The Man Who Talked Too Much

                             By Roy Norton

         Author of “David and Goliath,” “Merely Business,” Etc.


    “Lucky” Cochran they called him. Also he was eloquent--very.
    Too much so, felt David and Goliath. However, they came to
    think that he was not the only one that way.

The Westbound Overland on the Santa Fe Railway, although doing its
splendid fifty miles an hour, seemed to two of its passengers to be
moving at a snail’s pace; for the journey ahead of them was long, and
their destination, which was far northward from San Francisco, the only
spot on earth worth reaching. To increase boredom they had for so long
been partners and fellow adventurers that all ordinary topics of
conversation between them had long been exhausted, and the barren
scenery through which they passed was too familiar to be worthy of
interest.

Furthermore, they had, but a few days previously, escaped from a certain
district in Mexico where for a brief time they had gambled their lives,
and were still too glad of escape to indulge in foolish conversation.
The veriest fool could not have mistaken them for other than what they
were; miners, prospectors, men of still places where life is crude and
hard. There was nothing to distinguish them or attract a second glance,
other than their incongruity of size; for one was a magnificent giant,
and the other a blocky, stocky runt, with shoulders much too large for
his stature and a flaming red head that seemed to have defied even the
bleaching of the sun. That these two were known to frontiersmen and men
of their ilk, over many thousands of miles, as “David and Goliath,”
meant nothing to them, nor to any of their fellow passengers; but that
they had casually reversed a seat in the smoking car and thus sprawled
over two seats instead of one did, as a magnet, attract the attention of
a man who wandered inward with a very large and very new alligator-skin
suit case that he dropped in the aisle beside them.

“You boys mind if I sit in this seat?” he demanded, and, although they
very much did, they promptly lowered their feet to the floor, doubled
their tired legs back into cramped postures, and told him to “set in.”

“Goin’ far?” he asked, before his weight had settled.

“Clean through to Los Angeles, then to San Francisco,” David, the
smaller man, replied after a moment’s pause.

“I’m bound for Frisco myself,” the man said, and then as if considering
an introduction necessary, added, “I’m Cochran. ‘Lucky’ Cochran, as they
call me.”

The partners did not appear impressed, or act as if they deemed it
incumbent on them to either register surprise, curiosity, or tell him
their own names.

“Reckon you’ve heard of me--Lucky Cochran?” the newcomer asked with a
grin that was entirely self-complacent.

The partners studied him for a moment and then the smaller man said, not
without a suggestion of disapproval, “Nope. Can’t say I ever did. Why?”

“Never heard tell of me? Lucky Cochran? I’m the man that owned the ranch
at Placides, where they struck oil. I’m the boy they paid twenty
thousand to last week and-- By gosh!--if things go right, I’ll get a
million more.”

Goliath yawned openly, stretched his long legs out into the aisle, and
David unblinkingly gazed at him as if taking stock of all his new
clothing, his diamond stud screwed into a flannel shirt, the diamond
ring on his heavy, thick-knuckled hands, and thence downward to his big
feet that were incased in patent-leather shoes of a design affected by
“sporting gents” of the previous decade.

“Humph! He looks it, don’t he?” David said, turning toward his partner.
As if his attention had just been casually called to something outside,
Goliath, in turn, appraised Mr. Cochran and then rumbled, “He sure
does!”

Entirely unabashed by their comments, Mr. Cochran seemed, on the
contrary, to be highly pleased.

“That’s me!” he remarked. “Lucky Cochran! That’s me, boys.” And then, as
if stimulated to speech, he began talking. He told them the history of
his new wealth, of his lean years, of where he had originated. He even
told them stories. His tongue wagged as if on a pivot, pendulous, and
the fact that neither of them evidenced the slightest interest, or
interpolated any remarks, did not in the least curb his loquacity.

The partners moved into the emigrant sleeping car, where they breathed
deeply, thanking Heaven that they had lost Mr. Lucky Cochran. Two hours
later Mr. Cochran also moved in and greeted them like long-lost
brothers. The partners fled to the smoking compartment, and Cochran
pursued them. The tiny cabin was filled with men and smoke, and to their
relief Cochran began telling his story to those therein assembled, and
the partners fled to the smoking car at the front end of the train. They
sat quietly, glad of the fact that no conversation was hurled at them;
for they were wonderfully skilled as listeners, although short in words.
One man was telling another of how much cheaper it was to travel to San
Francisco from San Diego by steamer than by rail, and how much more
comfortable if one had time to spare. The partners listened and weighed
his words.

