“It’s the one that had the rifles and spare ammunition,” grunted Gray. “Damn!”
He had put the rifle that had been intended for McCann with his own extra piece and ammunition in a separate box. In spite of persistent questioning, the drivers who had brought the wagons to Honanfu denied that they had seen the box.
A telegram was sent to the railway terminal. The answer was delayed until late afternoon. No news of the box was forthcoming.
“It’s no use,” declared Delabar moodily. “Remember, you told Wu Fang Chien that our rifles were with the luggage. Probably he has taken the box.”
“Looks that way,” admitted Gray, who was angered at the loss. “Well, there’s no help for it. We’ll hike, before Wu Fang thinks up something else to do.”
He gave the word to the muleteers, the wagons creaked forward. He jumped on the tail of the last one, beside Delabar, and Honanfu with its watching crowds faded into the dust, after a turn in the road.
From that time forth, Gray kept his rifle in his hand, or slung at his shoulder.
While they sat huddled uncomfortably on some stores against the side of the jogging cart—nothing is quite so responsive to the law of gravity as a springless Chinese cart, or so uncomfortable, unless it be the rutted surface of a Chinese imperial highway—both were thinking.
Delabar, to himself: “Why is it that an imperial road in China is not one kept in order—in the past—for the emperor, but one that can be put in order, if the emperor announced his intention of passing over it? My associate, the American, who thinks only along straight lines, will never understand the round-about working of the oriental mind. And that will work him evil.”
Gray, aloud: “Look here, Delabar! We can safely guess now that Wu Fang would like to hinder our journey.”
“I have already assumed that.”
“Hm. Think it’s because the Wusun actually exist, and he wants to keep us from the Gobi?”
Delabar was aroused from his muse.
“A Chinese official seldom acts on his own initiative,” he responded. “Wu Fang Chien has received instructions. Yes, I think he intends to bar our passage beyond Liangchowfu. By advancing as we are from Honanfu, we are running blindly into danger.”
Gray squinted back at the dusty road, nursing his rifle across his knees. His brown face was impassive, the skin about the eyes deeply wrinkled from exposure. The eyes themselves were narrow and hard. Delabar found it increasingly difficult to guess what went on in the mind of the taciturn American.
“I’ve been wondering,” said Gray slowly, “wondering for a long time about a certain question. Admitting that the Wusun are there, in the Gobi, why are they kept prisoners—carefully guarded like this? It doesn’t seem logical!”
The Syrian smiled blandly, twisting his beard with a thin hand.
“Logic!” he cried. “Oh, the mind of the inner Asiatic is logical; but the reasons governing it, and the grounds for its deductions are quite different from the motives of European psychology.”
“Well, I fail to see the reason why the Wusun people should be guarded for a good many hundred years.”
“Simply this. Buddhism is the crux of the oriental soul. Confucius and Taoism are secondary to the advent of the Gautama—to the great Nirvana. Buddhism rules inner China, Tibet, part of Turkestan, some of India, and—under guise of Shamanism, Southeastern Siberia.”
Gray made no response. He was studying the face of Delabar—that intellectual, nervous, unstable face.
“Buddhism has ruled Central Asia since the time of Sakuntala—the great Sakuntala,” went on the scientist. “And the laws of Buddha are ancient and very binding. The Wusun are enemies of Buddhism. They are greater enemies than the Manchus, of Northern and Eastern China. That is because the Wusun hold in reverence a symbol that is hateful to the priests of the temples.”
“What is that?”
Delabar hesitated.
“The symbol is some barbarian sign. The Wusun cherish it, perhaps because cut off from the world, they have no other faith than the faith of their forefathers.” The scientist’s high voice rang with strong conviction. “In the annals of the Han dynasty, before the birth of Christ, it is related that an army under the General Ho K’u-p’ing was sent on plea of the Buddhists to destroy the Huing-nu—, the ‘green-eyed devils’ and the Wusun—the ‘Tall Ones,’ of the west. The military expedition failed. But since then the Buddhists have been embittered against the Wusun—have guarded them as prisoners.”
“Then religious fanaticism is the answer?”
“A religious feud.”
“Because the Wusun will not adopt Buddhism?”
“Because they cling to the absurd sign of their faith!”
Gray passed a gnarled hand across his chin and frowned at his rifle.
“Sounds queer. I’d like to see that sign.”
Delabar settled himself uneasily against the jarring of the cart.
“It is not likely, Captain Gray,” he said, “that either of us will see it.”
Whereupon they fell silent, each busied with his thoughts, in this manner.
Delabar, to himself: My companion is a physical brute; how can he understand the high mysteries of Asian thought?
Gray: Either this Syrian has a grand imagination, or he knows more than he has been telling me—the odds being the latter is correct.
CHAPTER VI
MIRAI KHAN
NEAR Kia-yu-kwan, the western gate of the Great Wall, the twin pagodas of Liangchowfu rise from the plain.
In former centuries Liangchowfu was the border town, a citadel of defense against the outer barbarians of the northern steppe and Central Asia. It is a walled city, standing squarely athwart the highway from China proper to the interior. Beyond Liangchowfu are the highlands of Central Asia.
In exactly a month after leaving Honanfu, as Gray had promised, the wagons bearing the two Americans passed through the town gate.
Gray, dusty and travel-stained to his waist, but alert and erect of carriage, walked before the two carts. He showed no ill effects from the hard stage of the journey they had just completed.
Delabar lay behind the leather curtain of one of the wagons. His spirits had suffered from the past month. The monotonous road, with its ceaseless mud villages had depressed him. The groups of natives squatting in the sun before their huts, in the never-ending search for vermin, and the throngs of staring children that sought for horse dung in the roads to use for fuel, had wrought on his sensitive nerves.
They had not seen a white man during the journey. Gray had written to Van Schaick before they left Honanfu, but they expected no mail until they should return to Shanghai.
“If we reach the coast again,” Delabar had said moodily.
The better air of the hill country through which they passed had not improved his spirits, as it had Gray’s. The sight of the forest clad peaks, with their hidden pagodas, from the eaves of which the wind bells sent their tinkle down the breeze, held no interest for the scientist.
Glimpses of brown, spectacled workmen who peered at them from the rice fields, or the vision of a tattered junk sail, passing down an estuary in the purple quiet of evening, when the dull yellow of the fields and the green of the hills were blended in a soft haze did not cause Delabar to lift his eyes.
China, vast and changeless, had taken the two Americans to itself. And Gray knew that Delabar was afraid.