So he borrowed three dollars from the tong brother and started for some place where he could lead a quiet life. He managed to get to Oakland, though the deck hands on the ferryboat talked about throwing him overboard. But they let him live if he would stay at the back end till everyone, including the deck hands, was safe off or behind something when the boat landed. Then he wandered off into the night and found a freight train. He didn't care where he went—just somewhere they wouldn't know about his crime.
He rode a while between two freight cars; then left that train and found a blind baggage on a passenger train that went faster and near froze him to death. He got off, chilled in the early morning, at some little town and bought some food in a Chinee restaurant and also got warm. But he hadn't no more than got warm when he was put out of the place, right by his own people.
It was warm outside by this time, so he didn't mind it so much. The town did, though. It must of been a small town, but he says thousands of men chased him out of it about as soon as he was warmed up enough to run. He couldn't understand this, because how could they know he was the one that caused all that trouble in San Francisco?
He got a freight train outside the town and rode on and on. He says he rode on for weeks and weeks; but that's his imagination. It must of been about three days, with spells of getting off for food and to get warmed when he was freezing, and be chased by these wild hill tribes when he had done the latter. It put a crimp into his sunny nature—all this armed pursuit of him. He says if he had been a Christian, and believed in only one God, he would never of come through alive, it taking about seventy-four or five of his own gods to protect him from these maddened savages. He had a continuous nightmare of harsh words and blows. He wondered they didn't put him in jail; but it seemed like they only wanted to keep him going.
Of course it had to end. He got to Spokane finally and sneaked round to a friend that had a laundry; and this friend must of been a noble soul. He took in the outcast and nursed him with food and drink, and repeatedly washed his clothes. Wanting a ranch cook about that time, I got in touch with him through another cousin, who said this man wanted very much to go out into a safe country, and would never leave it because of unpleasantness in getting here.
It was ten days after he got there that I saw him first, and I'll be darned if he was any human sachet, even then. But after hearing his story I knew that time would once more make him fit for human association. He told me his story with much feeling this time and he told it to me about once a week for three months after he got here—pieces of it at a time. It used to cheer me a lot. He was always remembering something new. He said he liked the great silence and peace of this spot.
You couldn't tell him to this day that his belief about the savage hill tribes ain't sound. He believes anything "can happen" in that country down there. Doctor Hong Foy never paid him the twenty-five, of course, though admitting that he would of done so if the animal had not escaped, because he was in such good condition, for a skunk, that he was worth twenty-five dollars of any doctor's money. I don't know. As I say, they're friendly little critters; but it's more money that I would actually pay for one.
Through two closed doors the whine of the fiddle still penetrated. Perhaps Lew Wee's recent loss had moved him to play later than was his custom, pondering upon the curious whims that stir the gods when they start to make things happen. But he was still no cynic. Over and over he played the little air which means: "Life comes like a bird-song through the open windows of the heart."