Li Jun and the Iron Road Page 7

  Suddenly, there was a loud crack. Little Tiger saw the shoring at the entrance shift and start to buckle. She heard a worker deep inside shout, “Cave-in! It’s coming down. Run!”

  Men streamed out of the tunnel, screaming with fear. Then there was a rumble, louder than thunder. Dust and rocks shot out from behind the workers as they ran for their lives. Alarm bells clanged through the whole construction site. Little Tiger covered her mouth to stifle a scream as she realized the full horror of the cave-in: many of the workers were likely dead inside, killed by falling rock and wooden supports that had held up the roof of the tunnel. Those who escaped now writhed in pain as they collapsed outside the tunnel. Many of them had had their limbs shorn off when the sides collapsed. Staggering around in a daze, she tripped over something strange and gagged as she realized it was the crushed head of a boy only a few years older than herself. There was blood everywhere, and heavy moaning. She heard a shriek behind her and turned to see that it came from a man in her own crew. She ran to wipe his forehead. He reached out to her, gasped for breath, then turned away, and died.

  Bookman called for stretchers to carry the wounded away, as James came running up the hill with Edgar. They stared dumbfounded at the disaster.

  “Doctors!” James called out. “We need doctors for these men, and quickly.”

  Bookman laughed bitterly as he handed Little Tiger some cloth to bind a man’s wounded shoulder. “That young Mr. Nichol has a lot to learn. Only his kind get doctors.”

  Little Tiger looked up at him, objecting. “Mr. James, he is not like the others.”

  “Ha! What do you know?” snarled Bookman. “The gwailo are all the same. They all treat us like animals.”

  He ordered the wounded to be laid out along the track. There were no doctors to be seen.

  Edgar pulled James aside. “Forget the doctors, James. Chinamen have to look after their own. Our job is to deal with this cave-in. Christ! This tunnel is blocked forty, maybe fifty feet back. It’ll slow us down for days — maybe weeks.”

  A few stretchers arrived and Little Tiger helped lift her wounded friends onto them. Others were carried off on their fellow workers’ shoulders. Little Tiger looked at the dead men left along the tracks.

  She turned to Bookman. “Will these men’s bones ever go home?”

  Bookman became thoughtful. “Not for a long time,” he answered. “I write their names and their home village on a piece of paper and seal it in a jar. We bury that jar with the body. Years later we hope the bone cleaner will come and pack up the bones with the jar and ship them back to their families in China.”

  “That’s good,” said Little Tiger. “My mother told me that if their bones are not buried in their home village, the souls of the dead wander forever.”

  “That is true,” said Bookman, nodding.

  One of the crewmen began to scatter spirit money over the bodies of the dead. Edgar fidgeted impatiently as he waited for the man to finish his ritual. Soon he yelled, “Enough! Get these bodies out of here. There’s work to be done,” and called over the dynamite boss.

  Little Tiger eyed the huge boulders and the collapsed timbers blocking the entrance to the tunnel. At the bottom she spotted a very small opening. Ah! she thought. I could squeeze in there, I know it. And she knew what was needed to blast out the debris and leave the tunnel intact. She remembered Mr. Zhou’s lesson — the exploding walnut. He’d taught her well.

  The Chinese dynamite boss had his orders from Edgar and now he walked toward the waiting men. “Boss wants a man to clear the cave-in. Will pay good money.”

  Cheung Wei laughed in his face. “Crawl inside that? Naagh. It’s a death trap.”

  Nobody wanted the job.

  The dynamite boss was stone-faced. “Boss will pay five dollars to any man who can set a charge behind this rubble and blow it out.”

  Edgar added from behind him, “That’s a helluva lot of money for fifteen minutes’ work.”

  But even that couldn’t convince the workers. Most of them, still bleeding, turned back to the camp. But not Little Tiger. Standing beside Bookman, she was listening hard, and thinking.

  James came up to Edgar. “Couldn’t we set charges bit by bit from the front and gradually clear out the opening that way?”

  Edgar had a quick put-down. “No, the overhead is too unstable. We need to set charges behind the rubble.”

  “But,” said James, “the only way in that I can see is the size of a dinner plate.”

  Edgar had to agree. He watched the workers one by one go back to their tents and barked at Bookman, “Where’ s my volunteer?”

  Bookman shrugged and pointed to the retreating workers.

  “Okay,” yelled Edgar, “tell them there’s an extra five bucks in it.”

  What a lot of money! thought Little Tiger. It would pay back everything she’d bought from the company store, and more.

  “Sir, I do it!” she piped up.

  Bookman grabbed her arm and shook it. “Never mind, you.”

  But Little Tiger was adamant. “I worked in a fireworks factory in Hong Kong. I know about explosives.”

  Bookman scowled. “This isn’t fireworks, it’s dynamite.”

  She shook herself free from his grip. “I want to do it.”

  “No, Xiao Hu. I’m not sending your bones home to your parents.”

  Little Tiger stood tall. “I don’t have any parents back home. Let me do it.”

  James recognized this voice — it was his buddy, the kid. He marched over. “Tiger! Are you crazy in the head?”

