Tales of the Fish Patrol | Page 8

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
passed; "we can wait some slack water till Big Alec has run his line and
gone ashore 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