Dushok! That flag-waving gung-ho son of a bitch! So he knew Ugly, or knew of him, from before the war probably, from those educational trips through the countryside, and had got word to him—god damn! He did that to another white man!
By nightfall he had reviewed his sins. He had not drunk. He knew the dangers. You took one swallow so the parching thirst would not be painful; not to tank up, just to wet the pipes, and soon you took another, and another, and then you were out of water. No. The way to do it was to let it hurt. Let it hurt all day and rest often. Chew jerky to rouse the saliva. Take a swallow of water before sleeping. Be strong.
He was not scared. The soon-to-be of it was not upon him; time and the desert stretched before him, and he could nurse one full canteen for days.
The waning crescent would not rise for a while, but the clustered stars sailed in incandescent clouds, and the tracks were clear before him. Once in an hour he verified his course: west-southwest a half south. The Heavenly River flowed above: Chinese for the Milky Way. It was almost worth being here, lost and alone, to see that stream of white diamonds. He had traveled here and there, and stayed out late many nights, but never had the gods bribed him with this dazzle: as if they were showing off, or easing him toward heaven.
That first night’s march was almost a pleasure. He was lean and tough, the air was cool, his cloth shoes were snug and light, he bore no burdens.
The solitude was new and invigorating. There were no hollows, no ridges not even trees; no strayed asses or lurking foxes, no hidden nomads or desert lions. Only Jake. And before him the tracks of unshod ponies. He could see miles by starlight, half a continent, and there was no motion, no life, no sound.
He marched. He thanked the gods for thirty-mile forced marches, for previous iron-handed sergeants (“Do it, Dodds, just do it, you’re not a soldier, you’re a fucking Marine”), for knee bends and push-ups, for waterless maneuvers, even for the weeks without a woman so that whatever force and virtue there might be in his own jism, in his own yang, he had not thrown them away on yin, and they were all his to spend now.
Just before dawn his calves tightened. He lay face down, and made his legs relax; he sat up and massaged his thighs; he lay back and slept.
In midmorning the heat woke him: he rolled away from the relentless sun and gagged on what felt like a mouthful of flannel. He stretched and rose, momentarily dizzy, uncapped the canteen, and warned himself to swallow three times only.
He looked about him. To the south he saw mountains, snow-capped mountains. The scorched desert lay before him, barren and endless. He felt for his knife and compass. The pony tracks lay sharp, branded into the trail.
His timing was not good. He had slept in the cooler forenoon and would walk now in scalding air. He gathered spittle and swallowed.
Slow now. Easy does it. You got better than a Chinaman’s chance.
In the true heat of noon, stifling and searing, he rested again. He dreamed constantly of his canteen, of the snow-capped mountains; but he had expected such dreaming and was armed against it. He closed his eyes and tilted the hat forward, but sleep would not come. A wet towel, like a turban: he would give gold for that. Later, he decided, he would think about China, and his career in business, and whether and where he had gone wrong.
Baking, he stumbled through the late afternoon, and at sunset—he forced himself to wait until the seething orange ball had vanished—he offered himself three swallows more, long swallows but only three.
He would not fall of thirst for another couple of days, but exhaustion might stop him. What he had accomplished? Thirty miles? Forty?
He rested. He watched the light fail, watched the dark gather, counted the first stars.
Lopliks. Where were the Lopliks? Fishing. Fishing! Orion sank low. Autumn coming. Dawn soon. He walked slowly, and more than once found himself zigging or zagging; he tried to concentrate on the tracks, but his mind wandered, and then his steps.
K’uang. If K’uang refused to quit, and came riding out of the sunrise! On his Tushegun camels! Would K’uang take him in, shoot him down, or pass him by?
Or a plane. A plane would buzz him, drop a can of water, drop food. How long? Since Peking. Since Peking he had seen not one plane aloft.
He staggered. He frowned, surly.
Four beggars executed. What the hell. Supposed to be five hundred million of these damn people. Where the hell is everybody?
Lopliks.
Do not think of fruit, water, or snow.
Dawn swelled, cloudless. He paused, and with great care took a compass reading. He snapped the compass shut and returned it to its case.
