Routledge rides alone

by Will Levington Comfort

Routledge laughed aloud. He had long since put away any resentment toward either of these men, but there was vim, and glow, in getting into the struggle again. He felt that he had earned his entry to this race. He had counted upon taking the chances of discovery. Already Bingley had seen him, and the word would go back; but the result of it would require time. He had long planned to close his own campaign for the year, even if the Japanese pushed on to Mukden. He would go deeper, past following, into China—even to the Leper Valley.

It was a momentous incident to Routledge—this meeting with the “Horse-killer.” The quick, startled, sullen look on the face of Bingley—not a flicker of a smile, not even a scornful smile, to answer his own—had meant that Cardinegh, dead or alive, had not told.

Bingley found the highway two miles west of the railroad, and spurred south in the darkness at the rate of about seven miles an hour. He meant to do six or seven hours of this before resting his mount.... Between twelve and one in the morning—and at most twenty miles to go! If there was anything left in his horse, after an hour’s rest, so much the better. Otherwise he could do it on foot, crossing the river above Fengmarong by six in the morning. This would leave two hours for the last two or three miles into Wangcheng. As for the other, without a mount, Bingley did not concede it to be within human possibility for him to reach the Chinese Eastern at any point to-morrow morning. Evidently Routledge had not planned to get away so soon. It would take eighteen hours at least to reach Wangcheng by the river, and Routledge, aiming westward, seemed to have this route in view.... With all his conjecturing, Bingley could find no peace of mind. Even if Routledge had not planned to reach travelled-lines to-morrow, would not the sight of a rival, with his speed signals out and whistling for right of way, stir him to competition? Such was his respect for the man who had passed on, that Bingley could not find serenity in judging the actions and acumen of Routledge by ordinary weights and measures.

Any other British correspondent would have hailed the outcast with the old welcome, notwithstanding the race-challenge which his appearance involved. On the morning he left Tokyo, five months before, Bingley had also promised Miss Cardinegh to carry the news of her father’s confession and death to Routledge, if he should be the first to find him. It did not occur to Bingley now, isolated as he had been so long, that this was the first time Routledge had been seen. Moreover, in their last meeting, at the Army and Navy ball, there had been a brief but bitter passage of words. Bingley was not the man to make an overture when there was a chance of its being repelled. Finally, the sudden discovery of a trained man, with carnage behind and the cable ahead, was a juggernaut which crushed the life from every other thought in his brain.

Routledge found his horses in excellent condition. The Chinese whom he had brought from Pingyang had proved faithful before, but with all the natives, not alone the banditti and river-thieves, emboldened by the war, the safe holding of his property was a joy indeed. At seven in the evening, the sky black with gathering storm, he left his servant, rich in taels and blessings, and turned westward along the Taitse river-road. This was neither the best nor the shortest way, but Routledge preferred to be impeded by ruts, even by chasms, than by Japanese sentries. With Bingley’s full panoply of credentials it would have been different.

Sixty-five miles to ride, a river to cross, an audience with Consul Milner, a train to catch, to say nothing of enforced delays by the possible interest of the Japanese in his movements—all in fourteen hours.

As Bingley conjectured, the chance meeting had hastened the plan of Routledge. He had intended to reach Wangcheng the following day, but by no means in time for the morning train; in fact, he had determined to tarry at the American consulate until the decision from the battle should come in. Wangcheng had changed hands since his last call at the port, but he counted on the wise and winning American to be as finely appreciated by the Japanese as he had been by the Russians. Milner would get the returns from the battle almost as soon as the Japanese commander at the base. The one word victory or defeat, and a line covering the incidental strategic cause, was all that Routledge needed for a startling story. He had mastered the field, and Oku had supplied a rainbow of pigments.

Bingley, having left the field, would not loiter on the road to the cable, nor would he halt before reaching an uncensored cable—therefore Shanhaikwan to-morrow night! Routledge did not care to accept second place, if hard-riding would win first. He faced the longer journey, and also set apart an hour before train-time for an interview with the Consul. It was eminently plain to him that this day had marked the crisis of the great battle, even if it had not already ended with nightfall. The unparalleled fury of Oku’s assaults was significant to this effect. To-morrow would doubtless bring the verdict; and all day to-morrow he would be on train to Shanhaikwan, in touch with Milner by wire at every station. Even if he reached the cable with the battle still raging, he could file the story of the great conflict, as it was synthesized in one man’s brain—up to the point of the historic last sentence.... Even as he rode, the lines and sentences fused in his mind, a colorful, dashing, galvanic conception that burned for expression.

On and on, hours and miles; cloud-bursts and flashes of lightning to show the trail ahead—until he came to doubt his watch, even the dawn of a new day, in the pressure of the illusion formed of dragging hours and darkened distances.

The rains helped to keep his mounts fresh. Every two hours he changed. The beasts had been long together, and either led with a slackened thong. He ran them very little, and it was after midnight before he dulled the fine edge of their fettle. They were tough, low-geared Tartar beasts, heavy-breasted, short in the pasterns, and quartered like hunters—built for rough trails and rough wear. Routledge slapped and praised them, riding light. It would take more than one gruelling night under such a horseman to break their hearts.