"I'll be gettin' five years--five years at least."
The surging fear became fixed in these words, and they, in turn, swung
in with the cadenced tramp of Corporal Sweeney, the other prisoner, the
sentry, and the young lieutenant along the Chien-men Road toward the
American camp and the guard-house. As the refrain rolled itself over in
the brain of the corporal, he discovered that he was muttering it aloud
when the other prisoner said explosively:
"I know you will, and so will I; but, by ----, I'm going to make a run
for it!"
"You're the silliest fool in Peking if you do," replied the corporal.
"An' where would you be after runnin' to? No place to----"
He checked himself and turned his head. The sentry and the lieutenant
were at their heels, but in the clamor of the crowded thoroughfare
the talk had been unheard. A swirl of Chinese street merchants was
scattering from in front of a German wagon-train, a troop of Bengal
Lancers clattered recklessly into the ruck, and the road flung the
tangled traffic to and fro between its walls, like a tide in a
mill-race. The corporal muttered again to the scowling man beside him:
"Nothin' doin'. Sure to be captured this side Tientsin. Forget it.
You're crazier than thim----"
A shout in his ear made him jump aside, and he saw the sentry lurch
against the flank of a transport camel and lose his footing as a
cart-wheel struck him from behind. The loaded rifle fell on the chaotic
stone flagging. The other prisoner heard the crash and knew what it
meant. Here seemed the chance he sought, but instead of doubling into
one of the crooked side streets, he broke away down the middle of
the Chien-men Road, and the traffic opened up for him, as the crowd,
grasping as by instinct what was happening, scattered in panic.
The young lieutenant whipped his revolver from its holster and took
a snap-shot at thirty yards, not caring overmuch if a Chinese got in
range of the heavy bullet. As he fired, the fugitive seemed to trip
and catch himself, then ran a few steps farther, falling all the time,
until he crumpled up in the filthy mud of the pavement. The lieutenant
stood looking at his quarry, his eye still ranging along the barrel
of the revolver, while the sentry had picked up his muddy rifle, and,
feeling faint and shaky, watched a private of his own regiment become,
in an instant, something that looked like a roll of blankets doubled
under the feet of the Chinese street mob.
The two had forgotten the corporal, who stood beside them as intent as
they upon the pitiable tragedy; and the three appeared to be posing
for a military tableau. But almost as swiftly as death had come to the
escaping prisoner, there swept over the one that remained a frenzy of
desire to run. He knew how remote was the possibility of freedom, how
desperately small the chance against recapture, dead or alive. But
hammers were beating in his head the cadence of "I'll be gettin' five
years--five years at least." And the opportunity was made by another's
unwilling sacrifice.
[Illustration: _The flight of Corporal Sweeney._]
The corporal was unconscious of a voluntary act, and something seemed
swiftly to drag him, as he wheeled and dashed for the entrance of an
alley not more than ten yards away. A peddler's shoulder-yoke was
splintered against his shoulder, and he thought that the bruising
impact was the shock of the expected bullet; the yells of the
sweetmeat-sellers at the alley's mouth sounded like the outcry he
dreaded to hear; but the lieutenant and the sentry turned in time
to see only the trail of sprawling Chinese left in the wake of the
escaping prisoner. The sentry jumped in pursuit, stumbled into the
tortuous alley, and saw a blank wall ahead. Between that and the
Chien-men Road three lanes twisted off to left and right, and he ran up
the nearest one at random.
Somewhere beyond the huddled houses, he could hear the thud of
leather-shod feet, the staccato flight of which marked the trail of
the deserter; but the pursuer could find no way through or around.
When he entered the street beyond, there was no blue overcoat in the
crowded field of vision, and the shuffling sound of felt-soled native
shoes gave no clew. He returned to the lieutenant, genuinely weary and
speciously disappointed. The officer was leaning over the body of the
other prisoner, and there was keen unhappiness in his flushed young
face.
"I've found an empty cart," he said to the sentry. "Help me carry this
poor fellow to camp. He has no use for a doctor. As for Sweeney, he
can't get away. He's hiding in the American section, and I will get
the provost-marshal over the field 'phone from headquarters, and have
the guard sweep the district from end to end. The man will be captured
before morning."
