Chapter IX: Part 9

Day broke with the wind lulled, and the old craft riding monster seas, her poles still to the sky. The daylight sail brought him to Yuenchen; from whence he made his way northward by land to Pingyang. This town was but an hour’s saddle to the east of the railroad and telegraph at Koupangtze--twenty miles west of the junction of the Taitse and the Liao river, and fifty miles west of Liaoyang. Here he established headquarters completely out of the white man’s world, rested and wrote mail stories for several weeks. Toward the end of July, he set out on a ten days’ saddle trip toward Liaoyang, with the idea of becoming familiar with the topography of the country, in preparation for the battle, already in sight. It was on this trip that he was hailed one afternoon by an American, named Butzel. This young man was sitting on the aft-gunnel of a river-junk, rolling a cigarette, when Routledge turned his horse upon the Taitse river-road, four or five miles to the east of the Liao. Routledge would have avoided the meeting had he been given a chance, but Butzel gaily ordered his Chinese to put ashore. The voice was that of a man from the Middle States--and Routledge filled with yearning to take a white hand. His only friend since he had left Rawder in India was Consul Milner at Wangcheng.

Butzel had journeyed thus deep into the elder world--as natural an explorer as ever left behind his nerves and his saving portion of fear. He hadn’t any particular credentials, he said, and hadn’t played the newspaper game very strongly up to now. The Japanese had refused to permit him to go out with any of the armies; and he had tried to get into Port Arthur with a junk, but Togo had driven him off. He had very little money, and was tackling China to get to the Russian lines. It was his idea for the Russians to capture him, and, incidentally, to show him how they could defend Liaoyang. In a word, he was eluding Japan, bluffing his way through the interior of China, and about to enforce certain hospitality from the Russians. A great soul--in this little man, Butzel.

Routledge delighted in him, but feared for his life. He himself was playing a similar lone-hand, but he carried Red-beard insignia, purchased at a big price; and when he had ventured into a river or sea-junk, he had taken pains to arrange that his receipt for a certain extortion was hung high on the foremast. Thus was he ever approved by the fascinating brotherhood of junk pirates. These were details entirely above the Butzel purse and inclination. The two men parted in fine spirit after an hour, the adventurer urging his Chinese up the Taitse toward the Russian lines. He was not so poor as he had been, and he yelled back joyously to Routledge that there wasn’t enough trails in this little piker of a planet to keep them from meeting again.

His words proved true. Poor Butzel rode back in state that afternoon, his head fallen against the tiller and a bullet hole in his breast. Even his clothing had been taken. The junk was empty except for the body. With a heavy heart, Routledge attended to the burial and marked the spot. That night he rode to Koupangtze, and, by paying the charges, succeeded in arranging for a brief message to be cabled to the _World-News_; also a telegram to the American consul at Shanghai.

So much is merely a suggestion of the work that told for his paper that summer. For weeks at a time he was in the saddle, or junking it by sea and river. Except when driven to the telegraph, he avoided every port town and every main-travelled road. He was lean, light but prodigiously strong. A trencherman of ordinary valor would have dragged out a hateful existence of semi-starvation upon the rations that sufficed for Routledge; and none but a man in whom a giant’s strength was concentrated could have followed his travels. The old Manchurian trails burned under his ponies; and, queerly enough, he never ruined a mount. He had left Shanghai on the first of February, ill from confinement, the crowds, and his long sojourn in the great heat of India. The hard physical life at sea in the Liao gulf and afield in Manchuria, and, possibly more than anything, his life apart from the English, restored him to a health of the finest and toughest texture.

China challenged him. He never could feel the tenderness of regard for the Yellow Empire that India inspired, but it held an almost equal fascination. China dwelt in a duller, more alien light to his eyes; the people were more complicated, less placable and lovable, than Hindus, but the same mysterious stillness, the same dust of ages, he found in both interiors; and in both peoples the same imperturbable patience and unfathomable capacity to suffer and be silent. Routledge moved in towns almost as unknown to the world as the Martian surfaces; learned enough of the confusion of tongues to procure necessities; supplied himself with documents, bearing the seals of certain dark fraternities, which appeared to pass him from place to place without harm: and, with a luck that balanced the handicap of an outcast, and an energy, mental and physical, utterly impossible to a man with peace in his heart, he pushed through, up to Liaoyang, an almost incredible season’s work.

More and more the thought was borne upon him during July and August that the coming big battle would bring to him a change of fortune--if only a change from one desolation to another. He felt that his war-service was nearing its end. He did not believe that Liaoyang was to end the war, but he thought it would close the campaign for the year; and he planned to conclude his own campaign with a vivid intimate portrait of the battle. Meanwhile he hung afar from the Russian and Japanese lines, and little Pingyang had a fire lit for him and a table spread when he rode in from his reconnoissance.

Late in August, when the artillery began, Routledge crossed to the south bank of the Taitse with a pair of good horses, and left them about two miles to the west of the city with a Pingyang servant who had proven trustworthy. On the dawn of the thirtieth he made a wide detour behind Oku, nearly to Nodzu’s lines, and watched the battle from Sha peak--one of the highest points of the range. He had studied Liaoyang long through the intricate Chinese maps; and as the heights had cleared the fighting-field for Bingley, so now did Routledge grasp the topography from his eyrie during that first day of the real battle. Similarly also, he hit upon Kuroki’s flank movement as the likeliest strategy of the Japanese aggression, and he came to regard it as a fact before starting for the free cable at Wangcheng the following night.

