Plentywood herald. [volume] (Plentywood, Mont.) 1908-current, 1930-08-07

Yung Long. the wholesale grocer, be
cause Of one little pimplel'
"One little pimple?' smiled the
remark-when applied to the delight
full Si-Si." He blew a kiss into the
air. Il have seen her"
80 have t. said Shen Mok.
He was the youngest man present.
the poorest, the least important. Own
er OF a small laundry, he found himself
here. in the Honorable Pavilion of
Tranquil Longevity, by sutferance and
because he was distantly related to the
great Nag clan which ruled supreme.
financially as well as socially, over the
Mott street side of Chinatown. Not
bad looking he was, tall and muscular
and broad-shouldered, his narrow face
sloping wedge-shaped to a pointed cleft
chin, his slant eyes black and fear
less, his thin nose breaking away bold
and high bridged and aquiline.
Hal" he went on, youthfully, bois-
terously, enthusiastically, she is ex-
quiSite - Buddha, Buddha how ex-
quisite! Hal, hai-when she washes
her hands she scents the water! Hal.
hal, hai--pearls around her soft throat
there should be. and precious emeralds
in her hair, and
Pearls and emeralds,' cut in the
grocer brutally, which you can i'll at
ford, oh c0olie! would marry her
myself-and I am rich-were it not
for the regrettable fact that my es-
teemed first wife has a mouth like
a running tap"
Came laughter, gutteral, sharp.
Only the priest did not laugh. He
thought of Cheng Sung; thought of
Kee Wong.
Friends SO long. No longer friends.
He liked them both. He sighed-re-
membered
Many years earlier, in Canton, these
two had been children together In
neighboring houses not far from the
temple Of the Monkey and the Stork.
in that hectic maze of barter and bar
gain where the blue-blOused coolies
mix with the sweat Of their hands and
broWs as bees mix with their honey.
There had been a small school where
he himself, then a young Buddhist
monk, though a few years older than
Chang Sung and Kee Wong, had
taught them and other children q
smattering of mandarin letters, a few
precious crumbs from Ku-liang'S Com
mentaries and the Diamond Sutra.
But neither Ku-liang's Commentar-
les, so chaste, nor the Diamond Sutra,
SO spiritual, had been able to scotch
the zest for gain and adventure which
had come with youth; and their
imagination fired by the not entirely
truthful tales of a Chinese supercarEo
who had returned from America, his
pockets clanking with gold-they had
agreed to try their luck in California;
had n day crowded aboard a rakish
New England clipper with a gang of
splitting, laughing, acrid coolies, the
SWeepingS Of the waterfront.
Even before the ship warped out they
received their first taste of the new
worlds Grass realities at the hands of
a Gloucester mate, who, short of help
and temper, picked decidedly involun-
tary and as decidedly unpaid steve
, dOreS from among his Mongol passen-
gers. With the rest, Cheng Sung and
Kee Wong labOred all that day in the
broiling sun, while the Gloucester mate
cuffed and cursed them with a certain
austere Puritan determination-would
have cufted and cursed them yet more
severely could he have understood what
Cheng Sung was telling Kee Wong:
1T is wisdom to bow to the ugly
monkey who is in power!"
Wisdom, too, to bow to the red
haired barbarian who is armed with
pistol and rope!"
"Besides-why complain? Are we not
together? And are we not friends?'
"Friends-always!".
Thus the beginning Of their Odyssey.
Once a gale that shivered a mast
into matchwood jerked the trysails
from the extra gaskets and swept half
a dozen coolies to their doom.
They were afraid. But not too much.
For there was their friendship.
Land finally. San Francisco. The
bay stretching like slippery purple glass.
The houses-like foreign devils incom-
prehensible houses. The thousands of
foreign faceS-ludicrous as well as ter
rifying to their Chinese standard. And
the strange language; the strange, row.
dy b-OiSterOuSneSS.
For those were the vests smashing,
roaring, hell-raising epic years. There
was liquor running freely; honky-
tonks; fights at the drop of a hat.
Gold was king. Silver-lead was vice.
roy. Railroads were being shot right
and left, like the tenacles Of a huge
steely octopus. There were ranches.
There was the red heart of wheat, the
white heart Of timber, the black heart
Of coal-and, everywhere, work!
ITO the devil with the cents!"
laughed the white men. 'L.et the yell
low men earn 'em!"
The yellow men did-and, among
them, Cheng Sung and Kee Wong.
Came years Of pitiless toll, of living
close to the danger line of starvation.
The mining camps first; presently San
Francisco, Chicago; at last New York.
Dollars frugally boarded; then tens of
dollars, hundreds, thousands. Slow
--S-l;~- AHo~ro1 6~oin~" 9oorri,,r tie