The Complete Adventures of Hazard & Partridge (37 page)

III

THERE is no easy traveling in China and that which we presently found ourselves accomplishing was a perpetual gymnastic exercise, muscle-wracking and tendon-straining. The total ascent to the base of the mountain which lay ahead of us wasn’t great, but the country was fairly corrugated with those crisscross ridges which seem to forever forbid in much of Yunnan and Sz-Chuen any other means of locomotion than the human legs or the pony caravan.

Here was a steep ascent up which we must crawl flattened like eels, clinging like monkeys; here a precipice down which we scrambled at imminent danger to life and limb; here shrubbery so thick that we were compelled to crawl over it instead of through it, until the upper branches gave way and we were let down into a mass of stinging bramble and dry debris from which the dust rose suffocatingly.

Hard as it was for Hazard and me, accustomed to rude traveling, it was harder for the shorter-limbed Chinese and hardest of all for Ko Tien Chung. What exertions that middle-aged mandarin, soft with easy living, made to negotiate that distance, how he scrambled and strained and slipped and fell, with heaving chest and purpling face! Truly, I thought again and again, a faithful servant of New China—but always, of course, with a twisted doubt in my mind.

His story had hung together. Go over it as I would I could discover not a single flaw in it, not even a handle for suspicion, except, of course, that he had deceived us as to his knowledge of English and that he still clung to Hazard and me like a leech, as if determined we should not exchange a word without his hearing it, and also except for his seemingly guilty start at Hazard’s announcement of the discovery of fresh bullet-holes in the hull of the junk. Thinking them over, these seemed two rather big exceptions and my impression of traveling blindfolded toward some inconceivable treachery strengthened rather than decreased.

That vague impression seemed to be of a piece with my equally vague memory of the one-eyed man who, under Ko Tien Chung, controlled and directed the march. It was still with me when shortly before dark we reached a hollow just to the west of the conical mountain, a place from which, according to the plan that had been made, we decided to launch our blow at the Ming treasure-vault and the Ko Lao Hui. But by the time we had made our carefully sentried camp, it had changed again to a feeling of danger that was as much with us as ahead of us, and it was with that more oppressive fear hanging like a shadow over my mind that I finally fell asleep.

I suppose it is because external stimuli no longer pound on the consciousness that one’s mind so often clarifies itself in sleep and that old, half-buried memories are particularly likely to revive. One recalls in dreams what one never could recall in waking hours, and perhaps it was the beginning of a dream that, hours after I’d stretched myself on the ground, jerked me suddenly to a sitting position, wide awake, every muscle grown rigid with the sudden impact of a frightening fact on my mind.

For now I knew—how I blamed myself for not having realized it before!—the reason for my curious, contradictory, non-visual half-recollection of the one-eyed man’s face. I had thought it familiar and yet’d been sure that I’d never seen it before. Both these impressions were the truth. His was a face that few honest men ever saw and lived, but his description was posted in great black hieroglyphs on the walls of every
yamen
in Yunnan; there was a reward on his head and sure death waiting for him if he were ever discovered; he was, in short….

Suppressing an ejaculation of pure terror, I turned to wake Hazard to tell him of my discovery, but I found Hazard already on his feet, standing spectrally over me in the darkness, and all around us were other vague, moving shadows. Maybe this stir had stimulated my brain to the terrifying half-dream that had awakened me, but at any rate the whole camp was aroused; it was time to go.

“All right, Partridge,” said Hazard, touching me on the shoulder.

It was not all right; it was all wrong. But Ko Tien Chung was standing close beside us, still preventing any confidences between us. Ko Tien Chung, by that fresh knowledge of mine, was himself either a dupe or a liar. Which was he? I had a mind to chance the former supposition and to tell Hazard in his hearing.

“Hazard,” I began in a nervous whisper, “I’ve discovered something. These men are—”

“All right, Partridge,” Hazard repeated, but in a different tone and he touched my shoulder warningly. He moved quickly away from me and began to talk in a low tone to Ko Tien Chung. The one-eyed man slipped out of the darkness and joined them.

