The Girl Of Ghost Mountain/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II
QUONG LI
It took a good twelve hours to drive cattle from the Circle S to the loading chute at Metzal for they had to be started in as perfect condition as was possible after the long trip. The start was made long before sun-up and frequent halts taken for water and intermittent grazing. Sheridan, Jackson and two cowboys went with them, one of the punchers slated to go on to the Junction with the main-line at Pioche and see them properly transferred.
So it was mid-afternoon before the herd arrived at the loading chute, a hundred yards from the little depot, and Sheridan rode ahead to see the agent about his cars. Metzal boasted one almost obsolete and wheezy engine for shunting purposes, relegated to the branch line for cattle purposes and its engineer and firemen were of the same character as their locomotive. The station agent was generally sleepy, infected with a Mexican manana that prevailed more or less in Metzal. There were two types of citizens in and about Chico Mesa, those who rose early, when the air was cool and sweet and bracing, and those who crawled out when the sun was high and the air within doors and out oppressive. There were, in effect, the hustlers and the loafers, and both seemed to find the climate suited their temperaments. Most of the loafers congregated in Metzal. All of them had one grievance, the airing of which they never ceased. This was Prohibition. The Mexicans made pulque and mescale. Nothing can stop a Mexican from slicing cactus and agave and fermenting their juices. He needs no still, no formidable, clumsy apparatus; his chief ingredients grow everywhere. But the loafing whites, who hung about the poolrooms and gambled with each other, or tried to set traps for taking away the money of the cattlemen and ranchers, by methods most indifferently honest, craved the whiskey with which they were saturated and, being no longer able to buy it in the labeled bottle, or from bond, surreptitiously consumed a substitute.
Metzal was far from the Federal authorities. The local officials were elected from the old regime. Metzal would vote "wet" and "no license" as long as the statutes were unrevoked. The sale of dubious liquor was winked at. If it was served from ginger-ale bottles it was more by way of a joke than by necessity. There were half a dozen so-called distillers of "forty-rod", "lightning" and "squirrel" whiskey. None of it was good, but that manufactured by Vasquez, who had a holding on the edge of the town, where he bred dogs and children, with his predilections slightly in favor of the first, was more fiery, more deadly than the rest.
Metzal was half a mile or more from the depot. It straggled along the banks of the creek and, when the railroad spur came out through Pioche Pass, it had to ignore the demands of citizens to come right into town by reason of quicksands. One train a day ran up from Pioche, rested a while and trailed back again. This was due at five o'clock and to it, on the return trip, would be attached the cars into which Sheridan and his men loaded the sweating, lowing, bewildered cattle.
It was done at last and Jackson went off to Metzal with another cowboy to make some purchases. Sheridan thought it likely that they would bring back "something on the hip" besides their guns but he was not worried about their getting drunk. Jackson, the Texan, was the type who, to use his own phrase, "worked like hell between paydays and raised hell while the check lasted." Neither of them, he was sure, had more than a dollar or two with them, and they had not drawn any.
He rode as far as the depot with them to see the agent about his waybills, bringing his mare alongside the platform, as high on the side of the street as it was by the track, reached at either end by a ramp. The agent roused himself at his call from an intermittent siesta and they transacted their business by the time a whistle sounded and the train from Pioche came shuffling in.
One passenger alighted and Sheridan stared at him curiously. The man was in dark blue serge and he wore a black broadbrim, of the type affected in the West by Pinkerton detectives and Chinamen. This was a Chinaman but he was different from any Chinese Sheridan had ever seen, far from the Mott Street variety. He was tall, his face was ivory pale and the features were wonderfully refined. They suggested the earlier ivory carvings of Chinese priests, or the paintings of Chinese aristocrats that Sheridan had seen in the Metropolitan Museum. For all its fine chiseling and oval symmetry there was a suggestion of strength about the face that was marked. The man was no pidgin-English coolie and Sheridan marveled over what had brought him to the end of a branch line in Arizona. There were Chinese in Phoenix, Chinese laundrymen in Bisbee, Globe, and the mining towns, but this man did not look like a washer of clothes. His hands were not those of a laborer. Sheridan had met a merchant in New York, an importer of valuable carvings and rugs, rare things of jade and teak and ivory, recognized as an expert, called to consultation by amateur and professional collectors, who reminded him of this Oriental who, with perfect self-possession and an inimitable air of self-isolation, descended from the jerkwater train carrying a modern suitcase, ignoring Sheridan's gaze and the more blatant curiosity of the agent, to take seat on the worn bench and smoke a cigarette produced from a silver case.