No use. I need water.
Not yet.
He concentrated: this was the second dawn. Ugly might have—and then again Ugly might not have.
Shuffle along, old bones. No birds even. No lizards or ants or any god damn thing.
Well, all right, I should not have.
Why not? These tax collectors and politicians and generals sending gold to foreign banks, sending furniture and antiques and dogs and cats, for Chrissake. Wearing cuffs and neckties, for Chrissake. Drinking foreign drinks and stashing away the dollars, for Chrissake. And they hang Kao.
Well, just get me out of this and—no. No, by God, none of that. No rice-Christian or any other kind, and we will not make the promises that men make and then break as soon as they have beer and a broad.
The mountains loomed, distant.
The pony tracks ran on.
He twisted to search for K’uang: nothing.
He counted a thousand steps, his mind empty.
Lopliks. God send me a Loplik.
He slept through the heat of the day, and most of the afternoon; he rose, and drank, and shuffled on.
Not a cloud, not a sound. No bells tinkling, no women’s voices. Only sand and bare rock.
He shuffled through sunset, through dusk, through starlight. Had he seen the moon last night? He could not remember. New moon, maybe.
His stomach was knotted hard now, and his legs hot with twinges, real pain. God help me. A damned lonely way to go. Is there any other way? Always lonely. Lie in bed, children and grandchildren all around, you still go off alone. All those weepers left alive: is that supposed to be a consolation? Nobody going to cry for me.
“Jake Dodds is not much,” he started to say aloud; a raucous croak startled him. Hell with it, he whispered, and took three swallows. Ah, aah. He remembered his thirst that long-ago morning in jail, and Kao there with tea.
He walked on. “Jake Dodds is not much,” he said, “but he is all we have to work with, and we will not have him whimper and grovel. If he gets out of this, old man God, he does not plan to build a church. He plans to sin plenty. He plans to stuff himself with savory meats and strong drink, and then stuff his lady friend with something else entirely. Hell,” and he laughed, “I need a fight. That’s all I’m good for anyway.”
You fight this desert. You fight those cramps. You fight that canteen.
When do the mirages begin? And the buzzards? Hell, no buzzards around here. No nothin. Won’t even decompose. Somebody find me in five years, still handsome.
Another night passed, or maybe two, and he slept, or maybe not; his first mirage was not a pyramid or a pond but a shimmering pile of rock. By now he was thinking crazy in two languages, and making occasional speeches. His step was unsteady and his wake crooked, but two things there were that changed not: west-southwest a half south, and three swallows. He took his three swallows even when the canteen was empty; the motion encouraged him, and afterward he said, “Aaaah.” Dimly he knew he was about to die, but his anger, or plain rudeness, overrode his regrets.
K’uang had not followed. No aircraft appeared. The Lopliks were elsewhere. In his lucid moments Jake thought he had trekked sixty miles. He would have liked to head south for the snowy mountains, but he had his orders. Ugly had charged him straitly. That was English, that was from the Good Book. Old man God really harpooning him t
his time: He disappointeth the devices of the crafty. And how.
In the end he gave out at sunset. He decided to sleep all night and see if he could make a few miles more in the early morning. He experienced no deep thoughts or visions. He did not repent. He sat for a while watching the sun go down. He looked one last look for Lopliks, caravans, cavalry, aircraft, the Red Cross or the Shore Patrol. Dreamily he fell sideways. He tried to smile. He slept well.
He dreamed that Ugly woke him: Ugly’s scarred mask floated above him, blotting out the spangled sky. “A sip of water,” Ugly said. “Only a sip. There. Bugger! This is a man. Another sip.”
Jake’s stomach heaved; he thrashed, and reached for his .45. “Easy, easy,” Ugly said.
“West-southwest a half south,” Jake said in English.
“Easy, easy.”
In Chinese Jake said, “The color of the Buddha’s hair is ultramarine.”
“Hsüüüü,” Ugly said. “All will be well. There was water at Abdal.”
“Abdal.”
“Yes. And now I have saved your life,” Ugly complained, “and am henceforth responsible for you.”
