The Chinese Bandit

by Stephen Becker

  In a quarter of an hour Ch’ing and Head of Pot had the three they wanted, and Jake had enjoyed an interesting performance, his Oriental friends displaying local custom and picturesque tradition. From now on it would perhaps be Jake’s tradition, too.

  Courteously, his hands spread wide, the Mongol asked a question. Head of Pot bowed, and gestured that he should proceed.

  The man of good bones yanked a sheep off its feet and onto its side; a knife flashed once in the brilliant sunlight, and there was a long slit in the sheep’s belly; the man darted a hand inside, twisted and yanked, and held the sheep’s heart high.

  Chu-chu said, “Hao, hao.”

  The sheep fluttered like a leaf and died.

  “That is a rare way to slaughter,” Jake said to Jim.

  “The Mongol way. Because so many of them are Buddhists and must not shed blood.”

  The world was full of wonders. Nomad shepherds who must not shed blood! Buddhists who live on meat!

  19

  K’uang felt powerful, irresistible, in the wireless shack; it was the center of a vast web, the forces of order, of justice, of retribution, working with the speed of light to trap and devour the forces of evil. Qomul at his fingertips, and now Peking. One could speak to generals, to governors, without suffering the haughty glance, without disgust at their obesities and slothful ways.

  The corporal completed the ritual of identification and introduction. K’uang took the microphone, and spoke to Peking. Of all but the nails.

  “Yes. Penicillin.”

  Peking spoke.

  “No,” K’uang said. “The foreigner’s identification was genuine, and he knew nothing of the medicine.” His own voice surprised him: a tremor of guilt, the voice of deceit. “What concerns me now is his employer. Kao Hu-tsuan, a merchant. A shady merchant, I have no doubt. You must have a file on him.”

  The air crackled: four hundred miles away, in Peking, a colonel exploded. Kao Hu-tsuan was known, all right.

  “The bastard is dead,” Peking snarled. “A black marketeer of the worst stripe, with a particular thirst for gold. The secret police took him in, finally.”

  “Ah,” K’uang said, and held his breath, prickling: what had the merchant confessed? “And what did he tell them?”

  “Nothing,” Peking said. “He never broke. Yüüü! They tried everything. He must have been a mess when he finally died. They hung out the corpse as a warning to other scum. All over Peking his gold lies hidden. And who knows what else. You must find that foreigner. Alive. You should not have let him go.”

  “He is with the caravan of the House of Wu,” K’uang said, “and I have already warned Captain Nien in Qomul.”

  “Then go get him,” Peking said. “If there is any question about your orders, have them call me here.” And after a pause, “Is this Major K’uang of the train at Ch’ang-sha?”

  “The same,” K’uang said dryly.

  A chuckle, floating four hundred miles. “A thousand Japanese dead, I heard.”

  “One exaggerates,” K’uang said coldly.

  “Find that foreigner,” Peking said. “And bring him in alive.”

  20

  Three weeks later, weary, bored and snapping curses, they hove to at a well called Ming-shui, or Clearwater, in a range called the Ma-tsun Shan, or Horseshoe Hills. Jake tried to explain to Jim why they might as well be in New Mexico if places were going to have such names.

  They hauled water. Water was not the problem Jake had imagined; there were wells and only a few went dry. The problem was feed. They had crossed the Black Gobi on a well-used track, and for days had seen no grass. Once across and into the hills they had seen grass, but it was a burnt, brownish blush on the hillsides. The camels were tired, and here at Ming-shui men and beasts would rest again.

  But three of the camels were kept off water for a day. They moaned and bellowed while the rest tanked up. Chu-chu marched here and there importantly, like a judge at a state fair. He was the hoof man, and the first day he did some resoling. The pads of a camel’s hoof were softer than Jake had suspected, and sometimes cracked, or split around a wee piece of grit that could work in and lame the animal.

  Chu-chu had his assistants hold a camel down while he roped the neck and foreleg. He presented the taut ropes to other assistants with a starchy sort of undertaker’s gloom. Then he looped a line around the hind hoof he wanted and a couple more assistants stretched the leg out behind.

  Jake waited for bones to crack.

