Part 7

Just at dawn he awoke. There was a clatter of voices in the courtyard, and the sound of horses moving hurriedly. Presently the paper of the latticed wall was ripped, and a brown finger popped through. All the fears of the refugee came trooping back with squadrons reinforced. He ripped the door open, rifle in hand. A string of traders' ponies was filing out for an early start toward Peking, and a hostler stood with his face pressed against the hole in the wall, trying to catch a glimpse of the lordly foreigner. That was all. But the deserter saw again the smoky room in the "Chinese City," and heard the Sixth Cavalry squad wheel just in rear of his frantic flight. The "illustrious guest" was again the fugitive, escaping, he knew not whither, from "five years--five years at least."

He kicked the sleeping You Han into action, and the cart was under way as soon as the mule had fed.

"Only thirty miles from Peking," growled the corporal; "not half far enough. An' cavalry is prancin' out to loot, pacify, an' scatter Christian blessings with th' mailed fisht where they have no business to be thinkin' of. I hike till I drop, an' that's me ultimatum."

They pressed on all day until the dun mule swayed in the shafts and the pilgrims were ready to drop by the roadside. The night was passed in a village tavern, for You Han was too weary to organize a reception. The deserter slept fitfully, and awoke often talking to himself. Nervous and foot-sore, he took the trail at dawn of the third day, You Han watchful and worried. As the deserter turned frequently to look behind him, the aspect of the future crushed him, while the imminent past lashed him to persistent flight. Camp, and the close comradeship of men in blue and khaki; the routine round of his army years; the Chicago streets that had known his boyhood; the father and mother who were proud of his record--these and all other links in the chain of his thirty years were as if they had never been forged. Names, faces and scenes of which he had been an intimate part were in an obliterating distance, and nothing that had gone before was given strength to follow him, except the incidents of his escape, and these filled all the landscape with portents.

Soon they came to a schoolhouse in the middle of a tiny hamlet. You Han knew it for such when the refugees were rods away, since from the squat building came an incessant sound like the hum of a gigantic top. The children were reciting their daily task from the Confucian Analects at the limit of their lung power, when the foreigner was spied by a truant outpost, and the teacher could not hold the clamorous flock in leash. By scores they tumbled out to scamper off in terror until You Han shouted his message of good will and the corporal laughed, threw down his rifle, and became one of them. It was not long before uproarious applause greeted his attempts to play jackstones and strike the sharpened stick to make it fly into the miniature mud-pie "city."

Again the feeling of homeliness tugged at his heart, and he lingered among the children until the teacher gathered them in, with labor like that of collecting spilled quicksilver.

You Han swaggered into the next village beyond, with a port inspired by remembrance of the magistrate's yamen, but he came to grief at the hands of the village bully. There was no mistaking the character of this truculent ruffian. His garments were studiously awry, and his queue was loosely braided and coiled around his neck to show that he thirsted for combat. He resented the lofty bearing of the stranger, and the two clashed with disaster to the features of You Han, who was plucky but overmatched. He was rescued by the corporal, who gave the bully the worst beating of his career. The feat was applauded by a throng of villagers whose peace had been much disturbed by this chronic nuisance, and they feasted the hero at the house of the head man with complex and effusive hospitality. The wayfarers were pressed to stay and make the town their home for life.

This incident, coming in a sequence of revelations of the life of this hitherto despised people, set the thoughts of the deserter definitely into a new and hopeful channel.

"I begin to think," he said to You Han, "that I could stick it out in one of these back counties, at worst until the troops are l'avin' China in the spring. An' I could come pretty near to runnin' a town or two meself. One more day's march an' I'll risk stakin' out a claim for a while. An' I'll be a leadin' an' dignified citizen, an' grandfather by brevet to all the kids in the camp."

