A TALE OF THE FAR EAST
It was as Doctor Emmons predicted: Teeny-bits slept half the morning
through and awoke with a clear look in his eyes that indicated at once
to his friends that his dazed condition had passed.
"What did I hit?" he asked.
"A big oak tree," said Ted Norris.
"I knocked it down, didn't I?" asked Teeny-bits. "My head feels as if I
did."
His friends laughed with a happy abandon in which there was a quality
that expressed release from a great fear.
Under the doctor's orders Teeny-bits remained in bed the rest of the
week, though he declared on the second day that he was feeling fit and
wanted to get up. Meanwhile the holidays came to an end. Phillips and
Whipple departed for Jefferson School and at the same time most of the
other vacationers in the Pocassett settlement went their various ways.
Neil Durant and Ted Norris, however, insisted on staying until
Teeny-bits was entirely recovered. A part of each day they sat about the
cabin talking over school and college life.
"If you fellows would only wait a year I might go to college with you,"
Teeny-bits said one day, half jokingly.
"I might do it at that," said Neil Durant. "Father has been talking to
me about staying out a year and working before I start in."
"That's not a bad idea," said Wolcott Norris. "Most of the fellows
to-day enter college with a pretty vague notion of what they're going to
do and it might help a lot to get out and work for a year or so before
you continue your education. I think it would be time well spent."
The conversation was brief, but it began something which was destined to
come to pass.
During these days while he was recovering, Teeny-bits had the
opportunity to accomplish the thing for which he had envied Neil Durant
on the night of the accident,--to become better acquainted with Wolcott
Norris. While Ted and Neil, who had recovered from his sprained ankle,
were out on snowshoes and skis, the mining engineer and the new captain
of the Ridgley team spent many hours together. The admiration that
Teeny-bits had felt for this man with the straight figure and the keen
eyes steadily increased. Here, he said to himself, was a man whose
character showed in his face and whose life any one would do well to
imitate. There was something about Wolcott Norris that inspired
Teeny-bits with a feeling of confidence, and somewhat to his surprise he
found himself telling the mining engineer things that he had never told
even to such good friends as Neil Durant or Snubby Turner,--confidences
about his own feeling toward the other members of the school, hopes for
the future and something of the ambitions for the attainment of which he
meant to strive. For some reason which he could not analyze it seemed
entirely natural to be conversing intimately--even after such a short
acquaintance--with Wolcott Norris.
"You two fellows seem to be getting pretty chummy," said Ted Norris one
afternoon when he and Neil came in and found Teeny-bits and the mining
engineer engaged in conversation. "What's all the deep talk about?"
"Why don't you pull up some chairs and sit down?" asked Wolcott Norris.
It was just at the beginning of twilight and the flickering fire was
already making shadows on the beamed ceiling of the cabin. Neil and Ted
Norris pulled off their leather coats and stretched themselves out
comfortably with their feet toward the blaze.
"Now," said Ted, looking at Wolcott Norris, "is the time for you to spin
us a yarn."
"Yes," replied the mining engineer gazing at the three of them with an
expression that they later remembered, "I guess this _is_ the time to
spin you a yarn."
To their surprise he got up abruptly from his splint-backed chair and
went out to his bedroom. As he returned he was thrusting something into
his coat pocket.
"After I got through Jefferson," he said, when he was sitting in front
of the fireplace once more, "I went to technical school to study
engineering--mining engineering--which meant that when I started out to
work I traveled round the country from one place to another, and within
a short time I had a commission to go to China. When I went I took some
one with me."
Wolcott Norris paused and for a minute or two gazed straight before him.
None of the three listeners interrupted the silence; there had been a
quality in the mining engineer's voice which had made them feel that
they were about to hear something unusual.
"Here's her picture," he said, and took from his pocket the object he
had placed there on entering the room a few moments before. He handed it
to Teeny-bits, who bent forward a little so that the glow from the
firelight fell on the photograph. Neil Durant and Ted Norris leaned
toward him and the three of them saw the likeness of a young woman with
smiling eyes and fine, clear features.
"Mighty nice looking," said Neil Durant. "She reminds me of some one
I've seen before, I can't think where."
There was a slight unsteadiness in Wolcott Norris' voice when he spoke
again, but he overcame it and went on with his story rapidly.
"We were married just after I got my new job, went out to San Francisco
and sailed for China on the Japanese steamer _Tenyo Maru_. It was a
wonderful world to us then--more wonderful than I can describe to you.