  The camel belched. Chu-chu worked fast: he cleaned the crack with a boomerang-shaped needle, slapped a camel-hide pad across it, and used camel-hair twine to sew it to the tough edges of the hoof. Then he stepped back soberly, like a surgeon, and the others waited anxiously like relatives in the anteroom. “Good,” he said. “Next.”

  Jake hunkered and observed. All around him camels lay nosing at feed bags. Men shaved, repaired gear and told dirty stories. The sky was cloudless and the wind hot; a few had improvised half-tents. Head of Pot and Second Head bustled. Second Head was chopping white vegetables on his portable block, and Jake hoped for a banquet.

  When Chu-chu had resoled four camels, he ordered a check on nose pegs. In this part of the world a bit was rare. These folks slit the calf’s nose and shoved a wooden peg through, in a hide washer. They attached twine or rawhide to both ends of the peg, and if the calf acted up, a good yank put him in his place. Though often camels seemed indifferent to pain. And the Chinese to the camels’ pain.

  Jake did not know yet why three camels were being kept off water, but refrained from foolish questions. He bathed instead. Now and then a camel-puller sidled over to observe this exotic extravagance. Hsü-to squatted near the well clucking and rolling his eyes. “Yin,” he said, meaning the female principle. “Water is full of yin. It will drain your strength.”

  “It will enfeeble my army of lice.”

  Hsü-to was emphatic. “Lice are born of water. A man is clean when he leaves Pao-t’ou. He stops at this well and that well. Aha! He has lice.”

  Next day Chu-chu worked on the three dry camels. Cold water, Jim explained, raised or dilated blisters. These three had been dried and rested for a day and now were ridden here and there to incite a good flow of blood. Then they were held in place as for resoling, and Chu-ehu lanced their blisters.

  Not exactly. He did not lance the blister itself. He drove a blade into the pad from the side. He was not opening the blister but relieving the pressure by bleeding the whole hoof.

  This unfriendly treatment irritated the camels and they stomped angrily. Soon there were spurts and pools of blood to mark their dance. Chu-chu liked that. The demons were draining away. “They will be well,” he said. “Water them now.”

  Next morning they were well. The men loaded up before sunrise and moved out, to take advantage of the cool hours. They had passed through a deep cut just after sunup when the world ended. Half a dozen bandits on swift ponies burst out of ambush and stampeded the caravan.

  Jake was aboard his donkey, nodding along half asleep like a raggedy-ass Mongol trader with a mangy boar hide and a horned hat. Bad Smell poked along beside him, and behind her Sweetwater, and last in line Whore-of-the-Mountain shuffled with her long bell, tingtung-tingtung, and the bandits exploded out of nowhere: war whoops, hoofbeats, shots, the camels blatting in panic.

  The donkey shot forward, and Jake pitched backward and landed hard on the nape of his neck. Ponies thundered past. A shot deafened him. His donkey dropped. For a frozen instant he lived a nightmare, shrinking from an inhumanly scarred face, cruel and ugly: a huge man, prodigious, and that shattered face! He saw the eyes widen and heard the man shout “Keep this one” as he swept by, and then many swept by, like an army, and the dust was thick.

  Jake heard shots, many shots, and the cries of men fighting. He heard hoofbeats and yip-yips. He was dizzy, and struggled to sit.

  Master of the Armory.

  He spat dirt and winced at the pain. He felt for the .45 bu
t was much too late. A young man with buckteeth, sitting a pony on a tight rein, flashed a killer’s smirk at him and said, “Do not move. At all.” The advice was not necessary. He had a rifle trained on Jake’s bellybutton.

  Also Jake was paralyzed, and his gut ached. He wanted to vomit. He shivered.

  After a time—maybe a minute, but it seemed like a year—the shooting and shouting died. The sun warmed Jake’s back. He squeezed out a thought: these were smart guys, attacking from the east at sunrise.

  He heard hoofbeats again and saw three horsemen approach over a rise, with two laden camels and a riderless horse. His guard never even looked around.

  The three men rode to Jake and glowered, and he was staring again at the huge man of the scarred face. When the huge man said, “They killed Bayan. We killed a few of them,” Jake’s bowels shifted.

  “Bayan,” Buckteeth said. “Bugger.”

  “Kill him and let’s go,” another said.

