by F. M. Parker
“Set your poles to pry,” Tom yelled at Scom and Yuen.
He leaped into the pit beside Yutang. He placed his feet against the rear wall at waist height and his shoulders on the massive stone.
“Pry, you bastards,” Tom screamed up at the two men above.
He put his strength on the rock. His mind contained but one thought—move the stone off his friend.
Sharp projections of rock stabbed into his back. His tendons and muscles creaked. His breath was compressed and locked like a solid in his lungs.
He put forth his ultimate effort. Stars exploded in his brain.
He sensed the stone shifting. Then he could no longer feel it. He fell beside Yutang.
And he heard the wonderful sound of the boulder rumbling down the trench to the river.
Men sprang into the hole and many hands lifted Yutang and Tom out. Gently they were laid on the ground.
Tom rested, breathing deeply, recovering from the tremendous effort. Yuen’s voice reached him. It was a sob.
Tom rolled over to look. All the men were gathered around Yutang. The big man raised his head and gazed steadily at Tom.
“You did a mighty feat in moving that stone,” said Yutang. “You are stronger than I am.”
“Only because I had your strength as well as my own there for just a moment,” replied Tom. “How is your foot?”
“See for yourself.”
From the middle of the lower leg to the ends of the toes, Yutang’s leg was horribly crushed. Shattered bones protruded from the flesh in a score of places. Blood spouted in red geysers from ruptured arteries. Yuen was working speedily to tie a tourniquet to stop the bleeding.
Tom knew with sorrow that the leg was lost. He had difficulty in keeping his voice from breaking as he spoke to Yutang.
“Many men live long lives with only one leg.”
Tom was mystified at the odd expression that came onto the faces of the men hovering near Yutang. What thoughts had his words created in them.
“Scom, where are you?” called Yutang in an iron voice. “Ah, there you are. I believe you deliberately let that rock fall on me. Now don’t deny it because there is nothing you can say that will change my mind.”
“Then I will say nothing,” growled Scom and sank back into the crowd.
“Don’t anyone try to take revenge on Scorn for me,” said Yutang. “One day I will take him in these hands and remove his head.” Yutang became silent, laying motionless. His eyes lifted upward past the sparkling snow-white peaks of Seven Devils Mountains to roam the sky. A wistful expression cloaked his broad countenance.
The other men remained still as if afraid to intrude into Yutang’s private reverie.
Several minutes passed before Yutang lowered his sight from the heavens to the earth.
“Hoy, I am hungry. Bring me some of your delicious fish soup.”
“Yes, Yutang. Right away,” said Hoy, his face strained. He stood up.
“Hoy, one last favor. Put a black pearl in it for me. I wish to take a long journey.”
“Are you very sure, Yutang?” Hoy asked, and once again stooped to be close to the injured man.
“I am certain.”
“Then I will do it.” With a haunted look, Hoy went up the slope to the shanties.
Tom was surprised at the turn of the conversation. Yutang wanted to eat when all attention should have been concentrated on treating his wound. And the term “black pearl” seemed to have a large significance. Was it some kind of special Chinese spice?
The men huddled ever closer to Yutang. Some reached out and touched him. When Hoy returned with the soup, the group provided a passageway for him.
Yutang ate slowly, savoring the food. He swallowed the last spoonful and looked around.
“Sit me up so the sun can shine brightly on me, for death loves a shining mark. I am ready to meet joss.”
Sigh and Yuen raised Yutang and placed his back to rest against a snow-covered rock. They sat down on the ground very near him.
Yutang raised his view to the heavens and sat motionless. “Ah! Isn’t the sunlight glimmering off the snowy shoulders of Seven Devils a wonderful sight?”
No one spoke or turned to look.
“I feel the dragon stirring,” said Yutang. “I will soon be dead. I would thank my friends to send my bones to China to the Flowery Kingdom. I hope and think you will. Then my spirit will have peace forever.”
“What is happening?” Tom whispered to Hoy.
