Charley bit his lip with suppressed anger and turned on his heel.
"Are you game, my lad?" he said to me later on in the evening, just as we finished washing down the _Reindeer"s_ decks and were preparing to turn in.
A lump came up in my throat, and I could only nod my head.
"Well, then," and Charley"s eyes glittered in a determined way, "we"ve got to capture Big Alec between us, you and I, and we"ve got to do it in spite of Carmintel. Will you lend a hand?"
"It"s a hard proposition, but we can do it," he added after a pause.
"Of course we can," I supplemented enthusiastically.
And then he said, "Of course we can," and we shook hands on it and went to bed.
But it was no easy task we had set ourselves. In order to convict a man of illegal fishing, it was necessary to catch him in the act with all the evidence of the crime about him--the hooks, the lines, the fish, and the man himself. This meant that we must take Big Alec on the open water, where he could see us coming and prepare for us one of the warm receptions for which he was noted.
"There"s no getting around it," Charley said one morning. "If we can only get alongside it"s an even toss, and there"s nothing left for us but to try and get alongside. Come on, lad."
We were in the Columbia River salmon boat, the one we had used against the Chinese shrimp-catchers. Slack water had come, and as we dropped around the end of the Solano Wharf we saw Big Alec at work, running his line and removing the fish.
"Change places," Charley commanded, "and steer just astern of him as though you"re going into the shipyard."
I took the tiller, and Charley sat down on a thwart amidships, placing his revolver handily beside him.
"If he begins to shoot," he cautioned, "get down in the bottom and steer from there, so that nothing more than your hand will be exposed."
I nodded, and we kept silent after that, the boat slipping gently through the water and Big Alec growing nearer and nearer. We could see him quite plainly, gaffing the sturgeon and throwing them into the boat while his companion ran the line and cleared the hooks as he dropped them back into the water. Nevertheless, we were five hundred yards away when the big fisherman hailed us.
"Here! You! What do you want?" he shouted.
"Keep going," Charley whispered, "just as though you didn"t hear him."
The next few moments were very anxious ones. The fisherman was studying us sharply, while we were gliding up on him every second.
"You keep off if you know what"s good for you!" he called out suddenly, as though he had made up his mind as to who and what we were. "If you don"t, I"ll fix you!"
He brought a rifle to his shoulder and trained it on me.
"Now will you keep off?" he demanded.
I could hear Charley groan with disappointment. "Keep off," he whispered; "it"s all up for this time."
I put up the tiller and eased the sheet, and the salmon boat ran off five or six points. Big Alec watched us till we were out of range, when he returned to his work.
"You"d better leave Big Alec alone," Carmintel said, rather sourly, to Charley that night.
"So he"s been complaining to you, has he?" Charley said significantly.
Carmintel flushed painfully. "You"d better leave him alone, I tell you,"
he repeated. "He"s a dangerous man, and it won"t pay to fool with him."
"Yes," Charley answered softly; "I"ve heard that it pays better to leave him alone."
This was a direct thrust at Carmintel, and we could see by the expression of his face that it sank home. For it was common knowledge that Big Alec was as willing to bribe as to fight, and that of late years more than one patrolman had handled the fisherman"s money.
"Do you mean to say--" Carmintel began, in a bullying tone.
But Charley cut him off shortly. "I mean to say nothing," he said. "You heard what I said, and if the cap fits, why--"
He shrugged his shoulders, and Carmintel glowered at him, speechless.
"What we want is imagination," Charley said to me one day, when we had attempted to creep upon Big Alec in the gray of dawn and had been shot at for our trouble.
And thereafter, and for many days, I cudgelled my brains trying to imagine some possible way by which two men, on an open stretch of water, could capture another who knew how to use a rifle and was never to be found without one. Regularly, every slack water, without slyness, boldly and openly in the broad day, Big Alec was to be seen running his line. And what made it particularly exasperating was the fact that every fisherman, from Benicia to Vallejo, knew that he was successfully defying us. Carmintel also bothered us, for he kept us busy among the shad-fishers of San Pablo, so that we had little time to spare on the King of the Greeks. But Charley"s wife and children lived at Benicia, and we had made the place our headquarters, so that we always returned to it.
"I"ll tell you what we can do," I said, after several fruitless weeks had pa.s.sed; "we can wait some slack water till Big Alec has run his line and gone ash.o.r.e with the fish, and then we can go out and capture the line. It will put him to time and expense to make another, and then we"ll figure to capture that too. If we can"t capture him, we can discourage him, you see."