The advance was checked by the discovery that the cart axle had split and must be repaired to prevent a breakdown over the next bit of rough going. The corporal was in a bluster of impatience to press forward. Delay had not lost its power to frighten him. The next village lay ten miles beyond, but between was a desolate stretch of waste land in which no one lived, in which nothing grew. From the tiled roof of the tavern the corporal could see this little desert rolling like a lake almost from the village walls to the sky line. It caught his fancy with a huge onset of relief. Once beyond this barrier, he would feel secure against discovery, and he magnified it as the borderland of safety. You Han was surrounded by a group of voluble citizens who urged waiting two days until a new axle could be hewn from the solid tree; but the deserter exploded the conference by shouting:

"Dump the carrt here. Pack the mule, an' we'll send back for the Noah's ark when we get settled over beyant. Make haste an' upholster the mule with the baggage of light marchin' order."

When the dun mule, in tow of the boy, limped out of the gateway across the crumbling moat, its small hoofs sank to the fetlock in white sand, and the trail of cart-wheels winding across the plain shimmered in an aching dazzle of sunlight. At the end of an hour the village behind them was a brown smudge not more than two miles distant. The deserter made peevish comments, but there was cheerfulness in the crack of his profanity, as he plodded painfully ahead of the boy and the mule. Whenever they paused to rest he talked to You Han, not caring whether the boy understood one word in five. The two seemed alone in all the world; their calamitous fortunes were more closely knit than at any time in the flight; and hope lay somewhere beyond this barricade provided by a fate grown strangely kind.

"You'll have the next week to get the sand out o' thim foolish shoes o' yourn," observed the corporal. "An' me blisters will be attinded to by the chief surgeon of the county. Like chickens an' silk over-coats, my son? We're goin' hell-bent for the comforts of life by the carrt-load."

You Han talked to the mule in encouraging whistles and replied, "Can do," to the monologue of the corporal, who rambled on:

"Say, thim kids did me more good than a barrel o' monkeys. Weren't they corkers? By the holy poker! I'm goin' to marry you off to a little squeeze-toed fairy in the big town over the way, an' you'll live without worrkin' forevermore. Maybe the old man will follow suit. It's me life ambition to be idle an' palatial. An' You Han will be the hottest sport in fifty li. Dinghowdy? All right?"

In the third hour they were not more than halfway across, and the short winter afternoon was reddening. The level desolation had begun to tumble up into crowding little hills and sand barriers among which the trail now and then entangled itself. But the air was crystal and windless, and scrambling to the top of one of the white hills, the corporal could see the faintest tracery of a towered temple on the farther side of the desert as a guiding landmark. It was a forced march, and a halt was made only for a fragment of supper and a swig for man and mule from the water-bottle on the pack. The moon rose in the sleeping dusk, but before it was clear of the scalloping ridges of sand the sky became spattered with rags of flying cloud. Presently the wind behind the angry scud began to pick up gusts of sand and flirt them from one crest to another. The travelers rubbed their eyes and coughed as they plowed steadily westward, steering a course by the cart-trail, still discernible, and by the moon behind them. "We're more 'n halfway over," shouted the corporal, "an' it's silly to be dr'amin' of losin' ourselves in this two-by-four desert."

Then the gray sky closed down in blackness everywhere, and leaping billows of sand seemed to meet it. The rush of the terrific wind wiped out the trail as if it had been no more than a finger-mark. There were no more hills nor winding passages among them, only a fog of whirling sand. The wind had an icy edge as it brought the killing cold of Mongolian steppes a thousand miles away. The deserter and the boy covered their faces with their hands, their garments; and almost instantly they were adrift, cowering, lost, helpless. So dense was the driving smother of sand that they could scarcely see the mule straining at the end of its halter-rope. The hillocks were shifting with a complaining roar, and the shriek of the wind in mid-air was pierced with a shrill rasp like the commotion of innumerable iron filings.

The corporal and You Han groped toward the side of a hillock, seeking a lee; but the flooding sand tumbled down its side knee-deep, and the wind sucked round and searched them out, as if in chase. The flinty particles pelted in sheets, and bit their faces like incessant volleys of fine shot. There was no more time to think of what should be done than when a swimmer is plunged over a dam.

