Cut Bank pioneer press. [volume] (Cut Bank, Mont.) 1909-current, 1913-04-04

MAAEMsM&HN% Inc racine deVeloped Its Bully
E Hayes, the Australian bush shell
@<H~l@@ tered the notorious Captain Star
light. and Tasmania in the seventies was the
theater for the exploits of Coventry Strike-a-
Light, but It is doubtful if either of those wor.
thies at tfle.r best, or worst, had anything on
the bright particular star of the Indian Ocean,
Red Saunders.
To have known Saunders was a liberal educa-
ton, and when a turn of Dame Fortunes wheel
pitched me out on the beach at Maize and into
his company, the tickle old lady unwittingly did
me a service not to be too highly esteemed.
There is only one place in the little town that
a sailor is likely to bring up in-Francois' MA
hogany Bar" and like everybody else [ had hung
around that rum ranch until money was as
scarce as frogs feathers. I was trying to figure
out my next move when Red Saunders hove in
sight. =.
The barkeep, / suppose on the same principle
that leads a sawbones to give a poor devil a
dose of dope preparatory to abbreviating his
longitude by a leg, set a bottle of liquid tin
tacks up for me, with the kind intimation to
nave one on the house and clear to blaZes out
of here" and my outlook seemed about as bright
as the soul of a Chinaman, when a red-topped
giant. six feet six by about four feet beam, rolled
in through the door and strobe up to the bar.
"Barkeep, where in Tophet are all the hugger-
muggers today" he growled In a voice like
Mauna-Loa in eruption.
Studs briefly indicated my now improbable
caTGdSS ana shrugged MS shoulders, remarklng
that business was bad, or even l should have
been on my way before now.
Solitude will breed strange comradeship any
where, and having nothing else to nail his at
tention. Saunders took a good look over me and
showed the "tacks' my way again. saying as he
let go the bottle:
You don't seem dazzling with diamonds,
matey, but maybe you can shoot the CUFF, so take
another pearler's peg and -,eep me company for
a SPELL"
We took our vitriol over to a table and stretch
ed legs, giving and receiving the news of the
beach, while I was debating in my mind whether
1t would be worth while for me to breach to this
copper-nobbed stranger the scheme that had kept
me awake nights for months. Though gossip and
rumor had made Saunders familiar to everybody
on the beach, the man had never crossed my
bows until ten minutes before, and what or who
he was little Willie could not have guessed. Pre-
vious to his entry there had been nothing on my
horizon. and he certainly was a sociable sort of
brute; so putting all my trade in one bottom, I
opened out and laid my dream out for Red to
pass on. Said /:
You look like a blue-water man, none bluer,
and, If you can find the hooker, / can lead you to
the place where minted moguls are lying, not too
far down for a number one diver to get at; but
I'm cleaned out. busted to blazes, ard can't even
subscribe to the tucker bill. I'm all in, but this
yarns straight stuff; if you're looking for a fut-
ter, here's a chance. What dye say?'
| was keenly aware of a cold ,steely drive
through and through from a gimlet eye before
that mighty voice rumbled forth:
Show your goods, perish your pelt. That CUFF
is too easy to pass if you've got no rocks at bot
tom. I've got a little schooner out in the bay
right now; she's ready for any trip from niger
stealing to pearl-poaching, and can be handled by
two s~ailor-men; but give us the yarn and give it
straight, or by the peak of perdition I'll haze you
for trying to throw the bull at Red Saunders!
Here, Francois, give that bottle a fair wind, and
leave il here"
Back in 1875" l began. the clipper ship
Strathmore, outward bound for Otago, New Yea
land, piled up on the CroZets, and when she went
up had fifty odd people aboard. all colonists, and
all carrying their entire worldly capital in the
ships strong box. The amount of cash aboard,
including a sum for payment of government sal
aries. was somewhere around twenty thousand
pounds sterling, or one hundred thousand if you
want it in dollars.
The people were taken off after more than
six months of misery, but the stuff is still there.
and l think can be got by a diver. The spot is
we'll laid down and I can take you there. How's
it strike you, cap'n?"
Red took his second-mate's nip at a gulp and
gripped me my the arm, growing like a south
erly buster:
See here, young fellow-my-Iad, I've got a
streak of intelligence in me today. and it seems
to me that you are sailing straight. Anyway, |
like the cut of your phiz, and as I've got nothing
better on hand, I'm going to take you up on that
CtfdlnIuOTe JOD, ana we ii get our NOOK Ln1S same
rudy p. m. I'll stand the stores and put my
boat in it; you'll take us there and We'll go alone,
share and share, fifty and fifty; and you'd bet
ter be sure you're sailing straight, for I'm an
ugly Brighter when I find I'm being blistered!"
That settled the hash so far as l. was con-
cerned; | had no dunnage to stow, and Red sim
ply yanked me out of the bar and down to the
beach, where his boat was lying, telling me to
row out to a little black schooner in the road
stead and cast off the stops, while he went up to
the town to get a barrel of beef and some small
stores.
The little vessel l boarded was certainly a
beauty-regular yacht in lines and deck fittings.
When well under way and heading for the
east coast of Madagascar, we arranged to keep
watch and watch, and each to call the other if
the schooner got out of hand, but after Red
showed me how the little hooker would lay her
course with the wheel in a beckett l had no
qualms as to the necessity for more hands, and
decided that l would not be the first one to
call the watch"
We took our supper on the cabin skylight to-