"Now what the devil are you doing in this galley?" Sheridan quoted to himself. But he had to superintend the shunting and coupling of his cars and he rode off as three riders came loping in from Metzal, one the postmaster, carrying his sacks across his saddle.
Another of the trio was Hollister, his face inflamed with the blood-fermenting combination of bad—but not cheap—liquor, and the sun. He did not notice Sheridan, who was well away by the time Hollister reined up opposite the platform, but he saw the Chinaman puffing at his cigarette and concentrated his attention upon him with drunken pertinacity. Suddenly he threw up his hat and caught it, cursing his shying mount, swaying in his saddle to retrieve the descending sombrero.
"Whoopee! Doggone my cats, but it's a Chink. Chink, what in hell are you doin' here? This is open season for Chinks in Metzal. Hey, blast yore yeller face, don't you sabby me?"
The Chinaman sat imperturbable.
"I sabby," he said quietly.
"You do? Then light out of here. We want no stinkin', bone-faced, water-spitting Chinks round here. We skin Chinks in Metzal, skin 'em alive an' use their flesh for coyote bait. It don't need no arsenic to pizen 'em." He guffawed at his own crude wit. His two companions looked on with careless interest, waiting developments, as they might have watched the preliminaries of a badger baiting. They were not especial pals of Hollister. He had accompanied them to the station on alcoholic impulse, not by their invitation. But a Chinaman was fair game. The old prejudice against them still lasted in Arizona, save where the towns tolerated them for their utility.
The Oriental did not move. His agate eyes, set slanting under wrinkled lids, were fixed on Hollister, He had finished his cigarette and sat on his bench mute and gravely attentive. His apparent apathy lashed Hollister to fury. He pulled a gun and fired it, the lead spatting through the clapboards less than a foot from the Chinaman's head. But he did not move a muscle. The agent came flying out.
"Doggone you, Hollister," he cried, "you quit shootin' up my freight room. They's chickens in there. Your derned shot went plumb through the top coop."
"Git back in yore own coop," retorted the bully, rolling bloodshot eyes towards the none too valorous agent. "Or I'll plug you, you ink-slingin', frog-faced, wire-pecker. Now," as the agent vanished, "are you paralyzed or are you a dummy? Come on, show us how the Chinks dance the shimmy. Come on!" He fired a second and a third shot, the last between his victim's shoes, perilously close to one foot. The Chinaman stood up.
"Me, I no sabby how to dance," he said. "Suppose I give you one fine piecee goods, velly fine piecee silk, you leave me alone? Bimeby I go away." Hollister turned with a grin to the two horsemen.
"You bet yore life you'll go away," he said. "Let me see that fine piecee silk." He sat twisted sideways in the saddle, his pony nervous at the shots, chafing at the cruel bit with which, and his heavily roweled spurs, Hollister forced him to stay against the platform. The Chinaman bent to his suitcase, unstrapped and slowly opened it.
"What kind you likee best?" he asked, his voice deprecating, his face a mask of hiunility. "You likee blocade, fine dless for lady?"
"That's the stuff, Chink," said Hollister, disposed for the moment to be patronizing. "For a lady. I'll give it to Juanita for a make-up present. You—you hully up," he jested, with a hiccough.
The Chinaman's hand came out of the open bag. He straightened swiftly as the rise of a snake's neck and his face had changed to malevolence incarnate. It was not the rage of terror; the jet eyes were blazing, the jaw firmly set and the hand that now held a blunt automatic gun was far steadier than Hollister's.
"Hi-yah," he shouted. It was not a yell, not loud, yet it was a war-cry, defiant, determined, the slogan of a pirate brood. He fired twice. The gun jerked and the first bullet went wild, but the second struck Hollister's frenzied mount high in the flank. Hollister's mouth was open with surprise as he started to return the fire. He had slid his gun back to the holster as he had leaned forward to examine the expected brocade. The broncho bucked high and hard, squealing with pain and fright and Hollister, none too firm in his seat, shot off in a parabola, sprawling in the fine dust of the road as his pistol fell on the platform and the pony went bucking away towards Metzal.
The agent peered through the grimy panes of his office, the two men who had come with Hollister rocked with laughter and the bully rose discomfited, his face smeared with dust and blood from his nose and cut lip.
"Give me a gun, damn you! " he shouted. "Catch my hawss, one of you!" He started back towards the platform but the Chmaman faced him indomitably, his gun raised, his arm crooked, hand upwards. Hollister stopped, wiped away the blood with his bandana, spat out more of it. He looked for his gun in the road and then saw it in the Chinaman's other hand, hung at his side.
