Mr. Masterton started from a slight doze in the heavy, lumbering "mountain wagon" which had taken the place of the smart Concord coach that he had left at the last station. The scenery, too, had changed; the four horses threaded their way through rocky defiles of stunted larches and hardy "brush," with here and there open patches of shrunken snow. Yet at the edge of declivities he could still see through the rolled-up leather curtains the valley below bathed in autumn, the glistening rivers half spent with the long summer drought, and the green slopes rolling upward into crest after crest of ascending pines. At times a drifting haze, always imperceptible from below, veiled the view; a chill wind blew through the vehicle, and made the steel sledge-runners that hung beneath the wagon, ready to be shipped under the useless wheels, an ominous provision. A few rude "stations," half blacksmith shops, half grocery, marked the deserted but wellworn road; along, narrow "packer's" wagon, or a tortuous file of Chinamen carrying mysterious bundles depending from bamboo poles, was their rare and only company. The rough sheepskin jackets which these men wore over their characteristic blue blouses and their heavy leggings were a new revelation to Masterton, accustomed to the thinly clad coolie of the mines. They seemed a distinct race.
"I never knew those chaps get so high up, but they seem to understand the cold," he remarked.
The driver looked up, and ejaculated his disgust and his tobacco juice at the same moment.
"I reckon they're everywhar in Californy whar you want 'em and whar you don't; you take my word for it, afore long Californy will hev to reckon that she ginerally DON'T want 'em, ef a white man has to live here. With a race tied up together in a language ye can't understand, ways that no feller knows,--from their prayin' to devils, swappin' their wives, and havin' their bones sent back to Chiny,--wot are ye goin' to do, and where are ye? Wot are ye goin' to make outer men that look so much alike ye can't tell 'em apart;that think alike and act alike, and never in ways that ye kin catch on to! Fellers knotted together in some underhand secret way o' communicatin' with each other, so that ef ye kick a Chinaman up here on the Summit, another Chinaman will squeal in the valley!
And the way they do it just gets me! Look yer! I'll tell ye somethin' that happened, that's gospel truth! Some of the boys that reckoned to hev some fun with the Chinee gang over at Cedar Camp started out one afternoon to raid 'em. They groped along through the woods whar nobody could see 'em, kalkilatin' to come down with a rush on the camp, over two miles away. And nobody DIDsee 'em, only ONE Chinaman wot they met a mile from the camp, burnin' punk to his joss or devil, and he scooted away just in the contrary direction. Well, sir, when they waltzed into that camp, darn my skin! ef there was a Chinaman there, or as much as a grain of rice to grab! Somebody had warned 'em! Well! this sort o' got the boys, and they set about discoverin' how it was done. One of 'em noticed that there was some of them bits of tissue paper slips that they toss around at funerals lyin' along the road near the camp, and another remembered that the Chinaman they met on the hill tossed a lot of that paper in the air afore he scooted. Well, sir, the wind carried just enough of that paper straight down the hill into that camp ten minutes afore THEY could get there, to give them Chinamen warnin'--whatever it was! Fact! Why, I've seen 'em stringin' along the road just like them fellers we passed just now, and then stop all of a suddent like hounds off the scent, jabber among themselves, and start off in a different direction"--"Just what they're doing now! By thunder!" interrupted another passenger, who was looking through the rolled-up curtain at his side.
All the passengers turned by one accord and looked out. The file of Chinamen under observation had indeed turned, and was even then moving rapidly away at right angles from the road.
"Got some signal, you bet!" said the driver; "some yeller paper or piece o' joss stick in the road. What?"The remark was addressed to the passenger who had just placed his finger on his lip, and indicated a stolid-looking Chinaman, overlooked before, who was sitting in the back or "steerage" seat.
"Oh, he be darned!" said the driver impatiently. "HE is no account; he's only the laundryman from Rocky Canyon. I'm talkin' of the coolie gang."