This day netted nothing in so far as the real battle color was considered. That night he closed up on Oku’s rear, crossing a big valley and climbing a lesser range. Daylight found him in a densely thicketed slope overlooking the city and the Japanese command. In that hot red dawn, he beheld the bivouac of the Islanders--a crowded valley stretching away miles to the east in the fast lifting gloom; leagues of stirring men, the faint smell of wood-smoke and trampled turf, the gray, silent city over the reddened hills, the slaty coil of the river behind.

The mighty spectacle gripped the heart of the watcher; and there came to him, with an awful but thrilling intensity, the whole story of the years which had prepared this amphitheatre for blood on this sweet last summer day.... Oppression in Tyrone; treachery in India; the Anglo-Japanese alliance; the Russo-Japanese war--a logical line of cause and effect running true as destiny, straight as a sunbeam through all these huge and scattered events--holding all Asia in the palm of history! Farther back, to the Kabul massacre, was to be traced the red history of this day--the mad British colonel; Shubar Khan!... And what did the future hold? If Russia called the French and Germans to her aid, England, by treaty, was called to the aid of Japan. America might be drawn by the needs of England, or for the protection of her softening cluster of Philippine grapes. Famine in a Tyrone town; a leak in one Tyrone patriot’s brain--and a world-war!...

The click of a rifle jerked Routledge out of his musings. A Japanese lieutenant and a non-commissioned officer were standing twenty paces away. The enlisted man had him covered.

TWENTY-SECOND CHAPTER

ROUTLEDGE STRIKES A CONTRAST BETWEEN THE JAPANESE EMPEROR AND THE JAPANESE FIGHTING-MAN, WHILE OKU CHARGES INTO A BLIZZARD OF STEEL

Queerly enough, Routledge’s first thought was that the moment of the wound had come, but this was out of the question. These men would not fire at him. They would send him to the rear under a guard; or, worse, escort him to the command where the other correspondents were held. The Englishmen would then suggest to the Japanese that their captive had once proved a traitor to England, and that it would be well to look deep into his present business, lest he repeat.... He would miss the battle, be detained for a Russian spy--and Noreen would hear.

Routledge was ordered to approach, and obeyed, swallowing Failure. The lieutenant spoke English, but disdained to look at proffered credentials. The sergeant gripped Routledge’s arm, and his superior led the way down the slope through the lines of troops. Many of the little soldiers of Oku were eating rice and drinking tea from bowls; some were bathing their bodies, others cleansing their teeth with great zeal, using soaps and pointed sticks. These meant to be gathered unto their fathers that day with clean mouths. Down and forward, the American was led, no word being spoken until they were in the midst of Oku’s front. Here was the field headquarters of some high officer of the left wing. Routledge breathed a hope that action would be joined before he was ordered back. The unknown commander stood in the centre of a thick protecting cordon of men. Evidently he was too rushed at present to attend the case of the detained civilian. Aides and orderlies spurred out with dispatches, and others riding in took their places.

Three or four minutes had passed when certain commands went ripping down the unformed lines and action was indeed joined. The lieutenant was brushed away in the torrent of infantry which just now swept over them, but the sergeant held grimly to his prisoner’s arm. Oku had ordered the first charge of the day. This was the reeking red splash on the map of all the world.

The soldiers leaped over Routledge and his captor. Shielding his head from their boots and rifle-butts, the American looked deep into the sweating brown faces that rushed past--red, squinting eyes, upper lips twisted with a fury they could not have explained, the snarling muscles drawn tight--and not a zephyr of fear in the command! Some of the men still had their eating-sticks and bowls and paper napkins. One stuffed the contents of a dish of rice into his mouth as he ran--an eight-pound rifle clapped between his elbow and ribs.

The correspondent warmed to the human atoms hurtling by and to the sergeant who stuck so fast to his arm. There was something tremendous in the delusion of these poor pawns who were doing their cruel work so well. There was an infernal majesty in the huge gamble for the old gray walls of Liaoyang on this gorgeous morning.... War is immense and final--for the big devil-clutched souls who make it--an achievement, indeed, to gather and energize and hurl this great force against an enemy, but what a rotten imposition upon the poor little obscure men who _fight_, not a tithe the richer if they take all Asia! So the thoughts of Routledge surged. Into the havoc, from time to time, he threw a sentence, wrung from the depths of his understanding:

“... Once a father threw his children out of the sleigh to hold back a wolf-pack--as he whipped his horse to the village. Would you call such a man ‘father’?... Yet you call a nation ‘fatherland’ that hurls you now to the wolves!... Oh, ye of mighty faith!... Pawns--poor pawns--of plague, famine, war around the world--God, tell us why the many are consumed to ashes at the pleasure of the few!... Oh, glorious Patriotism--what sins are committed in thy name!”

The great system of Russian fortifications now opened fire upon the Japanese charge. Men were falling. The bulk of the infantry avalanche had passed, and smoke was crowding out the distances. The long _p-n-n-n-g_ of the high bullets, and the instant _b-zrp_ of the close ones, were stimulus for that fast, clear thinking which so often comes close to death. Routledge’s brain seemed to hold itself aloof from his body, the better to grasp and synthesize the startling actions of the present.

The smoke blurred all but a finger-bone of the valley; yet from that part he could reconstruct the whole horrid skeleton of a Twentieth-century crime.... The brown line of Japanese rolled up against the first Russian trench. Routledge thought of toy soldiers, heads bent forward, legs working, and guns of _papier maché_ in bayonet charge. The works wore a white ruff of smoke, and its lace was swept by stray winds down over the fallen....

