he heard himself hailed: "Eh, one man! where you go?" turned. She seemed mollified at the name, and gazed up the street as if now more inclined to consider the matter. This Easterby, in fact, had ingratiated himself with her of old by some politeness or service, a way he had with people. It was Choy Susan herself, who had perhaps observed his quest, and now came out, laying aside some occupation in a shed used for storage. She waddled towards him, her ample form costumed in wide jacket and pantaloons of a shiny black cotton, men's gaiters on her large feet, and a bunch of keys dangling from her girdle. Her skin was plentifully marked with the traces left by small-pox. "Oh, is that you, Choy Susan? How strung rows of fish to dry. The site dy do?" "How do?" replied Choy Susan, severely. "It's a month o' Sundays since I've seen you, Susan. I declare, it's good for weak eyes to set 'em on a fine, strappin', handsome woman like you, agin." "Too much dam' talkee! What want?" responded the Chinese woman, treating this ingratiatory palaver with brusque contempt. "Well, we 'll get down to business right away, then, if you say so. Say! I want catchee about a dozen good China boys to go down workee on railroad, Miller's division." "No, can't catchee nothin' here. Man all gone flish. Bimeby, some time, other day." "Good pay! plenty eat! plenty much rice!" said the other, continuing imperturbably, and making pantomime of raising food to the mouth with both hands. "I knew you was the one to come to. Sez I,If Choy Susan can't git 'em for us, nobody kin." " "Too much talkee! No, can't catchee nothing." And she made as if about to bluntly conclude the interview and go back to her occupation. "It's probably Easterby that would want 'em, if they was wanted," appealed the applicant. "You know Easterby, you know. He's a white man." "Mist' Easte❜by he a daisy," she re The village consisted of a long main street of wooden cabins, silvered gray by the weather, with a motley cluster, nearer shore, of fish-houses, strange dismantled boats, odd tackles, and, above them, frames of tall poles, along which were was amid rugged bowlders, silvery-gray like the houses. Bright spots of color, the patches of red and yellow papers inscribed with hieroglyphics, a pennant, a tasseled glass lantern, a carved and gilded sign, scattered through it all, might serve from a distance as a reminder of the vivid spring wild-flowers, now vanished from the brown, dry, summer pastures. Just in the edge of the expansive blue bay beneath lay at anchor the Chinese junk, the Good Success and Golden Profits, - to transcribe into practicable form the mystic blazonry of her title in the original, which had come round on her periodic trip from San Francisco, to gather up the product of the fishing industry and bring a freight of salt and empty barrels. She had discharged cargo, and all at present was as quiet on board of her as elsewhere. "That's right, now," pursued Yank Baldwin, following up his advantage. Easterby's allers said your bark was worse than your bite." 66 Choy Susan's bark was, in fact, worse than her bite. She was plainly in the habit of being much bowed down before and deferred to; and this, together with her practice of defending herself against mockers, of whom she had met with many among "Melican" men, in a long experience, had given her a manner bluff, masculine, and inclining to surly rudeness. But this was in part a defense, as has been said; and there were moments when, under her unsmiling exterior, she almost seemed to appreciate. the humor of herself. She prided herself on giving back to mockers as good as they sent, in their own vernacular. She had learned her English first at the Stockton Street Mission at San Francisco, of which she had once been an inmate, and perfected it at the mines at Bodie. Now Bodie was a place where it was charged that they would steal a red-hot stove with a fire in it, and " a bad man from Bodie had passed into a proverb for what was lawless and terrorizing. At this university she had picked up a choice store of slang likely to be useful to her in her way of life, together with her half-English name and independent methods of action which made her an awe-inspiring figure before the eyes of her fellowcountrymen. The negotiation for laborers had progressed to about the point indicated when a prodigious clattering of hoofs was heard in the distance. On they came, drawing nearer, the sound increasing to a phenomenal racket. "Ger-eat Scott!" cried Yank Baldwin, pulling his hat down upon his head and running around a corner to see the more clearly, followed by Choy Susan. A horseman came tearing into the settlement like a comet come ashore. It was a Chinaman, mounted on a small roan steed, which snorted, wheezed, kicked, and bolted in the most extraordinary manner. The Chinaman's loose clothing ballooned in the wind, his eyes were starting from his head in terror, and at every plunge of the animal he bounded high from the saddle. A stride or two more, and they were here; another, and they were gone far up the street. A sudden population, now appearing, wherever they had been, rushed out and threw themselves in the track of the flying cavalier, crying after him in tones of agonized entreaty, "Ten Moon! Ten Moon! "Ten Moon!" shrieked the parrot, Tong, at Choy Susan's door, in goblinlike mockery. Never, perhaps, since the days of the "fiery untamed steed" of Mazeppa, or since Roland brought the