  “Easy does it,” the scarred man said. He was big as a monument. He said something in a language Jake did not know, and the others laughed. Jake hung on. He could hardly breathe, but he would not soil himself or beg.

  “That yellow hair,” another one said, a tiny little brown fellow with a sharp nose like a mouse.

  Ugly said, “That’s gold.”

  Buckteeth slung his rifle.

  Jake saw that it was a Garand. With tremendous, painful effort he understood that he had been captured by bandits in western Mongolia and that they were about to kill him, castrate him, throw him away on the desert, or blind him and sell him for a slave.

  Buckteeth said doubtfully, “Ransom?”

  Ugly nodded. He dismounted, and stepped to Jake. His boots crunched on the stony sand. At Jake’s side he squatted. Jake forced himself to meet the man’s eye. The scars were long furrows and ridges from hairline to chin, and the scar tissue was not burnt black by the sun, so the face was striped like the desert with yellow ridges and black gullies.

  Ugly drew the .45 from Jake’s holster. He liked the look of it and nodded. With a forefinger like a banana he poked Jake’s belly. “Ransom,” he said.

  The fourth man was a handsome young buck. “There is no way,” he said. “Take him to Russia? Look for his mommy and daddy?”

  Ugly said, “True. But there is often something to be made out of foreigners. Once we had a railroad car full of them in Manchuria. We traded them for horses, guns and safe-conduct.”

  “Not this one,” Mouse said. “This one is not useful. Not even a woman. Shoot him now.”

  “He might do for a woman,” Buckteeth said. “Better than nothing.”

  “Strip him,” Ugly said.

  Buckteeth came alongside Ugly and removed Jake’s shirt.

  “A little bag,” Ugly said. “Holy beads, no doubt.”

  Buckteeth ripped the bag loose. Jake had seen it coming and ducked his head, wriggling, so the wire only burned his neck and did not shear his head off.

  Buckteeth squirted a stream of gold into the palm of Ugly’s hand. “Now we’re in business,” he said, buy-sell he called it, like old Kao.

  Ugly jingled the coins and poured them from hand to hand. “Six of the handsome little buggers.”

  “Seven,” Jake muttered, massaging his neck. The wire had scraped, and raised a drop of blood.

  “It speaks,” Ugly said.

  Buckteeth bashed Jake where he sat. Broke my jaw, Jake thought hazily, and tasted blood.

  “Ah shit,” he said in English. He was suddenly sore as hell; man about to die, he has a right to be annoyed. He hunched away from Buckteeth and snarled, “Bugger your mother and your father and all ancestors to the original generation of maggots. You are a defiler of dead dogs, you suck horse cock, and you could not hit a camel in the ass with that rifle if he was shitting on you.”

  Ugly’s eyes widened. “This is no Russian,” he announced. “This is a scholar. Hit him again, Momo.”

  Buckteeth slapped Jake backhand. Buckteeth looked like about a hundred and twenty pounds and he damn near killed Jake with the one blow. Jake’s eyeballs rattled and his brains scrambled and whistled. The horizon tilted and blurred.

  “Son of a Mongol turtle,” Jake wheezed.

  “I’m Japanese,” he said, and whammed Jake again.

  “Son of a Japanese turtle,” Jake sobbed.

  Momo spat a great gob on him.

  “Take his pants off,” Ugly said. “They hide things in the plum garden.”

  “Jewels,” Handsome said, and laughed merrily. Jake tore off his shoes and shucked his pants, squirming where he sat. “Nothing hidden,” he said. “Green underwear,” Ugly marveled. “Maybe he has a green pizzle. Or a blue ass like the African monkeys.”

  The pain was ebbing and Jake could see a bit. He was also beginning to think. A painful process at the best of times but he was under considerable stress here and had no choice. He was thinking that he would have to tell these people something really interesting. He would also have to be very lucky. Those scars. There was a chance.

  “Take it off,” Ugly said.

  Jake took it off.

  “A well-favored creature,” Mouse said, “but no Russian. He must be a Turk.”

  “No,” Ugly said. “I know what he is. I think I even know who he is.”

  Who? “An American,” Jake said quickly, the fog thinning and his path clear, “wanted for murder and theft. I am traveling west to find a tiger’s assistant and go to work for him. I have killed many men, most of them Japanese,” that with a satisfying defile-yourself glare at Momo, “and am accounted the best rifle shot in America.”