The grip upon his arm relaxed. For a moment Routledge thought he was hit, when the blood rushed down the veins of his arm where the tightened fingers had been. He was free--and at what a cost! The little sergeant was down--his legs wriggling and beating against the American’s, the “red badge of courage” widening on his breast. Routledge bent over him and looked long into the dying face--forgetting the world and the war, forgetting all but the spirit behind the hour.

The face was brown, oriental. In the corner of the mouth was a flake of rice, and the coarse-grained dust of Manchuria was over all. The eyes were turned back, and the ears were bad. Evolution was young in the shape of the head and the cut of those ears--small, thick, close to the skull, criminal ears. But the mouth was beautiful! It was carved as if some God had done it--and on a fine morning when joy was abroad in the world--and the perfection of the human mouth was the theme of the day.

Routledge had not even water to give, but he said, “Hello.”

Deep understanding came to him from the dying face. He saw what it meant to this little soldier to go out for his Emperor--saw the faith and pity of it all. It was the smiling face of a man who comes home after years of travail to the marvel of a loved woman’s arms.

“_Sayonara!_” the fine lips muttered. One of the sweetest and saddest words of human speech--this Japanese farewell.

“_Sayonara!_” Routledge repeated.... The body jerked itself out, but the smile remained. The whole story of the Japanese conquest stirred in Routledge’s brain. It was all in the smile upon the face of the guard--all in that one perishable portrait of joy.

Routledge had once seen the Emperor for whom this soldier died with a smile. Though it was forenoon, he had been forced to put on evening-clothes for the Presence. Mutsuhito came back to his mind as he bent over the fresh corpse....

“He has no such mouth as yours, little sergeant,” he said in a swift, strange fashion. “His head is not so good as your hard, bad head, though his ears are better. He was dazed with champagne, as you have never been. He had the look of an epileptic, and they had to bring him a red-blooded woman of the people to get a son from him--and that son a defective!... A soft, inbred pulp of a man, without strength of will or hand or brain, and God only knows what rudiment of a soul--such is the Lord of Ten Thousand Years, whom you die for with a smile. You are greater than the Empire you serve, little sergeant--greater than the Emperor you die for; since he is not even a clean abstraction.... God pity you--God pity you all!”

The sun sent streamers into the white smoke drapery upon the Russian bank. The Island Empire men were thrashing against it. They met with their breasts the fire that spurted continuously from the ledges. One man of a Japanese company lived to gain the top of the trench. He was skewered on Russian bayonets and shaken down among his writhing fellow-soldiers, as the wing of a chicken is served upon a waiting plate. Running, crawling, Routledge made his way down and forward.

The Japanese hope lives high above the loss of companies. It was a glad morning for the Island Empire men, a bright task they were given to do. Other companies, full quota, were shot forward to tread upon the dead and beat themselves to death against the entrenchment. A third torrent was rolled against the Russians before the second had suffered a complete blood-letting.... Routledge saw one five-foot demon wielding his rifle-butt upon the rim of the trench, in the midst of gray Russian giants. For an instant he was a human tornado, filled with the idea to kill--that Brownie--then he was sucked down and stilled. Routledge wondered if they completely wiped out the little man’s smile at the last.

He was ill from the butchery, and his mind was prone to grope away from the bleeding heart of things; still, he missed little of the great tragedy which unfolded in the smoke. And always Oku, unparalleled profligate of men, coiled up his companies and sprung them against a position which Napoleon would have called impregnable--Oku, whose voice was quiet as a mystic’s prayer. The thought came to Routledge that the women of America would tear down the capitol at Washington with their hands, if the walls contained a monster who had spent the blood of their sons and lovers as Oku was doing now.

A new tumult in the air! It was like an instant horrid crash of drums in the midst of a violin solo. Artillery now roared down upon Oyama’s left wing.... The wildest dream of hell was on. Routledge, crawling westward through the pit of fire, saw a platoon of infantry smashed as a cue-ball shatters a fifteen block in pool.... Westward under the Russian guns, he crawled through the sun-shot, smoke-charged shambles, miraculously continuing alive in that thick, steady, annihilating blizzard of steel--his brain desperate with the rush of images and the shock of sounds. Over a blood-wet turf he crawled, among the quivering parts of men....

Silence. Oku stopped to breathe and pick up the fragments.... From far up on the Russian works--it was like the celestial singing in the ears of the dying--began a distant, thrilling music. Some regiment or brigade, swinging into the intrenchments to relieve a weary command, had burst into song.... Once before Routledge had caught a touch of this enchantment, during the Boxer Rebellion. He had never been able to forget Jerry Cardinegh’s telling of the Russian battle-hymns at Plevna.... Great emotions bowed him now. Another terrace of defense caught up the song, and the winds that cleared the reeking valley of smoke carried along the vibrant inspiration. Every Russian heart gripped the grand contagion. From terrace to terrace, from trench to trench, from pit to emplacement, that glorious thunder stalked, a company, a battery, a brigade, at a stride. Each voice was a raw, dust-bitten shout--the whole a majestic harmony, from the cannon-meat of Liaoyang! Sons of the North, gray, sodden, sorrow-stunted men of pent misery and unlit souls--Finlander, Siberian, Caspian, Caucasian--hurling forth their heart-hunger in a tumult of song that shook the continent. The spirit of All the Russias giving tongue--the tragedy of Poland, the clank of chains, the mockery of palaces, the iron pressure of frost, the wail of the wolf-pack on frozen tundras, the cry of the crushed, the blind groping of the human to God--it was all in that rhythmic roar, all the dreadful annals of a decadent people.

