Tropic Days Part 19

All the identifiable gold and other property was handed over to those who successfully established claims, and Tsing Hi, limp and dejected, pa.s.sed into the custody of Tim Mullane for escort to Cooktown.

Tim was rough and raw, teeming with good-nature and blessed with a brogue as thick as the soles of the ma.s.sive boots made for him by his cousin Terence at misty Ballinrobe. The once perky Tsing Hi slunk alongside the far-striding Tim, and Tim looked down at him and was half ashamed of such a "wee sc.r.a.p of a c.h.i.n.kee" as his first prisoner.

"Come away wid ye, me little fella--come away. Doan give me trouble, and ye'll fin' me gintle wid ye. Thry to maake a fool af me, and be the Holy Saints ye'll have occasion to be sorrowful." And he picked Tsing Hi up with one hand and set him down again with as big a jolt as such a f.a.g-end of humanity could expect to produce. Tsing Hi remained meek.

The crowd was unanimously against him. Big Tim might jolt him again and again rather than he would take the risk of venturing among his recent friends, for tales of his thieving, his acceptance of bribes, and imposition of levies, were coming in so fast and thick that the crowd would have relished adding something on its own account.

Before daylight next morning Tim left with his disconsolate captive, who wore handcuffs and was manacled to the "D's" in the saddle of the horse which he bestrode manifestly ill at case. In front of him was a huge swag containing the unidentifiable gold, three watches, three rings, silk stuffs, three pairs of elastic-side boots., several pairs of puce-coloured socks, flash neckties, four hats, three suits of clothes, and other clothing., All this was his own, to be handed over at the expiration of the sentence. Tim merely held the inventory. There was some sort of gratification for ill-doing, for the swag contained a fortune. He savagely reflected that six months would soon pa.s.s. He would then vanish from "Qee'lan," to enjoy himself for the rest of his days.

The sadness which had stagnated during the past week began to dissolve.

He sought to make a friend of his escort.

"I tink we cam' harp way to-ni', Tim."

"Shut up, you implicating tadpole! Wasn't I ordhered to hold conva.r.s.e wid me prisoner? Spake win Ye're spoke ter and be civil, Or I'll jolt the teeth troo your hat!"

Tim jogged on, and the led horse bearing Tsing Hi jogged after. Tsing Hi b.u.mped until he was fain to lean heavily on his precious swag, trying to discover by sensation an' unbruised part of his body on which to jolt.

"Hi! hi!" he shouted. "Horsey, him no goo'! You l'me walk!"

Tim whistled and jogged. Tsing Hi jolted and whimpered. The hot miles wriggled slowly past. Dust lay a foot deep on the track. It was a windless day. Tsing Hi, gripping with fearful intensity his swag, could not lift a finger to wipe the stains which stood for many tears and coursed down his cheeks in tiny rivulets, making puddles on his cramped hands. He, the dandy, smothered in dust, weeping, sore in every bone, blistered and scalded, pondered over his petty sins, moaned continuously, and longed for the hard floor of the gaol.

He, a disciple of Confucius, found no present relief in the tags of the master's philosophy that he could call to mind. Tears made him a grim spectacle. The beautiful yellow waistcoat was indistinguishable beneath dirt and dust. His carefully tended queue shook out in disordered loops, and finally dangled, dust-soiled, behind. His trousers worked and wrinkled up to the knees, chafed his unaccustomed skin, and still Tim in a cloud of dust jogged on singing:

"Until that day, plase G.o.d, I'll shtick To the wearin' o' the green."

It was a poor little prisoner, but his first and his own, and Tim was elated, and when a true Irishman is happy he becomes poetically patriotic. But happy though he undoubtedly was, even Tim was not sorry when the chance came of stretching his legs and incidentally sluicing down the dust. The halfway house looked cool and clean to him. In fact it was neither. It must have appeared a celestial scene to moaning Tsing Hi. The rough upright slabs (once rich yellow, now dingy) promised some sort of refuge from the dust, and the narrow strip of verandah a thin slice of shade. The mound of broken bottles at the rear betokened the drinks of the past, while the mind dwelt lovingly on those of the present. Three panting goats, all aslant, but tressed themselves determinedly against the end of the house, and two boys, long since dust immune, occasionally hunted the goats into the sun and away among the ant-hills. But when Tsing Hi slid from the horse and into the shade, he felt like a saint in bliss. They gave him water, and he wailed until Tim silenced him with threats of jolts and locked the manacles round the middle post.

Tim sighed profoundly as he scented beer. "I do belave I'm dhry, Jerry.

Give's a long un. I've swallowed mud by the bucket. Give the wee little divil outside a pannikin o' tay. Maybe it'll revoive, him!"

Tim drank long and well.

"I've heard about the case," Jerry said, as he filled the thick gla.s.s a third time. "Fancy the little beggar, an' him commin' and goin' as flash as ye make 'ern, and pickin' and thavin' all the time. Maybe he got the ear-rings the missis is after missin'."

"Nawthin' o' the sort's in the swag we took with the raskil."

A bit of dinner in the back room waited, for Jerry believed in keeping well in with the force. Tim fed heartily, and, in spite of dust, heat, and the chatter of the children, dozed, to wake with a start.