This occurred to the fugitive, also, as certain to happen, when he
staggered through a little courtyard, far in the heart of the "Chinese
City," and fell into a corner of a smoke-fogged room. It was so nearly
nightfall that the one occupant, failing to recognize the headlong
visitor, yelled and scuttled away from the brazier which he was trying
to coax into warmth against the winter night.
"It's me--all same me--come back. You no sabee this American soldier if
men come to look see me," gasped the corporal.
The Chinaman nodded without speaking and slipped out. Sweeney was
fighting for breath, and the fumes of coal-gas in the fetid room were
suffocating him. He tore a hole in the side wall of oiled paper, and
gulped his lungs full of the frosty night air. It was the room from
which he had gone the day before, when, after drinking much Japanese
beer, he had bought a quart of _samshu_ to carry away with him.
It was the deadly, maddening samshu that had caused the downfall of
Corporal Sweeney, and now he was trying to remember what had happened
in the twenty-four hours before he had been marched down the Chien-men
Road with the other prisoner. He knew that he had overstayed his leave,
but that was a minor matter compared with the row in the canteen on
Legation Street. He recalled that an American officer had entered the
place to investigate the uproar, and the corporal's mind held a blurred
picture of himself conspicuously cursing his superior officer with
black oaths, and struggling to "knock the face off him." Then he had
fled, to be picked up later by the lieutenant who had shot and killed
Private Smathers on the way to camp.
The corporal drew back from the hole in the paper wall, and slumped
down on the floor, a Chinese blue blouse tucked under his aching head.
"An' five years more, for attempted escape," he groaned, "an' two clane
enlistments behind me, an' promotion a cinch in the next six months.
Never a coort martial ag'in' me. It was all the ---- samshu. Serves a
white man right for foolin' with haythen liquor. An' they'll be pullin'
me out of here in no time at all. Holy Mother! where kin I go?"
The disgraced soldier turned as a new dread smote him.
"An' the Boxer swine that kapes this poison-shop will be handin' me
over as soon as he hears the news of the shindy down the Chien-men
Road."
Panic fear caught hold of the corporal, body and soul, and he wrestled
with it in the darkness. He knew not whither to turn. Hiding among the
Chinese in the city was impossible, and to take to the open road meant
capture at Tientsin or Taku if he made his way that far in a flight
toward the seacoast. To go blindly into the country about Peking,
unarmed and penniless as he was, knowing perhaps five words of Chinese,
was to drag out the finish in slow starvation, or to be picked up by a
foreign outpost, or to fall among hostile natives. He was as helpless
as a castaway adrift on a raft in mid-ocean. The penalties of capture
or surrender seemed worse than any sort of death, for Corporal Sweeney
had been a good soldier, bred to a hardy outdoor life.
The disgrace tortured him, and either alternative of his situation was
unthinkable. Yet after three hours of trembling in his trap, he would
have welcomed the chance of flight into the open, beyond the walls
of the nightmare city. The Chinese landlord had not returned, and it
seemed likely that intruders had been warned away from the smoky room
with the hole in the oiled paper of the side wall. The deserter had
found a bottle of samshu, and tried to brace his nerves with a swallow
of it, but the smell sickened him, and he flung it against the brick
partition, in a passion of rage at the source of his cyclonic ruin.
The heavy, yellow liquid guttered across the floor, and the stench of
it drove the soldier into the courtyard, where the chatter of Chinese
voices sent him quaking back into his little inferno.
He was not a coward, but he was alone in the darkness with such
fears as wrested from him all weapons. Somewhere outside, a Chinese
watchman, drifting along on his rounds, was beating a gong to frighten
away evil-doers. The measured _bong, bong, bong_ caused the fugitive
to wish that sudden death might overtake the harmless old gentleman,
for at each stroke it seemed as if tacks were being driven into his
skull. Toward midnight Corporal Sweeney fell into a stupor of complete
exhaustion that was no more than a caricature of sleep. A scratching on
the paper door and a falsetto whisper awoke him, and he sprang to his
feet, striking out in the gloom, to ram his fist through the fragile
panel into something yielding which cried:
"O-w-w--a-i-i! Me, master; You Han. Somet'ing do-ing, all l-l-ight?"
The deserter extended a muscular arm, grasped a handful of wadded coat,
and dragged the visitor in with one lightning sweep. Then, trying to
choke his amazed voice into a whisper, he croaked:
"Oh, me cock-eyed darlin' lad! An' how did you dig me out? I niver felt
like kissin' a Chink before. Now get me out o' this, or I'll break your
back over me two knees. I'm down an' out this time. Are you goin' to
give me up for the sake o' the rewarrd?"
