Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/103

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N the coast of California," Captain Buckingham began, "there was once a town named Saleratus. I don't know why it was named Saleratus. That's not its name now. It has reformed and doesn't like to remember the past. But at that time some of it was Mexican, and more of it was Chinese, and some of it wasn't connected with anything but perdition. That was about '73, and I was taking my ship, the Annalee, between San Francisco and different Asiatic ports, and I came down to Saleratus to look up cargo, and fell in there with some people by the name of 'Jones and Shan,' a firm that did a mixed mercantile and banking business. 'Ungainly Jones' he might have been called, but he wasn't. He was called 'Gainly Jones,' and came from Indiana.

"He and Fu Shan lived in two ornamental and expensive houses side by side on a hill that was bare and composed of sand-banks, and stood over the creek which ran down by the town into the bay. Jones lived alone, but Fu Shan was domestic. He was a cultivated Oriental with a mild squeaking voice, and came from a mercantile family in Singapore. He had more porcelain jars than you'd think a body would need, and fat yellow cheeks, and a queue down to his knees, and wore cream-colored silk clothes, and was a picture of calmness and culture. But Jones had a large slab-sided construction, and a countenance that seemed worn with care and thought. Thoughtful he was, given to contemplation and melancholy, but I judged some of his lines that simulated care came from the kind of life that people led in Saleratus, in order to avoid monotony. I spent some days with him in his house over the creek, and he said Saleratus was monotonous.

"We were sitting on Jones's porch with Fu Shan at the time, and waiting for supper. Yet there were going on in Saleratus, to my knowledge, at that moment, the following entertainments: three-card monte at the Blue Light Saloon, and a cock-fight at Pasquerillo's; two alien sheriffs were in town looking for horse-thieves, and had one corralled on the roof of the court-house; some other fellows were trying to drown a Chinaman in the creek, and getting into all kinds of awkwardness on account of there being no water in the creek to speak of and other Chinamen throwing stones. And yet Gainly Jones continued, 'No, I don't get no satisfaction out of it.'

Have no water in cleek,' said Fu Shan, with aristocratic peacefulness. 'Dlied up.'

Dried up, played out,' said Jones, drearily, not understanding him. 'Fu Shan's a dry-rotted Asiatic. Don't anything make any difference to him. Got any nerves? Nary a one. Got any seething emotions? Not a seeth. He's a worn-out race in the numbness of decrepitude.' Fu Shan chuckled.

But me, I'm different,' said Jones; 'the uselessness of things bothers me. Look at 'em. Why, I been in Saleratus eight years; partner with Fu Shan here five. Sometimes I had a good time. Where is it now? You laugh, and there's nothing left. You heave a sigh. Same amount of wind. Gone too. The Chinese invented gunpowder, but they only use it for fireworks. Why not? They're a level-headed race, they are. Anybody you happen to hear of that's done anything better with it? What's the use? If there's anybody with a destiny that's got any assets at all, and he wants to swap even with me, bring him along. Look at this town! Is it any sort of a town? No honesty, for there ain't a man in it that can shuffle a pack without stacking it. No ability, for there ain't more'n two or three can stack it real well. No seriousness, for they start in to drown a Chinaman