nge, 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 saw, and said it wasn't a bad idea. We watched our chance, and
the next low-water slack, after Big Alec had removed the fish from the
line and returned ashore, we went out in t