Sons (21 page)

Wang the Tiger fixed his two black eyes on the youth and he saw the lad’s ruddy face turn pale so that the pocks stood out like scars on the skin, but he spoke up well enough and he said, although somewhat breathless,

“I can do it.”

“I have never asked you anything,” said Wang the Tiger sternly, “but perhaps your clownishness can be of some use now. If you are lost and do not use your wits or if you betray yourself it is your own fault. But you have that merry, silly face and I know you look more simple than you are, and so I have chosen you. But play the part of a simple witless lad and you are safe enough. If you are caught—can you be brave enough to die and be silent?”

Then the good red came surging back into the boy’s face and he stood there sturdy and strong in his coarse clothes of blue cotton, and he said,

“Try me, my captain!”

Then Wang the Tiger was pleased with him and he said, “Brave lad! It is the test and if you do well you are worthy to move higher.” And he smiled a little as he stared at the boy and his heart that so seldom moved at anything except his gusts of anger now moved a little toward this boy, yet not for the boy’s sake either for he did not love him, but it moved with some vague yearning and he wished again he might have a son of his own; not like this lad, either, but a strong, true, grave son of his own.

So he bade the boy put on such clothes as a farmer’s son wears and girdle a towel about his waist and he had him put on old worn shoes on his bare feet, for he had a long way to go and rough rocks to clamber over. The lad made a little sling then such as all boys have and made out of the small forked branch of a tree and when it was made he ran lightly down the mountainside and he disappeared into the woods.

Then during the two days he was gone Wang the Tiger ordered his men as he planned he would and he apportioned out the work to them all so that none could be idle and mischievous. He sent his trusty men out into the countryside to buy food and he sent them separately and they bought meat and grains in small quantities so that none might suspect they bought for a hundred men.

When the evening of the second day was come Wang the Tiger went out and he looked down the rocky steps to see if the lad was come. Deep in his heart he feared for the lad and when he thought of him perhaps cruelly dead he found some strange, compassion and remorse in his heart and as night came on and the new moon rose he looked toward the Double Dragon Mountain and he thought to himself,

“I should have sent a man I could spare, perhaps, and not my own brother’s son. If he is cruelly dead, how shall I meet my brother? Yet I could only trust my own blood, too.”

He watched on after his men slept and the moon came clear of the mountains and swung high in the heavens, but still the lad did not come. At last the night wind grew very chill and Wang the Tiger went in and his heart was heavy because he found what he had not known before, that he would miss the lad a little if he never came back, because he had such merry tricky ways and he could not be angered.

But in the small late hours of the night as he lay awake he heard a little beating on the gate and he rose himself and in haste and he went out. There the lad was when Wang the Tiger had drawn away the wooden bar, and he looked very weary and spent but still good humored. He came limping in and his trousers were torn from his thigh and blood had streamed down his leg and dried. But he was still in high humor.

“I am back, Uncle,” he cried in a spent small voice, and Wang the Tiger laughed suddenly and silently in the way he had if he were truly pleased and he said roughly,

“What have you done to your thigh?”

But the lad answered lightly, “It is nothing.”

Then Wang the Tiger made one of the few jokes he ever made in his life, because he was so pleased, and he said,

“I hope the Leopard did not claw it!”

The lad laughed aloud at this for he knew his uncle meant it for laughter, and he sat down on the step into the temple and he said,

“No, he did not. I fell upon a briary tree, for the moss is damp with dew and slippery, and the tree scratched me like this. I am starving, Uncle!”

“Come and eat then,” said Wang the Tiger, “eat and drink and sleep before I hear your tale.”

And he told the lad to come into the hall and sit down and he roared out for a soldier to bring food and drink for the once to serve this lad. But the noise of it woke this man and that and one after the other waked and they came crowding into the court lit by the light of the high moon and they all wanted to hear what the lad had seen. Then Wang the Tiger, seeing how after the lad had eaten and drunk, that he was so important and excited with the success of his venture that he was far from sleep, and seeing that dawn was now near, he said,

“Tell it all now, then, and afterwards go to your sleep.”