31
Two days later Jake slid off his pony on the banks of the Cha-han-sai, a slow brown brook that a man could step across. “It has been broader, but we make no complaint,” Ugly said.
“Good news,” Hao-k’an greeted them. “We have a pony for the foreigner, and an ounce or more of gold dust, and some medicinal herbs.”
“Then you have killed a trader,” Ugly said, and stretched; after long rides his back sometimes ached.
“Ha!” Hao-k’an said. “Have we killed a trader. A young one, seeking Lopliks, and he put up a fight. We kept his donkey also. Welcome, Big-nose.”
“There was mountain wool also,” Momo said as they moved to the small heap of goods, “and a mile or two of sheep’s intestines.”
Jake drank, and drank again. Mouse stood by him, brow wrinkled, thoughts struggling, and after a bit said, “Nnnng.”
Jake waited.
Mouse gathered words: “It is a great thing that we have done. To cross that desert on ponies, without a supply train. I have not heard of it before. In winter, yes. In winter it can be done by the carrying of much ice.”
Jake said, “If it is truly a great thing, urge that bastard to set me free.”
Mouse laughed at this outlandish notion. “But you are goods.”
“Forget it,” Jake said. “What is there to eat?”
Major K’uang halted the column and waved acknowledgment to Pan and Ch’ao, his scouts. Sergeant Shih rode to his side, and together they glassed. “A fallen pony,” K’uang said. Some of the story he knew, being a soldier in the desert. Two miles back the tracks vanished: hence, a small sandstorm. Up ahead, what seemed to be carrion: hence, a victim. One or more. A bitter pleasure warmed his heart.
He turned to survey the column: his dozen on camels, and the four supply camels, and the ancient camel-puller picking his nose, squinting fiercely against the late afternoon sun.
“Forward,” K’uang called. Accursed slow camels! Those bandits were men; grudgingly he admired them, and fleetingly he wondered why it was always the adversary who was tough, disciplined and inspired. Bad bones, these, but tough. The American too.
How correct and how just if the gold had slowed them to their death! He fingered the nails through the cloth of his shirt. “Shih. I’m going on ahead. Follow at a walk.” He kicked his camel to a trot.
Pan and Ch’ao stood grim. K’uang dismounted, and the three men contemplated the dead pony.
Pan said, “Plenty of tracks now, Major.”
“Yes.” They walked a few steps. “Four ponies. Followed by a man on foot.”
“The man walking, and the ponies trotting.”
“Yes.” K’uang glanced ahead. “I wonder how far he got.”
“It was the foreigner, was it not?”
“Of course. A tough one but not that tough. I would have enjoyed taking him, but this will do.”
“A shame we cannot take the reward.”
“A dead foreign thug is its own reward,” K’uang said, and Pan and Ch’ao, startled, saw him smile faintly. A smile! They would tell the others about this. The smile vanished. “Too bad,” K’uang said. “That left more water for the others. Well, let us ride on and gather up the corpse. I wonder if there is fear on its face.”
By late October the bandits had traveled five hundred miles west and attacked one large eastbound caravan, which drove them off; one truck of the provincial army, which they ambushed and found full of steer hides and sheepskins; and two provincial post offices, which yielded a total of about forty dollars U.S. The villages were dry and dilapidated: a well and a few fields, and no money.
“Some bandits,” Jake said.
Ugly said, “Shut up.”
“I must have been your biggest haul in ten years.”
“Shut up.”
“Why will you not give me a rifle and let me learn a trade?”
They were camped in the hills outside a middling village.
“Go on in,” Jake said. “Maybe there is a teahouse you could loot, or a candy shop.”
Ugly scowled, and nodded to Momo, who sent Jake sprawling. “Mouse and I will go in,” Ugly said. “It is of a certain size and there may be soldiers. Be ready.”
Perhaps this was a nervous village, and the two would be shot down. But that would leave Jake with Momo and Hao-k’an. Jake did not know what to hope for. Most days there was nothing to hope for. They rode forever, and never arrived. A kind of hell. The wicked flee when no man pursueth.
