Turning the nearest corner, a glance over my shoulder showed me the loyal dog out on the sidewalk, still accusing me with his tired old eyes. The town was awake now and I soon found a sailor’s boarding house where I got a couple of bracing drinks and sat at a long table where sailors and stevedores were breakfasting in free-for-all, family style. I didn’t join in the conversation, didn’t have to. The quantity of food I put away convinced them I belonged on the water front. Paying for a room in the place, I got into it and took stock. There was enough money to get an outfit of clothes and feed me for a couple of weeks. I made a bundle of the jail pants and threw it off a wharf at once. The next day I bought new clothes, shoes, and hat, got cleaned up, and, dismissing the burglary charge and broken jail from my mind, proceeded to look about me.
I had not been photographed or measured in the small town I escaped from; it didn’t look reasonable that the authorities would travel five hundred miles on the chance of finding me in Vancouver, so I decided to stay there till I could get hold of something worth while. Moreover I was curious to know how my Chinese cellmate had fared, and being young and somewhat fond of myself, perhaps I wanted to meet his “cousins” and be admired by them.
After looking over the town, my experience told me the police were not to be feared and I went into Chinatown in search of my friend. Finding the company store he described, I went in and bought a small package of ginger candy. About a dozen Chinese were sitting around, talking or playing dominos, but the minute I appeared the dominos quit rattling and the Chinese stopped talking. I looked as mysterious as I could without making it too strong and surveyed them one by one. Not one uttered a syllable till I went out; then they all fell to talking and gesticulating at once. The following night I went back and bought more candy. A smart-looking, middle-aged Chinaman in European clothes was behind the counter.
“What you come here for?” he asked in very good English.
“I look for Chew Chee, China boy, my friend. We come Vancouver Sunday morning in box car. Before—we stop skookum house. Skookum house not very ‘skookum’ we come Vancouver—very cold, very hungry. Chew Chee tell me come this house. All right—I come. Now I go. Good-by!”
He remained silent, his face expressionless to me. I knew the Chinese mistrust of white men, and many of their good reasons for it, and was not offended or discouraged. He was protecting his countryman; I admired him for it. At the door I gave him a final dig. “My friend tell me come your house; I come. You think me ‘luc zhe.’ You very smart man. You think me policeman. All right. Good-by!”
This was too much for the stoical Chinaman. He followed me out and, catching up, said in a low voice: “You no ‘luc zhe’; you good man. You come ‘fi fi’ (quickly).”
I followed him into the next block, then down a narrow, dark lane between buildings and up shaky stairs where he knocked on a door. An old man admitted us and barred the door. The place was a big loft. The foggy air was hot, stifling, and laden with every Chinese smell—opium, tobacco, fish, and damp clothes drying. Chinamen were cooking, eating, smoking hop, gambling, or sleeping in curtained bunks that lined the walls. My conductor was evidently a considerable person. Silence fell on the room, and many Chinamen stood still in submissive attitudes.
He threw a mangy old cat out of a broken chair near the big stove in the middle of the room and told me to sit. After a few jerky gutturals to the old man that let us in, he disappeared in the haze of smoke. The gambling and chatter started again. Some of the younger Chinese passed and looked at me curiously.
I sat by the stove and watched the scene with interest. An old Chinaman—he must have been sixty—shuffled by me hastily with a hop layout and spread it in a near-by bunk. He was shaking with the “yen yen,” the hop habit. His withered, clawlike hands trembled as he feverishly rolled the first “pill,” a large one. His burning eyes devoured it. Half cooked, he stuck the pill in its place and turning his pipe to the lamp greedily sucked the smoke into his lungs. Now, with a long, grateful exhalation, the smoke is discharged, the cramped limbs relax and straighten out, the smoker heaves a sigh of satisfaction, and the hands, no longer shaking, turn with surer touch to another “pill.” This is smaller, rolled and shaped with more care, better cooked, and inhaled with a slow “long draw.” Each succeeding pill is smaller, more carefully browned over the lamp, and smoked with increased pleasure. At last the little horn container, the “hop toy,” is empty. The last pill is finished with perfect stroke and flourish, the bamboo pipe is put aside with caressing touch, the lamp blown out with gentle breath, and the devotee, sighing softly, curls himself up for pleasant dreams.