It did not seem possible that the danger of death was menacing in this absurdly small theater of action, yet it could not have been many moments before the deserter began to realize where lay the odds in another hour's exposure to such a storm. All sense of direction had been snatched from him, and he fought only for breath. You Han had no knowledge of desert storms in his home on the bank of the Pei-ho. He gasped whatever prayers came to him, but placed his active faith, still unshaken, in the ability of his master to save him from the choking, freezing terror. The man and the boy were not only stifled, but soon benumbed, for neither had ever felt anything to compare with the searching cold of this blast. They stumbled from one hill to another, sometimes keeping their feet, falling oftener, rising more slowly, the little mule trying in vain to turn tail to the storm.

There could be no conversation. At length the deserter muttered drowsily to the storm such fragments as these:

"No place like home. It's the finish that's comin' to me. Cudn't take me medicine like a man. P'rhaps this'll blow over soon. I'm blinded entirely. Good God! forgive me poor cowardly sowl! I niver meant to go wrong. Had to bring that poor fool You Han into this mess."

The deserter pitched forward on hands and knees, his rifle buried somewhere in his circling wake. He caught hold of You Han's queue lest they lose each other, and then the mule pushed impetuously between them, ears forward, muzzle outstretched, trumpeting joyfully.

"He b'lieve can find. He sabee plenty," feebly sputtered You Han.

The frantic mule dragged the boy by the lead-rope a few paces, the corporal falling, sliding after, and then stopped. The linked procession could go no farther. You Han collapsed in a little heap, and the corporal toppled face down. The boy had tied the lead-rope around his own wrist, and the impatient mule was jerking it so that the forlorn figure in the sand seemed to make appealing gestures. The corporal was without motion, and with a mighty effort You Han pulled himself a little nearer, and the mule followed protestingly. The swaying curtain of sand closed in around the three figures.

You Han struggled to his knees and with his teeth loosed the knotted cinch, and the pack fell from the mule. The boy writhed over on the corporal and tried to raise the dead weight, tried to talk to him in a wordless and appealing whimper. The deserter strove to rise, and failed until he dully comprehended that the boy sought to make him mount the mule, or at least to hitch him in tow with the lead-rope. Then the soldier awoke, and fighting off the death that had almost mastered him, lurched to one knee and pushed You Han toward the mule that was standing over them. His voice thick and rasping as if his tongue were of sandpaper, the deserter succeeded in saying:

"Get aboard that mule. No Chinese village in mine. Better man than me--you an' mule both better men. You won't? ---- ---- you, take that!"

The deserter swung his fist against the jaw of the struggling boy, and the blow went home with the last flicker of the old-time fighting strength of Corporal Sweeney. You Han dropped limp, as if shot. Then the fugitive from army justice braced himself, tried, and failed to lift the light body in his arms. Three times he tried and failed, and then, as the mule swerved, he fell against it and dropped the lad across its back, like a bundle of quilts. The cinch, trailing in the sand, tripped the man, and he slipped it over You Han and pulled it tight before he fell back in the tossing sand. The mule stumbled a step or two with its burden, found that it was free and in a moment tottered beyond the vision of the deserter.

Not more than a hundred yards away a camel-trail lay encamped against the storm, and to the Mongolian drivers, huddled in furs close to their beasts, came a little dun mule half dragging an unconscious Chinese youth, whom they took for dead as they wonderingly cut him loose from his lashing.

Daylight and the tail of the sand-storm had come before he was able to speak, and the camels were jostling into the line of march. The swarthy drivers scoffed at the story told by the raving stranger, until the bell-camel shied at something nearly buried in the sand. You Han fought the greedy northerners off until he had disclosed a figure in army blue and a clean-cut Irish face whose expression was vastly peaceful.

The last silver coin was gone from the knotted sash of You Han after he had persuaded the camel-men to carry the body to the village where Corporal Sweeney had expected to find a refuge from fear.