Rain or shine, every day was a perfect day, and we sailed on and on in
that little old steamer out across the Pacific until we came at last to
Asia. For several months we were in Shanghai at the headquarters of the
company, then they sent me up into the province of Honan to a little
place called Tung-sha on a tributary of the Yangtse in a country that
was pretty wild.
"There was gold and copper back in the hills and the company intended to
carry on extensive operations if the ground proved worth while. How
strange it seemed to us to find a bit of a foreign colony--a handful of
Americans and British and French, missionaries and representatives of
the company--set down in a region that for no one knows how many
thousand years had belonged to the yellow men. You go about in China and
you see those old, old temples and the weather-worn houses and the
ancient hills, bald and bare, and you feel as if antiquity were casting
a spell over you. A person who hasn't lived among the Chinese can't
imagine what a strange, superstitious people they are; more than any
other race on the face of the earth they are bound to the past--and I
suppose when we came up there to Tung-sha and began to dig tunnels in
their hills we were breaking the precedent of the past. Still we didn't
really expect any trouble--and for many months all went smoothly. Some
wonderful things happened up there in that out-of-the-way corner of the
world. We lived--Marion and I--in a three-room bungalow with a roof that
sloped like the roof of a temple, and here that first springtime
something very fine came into our lives--a son was born to us. He was a
husky little youngster--and maybe he couldn't yell!"
Wolcott Norris laughed.
"I remember that Ho Sen, my Chinese servant boy, used to say when the
baby howled 'Nice stlong lung; he'll glow nice, big man! And by Jingo!
How that little chap did grow! Those were days crowded with happiness
and before we knew it we'd been in Tung-sha more than a year. The mine
was beginning to require additional machinery and everything looked good
for the future. We were so contented there in our bungalow that I
suppose we never thought of anything happening to burst our bubble of
happiness--at least I don't remember that any worries troubled our
minds."
The mining engineer paused in his story and passed his hand across his
brow. A minute went by, during which the hushing sound of the fire alone
broke the stillness of the room. Teeny-bits, Neil Durant and Ted Norris
sat without moving; their eyes were on the red and yellow fireplace
flames, but what they saw was a bit of the old Chinese Empire, in-land
on a tributary of the Yangtse--and a bungalow at Tung-sha. The mining
engineer was silent so long that finally they looked up--and, seeing the
expression on his face, looked quickly down again--as those turn away
their faces who look by mistake too deeply into the intimate thoughts of
another.
"Bad water and Red Knife wrecked Tung-sha," said Wolcott Norris
abruptly. "The water was contaminated somehow--typhoid got into it. Our
little colony was hard hit and when that second summer was over the
youngster I told you about didn't have any mother--she was sleeping the
long sleep out there at the foot of the Tung-sha hills."
The mining engineer's voice had grown thick--it was as if another person
were speaking.
"I should have told you more at the start about Red Knife," he said. "He
was a Chinese robber--the chief of a gang of hill-men who for years had
levied tribute from those poor, ignorant people of Honan. His name was a
living terror--I have never seen such abject fear on the faces of human
beings as one day when a rumor passed among our mine workers that Red
Knife was in the hills near by waiting to pounce down upon them. They
reminded me of sheep huddling together to escape wolves.
"From the time when the company first started operations at Tung-sha we
realized that this bandit was working against us--for the reason, of
course, that he knew we would lessen his power. I questioned Ho Sen one
day and learned that Red Knife had sent word around that if the 'foreign
devils', as he called us, dug further into the hills man-eating dragons
would come out and destroy the villages. We had to pay extra to get
labor after that."
"Why did they call him Red Knife?" asked Neil Durant.
"Because that was his symbol--a red knife--and his followers were said
to carry red-bladed daggers.
"Red Knife chose his time well. He came down on our little settlement at
the height of the typhoid scourge. It was only a few days after Marion
had been buried and I was up at the mine attending to some last
arrangements so that I could leave. I had made up my mind to take
Winslow--that's what we'd named the little boy--out to Shanghai, for
Tung-sha was no place for a motherless youngster. In broad daylight I
heard the natives wailing and yelling, and then the mine workers began
to cry out that Red Knife had swooped down from the hills. The white men
who were with me pulled out their guns and we ran down to the bungalows.
We were too late, however; Red Knife had come and gone--and with him had
gone Ho Sen and the boy. Three or four of the natives lay in the street
with their throats cut and the rest of them were so frightened that at
first I couldn't get them to tell me anything, but finally I made out
that Red Knife's men had carried the baby away in a basket and that Ho
Sen had gone with them, voluntarily or as a prisoner I did not know.
