THE CARAVAN OF DEATH.
The little poet had no place in the heart of the camp at the first. And
now at the last when he was about to go away, he held even a less place
than when he came.
Nobody knew when he came, nobody cared. Now that he was passing away at
last, nobody, save the Widow, knew of it. Nobody cared to know of it.
Truly, this singular creature did not "fit in" anywhere in the Sierras.
The Widow had been seen to enter the little hermitage alone, and very
regularly of late, but no one made inquiry or interfered now. The case
was peculiar. The guilt of the Widow was an accepted fact. No one under
the circumstances could speak to her of him. They left this all to her,
a sort of monopoly of death.
We leave her at this bedside and turn for the last time to the little
Chinaman.
And what became of the little brown man with the meek almond eyes and
the peaceful smile that for ever hovered about the corner of his mouth?
Poor little Washee-Washee! When the Widow got married he had to go. He
could not embark in business again, and he would not go away. The Widow
always gave him all he asked when he came to her, but that was very
little. She even tried to persuade him to accept little gifts, and to
take some delicacies for his stomach's sake, but the little pagan would
only shake his head, smile the least bit out of one corner of his mouth,
and then go away as if half offended.
Every five years there is a curious sort of mule caravan seen meandering
up and down the mining streams of California, where Chinamen are to be
found. It is a quiet train, and quite unlike those to be found there
driven by Mexicans, and bearing whisky and dry goods. In this train or
caravan the drivers do not shout or scream. The mules, it always seemed
to me, do not even bray. This caravan travels almost always by night,
and it is driven and managed almost altogether by Chinamen. These
Chinamen are civil, very respectful, very quiet, very mournful both in
their dress and manner.
These mules, both in coming in and in going out of a camp, are loaded
with little beech-wood boxes of about three feet in length and one foot
square.
When the train arrives in a camp these boxes are taken from off the
backs of the mules, stored in some Chinaman's cabin close to the trail,
and there they lie, so far as the world knows, undisturbed for two or
three days. Then some midnight, the mules are quietly drawn up to the
cabin-door, the boxes are brought out, and the mules are loaded, and the
line winds away up the hill and out on the mountain to where their
freight can be taken down to the sea on wheels.
The only apparent difference in these boxes now is the lead label at
either end, which was not there when they entered the camp.
This is the caravan of the dead. No Chinaman will consent to let his
bones lie in the land of the barbarian. The bones of every Chinaman,
even to the beggar--if there ever was such a thing as a Chinese beggar
in California--are taken back to the land of his fathers.
Washee-Washee stood watching the train climb the corkscrew trail in the
gray dawn one morning, and then shaking his head he went to the Widow
and said--
"By'ee, by'ee. Washee-Washee allee samee."
And it was so. His first great commercial enterprise had been a
disastrous failure, and the brown little fellow never recovered. Other
Chinamen poured into camp, and he certainly had friends among them all,
but he went to none in his griefs as he did to the Widow; she who had
been his friend in his first great trouble.
The little brown man took to opium, and gradually grew almost black. His
little bright black eyes grew brighter, his thin face grew thinner, and
he became a little more than a shadow. Still he would smile a bit out of
that corner of his mouth. Would smile as if he was smiling at Death, and
was trying to cheat him into the idea that he felt perfectly well.
The caravan came in due time; as before, it rested, loaded, climbed the
hill, and as the train led up against the morning star, you might have
read on one little box, wherein a skeleton lay doubled up like a jack
knife, this name:
"WASHEE-WASHEE."