The Scarecrow and Other Stories Part 37

"Let me go;--you--d.a.m.ned--c.h.i.n.k!"

She muttered the words under her breath.

He heard her.

He thought of the drunkard and he thought of her.

Suddenly he felt quite furious; stilly, sinisterly furious.

"I'm 'Melican."

He said it stolidly. His narrow, black eyes were unwavering on her.

She began to cry.

"Let me go," she whimpered. "I ain't done nothing to you. I couldn't have got on to your being--a--c.h.i.n.k."

"What diffelence does that make?" He asked. And then he reiterated with careful precision: "I tell you I'm a 'Melican."

Her words came to him in a gurgle of terror.

"I hate you. I hate all of your yellow faces--and them eyes! I hate them horrid, nasty--eyes!"

He bent his head until his face almost touched hers. His strong, angry fingers held her firmly by either arm.

"It is not pletty, this face?"

She struggled, inane with fear. She fought, trying to free herself, to tear away from the vise-like grip of those awful hands; swaying like a tortured, trapped creature against his strength. She could feel the intensity, the calm scrutiny of his long, narrow eyes upon her.

Suddenly something in his brain snapped.

He pushed her roughly from him.

He saw her fall to the pavement; he saw her head strike the curb.

He stood there watching her as she lay, outlined by the light colored material of her dress against the wet blackness of the asphalt.

"What diffelence does it make if I am a Chinaman?"

He asked it as he bent over her. But she did not answer. The question went out into the heavy stillness, hanging there to be echoed deafeningly by a thousand silent tongues.

Something in the sudden quiet of the way she lay filled him with a tranquil joy. He knelt beside her, He reached his hand over her heart.

He got up slowly, deliberately.

He moved silently away, going with that padded, sinuous motion, so distinctly Chinese.

With cunning stealth he went back the way he had come, treading lightly; cautiously seeking the darkest shadows.

He had gone some little distance when he heard the regular beat of hurrying footsteps following him.

He stood stolidly, still, awaiting whatever might happen.

Overhead he saw a cl.u.s.ter of heavy, black clouds sweeping across the sky, like eager, reaching hands against a somber background.

It had begun to rain again. He could feel the raindrops trickling gently down his upturned face.

He wondered, as the footsteps halted beside him, if he should have run.

His mind, working rapidly, decided that any other man would have gotten away; any other man but not a Chinaman.

A heavy hand fell across his shoulder.

"I've got you, my boy!" A voice shouted in his ear. "I seen you kneeling there beside her. You'll be coming along with me!"

He turned to face the voice.

The wind that heralded the coming storm rustled through the street, carrying with it a litter of filthy castaway newspapers. Flurries of stinging sand-sharp dust swirled above the pavement. A low rumble of thunder bellowed overhead. Then the rain came down in sudden lashing fury.

He had to raise his voice to make himself heard.

"I'm velee glad," he said.

The bull's eye was flashed into his placid, narrow eyes.

He could see the policeman's face behind the light; see the surprise quivering on the red features.

In the darkness above the racket of the storm, he heard the man's gasping mutter:

"Yellow--by G.o.d!--Yellow!"

CHINA-CHING[1]

[Footnote 1: Published originally in _The All Story Magazine_.]

The racket was terrific. The yelping, the shrill prolonged whines, the quick incessant barking; and running in growling under-current, the throaty, infuriated snarling.

The woman stood at the window gazing out into the gathering twilight.

Before her eyes stretched the drab, flat fields; here and there a shadowy ma.s.s of trees reached their feathery tips that were etched in darkly against the graying skies. Directly before her, beyond the unkept waste that might at one time have been a garden, reared the high, wire walls of the kennels. She could just make out the dim, undefined forms of the dogs running to and fro within the narrow, confining s.p.a.ce.

The swift, persistent movement of them fascinated her. The ghostly shapes of them pattering sinuously and silently along the ground; the dull scratching thud of the claws and bodies that hurled themselves again and again into the strong wire netting. The impossibility of their escape throttled her. Their futile attempts at freedom caused a powerful nausea to creep over her. And there in the center of the run she could distinguish, chained to the dog-house,--a pale blur in the fading light,--the motionless yellow ma.s.s of the chow, China-Ching.

The shrill, prolonged whines, the quick, incessant barking:--

"Oh, my Gawd;" she muttered involuntarily. "Oh, my Gawd!"