  That shut them up. They froze like wax dummies, mouths open. Jake’s blood was running again and he believed he had a chance; he forced himself to look rough and surly.

  “Bugger my mother-in-law,” Ugly said in holy tones. “Do you know anything else? Besides killing? Do you know horses?”

  “Some. Camels, a little. Guns, a lot. Yours is a Lee-Enfield, short model, and that box magazine holds ten cartridges if it still works. Mouse there has a Kar Ninety-eight and God knows where he stole it but he can’t have much ammunition for it. Dung-head here”—that was Buckteeth, old Momo—“has a pistol in his belt that I think is worth a pound of gold. Only a few such were ever made.”

  “I took it from a Chinese general,” Momo said. “A pound of gold?”

  “Too much chitchat,” Ugly said. “So you can shoot.”

  “If this son of a whore’s towel hasn’t put my eye out.”

  “And what man have you killed, that you must run?”

  “My partner. He cheated me.”

  Ugly’s brows rose. “Old Kao? I doubt that.”

  Jake went popeyed. His heart hammered. Holy Jesus Christ. Holy Jesus Christ, what is this.

  Ugly spoke what sounded like Mongol. Handsome wheeled his pony and cantered west.

  Jake sat there with no clothes on. He was half blind and all scared now, and felt smooth and hairless between the legs, nothing there at all.

  The sun behaved as usual, warm and friendly and enjoying the morning.

  They heard hoofbeats and saw Handsome off to the north, riding east. Ugly sniggered. His lank black hair covered his ears. If any. “We allow you one shot,” he said. “If you point the rifle the wrong way we will gouge out your eyes and skin you.”

  “Skin him first,” Mouse said, “so he can watch.”

  “What did you mean—” Jake tried.

  “Why hatch this dwarf at all?” Mouse complained. “We have his goods.”

  “Shut up,” Ugly said, “or I will slit you from gizzard to gullet. I have taken a liking to this boy.”

  “What is this?” Jake croaked. “What’s—”

  “Will you shoot, or will you not?” Ugly asked.

  “I will shoot,” Jake said quickly. He pointed to Momo. “That rifle.”

  Ugly nodded. Momo unholstered his Luger, his American Eagle parabellum worth a thousand dollars. He sighted humorously
along the barrel at Jake’s crotch, which was momentarily without a tenant anyway. Then he tossed his M-I to Jake.

  Jake checked the safety; it was on. He slipped the clip in and out, and half drew the bolt. In as hard a voice as he could manage he asked, “What is Handsome doing?”

  “Setting a target,” Ugly said.

  “Bugger,” Jake said. “To make me shoot into the sun. Bring him back. Send him west.”

  “A regular general,” Ugly said.

  “A sergeant,” Jake said, “which is much better.” Kao, the man had said!

  Ugly called out once, a steady high-pitched note, and in a few seconds Handsome appeared on a rise. Ugly spoke to him; Handsome dashed off to the west. He circled around some high ground and came out on the road, where the caravan had fled.

  Jake’s throat was tight, but he pried open the butt plate, and when he found the scrap of paper he thanked God. All scared boots in love with their corporal and learning how to shoot—Jake too, in his time—marked down the windage and elevation, so many clicks of the rear sight this way and that, on a scrap of paper and rolled it up and stuffed it inside the plate, where there was a little storage space for the ramrod and patches and such. Jake filled up on a couple of deep breaths and his blood flowed in a more standard manner. He had the shakes, though, and the paper fluttered.

  He blinked slowly several times, and his vision cleared. His eye watered; he blinked it clear again. Lacking pockets, he took the scrap of paper in his teeth. He flipped the butt plate shut and checked the sling. It was worn but serviceable.

  Handsome had set his target in the middle of the track, a little bundle or a sack of small goods. Ugly waited patiently and was amused. Momo showed all ninety-nine teeth, squinted along the barrel of his Luger and made a mocking pop with his tongue.

  Jake slung the rifle as he had a thousand times and rolled himself prone as he had a thousand times. A thousand times and they were all practice for this time. He lay flat on the sandy rock. And him without a thing to wear.

  “Good luck,” Ugly said cheerfully.

  “Bugger,” Jake said, for the sake of pride and appearances.