Charley saw, and said it wasn"t a bad idea. We watched our chance, and the next low-water slack, after Big Alec had removed the fish from the line and returned ash.o.r.e, we went out in the salmon boat. We had the bearings of the line from sh.o.r.e marks, and we knew we would have no difficulty in locating it. The first of the flood tide was setting in, when we ran below where we thought the line was stretched and dropped over a fishing-boat anchor. Keeping a short rope to the anchor, so that it barely touched the bottom, we dragged it slowly along until it stuck and the boat fetched up hard and fast.
"We"ve got it," Charley cried. "Come on and lend a hand to get it in."
Together we hove up the rope till the anchor came in sight with the sturgeon line caught across one of the flukes. Scores of the murderous-looking hooks flashed into sight as we cleared the anchor, and we had just started to run along the line to the end where we could begin to lift it, when a sharp thud in the boat startled us. We looked about, but saw nothing and returned to our work. An instant later there was a similar sharp thud and the gunwale splintered between Charley"s body and mine.
"That"s remarkably like a bullet, lad," he said reflectively. "And it"s a long shot Big Alec"s making."
"And he"s using smokeless powder," he concluded, after an examination of the mile-distant sh.o.r.e. "That"s why we can"t hear the report."
I looked at the sh.o.r.e, but could see no sign of Big Alec, who was undoubtedly hidden in some rocky nook with us at his mercy. A third bullet struck the water, glanced, pa.s.sed singing over our heads, and struck the water again beyond.
"I guess we"d better get out of this," Charley remarked coolly. "What do you think, lad?"
I thought so, too, and said we didn"t want the line anyway. Whereupon we cast off and hoisted the spritsail. The bullets ceased at once, and we sailed away, unpleasantly confident that Big Alec was laughing at our discomfiture.
And more than that, the next day on the fishing wharf, where we were inspecting nets, he saw fit to laugh and sneer at us, and this before all the fishermen. Charley"s face went black with anger; but beyond promising Big Alec that in the end he would surely land him behind the bars, he controlled himself and said nothing. The King of the Greeks made his boast that no fish patrol had ever taken him or ever could take him, and the fishermen cheered him and said it was true. They grew excited, and it looked like trouble for a while; but Big Alec a.s.serted his kingship and quelled them.
Carmintel also laughed at Charley, and dropped sarcastic remarks, and made it hard for him. But Charley refused to be angered, though he told me in confidence that he intended to capture Big Alec if it took all the rest of his life to accomplish it.
"I don"t know how I"ll do it," he said, "but do it I will, as sure as I am Charley Le Grant. The idea will come to me at the right and proper time, never fear."
And at the right time it came, and most unexpectedly. Fully a month had pa.s.sed, and we were constantly up and down the river, and down and up the bay, with no spare moments to devote to the particular fisherman who ran a Chinese line in the bight of Turner"s Shipyard. We had called in at Selby"s Smelter one afternoon, while on patrol work, when all unknown to us our opportunity happened along. It appeared in the guise of a helpless yacht loaded with seasick people, so we could hardly be expected to recognize it as the opportunity. It was a large sloop-yacht, and it was helpless inasmuch as the trade-wind was blowing half a gale and there were no capable sailors aboard.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "He saw fit to laugh sneer at us, before all the fishermen."]
From the wharf at Selby"s we watched with careless interest the lubberly manoeuvre performed of bringing the yacht to anchor, and the equally lubberly manoeuvre of sending the small boat ash.o.r.e. A very miserable-looking man in draggled ducks, after nearly swamping the boat in the heavy seas, pa.s.sed us the painter and climbed out. He staggered about as though the wharf were rolling, and told us his troubles, which were the troubles of the yacht. The only rough-weather sailor aboard, the man on whom they all depended, had been called back to San Francis...o...b.. a telegram, and they had attempted to continue the cruise alone. The high wind and big seas of San Pablo Bay had been too much for them; all hands were sick, n.o.body knew anything or could do anything; and so they had run in to the smelter either to desert the yacht or to get somebody to bring it to Benicia. In short, did we know of any sailors who would bring the yacht into Benicia?
Charley looked at me. The _Reindeer_ was lying in a snug place. We had nothing on hand in the way of patrol work till midnight. With the wind then blowing, we could sail the yacht into Benicia in a couple of hours, have several more hours ash.o.r.e, and come back to the smelter on the evening train.
"All right, captain," Charley said to the disconsolate yachtsman, who smiled in sickly fashion at the t.i.tle.
"I"m only the owner," he explained.