"Me sowl to glory! It's aslape I've bin! Let's hav' a look at the little fella and be off."

The horses stood limply, as much out of the shade as in, the big swag leaned against the wall, the handcuffs lay half buried in the dust, but Tsing Hi had vanished.

"Me sowl to glory! The little divil's scooted! It's a ruined man I am!

In the name of the Saints, why is blasted c.h.i.n.kees made with han's an'

'em like a 'possum? Look at the wee han's on 'em to slip out of darbies like the same. He's slipped out as aisily as meself out of a horse-collar, and the face a' him as bould and as big as the hill o'

hope! I'm the ruined man, I am!"

"Off after him," advised Jerry. "There's his tracks."

"Just none o' your blasted interfarances! Lave 'm to me. He's away back to h.e.l.l, an' I'll folly him! How much does I owe yer, Jerry!"

"Nothing at all, sure, Tim. 'Tis little ye've had, and yer welcome as posies in May, though it's little we see of 'em here. And good luck.

Shall I tell him away, back to look out V'

"Say nothing and be d.a.m.ned to yer! Keep your mout closed and lave me to do the bizinis me own road," shouted Tim as he disappeared in the dust, led horse, swag and all.

A mile and a half back and a bit off the road lay the narrow, sheltered flat between two forbiddingly barren ridges which Hu Dra, the gardener, had converted into an oasis. Thin-leaved tea-trees fringed the little dam whence the industrious fellow hauled water for his vegetables.

Drought-stricken, broad, blue-leaved, scented ironbarks stood in envious array on the steep sides of the ridges, and gra.s.s-trees, blackened at the b.u.t.ts, struggled with loose boulders for foothold. The muddy water which the forethought of Hu Dra had conserved created the green patch which insulted the aridity of the ridge. He was a proud and happy man, a follower of the healing Buddha, a new-churn with scarce a word of English, and a gardener. He had a way with vegetables. They prospered under his hands, and he also prospered, for next to gold, vegetables were highly prized in that dry, almost verdureless country. Just now he swayed along with a pair of heavy baskets slung on a bamboo all the way from Wu Shu, as the pilgrim under his load of sin, and as he swayed he sang in a weak falsetto a ditty which sounded like--

"Nam mo pen s.h.i.+h s.h.i.+h chia Man tan lai lei tsun fo; Hu fa chu t'ien p'u sa, An fu ssu, Li she tzn."

His baskets, each screened with languid gum-leaves, held the week's output of his garden, representing in money value at least two pounds.

It wag not likely to yield half as much, for, being a new-chum, he was fair game, and it was considered smart to impose on his good-nature.

He also paid through an agent a weekly levy to Tsing Hi, which he understood purchased the tolerance, if not goodwill, under all and every circ.u.mstance of the dreaded police and the populace generally. It was a tax; but Hu Dra was patient under such exactions, as all his ancestors had been. They were unavoidable, inevitable, a part of the mystery of life, and consequently to be endured, if not with complacency, at least without murmur. His profits for the week might total one pound, a princely sum considering the scene and circ.u.mstances of his birth and upbringing in far Li-Chiang, where his father had reared a large family in a shed over a sewer, and had never possessed property or estate worth more than five s.h.i.+llings. Soon, if this money-making business continued to thrive, he would return thither. He might--for had he not been reared to the art of living in such places?--resume the sewer habit; but with three hundred pounds in good English gold what sewer in Li-Chiang could not be transformed into Paradise?

One basket contained a huge fruit which he understood his white customers to term "plonkn"; with it was a broad-bladed knife, with which he would slice off slabs according to demand. That one item might bring him in more money than his revered father's fortune. Wrapped in day-dreams, he hummed again his chant, dwelling on the refrain with lyrical gladness--

"Li she tzu."

Perhaps it was the name of the maiden he proposed to ask to share his fortune and his portion of the sewer, and so he repeated--

---"Li she t----!"

A big, strong, authoritative hand had gripped him by the shoulder.

He screamed. The baskets sat down plump.

"Come away wid ye! I've cotched yer! I'll tache ye to escape from lawful custody!"

"No savee! No savee!" screamed Hu Dra.

"I'll tache ye, thin V' shouted Tim, and Hu Dra reeled under the severity of the first lesson--a back-hander across the face.

"Wha' for?" asked Hu Dra, still staggering.

"Come on! You know wha' for! I'll stan' none o' yer wha' for's!"

Hu Dra clung to the basket-stick threateningly.

"Fwhat! Resisting the pollis in the execution of dooty. Me bhoy, ye're a new-chum or yer niver wad be so bould. It is sarious bizinis." The stick flew out of Hu Dra's hands, and, as if by magic, he found his hands clamped in iron bands, which pinched his wrists excruciatingly.

He yelled with vexation, fear, and pain.

"Ye can holler as much as ye have the moind ter. Be jabers, the next haythen c.h.i.n.kee that gits out of the darbies I clap on'm 'll be a slippery, slathery eel, and meself after fergittin' to maake a knot in his taale! Come quiet, me good haythen, and I'll dale aisy wid yer."