The boy, whom the corporal had picked up, a starving outcast from a
plundered village, on the march to Peking, tried to tell what he knew
in painfully Pidgin English, shattered by his master's interruptions.
He had learned that the corporal was a day overdue in camp, and had
started out to find him early that morning. Then came the tragedy and
the escape, the tidings of which were brought to the camp with the body
of Private Smathers. You Han had heard the name "Sweeney" scattered
through the excited talk of the company, until he pieced together a
working impression of what had happened. He had ransacked canteens,
tea-houses and gambling-dens from the camp to the Tatar city wall until
he began to pick up the trail from groups at the street corners who had
seen the "madman runaway soldier."
The corporal chopped the narrative short, because he was not interested
in the way of his fall into the bottomless pit, but in an agony of
speculation regarding the new possibility of a way out. The coming
of You Han made him clutch the hope of the open country, anywhere,
anyhow, no matter what lay beyond. The thought of flight alone among
the millions of mysterious aliens had oppressed him horribly. You
Han had the fidelity of a dog for the domineering American soldier,
whose ways he did not understand, but, because they were his ways,
they were believed to be impeccable. Now his lord had done something
more extraordinary than usual, for which, it appeared, decapitation
threatened. In addition to blind obedience, You Han knew what samshu
was, and was ready to make large allowances. It was only this new tone
of entreaty, almost of supplication, that alarmed the servant. Corporal
Sweeney shook off the paralyzing grip of his fears long enough to give
You Han orders in a voice that still quavered in little broken gasps:
"You get Peking cart, quick? Qui-qui--chop-chop--chase yourself--sabee?
Have you got any money in thim flowin' robes?"
You Han flashed a bisecting grin that was like splitting a sheet of
parchment, and dove into a knotted sash, where the clink of silver made
reply. Then he was gone, and the deserter became instantly submerged in
the returning rush of his manifold terrors. It seemed years before he
heard the protesting shrieks of a cart axle and the rattle of harness
in the compound. You Han stole in, and half dragging the corporal to
the cart, helped him to crawl under the curtained hood, whispering:
"One piecee cart belong my cousin. No pay him. You stay bottom side. We
go countlee."
As the cart jolted into the alley, the man beneath the cover heard,
faint and far, the beat of cavalry hoofs on the frozen earth. They
were coming nearer, and the fugitive flattened himself under a pile of
quilts, while the sweat beaded on his face. In a few moments the clink
of sabers and the creaking of saddle-leathers were audible, and the
patrol wheeled into a side street so close to the jogging cart that the
deserter caught the voice of a Sixth Cavalry trooper objecting:
"It's a blazin' cold night to be pokin' in all the rat-holes of Peking
for as good a blank-blanked son of a gun as Jack Sweeney. Wonder how he
got up against it so hard."
The reply was lost, for the deserter's heart was whanging against his
ribs and sounding louder to him than the clatter of cavalry. You Han
drove the mule at a gallop and said no word except once, when he turned
and remarked:
"Samshu no good, master. Floget it. Dlink water, all l-l-ight."
At daylight the cart was beyond the outer wall of Peking, heading west,
as aimless a derelict as ever tossed in uncharted seas. You Han did
not veer toward his own home on the Pei-ho, for he knew that it lay in
the track of the traffic to Tientsin, and that over the ruins of his
village floated the flag of an American infantry outpost. The dawn came
clear and cold, but sad in the gray aspect of tenantless villages, and
the litter of ungarnered millet-fields stretching over the flat lands
to the horizon. The driver told the deserter that the last foreign
outpost had been passed, and that he might get out and walk with
safety. Half frozen, bitterly bruised from tossing between floor and
roof of the springless cart, hungry and weak, the deserter climbed from
his ignominious hiding-place and trudged in silence along the rutted
highway. Presently You Han turned off the road, threaded a course
through the yards of a shattered temple, and drew up by a marble altar.
"Have chow now," said he, and the summons to breakfast aroused a shadow
of animation in the deserter. He knew not where the meal was coming
from, but he was past wondering, and the Chinese youth was in full
command of the sorry expedition. You Han crawled into the cart and
produced a charcoal stove, dried fish, potatoes, and a teapot.