“Goliath, what’s the matter with our takin’ the boat up?” David asked,
after the man and his companion had gone.

“Just the thing, provided we can lose that lucky guy,” said Goliath with
a grin.

“Right! Anything to lose him,” David agreed, and they considered their
information fortunate when Mr. Cochran found them again and opened up
his verbal batteries with, “By gosh! Been lookin’ for you boys. It’s
mighty lucky we’re to keep company all the way to Frisco. Where do we
stop in Los Angeles?”

“We don’t stop,” said David sourly. “We’ve got business down in San
Diego.”

“San Dieger, eh? Come to think of it, I ain’t never been to San Dieger.
Tell you what I’ll do, I’ll go along with you!” he added benignantly, as
if doing them a great favor.

It was on the tip of Goliath’s tongue to say, “Not by a dam sight, you
won’t,” but David broke in hurriedly with, “Come to think of it we ain’t
so sure. Maybe we won’t go that way. We’re thinkin’ it over.”

By skillful dodging they succeeded in losing Cochran, when they arrived
at Los Angeles, and went to an obscure hotel, where they intended to
stop overnight and break their journey; for railways to men of their
stamp were like temporary prisons. Unfortunately, after dining, they sat
in the rotunda which was ablaze with lights. In from the street rushed
Mr. Cochran with great jubilation.

“Mighty nice I found you!” he roared. “Been lookin’ everywhere for you.
A fool nigger grabbed my suit case there at the deepot, and while I was
chasin’ him I lost you. Reckon you were worried about me, too, wa’n’t
you?”

“We were! We were!” David declared, most fervently and truthfully.

Cochran bolted from them to the desk, held a conversation with the
clerk, produced a wad of bills as big as a Mohave maiden’s leg, and then
rushed back to them and seized a vacant chair.

“It’s all right! Got her fixed up now. Sent over to the Willard House
for my things and got a room here. By gosh! It’s a lonesome thing to be
travelin’ alone. I’m tickled as stiff as a burro’s ears just to be with
you two fellers, because it seems as if we was real old friends. But
it’s all right now, don’t you worry none!”

“We wasn’t; but we are!” growled Goliath, but Cochran took not the
slightest notice. He wanted to take them to a show. Failing in that, he
wanted to buy drinks. Failing in that, he bought three cigars at a
dollar each. They could find no complaint regarding his liberality. He
would have gladly paid their traveling expenses to continue in their
company.

And then, when they were ripe to murder him, he did something that at
least gained their tolerance. A terribly bent and crippled old man came
timorously into the rotunda with a tray of collar buttons and shoe
laces. The clerk spotted the vender, called harshly, and a burly porter
rushed forward to eject such an objectionable intruder. Cochran rose to
the occasion.

“You git to hell out of this!” he roared, planting himself between the
porter and the derelict, and poking a hard, huge fist under the
bouncer’s nose. “This old feller’s a friend of mine. You let him alone.
Come over here and sit down, old hoss. Here--take my cheer!”

Much to the partners’ interest in the proceedings, Lucky Cochran seated
the old man and said to him reassuringly, “Never mind, old feller. It’s
me that’s lookin’ after you. Me--Lucky Cochran. What I say goes, back in
Texas, where I’m known. I know tough luck when I see it. Had a heap of
it myself. What’s ailin’ your legs and back? Rheumatiz? U-m-m-mh! I know
what that is, too. Had it myself.”

The partners watched Cochran with a dawning respect and--as
usual--listened. Cochran certainly had sympathy for one who was in what
he called “tough luck.” He asked personal questions that made the
partners wince, and then smoothed the wincing with his kindly drawl.
They were gradually getting bored when Cochran suddenly said: “See here,
uncle, I was goin’ off on a bust. I got money, I have; but I reckon I
couldn’t blow in all I got comin’ to me, if I took twenty years for the
job. And I reckon I can cut out a few things I was goin’ to do, anyhow.
You said just now that if you had a thousand you could buy a cigar shop
you know of, where you wouldn’t have to worry no more.”

