The Complete Adventures of Hazard & Partridge Page 24

  A world which, indeed, appeared quite unfitted for man’s habitation, ragged and scoriac, black peaks piled on black peaks, looking as if but recently upflung from an inferno. A forbidding and depressing world, which was, however, but the eastern curve of the natural ramparts within which the Lolos, those last barbarians to remain unconquered and unassimilated, have hidden themselves for many centuries.

  Recalling the little that we’d heard of the land beyond those ramparts—a land, by all accounts, of warring clans, of fertile valleys and fortified villages and feudal castles, of lords and overlords and nzemos and Chinese serfs and slaves—I was glad of the uncharacteristic indecision of Hazard’s manner.

  “You were saying—” I suggested.

  “—that I don’t at all see our way in the matter. To go in any farther would seem—well, close to suicide. Then the camels will travel all night—it’s their time for traveling, on account of the flies.”

  He roused himself, and, still thoughtfully, got to his feet, an action which I imitated. We made a strange picture for each other, in our long, brown felt cloaks and blue cotton vests and breeches, with rusty old curved sabers hanging from our leather baldrics, and with the turbans we’d bought along with the rest of this outfit in Yunnan-fu twisted to a peak on top of our heads to imitate the Lolo “horn.” Hazard’s face, tinged dark brown by the juices of some useful plant, broke into a serious smile as he regarded me.

  “My word, Partridge, there’s as small a difference as the ethnologists say between the Lolo features and the Caucasian. If my masquerade is as good as yours, we should get by till we had to talk.”

  “That’s likely to be a fatal limit.”

  “Yes, that’s true. I can understand their lingo well enough, but as to twisting my tongue Lolo fashion—it’s hopeless. On the other hand, there’s Koshinga ahead.”

  “If one could be sure of that,” I said reluctantly, for by now the pursuit of that illusive fantom had come to be an obsession with both of us, “there’s no chance too great to take.”

  “This time there’s little doubt of it,” replied Hazard. “It would take Koshinga with all his powers to consolidate the Lolo clans and satisfy the demands they make of a leader. And their allegiance would be worth— Listen!” he broke off.

  There was coming from the pass below a sound of slow hoofbeats, and of men singing unrhythmically to the accompaniment of a badly played flute. Hazard and I went back to the edge of the cliff and again peered over it.

  A dozen Lolos, mounted on wiry, surefooted little ponies, were following in the wake of the camel caravan. It was such a group as we’d seen several times before, muscular, well set up, taller on the average than white men, with European features, and yet with something of the Indian about them. Indeed, I remember thinking, give them a war-bonnet each or a plume of feathers and what magnificent redskins they would make!

  As there was nothing new in the sight of them, so there was nothing new in the song they were half-chanting, half-speaking, jerking it out in a variety of rude cadences. It might really be called the national song of the Lolos, for all have known it for centuries, and have never known any other. There was much in it of Lolo character and history—and something else, too, that had made me think of the chantey the moment I’d heard of Koshinga’s ambition to dominate them:

  “Free rides the Lolo,

  Owing no master, bowing not the head;

  Free rides the Lolo,

  Bending the backs of those that oppose him—

  They shall his slaves be.

  “In the high mountains,

  Each man his kingdom, each man a warrior,

  Testing with arrows,

  Five arrows of death, those that would rule him—

  No man shall rule him.

  “But in a thousand years,

  Then there may come one greater than man is,

  One who withstands death,

  Searching out, smelling out, enemies hidden—

  Seeing the unseen.

  “Then shall the Lolos

  Come from the mountains, follow this Great One,

  Down where the world lies,

  Down where the fat and the wealth of the world lies—

  Soft for the white steel.”

  AS THE song died away in the distance, Hazard and I looked at each other, and I saw my own thought reflected in his eyes. There’d been an unusual note in the powerful voices of the Lolos, a note of tense and challenging excitement. If they were indeed on their way to the trial of a dangerous pretender to authority who offered them a great adventure at the great price of their liberty—well, they might be expected to sing in just such a way.