"All belong my cousin. He keep store; pay bimeby," said the boy, with
what might have passed for a wink.
The companions ate in silence. Shame had begun to march in the
foreground of the deserter's thoughts, crowding fear a little to the
rear. The soldier of a conquering race was as helpless as a child in
the hands of one of the conquered whom he had not considered wholly
human, whose swarms had fled like rats before the path of the columns
in khaki. The fugitive cursed and hated himself, possessed by an
unmanly humiliation impossible to imagine a few hours before. The
little dun mule munched dry millet-stalks, and squealed when You Han
fetched him water from the temple well.
"I ain't got as much sand left in me as that sawed-off apology fer a
mule," groaned the corporal; "an' he's a good deal more of a man than
meself."
You Han resumed the march without consulting his lord, which made the
deserter writhe anew, but he could say nothing. The cart trailed along
the foot of an ancient military wall for several miles, while the
man sullenly chewed the cud of bitterness and the boy revolved great
things in his unruffled mind. You Han was about to venture on some
fragmentary consolation, when the deserter, who was walking a little in
advance, balked in his tracks and stood crouched as if he had seen a
rattlesnake. The dun mule snorted and fanned his ears like an agitated
jack-rabbit. A furlong beyond, the steel ribbons of a railway track cut
across the road and vanished in sandy cuttings. Corporal Sweeney looked
instinctively for a telegraph line and saw one wire threading the
skyline in a humming loop. The sight hurled him back to the Chien-men
Road and the lieutenant alertly picking off Private Smathers with a
long snap-shot.
"What's this fool railroad doin' here? I wonder are they consthructin'
it to ketch up with me? Come a-runnin' there _pronto_,[A] chop-chop.
Ain't there no gettin' away from annywhere?"
[A] Soldiers who have campaigned in the Philippines use the
word _pronto_ for "hurry up" or "hustle."
He volleyed the questions at You Han as if they had been jerked out of
him. The boy looked puzzled as he replied:
"Devil cart go Pao-ting-fu, then go Peking. No belong to Amelican
soldier. English have got."
They crossed the rails on the run, as if the metals burned their
feet, and the deserter flogged the mule into a gallop, until their
road twisted beyond sight of the track and its unexpected autograph
of a civilization they were fleeing headlong. He would not have dared
predict it, but in the afternoon Corporal Sweeney began to be a man
again. They had passed beyond the area laid waste by the Christian
allies, and the villages were populous and busy. You Han had glimpsed a
shadow of the shame that smoldered in his master's mind, and he was for
making little overtures, simple yet crafty, to win him back to himself.
As the first step in reconstruction, he called "Look-see, master!" and
pulled from beneath the body of the cart a "Krag" rifle, bayonet, and
cartridge-belt. The deserter threw back his shoulders at sight of them,
and in an outburst of gratitude smote his benefactor so that his head
ached for several hours.
"Last night, when get cart, go back camp," twittered You Han; "find one
piecee master's gun in tent. Plenty dark. Sently shoot, no can hit.
Good, by golly!"
"Good! you twenty-four carat jewel of Asia! You're the goodest
imitation of a white man that was ever bound in yeller leather by
mistake. Now I feel as if I wanst looked like a man meself. Give me a
rag an' a bit o' that stinkin' cookin'-grease, an' make room on the
carrt till I do up me house-cleanin'."
You Han grinned and began to wail an interminable song about a girl
called "Little Fat Spring Fragrance," who lived in the "Village of
the Wise and Benevolent Magistrate." The ballad rose shriller as the
singer saw the corporal swinging along ahead, his rifle nestling on his
squared shoulder as if it had come home to its own, his back as flat
as a board. You Han was even more jubilant when his master spun on his
heel, and shouted with the rasp of the drill-ground in his voice:
"Shut up that racket! It's worse 'n the carrt axle."
The bracing wind swept keen out of the Siberian north, and sunshine
flooded from a cloudless sky. The deserter forgot much of his
weariness, and caught himself whistling "assembly," but broke off with
a groan.