As it was born, so it died,--that music,--from terrace to terrace, the last wavering chant from out the city walls. The little Japanese made no answer. Routledge could not help but see the mark of the beast in contrast. It wasn’t the Russians that bothered Oku, but the Russian position. Kuroki would pull them out of that.... Song or steel, they would take Liaoyang. They prepared to charge again.

* * * * *

In the disorder of the next charge Routledge crossed the railroad and passed out of the Japanese lines. Late afternoon, as he hurried westward for his horses, he met the eyes of Bingley. He was not given a chance to pass another way. The race for the cable was on.

TWENTY-THIRD CHAPTER

ROUTLEDGE ENCOUNTERS THE “HORSE-KILLER” ON THE FIELD OF LIAOYANG, AND THEY RACE FOR THE UNCENSORED CABLE AT SHANHAIKWAN

To each man the intention of the other was clear as the purpose of a fire-department’s run. One of them would file the first uncensored story of the great battle. Bingley had given up his chance to follow the Japanese army, and had set his stony face to freedom for this end--and England could not have horsed a man more unwhippable. Routledge, striding into the sunset, toward the place he had left his mounts, discovered with a smile that his pace was quickening, quickening. The character of the man just passed was an inspiration to rivalry. Moreover, from a newspaper standpoint, the issue at hand was big among dreams. The Great God, News, is a marvellous master. Would England or America be first to connect with Manchuria by wire? _World-News_ or _Thames_? If New York beat London, Dartmore would trace the story.... Dartmore had been a savage. Bingley had been a savage.

Routledge laughed aloud. He had long since put away any resentment toward either of these men, but there was vim, and glow, in getting into the struggle again. He felt that he had earned his entry to this race. He had counted upon taking the chances of discovery. Already Bingley had seen him, and the word would go back; but the result of it would require time. He had long planned to close his own campaign for the year, even if the Japanese pushed on to Mukden. He would go deeper, past following, into China--even to the Leper Valley.

It was a momentous incident to Routledge--this meeting with the “Horse-killer.” The quick, startled, sullen look on the face of Bingley--not a flicker of a smile, not even a scornful smile, to answer his own--had meant that Cardinegh, dead or alive, had not told.

Bingley found the highway two miles west of the railroad, and spurred south in the darkness at the rate of about seven miles an hour. He meant to do six or seven hours of this before resting his mount.... Between twelve and one in the morning--and at most twenty miles to go! If there was anything left in his horse, after an hour’s rest, so much the better. Otherwise he could do it on foot, crossing the river above Fengmarong by six in the morning. This would leave two hours for the last two or three miles into Wangcheng. As for the other, without a mount, Bingley did not concede it to be within human possibility for him to reach the Chinese Eastern at any point to-morrow morning. Evidently Routledge had not planned to get away so soon. It would take eighteen hours at least to reach Wangcheng by the river, and Routledge, aiming westward, seemed to have this route in view.... With all his conjecturing, Bingley could find no peace of mind. Even if Routledge had not planned to reach travelled-lines to-morrow, would not the sight of a rival, with his speed signals out and whistling for right of way, stir him to competition? Such was his respect for the man who had passed on, that Bingley could not find serenity in judging the actions and acumen of Routledge by ordinary weights and measures.

Any other British correspondent would have hailed the outcast with the old welcome, notwithstanding the race-challenge which his appearance involved. On the morning he left Tokyo, five months before, Bingley had also promised Miss Cardinegh to carry the news of her father’s confession and death to Routledge, if he should be the first to find him. It did not occur to Bingley now, isolated as he had been so long, that this was the first time Routledge had been seen. Moreover, in their last meeting, at the Army and Navy ball, there had been a brief but bitter passage of words. Bingley was not the man to make an overture when there was a chance of its being repelled. Finally, the sudden discovery of a trained man, with carnage behind and the cable ahead, was a juggernaut which crushed the life from every other thought in his brain.

Routledge found his horses in excellent condition. The Chinese whom he had brought from Pingyang had proved faithful before, but with all the natives, not alone the banditti and river-thieves, emboldened by the war, the safe holding of his property was a joy indeed. At seven in the evening, the sky black with gathering storm, he left his servant, rich in _taels_ and blessings, and turned westward along the Taitse river-road. This was neither the best nor the shortest way, but Routledge preferred to be impeded by ruts, even by chasms, than by Japanese sentries. With Bingley’s full panoply of credentials it would have been different.

Sixty-five miles to ride, a river to cross, an audience with Consul Milner, a train to catch, to say nothing of enforced delays by the possible interest of the Japanese in his movements--all in fourteen hours.

As Bingley conjectured, the chance meeting had hastened the plan of Routledge. He had intended to reach Wangcheng the following day, but by no means in time for the morning train; in fact, he had determined to tarry at the American consulate until the decision from the battle should come in. Wangcheng had changed hands since his last call at the port, but he counted on the wise and winning American to be as finely appreciated by the Japanese as he had been by the Russians. Milner would get the returns from the battle almost as soon as the Japanese commander at the base. The one word _victory_ or _defeat_, and a line covering the incidental strategic cause, was all that Routledge needed for a startling story. He had mastered the field, and Oku had supplied a rainbow of pigments.

