Oh, whatever is to be done?'
”'An' _I_ look like a real genuine blown-in-the-bottle pug,' whimpers Strokher. 'Never mind,' says he, 'we must face the music. We'll tell her these are sure honourable scars, got because we fit for her.'
”Well, the boat comes up an' the feemale party jumps out and comes up the let-down stairway, onto the deck. Without sayin' a word she hands Hardenberg the half o' the card and he fishes out his half an' matches the two by the light o' a lantern.
”By this time the rowboat has gone a little ways off, an' then at last Hardenberg says:
”'Welk.u.m aboard, Signorita.'
”And Strokher cuts in with----
”'We thought it was to be a man that 'ud join us here to take command, but _you_,' he says--an' oh, b.u.t.ter wouldn't a-melted in his mouth--'But _you_ he says, 'is always our mistress.
”'Very right, _bueno_. Me good fellows,' says the Signorita, 'but don't you be afraid that they's no man is at the head o' this business.' An'
with that the party chucks off hat an' skirts, _and I'll be Mexican if it wa'n't a man after all!_
”'I'm the Signor Barreto Palachi, gentlemen,' says he. 'The gringo police who wanted for to arrest me made the disguise necessary.
Gentlemen, I regret to have been obliged to deceive such gallant _compadres_; but war knows no law.'
”Hardenberg and Strokher gives one look at the Signor and another at their own spiled faces, then:
”'Come back here with the boat!' roars Hardenberg over the side, and with that--(upon me word you'd a-thought they two both were moved with the same spring)--over they goes into the water and strikes out hands over hands for the boat as hard as ever they kin lay to it. The boat meets 'em--Lord knows what the party at the oars thought--they climbs in an' the last I sees of 'em they was puttin' for sh.o.r.e--each havin' taken a oar from the boatman, an' they sure was makin' that boat _hum_.
”Well, we sails away eventually without 'em; an' a year or more afterward I crosses their trail again in Cy Ryder's office in 'Frisco.”
”Did you ask them about it all?” said I.
”Mister Man,” observed Bunt. ”I'm several kinds of a fool; I know it.
But sometimes I'm wise. I wishes for to live as long as I can, an' die when I can't help it. I does _not_, neither there, nor thereafterward, ever make no joke, nor yet no alloosion about, or concerning the Signorita Esperanza Palachi in the hearin' o' Hardenberg an' Strokher.
I've seen--(ye remember)--both those boys use their fists--an' likewise Hardenberg, as he says hisself, shoots with both hands.”
THE DUAL PERSONALITY OF SLICK d.i.c.k NICKERSON
I.
On a certain morning in the spring of the year, the three men who were known as the Three Black Crows called at the office of ”The President of the Pacific and Oriental Flotation Company,” situated in an obscure street near San Francisco's water-front. They were Strokher, the tall, blond, solemn, silent Englishman; Hardenberg, the American, dry of humour, shrewd, resourceful, who bargained like a Vermonter and sailed a schooner like a Gloucester cod-fisher; and in their company, as ever inseparable from the other two, came the little colonial, nicknamed, for occult reasons, ”Ally Bazan,” a small, wiry man, excitable, vociferous, who was without fear, without guile and without money.
When Hardenberg, who was always spokesman for the Three Crows, had sent in their names, they were admitted at once to the inner office of the ”President.” The President was an old man, bearded like a prophet, with a watery blue eye and a forehead wrinkled like an orang's. He spoke to the Three Crows in the manner of one speaking to friends he has not seen in some time.
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