Toward sunset the surrounding wall of a village was outlined like a
rocky island in the level plain. You Han halted a ragged wayfarer, and
coaxingly addressing him as "great elder brother," dragged forth the
information that the town was of considerable size, and that in it was
the residence of the ruler of the district. The song of the "Village
of the Wise and Benevolent Magistrate" had suggested an inspiration
whose magnitude made You Han gasp. But he took possession of it without
flinching, and when they were within a mile of the gateway in the wall
he said to the deserter:
"You wait. I go look-see."
The mule browsed by the roadside, the corporal sprawled near by, and
the brave figure in blue cotton trudged on alone to the town, the
strangeness of which made his heart flutter. He swaggered in past the
outer wall, searched out the _yamen_ of the district magistrate, and
that dignitary graciously consented to see the importunate pilgrim.
You Han kotowed before the heart-quaking presence in the gilded
audience-room, and with wailing stammer delivered the oration composed
on the cart:
"An illustrious and most honorable general of the foreign soldiers
comes to visit your beautiful city. I am his insignificant and
thrice-despised servant. This valiant and inexpressibly distinguished
hero is of the Americans, who protect and do not plunder and destroy.
He comes to extend peace and protecting power to your Heavenly
Presence, and to learn whether you have been molested by other
foreign-devil armies, whom he will swiftly punish if it be your august
pleasure to ask it. My insufferably benevolent master leaves soldiers,
cannon, horses behind him, lest he terrify the country round about,
already in fear of the devastating foreign fighting-men. He sends the
greetings of one ruler to another, and also his card."
You Han bobbed his head to the floor by way of incessant punctuation,
and watching eagerly from the tail of his eye for results hopeful or
otherwise, laid before the magistrate the vivid label of a tin of
"Army Cut Plug," on which heroes in blue and khaki posed nonchalantly
in a "baptism of fire." A group of official servants, crowding
within ear-shot, saw a gleam of surprised pleasure twinkle through
the huge spectacles of their ruler. They took their cue, and helping
the trembling You Han to his feet, were soon bustling through the
courtyard, propelled by vehement commands to make haste.
Half an hour later, the deserter saw approaching a procession led by
You Han and a squad of yamen runners, whom he knew by the red tassels
on their flat hats. These rode shaggy rats of ponies, and behind
them tailed off scores of villagers on foot and convoys of squealing
children. The American grabbed his rifle and dodged behind the cart,
ready to run or open fire, until he heard You Han's shrill shouts of
reassurance. Then he was swept up in an admiring throng, whose bodies
doubled in homage, down to the wee tots who fell on their flat noses
when they tried to kotow.
You Han had no time for explanations. He was expanding in the reflected
glory of his own devising, and busy chasing children from under the
agile hoofs of the ponies. In their layers of wadded coats, like so
many puff balls, the jolly youngsters rolled to the roadside, and the
deserter felt a stir of emotion which he could not have defined. Yes,
there were homes and firesides and mothers and play and work and
love in this land of desolation, and the smoke of the village hearths
beckoned with vague homeliness.
The shopkeepers left their wares and the old men in the doorways tucked
away their pipes when the procession filled the little streets, and the
deserter rode to the yamen like a conquering hero. In the courtyard of
the compound other servants waited to escort the "benevolent foreign
general" to rooms made ready for him. There was fire in the brick
_kang_, or sleeping-platform, and chickens, eggs, fruit and potatoes,
and a fur-lined robe were heaped on a table. You Han vanished, and
the outlaw sat himself down in speechless wonderment. Presently You
Han returned and announced that the magistrate would be inexpressibly
honored to receive the Personage in the evening, and the reason for
not inviting him to dine was that he knew the guest would prefer his
food prepared after his own strange fashion by his own servant. As in
a gorgeous dream the deserter dined, with three attendants squabbling
with You Han for the honor of passing each dish. Then he brushed his
dusty leggings and blue clothes and summoned a barber.
A little later the guest was greeted as a person of rare distinction
by the dignified elderly gentleman in red-silk robes who ruled and
"squeezed" the district. The corporal rose grandly to the occasion. The
two mingled to a nicety their mutual attitudes of respect, cordiality,
protection. They talked laboriously through the doubtful medium of
the overpowered You Han, whom the intricacies of the mandarin dialect
bowled over from the one side, and on the other such instructions as
these from the corporal:
"Tell old Four-Eyes that I'm the personal ripresintative of George
Washington and Gineral Grant, an' that when I stamp me fut a million
brave soldiers trimble violently; but that because I know a great
intelleck when I see one, me heart is swelled with pride to sit down
and talk it over as man to man. Poke that into him good and har-r-d."