  Desperate to prove herself, Little Tiger said, “No, not crazy, Mr. James. I get the five bucks. And now I get five bucks extra!”

  James sighed. “Okay, fine, if you’re so fired up to do it.” He eyed Edgar. “Just make sure my little buddy here comes back in one piece.”

  The dynamite boss gave Little Tiger her equipment — matches, a couple of candles, and a big bundle of explosives all tied together, plus the longest fuse from his arsenal. She put on her bravest face.

  “Watch. I am fantastic!” she called out and started toward the entrance.

  “Wait!” shouted James. He’d spotted a pair of thick gloves and brought them over to her. “You’re going to need these.”

  Touched by his kindness, Little Tiger pulled on the gloves.

  “Now don’t kick anything loose, and for heaven’s sakes, be careful,” he said.

  “Yes, Mr. James, I be sure to be careful.”

  She put all her equipment into a sack and slung it over her shoulders. She squeezed herself into the oh-so-narrow hole and wiggled through, feet first. Before she slid into the rubble, she took a last look back and saw James watching her intently, gnawing at his lower lip.

  She closed her mind to the danger ahead and imagined that she was a fish slipping over and around the sharp rocks, as she made her way through the cave-in rubble to the tunnel beyond it. Fallen timber beams crisscrossed the space ahead of her and her feet slipped on loose rock. It was pitch-dark now, and she feared that at any moment more of the tunnel could collapse on her. She lit a match to her first candle and held it high, planning her strategy: there was just room enough for her to move about here, her fuse seemed long enough to do the job safely, and there were her explosives all tied together in one bundle.

  Remembering Mr. Zhou’s advice, she repeated his words out loud, “It’s not how much powder you use but where you place the charges that counts.” She surveyed the fallen tunnel walls around her, the rubble behind her, and made a decision. She would unwind the string that bound all the dynamite sticks together and place them separately in five different locations among the fallen rocks at the bottom and the sides of the tunnel. Then she would connect each of their fuses to the main fuse, the long one, and pull it back with her to the entrance where she would light it.

  Her first candle was burning dangerously low, so she dripped some wax from it onto a fallen timber just above her to make a glue, then pulled out a seco
nd candle, pressed it into the still-hot wax, and lit it. It did the trick.

  Now she could see to do her job. She chiselled at a crevice halfway up the rock wall until it was wide enough to wedge in a single stick of dynamite with its fuse dangling from the end. She then inserted the four other dynamite sticks in four separate holes on either side of the tunnel walls, and attached their fuses to the main one.

  But cutting through the silence, she heard a strange sound — drip, drip, drip. She looked up and saw small drops of water collecting and falling from the ceiling above. This could be disaster! When the main fuse was lit and the flame rushed along its length, this water could fall onto it and make it fizzle out before it ignited the dynamite sticks she had set so carefully. What could she do?

  She gave herself a good talking to. “You are first class,” she said aloud. “Nothing can stop you now.” But just in case, she prayed to her ancestors to stop the drip, drip, drip from the ceiling.

  Carefully, she checked everything, then scrambled back out through the rubble and back out the narrow opening at the entrance.

  As she emerged from the hole, the Controller was puffing madly on a cigar while James and Edgar were pacing the railway ties. She wiggled out, unfurling the long fuse from the mouth of the tunnel.

  Her big moment! She turned to the men with a grin and took out her matches, ready to light the fuse, but to her surprise Edgar grabbed the cigar from the Controller’s mouth and came forward. Usually the bosses were the first to get as far away as possible from the blasts. Not this time.

  “Good job, kid,” he said. “Now get away. I’m gonna light this one.” He pulled on the cigar to get it burning red, then put the tip to the fuse.

  “Fire in the hole!” he shouted.

  With a fearsome hiss, the flame travelled along the fuse, through the entrance hole until, with a trail of smoke, it disappeared inside. FIVE-FOUR-THREE-TWO-ONE! Utter silence, then a thunderous detonation. Rocks began to spew from the tunnel like cannon shot, Just in time, James pushed Little Tiger to safety behind a granite boulder as the rocks tumbled past, missing the two of them by inches.

  Smoke and dust rolled through the air for a long time while they cowered there. Finally there was another silence, a strange silence. Little Tiger looked up at James, then gingerly they stepped out to survey the tunnel entrance.

  Bit by bit a beam of sunlight appeared from the far end of the tunnel.

  “It’s open!” Little Tiger shouted. “I told you I explode fantastic.”

  Edgar gave her a pat on the shoulder. “I admire your guts, kid.” And he handed her the money — five plus five dollars.

  Everyone erupted into cheers. Little Tiger shyly smiled up at James. He was looking at her in a new way, respect and admiration in his eyes. She wondered what he saw in hers.

  Images

  “Get your fireworks here for New Year.”

  She looked up at the recruiting poster — a North-West Mounted Policeman with a wide-brimmed hat and a scarlet tunic.

  The bully lit the fuses and all her firecrackers exploded WHIZ! BOOM! BANG!

  The scrawny workers protested and James fired a shot into the air.

  The oarsman paddled his three passengers up to Little Tiger’s home village.