  “Um!” muttered Hazard. “ ‘Five arrows of death.’ And ‘seeing the unseen.’ What do you know about that rigmarole, Partridge?”

  “Well, it can hardly be called a rigmarole. It has meaning enough—that is, if one believes the Chinese story that about a dozen aspirants to authority over the Lolos have come to their deaths trying to pass the tests it mentions.

  “Just what those tests are nobody seems to know, except that so far they’ve proved impossible. But with Koshinga it may be different.”

  “Yes,” agreed Hazard, “with Koshinga it may be different. Well, let’s go down to our ponies.”

  I acquiesced; and we started down the roundabout trail up which we had climbed to our point of observation. Near the bottom of it we came upon our ponies tethered where we had hidden them; and we led them down into the pass. During this procedure Hazard surprized me with a seemingly irrelevant remark:

  “Speaking of tests, have you ever felt that there’s something inadequate in the ordinary explanation of the Boxer invulnerability to firearms? I mean the exhibitions their leaders used to give, and will probably give again.

  “There were some darn intelligent men fooled by the trick, or Chinese history lies. Seems to me the stunt of extracting the bullets before the shot, or never putting them in, would have been easily detected. Then there would have been the fatal flaw that a suspicious spectator could merely have insisted on the substitution of his own gun—and away would have gone both the superstition and the teacher of it, together.”

  I replied truly that I’d sometimes had that thought. In fact it was a matter that I intended fully to investigate if I lived through the struggle with the Ko Lao Hui. But just then we came to the bottom of the pass, and face to face with decision.

  We were not so far into the Lolo country but that we could turn back and spend at least the latter part of the night in a Chinese inn. On the other hand, if we were to go forward we must camp the night where we were, for our disguises would not serve us in the dark, and we would surely be challenged. So we debated the matter, the lure of Koshinga and of the unknown matching discretion and common sense, until presently I saw Hazard start and gaze fixedly at the ground just in front of me.

  There was a knife there—a short knife shaped like a dagger. I picked it up quickly, and we examined it together. We examined it for a full minute in fascinated silence, though one glance had served us to recognize it.

  For on the handle of the knife was engraved that which was really a symbol of authority among the Ko Lao Hui, permitted by their laws to be in the possession only of those holding high rank in the society—an exact likeness of the man Koshinga, as he had been prophesied in that dim past in which the Ko Lao Hui was formed.

  There was no mistaking that powerful, deracialized, and very nearly dehumanized face; and so, while Hazard and I stared at it, our half-conviction of what had been planned for Lololand changed into certainty.

  “Of course,” I said rather huskily, “it was dropped by the camel caravan.”

  “Of course,” agreed Hazard.

  “It was a peculiar accident, their happening to drop it just where we would be almost sure to find it.”

  “If it was an accident,” doubted Hazard.

  “Well, what then?”

  Hazard didn’t reply, and, looking at h
im, I questioned whether he had heard me. His almost commonplace face—the best mask I ever knew for the subtlest wits I’ve ever encountered—gave no clue to his thoughts, but I knew from past experience what that silence meant. Somehow he had fallen upon a thought that might mean action, perhaps upon a working hypothesis of our antagonist’s plans.

  He was playing with all the known elements of the situation as a juggler might play with balls, tossing them up, observing them, mingling them into each other with incredible rapidity, testing whether or not they would fit into that thought.

  It was an eccentricity of his that I respected, and that most keen minds and all good chess-players will understand—of liking thus to mull matters over in secrecy, to plan his moves ahead without the distraction of confidences.

  But when he finally spoke, it was in an entirely colorless voice:

  “Well, Partridge, I leave it up to you. There’s no doubt the danger ahead of us is as great as the importance of this project is to Koshinga; and that can’t be exaggerated. But for all that, there’s a weakness in Koshinga’s position that might be made fatal—that is, if a certain idea I have proves true.”

