Can Such Things Be?

I—­HOW TREES ARE FELLED IN CHINA

A half-mile north from Jo.  Dunfer’s, on the road from Hutton’s to Mexican Hill, the highway dips into a sunless ravine which opens out on either hand in a half-confidential manner, as if it had a secret to impart at some more convenient season.  I never used to ride through it without looking first to the one side and then to the other, to see if the time had arrived for the revelation.  If I saw nothing—­and I never did see anything—­there was no feeling of disappointment, for I knew the disclosure was merely withheld temporarily for some good reason which I had no right to question.  That I should one day be taken into full confidence I no more doubted than I doubted the existence of Jo.  Dunfer himself, through whose premises the ravine ran.

It was said that Jo. had once undertaken to erect a cabin in some remote part of it, but for some reason had abandoned the enterprise and constructed his present hermaphrodite habitation, half residence and half groggery, at the roadside, upon an extreme corner of his estate; as far away as possible, as if on purpose to show how radically he had changed his mind.

This Jo.  Dunfer—­or, as he was familiarly known in the neighborhood, Whisky Jo.—­was a very important personage in those parts.  He was apparently about forty years of age, a long, shock-headed fellow, with a corded face, a gnarled arm and a knotty hand like a bunch of prison-keys.  He was a hairy man, with a stoop in his walk, like that of one who is about to spring upon something and rend it.

Next to the peculiarity to which he owed his local appellation, Mr. Dunfer’s most obvious characteristic was a deep-seated antipathy to the Chinese.  I saw him once in a towering rage because one of his herdsmen had permitted a travel-heated Asian to slake his thirst at the horse-trough in front of the saloon end of Jo.’s establishment.  I ventured faintly to remonstrate with Jo. for his unchristian spirit, but he merely explained that there was nothing about Chinamen in the New Testament, and strode away to wreak his displeasure upon his dog, which also, I suppose, the inspired scribes had overlooked.

Some days afterward, finding him sitting alone in his barroom, I cautiously approached the subject, when, greatly to my relief, the habitual austerity of his expression visibly softened into something that I took for condescension.

“You young Easterners,” he said, “are a mile-and-a-half too good for this country, and you don’t catch on to our play.  People who don’t know a Chileno from a Kanaka can afford to hang out liberal ideas about Chinese immigration, but a fellow that has to fight for his bone with a lot of mongrel coolies hasn’t any time for foolishness.”

This long consumer, who had probably never done an honest day’s-work in his life, sprung the lid of a Chinese tobacco-box and with thumb and forefinger forked out a wad like a small haycock.  Holding this reinforcement within supporting distance he fired away with renewed confidence.

“They’re a flight of devouring locusts, and they’re going for everything green in this God blest land, if you want to know.”

Here he pushed his reserve into the breach and when his gabble-gear was again disengaged resumed his uplifting discourse.

“I had one of them on this ranch five years ago, and I’ll tell you about it, so that you can see the nub of this whole question.  I didn’t pan out particularly well those days—­drank more whisky than was prescribed for me and didn’t seem to care for my duty as a patriotic American citizen; so I took that pagan in, as a kind of cook.  But when I got religion over at the Hill and they talked of running me for the Legislature it was given to me to see the light.  But what was I to do?  If I gave him the go somebody else would take him, and mightn’t treat him white.  What was I to do?  What would any good Christian do, especially one new to the trade and full to the neck with the brotherhood of Man and the fatherhood of God?”

Jo. paused for a reply, with an expression of unstable satisfaction, as of one who has solved a problem by a distrusted method.  Presently he rose and swallowed a glass of whisky from a full bottle on the counter, then resumed his story.

“Besides, he didn’t count for much—­didn’t know anything and gave himself airs.  They all do that.  I said him nay, but he muled it through on that line while he lasted; but after turning the other cheek seventy and seven times I doctored the dice so that he didn’t last forever.  And I’m almighty glad I had the sand to do it.

Jo.’s gladness, which somehow did not impress me, was duly and ostentatiously celebrated at the bottle.