At sunset the two returned, Ugly with a dragon’s grin and Mouse wide awake. “Mouse will report,” Ugly shouted, skidding his mount to a halt and leaping off like a tumbler. The evening air was cold, and Jake shivered. November.
Mouse slid off his pony and stood clutching the reins. “The name of the town is Ying-ch’ang,” he began, “and I have brought wine.”
They cheered and scrabbled for canteen cups. Mouse tossed a jug to Hao-k’an. “This dog also drinks,” Ugly said with a mad crow of laughter, and waved a large folded sheet of paper at Jake.
“There is a played-out gold mine to the north of the village,” Mouse said. “On the stream, with an abandoned shack. There is a clothes shop for sheepskins and half-finished boots. There is a wineshop with women and a barber. There is also an official post office.”
“Is there not!” Ugly said happily.
“In the village are two hundred souls, perhaps more. There are eight soldiers and no police. The soldiers are arrogant and oppressive and the villagers hate them.”
“As usual,” Ugly said cheerfully.
“There is also gossip,” Mouse said. “The war in the east goes badly and the villagers fear that deserters and riffraff will spill into the province.”
“Riffraff,” Ugly chuckled.
Jake kept a wary eye on Ugly; the man was clearly not normal.
“All this we had from a corporal,” Mouse finished.
“You old dogs,” Hao-k’an said. “You talked to a soldier?”
“Indeed.”
“Is there news of K’uang?”
“None.”
“You talked to a soldier!” Hao-k’an marveled.
“And later a whore,” Ugly said. “But all this is merely chitchat. What a day!” he cried suddenly, and raised his cup. “Gentlemen! Favorable disturbances of the middle air! News indeed!” He flapped his sheet of paper. “We drink to bandits everywhere.”
They drank. Jake wondered what the hell now, but drank deep; it was the red wine of the western oases, and it warmed him.
Ugly stood like a speechifier and unfolded his paper. It was outsize. Jake saw print, Chinese, and decided it was news of the war, or some old friend of Ugly’s.
“To begin at the beginning,” Ugly declaimed, “and omitting perhaps an unfamiliar word or two, the news is as follows. No, another drink first.”
Hao-k’an
poured.
“Ah,” said Ugly. “Yah. Now.” He beamed fiercely at each of them, and read aloud. “Wanted. By the authorities of America for theft, assault and desertion. By the authorities of China for theft, for traffic in gold, for gross fraud upon the military, for low banditry and for the murder of one Kao, a merchant, and one Chin, a camel-puller. And therefore by the police and armed forces of all provinces and neighboring states. One foreigner calling himself Ta-tze. And here,” he flapped the poster before Jake, “is a word in your script. What does it say?”
Jake was struck dumb, and showed palm. “Wait,” he said. He swigged wine, and blinked, and drew a deep breath. The others cackled like old friends.
He peered at the print. Jakob Alwin Doods, he read. “It says,” and he drew another deep breath, disturbances of the middle air indeed! “It says Jacob Alvin Dodds, which is my name in the English language.”
“There!” Ugly smacked him on the shoulder. “To go on: of great height and strength. Yellow of hair and blue of eye. Last noted in Shandanmiao and Ming-shui. Speaks Mandarin as well as English. A reward is offered equal to ten ounces of gold for information of accuracy and importance, twenty ounces of gold for his identifiable head, and thirty ounces of gold for the living man. Reports may be received at, and so forth, attested and signed by, and so forth, and dated the twentieth day of August, and so forth.” Ugly spread the poster before Jake and said, “So you told us the truth after all, you scoundrel.”
Jake sat stunned. He was trying to pull his thoughts together, but they were scattered all over the desert like a herd of runaway ponies: Kao, Dushok, K’uang—the old man in the gold shop: was he also hanged? Well, by God, now I know who I am!
Ugly broke the spell: he stepped to Jake’s pack, rummaged, and tossed a bundle to Jake. The holstered .45, and the belt. Then the sheathed knife. Jake scooped these goodies toward him and said, “Yüüü.”
“On your feet,” Ugly said. “We drink to this hero.”
The Chinese Bandit Page 20