He dug out that huge roll of bills again, wet his heavy thumb on the tip
of his tongue, and proceeded to laboriously count off some bills. He
went over them twice, while the partners, aghast, watched him. He thrust
the bills into the old man’s half-reluctant hands.

“Now,” he said, “you hustle out and buy that cigar place. I hate to see
a busted up old feller like you peddlin’ things in hotels and saloons.
Always makes me think of what might have happened to me. Come on. I’ll
walk out to the door with you so’s no one can bother you.”

And he did escort the derelict to the exit and for a few minutes
disappeared with him. The partners stared at each other, as if doubting
their senses.

“Well--well--what do you think of that!” exclaimed Goliath.

“Think of it? Can’t quite say--yet! But it looks to me as if there was
some good streaks in this piece of bad bacon after all,” David said, and
then added, “The big boob!”

It may have been the somewhat kindly feeling engendered by Cochran’s
liberality that caused the partners, after much consultation, to leave a
note to be delivered to him after their departure on the following
morning. It read:

    Impossible for us to wait to say good-by and good luck to
    you. Found we have to hustle to catch the train. Better not
    take the trouble to wait for us to come back, but go on to
    San Francisco. May your good luck continue.

David was very proud of his note.

“She don’t tell lies, nor nothin’, and don’t give nothin’ away,” he
remarked, as he sealed it into a hotel envelope, carried it down to the
desk, after carefully reconnoitering to make sure that Cochran, the
loquacious, was not in the lobby, paid their bills, and gleefully joined
Goliath who appeared with their suit cases.

In San Diego they had to wait twenty-four hours for the northbound
steamer, during which time they lived in some slight apprehension lest
Cochran appear; but once they had climbed the gangplank and been shown
to their cabin, they felt secure and jubilant. They went back on the
deck to see the steamer cast off, interested, as landsmen usually are,
in anything so novel. The “all off” had been given, the last of the
stewards had come aboard, and the order had been given to clear the
gangway, when there was a whirl of excitement in the outskirts on the
dock, and there appeared, breathless, but loudly yelling an appeal to
hold fast until he could get aboard, a belated passenger.

“Good Lord! It’s him all right!” groaned David.

“His luck holds good; but--hang it all!--ours is out!” Goliath growled,
as Cochran climbed aboard, discovered them, and, dropping his big
alligator suit case to which he had clung, rushed upon them.

“Ain’t I the lucky one, eh? Lucky Cochran! That’s me. You spoke in your
letter about troublin’ to wait for you; but, pshaw! It wasn’t any
trouble to me, although it was right thoughtful and kind of you fellers
to say so. Nothin’ ever troubles me. So I just found out from the boss
porter at the hotel how you’d been makin’ inquiries about trains to San
Dieger, and about the boat, and says I, ‘I’ll just pop down and join
’em, and won’t they be surprised to see that I’m goin’ to keep ’em
company.’”

“We’re surprised, all right!” David remarked, but Cochran did not
observe that he had omitted any reference to the happiness his arrival
had caused.

Their sole remaining chance for peace now rested upon wind, wave, and
weather. They hoped, earnestly, that Mr. Cochran would be as sick as the
whale that swallowed Jonah; but Cochran’s luck held, and if the ship had
turned somersaults, he would have merely laughed. For an hour they
watched him solicitously before they gave way to despair. He talked as
joyously as ever, roaring with laughter at his own jokes, and bubbling
over with human kindness in sufficient quantities to deter them from
murdering him. If he could have but kept his mouth shut, the partners
would have rather liked him. And then Goliath suddenly gave a groan,
clutched himself around the abdomen and said, “I got to get below. I
feel awful, I do!” And away he went.

“Pore feller! I’m awful sorry for him. Anybody sick or ailin’ always
gits my goat,” said Cochran sympathetically. “I couldn’t kill a
rattlesnake, if it was hurted. One time I had a burro that busted its
foreleg right above the pastern joint, and I couldn’t shoot it. Didn’t
have the heart! And every time I tried to nuss it the damn thing bit
me.”

David failed to draw the sympathetic connection between rattlers, mules,
and his partner. Indeed, at the moment, he was solicitous for Goliath,
and after a time went to investigate, and try to help, having much
difficulty in dissuading Cochran from accompanying him. He found the
giant on his back in the lower berth, calmly reading a dime novel.