  “What troubles me,” I said, “is this: Will we ever find the place of Koshinga’s rendezvous with the Lolos, even if we do go on? The camels leave no trail on these rocks, and we don’t know what’s beyond this pass.”

  “That was bothering me too, up to a minute ago,” said Hazard.

  “And now—”

  “Now I’m pretty sure we’ll find it,” with the slightest touch of eagerness.

  I read his desire, and in truth it squared with my own; nor did I care to trouble him with curiosity concerning an idea, which must as yet be only nebulous. But there was no escaping the lure of Koshinga’s challenge—if indeed the knife were a challenge. And if Hazard’s last-expressed belief were true, then we should at least have a chance at Koshinga; and for such a chance either of us was willing to risk our lives many times.

  “Well, then,” I said rather weariedly, for that had been but the last of several hard days, “since we’ll have to do sentry-go tonight let’s pick a place to camp.”

  II

  IT WAS a very guarded rest we took that night, in a ravine across the mouth of which we scattered many wooden pegs, their poisonous points upward, a safeguard we’d learned from the Lolos themselves. But the morning came without incident, and after breakfasting on canned stuff from our pony packs we began a silent and watchful journey.

  Silent and watchful, for, of course, if the knife had really been dropped in our path by design, it proved that we were being followed by the Ko Lao Hui; and nowhere was the ground on either side of us so clear that it might not have hidden an enemy.

  Indeed, sometimes the walls of the pass closed in until our knees brushed the rocks on either side of it. There were many such places; it was like passing through a succession of doors into another world.

  Hazard led the way with a short rein and with his right hand always free to grip the revolver which was thrust into the lining of his cloak. His quick, microscopic eyes continually searched the walls of the pass ahead of us; but for all his sharp sight I felt I wouldn’t give much for our chances in case of an ambush. I began to hope most fervently that he really had some sound foundation for his belief that we would live to reach the unknown place of rendezvous ahead of us.

  This continual anticipation of a spear crashing into me from above, or an arrow winging me from the side, did much to neutralize the pleasant sense of traveling where, in all probability, no white man had ever traveled before. This sense of itself is quite the most delicious sensation I know of; it’s as if some magic spell had dissolved the limits which have been hitherto set to foot and eye.

  Presently the walls of the pass began to slope back less steeply. Now they became covered with a dense growth of underbrush, above which rose giant rhododendrons, thirty feet high, covered with red and white bloom. There were rosy azaleas, too; and from the occasional beech and pine trees mossy lianas hung like garlands. We’d passed Lololand’s outer ramparts and come into a very beautiful country; but I had too much on my mind to enjoy it very much.

  Particularly I was wondering just what Hazard was expecting to happen—for that he was expecting and watching for something else than the chance of sudden death was plainly evident. Nearly inscrutable as was his face, I knew him well enough to read that.

  And now I began to wish that I’d displayed more curiosity concerning his half-utterances back where we’d found the knife. Frankly, I’d been too tired for curiosity; and I’d had so much experience of his ability that I was still content to follow his lead; but I didn’t like this traveling blindfolded into the unknown.

  But very probably, I told myself, he’d had only a flash of divination then, a partial glimpse of what was ahead of us. If that were true, his air of confident expectancy indicated that he’d completed his surmise and proved it to his own satisfaction at least.

  This was with him always a rather complicated process of sorting facts, sifting out improbabilities, building up complete riddles from the smallest fragments and then solving them by swift logic—but mainly, I think, of projecting himself subjectively into other men’s minds. In this case, of course, into the mind of our enemy, Koshinga.

  That last feat really requires a peculiar gift; often as I’d tried it myself, I’d succeeded only in placing myself in the other man’s position—which is an entirely different matter.