Bingley, having left the field, would not loiter on the road to the cable, nor would he halt before reaching an uncensored cable--therefore Shanhaikwan to-morrow night! Routledge did not care to accept second place, if hard-riding would win first. He faced the longer journey, and also set apart an hour before train-time for an interview with the Consul. It was eminently plain to him that this day had marked the crisis of the great battle, even if it had not already ended with nightfall. The unparalleled fury of Oku’s assaults was significant to this effect. To-morrow would doubtless bring the verdict; and all day to-morrow he would be on train to Shanhaikwan, in touch with Milner by wire at every station. Even if he reached the cable with the battle still raging, he could file the story of the great conflict, as it was synthesized in one man’s brain--up to the point of the historic last sentence.... Even as he rode, the lines and sentences fused in his mind, a colorful, dashing, galvanic conception that burned for expression.

On and on, hours and miles; cloud-bursts and flashes of lightning to show the trail ahead--until he came to doubt his watch, even the dawn of a new day, in the pressure of the illusion formed of dragging hours and darkened distances.

The rains helped to keep his mounts fresh. Every two hours he changed. The beasts had been long together, and either led with a slackened thong. He ran them very little, and it was after midnight before he dulled the fine edge of their fettle. They were tough, low-geared Tartar beasts, heavy-breasted, short in the pasterns, and quartered like hunters--built for rough trails and rough wear. Routledge slapped and praised them, riding light. It would take more than one gruelling night under such a horseman to break their hearts.

Two hours after midnight the rain ceased, and the wrung clouds parted for the moon. The hill country was passed. Routledge moved swiftly along the river-flats. It was the second night he had not slept, and his fatigue was no trifle, but he was drilled to endure. It was not in him to make a strongly reckonable matter out of muscular stiffness and cuticle abrasions. True, rain softens the glaze of a saddle, and long riding on the sticky leather tears the limbs, but Routledge had a body that would obey so long as consciousness lasted. He used it that night.

Five-thirty in the morning; daylight; sixty miles put behind. Ahead far in the new day he discerned the Japanese outposts of Fengmarong; and on the right hand was the big, mottled Liao, swollen with flood. If he were to be detained by the Japanese, he preferred it to be on the opposite bank--the Wangcheng side. Routledge rode up to the ferry-scow and called for service. Yellow babies were playing like cinnamon-cubs on the shore; two women were cooking rice and fish; two men were asleep in the sail-tackle. These he aroused. They helped him with the horses, half-lifting the weary, trembling beasts aboard. Cups of tea; rice with black dressing, as the scow made the opposite landing at a forty-five degree angle! A quick and safe crossing; and two hours for the Japanese lines, the American Consul, and the Chinese Eastern!... A distant call through the morning light! Bingley, horseless, imperiously demands the return of the craft to the Fengmorang bank.

Routledge had hoped to be missed by the other, at least until train-time. He smiled at the compelling incidents of the race thus far, and at the surpassing prospects--even though he chilled at the thought that the Japanese in Wangcheng would have big excuse to detain him if Bingley intimated that his rival had once betrayed England to the Russian spies on the Indian border. Consul Milner would sweat, indeed, to free him against that....

Yet Routledge had a feeling that he would win against Bingley. Work had always favored him. So far he had borne out the prophecy that he would not be wounded in battle, in a manner past astonishment. It was no less than a miracle--his escape from the firing of both armies at Liaoyang. Often during the night-ride he had thought of the wound that was to come to him--thought with a chill of dread of the lawless country he passed through. Now, with Wangcheng ahead, and in touch with the safe-lines of foreign-travel--the chance seemed minimized once more. There must be significance in this.... He looked back and saw the Chinese beating up against the river to the Fengmarong landing, where Bingley waited, doubtless frothing his curb.

At the edge of the town Routledge was arrested by a five-foot Japanese sentry, and was locked with his world tidings in a garrison, lately Russian, which overlooked Wangcheng’s little square. He wrote “A. V. Weed” on a slip of paper and asked to have it taken to Consul Milner; then sat down by the barred window to watch the Consulate across the Square. It was now seven o’clock. The train left in an hour, and the station was a mile away. Minutes dragged by.

An enlivening spectacle from the window. The “Horse-killer” is being borne across the Square under a Japanese guard! The little sentries at the edge of town have been busy, this sweet-smelling morning after the rain! Even at the distance, Routledge perceives that the Englishman’s face is warmed with a lust for murder, and he hears the Englishman’s voice demanding _his_ Consul. Bingley is borne into the garrison, and his voice and step are heard throughout the halls. The voice continues--as he is locked in the apartment next to Routledge’s.

Fifteen dreadful minutes. Bingley is a noisy, unlovely devil in the next room, beating against his bars. Routledge remembers what Hans Breittmann said of the caged orang-outang: “There is too much ego in his cosmos.” The “Horse-killer” does not know that his rival is so near--as he cries unto his heaven of martial law, for artillery to shoot his way out of this town of beastly, pig-headed Japanese coolies!... A Consul appears in the Square. It is not the natty Milner, but an elderly Briton, with a cane and a presence, who just now asks to be shown to Mr. Bingley.... The two talk softly for several minutes--a harsh interval for Routledge.

“I shall do what I can as promptly as possible, Mr. Bingley--trust me,” concludes the Consul, and his cane sounds upon the flags once more--diminuendo.

“Remember, I must be on my way at once,” the “Horse-killer” shouts after him.

Seven-twenty. Where was Milner?... Routledge wondered bitterly if the Gods of War had turned their faces from him at last. A low laugh from Bingley. Milner was crossing the Square hastily, but did not approach the garrison--instead was admitted to the big building occupied by the Japanese headquarters.

“God, I’d hate to have to depend upon an American Consul at a time like this,” is heard from the “Horse-killer.”

Routledge’s nerve was taxed to smile at this.... Seven-thirty. Consul Milner reappears in the Square, this time followed by two Japanese officers of rank.... Routledge’s door is unlocked, and he is called out into the hall.