“About five years ago I started in to stick up a shack.  That was before this one was built, and I put it in another place.  I set Ah Wee and a little cuss named Gopher to cutting the timber.  Of course I didn’t expect Ah Wee to help much, for he had a face like a day in June and big black eyes—­I guess maybe they were the damn’dest eyes in this neck o’ woods.”

While delivering this trenchant thrust at common sense Mr. Dunfer absently regarded a knot-hole in the thin board partition separating the bar from the living-room, as if that were one of the eyes whose size and color had incapacitated his servant for good service.

“Now you Eastern galoots won’t believe anything against the yellow devils,” he suddenly flamed out with an appearance of earnestness not altogether convincing, “but I tell you that Chink was the perversest scoundrel outside San Francisco.  The miserable pigtail Mongolian went to hewing away at the saplings all round the stems, like a worm o’ the dust gnawing a radish.  I pointed out his error as patiently as I knew how, and showed him how to cut them on two sides, so as to make them fall right; but no sooner would I turn my back on him, like this”—­and he turned it on me, amplifying the illustration by taking some more liquor—­“than he was at it again.  It was just this way:  while I looked at him, so”—­regarding me rather unsteadily and with evident complexity of vision—­“he was all right; but when I looked away, so”—­taking a long pull at the bottle—­“he defied me.  Then I’d gaze at him reproachfully, so, and butter wouldn’t have melted in his mouth.”

Doubtless Mr. Dunfer honestly intended the look that he fixed upon me to be merely reproachful, but it was singularly fit to arouse the gravest apprehension in any unarmed person incurring it; and as I had lost all interest in his pointless and interminable narrative, I rose to go.  Before I had fairly risen, he had again turned to the counter, and with a barely audible “so,” had emptied the bottle at a gulp.

Heavens! what a yell!  It was like a Titan in his last, strong agony.  Jo. staggered back after emitting it, as a cannon recoils from its own thunder, and then dropped into his chair, as if he had been “knocked in the head” like a beef—­his eyes drawn sidewise toward the wall, with a stare of terror.  Looking in the same direction, I saw that the knot-hole in the wall had indeed become a human eye—­a full, black eye, that glared into my own with an entire lack of expression more awful than the most devilish glitter.  I think I must have covered my face with my hands to shut out the horrible illusion, if such it was, and Jo.’s little white man-of-all-work coming into the room broke the spell, and I walked out of the house with a sort of dazed fear that delirium tremens might be infectious.  My horse was hitched at the watering-trough, and untying him I mounted and gave him his head, too much troubled in mind to note whither he took me.

I did not know what to think of all this, and like every one who does not know what to think I thought a great deal, and to little purpose.  The only reflection that seemed at all satisfactory, was, that on the morrow I should be some miles away, with a strong probability of never returning.

A sudden coolness brought me out of my abstraction, and looking up I found myself entering the deep shadows of the ravine.  The day was stifling; and this transition from the pitiless, visible heat of the parched fields to the cool gloom, heavy with pungency of cedars and vocal with twittering of the birds that had been driven to its leafy asylum, was exquisitely refreshing.  I looked for my mystery, as usual, but not finding the ravine in a communicative mood, dismounted, led my sweating animal into the undergrowth, tied him securely to a tree and sat down upon a rock to meditate.

I began bravely by analyzing my pet superstition about the place.  Having resolved it into its constituent elements I arranged them in convenient troops and squadrons, and collecting all the forces of my logic bore down upon them from impregnable premises with the thunder of irresistible conclusions and a great noise of chariots and general intellectual shouting.  Then, when my big mental guns had overturned all opposition, and were growling almost inaudibly away on the horizon of pure speculation, the routed enemy straggled in upon their rear, massed silently into a solid phalanx, and captured me, bag and baggage.  An indefinable dread came upon me.  I rose to shake it off, and began threading the narrow dell by an old, grass-grown cow-path that seemed to flow along the bottom, as a substitute for the brook that Nature had neglected to provide.

The trees among which the path straggled were ordinary, well-behaved plants, a trifle perverted as to trunk and eccentric as to bough, but with nothing unearthly in their general aspect.  A few loose bowlders, which had detached themselves from the sides of the depression to set up an independent existence at the bottom, had dammed up the pathway, here and there, but their stony repose had nothing in it of the stillness of death.  There was a kind of death-chamber hush in the valley, it is true, and a mysterious whisper above:  the wind was just fingering the tops of the trees—­that was all.