The official volleyed many questions, and the deserter parried what
fragments of them You Han was able to pass along. A military escort
to the next village was offered, but the guest declined with polite
emphasis. He was not seeking ostentation in public. When he went to his
apartments after a surfeit of cakes, wine, and tobacco, Corporal John
Sweeney rubbed his close-cropped head and puzzled over his identity. As
he curled up on the warm brick kang, he was a deserter fast becoming
reconciled to his fate.
"It strains the rivets of me imagination to believe it's rale. I
hope there's more miracles in stock where this one was projuced," he
murmured sleepily.
Just at dawn he awoke. There was a clatter of voices in the courtyard,
and the sound of horses moving hurriedly. Presently the paper of the
latticed wall was ripped, and a brown finger popped through. All the
fears of the refugee came trooping back with squadrons reinforced.
He ripped the door open, rifle in hand. A string of traders' ponies
was filing out for an early start toward Peking, and a hostler stood
with his face pressed against the hole in the wall, trying to catch a
glimpse of the lordly foreigner. That was all. But the deserter saw
again the smoky room in the "Chinese City," and heard the Sixth Cavalry
squad wheel just in rear of his frantic flight. The "illustrious guest"
was again the fugitive, escaping, he knew not whither, from "five
years--five years at least."
He kicked the sleeping You Han into action, and the cart was under way
as soon as the mule had fed.
"Only thirty miles from Peking," growled the corporal; "not half far
enough. An' cavalry is prancin' out to loot, pacify, an' scatter
Christian blessings with th' mailed fisht where they have no business
to be thinkin' of. I hike till I drop, an' that's me ultimatum."
They pressed on all day until the dun mule swayed in the shafts and the
pilgrims were ready to drop by the roadside. The night was passed in
a village tavern, for You Han was too weary to organize a reception.
The deserter slept fitfully, and awoke often talking to himself.
Nervous and foot-sore, he took the trail at dawn of the third day, You
Han watchful and worried. As the deserter turned frequently to look
behind him, the aspect of the future crushed him, while the imminent
past lashed him to persistent flight. Camp, and the close comradeship
of men in blue and khaki; the routine round of his army years; the
Chicago streets that had known his boyhood; the father and mother who
were proud of his record--these and all other links in the chain of his
thirty years were as if they had never been forged. Names, faces and
scenes of which he had been an intimate part were in an obliterating
distance, and nothing that had gone before was given strength to follow
him, except the incidents of his escape, and these filled all the
landscape with portents.
Soon they came to a schoolhouse in the middle of a tiny hamlet. You
Han knew it for such when the refugees were rods away, since from the
squat building came an incessant sound like the hum of a gigantic top.
The children were reciting their daily task from the Confucian Analects
at the limit of their lung power, when the foreigner was spied by a
truant outpost, and the teacher could not hold the clamorous flock
in leash. By scores they tumbled out to scamper off in terror until
You Han shouted his message of good will and the corporal laughed,
threw down his rifle, and became one of them. It was not long before
uproarious applause greeted his attempts to play jackstones and strike
the sharpened stick to make it fly into the miniature mud-pie "city."
Again the feeling of homeliness tugged at his heart, and he lingered
among the children until the teacher gathered them in, with labor like
that of collecting spilled quicksilver.
You Han swaggered into the next village beyond, with a port inspired
by remembrance of the magistrate's yamen, but he came to grief at the
hands of the village bully. There was no mistaking the character of
this truculent ruffian. His garments were studiously awry, and his
queue was loosely braided and coiled around his neck to show that he
thirsted for combat. He resented the lofty bearing of the stranger,
and the two clashed with disaster to the features of You Han, who was
plucky but overmatched. He was rescued by the corporal, who gave the
bully the worst beating of his career. The feat was applauded by a
throng of villagers whose peace had been much disturbed by this chronic
nuisance, and they feasted the hero at the house of the head man with
complex and effusive hospitality. The wayfarers were pressed to stay
and make the town their home for life.
This incident, coming in a sequence of revelations of the life of this
hitherto despised people, set the thoughts of the deserter definitely
into a new and hopeful channel.
