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About The Oregon daily journal. (Portland, Or.) 1902-1972 | View Entire Issue (March 25, 1917)
THE SUNDAY FICTION MAGAZINE, MARCH 25, 1917 E OF Y EYE IVOR llr 1 I hT II TVT II I IHITE moonlight." said Kinxie Mitchell. "and wailing wind. It's queer, too, how thorn things affect a fellow 'way up there on the roof of i the world. I've lain on theedge of one of the Kfoo Long Bran ledges and looked ' down at the Dokpa camp Srs and up at . the stars, and after while, with the winds wailing- in the ' valleys and moonlight flooding: down the scarred blue faces of the higher crags, I couldn't ten which was which!" Mitchell's face has the strange passiv ity that comes to Occidentals of long years in the Orient. It is bronzed by the winds that cry by night in the San Luen passes and whip the turbid waters of the Yar Tsangpo, until the Bhs-Ka sampan men supplicate their" fathers' gods. Tears of Staring: into the slant eyes of , the Mongol has given his own a percep . tible oblique cast. The fiber arch he used to wear in his mouth, io depress tie soft , palate that his gutturals might the more nearly resemble, the trne Celestial's, has done its work well. Only his eyes are different,' and only by the light in them ; does one know that he is not the tall, shaven pated Tartar that he appears. His bronzed features are' scarred with the knives that flashed by night in the , Kara-Ulaa trails, when the Mongols of . S'ai Chiang tried to intercept the gold caravans from the mines of Jalung. It r was unsuccessful, and the nugget-laden ' native mules plodded on their thousand ' Mile journey, or stampeded wildly up the .back passes, to be lost to the government i coffers, and to carry down upon the heads of the finders the curses of the I Dalai Lama and the monks of the ruby I veils. I , His left arm has shriveled and muml I fled from the elbow to te wrist; and he J steadfastly avers that the spear,that ran P- By Arthur James Mayes JUuttrated by Anthony Stuffera "TTHE roof of the world and the moonlit gorges of Lat Dayul are the setting for this story, as weird and thrilling a tale as man has conceived! 3 it through in Lat Dayul was poisoned with the orchid juice that makes the strange ivory mummies on the tombs of the Karsang priests'! So when he stares with unseeing eyes at the mists of the far horizon! listen without interruption. Like most men who have seen much, he talks but little, nor will be brook questioning on the things be says. He has learned finality from the "Whispering Prophet of the strings and distant Temple of the Stars and a. fine disdain -from the Silent Seer of Khotan, whose trances are as long as the moon's phases, and who scorns the puny minute of the white race, struggling use lessly in the sea of unchanging time. WONDER, sometimes whether the af fair of the Phantom Sedan wasn't a figment of dreams," he said, "one of those weird processionals compounded oat of the -moonlight and the whispering winds and the flaming imminence of the planet spangled sky! The silence is big and ths spaces that the eye ranged through are appalling. It's a sort of anteroom to eternity,; and one dreams big, grand dreams up there. I've been so lonely on the rock-girt trails that I've trailed my pack mule alongside of me.' instead of behind, asis the time honored practice. And when a mangy Thibetan mule is company, a man- is hard pressed! "And I've seen as clearly as if they ' weren't built of the, mists of my own I "They rode away again into the quiet darkness of desert night: brain the white, shimmering robes of thai Khal Liang Lama, who was killed in a' fifth century schism, and now rides the spare horses of the lonely little caval cades that bring the interdicted silks out of Khotan for the illicit opium that trends northward from India over the Ningtse hills. Tie's ridden at my side for hours, and I've pinched myself to be sure I was awake and thrust my hands through him and laughed and sung and cursed to break the spell! And then I've seen the moon over my shoulder and realized that it was merely a matter of lights and shadows in the narrow pass. Then I laughed again to find that the sweat was dripping from my face, despite the frost laden wind that echoes the prayers of the Blind Lamas and the despairing shrieks of the mad Shu-Kans, the cliff hermits. "It's a matter of where you are, of course. Plant me alongside of electric lights and white man's laughter, and I'm as incredulous as any man alive. But place me up there, where the wind never ceases its murmuring passage among the crags, where the sandghosts dance in the 'moonlight and the ruined towers of dead civilizations poke their shattered turrets at the flaming' night sky, and I am a child again, heeding the menace of the unpeopled gorges and pattering en ergetic Buddhist prayers in the clucking tongue of the Red Faces! "I'd heard of the Phantom Sedan be fore I ever met