“Yutang has taken the black pill. It is opium. I put much of it in the soup as he asked. It will soon kill him.” Hoy spoke so low Tom had doubt he had heard correctly.
“But he could live with one foot. We could cut it off quickly and a strong man like him would not die.”
“What would a one-legged Chinaman do here in the mountains of a foreign land? He cannot work. The rest of us do not have enough money above our own needs to clothe him. Yutang is a proud man. He would rather die than to be dishonored by begging.”
“My spirit rises up from the land,” said Yutang in a calm voice. “I am flying swiftly over the forested mountains and the dry desert. I see Gum San To Foy, the big city of the Golden Mountains. There below me is the shore of the great sea where we first set foot upon this country of white men. Now I am speeding swiftly over the wide, deep sea. Oh, how beautiful it is. The sky is without clouds and the same wondrous blue as the ocean.”
Yutang quivered as more of the potent narcotic flooded into his blood. His drug-induced dream intensified and his speech increased in tempo and the pitch rose.
“Canton! My brothers, I can see Canton. I am approaching it very fast. I can hear the thousands of people at the marketplace and smell the wonderful odors of incense, soy and cooking oils.”
Yutang’s body trembled and arched as the concentration of opium reached a toxic level and seared the nerve endings. He fought for control. He spoke again.
“I am at my father’s farm. He has planted cabbage in one field and rice in the other. It will be a bountiful harvest. I am finally home.”
All the men listened intently and without a murmur to Yutang’s recital of his vision. No one commented that it was the dead of winter in China and nothing grew in the fields. They hunkered very near him, many with their eyes closed, living his vision of home with him.
Yutang began to twitch. His eyes opened widely and the pupils dilated. His legs and arms jerked as convulsions seized his thick frame. His body beat up and down on the rocks.
Sigh and Hoy fell upon the thrashing figure, placing all their weight to hold it still. They were as chaff against the massive strength of Yutang. Yuen and Tom piled their body weights upon the mound of men.
Yutang grimaced in shock and sudden agony of death. There was a last rattle of air in his throat. His face softened and eyes steadied and came to final rest.
Sigh reached out and brushed the eyelids down to cover the black orbs. “The black pearl has done its work,” he said.
He stood up. “Yutang shall receive his share of gold as if he were alive. We will send it to his father. His bones shall sail back to China with me.”
* * *
The stormy days of December passed drearily. Tom felt only gloom at Yutang’s death and spoke little to the other men.
Snow lay two feet deep. The men remained in the cabin, venturing out only to chop more wood to feed the voracious appetite of the open fireplaces.
In the late part of the month, a dense ice fog settled into the valley and obscured the sun. For days it endured, restricting the range of sight to a few yards.
One day, late in the evening, loud shouts sounded from down the river. Sigh, Tom and the total group streamed from the shanties. Tom and five other men were armed with the rifles captured from the outlaws.
Phantom forms like spirits moved in the ice mist at the base of the mountains. Then they materialized into full view, eighteen men in a line. One man broke trail through the snow and the others followed exactly in his footsteps.
“It is Guofeng and his comrades,” said Sigh. “They have come all the long distance from their mine on the Imnaha River.” He hurried forward to greet the lead man with a bear hug.
Old friends were made welcome. Some of the younger men did a happy, wild dance in the snow with their countrymen they had not seen for months.
The new arrivals became instantly silent as Tom came nearer and was recognized as a white man.
“What is a foreign devil doing among you?” angrily questioned Guofeng.
Sigh walked to the tall American and put his hand on his shoulder. “This foreign devil saved our gold and perhaps our very lives. But come inside for you must be tired. Have hot tea and I will tell you the story.”
As the newcomers sipped the strong beverage, Sigh described the incident of the thieves and Tom’s and Yutang’s deeds. Guofeng found the tale pleasing and asked for it to be told a second time with more detail.