good news to Ghent, had equestrian arrived anywhere in more redoubtable haste than this. "Well, if it ain't Ten Moon, cook o' the Palace Boardin' House, on my pony, Rattleweed! Oho! ho! ho-o! The boys has put up a job on him!" cried Yank Baldwin, slapping himself on the thigh with a coarse big hand. "A Chinaman on horseback!" he continued: "that beats a sailor, and they beat the Dutch," and he doubled himself up in convulsions of delight. Turning inadvertently about, in his amusement, he discovered a new figure, a pleasing young woman, standing behind him. He reported at camp afterwards that he was "dead gone on " her from the first instant. She had come quietly out of the storage shed, where she had been in conference with Choy Susan. She was attired in brown merino, with several furbelows on the skirt, and at the neck a wide linen collar of fresh appearance, and her brown hair was neatly smoothed. Her girlish face, of a clear paleness, had the features rather small, and a somewhat long upper lip which contributed to give her a thoughtful cast. She wore a flamboyant hat, which might have been the mode on the Eastern seaboard some years before. The knowing in such matters would have detected considerable trace of rusticity, but to Yank Baldwin she seemed the epitome of elegant distinction, a person far beyond all those he was in the habit of seeing in his way of life. He considered her "high-toned," or "tony," in the extreme; and a thought of infidelity to one Spanish Luisa occurred to him. He immediately drew a long face, as if his mirth were not decorous before the stranger. He threw out, by way of overture at conversation, the remark, — "A pleasant day!" "Yes, it is a pleasant day." But she gave him very little heed; her glance was following with a painful intensity the flying form of Ten Moon. "Oh, he will be hurt; he will be killed, will he not?" she cried, clasping her hands tightly as the rider disappeared brusquely around a turn. "Yes, I s'pose so; that is, I hope so," replied the storekeeper nonchalantly, quite as if it were a matter of course. The trio were walking onward to witness the end of the adventure, which must certainly now be near its close, among the narrow by-ways of the place; and Choy Susan was a little behind the two. "You talk so about a fellow-being?" said the young girl, turning upon him indignantly. "Well, may be they is feller-bein's. I dunno but they is," he returned, weakening under her glance, and taking an apologetic tone. "I dunno's I've got anything so particular agin 'em, if you hain't." He apparently began to admire the spirit and originality of her ideas, as well as her good looks. "The Chinese has got to go, though, I s'pose?" he suggested inquiringly. "Well, that's no reason for wanting them all to be fatally injured while they're here." But she had a much closer interest than general benevolence for the race in this, her messenger; for her messenger Ten Moon was. "What is the matter with the pony, and why do they call him Rattleweed? she now condescended to inquire. "They've got to call him something," he replied, as if this were a full and complete explanation. "Oh!" was her only comment, taking him in his own way, which pleased him; and before he could begin the further explanation he intended, he was suddenly called away to take part in a curious mêlée which met their eyes in front. The fiery little animal, after circulating impatiently in various by-ways, had been checked by rocks and fishing paraphernalia, forming a cul-de-sac. This had given time for assistance to come up. Some had thrown their arms wildly about his neck; others had seized Ten Moon's legs; still others endeavored, with ropes, sticks, and poles, to snare the fuming pony and throw him down. Taken thus at a disadvantage, Rattleweed now at last succumbed, with a certain expression of duty accomplished. He went down amid great clamor, Ten Moon still in the saddle, and the rest falling upon these in a confused mass. All emerged from this chaos, miraculous to say, with but few bruises and practically unharmed. When Ten Moon had well felt of his bones and found that none of them were broken, he began a voluble recital of his story to the crowd. The young surveyors down at Sloan's Camp, he said, had mounted him on this never-to-be-sufficiently-accursed animal, under pretense of kindness, on his return from an errand to that place. The audience looked at each other in indignant disgust, and expressed in shrill tones their opinion of the baseness of the surveyors aforesaid. Choy Susan, with her air of authority, strode forward and interrupted this. She touched the narrator on the shoulder, took him aside, and listened to a report of his mission. Then she returned to her companion, the stranger, and reported in turn : "Ten Moon no got answer. No could find Mist' Easte'by. Easte' by gone way now, down Miller's Camp. They send letter if he no come back light away, bimeby, plitty click." The girl seemed to make an effort at first to repress strong feeling; then broke out with a despairing cry, "Oh, what shall I do if he does not get my letter at all?" The female interpreter and autocrat of the Chinese village looked at her in open surprise. An expression of shrewd insight succeeded this. "You want marry Mist' Easte'by? He you' beau?" she asked in a tone of bluff friendliness. "Oh, Choy Susan, my father is going to make me marry another man! He has gone down to Soledad now, to bring him