“Which there's a little tallow-faced runt in perspective,” he says, climbing down the stays, “that I can lick,” he says, being misled by my size. And when that was over, I started for Saleratus.
It was a town to the south, down near the coast. That's not its name now, because it's reformed and doesn't like to remember the days before it was regenerated. 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.
Shan and Sadler did a mixed mercantile business, and they seemed to be prosperous people, but I take it Fu Shan mainly carried on the business, and Sadler was the reason why the firm's property was respected and let alone by the Caucasians. There is a big Chinese company in Singapore, called “Shan Brothers,” whose name is well known on bills of lading, and Fu Shan was connected with them. But a man wouldn't have thought to find Sadler a partner in banking, mercantile, and shipping business, with a Chinaman. He'd been the wildest of us all in the Hebe Maitland days, and always acted youthful for his years. There were two things in him that never could get to keep the peace with each other, his conscience and his sporting instinct. Yet he was a capable man, and forceful, and I judge he could do 'most anything he set his hand to.
He and Fu Shan lived just outside the town of Saleratus in two ornamented and expensive houses, side by side, on a hill that was bare and mostly sand banks, and that hung over the creek which ran past the town into the bay. Sadler lived alone with Irish, but Fu Shan was domestic. He was a pleasant Oriental with a mild, squeaking voice, and had more porcelain jars than you would think a body would need, and fat yellow cheeks, and a queue down to his knees. He wore cream-coloured silk, and was a picture of calmness and culture. Irish hadn't changed, but Sadler was looking older and more melancholy, though I judged that some of the lines on his face, that simulated care, came from the kind of life folks led in Saleratus to avoid monotony. We spoke of Craney among others, but Sadler knew no more of Craney than I did. Likely he was still in Corazon.
We were sitting one evening on Sadler's porch, that looked over the creek, waiting for supper. Fu Shan was there, and Sadler said Saleratus was monotonous. Yet there were going on in Saleratus to my knowledge at that moment the following entertainments: three-card monte at the Blue Light Saloon; a cockfight at Pasquarillo's; two alien sheriffs in town looking for horse thieves, and had one corralled on the roof of the courthouse; finally 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. But Sadler said it was monotonous.
“I don't get no satisfaction out of it.”
Over the top of the town you could catch the sunset on the sea, and the smoke of the chimneys rose up between. There were red roses all over the pillars and eaves of the porch. Seemed to me it was a good enough place. Fu Shan smoked scented and sugared tobacco in a porcelain pipe with an ivory stem. The fellows down by the creek ran away, feeling pretty good and cracking their revolvers in the air, and the Chinamen got bunched about their injured countryman.
“Have no water in cleek,” says Fu Shan, aristocratic and peaceful. “Dlied up.”
“Dried up. Played out,” says Sadler, not understanding him. “Fu Shan's a dry-rotted Asiatic. Doesn't anything make any difference to him. Got any nerves? Not one. Got any seethin' emotions? Not a seeth. He's a wornout race in the numbness of decrepitude.”
Fu Shan chuckled.