“I would have given much to see the fight. I am glad you shot two of the bandits. From your description they are the very same men who killed my brother Woen and stole our gold. Sigh, you should have let Yutang break the leader’s neck. All of them deserved to die. It is sad that part of them still lives.”
“Tell us what happened to your gold,” said Sigh.
With a sad countenance, Guofeng did as asked. Then he wiped the sorrow from his face. He said, “But now it is the New Year. A new start must be made. We have come to share this day with you. It is the time to pay honest debts, visit friends, and buy new clothes. We cannot buy new clothes, so we will visit with our friends for a day and talk of home and women.”
“You must be hungry,” said Hoy. “I will prepare you some food.”
“Not just food,” said Sigh. “We must have a feast.”
“Yes. A great feast,” agreed Guofeng. “We have brought special delicacies of dried abalone and oysters shipped from California, and our cook has sprouted beans which he has carried all the way on his back.”
Hoy clapped his hands gleefully. “Give them to me and I will add them to our food stock and fix a meal fitting to serve the Emperor of China. Who is your cook? I will need help to feed this army of mouths.”
A delicious banquet was held. The table groaned and sagged with steamed breads stuffed with dark sugar, noodles, rice, venison, beans and bean sprouts, millet soup, oysters, abalone and gallions of hot tea.
Tom had never consumed such exquisite and rare foods. He ate until his stomach was comfortably full and then beyond that until gorged.
He conversed little, satisfied to merely sit near the wall and listen to the banter and story telling of the men caught up in a happy evening by the companionship of visiting countrymen. He was pleased that he understood much of what was said. It was a very enjoyable time.
The men slept shoulder to shoulder, the normally crowded space barely holding them all. Early the next morning, Guofeng and his group prepared to leave.
The goodbyes were much subdued. Tom understood why. These men might never see each other again. This America was a perilous place for the men from China. Outlaws robbed and killed them, they drowned when ships sank crossing the seven thousand miles of tempestuous ocean and the land itself was hostile and took its toll.
Guofeng gave a last salute to Sigh and Tom and struck out along the return trail. His men fell in behind him like iron filings to a magnet. They vanished one by one into the frosty mist.
* * *
The ice cloud began to thin late in the seventh day of the new year. Tom felt his mood brighten as sun dogs began to flash, small incomplete rainbows shining in the diamonds of the frost mist.
The sun came out completely for a handful of minutes just before it dropped behind Black Mountain. It turned dark swiftly, the winter day holding little time between sundown and star-shine.
Tom sat late in front of the dying coals of the fire and listened to the cold cough of the wind on the clapboard roof. It seemed the wind was trying to tell him something. Time and again he got up to broodingly peer outside at the star-blown wilderness night. He saw the moon rise round and frozen and wintry wan.
He sensed his stay with the Chinamen was ending. Yet he felt a bleak loneliness at the thought of leaving.
He was still awake when the false dawn arrived, when a spectrum of the light of the still hidden sun was reflected down into the valley from a high layer of clouds.
Sigh awoke and came to stand in the doorway beside Tom. “You are thinking of other paths to follow, rather than staying here with us,” he said.
“Yes. As soon as the weather breaks, I will go.”
“What is your route, your destination?”
“I do not know.”
“Do you have any money?”
“No. Not one cent.”
“You have helped us to mine gold. Some of it belongs to you. How would you like to earn additional money? There is something very important you could do for us.”
“What is it?”
“I have asked my uncle in China to buy a woman and send her to America. He is a trustworthy man and will accomplish this for us. She should arrive in San Francisco in March or April. You are the one person who could bring her safely to us here in this place.”
“One woman for all of you?”
“We are lonely men, and san doys, bachelors. We have only enough money to buy one woman. We will treat her kindly. Will you do this for us?”
“Certainly. I would be pleased to do it.”
“Good. We will talk again of this and make our plans when the days grow longer and the snow melts.”