They were discussing the attack, I suppose, but I had small interest in it. Already it was sufficiently plain to me that the plan of it, taken together with that last fact I had discovered, doomed Hazard and me irretrievably. But it was also plain to me that our end was fixed in any case, that even if I managed to make Hazard understand now and we tried to get away, death would come only the sooner. We were surrounded, as I now saw it, by as dangerous a crew as ever defied God and man and we would never be permitted to escape.

ALMOST immediately we were under way, Ko Tien Chung in the lead. By his request Hazard and I followed in order and the one-eyed man followed me with his band trailing him in single file, their rifles and revolvers ready.

After we had started there was not a whisper, hardly a sound; never have I known men to move more stealthily than did those cat-footed Chinese. Until then I had wondered at their capacity for deft and silent coordination of movement, so unlike provincial soldiers, but now I understood it. I looked over my shoulder and saw how closely they marched; the column was like a great, venomous, many-legged snake creeping through the night upon its prey.

And Ko Tien Chung? How was it that he, by his story but lately arrived from Peking and an utter stranger to these wilds—how was it that he knew his way so well? Unhesitatingly he led us through narrow defiles, over bare rocks, along the narrowest of trails through the densest of underbrush and toward a spot which he’d visited but once and that by an altogether different route. Impossible! Of course it was impossible, but after that other discovery even the proof of his duplicity had little added terror for me.

I wondered if Ko Tien Chung had imagined we would overlook this proof. Then I realized that he had known it wouldn’t matter greatly if we didn’t. Once we had arrived at this stage we would go through with the game whatever our suspicions, and as proof of that fact here was I going through with it. At least it promised temporary separation from those allies of ours who had turned into enemies, and after we had separated from them—well, the worst that could be ahead of us was only that which was certain if we broke with them now.

But I determined that before we embarked on our part of the enterprise, before we led off on that attack, the real meaning of which was now altogether confused and uncertain to my mind, I would at least have a word with Hazard. I had not long to wait.

We had rounded the shoulder of the mountain and had come out on the steep western slope of it not far above the point where, according to Ko Tien Chung’s rough drawing, the mouth of the cave was located. Somewhere near us there must be the second entrance, the secret entrance from above upon which our plan was based.

It was this entrance which Hazard and I were to use—clever enough strategy if everything were as Ko Tien Chung had said—for from the tiny chamber in which it ended, again by the mandarin’s drawing, we could draw the fire of the defenders of the cave without being ourselves in any danger from it, and at the same time we could demoralize them with our own fire so they would fall easy victims to the rush of Ko Tien Chung’s men from without.

We had come to that place. Ahead of us Ko Tien Chung stopped and held up his hand. Hazard and I came up to him and the line broke and circled around us.

“It is here,” Ko Tien Chung whispered.

He was standing near a shelving ledge of rock and, stooping, he pointed to a black, nearly circular opening in the bottom of it, not three feet across.

“Good!” said Hazard and he got on his knees to examine it.

I got down also and, determined that he should know what I knew before we descended into that burrow, whispered to him swiftly:

“Hazard, I’ve discovered something. That one-eyed man is Ma Yola, robber and river-pirate. And these must be his men. Ko Tien Chung is—”

Hazard drew in his breath sharply, but it was more like an expression of completed understanding than a gasp of astonishment.

“Ah!” he exclaimed almost inaudibly. “All right!”

And the next instant he was on his feet again. His hand had touched my lips warningly as he arose.

“Your Excellency is sure this leads to the inner chamber of which you spoke, adjoining the one in which there is the gold?”

Ko Tien Chung repeated his assurance.

“Then we will descend it and when the evil-doers are in confusion from surprize your brave men will rush in from the mouth of the cave. But we should wait before descending until you have concealed yourselves and are ready for the attack.”

At that I had a flash of hope, for Hazard’s proposition seemed to offer us a chance to withdraw, but Ko Tien Chung immediately eclipsed that hope.

“We are already in concealment and already prepared,” he pointed out. “It is but a leap down the mountainside to the mouth of the cave. Doubtless the Ko Lao Hui have watchers posted; we can not hope to get closer.”