I had not thought of connecting Jo.  Dunfer’s drunken narrative with what I now sought, and only when I came into a clear space and stumbled over the level trunks of some small trees did I have the revelation.  This was the site of the abandoned “shack.”  The discovery was verified by noting that some of the rotting stumps were hacked all round, in a most unwoodmanlike way, while others were cut straight across, and the butt ends of the corresponding trunks had the blunt wedge-form given by the axe of a master.

The opening among the trees was not more than thirty paces across.  At one side was a little knoll—­a natural hillock, bare of shrubbery but covered with wild grass, and on this, standing out of the grass, the headstone of a grave!

I do not remember that I felt anything like surprise at this discovery.  I viewed that lonely grave with something of the feeling that Columbus must have had when he saw the hills and headlands of the new world.  Before approaching it I leisurely completed my survey of the surroundings.  I was even guilty of the affectation of winding my watch at that unusual hour, and with needless care and deliberation.  Then I approached my mystery.

The grave—­a rather short one—­was in somewhat better repair than was consistent with its obvious age and isolation, and my eyes, I dare say, widened a trifle at a clump of unmistakable garden flowers showing evidence of recent watering.  The stone had clearly enough done duty once as a doorstep.  In its front was carved, or rather dug, an inscription.  It read thus: 

AH WEE—­CHINAMAN.

Age unknown.  Worked for Jo.  Dunfer.  This monument is erected by him to keep the Chink’s memory green.  Likewise as a warning to Celestials not to take on airs.  Devil take ’em!  She Was a Good Egg.

I cannot adequately relate my astonishment at this uncommon inscription!  The meagre but sufficient identification of the deceased; the impudent candor of confession; the brutal anathema; the ludicrous change of sex and sentiment—­all marked this record as the work of one who must have been at least as much demented as bereaved.  I felt that any further disclosure would be a paltry anti-climax, and with an unconscious regard for dramatic effect turned squarely about and walked away.  Nor did I return to that part of the county for four years.

II—­WHO DRIVES SANE OXEN SHOULD HIMSELF BE SANE

“Gee-up, there, old Fuddy-Duddy!”

This unique adjuration came from the lips of a queer little man perched upon a wagonful of firewood, behind a brace of oxen that were hauling it easily along with a simulation of mighty effort which had evidently not imposed on their lord and master.  As that gentleman happened at the moment to be staring me squarely in the face as I stood by the roadside it was not altogether clear whether he was addressing me or his beasts; nor could I say if they were named Fuddy and Duddy and were both subjects of the imperative verb “to gee-up.”  Anyhow the command produced no effect on us, and the queer little man removed his eyes from mine long enough to spear Fuddy and Duddy alternately with a long pole, remarking, quietly but with feeling:  “Dern your skin,” as if they enjoyed that integument in common.  Observing that my request for a ride took no attention, and finding myself falling slowly astern, I placed one foot upon the inner circumference of a hind wheel and was slowly elevated to the level of the hub, whence I boarded the concern, sans ceremonie, and scrambling forward seated myself beside the driver—­who took no notice of me until he had administered another indiscriminate castigation to his cattle, accompanied with the advice to “buckle down, you derned Incapable!” Then, the master of the outfit (or rather the former master, for I could not suppress a whimsical feeling that the entire establishment was my lawful prize) trained his big, black eyes upon me with an expression strangely, and somewhat unpleasantly, familiar, laid down his rod—­which neither blossomed nor turned into a serpent, as I half expected—­folded his arms, and gravely demanded, “W’at did you do to W’isky?”

My natural reply would have been that I drank it, but there was something about the query that suggested a hidden significance, and something about the man that did not invite a shallow jest.  And so, having no other answer ready, I merely held my tongue, but felt as if I were resting under an imputation of guilt, and that my silence was being construed into a confession.