"I begin to think," he said to You Han, "that I could stick it out in
one of these back counties, at worst until the troops are l'avin' China
in the spring. An' I could come pretty near to runnin' a town or two
meself. One more day's march an' I'll risk stakin' out a claim for a
while. An' I'll be a leadin' an' dignified citizen, an' grandfather by
brevet to all the kids in the camp."
The advance was checked by the discovery that the cart axle had split
and must be repaired to prevent a breakdown over the next bit of rough
going. The corporal was in a bluster of impatience to press forward.
Delay had not lost its power to frighten him. The next village lay ten
miles beyond, but between was a desolate stretch of waste land in which
no one lived, in which nothing grew. From the tiled roof of the tavern
the corporal could see this little desert rolling like a lake almost
from the village walls to the sky line. It caught his fancy with a huge
onset of relief. Once beyond this barrier, he would feel secure against
discovery, and he magnified it as the borderland of safety. You Han was
surrounded by a group of voluble citizens who urged waiting two days
until a new axle could be hewn from the solid tree; but the deserter
exploded the conference by shouting:
"Dump the carrt here. Pack the mule, an' we'll send back for the Noah's
ark when we get settled over beyant. Make haste an' upholster the mule
with the baggage of light marchin' order."
When the dun mule, in tow of the boy, limped out of the gateway across
the crumbling moat, its small hoofs sank to the fetlock in white
sand, and the trail of cart-wheels winding across the plain shimmered
in an aching dazzle of sunlight. At the end of an hour the village
behind them was a brown smudge not more than two miles distant. The
deserter made peevish comments, but there was cheerfulness in the crack
of his profanity, as he plodded painfully ahead of the boy and the
mule. Whenever they paused to rest he talked to You Han, not caring
whether the boy understood one word in five. The two seemed alone in
all the world; their calamitous fortunes were more closely knit than at
any time in the flight; and hope lay somewhere beyond this barricade
provided by a fate grown strangely kind.
"You'll have the next week to get the sand out o' thim foolish shoes o'
yourn," observed the corporal. "An' me blisters will be attinded to by
the chief surgeon of the county. Like chickens an' silk over-coats, my
son? We're goin' hell-bent for the comforts of life by the carrt-load."
You Han talked to the mule in encouraging whistles and replied, "Can
do," to the monologue of the corporal, who rambled on:
"Say, thim kids did me more good than a barrel o' monkeys. Weren't
they corkers? By the holy poker! I'm goin' to marry you off to a
little squeeze-toed fairy in the big town over the way, an' you'll
live without worrkin' forevermore. Maybe the old man will follow suit.
It's me life ambition to be idle an' palatial. An' You Han will be the
hottest sport in fifty li. Dinghowdy? All right?"
In the third hour they were not more than halfway across, and the
short winter afternoon was reddening. The level desolation had begun
to tumble up into crowding little hills and sand barriers among which
the trail now and then entangled itself. But the air was crystal and
windless, and scrambling to the top of one of the white hills, the
corporal could see the faintest tracery of a towered temple on the
farther side of the desert as a guiding landmark. It was a forced
march, and a halt was made only for a fragment of supper and a swig for
man and mule from the water-bottle on the pack. The moon rose in the
sleeping dusk, but before it was clear of the scalloping ridges of sand
the sky became spattered with rags of flying cloud. Presently the wind
behind the angry scud began to pick up gusts of sand and flirt them
from one crest to another. The travelers rubbed their eyes and coughed
as they plowed steadily westward, steering a course by the cart-trail,
still discernible, and by the moon behind them. "We're more 'n halfway
over," shouted the corporal, "an' it's silly to be dr'amin' of losin'
ourselves in this two-by-four desert."
Then the gray sky closed down in blackness everywhere, and leaping
billows of sand seemed to meet it. The rush of the terrific wind
wiped out the trail as if it had been no more than a finger-mark.
There were no more hills nor winding passages among them, only a fog
of whirling sand. The wind had an icy edge as it brought the killing
cold of Mongolian steppes a thousand miles away. The deserter and the
boy covered their faces with their hands, their garments; and almost
instantly they were adrift, cowering, lost, helpless. So dense was the
driving smother of sand that they could scarcely see the mule straining
at the end of its halter-rope. The hillocks were shifting with a
complaining roar, and the shriek of the wind in mid-air was pierced
with a shrill rasp like the commotion of innumerable iron filings.