“Well, I’ll go first, Partridge,” said Hazard.

I was too bewildered to dispute precedence. Apparently, almost from the beginning, Hazard had known or had suspected—what? Certainly he had suspected that we were being duped; that much was proved by his lack of surprize at my whisper concerning Ma Yola. But what else? What fact as yet unknown to me had he grasped that had caused him to play absolutely into the hand of the man who was duping us?

This much I knew: Hazard was no man to follow a leader sheep-like and no man to be urged, without resisting, upon a death that he could foresee. But what could he know of that which was ahead of us that would give him even a hope of escape?

What indeed could he know that I didn’t know? And now I realized that I knew nothing. Certainly nothing that Ko Tien Chung had said could be relied upon. An enemy was ahead of us but what enemy? There was no longer any reason for believing it to be the Ko Lao Hui or that it was an enemy of ours at all.

Whom were we fighting in order that Ko Tien Chung and his pirate crew might possess the treasure of the Mings? Of a sudden even the story of the treasure seemed to pass into fantasy and I merely groped in conjectures without a single touch of solid truth.

Hazily I recalled Hazard’s words concerning the bullet-holes in the side of the junk and Ko Tien Chung’s perturbation at that discovery. There seemed a clue in that but there was no time to think it out.

Hazard was crawling feet foremost into the tunnel-like opening which seemed to slant steeply downward. As soon as he had disappeared I followed him. At the top the hole would barely admit a man’s body but the sides widened as one entered it.

It was a steep descent. Presently I found myself gripping hard lest I should fall on Hazard’s head. A moment later Hazard gasped once and I heard him fighting hard for a hold on the lichen-covered surface of the smooth rock that bounded the tunnel. But it was no use; he was already falling with a noise that could not but arouse any one that was below us.

I heard him hit the bottom and gave him time to step aside out of my way. Then I loosened my own hold and an instant later we were standing on the bottom of that trap together.

IV

FOR IT was a trap. My suspicions of Ko Tien Chung’s treachery had been well-grounded enough before, but now they flashed into certainty. Whoever the present occupants of the cave were, Ko Lao Hui or others, they had us at their mercy. It had been intended that we should draw their attack and we would indeed draw it, for we were good, plain targets against a blank wall of rock. We would serve Ko Tien Chung’s purpose well enough but we ourselves would die.

The place in which we found ourselves was somewhat different from what Ko Tien Chung had pictured it. True, there was a great cave in front of us, a cave lighted by Chinese candles bracketed about on the walls, as if in anticipation of our coming. It was a nearly oval cavern with a domelike ceiling of rock looking like a gigantic egg bisected lengthwise. And it was also true that we had fallen into a small, rock-walled chamber opening off that cave. But the entrance was broad, not narrow; the walls curved inward, not outward; and there was no place in which even a pigmy could have hidden himself from either the view or the fire of the men in the outer chamber.

Indeed, we had barely landed when a shot came from somewhere at the other side of the cave and a bullet, flying high, spattered the rock from the curving wall high over our heads.

“We’re lost, Hazard!” I gasped, instinctively jerking out my revolver to answer that shot. “I tried to tell you. Ko Tien Chung lied—he lied all through—he’s—”

“Careful, Partridge, don’t! I’d something to tell you, too, but I couldn’t. Who would you shoot at?”

My revolver was already leveled although I could see nothing but the black wall opposite me and the scattered rocks along the bottom of it. That inquiry brought me up short. Who, indeed? Ko Tien Chung’s enemies and by that token likely to be our friends?

Then half a dozen other shots rang out, sounding like cannon in that enclosed space, and, though I could not see where the bullets went, my finger tightened on the trigger.

“They’re not shooting at us,” said Hazard catching my hand. “They’re shooting because— Hold your fire till you understand.”

In all my experience with Hazard I think that was my moment of greatest bewilderment. A rattling fusillade now came from a thin line of men lying concealed behind rocks across the floor of the cave—men who had by no means been taken by surprize but who had waited with full knowledge of our coming.