“This is the gentleman--and I’ll vouch for him.” Milner observes, holding out his hand to Routledge. “Weed, my boy, how are you? Missed the train last night at Yopanga, I suppose, and came down the river. Didn’t you know we’re a closed port down here?”

“Yes, but I knew _you_ were here, Consul. The battle’s on at Liaoyang, I understand.”

The eyes of the men managed to meet. The Japanese officers bowed politely, and the two Americans left the garrison.... Bingley’s voice is loudly upraised. The Japanese officers politely inform him that the order for his release has not yet reached them.

“Milner,” said Routledge, “would it complicate matters if I fell upon your neck and wept?”

“Wait till we catch the train, Weed. That’s what you want, isn’t it?” the Consul whispered.

“Badly.”

“So I concluded when I got the slip from you. That’s why I went to headquarters to fix things before coming here--saved a few minutes. Also I told my Chino to get up the carriage. It’ll be ready.... Our British friend will have to get his business transacted at once or he won’t get off for Shanhaikwan this morning.... Great God, Weed, did you get the battle--any of it?”

“I was with the left wing all day yesterday, Consul--it seems like a month ago. Oku was beating his brains out against the Russian intrenchments.”

They were crossing the Square. Bingley’s voice reached them: “Oh, I say, American Consul, prod up my man a bit--won’t you?”

The agonized face behind the bars took the edge off his own success to Routledge. He knew what these moments meant to the “Horse-killer.”

“Unfortunately, I’m not on speaking terms with the British Consul,” Milner observed lightly to Routledge, as they hurried to the carriage.

“I take it that Kuroki has crossed the Taitse--what have you heard?” Routledge inquired quickly.

“Just that much,” Milner replied. “The Japanese here say that Oyama will enter the city to-day. Kuroki pontooned the river two days ago. What you saw was the terrific effort of the Japanese to hold the bulk of the Russian army in the city and below while Kuroki flanked.”

“Exactly. I’m doing the story on those lines. I’ll be in Shanhaikwan to-night. You’ll get the decision to-day probably--wire me anywhere along the route, Consul?”

“Of course.”

“The _World-News_ will get you Tokyo for your next post,” Routledge said with a laugh. “All I need is the single sentence--‘Oyama wins’ or ‘Oyama loses.’ By the way, the Japanese have got two good horses of mine----”

“I’ll see to them.”

The carriage reached the station at two minutes before eight.

“It looks as if you had it all your own way, Weed,” Milner observed with a laugh. “God! you’ve got the world at your feet--the greatest newspaper chance in years. You’ll give ’em a story that will rip up the States. Show ’em pictures--never mind the featureless skeleton--show ’em pictures, Weed!”

“I’ll try, Consul,” said Routledge, with feeling.

The station-boys were clanging their bells. The eyes of both men were fixed upon a clot of dust far down the road.

“Weed, my boy,” said Milner excitedly, “the race isn’t won yet. Your rival is going to make the train.”

The huge figure of the “Horse-killer” was sprinting toward them, less than two hundred yards away.

“So I observe,” said Routledge. “You’ll have to give me one more lift, Consul. A man who can run like that will be rather hard to beat over the half-mile course from the train to the cable-office in Shanhaikwan at seven to-night. Wire Borden, the American Combined Press man there, to arrange for me at the cable-office, and to meet me when the train pulls in to-night, with the fastest saddle-horse in Shanhaikwan--none but the fastest will do. I’ll win the half-mile!”

The train was leaving the station. Bingley caught the railing of the first-class coach, swung on, and staggered by Routledge into the car. Milner signified with a final gesture that he would look after the rights of America and the _World-News_. Bingley, panting hoarsely, was stretched out in his compartment when the American entered. He did not look up, and no word passed between them. For a moment Routledge hoped it might be different--that day might bring to him something of the life or death of Jerry Cardinegh. As the alleged author of the Indian treachery, he could not bring himself to seek the other’s notice. He wondered if Bingley had used the crime charged against him, to hold him in Wangcheng. This would have been natural; certainly he had whispered to the British Consul in the garrison. At all events, the swiftness of Milner’s efforts in his behalf had killed the result of such an intent. Routledge fell asleep. It was after ten when he awoke.

The “Horse-killer” was writing steadily, swiftly, fighting sleep, his eyes cocked open like a stuffed bird’s, and referring often to a carefully crowded note-book, the like of which he had carried in India.... Routledge started on his story. An hour’s sleep had quieted his brain a trifle. Before, his thoughts had darted about, like tumbler pigeons at play--in that queer light fashion of extreme fatigue. With the structure placed, he began to spend the great coiled chronicle at a swift, steady pressure. For the first time in his life he turned loose all that he had for a newspaper. The hurl of power glorified him for the time--work’s chaste and lofty joy--until he was beyond misery or any earthly evil. Without thinking, he turned to Bingley at last:

“We both want the free cable at Shanhaikwan,” he said briefly. “One of us will reach it first. It might be well to arrange for the winner to turn over the wire--at the end of, say, two hours--then both London and New York would have the story in the morning.”

“No,” said the “Horse-killer” coldly. “I shall put on whole story at once, and there will be five columns or more of it.”

Routledge laughed inwardly, surprised at himself for speaking, and just a little appalled at the grim nerve of the other. In the great glow from his work, he had followed a generous impulse to give Bingley and the _Thames_ a chance that night--on the basis of his meeting a man at Shanhaikwan, with the best horse in the town. In the emancipation of high expression, the sense of rivalry had been lost, and he saw that Bingley was entitled to no little consideration, even if he were beaten by a nose to the cable-door. Routledge went on with his work, his compunctions eased.

