THE YELLOW FIEND.
By Julian Johnson, of Los Angeles, California.
MR. CONLISK, WHO WAS THE CONDUCTOR OF THE TRAIN AT THE TIME THIS ADVENTURE HAPPENED.
From a Photograph.
Much of the history of railroading in Western America reads like a chapter from some “penny dreadful,” but none of the thrilling pioneer episodes surpasses in dramatic interest an incident which occurred a few years ago on one of the regular passenger trains of the Denver and Rio Grande.
The principal surviving actor in this singular tragedy is John Conlisk, who has now retired from active railroad service, and is at present living quietly at 2,717, Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles, California.
At the time of our story—March, 1892—Mr. Conlisk was a passenger conductor on the Denver and Rio Grande, running between Ogden, Utah, and Grand Junction, Colorado, making his home in the Utah city. This brief introduction is sufficient, however, and the rest may be narrated just as he told it to the writer recently.
The morning was crisp and clear and promised a bright March day. Shortly after two o’clock I was on the platform at Grand Junction waiting for No. 7, which I was to take back to Ogden. She came in on time, the few preliminaries attending the exchange of crews were finished as usual, and at three I was ready to go, when the conductor for the other division ran across the platform to me.
“Jack,” he said, “there’s a Chinaman in the ladies’ wash-room in the chair-car. He’s been in there two or three hours, and we can’t get him out. He’s in an ugly temper, and you may have trouble with him. If I were you I’d call the station officer.”
So I started on a hunt for that person, but he was not to be found anywhere, and after delaying the train two or three minutes I concluded to settle the matter with my own crew and passed the signal to the engineer. As we swung on board I spoke to my head brakeman, a young fellow named James Genong.
“There’s a Chinaman in the ladies’ wash-room in the chair-car,” I told him. “He’s locked himself in, for some heathen reason or other, and I wish you’d see if you can get him out without making any disturbance.”
I had a heavy load of passengers, probably two hundred in all, and after making my rounds, of course not disturbing the people in the sleepers, I went into the coach just ahead of the chair-car, and, with my train-box before me, sat down to count my tickets.
I had hardly finished my work when the door flew open, as though hurled by a violent gust of wind. Jim was behind it, with a pale, excited face. “Got a gun about you?” he asked, in a hoarse, frightened whisper.
“Why?” I asked, in astonishment.
“That Chinaman’s stabbed me!” he replied, looking furtively over his shoulder.
“Jim,” I said, getting up at once, “this thing may be serious, but it can’t be settled by indiscriminate shooting in a train-load of passengers. We’ve got to find another way.”
I must here interrupt my story for a moment to tell you what had actually happened. Jim, thinking the Celestial an easy conquest, started after him before the train was fairly under way. In those days chair-cars carried the time-honoured stove and wood-box, and the brakeman, putting one foot on the edge of the latter and the other on an opposite ledge, peered down over the transom and ordered the Chinaman to come out in language that admitted of no misinterpretation. And the Chinaman did come out, ducking fairly under Jim in his elevated position. As he ducked he slashed upward with a great curved hunting-knife. The slash caught the white man on the inside of the thigh, producing a wound that bled profusely and probably gave a deal of inconvenience, but which was not really dangerous.
Seeing Jim streaming with blood, and believing that the yellow man was actually running amok, I started for the door, first telling the passengers in that car to lie down on the floor if they heard any shooting going on beyond.
The train was making good speed, but as I stood on the platform I could hear the culprit jabbering about, “Fiftleen hundled dolla! Me got plenty monee!” He commanded his end of the car, from which practically all the passengers had retired panic-stricken. The only exceptions to the general decampment were a fine-looking young chap from Bunker Hill, Illinois, who sat in a forward chair reading a book, and an army officer’s wife with a little baby, bound for Salt Lake City—in the seat opposite. These were directly under the Chinaman’s eye, and whenever they attempted to move he waved them back with a ferocious gesture of his great glittering knife.
Going to the door, which was locked, I rapped sharply on it with my ticket-punch. I had no revolver with me, but I hoped to distract his attention. And I did! Turning, he saw me, and with his face distorted with an expression of the most hideous savagery he drew back his arm, and sent it and the knife through the glass, clear to the shoulder, the blade just missing me!
Without more ado I pulled the bell-cord and ran into the forward car, where I borrowed a big Colt’s revolver from a cowboy I knew. Then, returning to the platform, I waited until the train had almost stopped, and dropped to the ground, catching the rear platform of the chair-car as the wheels ground down to their final revolution.
The frightened people were packed so densely against the door that I had to fight my way in, and then through them. The Chinaman, with his two quiet prisoners, had the whole front end of the car to himself. I called to him, exhibiting the pistol.
At the sight of that gun the most awful frenzy blazed in his eyes. He was a big fellow, and now, with the greatest deliberation, he rolled up his wide sleeves, disclosing a tremendous pair of arms, covered with heavy black hair. He looked like a typical Boxer on the war-path.
Then he started in my direction, but in a moment changed his mind about leaving a foe in his rear, and with the most calculating, revolting cruelty that I have ever seen swirled his great blade down over the seated boy’s head, and plunged it to the hilt in his body. Women shrieked and fainted, and I felt myself all but falling.
Raising my revolver I fired, and the ball broke his legs under him. He fell, and the army officer’s wife, with a terrible shriek, raised her baby to her shoulder and started down the car.
