My Friend The Murderer | Page 5

the evidence. I'd die happy if I could come across him. There are
two things I have to do if I meet him."
"What's that?" says I, carelessly.
"I've got to ask him where the money lies--they never had time to make
away with it, and it's cachéd somewhere in the mountains--and then
I've got to stretch his neck for him, and send his soul down to join the
men that he betrayed."
It seemed to me that I knew something about that caché, and I felt like
laughing; but he was watching me, and it struck me that he had a nasty,
vindictive kind of mind.
"I'm going up on the bridge," I said, for he was not a man whose
acquaintance I cared much about making.
He wouldn't hear of my leaving him, though. "We're both miners," he
says, "and we're pals for the voyage. Come down to the bar. I'm not too
poor to shout."
I couldn't refuse him well, and we went down together; and that was the
beginning of the trouble. What harm was I doing any one on the ship?
All I asked for was a quiet life, leaving others alone and getting left
alone myself. No man could ask fairer than that. And now just you
listen to what came of it.
We were passing the front of the ladies' cabin, on our way to the saloon,
when out comes a servant lass--a freckled currency she-devil--with a
baby in her arms. We were brushing past her, when she gave a scream
like a railway whistle, and nearly dropped the kid. My nerves gave a
sort of a jump when I heard that scream, but I turned and begged her
pardon, letting on that I thought I might have trod on her foot. I knew
the game was up, though, when I saw her white face, and her leaning
against the door and pointing.
"It's him!" she cried; "it's him! I saw him in the court-house. Oh, don't

let him hurt the baby!"
"Who is it?" asked the steward and half a dozen others in a breath.
"It's him--Maloney--Maloney, the murderer--oh, take him away--take
him away!"
I don't rightly remember what happened just at that moment. The
furniture and me seemed to get kind of mixed, and there was cursing,
and smashing, and some one shouting for his gold, and a general
stamping round. When I got steadied a bit, I found somebody's hand in
my mouth. From what I gathered afterward, I concluded that it
belonged to that same little man with the vicious way of talking. He got
some of it out again, but that was because the others were choking me.
A poor chap can get no fair play in this world when once he is
down--still, I think he will remember me till the day of his
death--longer, I hope.
They dragged me out on to the poop and held a damned
court-martial--on me, mind you; me, that had thrown over my pals in
order to serve them. What were they to do with me? Some said this,
some said that; but it ended by the captain deciding to send me ashore.
The ship stopped, they lowered a boat, and I was hoisted in, the whole
gang of them hooting at me from over the bulwarks, I saw the man I
spoke of tying up his hand, though, and I felt that things might be
worse.
I changed my opinion before we got to the land. I had reckoned on the
shore being deserted, and that I might make my way inland; but the
ship had stopped too near the Heads, and a dozen beach-combers and
such like had come down to the water's edge and were staring at us,
wondering what the boat was after. When we got to the edge of the surf
the cockswain hailed them, and after singing out who I was, he and his
men threw me into the water. You may well look surprised--neck and
crop into ten feet of water, with sharks as thick as green parrots in the
bush, and I heard them laughing as I floundered to the shore.
I soon saw it was a worse job than ever. As I came scrambling out

through the weeds, I was collared by a big chap with a velveteen coat,
and half a dozen others got round me and held me fast. Most of them
looked simple fellows enough, and I was not afraid of them; but there
was one in a cabbage-tree hat that had a very nasty expression on his
face, and the big man seemed to be chummy with him.
They dragged me up the beach, and then they let go their hold of me
and stood round in a circle.
"Well,