"Wait," he cried, his voice bullying but his eyes doubtful, the suggestion of a cringe in his attitude. "I'll crucify you before I'm through with you." And he started to run at a zigzag towards his companions, who had captured his pony and were holding it for him, still roaring at what they regarded as the primest joke that had struck Metzal. Hollister pleaded with them for a gun but they refused him with jeers and he spurred up his horse and streaked towards town in a cloud of dust, passing on his way the returning Jackson and his comrade, who stopped to inquire the cause of the rumpus, retailed them by the pair, who slapped their thighs and doubled themselves in mirth before they followed Hollister.
Sheridan came loping up on the mare. He had only heard the last two shots; the noise of the shunting and coupling had drowned the rest. The agent was out on the platform, the Chinaman was calmly closing his grip. He had put Hollister's gun inside it and laid his own on the seat. Evidently he expected more trouble but he looked quietly at Sheridan as the latter questioned the agent. Jackson and the other cowboy dismounted and came up on the platform to join the group.
"Hollister tries to make him dance," said the agent. "After he fires clean through the wall into the freight house and tells me he'll plug me if I kick. Then the Chink outs with a gat and cuts loose. You should have seen Hollister soarin' off that bronc' of his, like a spread-eagle with a busted wing in a gale. Gawd! Served him right. An' the Chink is game if his skin is yeller." It wasn't, it was the exact hue of aged ivory but, to the agent, all Chinamen were yellow-skinned.
Sheridan turned to the Oriental.
"Have you got friends in Metzal?" he asked. "Are you going to start in business here?"
The Chinaman regarded him with eyes that were appraising. That Sheridan's cosmopolitan quality of speech appealed to him was clear in the manner of his reply. His pidgin-English had vanished. Even his r's were only slightly blurred.
"I am looking for work of some kind," he said, without deference.
Sheridan hesitated.
"They don't like Chinamen in Metzal," he said. "You may sense that."
"It is an ancient antipathy that still holds, outside the cities," said the other.
"They are laughing at Hollister now, "went on Sheridan, "but he trails with a gang of his own sort and they'll be starting a lynching bee in this direction inside of half an hour, if not before. What kind of a job do you want?" Jackson pressed forward.
"Did you eat any of Stoney's hotcakes this mornin'?" he asked. "They warnt hot, in the first place, they was mush in the middle an' mine is still stuck halfway to my stummick. All Chinks can cook. Hire him an' the boys 'll chip in for the extry pay." Sheridan saw gleaming approval in the face of the second cowboy.
"Can you cook?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Fifty a month and found. Does that suit you?"
"Yes."
"Can you ride?"
"I will try."
Sheridan glanced towards the town, expecting to see a dust cloud heralding the lynching party he was sure would materialize shortly, if only for the supposed sport of the thing.
"Jackson, you take his grip," he said. "He'll have enough to do to manage Rand's horse. Rand goes with the steers. He won't be back till tomorrow. The horse is down by the chute. Get off there now and ride as fast as he can stay on. You didn't give me your name?" he asked the newly appointed chef.
"Quong. Quong Li. I think they are coming from the town."
He did not show any signs of nervousness. Sheridan still regarded him as a mystery. Dust showed on the outskirts of the town and they could hear shouts. But the mob had not started. It seemed to be waiting for others to join the party. Jackson took the suitcase and he and his comrade walked their ponies so as to screen Quong Li, walking at a fast clip ahead of them, losing no time, but unflurried, apparently the least anxious of any of them.
Sheridan lingered to talk to the agent.
"I'd hate to lose a good cook. They're scarce," he said. The agent winked.
"I've no love for Hollister," he said. "I'll fool 'em. Here they come."
A score of men on galloping horses came dashing up, shouting in excitement, Hollister leading. His nose was still bleeding and he had to mop continually at it with his bandana. He affected not to notice Sheridan but shouted for the agent, who had gone inside, to come out. As the man responded the train started, slowly gathering speed.
"Where's that damned Chink?" demanded Hollister.
"Last I see of him," replied the agent, "he was makin' tracks for the Golden Gate. Goin' due west, fast." He pointed over to the willows that masked a bend of the creek. The mob wheeled and raced in that direction. The agent grinned.
"When they come back I'll sort of suggest that he may have doubled on 'em an' boarded the train," he said. "I'll come out some day to the Circle S an' sample some of his grub."