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

  Rain was pelting down when the ship docked in Victoria Harbour, British Columbia.

  Steam hit Little Tiger and Wang Ma as they arrived at the work camp.

  Little Tiger was amazed by the buzz of construction all around her.

  Their job was to build the railway track to Eagle Pass to connect with the track from the east.

  “Be a good tea boy and stay alive,” said Bookman.

  “Never trust the gwailo,” whispered Bookman.

  The men killed in the tunnel were laid out along the track, with no doctors in sight.

  She pulled on the gloves and squeezed herself into the oh-so-narrow hole.

  Edgar lit the fuse and with a fearsome hiss, the flame travelled along it to inside the tunnel.

  “It’s open! I told you I explode fantastic.”

  Turning away from Wang Ma, she wept.

  “I get it,” said James. “You’re nervous about going bare ass.”

  “I don’t want you to go either.”

  Alfred Nichol hissed, “We won’t be held hostage by a bunch of superstitious Chinamen!”

  He reached for her hand. “Bring your photograph to my railcar tonight.”

  “Just James,” he said and leaned in to kiss her.

  “I bet I’m the biggest surprise you’ve had this week,” cooed Melanie.

  “I’m a hawk!” shouted Wang Ma, spreading his arms like wings.

  “How much time do we have to set our charges?”

  “I want you, and I don’t give a damn who else knows or what they think.”

  Bookman leaped onto her rope. “Give me your hand!”

  Li Jun stared at the photograph, then at Bookman, blood seeping from his mouth.

  Li Jun knelt beside her father’s funeral pyre.

  “I need you to hold me one last time.”

  Chapter

  Eight

  With the tunnel open, Bookman slipped away. Little Tiger thought he was a curious creature. Hard as a railway spike, with a fierce temper that could flare at the least provocation, but protective of the men in his crew. She never saw him joke or laugh with either his white bosses or the other Chinese.

  Edgar and the Controller, arms around each other,headed toward their office railcar at the end of the track, but James stayed behind.

  He nudged her in the ribs. “I bet those two will open the champagne back there. It was a big deal what you did today, little buddy. Saved their sorry butts, you did.”

  Little Tiger was thrilled by his praise but turned toward the cook tent. “I have to help Powder with dinner now.”

  “No way,” said James.

  “If I don’t work, I don’t get paid.”

  “Leave it to me,” he said. “I’ll clear it with Bookman. Besides, you got five bucks plus five bucks extra, right?”

  Little Tiger reached into her pocket and rubbed the notes between her fingers.

  James grinned at his buddy. “How about I show you a place where I go to wind down.”

  Little Tiger hesitated.

  “Come on kid. I’m the boss.”

  They walked along the river’s edge until James spotted a barely trodden path that led into the dense forest where the trees were so tall that no sun penetrated the canopy. He parted the brush and motioned his buddy to follow closely behind.

  “This is where the Indians come to hunt deer and bear,” he said.

  “I see the Indians sometimes.” said Little Tiger. “They fish with their nets and spears. If they have extra, they come into camp and trade their fish for tea. It’s good fish, too.”

  They stepped onto a thick carpet of fallen boughs and needles, picking their way among the jutting roots until they came upon an opening in the forest and a stunning vista of valleys and mountains spread before them. James stretched his arms wide as if to say that everything they saw was theirs.

  “Whoo!” he shouted. “Beautiful!

  They stood on rocky shale at the edge of a deep mountain pool. James picked up a pebble and skipped it across the surface. Little Tiger crouched on her heels and splashed at the water.

  “Do you always come here?” she asked.

  “Every chance I get,” said James.

  She scooped a handful of water and splashed it onto her dusty face. She tensed when the icy water hit her skin and screamed, “Ooo! It’s cold.”

  “Aw, it’s not so bad once you get in.”

  Get in? Ah, he intended that they both go swimming! She turned to see him. He had taken off his boots and was about to strip off his clothes. She wasn’t sure whether to stare at this man or turn away. It was clear he intended to take off all his clothes. She’d seen naked men befor
e — lots of them, since it was hard to avoid when you shared tents. But she’d never seen a naked white man before. It wasn’t so much that it was a white man. She figured men were men and all the parts were pretty much the same, but the thought of seeing the Controller or Edgar buck naked just made her shiver with embarrassment. However, she felt a totally different kind of shiver looking at James strip off his long johns. Blushing, Little Tiger turned toward the water, averting her eyes.

  “How deep is it?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Ten, maybe fifteen feet. Come on kid. Last one in’s a rotten egg.”

  With that, Little Tiger did turn, and saw the very naked, very fit Mr. James place one foot after the other and clamber up the rocks to a natural diving platform, high above the water.

  “Whoo! Look out below!” he shouted, full of glee.

  He wrapped his arms around his knees and cannon-balled into the pool below. There was a huge splash and Little Tiger waited for him to emerge. Where had he gone? He surprised her by grabbing the back of her shirt and pulling her from behind into the frigid pool.

  She gasped as she hit the water. She flailed and kicked, sputtered and gasped. James was surprised. She was in trouble, so he lifted her under the arms and helped her up onto the rocks.