Just then a cold shadow fell upon my cheek, and caused me to look up.  We were descending into my ravine!  I cannot describe the sensation that came upon me:  I had not seen it since it unbosomed itself four years before, and now I felt like one to whom a friend has made some sorrowing confession of crime long past, and who has basely deserted him in consequence.  The old memories of Jo.  Dunfer, his fragmentary revelation, and the unsatisfying explanatory note by the headstone, came back with singular distinctness.  I wondered what had become of Jo., and—­I turned sharply round and asked my prisoner.  He was intently watching his cattle, and without withdrawing his eyes replied: 

“Gee-up, old Terrapin!  He lies aside of Ah Wee up the gulch.  Like to see it?  They always come back to the spot—­I’ve been expectin’ you.  H-woa!”

At the enunciation of the aspirate, Fuddy-Duddy, the incapable terrapin, came to a dead halt, and before the vowel had died away up the ravine had folded up all his eight legs and lain down in the dusty road, regardless of the effect upon his derned skin.  The queer little man slid off his seat to the ground and started up the dell without deigning to look back to see if I was following.  But I was.

It was about the same season of the year, and at near the same hour of the day, of my last visit.  The jays clamored loudly, and the trees whispered darkly, as before; and I somehow traced in the two sounds a fanciful analogy to the open boastfulness of Mr. Jo.  Dunfer’s mouth and the mysterious reticence of his manner, and to the mingled hardihood and tenderness of his sole literary production—­the epitaph.  All things in the valley seemed unchanged, excepting the cow-path, which was almost wholly overgrown with weeds.  When we came out into the “clearing,” however, there was change enough.  Among the stumps and trunks of the fallen saplings, those that had been hacked “China fashion” were no longer distinguishable from those that were cut “’Melican way.”  It was as if the Old-World barbarism and the New-World civilization had reconciled their differences by the arbitration of an impartial decay—­as is the way of civilizations.  The knoll was there, but the Hunnish brambles had overrun and all but obliterated its effete grasses; and the patrician garden-violet had capitulated to his plebeian brother—­perhaps had merely reverted to his original type.  Another grave—­a long, robust mound—­had been made beside the first, which seemed to shrink from the comparison; and in the shadow of a new headstone the old one lay prostrate, with its marvelous inscription illegible by accumulation of leaves and soil.  In point of literary merit the new was inferior to the old—­ was even repulsive in its terse and savage jocularity: 

JO.  DUNFER.  DONE FOR.

I turned from it with indifference, and brushing away the leaves from the tablet of the dead pagan restored to light the mocking words which, fresh from their long neglect, seemed to have a certain pathos.  My guide, too, appeared to take on an added seriousness as he read it, and I fancied that I could detect beneath his whimsical manner something of manliness, almost of dignity.  But while I looked at him his former aspect, so subtly inhuman, so tantalizingly familiar, crept back into his big eyes, repellant and attractive.  I resolved to make an end of the mystery if possible.

“My friend,” I said, pointing to the smaller grave, “did Jo.  Dunfer murder that Chinaman?”

He was leaning against a tree and looking across the open space into the top of another, or into the blue sky beyond.  He neither withdrew his eyes, nor altered his posture as he slowly replied: 

“No, sir; he justifiably homicided him.”

“Then he really did kill him.”

“Kill ’im?  I should say he did, rather.  Doesn’t everybody know that?  Didn’t he stan’ up before the coroner’s jury and confess it?  And didn’t they find a verdict of ’Came to ’is death by a wholesome Christian sentiment workin’ in the Caucasian breast’?  An’ didn’t the church at the Hill turn W’isky down for it?  And didn’t the sovereign people elect him Justice of the Peace to get even on the gospelers?  I don’t know where you were brought up.”

“But did Jo. do that because the Chinaman did not, or would n’ot, learn to cut down trees like a white man?”

“Sure!—­it stan’s so on the record, which makes it true an’ legal.  My knowin’ better doesn’t make any difference with legal truth; it wasn’t my funeral and I wasn’t invited to deliver an oration.  But the fact is, W’isky was jealous o’ me”—­and the little wretch actually swelled out like a turkeycock and made a pretense of adjusting an imaginary neck-tie, noting the effect in the palm of his hand, held up before him to represent a mirror.

“Jealous of you!” I repeated with ill-mannered astonishment.

“That’s what I said.  Why not?—­don’t I look all right?”