So the boy sat on the altar before the Buddha whose face was covered and he said,

“Well, and I went and I went, and that mountain is twice as high as this one, Uncle, and the lair is in a valley round as a bowl at the top, and I wish we could have it for ours when we take the region. They have houses and everything there like a little village. And I did what you said, Uncle. I went crying and limping to the gates at night with my dead birds in my bosom, and some of the birds on that mountain are the strangest, brightest hue. One I struck was bright yellow all over like gold and I have it yet, it was so pretty—” and as he spoke he drew out of his bosom a yellow bird and it hung in his hand soft and dead and like a handful of limp gold there. Wang the Tiger was in all haste to hear the lad’s tale and he chafed at this childishness of a dead bird, but he restrained himself and let the lad tell his tale in his own way, and so the lad went on and he laid his bird carefully on the altar beside him and he looked from one face to another of the men who listened to him, and beside him flared the torch Wang the Tiger had caused to be lit and thrust into the ashes of the incense urn on that altar, and the lad said,

“Well, and when they heard the beating on the gate they came from within and first they opened a very narrow crack and peered to see who it was. And I cried piteously and said, ‘I am far from my home—I have wandered too far and the night has come down on me and I am afraid of the beasts of the wood and let me come into this temple!’ Then the one who opened shut the gate again and he ran and asked someone and I cried on and moaned as piteously as I could,” and here the lad moaned to show them all what he did and all the men roared with laughter and admired him and here and there one called out,

“The little monkey—the little pocked devil!”

The lad grinned all over his pocked face with delight and he told on and he said,

“They let me in at last and I was so simple as I could be and after I had eaten wheaten bread and a bowl of gruel I pretended to be frightened and to know where I was and I began to cry, ‘I want to go to my home. I am afraid here because you are the robbers and I am afraid of the Leopard!’ and I ran to the gate and wanted to be let out and I said, ‘I would liefer be among wild beasts after all!’

“Then they all laughed because I was so simple and they comforted me and said, ‘Do you think we will hurt a lad? Wait until morning and you may go your way in peace.’ So I ceased my shivering and crying after a while and I pretended to be more at ease and they asked me where I had come from and I told them the name of a village I had heard was on the other side of the mountain. Then they asked me what I had heard about them and I said I had heard they were very heroic, fearless men and their leader not a man, but a man’s body with a leopard’s head on it, and I said, ‘I would like to see him, but I would be afraid, too, to see such a sight.’ They all laughed at me, then, and one said, ‘Come and I will show you him,’ and he led me to a window and I looked in out of the darkness and there were torches burning inside, and there the chief sat. He is truly a curious and monstrous fellow, Uncle, and his head is wide at the top and slopes at the brow so that he does look like a leopard, and he sat drinking with a young woman. She was very fierce, too, and still she was pretty, but fierce, and they drank together from a jug of wine. First he drank and then she drank.”

“How many men were there in that place and what their guns?” asked Wang the Tiger.

“Oh, many men, Uncle,” said the lad earnestly. “Three times our number of fighting men and many serving men and there are women and there are little children running everywhere and some lads like me. I asked one of them who his father was and he said he did not know because they had no separate fathers there and they only knew their mothers but not their fathers. And that is a strange thing, too. All the fighting men have guns but the serving men have only sickles and knives and such homely things. But at the head of the cliffs about the lair they have great heaps of round rocks piled to roll down upon any who attack them, and there is only one pass into that lair, for there are cliffs everywhere about it and guards always at the pass. Only the guard slept when I came by and I crept past him. He slept so that I might have taken his gun for it lay there on the rock beside him and he snored so that I might have taken it. But I did not, though I was tempted, for they might have thought I was not what I seemed.”

“Did the fighting men seem large and brave?” asked Wang the Tiger again.

