Brand, Max - 1924

by Clung (v1. 1)

  In the older man it held the longest and moved him to leave the place as soon as possible. In the two younger it was merely a stimulus; but though they heard and felt the call of the wild, they were not yet of the wilderness. They followed John Sampson slowly from the gambling house of Yo Chai. At the door, when they looked back, they saw Yo Chai settling back into his chair with the extra man already in the chair of Sampson.

  "By the Lord,” growled the financier, "I've left like the Mexican before me, beaten and sulky; and there's my successor ready for the bait."

  And then he led the way, grinning, from the house, for to be beaten was so great a novelty to him that it was not altogether displeasing. They took the course for their shack and Hugh Williams; they walked in such silence that finally John Sampson asked: "What are you thinking of?"

  "Yo Chai," they answered in one voice, and then laughed at their unanimity. "Yo Chai," chimed in Sampson, "but it's the first time in a month, Winifred, that you've got your thoughts away from the — half-breed."

  And he glanced at William Kirk through the dim night.

  "His blood,” said the girl calmly, "is nothing against him. It is not of his choosing. Besides, he's whiter than most."

  A remark which left the other two strangely silent, and in that silence they reached their cabin, and went to their rooms at once, for it had been a hard day. But when the voices of her father and Kirk died away in the next room and the bunks creaked for the last time as they turned and twisted about finding comfortable sleeping positions, Winifred remained awake, sitting on the edge of her bed. For her mind was haunted by a picture of singular vividness — the face of Yo Chai as he shoved back his chair, slowly, his head tilted, his eyes half closed like one who basks in the sun, a smile of mysterious meaning touching his lips. It grew out on her with astounding vigor and made another name grow up in her memory — Clung! She had been on the verge of imparting her thought to Kirk back there in the gaming house, but some strange impulse of caution had held her back.

  Now the overmastering curiosity was too great for her. The impulse to go back to the gaming house, confront the impassive face of Yo Chai, and tax him with being Clung disguised, swelled in freshening pulses in her blood. The deciding force, oddly enough, was a sudden creaking of a bunk in the next room.

  At once she knew that she must go, alone, and at once. It would be a great adventure; she felt that she could trust herself implicitly with the roughest of those Southwesterners; if it was a cold trail she would escape the ridicule of her father if she dragged him back to the gaming house; if it was the true trail she would have all the glory of the discovery in the morning. Besides, while Clung might reveal himself to her, it was very doubtful if he would acknowledge his identity in front of her father.

  And so, at the creaking of the bunk in the next room, she rose straight from the bed and went to the window. It was close to the ground and already open. Through it blew the night wind softly, inviting her out; and beyond glowed the confiding stars and the lower, redder lights of the town. She slipped at once through the window, went to the shack which served as a stable, saddled her horse hastily, and rode down the trail towards Kirby Creek.

  The creaking of the bunk was caused by one who, like Winifred, had not been able to sleep because of something he had seen that night in the house of Yo Chai. It was Kirk, and the vision which haunted him had nothing to do with the yellow face of Yo Chai, but with the roulette wheel, spinning brightly, clicking with a rapid whir to a stop, and then the droning voice which called the number and the color, "eleven on the red," "black five," "eleven red," "black two," "eleven on the red." It suddenly recurred to him that eleven had come many times on the red — four times as often as any other figure. He sat up sweating with excited eagerness. What a dolt he had been not to venture a few dollars on the wheel! Not that he needed money, but the excitement — the great chance — he might —

  But by this time he was sitting bolt upright on the edge of his bunk, grinding his teeth and cursing softly in the dark. The heavy snore of John Sampson broke in upon him and he felt a great impulse to take the older man by the throat and choke off the noise. He began dressing hastily. The gaming house ran all night and he might as well take a whirl at the roulette wheel as lie awake and think about it until morning. His hands began to tremble so that he found it difficult to tie his shoes. Then he tiptoed cautiously across the floor. There was little need of such silence, for John Sampson was a redoubtable sleeper.