At Koupangtze, the half-way station, there was a stop for ten minutes. Bingley improved the time by close conversation with an Englishman on the station platform. Routledge, who remained in his compartment, wondered with animation, as Bingley passed the other a sum of money, if he were arranging with the Englishman to telegraph for a horse to meet _him_ at the train in Shanhaikwan. Could there be two fastest horses at the end of the run?

All that afternoon, as they crossed the brownest, most level and ancient country on earth, two correspondents toiled with words and a battle. At the little town of Shenkau, Routledge heard the name of “Weed” called in a laughable intonation by a Chinese boy on the platform. He reached out and took the telegram. Milner had not allowed a single sentence to suffice. Here is the message:

Oyama entered Liaoyang to-day. Russians in flight to Mukden. Russian
rear-guard still fighting. Flanking movement successful. Show ’em
pictures.

The gods of war had been good to him, indeed. He ran the telegram entire, at the head of his story. An hour later the Great Wall appeared to his tired eyes. His capacity to express or thrill at a thought was utterly gone. Every film of the battle which his brain had caught, all that he had desired to say, had been re-done in pencil. He folded the sheets and put them away with his credentials and cable-frank. The early twilight was soft and warm. The Great Wall cast a long shadow as the train passed through its single break. The sea was gilded and crimson-touched with the sunset. Shanhaikwan station is but a half-mile from the Wall. Already huts and burial-mounds were passed--dull brown in the dusk.... They were in a free land now; the zone of war and censorship lay behind. It was a dramatic moment.

Each correspondent arose. Each correspondent glanced at the heels of the other and found _spurs_!

Bingley made his way toward the rear-platform; Routledge took the other. Leaning far out, as the train pulled into the station, Routledge saw Borden and the black stallion--hopped off and ran to him. A China-boy holding the nervous, prick-eared mount stood beside the Combined Press man. Routledge leaped into the saddle. With the tail of his eye he saw Bingley rushing along the platform toward a gray mount.

“They’re looking for you at the cable-office,” Borden yelled. “Don’t burn out the wire!”

Half of Europe and a touch of Asia were represented in the faces on the platform. Meeting the night-train was the chief of the day’s social obligations in Shanhaikwan. To-night everybody was down to get the last fresh word from the field. The crowd sensed distantly that rival correspondents had come in, and that a great newspaper race was on, from the platform to the cable-office.... Spurring across the sandy station-yard, the heart of Routledge lifted to the splendid spirit of the game. He glanced around at the beating hoofs behind. Bingley was straining forward in the saddle, furiously rowelling his gray.... Above the cheering, Routledge heard his name called, and the face of Talliaferro appeared in the crowd, blurred as in a dream. Then came a voice that incited all his senses.... He did not see her. He thought it was in his soul.

“Routledge-san! Win--ride to win!” Then a trailing “Routledge ... san!”

The Hate of London was not in the face of Talliaferro.... As he rode, the heavenly lifting of the moment almost pulled him out of the race at hand.... “Win--ride to win!... Routledge-san!”... He spurred. The black answered. Veritably, he was a night-streak whirring cableward.... Routledge knew every step of the way. The day would have been lost, were he forced to halt for direction.... Past the Rest House, through the mud-hut quarter, breaking a detachment of Sikh infantry, he led the race--Bingley, unable to gain, back in the shadows, shouting, rowelling!

There was some meaning to his words, but Routledge did not think of them, until the gun-talk.... One shot stood out by itself--and four followed.... The black sprawled.... Routledge found himself coughing, but cleared grandly from the fallen mount, and crossed the threshold of the cable-office. He realized that he had fallen with the mount, but it made no impression. His hands were bleeding. He met the dust full-length. He knew that he staggered a bit as the operator leaped over the counter and caught him in his arms....

“I’m Weed of the _World-News_.... Borden arranged for me. Here’s the copy, credentials, cable-permit.”

“I’ve been waiting for you, Weed.... You’re shot--my God!”

Bingley entered, his face terrible but frightened. He glanced at the man who had beaten him--from head to foot.... Routledge was leaning against the counter, his clothing caked with dust, a laugh on his face, dripping blood from a wound under his coat.

“I didn’t mean to hit you--I tried to get your horse!” Bingley gasped.

“You did. Go out and finish him.... You’re not much of a shot from the saddle--or perhaps you lost your nerve, Bingley.... Any way, I am long over-due for a wound.... Get a surgeon. I’m hard-hit. Hurry!”

Routledge dropped forward on the counter, closing his eyes. Bingley disappeared. The operator was unfastening his clothes.

“Don’t mind me--until the doctor comes--but start my stuff going.... By the way, in a couple of hours, if it goes steadily, break in on my stuff and give Bingley a head-line in the _Thames_ to-morrow. He only meant to get my horse--I see that. A man takes liberty in shooting a horse from under another--but never mind. There’s always room for two at the top!”

* * * * *

“He was shot from behind--a bad wound, but not necessarily a fatal one.... It hit him under the right-shoulder-blade,” the doctor was saying.

Routledge felt choky and very tired. His consciousness wavered back and forth like the throw of wind under a punkah when the coolies are fresh.... There was a light running step outside.... He was to go down close to the Gates with a lock on his lips.... His lips were tightened. First of all, there was a sweet breath of wind, like one of the best memories of early life.... He wanted to rub his eyes, but the surgeon held his hands.... Noreen’s voice was quick and tragic. The word “die” was uttered.