back with him. When they return, it will have to be done. My father is aa bishop of our faith, and he will marry us himself." "Why you stay here, then?" "I got my father to leave me under pretense of sickness. I told him I could not travel any further in the jolting stage." "So you want see East'by? "It was by the merest accident I knew he was here. I saw his name in a newspaper as among the surveyors at this place." "How you come know he?" Choy Susan propounded her questions with a dry, almost inquisitorial air. "I used to know him when he was surveying down at Lehi, on the Utah Central, and afterwards at Salt Lake City. It is a very long time since I have seen him. He used to talk to me about about running away, and going to join his mother and sisters." “So you goin' run away, now?" "Oh, Choy Susan, how can I? He has n't asked me. He does n't know I am here I don't want to marry anybody - ever. I only want somebody to sympathize with me — to know." She burst into hysterical sobs, and put her handkerchief to her face. “Finding you here, I — I thought I would get you to take a note to him," she added: "but he will never get it." The listener turned an attentive ear to sympathetic wisdom even from this rude source. "Yes. You heap good look, but heap good look can catch all same plenty bad time," a way of saying, no doubt, that beauty may be coupled with a hapless fate, which we know is true enough. "My know how it was myself," she continued. "My husbin name Hop Lee. I marry Hop Lee when I Jesus girl, down Stockton Street Mission. He Jesus boy, too." "Oh, you were Christians?" "One time; not now. I tellee you. Hop Lee he say, 'You marry me ; I got heap big store, heap money. You no work sewin'-m'chine; you catch plenty good time, plenty loaf. I no takee more wife.'" "He promised you not to marry again?" "He plomise." The speaker closed an eye shrewdly; then, reopened it. "Bimeby plitty click I get sick, smallpock. He say, 'You no good. Shut up! I goin' bling otha wife.' He bling two more wife. They beatee me; make work sewin'-m'chine all time, all time, likee slave." "Poor Choy Susan!" "And that was the time when you broke your arm, and I met you there?" "Yes, you helpa me. Bimeby I go Bodie; then come here, get pardner, go fish, and kleep store." always on the folks like that, too, dead jump, always burnin' the candle at both ends. I dunno but what I've been a good deal that way myself 'fore now. I've been thinkin', though, that it's "And what has become of Hop 'bout time for me to settle down, and Lee?" "He dead," said Choy Susan contemptuously. "I pray Jesus 'ligion first time makee Hop Lee die, but it no makee die. Then I pray China 'ligion makee die, and China 'ligion makee die, and both wife too, right away, plitty click. China joss much good. Jesus 'ligion no good." "Oh, no, you must not say that!" expostulated the girl; but she was soon led back to her own affair, to which the Chinese interpreter returned. "When your father and other man comin' back?" inquired the latter. "Inside of four or five days; and then it will have to be done." The fair speaker whimpered tearfully again. “Oh, plenty much time! plenty much time!" reassuringly. "Easte'by he get letter, he come. You see!" Yank Baldwin came up and interrupted, having now rescued his eccentric pony from the chaotic scramble, and secured him in a place of safety. 66 Crazy as a bedbug!" he now condescended to explain. "He's eat some o' this here rattle-weed, or loco-weed, what grows in the pastures. It gives 'em kind o' jim-jams. He goes like that every time he starts out. Never knows when to stop. He'd run himself to death if he had room. Run away once in a paymaster's wagon, with seven thousand dollars under the seat. Was out all night, and found in the woods next mornin', fast asleep on his feet." His new acquaintance made a polite pretense of listening, but was furtively edging off at the same time to take her departure. "He'll go down, some day, all of a heap, like the sun in the tropics," said the man, following her up. "There's get me a good, spry, harnsome wife." He accompanied this speech with such a glance of bold admiration that his meaning was plainly evident. Yank Baldwin's theory was that of "love at first sight," and not confined to a special occasion, either. His stock of devotion lay very near the surface, and he made prompt demands upon it. It was told of him that he had once proposed to a waiter-girl at Frisco on her bringing him his second cup of coffee, and was only distanced by a companion who had already secured her af ter the first. The stranger did not remain long to listen to his gallantries, but now tripped demurely away from the hamlet in the direction of the Palace Boarding House, at no great distance. "Who is she?" inquired Baldwin sententiously, looking after her. "She one o' them Mormins, friend o' mine over to Salt Lake." "She ain't no Mormon," he said, in strong incredulity. "She Mormon, you hear me?" severely. "Goin' marry man with heap other wife all same like Chinaman." Go way" He whistled softly. You go way "returned Choy Susan, in her most rowdy manner. "Where's she stoppin'?" the storekeeper inquired again, after a reflective pause. "Palace Boardin' House." "That's where I take my meals myself, when I'm here from camp. I'm goin' there now." He whistled several times more, low whistles of peculiar meaning. "What was Ten Moon up to, down to camp?" he asked. 66 guess he gone down see China |