Li Jun and the Iron Road Page 5

  All the way home on the boat she thought about it. When they reached Hong Kong, James hailed a rickshaw and said goodnight to Relic and Little Tiger.

  Relic warned him, “Be sure to go straight to your hotel, young man. Lei Mo will have his thugs out looking for you.”

  “First I have to send a message to my father,” said James.

  “But the New Year’s celebrations are starting,” said Relic, pointing at the first firecracker lighting up the sky to herald the New Year. “Everything will be closed.”

  Little Tiger butted in. “Tell your father how I found the men.”

  James smiled at her. “I appreciate all you’ve done, Little Tiger, but I want to prove to my father that I have done the job he sent me to do, contrary to all his expectations.”

  Relic became thoughtful. “It’s the way of fathers and sons, young man. Sons try to please their fathers and it is never good enough, until one day the son surpasses the father.”

  “Some fathers are never satisfied,” muttered James.

  “And some fathers not there at all,” sighed Little Tiger.

  Relic put his hand on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze.

  “This is what I will write in the telegram,” said James. “Good News. Stop. Two thousand healthy and hale crew ready to sail. Stop. Happy Chinese New Year. Stop.”

  “Why stop?” asked Little Tiger, puzzled.

  Relic answered. “My boy, James will send a message over telegraph wires — a miracle of communication. But messages sent this way are easily garbled and misunderstood. Saying ‘stop’ shows that it is the end of a sentence.”

  She leaped at the opportunity.

  “Mr. James, you should telegraph ‘Little Tiger is coming. STOP. Little Tiger is fantastic with black powder. STOP.’”

  James patted her on the head and laughed as he climbed into his rickshaw.

  Relic called to him, “Watch out for Lei Mo. He wants to get revenge on us.”

  But James had already sped off.

  Relic bent down to say goodbye to Little Tiger. With tenderness and deep concern, he looked her in the eye. “Make sure you find a safe bed tonight, Little Tiger,” he told her, and strolled off down the long street, festooned with lanterns for the New Year celebrations.

  Back in her tiny room, Little Tiger had things to do. She set up her altar and prayed to her ancestors that the village recruits would show up as they had promised. She held the photograph of her family close to her and caressed the image of her father.

  “I will find you,” she whispered.

  Then she packed the tintype and what little else she owned into her rucksack. Yes, she would make one last try to be on that boat to Gold Mountain in the morning. She tried to sleep but she only tossed and turned, listening to the gongs announcing the dragon dancers and the sound of thousands of fireworks exploding to signal the arrival of the Year of the Horse. Would this be the year when her luck would change?

  ***

  Two days later, on the dock, Little Tiger counted the men who’d come from the village. Yes! she said to herself, relieved that they had all kept their promise. When James arrived she boasted, “Ninety-nine men plus me — one hundred!”

  James smiled indulgently and pulled out his money clip. He was a man of his word and he would pay her for recruiting these men. He peeled off the notes and handed them to her.

  “Now where’s Relic?” he asked. “He said he’d be at the office, but … ha, ha! He’s probably in a drunken stupor now that the job is done. However, I promised to pay him and I will.”

  As James headed to the office, the ship hands started to line up all the Chinese men waiting on the dock. Little Tiger trotted behind him. She didn’t know what to think, what to do, how to react. Was it possible that James would leave her behind after all she had done to help him? In desperation she tugged on his arm and pressed some of the money into his hand. “See. I pay myself for the ocean passage.”

  He looked down at her. “Long life, happiness, and prosperity to you. You’ve got a lot of spunk, little buddy. I really mean that, but I told you — you’re not coming. You’re too small.”

  Still she traipsed after him calling out, “Please, Mr. James, please take me to Gold Mountain.”

  They reached the Nichol Company office and James pulled open the door. What they saw inside made them freeze in shock.

  “Oh, Jesus!” he cried, clapping his hand over his mouth.