it. - And after my horse had shied to the edge of the cliff and crouched there, trembling, taut for the leap into space, I've stood up In my stirrups, the better to eee within the silken curtains. What I saw within I always attributed inr' next morning's sunlight to another phantom of the lights and shadows and loneliness that breed strange fantasies. . Tor a woman looked out at me a wondrous white woman, who wore her yellow curls bound up beneath a great turban of pearls. She looked at me and smiled at my grotesqueness, for I was senna -ed and queue-ed uatil my own mother would have never glanced a second time. And partly from habit and partly from sheer terror I was pattering- aloud the-clacking, .broken prayers of "the Bed Faces! I learned them from motives of caution and recit ed them In secret derision and with outward piety, and now, like, the devil at orisons, I mouth them with the soulless grace of a parrot! "So she smiled, disdainful ly, with full red curving Hps, that seemed purple In the moonlight, and the eight tall white figures that bore her passed, leaving to me only the memory -of wide, dark eyes and curling lips and bare shoulders draped with golden chains In which glittered great uncut rubles, like drops of blood against her alabaster breasts.' , "Then I had to kick my prostrate coolies into their sense and start again.' "I asked about it, and was assured that it was a shadow, like he ghost of the Khal Liang lama. Fu Chang swore by all the neatben gods that once his mule had bolted right through It, and that it was' only a misty cloud, smelling stalely of .tombs and dead men's bones, The Chinese are born liars, but their lies are usually rather expedient than faad-T fuL Among the yellow skinned devils are few artistic twisters of truth. Thsj coolie will lie to spare his back the torw ture of the split bamboo, or to mulct one of a few brass 'cash.' But lies that have to do with the spirit world are seldom encountered. "The red, honest sunlight made the whole thing laughable, and I relegated ri to the long catalogue of unexplained' things which the Orient parades to atar-r tie and amaze the transient Aryan. Bat from that day forward I was keen to col lect all the rumors of the Phantom Se . dan that began to be whispered m the Kinghla gold marts and the Bho-Kan' villages. They were plentiful. - They had1 to do with men mysteriously dead, upon the trails, their eyes wide with a terror that was not engendered- of mortal things: of mule caravans piled In bat tered heaps hr the deepest gorges, where the jackals spurned gold casks and silk bales and opium packets to gnaw the nock-riven flesh; with Internecine strife" that threatened to disrupt ths Dalun Ton monastery, because of ths monks wof shiping a white goddess instead of the fleshless ideals of the true Nirvana! THERE things stood, with source! ess rumors multiplying, when chance and ' a choice offer on smuggled opium sent mt to Dar jeeling. to load under the none too watchful eyes of the British Inspectors' sundry concealed packets of fiber cry-" tals. Weazened old Sing Fongbstensihle stool pigeon for the Chinese' colony, helped me get the contraband inside the hollow pack saddles, whereon reposed commonplace English textiles and trin kets for a gold trading junket, and then made It known that he had a passenger for me. "I hate passengers. Sing Fong met my protests smilingly, 'if the Favored of' Heaven wishes, he explained, he can with ease stampede an old and worthless mule off the Black Precipice. And if,1 perchance, the Red Foreign Devil is rid ing the careless brute the Favored of Heaven will be freed of further hotter. ButX who have accepted gold from "him to stop the ears of tits accursed Bmhman nigs who act for the police, cannot well refuse the honored eompactr "And that Sing Fongs ouaint con cept of honor might be complied with. I traveled north with Scott UcRae. ' Nor did I mount him on a footsore mule that might be expeditiously jostled ty pu Chang; assassin unparalleled, la half a dosen words lie bad discounted my whole theory of etimteatioa. " 'Have you ever met he akB, Any where In China a small frigbteoed-look-Jng white man with a dark-eyed, tall .and fearless-appearing- daughter? -I have. I responded. Six years back, n the Alaahaa fringe of the Goal Desert. He said be was In there for the Russian government to trace down dry petroleum lake rumors that the ' was frankly Interested la. He rode tntoU camp at sunset. Beside htm, on a little white male, rode a young- girl, in the' grotesque Such in costume. But the turned' leather and cumbersome garb could net entirely disguise the lithe slendemese ef the supple young figure. - " 'She was the first white woman t had seen In seven years, and old as I . . 'was, the careless glance ef ber deep fringed eyes sent the blood mounting; be neath the senna stains that helped nry Mongol make-up. They wanted cart ridges and goat'-s milk. I pattered along