The corporal and You Han groped toward the side of a hillock, seeking
a lee; but the flooding sand tumbled down its side knee-deep, and the
wind sucked round and searched them out, as if in chase. The flinty
particles pelted in sheets, and bit their faces like incessant volleys
of fine shot. There was no more time to think of what should be done
than when a swimmer is plunged over a dam.
It did not seem possible that the danger of death was menacing in this
absurdly small theater of action, yet it could not have been many
moments before the deserter began to realize where lay the odds in
another hour's exposure to such a storm. All sense of direction had
been snatched from him, and he fought only for breath. You Han had no
knowledge of desert storms in his home on the bank of the Pei-ho. He
gasped whatever prayers came to him, but placed his active faith, still
unshaken, in the ability of his master to save him from the choking,
freezing terror. The man and the boy were not only stifled, but soon
benumbed, for neither had ever felt anything to compare with the
searching cold of this blast. They stumbled from one hill to another,
sometimes keeping their feet, falling oftener, rising more slowly, the
little mule trying in vain to turn tail to the storm.
There could be no conversation. At length the deserter muttered
drowsily to the storm such fragments as these:
"No place like home. It's the finish that's comin' to me. Cudn't take
me medicine like a man. P'rhaps this'll blow over soon. I'm blinded
entirely. Good God! forgive me poor cowardly sowl! I niver meant to go
wrong. Had to bring that poor fool You Han into this mess."
The deserter pitched forward on hands and knees, his rifle buried
somewhere in his circling wake. He caught hold of You Han's queue lest
they lose each other, and then the mule pushed impetuously between
them, ears forward, muzzle outstretched, trumpeting joyfully.
"He b'lieve can find. He sabee plenty," feebly sputtered You Han.
The frantic mule dragged the boy by the lead-rope a few paces,
the corporal falling, sliding after, and then stopped. The linked
procession could go no farther. You Han collapsed in a little heap,
and the corporal toppled face down. The boy had tied the lead-rope
around his own wrist, and the impatient mule was jerking it so that
the forlorn figure in the sand seemed to make appealing gestures. The
corporal was without motion, and with a mighty effort You Han pulled
himself a little nearer, and the mule followed protestingly. The
swaying curtain of sand closed in around the three figures.
You Han struggled to his knees and with his teeth loosed the knotted
cinch, and the pack fell from the mule. The boy writhed over on the
corporal and tried to raise the dead weight, tried to talk to him in
a wordless and appealing whimper. The deserter strove to rise, and
failed until he dully comprehended that the boy sought to make him
mount the mule, or at least to hitch him in tow with the lead-rope.
Then the soldier awoke, and fighting off the death that had almost
mastered him, lurched to one knee and pushed You Han toward the mule
that was standing over them. His voice thick and rasping as if his
tongue were of sandpaper, the deserter succeeded in saying:
"Get aboard that mule. No Chinese village in mine. Better man than
me--you an' mule both better men. You won't? ---- ---- you, take that!"
The deserter swung his fist against the jaw of the struggling boy,
and the blow went home with the last flicker of the old-time fighting
strength of Corporal Sweeney. You Han dropped limp, as if shot. Then
the fugitive from army justice braced himself, tried, and failed to
lift the light body in his arms. Three times he tried and failed, and
then, as the mule swerved, he fell against it and dropped the lad
across its back, like a bundle of quilts. The cinch, trailing in the
sand, tripped the man, and he slipped it over You Han and pulled it
tight before he fell back in the tossing sand. The mule stumbled a step
or two with its burden, found that it was free and in a moment tottered
beyond the vision of the deserter.
Not more than a hundred yards away a camel-trail lay encamped against
the storm, and to the Mongolian drivers, huddled in furs close to their
beasts, came a little dun mule half dragging an unconscious Chinese
youth, whom they took for dead as they wonderingly cut him loose from
his lashing.
Daylight and the tail of the sand-storm had come before he was able to
speak, and the camels were jostling into the line of march. The swarthy
drivers scoffed at the story told by the raving stranger, until the
bell-camel shied at something nearly buried in the sand. You Han fought
the greedy northerners off until he had disclosed a figure in army blue
and a clean-cut Irish face whose expression was vastly peaceful.
The last silver coin was gone from the knotted sash of You Han after
he had persuaded the camel-men to carry the body to the village where
Corporal Sweeney had expected to find a refuge from fear.