THE LAST PILOT SCHOONER

Young James Arbuthnot Wilson slipped into the _Standard_ building with an uneasy air as if he were vaguely on the defensive. Six months of work in the "City Department" had not rid him of the feeling of a cat in a strange garret. The veterans of the staff were rather pleased that this should be the attitude common among young reporters. It showed that the office machine was geared to high tension when every man, short of five years' service, was thankful to find his "job" had not slid from under him between two days.

Wilson could recall no specific warnings that his head was in peril. His activities had been too inconspicuous to merit the dignity of official notice of any kind. He had faithfully followed his foot-sore round of minor police courts, hospitals, one-alarm fires, and dreary public meetings, to have his copy jammed as scanty paragraphs under the head of "City Jottings." A "story" filling a third of a column had marked his one red-letter day on the _Standard_.

Each afternoon, at one o'clock, he hurried to his pigeon-hole in the row of letter-boxes by the city editor's door, his heart thumping to this sense of intangible fear, and with it pulsing the foolish hope of a "big assignment." Some day they must give him a chance, and he would show them whether or not he could handle something worth while. But the flame of hope was low on this dull day of June as Wilson unlocked his box and tore open the yellow envelope on which his name was scrawled.

He whistled in blank amazement as he followed an unfamiliar hand down to the managing editor's signature. The youngster's face flushed and his fingers twittered as he turned sharply to see if the loungers at their desks had noted his agitation. Then he stole into the hall and re-read, with his lips moving as if he were spelling out the words:

DEAR MR. WILSON: You have been pegging away without any let-up for three months and your work has been excellent. Here is an easy assignment as a reward of merit. It will give you a pleasant outing, and us a good page story for the Sunday sheet. The enclosed clipping from to-day's paper will give you the idea. The art department will have a snap-shot camera waiting for you. Our Ship-News man made arrangements this morning for you to be met and taken aboard. The one-forty train from Broad Street Station will take you through to Lewes and the Breakwater. To save time I enclose some expense money. Try to be back on Thursday. This will give you three days at sea. We want plenty of rattling description and human interest, with local color _ad lib._ Good luck.

"Oh, there must be some mistake," gasped young Wilson. "A page Sunday story? A whole page? My work has been excellent? The managing editor has been following it? Why, I didn't suppose he knew me by sight. I can't believe it."

Befogged with hopes and fears, he turned back to the door of the city editor's room.

"He's just gone out to lunch with the managing editor," volunteered the day assistant. "No, I don't know where they went. Said they'd be back about two-thirty."

Wilson looked at the office clock. If he would catch the one-forty train for Lewes there was no leeway for hesitation. He started toward the elevator, then halted to read the clipping, which might throw some light upon this staggering manifesto:

THE LAST PILOT SCHOONER

The new steam pilot-boat will go into commission off the Delaware Capes early next week. This change from sail to steam is another blow at the romance of blue water. Six of the eight trim schooners of the Delaware fleet have already been dismantled, not only the _Albatross, Number One_ is cruising on the station. She will be laid up as soon as the steamer is ready to put the pilots aboard incoming vessels. Every ocean voyager will regret the passing of the pilot schooner. These stormy petrels among sailing craft have been the first messengers from the looked-for land, as specks in the tumbling waste of sea, or lying hove to in all weathers....

Wilson threw his doubts overboard. All he had ever read of bellying canvas, whipping spars, and lee rails awash leaped into the foreground of his boyish imagination. Here was his chance for such a "descriptive story" as he had dreamed of through weeks and months, this last cruise of the last pilot schooner. He dashed into the art room, snatched up the waiting camera, and bolted for the station. After he dropped panting into a seat of the accommodation train for Lewes, he found himself already overhauling his stock of sea-lore and sailor adjectives.