“Thought you was seasick?” David blurted through the half-opened door.

“Seasick? Hell! I was talk sick!”

“Good! Never thought of that. I reckon I’m seasick, too. But what are we
goin’ to do? Stay shut up here all the way to Frisco?”

“Either that, or chuck the perpetual-motion talkin’ machine overboard,”
growled Goliath.

“Got another one of them dime novels? Gimme it. I’m sick, too,” David
said as he climbed into the upper berth.

At intervals for the first few hours Cochran called on them, bringing
various remedies that he had solicited from their fellow passengers; but
when dusk came the partners ventured out, trusting to the darkness to
escape the attention of their well-wisher. As time went on they gained
courage, and began to enjoy their freedom. They even dared to saunter
along the decks. From the smoke room, which was forward under the
bridge, came inviting sounds of conversation, merriment, and human
society. They paused and looked enviously through the open window and
breathed more freely, for they discerned Cochran absorbed in a game of
poker, but still talking steadily.

“That’s me. Lucky Cochran!” they heard him explode, as he raked in a
pot.

“Good old sport! Hope he plays poker from now until this boat ties up at
the dock,” David remarked. “That’ll keep him busy, and make it a lot
nicer for us.”

Their hopes seemed justified when, after the deck lights were turned out
they retired to their cabin, for Cochran was still playing and still
winning--and still garrulous. It was a late session, they learned on the
following morning. They were leaning up against a deck cabin, staring at
the sea and, as usual, saying nothing because there was nothing to talk
about, when through the open window near them they heard a yawn, as some
late sleeper turned in his berth, and then an answering yawn.

“Gad! I dreamed that sucker Cochran was talking to me in my sleep. Bad
enough to have to sit up until three o’clock and listen to him. We
certainly do have to work hard to earn our money. What?”

The other voice yawned and said, “Yep; but what we want to watch out for
most is the howl he’ll make when we collar his bank roll. Rubes like him
always yelp the loudest.”

“He’s got no friends aboard, I reckon; and he’s too much of a mutt to
make a gun play, and, besides, we don’t want to pull it off, if we can
help it, until just about the time the boat is ready to land. He can
yell all he wants to then, and we can stand it.”

“‘’Tis music to the gambler’s ears to hear the loser squeal,’” the other
voice quoted the old proverb.

David looked across at Goliath, gestured for silence, and slipped
cautiously away. Goliath, with equal care, followed him until they were
well aft, but from where they could keep an observant eye on the door of
the cabin occupied by the complacent “Sure-thing men.”

“So that’s the way of it, eh?” Goliath rumbled.

“Looks like it.”

“Reckon we ought to wise him up. I’d not do that, if it wasn’t
for--ummh!--the way he acted there in the hotel and--it’s better for him
to give his money away where it’ll do some good, than pass it over to a
couple of sharks.”

After a time, the door they had under observation opened, and two men
sauntered out who were neither over nor underdressed, but had the
appearance of being nothing more than possibly a pair of small-town
merchants. The partners marked them well for future identification and
patiently waited for Lucky Cochran to appear. He came after a further
interval, and David, with characteristic bluntness, opened up on him.

“You played poker until three o’clock this mornin’ with some strangers,”
he said, staring at the prosperous one. “And me and my pardner have
found out that they’re nothin’ but a pair of sharps out to do you.”

“Out to do me? Out to do Lucky Cochran? It’s a joke! Why, boys, I won
fifteen hundred dollars last night. Nobody can beat me. I’m Cochran.
Lucky Cochran!”

And his “Haw, haw, haw!” was so loud it startled even the deck steward,
who barely missed dropping a cup of hot coffee he was carrying to an
invalid, and prompted an A. B. on the boat deck to peer over, to learn
whether there was a menagerie aboard.

“Oh, you’re lucky, are you?” David answered with a badly concealed
sneer. “And you’ve won at the first sitting, have you? Well, see here,
Cochran, I’m goin’ to tell you something. The boob always wins at
first--until the stakes get high. After that his luck changes. If we’re
either locoed, or talkin’ through our hats, I’ll tell you what we
overheard this mornin’.” And then, in confidential tones, he repeated
all the conversation that had come through the cabin window shutters,
and ended with, “If you’ll take a little pasear with me I’ll point the
two crooks out to you, so that you can steer clear of another game with
them, and quit fifteen hundred to the good.”