  As Kirk opened the front door he heard the clatter of a galloping horse speed away over the soft sod, and looking quickly to the side he saw what seemed the phantom of Winifred speeding through the night. He almost cried out to her, but an instant of thought made him check the sound as a foolish impulse. Yet the figure had seemed so familiar that he could not help walking to the side of the house and peering into the room of the girl. It was faintly lighted — very faintly, but he made out with perfect certainty that the covers of the narrow bed were too straight to conceal any sleeper. His breath went from him, and he turned and stared down the valley towards Kirby Creek. Then he ran to the stable, saddled, and made at a full gallop for the town.

  Chapter 23

  The first thing the eyes of Winifred sought when she re-entered the gaming house was the high central table, but at it the form of Yo Chai no longer appeared; a white dealer sat in his place. The beating of her heart decreased by a dozen strokes to the minute. She stopped one of the Chinese waiters: "Where catchum Yo Chai, John?”

  "Yo Chai catchum home,” said the waiter. "Catchum sleep.”

  "How long?”

  "Where?"

  " ‘Roun’ corner. Li’l square house. Maybe John show?”

  His eyebrows raised in inquisition, and the girl slipped a fifty-cent piece into his hand.

  "Sure,” said the waiter, "plenty quick.”

  And he led her to a side door, from which he pointed to a low, square building at the back of the large gaming house. Even as she looked lights appeared in two little windows. It was as if the place had awakened and were staring at her with ominous, red eyes through the darkness. The waiter disappeared and she felt a great need of reinforcement; to face Yo Chai in the public gaming house was one thing; to beard the lion in his secret, Oriental den was an affair of quite another color. She forced her fear back with a use of simple reason. Through the walls of any of these shacks her voice would ring out for a hundred feet, and the first murmur of a white woman's voice would bring a score of men to her help. She felt suddenly tender and sisterly towards all the wild men in that hall.

  Before her courage cooled she went straight to the door of the little house and seized the knocker and rapped. While her fingers still clung to it, she saw that it was of brass, hanging from the mouth of a brazen dragon that writhed down the face of the door, his scales glinting here and there as if with inherent light. Not a pleasant sight. She regretted sharply that she had touched the knocker, and had already withdrawn a step when the door opened. It swung a foot or so wide and no one appeared at the opening. Then as if the opener decided that he might safely show himself, a Chinese, tall and of prodigious bulk, evidently a Manchurian, stepped out before her and stood with his hands shoved into his capacious sleeves — sleeves that might have contained a whole armory of knives and revolvers.

  He frowned upon her, so that her knees shook. And because she knew her knees were shaking nothing in the world could have induced her now to draw back from her purpose.

  "White girl lose plenty money,” boomed the big Oriental. "Yo Chai not help. Yo Chai lose plenty money too. Too bad. Catch bad-luck devil.”

  He stepped back through the door.

  "Wait,” called Winifred eagerly, and she stepped close to the guardian. "White girl got plenty money. Want see Yo Chai. Maybe pay Yo Chai much money.”

  But the guard was not to be moved by eyes that would have shaken the firmness of any ruffian in Kirby Creek. "Yo Chai maybe sleep. No can see." And he began to close
the door when a sing-song current of Chinese began from the deeps of the house. Chinese, but it made Winifred rise almost on tiptoe with eagerness. She thought that she recognized that voice. The doorkeeper turned his head and answered over his shoulder the speaker from within. He turned back, regarded the girl with a keen scrutiny, and then added something more to the inquirer — evidently a description. There came a sharp voice of command and the guard stepped surlily back from the door; motioning her mutely to enter. She slipped past him at once and found herself in a little box-like hall. On the wall opposite her hung a tapestry of shimmering blue silk run with a pattern of golden brocade, cunningly, so that while she guessed at dragon figures she could find neither head nor tail to the design. She only knew that it was beautiful and extraordinarily expensive. From the tapestry depended three scrolls of parchment covered with Chinese written in even columns, the central one much larger than the neighboring ones. This she saw by the light of two lanterns, one at either end of a rather long, narrow table directly before the tapestry and scrolls. They were unusual lamps, made in the form of two conventionalized forearms. The whole was so grotesque and interesting that it needed little imagining for Winifred to feel that two unbodied arms were there supporting their lanterns so that she could read on the scrolls something which it imported her to know — something of a fatal significance, perhaps. And the sight quelled her so that she could not help a timorous and regretful glance back at the door.

