Humorous stories; Washington (State) -- Fiction; Western stories
He lay hid in this cellar till dark; then started out to find his friends
and get something to eat. He darned near started everything all over
again; but he dodged down another alley and managed to get some noodles
and chowmain at the back door of the Hong-Kong Grill, where a tong
brother worked. He begun to realize that he was a marked man. The mark
didn't show; but he was. He didn't know what the law might do to him.
It looked like at least twenty years in some penal institution, if not
hanging; and he didn't want either one.
So he borrowed three dollars from the tong brother and started for
some place where he could lead a quiet life. He managed to get to
Oakland, though the deck hands on the ferryboat talked about throwing
him overboard. But they let him live if he would stay at the back end
till everyone, including the deck hands, was safe off or behind something
when the boat landed. Then he wandered off into the night and found a
freight train. He didn't care where he went--just somewhere they wouldn't
know about his crime.
He rode a while between two freight cars; then left that train and found
a blind baggage on a passenger train that went faster and near froze him
to death. He got off, chilled in the early morning, at some little town
and bought some food in a Chinee restaurant and also got warm. But he
hadn't no more than got warm when he was put out of the place, right by
his own people.
It was warm outside by this time, so he didn't mind it so much. The town
did, though. It must of been a small town, but he says thousands of men
chased him out of it about as soon as he was warmed up enough to run. He
couldn't understand this, because how could they know he was the one that
caused all that trouble in San Francisco?
He got a freight train outside the town and rode on and on. He says
he rode on for weeks and weeks; but that's his imagination. It must of
been about three days, with spells of getting off for food and to get
warmed when he was freezing, and be chased by these wild hill tribes when
he had done the latter. It put a crimp into his sunny nature--all this
armed pursuit of him. He says if he had been a Christian, and believed
in only one God, he would never of come through alive, it taking about
seventy-four or five of his own gods to protect him from these maddened
savages. He had a continuous nightmare of harsh words and blows. He
wondered they didn't put him in jail; but it seemed like they only
wanted to keep him going.
Of course it had to end. He got to Spokane finally and sneaked round to
a friend that had a laundry; and this friend must of been a noble soul.
He took in the outcast and nursed him with food and drink, and repeatedly
washed his clothes. Wanting a ranch cook about that time, I got in touch
with him through another cousin, who said this man wanted very much to
go out into a safe country, and would never leave it because of
unpleasantness in getting here.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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