"Good! you twenty-four carat jewel of Asia! You're the goodest imitation of a white man that was ever bound in yeller leather by mistake. Now I feel as if I wanst looked like a man meself. Give me a rag an' a bit o' that stinkin' cookin'-grease, an' make room on the carrt till I do up me house-cleanin'."
You Han grinned and began to wail an interminable song about a girl called "Little Fat Spring Fragrance," who lived in the "Village of the Wise and Benevolent Magistrate." The ballad rose shriller as the singer saw the corporal swinging along ahead, his rifle nestling on his squared shoulder as if it had come home to its own, his back as flat as a board. You Han was even more jubilant when his master spun on his heel, and shouted with the rasp of the drill-ground in his voice:
"Shut up that racket! It's worse 'n the carrt axle."
The bracing wind swept keen out of the Siberian north, and sunshine flooded from a cloudless sky. The deserter forgot much of his weariness, and caught himself whistling "assembly," but broke off with a groan.
Toward sunset the surrounding wall of a village was outlined like a rocky island in the level plain. You Han halted a ragged wayfarer, and coaxingly addressing him as "great elder brother," dragged forth the information that the town was of considerable size, and that in it was the residence of the ruler of the district. The song of the "Village of the Wise and Benevolent Magistrate" had suggested an inspiration whose magnitude made You Han gasp. But he took possession of it without flinching, and when they were within a mile of the gateway in the wall he said to the deserter:
"You wait. I go look-see."
The mule browsed by the roadside, the corporal sprawled near by, and the brave figure in blue cotton trudged on alone to the town, the strangeness of which made his heart flutter. He swaggered in past the outer wall, searched out the yamen of the district magistrate, and that dignitary graciously consented to see the importunate pilgrim. You Han kotowed before the heart-quaking presence in the gilded audience-room, and with wailing stammer delivered the oration composed on the cart:
"An illustrious and most honorable general of the foreign soldiers comes to visit your beautiful city. I am his insignificant and thrice-despised servant. This valiant and inexpressibly distinguished hero is of the Americans, who protect and do not plunder and destroy. He comes to extend peace and protecting power to your Heavenly Presence, and to learn whether you have been molested by other foreign-devil armies, whom he will swiftly punish if it be your august pleasure to ask it. My insufferably benevolent master leaves soldiers, cannon, horses behind him, lest he terrify the country round about, already in fear of the devastating foreign fighting-men. He sends the greetings of one ruler to another, and also his card."
You Han bobbed his head to the floor by way of incessant punctuation, and watching eagerly from the tail of his eye for results hopeful or otherwise, laid before the magistrate the vivid label of a tin of "Army Cut Plug," on which heroes in blue and khaki posed nonchalantly in a "baptism of fire." A group of official servants, crowding within ear-shot, saw a gleam of surprised pleasure twinkle through the huge spectacles of their ruler. They took their cue, and helping the trembling You Han to his feet, were soon bustling through the courtyard, propelled by vehement commands to make haste.
Half an hour later, the deserter saw approaching a procession led by You Han and a squad of yamen runners, whom he knew by the red tassels on their flat hats. These rode shaggy rats of ponies, and behind them tailed off scores of villagers on foot and convoys of squealing children. The American grabbed his rifle and dodged behind the cart, ready to run or open fire, until he heard You Han's shrill shouts of reassurance. Then he was swept up in an admiring throng, whose bodies doubled in homage, down to the wee tots who fell on their flat noses when they tried to kotow.