"You're welcome." Sheridan turned his horse and rode slowly after his men, now hidden by a bend in the road. He did not want to attract possible attention by hurrying. Once on the Circle S, he had no fear of interference for Quong Li. By the time the news leaked out, as it ultimately must, the excitement would have died down, submerged in the joke on Hollister. The laugh would still be against him when they returned from the futile search. Ridicule would calm the resentment against Quong better than anything else. And, if he turned out a successful chef—somehow Sheridan felt certain as to that—the men of the ranch would defend his sanctuary.
He caught up with them two miles out of town. Quong was hunched up on the pony, both hands on the horn and reins. He jerked to the trot, making a poor figure of it yet, curiously, there were no covert smiles on the faces of the cowboys. His awkwardness was still pervaded by a certain dignity. Moreover, a cowman has his points of etiquette and of fitness. It would never have occurred to them to "kid the cook". A chef, be he white, brown, black or olive, is a personage on a ranch, to be propitiated rather than to poke fun at, even when he was as poor a cook as Stoney, pressed into the kitchen by circumstance and not by his own desire.
Jackson dropped back to join him.
"They ain't trailin'?"
"The agent sent them off on a wrong trail," said Sheridan. "And he's going to hint that he might have made the train, after all."
"I never heard of a Chinese cowboy," said Jackson, meditatively. "Now I've seen one on a hawss, I know why."
"If they had more and better horses in China, I fancy they'd learn well enough. Red. They're a clever race. The Chinese aviators are good ones." Jackson snickered.
"I'll say they are. He's bin doin' some aviatin' himself. Ridin' the air, most of the time. Got bucked off twice but climbed on ag'en cool as a chunk of ice. He's game. What's more, I'll bet he can cook."
Jackson was not especially predisposed towards his stomach, but a rancher who has the name of a good provider can secure hands where others go begging. Open air work, that is apt to be strenuous, breeds appetite that can get away with coarse food, but appreciates good. And Quong Li was a success from the moment he entered the kitchen. Stoney remained to show him the ropes and gasped at the deft way in which the new chef went to work upon half a dozen things at once, bringing them all to a grand climax. The well had made a little garden possible and Sheridan had planted it to vegetables. With these, with steaks broiled to a turn, crisp potatoes and flaky-crusted pies and coffee, Circle S dined well that night. Yet Sheridan was positive Quong Li had never graduated at a range. He had seen him nonchalantly sacrificing an extra inch of nail from his forefingers.
Jackson, privileged as foreman as well as in a genuine friendship between him and Sheridan, joined the latter on the ranch-house porch while the rest of the men went to their own quarters.
"That's the first coffee I've tasted since Stoney went on the job," he said, ecstatically, "barring what you made that night up by Lake of the Woods. Stoney's didn't even smell like coffee. It looked an' tasted like Ghost Crick flood water. If Quong keeps up his lick the boys 'ud fight for him if it ever came to a showdown."
"I offered to bet you a month's pay that was a real gel on Ghost Mountain that night," he went on presently. "But you was asleep. If you'd took me up, you'd have lost."
"How's that, Red?"
"I heard somethin' about her in town. Seems she an' her friend, or her maid, some says, got off the train to Pioche two weeks ago. They puts up at the Mountain House an' ses nothin' to nobody about their bisness, was they tourists or lungers or whatnot? Jest asks, casual, to be p'inted out Ghost Mountain. Hires Jim Woodhouse, who used to drive the stage, a few questions about campin' an' the like, hires him to buy 'em an outfit, an' then they strikes the grit for Ghost Mountain, all by themselves. One of 'em, the maid, is a crowd by herself. A Swede or some kind of a squarehead, an' big as two men. Seems a couple of ranch hands got fresh when the outfit passed 'em. This Swede she jest natcherly bumps their heads together, like she was crackin' walnuts. One of 'em's in the hospital, they say, an' t'other's a sorehead for life. Course it's all second-hand news, brought over to Metzal by some one who seen 'em, or said he did.
"One of 'em plays the violin. That made 'em think to Pioche they was concert folk. But they lit out—an' we saw the gel on the mountain that night. Rum, ain't it, two wimmen like that strikin' out alone an' choosin' Ghost Mountain for campin'?"
"What is the other one like, the one you think we saw?"
"It is the one. The other u'd break the back of anything short of an elephant. Why, some say she's pritty, some not. Got an elegant figger, 'cordin' to hearsay. Sort of slimsy. Not peaked or frail, but small built. I reckon she's a lady by all they say. That's one reason I wanted to talk with you about them. The boys are talkin' of givin' a surprise party, but I don't reckon they will."
Sheridan leaned forward in his chair.