  It was completely blocked by the bulky form of the Chinese who stood with his arms folded, and his eyes gleaming ominously down at her. Panic caught at her.

  "I have changed my mind,” she said. "I'm going to wait until tomorrow before I see your master. Tell Yo Chai I'm sorry to disappoint him."

  And she advanced towards the door with a hand outstretched towards the knob; but the guard did not move, and it seemed to her that he was setting his teeth to keep back a meaning grin. She was armed with a small revolver, and now, in her rush of cold terror, her hand moved down to the handle of the weapon. She checked herself in time, for she knew enough about the Southwest to understand that one must not draw a weapon until one intends to kill, and the shot must immediately follow the draw. She would reserve the weapon for an emergency. So she mastered herself again with a great effort.

  "Where?" she queried.

  The guard extended an arm of prodigious bulk and length and pointed to a door standing open at the left, with the view of the room beyond blocked by a tall screen. She hesitated a single instant and then stepped boldly through the doorway. Even as she did so, there was a click behind her. When she whirled she found that the door through which she had just stepped was closed. The Chinese must have followed her closely with noiseless, slippered feet. And the fear she felt was greater than if a gun had been held under her chin with an ominous face behind it. She seized the handle of the door; she could not even turn the knob, and as she strove to do so, it seemed to her that she caught a faint bass chuckling from beyond the door. Then came a whisper behind her.

  She whirled and set her back against the honest wall, but nothing threatened her, apparently, from behind. Only the pleasant screen rose before her. And then, in midst of her panic she realized why that door had been closed. Until that time her voice would have struck through the walls of the house to the street. Now she was in the interior of the house and even if she screamed at the top of her lungs she would not be heard, probably. She thought of William Kirk, the bull strength of those shoulders and hands which would have torn that door down and felled the huge Chinese with a blow; and tears of helplessness welled up in her eyes.

  Only for a moment. She knew, all at once, that her fear had not paralyzed her, for though her heart thundered fast it beat steadily. She was able to fight to the end, and she had the means for the battle. She drew the revolver; set her teeth; and stepped from behind the screen, crouching, ready to fire in any direction.

  What she saw was Yo Chai himself. He sat among a heap of cushions, cross-legged, a crimson skull-cap with a black tassel on his head, his eyes half shut, and his frail fingers supported a long-stemmed pipe from which he puffed a slowly forming cloud of pungent, pale-blue smoke. Loathing, a desire to murder, filled the heart of the girl; and she drew the revolver close to her.

  "Who locked the door on me?" she cried. "Who dared to lock the door on me?”

  She pointed behind the screen.

  Yo Chai removed the pipe slowly, slowly from his lips, blew forth another delicate tinted cloud of smoke, and answered in the softest of voices: "K'e pu chih tao fa shi shut."

  "English,” said the girl fiercely. "Don't sit there jabbering your Chinese nonsense at me. Speak English!”

  The eyes under their whimsically high arches did not vary by the stir of a lash as the gambler stared at her wearily, not in anger.

  He repeated: "K'e pu chih tao t y a shi shut. I do not know who he was.”

  "You don't know?” she whispered, for terror had taken the strength from her voice. "You don't know? In your own house? Yo Chai, I’m not alone. Men wait for me in the street. Open that door and let me go. Or if you won't, this gun is levelled on you — and I don't miss at this distance."

  The head of Yo Chai tilted ever so slightly back and the dreamy smile she had known so well somewhere in the past crossed his lips.

  Chapter 24

  She did not connect it with Clung this time, but rather it seemed to her a characteristic of the entire Chinese race, a smile of devilish cunning and subtlety.

  “You dog of a Chinaman," she said, her voice returning, a warmth of rage filling her now that she faced a crisis, "the white men will burn you — inch by inch. Call your servant; make him open those doors!"

  Yo Chai arose, laying down the pipe on a little ebony table. He bowed till the long, black pig-tail slipped over his shoulder and tapped the floor.

  "Yo Chai," said that softest of voices, "will open the door." And he stepped past her beyond the screen. That complaisance scattered her fears as a wind scatters the morning mist.

  "Wait a minute, Yo Chai," she said hastily. "Maybe I've spoken too quickly."

  The other turned and stood with his arms thrust into his flowing sleeves and his eyes looking past her. Seen at this close range his face seemed at least ten years younger than when she had first glanced at him in the gaming house. Moreover, his throat was more smoothly rounded than should be in a man of his age. The shadows about the eyes appeared now rather a coloring of the skin than the sunken pouches of debauched middle-age. The features, too, showed with extreme delicacy of chiselling. Altogether she had never seen a Chinese like this, and her first suspicion came back over her.

  "Sit down again," she said with perfect calm. "I want to talk with you."

  He bowed again, this time not so low, and turned back towards his cushion; but as he was in the very act of stooping she spoke, changing her voice, making it rough, hoarse, like the voice of a man, and bringing out the word with a sharp, aspirate force: "Clung!”

  As a horse starts when the spur is buried in tender flesh, so Yo Chai started, whirled with a movement swifter than the eye could follow, and Winifred found herself staring into a face drawn and terrible with fighting eagerness; and below it, the yawning muzzle of a forty-five Colt.

  "Clung!” she repeated faintly, and her lips remained parted on the word.

  The revolver disappeared somewhere into the folds of his clothes. He drew himself up until the artificial stoop of middle-age disappeared suddenly from his shoulders; and his eyes went again past her, past her and into infinity.

  "Call your men,” said Clung. "I am weary of living. I will not fight.”

  She did not answer.

  "Call them,” he repeated, "or else I will go with you alone. Be quick before the mind of Clung changes. Quick! There is a reward on the head of Clung!”

  "Oh, Clung!” she said at last, and she threw out her hands towards him. "Do you think I have come to betray you?”

  "Who will call it
that?” he answered in his soft, flawless English. "Clung is a dog of a Chinaman.”

  "I said it when I was afraid,” she pleaded. "I thought — the door closed behind me — the big man acted as if he were making a prisoner of me. Clung, forgive me!”

  "Clung has forgotten,” he said quietly.

  "But he will not forgive?” she asked wistfully. "No more than you would ever forgive that day when Marshal Clauson came to my father's house and took you. Clung, do you know that I had no part in that?”

  "Clung has forgotten,” he repeated with the same calm.

  She sighed. Then, eagerly: "But we don't ask you to forgive us so easily. Do you know that Kirk has come from the north to help me find you and make some amends for what he did?”

  "It is good,” said Clung.

  And he smiled.

  "And when I passed you in the room that day,” she went on hurriedly, "it wasn't because I was not sorry for you, but — I had been thinking of you in another way, and — and — “

  "It is very clear,” he said. "A child could understand. You thought Clung was a man, and you found he was only a Chinaman."

  "I see,” she said sadly. "You will never forgive me, Clung?"

  "Clung has forgotten,” he repeated.

  She bent her head.

  "After all,” she said, "what can we offer you? My father has wanted to send you north and put you in some fine school. But I see how foolish all that is. You could never go to such a place.”

  "My father is Li Clung,” he said.

  She winced, seeing that his head went back in the old familiar way and the lazy smile touched his lips.

  "My father is Li Clung, and he has taught Clung what a Chinese should know: the prayers of Heaven and Earth and the teachings of Confucius. It is well; it is ended. Clung has learned a little. He shall learn more hereafter.”

  She began to speak, but finding his eyes fixed once more on the infinity behind her the words died at her lips.