“Psho!” said Lucky Cochran. “You don’t mean it! Come on and show ’em to
me.”

The three men promenaded the deck, casually looked into the smoke room,
and finally discovered their quarry in the bows holding earnest
conversation.

“There they are,” David said, pointing at them.

“That’s them, all right,” Cochran agreed. “And right nice sociable
fellers they are, too. Don’t see how it kin be that two such nice
fellers as them could be out to skin a good old feller like me. Think
I’ll go over and tell ’em what I think of ’em, right now.”

“Suit yourself,” said David. “We’ll come along and see you through.”

Cochran moved as if to carry out an intention, then stopped, looked at
the partners and wagged his head slowly and solemnly.

“Nope,” he said, then paused and grinned. “I reckon I’ve got the best of
it as it is--got their fifteen hundred, so I’ll just hang on to it and
leave ’em alone, and stick around with you two fellers. I was mighty
lonesome yisttiday without you two and-- By heck! I’m glad you ain’t
seasick any more. Reminds me of a story about a feller that--”

And the partners glanced at each other, as if admitting a great mistake;
for the garrulous one was on again, had promised to stay with them
indefinitely, closely, intimately, and--talk their heads off! He clung
to them like a loving leach, or as a bride of seventy adheres to a
bridegroom of twenty, or as does the unbreakable limpet to its gray
rock. His sole virtue was that he never repeated himself. Their sole
hope was that some time he would run down, get hoarse, or have paralysis
of the tongue. He tried indirectly to learn all about them, where they
had been, their business, whither bound, and what luck they had endured
or profited by; but the partners, bored, surfeited with words, and
casting about for means of escape, maintained their customary reticence.

David was the first to escape and most callously deserted his partner;
but Goliath, being less diplomatic, eventually invented an excuse and
ran, rather than walked, to a distant part of the ship. The partners met
in their cabin and took turns in imprecating the kindliness that had
inspired their well-meant interference.

“I don’t give a cuss what happens to him now. He’s been warned, and if
he loses his wad it’s not our fault,” David asserted.

“Neither do I care what happens to him,” Goliath growled. “I ain’t no
hero, nor Christian martyr, nor nothin’ like that. All I want is to have
him keep away from me. I’m goin’ to read from now on, right here in this
cabin. I’m afraid to go out on the deck.”

“So’m I!” David asserted; but their resolution broke, after some hours,
and the craving for open space, habitual with such men of outdoors,
overcame their fears of Cochran, and they slipped away to the decks
again. Almost surreptitiously they looked through a window of the smoke
room and then frowned. Cochran was sitting at the same table with the
same pair of gamblers, playing with what was probably the same deck of
cards and talking Just as steadily as ever before. Even as the partners
looked they caught signs of undoubted signals between the two card
sharps, saw a bet brought to a finale, and by the interchange of money
discerned that Lucky Cochran’s luck seemed to be out, and that he was
passing over considerable sums of his accidental wealth. Save for these
three earnest players, the smoke room was deserted.

“Think we ought to go in and bust up that combination?” Goliath asked.

“Humph! That old boob would think we were hornin’ into his business. The
pair of cutthroats he’s playin’ with would yell to the skipper of the
ship for help, and--no!--all we can do is to get him outside and tell
him he’s bein’ trimmed by good sign work.”

David sauntered in through the door and said, with an attempt at
suavity: “Cochran, I’d like to talk to you a minute outside. It’s
somethin’ right urgent. Sorry to disturb your game, but--”

“Sure, pardner, sure!” said Cochran, lumbering to his feet and sweeping
his money into his pockets. “See you fellers later,” he said to the two
gamblers who glared at David, exchanged glances of inquiry, and then
resignedly began pocketing their own money. But David and Goliath gained
nothing by their warning. Cochran merely grinned and then chuckled, and
finally laughed.

“You boys just let me alone,” he said. “Me lose? Lucky Cochran? Not by
the mill by the damsite. Why--say!--I’m still winner by nigh onto four
hundred dollars. Can’t beat that, kin you?”

They exhorted him for his own protection to stop and call his four
hundred an ample winning. He appeared to ponder it, and then blurted:
“But what’s a feller to do when he’s out on the fust vacation he’s had
for more’n forty year, if he can’t play a few keerds--huh? Here! Tell
you what me’ll and you’ll do! We’ll go in and play penny ante and cut
them fellers out. What say?”