There was time for reflection in this four-hour journey to the sea, and ere long, sober second thought began to overtake his first wild elation. The young reporter's doubts came trooping back. He remembered now that he had never written a line of "ship-news" for the _Standard_. He blushed to confess to himself that his life on salt water had been bounded by the decks of river excursion steamers. And what had he ever done worth the notice of the managing editor? Of course, he had worked hard, and the world, at least in fiction, occasionally rewarded honest merit in lowly places with unexpected largess. But any "star man" of the staff would have given a week's salary for such a note as this from the chief executive of the _Standard_. And he, James Arbuthnot Wilson, was indubitably the rawest and humblest recruit of that keen and rough-riding squadron of talent.

An inevitable reaction swung his mood into the forebodings. The train was loafing along the upper reaches of Delaware Bay when he re-read the intoxicating note, and caught himself repeating "Dear Mr. Wilson," with a sudden glimmer of association. In another miserable moment the youth's beautiful dream was wrenched from him. What a fool he had been! "Wilson," "Wilson," he muttered and burst out:

"Of course, there is another Wilson, the tip-top man of the staff. It's the Wilson who's been filling in as chief of the Washington Bureau for six months. I heard somebody say the other night that 'Doc' Wilson was coming back, and was to go on general work again. He must have turned up over Sunday. And that new boy put his note in my box. Well, I am IT."

Young James Arbuthnot Wilson squeezed back a smarting tear. He did not try to fence with this surmise. There was no room for doubt that the kind words and the pleasant outing had been aimed at his high-salaried elder. James Arbuthnot had never clapped eyes on the gifted "Doc" Wilson, whose Washington dispatches had carried no signature and whose distant personality had made no impression upon this wretched understudy of his.

How could the pilgrim muster courage to go back and face the issue? He would be the office butt--Well, he could resign, but most likely, he reflected, dismissal would be the instant penalty of this incredibly presumptuous blunder. The only thing to be done was to drop off at the next way station and return to the scene of his downfall. But to his stammering plea the brakeman returned:

"Next train up won't get along here till late to-night. You better go through to Lewes instead of waiting seven hours at one of these next-to-nothing flag stations."

The reporter slumped into his seat and looked through the open window. The tang of brine was in the breeze that gushed up the bay with the rising tide. Across the green fields he began to glimpse flashing blue water and bits of the traffic of far-off seas. A deep-laden tramp freighter was creeping toward her port, a battered bark surged solemnly in tow of an ocean-going tug, and a four-masted schooner was reaching up the bay with every sail pulling. Across the aisle of the car Wilson noticed, with a melancholy pleasure, four deep-tanned men of rugged aspect, who played cards with much talk of ships and tides and skippers. They belonged in this picture.

Wilson thought of the stewing city far behind him, and the spirit of some sea-faring ancestor was whispering in his ear. Yes, by Jove! he would see the tragic venture through after all. It were better to return with a "story," and fall with colors flying than to slink back to empty ridicule. Let them try to overtake him if they dared. This was "Mr. Wilson's" mission, and no one could snatch it from him.

When the train labored into Lewes, the fugitive looked across the flats to the cuddling arm of the Breakwater and the shining sea beyond. With the instinct of the hunted, he made ready to flee in this direction, away from the station and the town. As he dropped from the car, a man in the uniform of a station agent climbed aboard and shouted:

"Telegram for Mr. Wilson. Is Mr. Wilson aboard? Urgent telegram for Mr. J. A. Wilson."

Mr. Wilson's pulse fluttered as he dove behind the warehouse across the tracks, while the hoarse cry of the station agent rang horribly in his ears. The long arm of the _Standard_ had almost clutched him by the collar. As he hurried down the nearest street to the water, he saw heading toward him a lusty youth of a sailorish cut, who eyed the camera case as if hasty suspicions were confirmed.

"Is your name Wilson?" demanded the stranger. "If it be, come along with me. I'm from the _Albatross'_ boat-crew."

Wondering how much guilt was written in his face, Wilson fervently shook the hand of the briny youth. They fared toward the pier, while the convoy explained: