“One dead donkey.”
“I’ll be back,” Jake said. Old Jake. Standing at the center of the universe, the god damn middle of the Gobi, in a pair of green underpants. He ran to his bedding and dressed. Aside from being half frozen, he faced trouble better with pants on. One of life’s great truths. He slipped into cloth shoes, and loped off to check the perimeter about fifty yards out. He could see for miles, and every rock and shadow was a man or a donkey. He found wet blood and followed it, but not far; he gave up and turned back. Poor dumb beast, gut-shot and out there dying forever. One of the guards Jake had detailed almost blew his head off. Jake thundered through about thirty seconds of high-style cursing. “Excuse me,” the guard said. Excuse me. Jake was warming up in all ways and beginning to enjoy this. Another great yarn for his grandchildren. He trotted back to the fire. “Well,” he said to Ch’ing. “They have not overpowered you. Or taken your guns away.”
Ch’ing spat.
“Nothing out there,” Jake said, “except a couple of rotten shots.”
“Shut up,” Ch’ing said.
“Did they fire at your order?”
Ch’ing said kindly, “If I wanted you dead, I’d kill you. And nothing at all would be said about it.”
Every camel-puller there, including Jim, looked hard at Jake.
“You’re the boss,” he said mildly.
Ch’ing turned back to the prisoners. They were kneeling now, heads bowed, submissive. Finished.
“What now?” Jake whispered to Jim.
Jim shrugged.
“They never even got anything,” Jake said. “We’re winning by one donkey.” He sucked in a lungful of crisp night air. For a desolate, barren desert the Gobi was full of traffic and surprises. He moved closer to the fire and inspected the prisoners. “They’re younger brothers,” he said, meaning boys.
“Be happy they aren’t Elder Brothers,” Ch’ing snarled, meaning the band of outlaws. “We shoot them anyway.”
“You shoot bungling children?”
“Bugger your mother,” Ch’ing said without humor. The firelight painted his face orange and yellow in flat planes like slabs of wood, and his dark eyes shone like jewels, and behind him the desert slept. A small tug of fear stopped Jake’s breath. For no reason at all, just the night, and the distance, the solitude.
“Changing the rules again,” Ch’ing said. “We don’t seem to do anything the way you want.”
“I beg pardon. Forget it. I never spoke.”
“No no,” Ch’ing said, “no no, please. Distinguished visitor. You prefer to carry them along? Eating our food and drinking our water? No. Crop their ears and turn them loose? To wander and die of thirst, or to prey on other caravans? No. Send them up to Noyon under guard? Four days there and four days back. Give them to the police, or the army? All right. Where are the police? Where is the army? All right. What then?”
“It seems too much.”
“We await suggestions. Lop their hands?”
The three men looked up then, and firelight flickered across their round faces. They were without expression, but one of them said, “No.”
“You see,” Ch’ing said.
The thieves were barefoot. Their lank hair flopped.
“All right,” Ch’ing said to his men. “Back to bed.” They fidgeted. “You,” he said to Jake, “take them out some yards and shoot them.”
The camel-pullers chuckled, and waited.
“Why me?”
“Master of the Armory,” Ch’ing said reasonably, “and also a man of the three prime virtues: benevolence, fellow-feeling and humanitarian charity. Surely you will do for a man what you would do for a camel?”
Jake was silent, but soon nodded.
The men melted off into the lines of sleepy camels. Ch’ing and Jake stood together before the three thieves. Jim stood by Jake. Ch’ing smiled a light, wise, mocking smile.
“Stand up,” Jake said. Ch’ing said it in Mongol. The men rose.
“This way,” Jake said, and showed them; they moved. That, Jake did not understand. They were not bound and there were three of them and Jake had been holding his breath as they rose and turned. But they did not try to flee, and only marched across the sands, shuffling and stumbling. They did not even whimper. Ch’ing and Jim followed.
By the donkey’s dried blood Jake told the thieves to kneel, and they knelt. Jake fought down a surge of excitement.
“The caravans have always passed this way,” Ch’ing said suddenly. “Before there were countries the caravans passed this way.” All about them lay the flat black fetches of barren land; the horizon was the end of the world.
“No armies,” Jake said. “No police. I understand.”
“Nothing,” Ch’ing said. “Only the rule of the lord of all under heaven.”
“The lord of all under heaven.”
“Old man God,” Ch’ing said. “Remember that. When there is trouble we must do things his way.” He spoke softly.
Ch’ing shot the first thief in the back of the head. The boy fell forward and settled on his knees and face, ass in the air, like a Mohammedan praying. Jake had forgotten what a small, flat snap the Nambu made.
Quickly Jake shot the second man, who rolled over and came to rest against the third. With his Lee-Enfield Jim shot the third.
“I have responsibilities,” Ch’ing said as they walked back.
“I want one of the donkeys,” Jake said.
“Oho,” Ch’ing said, “this man is learning.”
“I’ll take the other,” Jim said.
“No,” Ch’ing said. “No need for two in the same lien. Ta-tze can have one, but to Gurchen only.”
“Fair enough.”
“Do you know,” Ch’ing said, “I believe that we can be friends now.”
17
In a private room at the Southwestern Barracks in Pao-t’ou, Major K’uang Kuo-hua of the Nationalist Chinese Army, a tank commander long ago detached to desert patrol, was enjoying his first hot bath in seven weeks. The tub was of galvanized iron, with a small hardwood seat under water; both water and soap were scented, and his orderly, an eager orphan of fourteen, stood by with tea and towels. After the sere and crusty desert, the Major was pleased by the erotic swirl of the warm and faintly oily water.
“Qomul is full of garbage,” the Major said, “and so is Pao-t’ou, crates and canvas, wrappers and worn tools and liquor bottles, and all with foreign script on it, Russian and American and Japanese. And our women speak gross words in those languages, and have learned to perform delicate acts in a gross manner. Have you seen Soochow? No: you are fourteen only. Well, in Soochow there are still establishments of quality where the women are clean, and lightly painted and powdered, and wear the ancient gowns, and mix hot spices, and play the old instruments. It is all disappearing, though. I pity you. You will never know China. I am the son of a provincial magistrate and a concubine, and there is pride even in that. There are no longer concubines, only whores.
“A towel. And sharpen my razor.”
Shaving, dripping lather into the chipped basin, gazing into the small cracked mirror, the Major recited to himself, as always when shaving, the verses, mottoes and principles drummed into him for ten years in a stone-and-mortar schoolhouse in Wu-tso near the great lake of Sung-hua in the heart of Manchuria. They stood, fifteen or twenty boys of many ages, and recited in unison. “Fu-fu-tzu-tzu.” When the father is a father and the son is a son. When the prince is a prince and the minister is a minister. Then will justice and benevolence prevail. The Master said: The superior man dislikes the idea that his name will vanish after death.
“All those,” the Major said to his orderly in the cracked mirror, “are to be laundered.” He rinsed the razor, dried it carefully, folded it away, and washed his face. “A fresh, starched uniform,” he said, pleased. “Underwear. Socks. What is that?”
The orderly bowed, and handed him two nails. “From the shirt pocket, sir.”
They were those
double-headed nails. Resentment boiled through K’uang, sour and hot. The foreign ox with his foreign ways. The arrogance of him. And yet K’uang was sure this ox had not, really not, known about the penicillin. A false note in that whole day, somewhere, but it was not the penicillin.
He juggled the nails. I stand here in a towel, hating one barbarian. How foolish!
A nail in either hand, he began a double toss to the wastebasket, but checked it.
He hefted them, one in each hand.
They were of clearly different weights.
He went to his small desk, sat, switched on the small electric lamp. “Orderly,” he said, “my knife.”
The boy scurried. He served efficiently and in near silence, but his heart hummed and his ears burned: he was serving Major K’uang, and the name alone left men short of breath. The campaign ribbons, battle ribbons, decorations and commendations. The legends of battles won and lost, in Manchuria, in Burma; of insubordinates shot; of his grace in the company of generals and their ladies; and how he had blown a train near Ch’ang-sha, and killed a thousand Japanese.
K’uang took the knife with a grunt, and shaved a curl of iron from the shank of the lighter nail. Dull iron, and more dull iron.
He shaved a curl of iron from the shank of the other, and gold gleamed out at him.
He closed his fist on the nail and looked about him: his orderly stood near the door, at attention.
The Major pictured the foreigner, a large man and strong, weathered skin and bleached hair. He tried to remember just what Jake had said and done.
He grimaced. “Defile him! He did that well!”
Four kegs! Say half the nails were gold, dipped in iron; say a hundred pounds in all. At least.
They would be halfway to Gurchen by now but they were a large caravan, slow-traveling and with much opportunity for delay, camels down, pullers sick, sandstorms. He might overtake them. Meanwhile on the wireless he would hail Peking about that Kao—that was it, Kao Hu-tsuan—and he would hail Captain Nien in Qomul.
He could order Captain Nien to meet the caravan.
Ah, no.
He considered this for some moments, and decided uneasily to avoid burdening Nien with too many facts. He would ask Nien to detain the caravan, and to impound the foreigner’s goods. All of them.
And to impound the foreigner too. It should be no unpleasant task to apprehend and impound a foreigner. They bumbled through China like elephants, consuming, trampling, crushing, tusking.
18
Jake was leathery and black like all of them, and except for the blond hair as much a coolie as anybody. His pee was bright yellow, damn near orange, because they drank so little. It was late summer now, and pretty soon the tamarisks would bloom, and they came to wells or gullies that should have run but were dry. And still the nights were cold, and they warmed themselves under saddle blankets and sheepskins. In the morning the sky was a clear gray, then pale yellow, then gold, then suddenly blue; at night the blue enriched to purple and then black, and the stars popped out like flares.
Sogo Nor was a roundish lake about five miles across in a two-day sandy depression. When they edged the north shore Jim called down a blessing on so much water, and Jake strained his eyes for ducks or geese, or partridge along the shore.
But Sogo Nor was brackish. They pushed west against the afternoon sun, and came to their oasis that night, a place called Erhlitzeho near the shores of Gashun Nor. By now the place-names were not reliable. Jake liked that: he was a long way from anyplace. He was in places that might not exist! Damn! Erhlitzeho could have meant several things in Chinese, or it could have been the Chinese twist of something Mongol like Oridzagol. Jim said, “Two Regions River.” Erhlitzeho had no mayor or even citizens, but it lay by sweet water. They off-loaded, watered the camels, and set up for a few days of rest, prayer and light housekeeping.
More luck: a light cloud of dust moved in from the west the next day, about midmorning, and every man took up a weapon while Hsü-to bounded onto Ch’ing’s pony and cantered out to reconnoiter. He came prancing and sashaying back and let out a whoop. Jim said, “Ha. Fresh meat.” Ch’ing reclaimed the pony and went forward with Head of Pot.
By now Jake could see the strangers, half a dozen Mongols and a herd of sheep. “Also cattle,” Jim said, and soon Jake saw them, ten or fifteen head of scrubby horned cattle among about a hundred and fifty sheep.
“Cows,” Jim said, but Jake was inspecting the cowboys. They wore skin hats shaped like Robin Hood’s, and leather vests over no shirts, and ragged pants and cloth boots. They carried rifles and rode little brown ponies.
Two of them cantered out to talk with Ch’ing, and the others kept the stock milling slowly. Ch’ing talked with his hands and offered cigarettes and ushered them closer, and the camel-pullers gathered around.
Then they started to talk, and Jake was lost: Mongol, and bastard Chinese, and God knew what-all. The two Mongols sat, rifles butt-down between their legs, barrel leaning back against the left shoulder. They were cheerful but there was an irreducible wariness. Jim translated in a swift mutter. “They’ve been grazing the river here. It’s drying up. They’ll sell us a sheep or two.”
Head of Pot was detailing the bargain he wanted. The Mongols listened without emotion. Ch’ing said the caravan was without money but heavy with goods.
The Mongols scoffed at that. They had no need of fancy silks or newfangled foreign inventions. They were grazing this side of the border to keep their feet out of such garbage. Milk in tins when they had sheep and cows! Russian nonsense, like eyeglasses for hunting when any Mongol could see as far as the moon and the stars! They were thirty miles from Outer Mongolia with a defile-it regular army and a defile-it telegraph and a defile-it police force. There was no place a man could go these days without running into eunuchs with badges and seals and stamps, who lived on foot. Men of no bones.
For the sheep they would accept silver. Or gold.
Ch’ing blew the mustache. The caravan was walking up. When it rode down there would be silver.
“They’d love a Browning,” Jake told Jim, “with fifty rounds.”
“Bugger yes,” Jim said. “Four sheep at least.” He sidled to Ch’ing and whispered. The morning light was harsh, a yellow-white glare, and on the desert four Mongol horsemen stood guard over their flocks as if they had been there since Genghis Khan. Ch’ing palavered roundabout. He let the Mongols know that these camel-pullers were a rough bunch, armed to the teeth and hell on bandits, and so good at pulling camels that they did not fear to throw away a pistol to men of good bones. Ch’ing himself had a Mongol wife in Gurchen. Men who traveled the desert were brothers.
The Mongols asked to see the pistol and ammunition. Ch’ing obliged. One of the Mongols tipped his rifle to the other, slipped the clip out of the pistol, popped a couple of cartridges into it and rammed it home, snapped one into the chamber, ejected it, ditto the other, pulled the dry trigger, opened the breech, took a quick peek up the barrel and grunted to his buddy, who had caught both cartridges on the fly. This was one newfangled foreign invention they knew a little something about.
Their rifles were nothing Jake had ever seen. They weighed about twenty pounds and looked like they burned coal.
“Six sheep,” Ch’ing said. “A man works half a year for such a weapon.”
The Mongolian rube said, “Horse apples. A man steals these from your drunken soldiers.”
“Without ammunition,” Ch’ing said complacently, “and the stolen ones are rusty, or the parts are broken.”
“And this one? How do we know?”
“Fire it. Look at the gleam. Feel the good oil.”
“And panic the sheep and cattle,” the Mongol said, “and your camels.” Though not their ponies, he explained, which were first-class Bar Köl ponies and well trained.
“Then my Tartar will vouch for it.” Ch’ing jerked his head at Jake.
The Mongols contemplated Jake.
“He is a master of
weaponry,” Ch’ing said.
They shrugged again. “Another Russian.”
“Tell them it is good,” Ch’ing said.
Jake eyed him, cool, and put out a hand for the pistol.
“Tell them it is good,” Ch’ing said.
Jake stepped forward and took up the pistol. Quickly, like a magician performing, he stripped it and reassembled it. “Master Ch’ing does not lie,” he said. “The pistol is like new.”
Ch’ing managed a thin smile. “Bar Köl ponies,” he said chattily. “You have wandered far with your flocks.”
Oh yes. Ten years ago they had been west of Mingshui, in Turkestan. Two years ago here, last year there. The water flowed one year and was sand the next. It was necessary to wander. Bandits were not a problem. They took only a sheep or two.
“Ah yes, sheep,” Ch’ing said. “Three sheep will be acceptable.”
“That seems right,” the Mongol said.
“Sheep and not lambs. Fat and not lean.”
The Mongols mounted up and trotted off. The Mongol said, “These are the best.”
Ch’ing said, “They can hardly walk. They’re starving.”
“There are none so fat this side of Qomul.”
“I see one or two that look edible.”
The Mongol cut one out. “My personal favorite.”
“How long has he been sick? Colic or worms?”
“Like a pet, believe me,” the Mongol said.
“Poisoned grass,” Ch’ing said sympathetically.
“A healthy wether, and all meat. No air in him.”
Meanwhile the other candidates were baaing and milling and dropping many little pellets of dung. The second Mongol stood half smiling. The camel-pullers too were enjoying themselves, and Chu-chu sat by like a man at the opera, waiting for the moment to shout Hao, hao.
The Chinese Bandit Page 13
