Wallace Irwin

“ Anderson says that a Poet is a feller that'll creep up on a rattlesnake and tickle him behind the ear with a feather just to see him smile; and when he gits bit he goes off and writes a pome about it. I've been bit more'n onc't, sometimes foolin' with horses, sometimes with women, but I never took it poetical like Smuggler King Garcia, him bein' born to lisp in numbers, though he couldn't sign his Greaser name.
It was in the Fall o' Ninety-eight that I seen Garcia on the wharf at Enciñada squeezing a yeller demijohn between his knees. ”

“ At dark we crep' in under the stars and tied up at La Playa. "Jingo Jo," a Portuguese "fence," met us at the wharf and looked over our cargo. He was a square cornered foreigner with a big, brown beard like a door-mat. Jo looked nervous. Had luck for the "traders," he said—revenue cutter Wolverine was in the bay—Miguel Thompson's outfit seized, crew and all, only last week.
So twenty-four hours we lay in La Playa a-waitin' for the Wolverine to clear out. At the end o' that time Garcia got another demijohn, then there was more poetry, and more talk about the beautiful Lolita Sanchez. ”

“ The Wolverine was nowheres in sight.
"Cowards!" bawls Garcia, gitting brave again. "I see—they're afraid!"
"Oh, are they?" I inquires very gentle. "So's a bald eagle afraid of a caterpillar. If you want to fight any naval battles a-shootin' spit-bills from this here old wash-boiler, why jest let me off. I'll walk."
"You sawbee! him all same so muchee long-talk he no can do!" says Bong, rising scornful out of a bundle o' rags. ”

“ Fools butt in where angels walk around.
The Wolverine was now right up close, the white finger of her search-light running slow-like over the island, swingin' toward us till it came to the crack where our boat floated. Here it stopped, trickled in among the boulders, sniffed at the rocks and surf, then moved on. ... They missed us!
Three hours we lay there only taking half breaths. The sea water was oozing from our hair to our boots. Garcia found his demijohn and there was two drinks for him and me, one for the cook and a drop and a half for the Chink. ”

“ Spoke English fluent and natural, bein' a San Diego half-breed. His heart was broke, he said, because he loved an Injun girl who went and married a padrone.
"Then," said Garcia, "what remained? Nothing! I went to the coast. I wanted to be a priest or a bandit. Not having an education I tried the bandit business. And now," he says, slow and impressive, "I'm a-smuggling guano fertilizer off the Bird Islands into the States." ”