The partners flatly refused this proffered amusement, remembering that
Mr. Cochran would have them completely at the mercy of his interminable,
unquenchable drawl. Anxious as they were to protect him, they thought
the price in self-sacrifice too great, and found difficulty enough, as
it was, to finally shake him off.

Something went amiss in the engine room, and for a couple of hours the
steamer hove to, lolling gently, on a gentle sea. It was conducive to
sleep, although rendering it certain that their landing in San Francisco
must be made late at night. The partners were awakened by the supper
gong and on arriving at the table discovered that not only Lucky
Cochran, but the two card sharps, were not to be seen. Nor did they
appear in the smoke room afterward, and as the hours passed, the
partners began to be apprehensive. They made inquiries of the deck
steward, and learned that he had served sandwiches and coffee to three
gentlemen who were now playing cards in one of the deck cabins, which he
pointed out, and the partners promptly retired to the rail in wrath and
disgust.

“I’m through!” declared David. “Let ’em trim him for all I care.”

“That goes for me, too,” Goliath snorted.

Lights became visible, and passengers crowded the decks waiting for the
first big spread of glowing points that would open out after the ship
had rounded the Golden Gate. Luggage had all been packed and stewards
were bringing out and heaping up piles of traveling impedimenta. And
then what the partners had expected, happened. A very gloomy man came
through the crowd, stumbled into contact with them, and said: “Well,
what do you think of that! You was right about them two fellers bein’
regular cheaters and crooks!”

“Got you, did they?” David inquired sarcastically. “Well, it’s your own
fault. We did all we could to pry you loose from ’em, and it serves you
darned well right.”

“Yep. And the fact is if you hadn’t talked so much they’d never have
gone after you the way they did,” Goliath added. “Did they get all that
twenty thousand dollars you was blowin’ about?”

“Not all of it,” said Cochran dolefully. “I got enough to get back home
on, anyhow. My luck didn’t altogether leave me, but--”

“The only thing for you to do is to go and get a cop the minute the boat
lands, and nail ’em!” David declared.

“I reckon maybe they’d fork over, if you did that,” Goliath seconded.

“Think so?” said Cochran hopefully. “But--how in tarnation can we keep
’em here till I find a cop?”

“We’ll keep ’em for you, all right,” growled Goliath. “You be the first
one off that gangplank when she goes down, and get a hustle on you. And
mind this--that if it’d been a square game me and my pardner wouldn’t
turn a hand to help you, because--we both hates a squealer. It’s only
because you’re such a dam old simpleton that we do anything at all.
Maybe this’ll teach you a lesson!”

“It will! It will!” groaned the now “unlucky” Cochran, with great
humility. “But--but--how you goin’ to hold ’em aboard this here ship?”

“We’re goin’ to horn into their cabin with a gun and just naturally keep
’em there,” said David as the plan slipped into his agile mind.

“By gosh! That’ll be good!” Cochran gleefully chortled. “Me for the head
of that gangplank!”

David and Goliath stationed themselves outside the cabin door of the two
sharpers and waited. They seemed to be in no hurry. Indeed, from the few
sounds that could be overheard from within, they were indulging in a hot
altercation and mutual recriminations.

“They’re fightin’ over the split, I got an idea,” David mumbled to his
partner.

“Let ’em fight! Saves us trouble,” said Goliath.

The gangplank fell and the passengers began to pass away, in an orderly
procession, before the cabin door opened, and the first of the sharks
appeared. Instantly he was confronted by a determined little red-headed
man, who said: “Just a minute. I want to talk to you two fellers. We’ll
just step inside, if you don’t mind.”

With an oath of surprise the man fell back, and both Goliath and David
entered, and closed the door behind them.

“You’ve got to wait here a few minutes. It won’t be long,” David
remarked in a voice that forbade any light reply. “You might as well sit
down and take it cool--unless you’re lookin’ for trouble.”

The card sharpers looked at each other helplessly, and, quite evidently
believing themselves held up by officers of the law for some of their
misdeeds.

“We’re in for it, Crump!” one of them growled at the other.