"I can't tell you just how crazy I was. I remember that I grabbed up a
handful of shells for my revolver and ran up toward the Hai-Yu Gap where
the natives said Red Knife and his gang had disappeared. I remember also
that Hartley, the surgeon, and a Frenchman ran after me and tried to
pull me back, and when I wouldn't come with them that they ran along
beside me. But I guess I out-distanced them, for after a time I was
running alone up the dry bed of a stream where the Hai-Yu Gap cut the
hills. I meant to get the boy and bring him back, but I suppose I might
as well have tried to follow a black tracker into a tropic jungle as to
follow the trail of Red Knife through those Tung-sha hills.
"I don't know how far I went. When night came I was lost--scrambling in
the dark over bare rocks, slipping into gulleys and fighting my way out
again. I suppose I made a terrific clatter and that Red Knife's men
heard me coming when I was a long way off. At any rate they got me when
I was off my guard--the yellow men pounced on me from behind the rocks
and, though I think I did for one or two of them with my gun, they
knocked me over the head. When I came to I was in the dusky interior of
a stone house, bound and utterly helpless."
Wolcott Norris got up abruptly from his chair and, walking over to the
window, looked out into the twilight at the snow-covered Pocassett
landscape. When he came back to the fireplace he said to the three
listeners who had followed them with their eyes but had not stirred:
"Maybe you've read of the devilish ingenuity of some of these Chinese
brigands--there are wild stories and some are true and some are not, but
the torture that Red Knife put me to in that stone house up beyond the
Hai-Yu Gap was worse than death--or so it seemed to me.
"He was a short, broad-shouldered wretch with a thin, hairy mustache
that curled round the corners of his mouth. That mouth of his and his
black, slant eyes were the most vivid expressions of cruelty that I have
ever seen. When I first saw him I thought of Genghis Khan, that ancient
conqueror who is said to have slaughtered five million persons while he
ruled over China. Red Knife brought in Ho Sen and my little boy and he
made Ho Sen, who was trembling like a leaf, interpret the things he
wanted me to know.
"'Foreign devil,' he said, 'what is worth more than your life to you?
Ai, I know. This child is worth to you more than your life, therefore
will I take him away.' And then he uncovered the baby's back and showed
me a livid mark on the little chap's shoulder. 'See,' he said, 'he
belongs to Red Knife now; he wears Red Knife's mark. My women will be
_very_ good to this little son of the foreigner. We will bring him up in
our band; he will be clever like the white man. Who knows, perhaps he
will be as good a thief as Red Knife himself!'
"I tried to think of something that I could say or do that would move
this wretch's heart, but it was of no use. Poor Ho Sen was frightened to
death, and when I begged him to try to escape and bring help from the
village I little thought that he could do anything.
"'Take the boy back to the village,' I said to Red Knife through the
interpreter, 'and do with me as you will.'
"'Yes, I will do with you as I will,' was his answer. 'I think I will
put you in a hole in the ground and perhaps I will give you a toad and a
lizard to keep you company. Red Knife wants no one to be lonely.'
"Red Knife--I've always supposed--did intend to put me out of the way by
some diabolical method of his own. And then the idea of holding me for
ransom apparently occurred to him, for he kept me in the stone house
back in the hills day after day. Two or three times when I saw Ho Sen I
begged him to run away from the bandits and take the little boy with him
and tell my friends in the village where we were, but Ho Sen only looked
at me and trembled. I couldn't much blame him for being terrified.
"One night there was a jabbering and yelling round the stone house and I
thought Red Knife had killed Ho Sen, for I saw him no more. Two days
later there was more commotion and the whole band began to prepare to
depart. I hoped that an expedition had come from the town--and that in
fact was actually what happened. Some of the Imperial Government troops
led by the white men were on Red Knife's trail, but Red Knife knew those
hills too well. He and his gang went farther back and took me along,
helpless. The horrible part of it all was that the little boy seemed to
have disappeared, and when I asked what had become of him these yellow
men only jabbered at me in their outlandish tongue. We traveled all day
and all night and finally camped in some limestone caves. There I became
very sick and I hoped that I should die because the future didn't seem
to hold anything at all for me. I know I was delirious for a long time;
things seemed very hazy--a confused coming and going of the natives and
the jabbering of their singsong voices. Perhaps that sickness was what
saved my life, for when I came to the end of my delirium I was lying
there deserted in the limestone cave. I suppose Red Knife thought that
the 'foreign devil' was dying and that I was only an encumbrance in his
retreat. I don't know how long I had remained in the cave and I can't
tell you how I managed to make my way out of that wilderness of hills
and dry river beds, but Providence must have guided me, for I finally
stumbled down into the village of Tung-sha and found Hartley, the
surgeon, and three or four of the Europeans still there.