  There, slumped in the chair behind the desk, was Relic’s body. His throat had been slit and the blood was still oozing from his neck, turning his white shirt a dark crimson. Little Tiger had never seen such a brutal death. She felt as if a knife had cut at her own heart and tears welled up in her eyes. She collapsed in a heap, sobbing.

  “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,” she said, holding her knees and rocking back and forth. “Mr. Relic, you were my only friend.”

  James put his hand firmly on her shoulder to comfort her. Then he called the police, who asked him a lot of questions while Little Tiger sat in the hall, alone with her grief. The world had utterly changed. Now she was truly alone.

  James came to find her and together they watched the uniformed policemen carry Relic’s body away on a stretcher. She turned to James. “Only one person could do this.”

  “I know,” he said. “It must be Lei Mo, and I’ll bet you’re next on his list. Come on, kid, you’re coming with me.”

  “To Gold Mountain?”

  James nodded. In her heart, Little Tiger was both ecstatic and terribly sad. This was what she had longed for but it had happened for the wrong reason. Mr. Relic, her friend, was dead.

  ***

  With all three ships ready to board, Little Tiger joined the stream of workers on the Hong Kong dock, two thousand men, four abreast in a line that seemed to stretch forever. As she shuffled up the gangplank, shoulder to shoulder with all these strangers, she realized that she had no idea what lay ahead.

  At the top, she turned and searched for James. Ah — there he was, standing with harbour officials reviewing the paperwork for his human cargo. Hoping she could catch his eye, she lingered on the gangplank until a sailor pushed her forward. “Hurry up! Move it! Let’s go!”

  ***

  They had been sailing for close to two months and many of the workers had become sick with dysentery, stuck in the dark, dank hold of the schooner. Many had stopped eating because they couldn’t keep their food down. Little Tiger wouldn’t call it food — slop, more likely. The stench in the hold was overpowering and what little gruel and water they were given came down in a bucket on a rope through a hatch that was only opened twice a day.

  Little Tiger longed to feel land under her feet and breathe fresh air. She’d been crammed in the hold ever since leaving Hong Kong, shoulder to shoulder with so many men as the ocean heaved beneath them. Most of them were strangers, a few were from her village, and who was that in the corner? Little Tiger thought she recognized him — yes, it was Di Hong, the bully she’d outsmarted with fake dynamite, trying to hide with his arms locked around his knees. There was nowhere safe for him; not Hong Kong where Lei Mo had put a price on his head, not here on the ship where so many men had been victims of his brutal gang. They were his enemies and would seek revenge. Little Tiger looked him in the eye and he turned away, embarrassed.

  The hold was a stinking nightmare, but at least she had one friend — Wang Ma, from her village. He crouched beside her as the hatch opened and light streamed into their prison. Little Tiger took out her photo and, turning away from him, examined it in the unaccustomed light.

  “Those your parents?” asked Wang Ma. “They know you’re going to Gold Mountain?”

  “They’re dead,” she answered. She didn’t confide to him that deep in her heart she clung to the hope that her father was still alive. No, she would only confess that to someone she knew very well.

  Wang Ma nodded in sympathy. “When I left, my mother cried her eyes out. I told her that in a year of two, I’ll b
e back to buy her a little farm. Then I’ll find myself a wife, maybe two, and we’ll have a dozen children.”

  Little Tiger was unimpressed. “That’s your dream? A pair of fat wives and a litter of kids? Me, I want to build a factory in my village so every man can work.”

  “Just one factory?” Wang Ma teased.

  “To start with,” said Little Tiger. “Then more, when the farms are replanted.”

  “You’ve got big dreams,” he said, laughing aloud.

  Little Tiger punched him playfully in the chest. “You dream little, you live little,” she replied as she wrapped up her precious photo and put it back in her rucksack.

  The hatch opened wider and sun streamed into the hold. Little Tiger and Wang Ma shielded their eyes from the sudden brightness. A rope ladder was thrown down.

  “Time to get some air,” called a sailor from above.