“You sure are, and the less you have to say the better it’ll be for
you,” David announced sharply. Whereupon the evil pair settled
disconsolately to the edges of the lower berth and stared at their
captors.

“Goliath, keep an eye out of the door for the cop and call him this
way,” said David, still acting as master of ceremonies.

The two crooks scowled apprehensively, and one of them inquired
savagely: “You might at least tell us what it’s all about?”

“You’ll find that out soon enough,” David snapped back at him, after
which there was no further conversation, while outside the shuffling of
feet began to diminish, the running of porters slowed down to mere
walking strides, and the voices of officers could be heard calling to
one another. In the doorway Goliath’s broad back began to twist this way
and that, and with an impatient “Humph! Wonder if that boob’s got lost?”
he disappeared. The wait continued, and sounds indicated that the very
last of the passengers had departed not only from the ship, but from the
dock. David felt like expressing his impatience with the tardy Mr.
Cochran aloud, and himself looked out of the door just as Goliath
reappeared with a man in uniform--not a policeman’s garb, but that of
the ship’s chief officer.

“The mate says we can’t hold these fellers here all night, but must take
’em out to the police office at the end of the docks,” Goliath
announced. “I’ll get our suit cases and you can make ’em tote theirs,
and we’ll go.”

“Come on!” David ordered his prisoners, and the chief officer scowled at
them as if to identify them for future reference as they descended the
gangplank. They made their way to the little building at the end of the
wharf, which, to their astonishment, was filled with harbor police. It
did seem as if Cochran must have been blind not to find it himself. A
plain-clothes man, evidently of authority, looked up and smiled with
great satisfaction and lighted eyes, as he said: “Hello! ‘Crump’ Smith
and ‘Slippery’ Murdock, eh? Hope you’ve got somethin’ on ’em, this time,
that we can put ’em over for. I’ve been tryin’ to get the goods on them
for a long time now.”

The disconsolate sharpers scowled like a pair of pirates and sank down
on a bench, while the detective called David into an inner office to
question him. He listened to David’s story and then shook his head
doubtfully.

“Something funny about this,” he said at last. “This man Cochran’s been
gone more than an hour. He’s the complaining witness. We can’t hold this
pair of sharks without him. Not but that I’d like to, right enough. We
can detain ’em for a few hours, but no longer. You two men better go and
see if you can find your friend that they skinned out of his wad. If I
don’t hear from you before morning and have to turn ’em loose, I’ve got
a way of keepin’ track of ’em so that we can pick ’em up again, when you
find your man. What hotel you going to stop at?”

He wrote down the address David gave, and ushered him out. The partners
caught a nighthawk taxi and went to their hotel first, and then
instituted such inquiries as they could for the missing Mr. Cochran--all
without success. Alarmed over his disappearance, and fearing that ill
had befallen him, they arose, after a few hours’ sleep, prepared to
resume their philanthropic quest. They pictured him as having wandered
off the dock and having been sandbagged. They feared he might have
fallen even into more merciless hands than those of the two callous
crooks who had rooked him aboard the steamer. They recalled tales of
doping, of shanghaiing, of murders done on the Barbary Coast, and dead
men thrown into the bay. They forgot the boredom of his gabbling tongue,
his tiresome and unquenchable garrulity, and remembered only that he was
a simple and unsophisticated old fellow who had shown a touching and
homely liberality to a derelict whom he had accidentally met. As their
apprehensions increased, so did their sense of helplessness.

“The only thing left for us to do,” said David wisely, “is to go down to
the harbor police and see if they’ve learned anything about what became
of him.”

“Good!” said Goliath. “And if they ain’t, don’t you reckon we ought to
kind of stir ’em up by offerin’ a reward or somethin’?”

“Sure! We can’t balk at blowin’ in a little money for that poor old
cuss. I reckon we’re the only friends he’s got in this whole blamed town
to look after him and help him out. But-- By the great horn spoon! He
ought to be in an orphan asylum or hire a guardian, I reckon.”

Glum with anxiety they boarded a Market Street car and rode to the
ferry. Glum with anxiety they trudged from there to the police office
and, glum with anxiety they entered. The same plain-clothes man they had
interviewed in the night lowered a paper he had been reading, looked at
them, recognized them, and grinned.

“Well,” he inquired pleasantly, “did you find your man Cochran? No?
Humph! Guess you didn’t; but I did!”