They remained standing quietly in the doorway. On the Snake, the ice cracked and moaned as it strained and thickened with the pressure of the cold. On the mountainside, a scream, like a woman in terror, tore a hole in the cold morning. The cry mounted and peaked and echoed back and forth between the canyon walls before it reluctantly died away.
“What was that terrible sound?” asked Sigh.
“That was a mountain lion. Perhaps it failed to make a kill and now must sleep with an empty belly.”
“It is easy to fail,” said Sigh. “Tom, do you think we will fail in returning to China with our gold?”
“I don’t know. You must keep your guard posted every day and night when the trails are open. I believe Yutang and Guofeng were right and we should have killed the thieves, so they could not return and harm you.”
CHAPTER 11
Keging smiled, her lips partly open and her black almond eyes luminous as lanterns, shining with inquisitive innocence. She held out her hands and beckoned to Pak.
The dream was so tangible, Pak put out his arms to pull her to him. Then he jerked awake.
He lay on the hard bunk in the tiny cabin of the clipper ship and stared into the darkness. The ship tossed under him as it drove ahead in a rough sea. The blanket separating Keging’s portion of the cabin from his swayed with a soft, rustling sound. As if she were shoving aside the flimsy partition to come to him.
Pak sat up and swung his feet to the wooden deck. He reached and touched the blanket. One long step would take him to her. He craved his cousin’s woman. He could not stop the craving.
He took his short sword from where it lay on the bunk. He tied the leather loop of the scabbard around his neck so the sword hung inside his blouse and down between his shoulder blades. No Chinaman could bring weapons, either knives or guns, onto the ship. Pak had asked the Chinese cook to smuggle his sword on board. The man had readily agreed to do it for Pak—a captain in the Hung Society. He also readily accepted the piece of silver Pak offered him.
Pak went out into the darkness on the stormy deck. He walked aft along the starboard side of the ship.
It was the beginning of the second month at sea and three thousand watery miles separated him from Canton. Pak had purchased passage for Lian and himself on the clipper ship, American Wanderer. For th
e fabulously expensive price of two hundred American dollars, he had obtained a small cabin on the mid-deck of the tall-masted sailing ship. That cramped cave of a temporary living place forced him within an arm’s length of Lian almost every hour of the day and night.
Pak paced the empty deck, eyes slitted against the cold rain and sea spray. The ship sailed beneath a black overcast. A stiff wind blew from the starboard quarter and the vessel heeled to port. The oaken beams of the ship creaked. The canvas sails on the three tall masts above his head now and then snapped like muffled pistol shots.
He turned across the fantail of the ship. He thought of the three hundred and fifteen Chinamen packed in the lowest decks under his feet. They had bought passage in the steerage for fifty dollars each. They were men dreaming of golden fortunes to be made in California, and in the meantime, living a squalid and harsh existence in the bowels of the ship. Their only opportunity to breathe the clean sea air was when they were permitted to come onto the top deck in shifts for an hour each day.
Pak stopped by the lee rail to watch out into the turbulent sea. His nose sniffed the wind and his tongue tasted it, tangy and heavy with salt. He had found a liking for the sea.
The ship rolled far to port as it sank into a trough, and a liquid mountain of water rose to loom high over Pak. He half saw and half sensed the menace of the wave and knew afresh the feeling he sometimes had in battle, of how narrow was the gulf separating life and death.
Then the remarkable clipper ship with its tons of heavy ballast in the keel pulled itself erect and only the lip of the danger brushed Pak, a thin wavelet coming on board to wet his feet. The Americans were skilled craftsmen to build such a masterful ship.
He turned and walked forward on the tossing deck. He enjoyed the violence of the motion. The winter storm and the ship’s struggle through it, was somehow removing some of the tangle that his desire for Lian had twisted into his thoughts.
* * *
The seaman on watch made his way among the swaying hammocks in the stuffy fo’c’sle. He held his coal oil lantern up and peered into the face of one of the sleeping sailors.
“Tolman, time to wake for the midnight watch,” said the seaman.