Many times since he had visited Karin San, stealing down to the school unknown to the Japs, or even Davydoff. He would sit beside her on her platform, and she would turn to him for correction when her red lips mistrusted how an English word should sound. After lessons they would talk of Japan and America, for the captain had the reserve of age and disappointment, and to Karin the war was no more a subject for discussion than the coming of spring itself.
“Shame me for lovin’ you, Karin San,” he muttered now tonight. “One of the yeller-bellies I hates. Hypocrite!” and he turned toward a gigantic sort of dog-house under his flag-pole, where hibernated in winter and dozed in summer, the captain’s big brown Siberian bear, Kuropatkin, which he loved even more than his twisty pine trees. He tapped on the house with his bamboo stick, and wished the General “Happy New Year.”
“It’s time ye waked and brushed yer teeth,” he said. “World’s a bit livelier in these parts than when ye went to bed last year.”
The rattle of a chain told the hibernation was over, while eight hundred pounds of shagginess squeezed into the open; tested the ground for frost with a paw, waved its head as a man sounds a stiff neck, and as if to say, “My! but this is early in the summer to wake a fellow!”
But the captain had stooped quickly and snatched at a red object in Kuropatkin’s house. “Cuss them, Gen’ral!” he exclaimed, grasping a shinbone hung with flesh. “The Japs has tried to pizen ye! Peach kunnels,” he growled holding the meat to his nose. “But Mr. Jap Mustard-belly ain’t so all-fired wise, and don’t know God A’mighty can’t pizen a b’ar. He’ll learn a thing or two ’bout Rooshian b’ars some fine day, though now he’s got the nerve and numbers to do most anything.”
Kuropatkin, cocking his head on one side, raised an ankle, and, pointing like a setter dog into the pine-grove, let out an “Oof!”
“You see Mr. Mustard yonder?” drawled the captain, following the General’s gaze. “You’re sayin’ you’re pretty wise, you b’ars, ain’t you? I guess the’ ain’t no monkey law yit about watch dog or b’ar licenses in this country. My timber’s lyin’ pretty loose about this hill. We’ve likely got a vendetta on, General,” and having kicked away the poisoned bone, the captain unhooked Kuropatkin’s ankle chain, thus freeing him.
Quite right was the Yankee about Jap nerve and a vendetta. The Islanders’ next militant move in the feud came that very night. In his French bedstead—the only kind in Korea, with its thin iron mosquito-frame aloft—he was wakened by a rasping, cracking sound out in his grove. Now and then came a swish and a thump. Then——
“Yai! Yai! Eee! Eee! and a diabolical yeodle curdled the moonlight on the hill-side. Presently a big brown object lolled from the shadows of the pines, and stalked majestically toward the flag-pole.
“Got the fisheatin’ Japs in the act, did yer, Pat?” whispered the captain out the window, shaking with laughter.