“Brave enough,” replied the lad. “Some are big and some small, but they talked among themselves after they had eaten and they paid no heed to me for I stayed with the lads after a while, and I heard them complain against the Leopard because he would not divide the spoils according to their law, and he kept so much for himself and he was greedy with all the pretty women and he would not let the other men have them until he was tired of them. He did not share as brothers should share, they said, and he held himself too high, although he was born a common fellow, and he cannot read and write, and they are weary of his highness.”

Now this pleased Wang the Tiger greatly when he heard it and he mused on as the lad told his story of this and that and what he had to eat and how clever he was and Wang the Tiger mused and planned, and after a while he saw that the lad had told all and only repeated his words and searched his brain for a last thing so that he might keep the attention and the admiration of the men as long as he could. Then Wang the Tiger rose and he commended the lad and bade him go to sleep now and he told the men to be at their tasks for it was dawn, and the torch was burned down and its flickering flame pale in the light of the rising sun.

He went into his room, then, and he called his trusty men to him and he said,

“I have mused and planned and I believe I can do this thing without losing a life or a gun, and we must avoid battle, since they are so many more than we are in that lair. The thing to do when one kills a centipede is to crush its head and then its hundred legs are in confusion and they run hither and thither against each other and they are harmless. We will kill the poisonous head of this robber band thus.”

The men stared astounded at such boldness and the Pig Butcher said in his loud coarse way,

“Captain, it sounds well, but you must first catch the centipede before you can cut off his head!”

“So shall I,” returned Wang the Tiger, “and here is my plan. You are to help me. We are to garb ourselves very fine and bravely as heroes do, and we will go to the magistrate of this region and say we are braves and wandering soldiers and that we seek for service under him, secret service as a private guard, and we will give as our pledge that we will kill the Leopard for him. He is anxious now for his seat and he will be eager for our help. Here is the plan. I will tell him he is to pretend truce with the robber and invite the Leopard and the next to him to a mighty feast. Then when the moment comes, and he can mark it by a wine cup dropped from his hand and shattered, you and I will rush from where we are hidden and fall upon the robbers and kill them. I will have our men scattered through the town secretly everywhere and they shall fall upon such of the smaller robbers as will not come to my banner. So we will kill this centipede’s head and it is not a thing hard to do.”

Now all of them saw this thing was feasible and they were struck with admiration and they agreed heartily to it. After they had talked a little more of how it would be managed, Wang the Tiger dismissed them and he called his men into the temple hall. He sent his trusty men to see that the priests were not near where they could hear him and then he told his gathered men what his plan was. When they heard it they shouted loudly,

“Good! Good! Ha, the Black-browed Tiger!”

And Wang the Tiger heard them as he stood there beneath the veiled god and although he said nothing and he was very proud and silent and aloof, yet there surged up in him such a deep pleasure in his power that he lowered his eyes and stood there grave among his men. When they were still once more and waited to hear what else he might tell them, he said,

“You are to eat and drink well, and then garb yourselves as commonly as you can, but still as soldiers, and take your guns and scatter yourselves through the city only not too far from the magistrate’s court. When I send out my shrill whistle you are to come. But wait the number of days until I call.” And he turned to his trusty harelipped man and he said, “Pay every man five pieces of silver for wine and lodging and the food he needs.”

This was done and every man was content. Then Wang the Tiger called his three trusty men to him and they dressed themselves bravely and concealed short swords in their garments and they took up their guns and they all went away together.

As for the priests, they rejoiced very much to see these wild fellows go. But when Wang the Tiger saw them rejoicing he said,

“Do not rejoice too soon, for we may come back. But if we can find a better place we will not.” He paid them well, nevertheless, and above what he owed he gave them a sum and he said to the abbot, “Mend your roofs and repair your house and buy yourselves each a new robe.”

The priests were overjoyed at such generosity and the old abbot was somewhat ashamed and he said,