“No,” the doctor repeated; “not necessarily a fatal wound. I’ve ordered a carriage. We’ll take him to the Rest House.”

* * * * *

Noreen--the Leper Valley--the Russian music--the Shanghai Bund--Charing Cross--the carriage--the hovel in Rydamphur--the night in Bookstalls--Noreen--that he must be silent in delirium--these were the waves of consciousness.... He felt her hand, her lips, upon his brow. Even if it were just a vision, he wanted to welcome her with a smile, but his lips were locked.

“Oh, you martyr--you blessed martyr!... Don’t you know me, Routledge-san?”

“Is it true, Noreen? Are you here?”

“With you always, beloved.”

A frown fell upon his face. “I just came in from Liaoyang for the cable. It isn’t good for you to be with me.”

“My Master--don’t you know Father is dead, and that he was sane to confess at the last?... Feeney and Finacune were there.”

The eyes of Routledge found her.

“Just a minute, doctor,--I must say this.... Noreen, don’t speak of it again--the others need not know! Your father was the best and bravest of our breed----”

“Strongheart!... London knows; Tokyo knows; every British correspondent cabled it to his paper that night, months ago; there are crowns of vine-leaves for you in the heart of every friend of yours; the Secret Service knows----”

“But your good name, Noreen----” he faltered.

“My name is Routledge for eternity,” she answered, and the famous eyes bent to lull him.... “Sleep, my lover, sleep.... I shall always be with you now!”

TWENTY-FOURTH CHAPTER

THE GREAT FRIEZE COAT AND THE WOMAN JOURNEY DOWN THE COAST OF CHINA TOGETHER, AND CROSS INDIA TO THE LEPER VALLEY

No one hurried a destroyer after this torpedo of a man, the “Horse-killer.” Now and then a Bingley bullet, when it is not aimed too accurately, gives a tired man a rest which his energy would not permit by any less drastic measure. Certain heroic temperaments must needs receive a jolt every little while to force them to lie down.

There are two kinds of men in the world--those who have a sense of brotherhood, and those whose every thought is an explosion designed to increase their own personal impetus. The one makes war; the other peace. Perhaps the ultimate relation between the two is suggested in the race for the cable--and its result.

Routledge healed in a month, and incidentally found his first rest in years. Noreen was with him--a tremendous thing. The two had been long apart, pent and hungering.... Meanwhile, the world read and commented upon the great story of Liaoyang. Bingley’s story led in London.

On their last day in Shanhaikwan, they walked along the Wall--Routledge and Noreen--and that night were together in the Yellow Sea. The ship was the _Tung Shing_, a little steamer that breasted the waves in her own way, but quite correctly. So clean and clever was she, that everyone was refreshed. There were no distractions, nor counter-attractions, and every night-view was beautiful. The loom of the Wu Tung light was over the shoulder of the East, and a cliff to avoid on the starboard. A rising wind decided not to bother, and boomed away north, before the near sea was aroused to a fit of temper.

Routledge was so happy that he did not care for utterance. Noreen drank the chill breeze in silence for a long time. Once she placed her hand upon the sleeve of the great frieze coat.... Thus they sailed down the variegated and populous coast of China--a different breath from every big and little harbor. Noreen caught them all and was glad, divining far at sea the places she had tarried, but Routledge was Asia and countless continents to her. One night when only the pilot and the ship-lights and themselves were burning, the thought came to embrace--but they refrained.

Presently they were down to Singapore; then across to Calcutta, where the Ganges opens her mighty throats to the sea; then up by devious travels--to catch the breath of the Hills after the Heats. Morning and nightfall, Routledge looked down into Noreen’s eyes and found his world. Night-winds of India soothed them, though apart. And they had their thoughts of the day’s travel together.

At length, up over the crest of the world in their wanderings, they looked, from the amethyst Himalayas, down upon that strange dead civilization of China, a vista for eagles. Tight in the heart of it was the Leper Valley.

This is reached by one of the lost trails of the world. A few gallant explorers have picked the way, but failed to publish since the people would think such a report a fiction, and their reputations for veracity be broken. Traders pass the rim of the gap regularly, but do not know it.

Routledge had learned it from a Sannyasi. The way is tortuous and a bit perilous, so he arranged for Noreen and himself to follow a party of traders. Among these men was a Boy. There was cleanness in his gray eye, and you could not think of taint and look at his cheeks so ruddy under the tan. The Boy searched Noreen’s face with the guilelessness of a child and the valor of a man. When he rode beside her, the air that she breathed was new.

Of course the saddle was torture to her, a cumulative torture with the hours, but it was only physical, and night bore down with the sleep of healing, from the twilight of evening to the twilight of dawn. The journey melted into a strange composite of cool mountain winds; brief, warm showers which released the fragrance of the valleys; humans in dim doors and upon the highways, held, as they passed, in tableaux of freezing horror--suffering, sunlight, sleep. And always ancient China unfolded greater vistas of hills, fields, huts, and glowering yellow faces; and always the Boy walked beside and served--a ragged chaperon.

Routledge would smile on his way and note the large relation. The traders, too, were respectful--brave men whom the Open had kept mainly pure. There is a curse upon a white man in Asia, if he relaxes.

Once the Boy said: “Don’t be afraid, lady. This is the sleepiest part of China. Any way, I would take care of you.”

Routledge bent over from his mount and patted the Boy’s shoulder.

They parted by the wayside with a smile--the Boy and Noreen. She proffered him her purse, but he answered:

“I don’t want that. But any time I can help you--hail out! What are you going to do--stopping off here?”