  All the men were startled and shouted with joy. Little Tiger was one of the first to scramble up the ladder and onto the deck. She looked out across the railing to the sea. Never had she seen so much water. It stretched up to the sky and around on every side. As she stared out at the horizon, she lost her footing, slipped on the wet wood, and slid across the deck. Right into James himself as he walked with the first mate.

  He grabbed her. “Careful, boy, you don’t have your sea legs! … Oh, it’s you, Little Tiger. What a surprise. How are you?”

  Little Tiger was amazed, and embarrassed as she tried to stand up. She knew she smelled and her hair was a rat’s nest under her hat. There was no way for her to bathe down in the hold, just a bucket and soap occasionally lowered through the hatch that all the workers had to share. There was no privacy down there and she was afraid to undress or unbind herself for fear that one of the men might see that she was a woman. She couldn’t take any chances, not now when she was so close to her goal. Besides, the rest of the men in the hold smelled just as bad so she’d been unaware of her own stench … until now. She looked away.

  “I smell bad,” she muttered.

  “A little ripe,” he answered gamely. “And you’re even more puny. You’ve lost a lot of weight. By golly, I didn’t know things were so bad down below. I’m going to make sure that you all get more food and water, and come up on deck more often.”

  “Thank you, Mr. James. You are not like the others.”

  James looked at the slip of a boy in front of him. “Are you still sure this is what you want? Gold Mountain?”

  “A dollar a day? And all the gold I find?” she answered. “Oh, yes!”

  “It may be harder than anything you’ve ever done.”

  “I am hard worker. We all hard workers,” said Little Tiger, “but I never build a railway. Mr. James, what is a railway?”

  James was stunned by the question. “Ah, of course!” he said. “You’ve never seen a train or a railway. Not in Hong Kong or Guangdong. And still, you were willing to come?”

  Little Tiger nodded. She had her own reasons. James motioned for her to sit beside him on the deck.

  “Let me try to explain, kid. A railway is two things: trains and rails. Trains are like huge carts with many wheels. They pull railway cars along the rails. Some of the cars carry animals and supplies and some cars are like little houses.”

  Little Tiger was confused. “Houses on wheels?” she asked.

  “Well, yeah. Oh dear. I’m not doing a good job at this.” James ran both of his hands through his hair. “Uh, they’re pulled by …”

  “Horses?” suggested Little Tiger.

  “Well, sort of. Iron horses that snort steam.”

  Little Tiger wasn’t sure she was ready for these strange things in the new world.

  “Now, rails,” continued James, “are special roads just for trains. First we make a flat, narrow bed of crushed stone, then we lay thick beams of wood, we call them ‘ties,’ all the same size, this close together.” James held his arms about a foot apart. “Then we take two long pieces of iron that have been smoothed on the edges and hammer them into the ties with metal spikes. The train rolls along these pieces of iron.”

  Little Tiger struggled to imagine iron horses snorting steam, pulling houses on wheels along an iron road.

  “Why do you want this iron road?” she asked.

  “Canada’s a new country,” he said, his eyes lighting up. “If we want to grow, we need ways to move people and things from one end of the country to the other. Trains are the fastest way.”

  “This would be a good thing for China too,” said Little Tiger.

  “It won’t be long,” he answered. “In fact, I’m surprised that the Chinese didn’t invent the railway. You invented so many other things.”

  Little Tiger had never heard a white man talk about her countrymen with admiration. Every foreigner she’d met claimed to be superior at everything.

  “I’ve been reading,” said James, smiling. “When I wasn’t trying to point a gun, or being chased by gangs or saved by street urchins.” He poked her in the ribs.

  Little Tiger laughed.

  James continued his history lesson. “The Chinese invented lots of things — tea, and paper, and printing, and the compass. We would be lost in this ocean without the compass, don’t you think? And gunpowder, which led to dynamite and fireworks. You know all about that, don’t you, kid?”

  Little Tiger beamed. “That why you need many Chinese to build your railway. We are fantastic with black powder … especially me.”