And then, as if unable to restrain himself, he indulged in a great
laugh.

“This,” he declared, again looking up at their amazed faces, “is one of
the best jokes that’s blown along the water front for the past year. Sit
down and have a smoke. Tell you about it.”

The partners subsided limply into two worn and shiny old chairs and
gravely eyed him.

“One time,” he said, as if to give his story a true narrative flavor,
“there was two of the slickest crooks and card sharks who ever flimmed a
mutt, sailed on a ship. They’d done it before--lots of times, and got
away with many a hick’s vacation money. That’s Crump Smith and Slippery
Murdock. They pick up a rube calling himself Lucky Cochran. Regular
backwoods goat. Moss on his back an inch thick. Hay in his whiskers.
Birds’ nests in his hair. Nice old man that talks all about himself
every time he can get any one to listen long enough. Funny old cuss with
a sense of humor. Some of the time he’s been in Texas. Some of the time,
mind you. For--say--the last five or six years.

“This pair of slick guys set out to do him until a busted and dried
bladder would look bigger than a circus tent in comparison with what
he’ll be like when they get through with him. Now, what I guess is that
this fine old gentleman thought that he’d found a couple of miners who
were worth lookin’ after and so hung on to them; but when they didn’t
prove worth his while, he grins to himself and says, ‘I’ll devote a few
idle hours to this pair of smart Alecks that are cruising the seas of
adventure, because it’s a rule of mine to make somebody else pay my
traveling expenses.’”

He stopped, grinned again, threw his paper to one side, and, lowering
one leg that had been crossed over the other, leaned toward them.

“Settling down to business, and all fooling aside,” he said with an
abrupt change to seriousness, “the man you knew as Lucky Cochran, the
rancher, is nobody but ‘Peerless’ Carfield, the sharpest, cleverest,
coolest, shrewdest man who ever skinned a sucker and then sympathized
with him over his loss. He’d gamble with a rabbit for its winter’s nest.
The only thing that’s to his credit is that he’d most likely hand it
back after he’d won it. He’d win a squatter’s farm, and then, if he
wasn’t short himself, hand it back to the squat, and tell him how to
clear the title.

“Nobody can put anything across with him. He’s had ’em all, from New
York to New South Wales, and from London to Lima. Crump Smith and
Slippery Murdock were a pair of infants in his mitts. He won everything
they had, from their bank roll down to their shoe buttons, and then,
just as a joke, left ’em hung up with you two standin’ guard over ’em
when he got off the boat and grabbed a taxicab for the most expensive
hotel in this town, and rode away.

“Sorry for him, were you? Well, you needn’t be sorry any more. He’s most
likely forgotten all about you two by now, and is living up at the most
swell hotel in this town, in a suite of rooms for which he pays about
fifty bucks a day; same rooms that a Russian prince had a year or two
ago. If you’ve got sympathy to waste you’d better hang some of it on to
Crump Smith and Slippery Murdock; because if skins were overcoats and
this was nothing but mid-summer, they’d shiver in the wind.”

The partners, in a daze, got up and walked outside. The docks were busy.
Masts showed here and there against the sky line. Teamsters drove
straining horses hauling highly piled wagons into the caverns, and the
rumble of hoofs and wheels echoed like a song of export in the morning
air. The screech of a hundred steam winches told of cargoes being
lowered into holds. Off toward the ferry nave the clanging of street
cars joined ragged symphony. The giant looked away toward the north, as
if scenting forests and mountains and cabins, and then said, “Humph! So
that’s that! We’re always buttin’ into somethin’ that ain’t worth while.
And--we thought he was the man that talked too much, and didn’t sabe how
to take care of himself.”

“It’s me and you that ought to have a nurse leadin’ us by the ears,”
David replied, then paused, seemed to quest for some excuse, and then
scowled upward at his stalwart and time-tried partner, and said
admonishingly: “Goliath, you’re all right; but--but--it’s you that talks
too damn much!”

And Goliath, whose habitual conversation consisted of a mere “yes” or
“no” cogitated with the utmost seriousness, pondered as if reviewing all
the words he had ever uttered, remembering them all, and uttered a long
speech. He blinked, wet his lips with his tongue, hesitated, and then
very gravely said, “Yep!”

                                THE END


[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the November 7, 1920 issue
of Adventure magazine.]