  At present, for instance, though I went patiently over all the elements in the case—Koshinga’s project of converting the Lolos into Ko Lao Hui and so dominating them; their peculiar requirements for leadership as indicated by the song we’d heard; the caravan which presumably carried Koshinga’s dangerous gift to them; and the grotesquely ugly knife bearing the Ko Lao Hui symbol which Hazard and I had found—piece these things together as I would, it only became more evident that we were two easy dupes advancing foolishly into a very apparent trap.

  And the next incident of our journey fitted equally well into either the theory of Hazard’s prophetic foresight or my own pessimistic deductions—until an occurrence a little later threw it heavily into the wrong balance.

  For of a sudden Hazard drew up his pony sharply, and, with his eyes narrowing and a half-smile on his lean face, leaned forward, intently studying the underbrush to the right of the trail ahead of us.

  I followed his look, but for a moment could see nothing. Then I caught the slightest possible movement of the top of the underbrush. Some one was creeping through that underbrush, down toward the trail. Of course, my one thought was of a Ko Lao Hui ambush; and, coming up beside Hazard, I drew my revolver from under my cloak.

  Hazard already had his in his hand, but—

  “Don’t shoot,” he whispered peremptorily.

  I glanced at him in natural-enough surprize, but the next moment saw some reason in his injunction. A man dressed in the ragged and faded blue garments of a Chinese coolie, who was evidently unaware of our presence, wormed out of the brush until his body lay half-across the trail.

  Then he turned on his side, revealing an intelligent but ugly-looking face, and glanced furtively up the trail until he saw us. He emitted an inarticulate cry, and, his yellow features twisting with seeming terror, made as if to squirm hastily back into the bushes.

  At that, Hazard seemed about to disobey his own command; his revolver flashed down on the man.

  “Stop!” he cried in Yunnanese.

  It appeared to me strange even then that the man made no greater effort to get away. To him we were, or should have been, Lolos; and death rather than slavery is the usual fate of unauthorized Chinese found in Lolo territory. But he groveled on the ground until we came up to him; and then, at Hazard’s command, got to his feet cringingly and went off into a half-hysterical plea for mercy.

  He was in the middle of it, and I’d supplemented my first distrust of him by a closer view of his cunning-looking face, and also by the r
eflection that his long, talon-like fingernails proved his coolie’s garb to be a masquerade, when Hazard did something that amazed me. He tossed back the corner of his cloak, pushed up the sleeve of his jacket, and showed him his white arm.

  “SEE, we are yang whan. The han ren has nothing to fear from us. Now will you tell us why you are here?”

  And the next moment, with harsh ejaculations of rage against the Lolos, with shrill-voiced lamentations, with many quotations from the classics concerning the duties of younger brothers, the Chinaman was pouring out his story—which was as plausible a yarn as he or one shrewder than he could possibly have contrived to explain his presence in these forbidden hills.

  His name—he introduced himself—was Shen Yun. His elder brother had been chief magistrate of the village of Ki-Liang. On an evil day his brother had been traveling toward Yunnan-fu, when the coarse-haired savages of the mountains had come upon him and carried him and his servants off into the hills and made them into slaves, which was the way of the Lolos.

  And Shen Yun had sworn by Mencius, teacher of Confucian truths, that he would follow his brother into the mountains and either rescue him or pass to join their father. But, having made this resolve, Shen Yun had waited patiently until wisdom should come to him. And five days ago the wind of gossip had brought him a story which told him how to proceed.

  He had heard of a great gathering of all the Lolo nzemos, and the day and place of it, and heard, too, that the chiefs would bring servants according to their ranks. Was it not likely that his brother, being no common man, would have been made into a servant rather than a toiler in the fields? Was it not likely that he would find him at that gathering? Shen Yun put these questions to us anxiously.

  “Your wisdom is as great as your sense of fraternal duty,” replied Hazard. “And clearly Heaven shines upon both, and upon the poor efforts of your servants, in bringing us together. We also would go to this gathering, only we know not the way. You shall be as our slave and show us the way, so we may both go quickly.”