Adventure stories; Gold mines and mining -- Fiction; Love stories; Mutiny -- Fiction; Sea stories
"'Cordin' to the agreement," Lund said to Rainey, "the gold's to be
split into a hundred shares. One for each sailorman, an' they chip in
for the boy. Two for the hunters, two for the cook, four for Bergstrom,
the first mate, who died at sea. Twenty for 'ship's share.' Fifty shares
to be split between Simms an' me."
"What's the 'ship's share'?" asked Rainey.
"Represents capital investment. Matter of fact, it belongs to the gal,"
said Lund. "Simms gave her the _Karluk_. It's in her name with the
insurance."
"Then he and his daughter get forty-five shares, and you only
twenty-five?"
"You got it right," grinned Lund. "Simms is no philanthropist. It wa'n't
so easy for me to git enny one to go in with me, son. I ain't the first
man to come trailin' in with news of a strike. An' I had nothin' to show
for it. Not even a color of gold. Nothin' but the word of a dead Aleut,
my own jedgment, an' my own sight of an island I never landed on. Matter
of fact, Honest Simms was the only one who didn't laff at me outright.
It was on'y his bad luck made him try a chance at gold 'stead of keepin'
after pelts.
"An' we had a hard an' tight agreement drawn up on paper, signed,
witnessed an' recorded. 'Course it holds him as well as it holds me, but
he gits the long end of _that_ stick. W'en I read, or got it read to me,
in the Seattle _News-Courier_, that the _Karluk_ was listed as 'Arrived'
in San Francisco, it was all I could do to git carfare an' grub money.
If I hadn't bin blind, an' some of 'em half-way human to'ards a man with
his lights out, I'd never have raised it. I'd have got here someways,
matey, if I'd had to walk, but I'd have got here a bit late. Then I'd
have had to wait till Simms got back ag'in--an' mebbe starved to death.
"But I'm here an' I've got some say-so. One thing, you're goin' to git
Bergstrom's share. I don't give a damn where the doctor comes in. If he
marries the gal he'll git her twenty shares, ennyway. Though he ain't
married her yet. And I ain't through with Simms yet," he added, with an
emphasis that was a trifle grim, Rainey thought.
"The crew, hunters an' sailors, don't seem over glad to see me back,"
Lund went on. "Mebbe they figgered their shares 'ud be bigger. Mebbe the
doc's queered me. He's pussy-footin' about with 'em a good deal. But
I'll talk with you about that later. It's me an' you ag'in' the rest of
'em, seems to me, Rainey. The doc's aimin' to be the Big Boss aboard
this schooner. He's got the skipper buffaloed. But not me, not by a
jugful."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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