He assumed a mocking attitude of studied grace, and twitched the wrinkles out of his threadbare waistcoat.  Then, suddenly dropping his voice to a low pitch of singular sweetness, he continued: 

“W’isky thought a lot o’ that Chink; nobody but me knew how ’e doted on ’im.  Couldn’t bear ’im out of ’is sight, the derned protoplasm!  And w’en ‘e came down to this clear-in’ one day an’ found him an’ me neglectin’ our work—­him asleep an’ me grapplin a tarantula out of ‘is sleeve—­W’isky laid hold of my axe and let us have it, good an’ hard!  I dodged just then, for the spider bit me, but Ah Wee got it bad in the side an’ tumbled about like anything.  W’isky was just weigh-in’ me out one w’en ’e saw the spider fastened on my finger; then ’e knew he’d made a jack ass of ’imself.  He threw away the axe and got down on ’is knees alongside of Ah Wee, who gave a last little kick and opened ‘is eyes—­he had eyes like mine—­an’ puttin’ up ’is hands drew down W’isky’s ugly head and held it there w’ile ’e stayed.  That wasn’t long, for a tremblin’ ran through ’im and ’e gave a bit of a moan an’ beat the game.”

During the progress of the story the narrator had become transfigured.  The comic, or rather, the sardonic element was all out of him, and as he painted that strange scene it was with difficulty that I kept my composure.  And this consummate actor had somehow so managed me that the sympathy due to his dramatis persone was given to himself.  I stepped forward to grasp his hand, when suddenly a broad grin danced across his face and with a light, mocking laugh he continued: 

“W’en W’isky got ‘is nut out o’ that ’e was a sight to see!  All his fine clothes—­he dressed mighty blindin’ those days—­were spoiled everlastin’!  ’Is hair was towsled and his face—­what I could see of it—­was whiter than the ace of lilies.  ’E stared once at me, and looked away as if I didn’t count; an’ then there were shootin’ pains chasin’ one another from my bitten finger into my head, and it was Gopher to the dark.  That’s why I wasn’t at the inquest.”

“But why did you hold your tongue afterward?” I asked.

“It’s that kind of tongue,” he replied, and not another word would he say about it.

“After that W’isky took to drinkin’ harder an’ harder, and was rabider an’ rabider anti-coolie, but I don’t think ’e was ever particularly glad that ’e dispelled Ah Wee.  He didn’t put on so much dog about it w’en we were alone as w’en he had the ear of a derned Spectacular Extravaganza like you.  ’E put up that headstone and gouged the inscription accordin’ to his varyin’ moods.  It took ’im three weeks, workin’ between drinks.  I gouged his in one day.”

“When did Jo. die?” I asked rather absently.  The answer took my breath: 

“Pretty soon after I looked at him through that knot-hole, w’en you had put something in his w’isky, you derned Borgia!”

Recovering somewhat from my surprise at this astounding charge, I was half-minded to throttle the audacious accuser, but was restrained by a sudden conviction that came to me in the light of a revelation.  I fixed a grave look upon him and asked, as calmly as I could:  “And when did you go luny?”

“Nine years ago!” he shrieked, throwing out his clenched hands—­“nine years ago, w’en that big brute killed the woman who loved him better than she did me!—­me who had followed ’er from San Francisco, where ’e won ’er at draw poker!—­me who had watched over ’er for years w’en the scoundrel she belonged to was ashamed to acknowledge ’er and treat ’er white!—­me who for her sake kept ’is cussed secret till it ate ’im up!—­me who w’en you poisoned the beast fulfilled ’is last request to lay ’im alongside ’er and give ’im a stone to the head of ’im!  And I’ve never since seen ’er grave till now, for I didn’t want to meet ’im here.”

“Meet him?  Why, Gopher, my poor fellow, he is dead!”

“That’s why I’m afraid of ’im.”

I followed the little wretch back to his wagon and wrung his hand at parting.  It was now nightfall, and as I stood there at the roadside in the deepening gloom, watching the blank outlines of the receding wagon, a sound was borne to me on the evening wind—­a sound as of a series of vigorous thumps—­and a voice came out of the night: 

“Gee-up, there, you derned old Geranium.”