"I was delirious again for a time and didn't know what went on around
me. But Hartley pulled me through and I found myself asking what had
happened. They told me that the native troops of the Imperial Government
had come up and that the foreign colony had led an expedition back into
the hills. They hadn't been able, however, to overtake Red Knife and had
finally abandoned the expedition partly because of the doubtful loyalty
of the Chinese troops, who weren't over eager to chase Red Knife. That
whole region in those days needed only a spark to set it aflame against
all foreigners.
"There was one surprising bit of news, something that gave me a great
desire to live. Ho Sen, poor, faithful Ho Sen, had escaped from Red
Knife. He had come crawling to Hartley's bungalow at midnight several
days after the raid, carrying in his arms the boy, and had fallen
unconscious at the doorsteps. Hartley took them in and found the boy
little the worse for his experiences, but Ho Sen died that same night
and had been in his grave more than two weeks when Hartley told me the
story. Meanwhile they had given up hope of ever seeing me alive again,
and when the colony decided that it was unsafe for the women to stay at
Tung-sha any longer they sent the boy down to Shanghai with an American
missionary by the name of Singleton, who was going back to the United
States. She had become deaf during her service in China and was
returning to the States for treatment.
"Of course I started for Shanghai as soon as I was able to get about,
going down the Yangtse in a river boat. But again I was too late. When I
arrived I discovered that this Miss Singleton had gone to the office of
the company and on their advice, after she had reported my death, had
taken the baby with her when she sailed for San Francisco. She had the
address of my brother--Ted's father--and said that she would deliver the
child to them in New York. That's about the end of the story, except
that I was never able to trace Miss Singleton beyond San Francisco. In
Shanghai I came down with typhoid and was delayed three months in
getting back to America. Then I discovered that my little son never
arrived in New York--as far as any one knew--and the result of the
investigations that I carried on through the police and private
detective agencies established only the fact that the young missionary
was on the steamer when it arrived at San Francisco and that she and the
baby disembarked with the other passengers.
"I said that was pretty nearly the end of the story--but you know I've
never quite given up hope of sometime finding that boy of mine."
"Will you let me look at that picture again?" asked Neil Durant.
As the mining engineer took the photograph from his pocket and handed it
to Neil, Teeny-bits asked a question:
"That mark," he said in a voice that was peculiarly tense, "what was it
like--was it--?"
"Yes," said Wolcott Norris, "it _was_ like the mark that I saw on your
shoulder when Doctor Emmons...."
"Look!" Neil Durant suddenly broke in. "I know _now_ where I've seen the
person that resembles this picture--it's _you_, Teeny-bits! Her eyes and
mouth--just look!"
Teeny-bits gazed at the picture and finally raised his eyes to those of
Wolcott Norris. He opened his lips to speak, but no sound came from
them. For the moment his thoughts were too full to find expression in
words.
"It seems--" he said unsteadily after a time, "like something I've been
dreaming, and now I know why I've had such a strange feeling toward
you--just as if you were my older brother--or my--my father. To-morrow
when Neil and I go back to Ridgley, will you come?"
"Yes, Teeny-bits, I'll come," said Wolcott Norris, "and we'll go over to
Greensboro and have a talk with those Chinese that Neil told me about."
Ted Norris jumped to his feet as if he had suddenly come out of a
trance. "By thunder!" he cried, "my head is swimming round in circles,
but I've just enough of a grip on my brains to see that you and I--that
we--oh, shucks!--put it there!" And the big fellow thrust out his hand
to Teeny-bits.
Next day the Norris cabin at Pocassett was closed. Ted Norris went back
to Jefferson and the other three traveled on toward Ridgley School. At
the Greensboro station Teeny-bits and Wolcott Norris left the train and
made their way to the Eating Palace of Chuan Kai. There the mining
engineer, who knew how to talk to an Oriental, very quickly discovered
that the proprietor of the establishment was a native of the Honan
Province; that Shanghai and the Yangtse and Tung-sha were places not
unknown to them, and then suddenly he put the question toward which he
had been leading the conversation. When Chuan Kai had left China was Red
Knife, the robber, alive? Chuan Kai started at the name and answered
quickly:
"He is a devil! He will never die."