"What boys?"
"The bunch of shorthorns that Hollister trails with."
"We can't stand for that, Red. Those two women alone!" He got up and strode up and down the verandah. "We'll have to stop that sort of thing."
"I thought you'd say somethin' of the kind. But it won't happen yet awhile, though I'll keep my eyes peeled an' my ears cocked."
"Why do you say it won't happen yet awhile?"
"Because there's one thing they are all agreed upon, unanimous, in the face of the fact that the wimmen are there. Leastwise we know they're there. The folks in Metzal on'y know they started out for Ghost Mountain an' was seen makin' for it an' never come back. What they're agreed on is, one an' all, in Pioche as well as Metzal, that there ain't no way to get up Ghost Mountain short of flyin'. It sure stumps me how they did it."
"If they found a trail, Hollister and his gang will nose it out," answered Sheridan. "It's just the devilish sort of thing they'd delight in, to start a chivaree and scare those women half to death, if they went no farther. They must be fairly sure they are on the mountain. If one of them is a lady...."
"She's an Easterner," said Jackson. "Calls a mountain a 'mounting'. Like that Vermont chap down to Prieta. What do you aim to do?"
"We've got to send a horse in for Rand to meet the train tomorrow. Suppose you take it, Red. I'll take over your work."
"That suits me. I'd ruther put a crimp in Hollister's schemes than hold four aces in a thousand dollar jack-pot. Not to mention the wimmen. The West may be wild an' woolly yet in spots, but it's usually bin reckoned a safe place for a decent female, an' I aim to hold up my hand in that."
"Then that's settled. And you can see how they stand about Quong at the same time."
But Sheridan was not bothering very much about Quong. He was seeing more plainly the vision of the girl in the notch of the mountain, with the mauve mists trailing about her. It had been stamped upon his mental retina more clearly than he had fancied. He had dismissed it as a trick of the eye but now he seemed to see it plainly, a slim girl upon a big horse, the mane of the beast lifting in the wind.
Was the fact that they had camped on the shore of Lake in the Woods and she had come to the edge of the cliff that evening mere coincidence?
Sheridan had a theory that there was no such thing as coincidence, as generally interpreted. Such related happenings were, he thought, the fruit of seeds not cast at random. If they had not seen her Jackson might not have listened to a casual conversation, the women might have gone unchampioned.
A lady, a slimsy lady! An Easterner who called a mountain "mounting". Sheridan smiled in the dark at the trick of speech. His own sisters, back in Massachusetts, had it. Was not Boston, "Bosting," even to its bluest blooded?
Why they had come, what they were doing there, furnished a mystery that fascinated him. The slimsy girl, the husky serving-woman, if she was that, the violin—and Ghost Mountain. Ghost Mountain the unscaleable! It gripped him and he made up his mind to follow the challenge, to solve the riddle. She might or might not be pretty, said gossip; she was a lady. It was all provocative. It awakened chivalry, never very dormant with Sheridan. His rough life had not blunted his sensibilities nor his imagination.
"I wonder which one of 'em played the fiddle?" said Jackson out of the long silence.
"The girl, I imagine. Why?"
"I sure hanker after good fiddlin'," said Jackson. "There was a chap in Texas could make you snap yore fingers at the whole dern world or choke you up like a hurt babby. He was a squarehead, too. They're long on music. I'll bet you ten dollars it's the big one."
"I'll take you on that, Red."
"You're on. If that surprise party don't come off, which same we'll attend, let's you an' me make a social call, bein' as we're neighbors?"
"Neighbors? To folks on a mountain ten miles off and three thousand feet up! And how are we going to find the way?"
"Hell!" said Jackson with unconscious and colloquial profanity, "where a gel can climb, I can. An' what's a little space in Arizony?"
Sheridan laughed but he was paying close attention. Some lines from Kipling's "Explorer" occupied his mind. They seemed pat to the occasion:
One everlasting whisper, day and night repeated—so;
'Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the ranges—
Something lost behind the ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!
'"Lost and waiting for you. Go.'" He repeated the words aloud.
"Huh?" queried Jackson. "What did you say?"
"Nothing, Red. I'm going to turn in. Good-night."
"Goodnight." Jackson left the verandah, the red glow of his cigarette glowing in the dark. It was stuck in the corner of his lips and his mouth was twisted in a confidential grin.
"'Lost an' waitin' for you?' Now what do you know about that?" he asked himself as he walked towards the bunk-house. "The Boss has struck a romantic streak. I hope it runs to pay-dirt. Me, I'm for the Big One, the one that plays the fiddle."