The Apaches of New York

by Alfred Henry Lewis

Little Bow Kum watched her fifteenth year approach—that year when she would take up her profession—without shame, scandal or alarm.

Had you tried to show her the horrors of her situation, she wouldn't have understood. She was beautiful beyond beauty. This she knew very well, and was pleased to have her charms confessed. Her owner told her she was a lamp of love, and that he would not sell her under $3,000. This of itself was the prettiest of compliments, since he had never before asked more than $2,000 for a girl. Koi Ton, two years older than herself, had brought just $2,000; and Koi Ton was acknowledged to be a vision from heaven. And so when Bow Kum learned that her price was to be $3,000, a glow overspread her—a glow which comes to beauty when it feels itself supreme.

Little Bow Kum was four feet tall, and weighed only seventy pounds. Her color was the color of old ivory—that is, if you can imagine old ivory with the flush and blush of life. She had rose-red lips, onyx eyes, and hair as black as a crow's wing. One day her owner went mad with opium. As he sat and looked at her, and her star-like beauty grew upon him, he struck her down with a bamboo staff. This frightened him; for he saw that if he kept her he would kill her because of her loveliness. So, knowing himself and fearing her beauty, he sent little Bow Kum to San Francisco, and never laid eyes on her again.

Having ripened into her fifteenth year, and the value of girls being up in San Francisco, little Bow Kum brought the price—$3,000—which her owner had fixed for her. She kissed the hand of Low Hee Tong, her new owner; and, having been adorned to the last limit of Chinese coquetry, went with him to a temple, dedicated to some Mongolian Venus, which he maintained in Ross Alley. Here little Bow Kum lived for nearly four years.

Low Hee Tong, the Ross Alley owner of little Bow Kum, got into trouble with the police. Something he did or failed to do—probably the latter—vastly disturbed them. With that, waxing moral, they decided that Low Hee Tong's Temple of Venus in Ross Alley was an eyesore, and must be wiped out.

And so they pulled it.

Little Bow Kum—so small, so much the rose-flower which her name implied—aroused the concern of the judge. He gave her to a Christian mission, which years before had pitched its tent in Frisco's Chinatown with a hope of saving Mongol souls, which hope had failed. Thereafter little Bow Kum lived at the mission, and not in Ross Alley, and was chaste according to the ice-bound ideals of the white devils.

The mission was ruled over by a middle-aged matron with a Highland name. This good woman was beginning to wonder what she should do with little Bow Kum, when that almond-eyed floweret came preferring a request. Little Bow Kum, while dwelling in Ross Alley, had met Tchin Len and thought him nice. Tchin Len owned a truck-farm near Stockton, and was rich. Would the Highland matron, in charge of the mission, write a letter to Tchin Len, near Stockton, and ask that bewitching truck-gardener to come down and see little Bow Kum?

“Because,” explained little Bow Kum, in her peculiar English, “I likee Tchin Len to mally me.”

The Highland matron considered. A husband in the case of little Bow Kum would supply a long-felt want. Also, no harm, even if no good, could flow from Tchin Len's visit, since she, the Highland matron, sternly purposed being present while Tchin Len and little Bow Kum conferred.