But in an instant the Chinaman was on his feet, wounded as he was, and struck the woman an appalling blow over the shoulder. She dropped like a stone—apparently stabbed to the heart.
I waited no more on the possibility of a high bullet glancing into the car ahead, but fired straight at his heart. Even with the crash of my pistol another sounded just behind me, and the yellow fiend fell headlong between two chairs.
Someone went over and kicked him, but the body gave no sign of life, and we devoted our attention to the unfortunate young man, who now lay huddled in a pathetic and bloody heap in his seat.
Others crowded around us, and at length I saw my cowboy friend approaching. Just as he reached me I was stooping over the Celestial’s first victim, in an attempt to raise him, when I heard the puncher yell, in an agonized voice, “For Heaven’s sake, Jack, look out!”
I glanced backward, and there was that colourless, diabolical countenance again blazing into mine. He was standing erect, and the knife was poised for a blow which would have given me my quietus. As I looked, certain that death was coming, I felt a wrench at my hip-pocket. It was the cowboy tearing his revolver out of my clothes. Even as the knife descended, my saviour jammed his weapon squarely into the Chinaman’s ear—and fired.
The big bullet, at that distance, almost tore his head to pieces. Blood was spattered over all of us, in the most sickening way that could be imagined. Hating to touch the body, we pushed it under a seat and turned our whole attention to the wounded.
“EVEN AS THE KNIFE DESCENDED, MY SAVIOUR JAMMED HIS WEAPON SQUARELY INTO THE CHINAMAN’S EAR.”
The officer’s wife, strangely enough, had not a scratch on her. She was in a dead faint, but both she and the child were practically uninjured. The explanation of her escape seems to have been that the Chinaman’s wrist fell with full force on the baby, thus preventing the knife from doing any damage to either.
The poor boy, though conscious, was plainly mortally wounded. He made no complaint, and smiled faintly as we carried him back to a vacant berth in one of the Pullmans.
About daylight, at one of the longer stops, several of the passengers dragged the murderer’s horribly-battered body forward to the baggage-car. They did not carry him, but dragged him, and, as it was in the spring, the road-bed was very muddy. When the body reached the baggage-car the features were absolutely hidden in a combined coating of dried blood and slime.
Then, as we got under way again, a physician on the train, with myself and others, searched the remains. The dead man had on two pairs of trousers, and, sewn inside his shirt, fifteen hundred dollars in greenbacks. In his purse he had a first-class ticket from Pittsburg to San Francisco and, what was still more singular, a paid-up life insurance policy for five thousand dollars in favour of one Ah Say, of Evanston, Wyoming.
We rolled the body into a corner and looked over his few effects. Presently one of the men, who was sitting on a trunk facing us, gave a peculiar gasp and turned as white as blotting-paper. His eyes were fixed staringly on something behind our backs. We turned with one accord.
The supposedly dead Chinaman—a Chinaman with a body as full of holes as a sieve—was sitting up! I cannot convey in words the indescribably hideous effect of that face, caked as it was with gore and filth. Only a ghastly red crack of mouth was visible, grinning in demoniac vacancy, and two burning black slants which indicated his eyes.
The doctor was the only man who had his nerve in that excruciating moment.
“Well, John, how d’you feel now?” he said, speaking in a tone that was even jocular.
The Chinaman did not deign to answer, but first felt carefully all over himself. Then he put his hand to what should have been his trousers pocket, and at length ran his fingers violently around the place in his shirt from which we had taken his greenbacks. That frightful malevolence came back into his eyes, and, never taking those snaky optics from our faces, he began to hitch painfully across the floor towards a stand in which were kept guns for emergency use, in case of train robbery. To me, his actions seemed like those of some dreadful automaton. Every man of us watched him—held motionless, as a rattlesnake holds its victim, by the spell of terror.
Slowly, painfully, he progressed. He gained inch by inch, and at last was almost within reaching distance. He stretched out his arms to the guns, and partially rose; then he fell over stone-dead—dead this time for good and all.
The doctor examined him, and reported his survival to be due to opiates, which he had taken in enormous quantities.
At Salt Lake City I received an order from Mr. W. H. Bancroft, then receiver of the road, to stop there with the crew, which included James Donohue, engineer, and Charles Francis, fireman.
We arrived there about three o’clock, and the young man was still alive, though fast weakening. In an ordinary conversational manner he told us that his home was in Bunker Hill, Illinois, that his father was a banker, and that, after leaving school, he had been sent on a Western trip before assuming the business himself. Informed of his grave condition, he expressed his best wishes for all of us, and went under the anæsthetic with a happy smile. He died without ever returning to consciousness.
At the coroner’s inquest it was decided that the Chinaman had suddenly gone insane from an overdose of opium, for, as the evidence showed, he had been pleasant enough during the day, and had talked to several ladies in the car, telling them that he had been recently converted to Christianity and that he proposed to preach in San Francisco. After his burial expenses had been paid, the balance of his money was forwarded to the Chinese Consul in the city toward which he was bound.
There was an amusing sequel to the tragedy, though an exasperating one in some ways. Some months afterwards the keeper of one of the eating-stations, calling me to one side, inquired rather pointedly, “Have you noticed that the Chinese seem to be afraid of you?”
I replied that I hadn’t given the matter any thought, either way.
“Well,” he added, “Agent ——, of the U.P. (an opposition road), has told all the Chinks in the State that you killed their countryman for his money!”