  A dark cloud seemed to descend on James.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “The fact is that we want all you Chinese labourers because you work harder for less money than whites, and nobody gives a damn if you die on the job.”

  “But you give a damn, don’t you?” asked Little Tiger.

  James put his arm around his buddy’s shoulder. “You be careful. Promise?”

  Little Tiger felt a jolt of electricity at his touch. She had a lot to learn about the railway and the new country of Canada. But she had even more to learn about Mr. James.

  Chapter

  Six

  Rain was pelting down when the ship docked in Victoria Harbour, British Columbia. By now it was spring, and Little Tiger was filthy and exhausted after all those months in the hold. She opened her arms to the sky and let the fresh rain run over her face and down her neck. She took a deep breath and thanked her ancestors for bringing her safely to this new world, but her first steps were wobbly after so many weeks on the rolling schooner. She held tight to the railing on her way down the gangplank.

  The buildings surrounding the pier were impressive and a lot like the Englishmen’s buildings in the other Victoria Harbour, the one she knew in Hong Kong, an ocean and a lifetime away. But on this pier there were only gwailo. She looked into their faces, expecting to see welcome smiles, but instead she was met with angry scowls. Well-dressed men, women, and even children shouted and waved their fists at her and her exhausted friends.

  “Go home, Chinamen! Filthy scabs, stealing jobs from our men. You’re only good for taking out slop pails.”

  Little Tiger and the other Chinese workers were confused. Most of them couldn’t understand the insults being hurled at them in English, but they knew an ugly crowd when they saw one and it was clear that they were not welcome in Canada. But hadn’t the Mountie on the poster invited them to this country? Didn’t Mr. James beg them to leave their country and their families to work on the railway? Here before her was the harsh reality that Mr. Relic had tried to warn her about: no one wanted her in Canada and life was going to be very hard.

  A crush of workers pushed Little Tiger toward the immigration shed. There she lined up with hundreds of others to get their papers stamped by the officials. As she waited, she looked around, hoping to see James. It had been a long time since their talk on the schooner’s deck, and while she continued her journey in the stinking hold, he had travelled in luxury in his cabin above. Now that they had landed, where was he? Was he with the immigration o
fficials? Yes, there he was, conferring with them. But who was that running toward him? A beautiful woman with a pile of golden curls, dressed in pink taffeta with a low-cut bodice, threw her arms around him. Little Tiger watched in dismay as he embraced this bundle of pink fluff.

  “James Nichol, what an impressive sight!” squealed the woman.

  James seemed surprised but delighted. “Melanie! You are a vision,” he said.

  Melanie pretended to accept the compliment bashfully,but to Little’s Tiger’s eye this pink fluff was no shy wallflower. She was a woman on a mission to capture James’s heart. “I venture to say your father will be very impressed when he sees all these Chinamen,” she said.

  James said he’d soon find out. Once their papers were processed, he was going to take his Chinese workers upriver to Hell’s Gate, where his father was supervising the most dangerous part of the railway construction.

  “Don’t tell me you’re leaving me here all by my lonesome,” cooed the woman in pink, batting her eyelashes.

  Little Tiger wanted to gag. She knew a phony when she saw one. A sugary phony at that.

  “I have to get my men safely to the jobsite,” said James. Then, seeing her smile fade, he added, “They’ve had a rough journey and deserve a good meal. So I will stay to have lunch with you.”

  “That’s better,” said Melanie, clapping her hands like a child. “I was afraid you were turning into someone I didn’t know.”

  She cupped his chin in her hand. “Hmm, there is something different, about you. I’ve never heard so much concern for underlings before, especially for these, uh, what do they call them…? Slant eyes?”

  James was taken aback. “It’s a hard life in China, Mel. Sure, they’re different from us, but these are hardworking men trying to make a living to support their folks back home. And …” he smiled, “they have names for us too, y’ know — ‘white ghosts,’ and ‘round eyes.’” Playfully he sniffed her neck. “And they think we smell funny too.”