"And that was why your men acted strangely when they saw the mark on the
young man's shoulder? They are from your region, too, and they know Red
Knife's mark. It frightened them to find it on an American over here on
this side of the world. That's all right. We've learned all we wish to
know and you need have no fear, Chuan Kai, that any harm will come to
you."
The Oriental had shown clearly that the mining engineer had hit upon the
truth; there was no necessity of wasting more time in Greensboro. A
little later Teeny-bits and Wolcott Norris were in the Hamilton station
greeting Pa Holbrook, who insisted on taking them home to supper. No one
could be more hospitable than this kindly old couple who made no excuses
for the humbleness of their home and who gave to every one who entered
it the true feeling of welcome. They accepted the mining engineer as a
friend of Teeny-bits. Ma Holbrook said to herself that here was "a real
fine man" and Pa Holbrook's mental comment was that he was a "genuwine
gentleman." Teeny-bits could see that these two persons, to whom he owed
so much, approved of Wolcott Norris, but he was filled with uneasiness
at the thought of telling them what he knew must be told.
It all came out very simply after the meal was over. The story seemed to
tell itself. Teeny-bits started it and Wolcott Norris helped him out,
and when it was all done and Ma and Pa Holbrook grasped the full import
of its meaning, there was no unpleasant scene.
Ma Holbrook put her handkerchief to her eyes, and the station agent
said, "There, there, mother, don't cry."
"I'm not really crying," declared Ma Holbrook. "I'm just a little bit
weepy, I'm so glad for Teeny-bits."
Pa Holbrook took the mining engineer's hand in his two old, gnarled ones
and said something that made Teeny-bits very happy:
"Ma and I are old folks and we've kind of worried, you can understand,
about Teeny-bits not having any family when we pass on. He's
_everything_ to us, and of course this coming so sudden sort of works Ma
and me up a mite, but when we're used to it we'll be the happiest people
on the face of the globe to know that our boy has a real dad like you."
"I know what we'll do," said Ma Holbrook suddenly, "Pa and I will sort
of adopt you, too, Mr. Norris. It don't really seem that you're much
more than old enough to be Teeny-bits' brother, anyway."
At that the mining engineer got up and stood over by the window blowing
his nose. When he turned round there was a redness about his eyes, and
his voice was husky:
"It's a wonderful thing to me to know that Teeny-bits has had you two to
look out for him all these years, and it's the best compliment I ever
had for you to say that you'd like to adopt me too. We'll share
Teeny-bits together and I'll be satisfied if I can make him care as much
about me as he cares about you."
Teeny-bits felt that he ought to say something, but for the life of him
he could not speak a word. He looked at these three persons who meant so
much to him, he thought of all the things that had come to him since
that first day when he climbed the hill to Ridgley School. The whole of
it seemed to pass before his eyes like a panorama suddenly displayed.
How much had happened! How many new friends he had made! How much life
held in store for him!
Ma Holbrook broke the trend of Teeny-bits' thoughts.
"Now," she said, smiling through the tears that still gathered in her
eyes, "what are we going to call you?"
Teeny-bits laughed. He could speak now. "Why, Ma," he said, "there's
only one thing to call me; I've been Teeny-bits all my life and I want
to be Teeny-bits still."
THE END
_By_ CLAYTON H. ERNST
BLIND TRAILS
_Illustrated by G. A. Harker_
"Clayton H. Ernst has avowedly written his story, 'Blind Trails,' for
'Boys from 12 to 18,' but the blood of any grown up who fails to find a
thrill in the adventures of young Hal Ayres must be thin indeed. 'Blind
Trails' is a far more interesting and better written story of adventure
than many of those recently offered for full grown readers."--_The New
York Sun._
"A story full of thrills that will keep the boy of 12 years or more
curled up in the chair before the fire long after bedtime."--_The
Philadelphia North American._
"A well-written and exciting story of a fight over the possession of
valuable lumber lands. It is a book far better than the usual run of
those intended for boys in the 'teens."--_The Saint Louis Star._
"'Blind Trails' is one of the best of the season's tales for big boys of
sub-college age. It is well written, with real conversations and
skillfully suspended interest, and more character-drawing than is usual
in such stories."--_The Boston Herald._
End of Project Gutenberg's The Mark of the Knife, by Clayton H. Ernst