Port O' Gold Part 51

"How's that?" Robert's tone was puzzled.

Windham rose. "I'm saving it," he answered, "for a wounded hero, who, I rather hope, will volunteer."

"FATHER!" cried the young man rapturously.

At the Mount Zion Hospital Po Lun fought with death on Tuesday. The bullet was removed; but though this brought relief, there came an aftermath of fever and destroying weakness. Alice and her son were at his bedside, but Po Lun did not recognize them.

Mrs. Windham turned a tear-stained face to the physician. "Can nothing be done?" she pleaded. "He saved my boy.... Oh, doctor! You won't let him die."

The young physician's sympathy showed plainly in his eyes. "I've done everything," he said. "He's sinking. If I knew a way to rouse him there might be a chance."

As he spoke Francisco Stanley entered, viewed the silent figure on the cot and shook his head. "Poor Po Lun. At any rate he's been a hero in the papers. I've seen to that ..."

"He was delirious all morning ... stretching out his arms and calling 'Hang Far! Hang Far!' Do you know what it means?"

"I do," Alice answered; "it's the girl from whom he was separated nearly twenty years ago."

"Why--that's funny," said Francisco. "Yesterday a woman by that name was captured by the mission-workers in a raid on Chinatown. I wonder....

Could it be the same one?"

"Not likely," the physician answered. "It's a common name, I think.

Still--" he looked at Po Lun.

"Run and get her," Alice urged. "It's a chance. Go quickly."

Half an hour pa.s.sed; an hour, while the watchers waited at the bedside of Po Lun. Gradually his respiration waned. Several times the nurse called the physician, thinking death had come. But a spark still lingered, growing fainter with the minutes till a mist upon a mirror was the only sign that breath remained.

Suddenly there was a rush of feet, a door flung open and Francisco entered, half dragging a Chinese woman by the arm. She gazed with frantic eyes from Alice to Robert till her glance took in the figure on the bed. She stared at it curiously, incredulously. Then she gave a little cry and flung herself toward Po Lun.

What she said no one there present knew. What strange cabal she invoked is still a mystery. Be that as it may, eyes which had seemed closed forever, opened. Lips white, bloodless, breathed a scarce-heard whisper.

"_Hang Far_!"

"Come," said Alice. "Let us leave them together."

Half an later, in an ante-room, the doctor told them: "He will live, I think. It's very like a miracle...."

At the foot of Brannan street lay the Pacific Mail docks, where the Chinese laborers were landed. Many thousands of them had been brought there by the steamers from Canton. They had solved vexed problems as house servants, fruit pickers, tillers of the soil; they had done the rough work in the building of many bridges, the stemming of turbulent streams, the construction of highways. And while there was work for all, they had caused little trouble.

Now half a thousand jobless workers, armed and reckless, marched toward the docks. They bore torches, which illuminated fitfully their flushed, impa.s.sioned faces. Here and there one carried a transparency described, "The Chinese Must Go."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Half a thousand jobless workers, armed and reckless, marched toward the docks. They bore torches.... "A h.e.l.l-bent crew'"

said Ellis.]

Chief Ellis and a squad of mounted policemen watched them as they marched down Second street, shouting threats and waving their firebrands. "They're a h.e.l.l-bent crew," he said to William Coleman. "Is your posse ready?"

"Yes," he answered, "they've a.s.sembled near the dock. I've twenty companies."

"Good.... You'll need 'em all."

As he spoke a tongue of flame leaped upward from the darkness. Another and another.

"They've fired the lumber yards," the chief said. "I expected that.

There is fire apparatus on the spot.... It's time to move."

He spurred forward, rounding up his officers. Coleman rode silently toward the entrance of the docks. Very soon a bugle sounded. There were staccato orders; then a tramp of feet.

The Citizens' army moved in perfect unison toward the fires. Already engines were at work. One blaze was extinguished. Then came sounds of battle. Cries, shots. Coleman and his men rushed forward.

Stones and sticks flew through the air. Now and then a pistol barked.

The mounted police descended with a clatter, clubbing their way into the throng. But they did not penetrate far, so dense was the pack; it hemmed them about, pulling officers from their horses. The fire engines had been stopped. One of them was pushed into the bay.

More fires leaped from incendiary torches. The rioters seemed triumphant. Then Coleman's brigade fell upon them.

Whack, whack, whack, fell the pick-handles upon the backs, shoulders, sometimes heads of rioters. It was like a systematic tattoo. Coleman's voice was heard directing, here and there, cool and dispa.s.sionate. A couple of locomotive headlights threw their glare upon the now disordered gangsters. Whack! Whack! Whack!

Suddenly the rioters, bleating, panic-stricken, fled like frightened sheep. They scattered in every direction leader*-less, completely routed. The fire engines resumed work. An ambulance came up and the work of attending the wounded began. The fight was over.

CHAPTER LXVII

DENNIS KEARNEY

Weeks went by and brought no further outbreak. Chinatown which, for a time, was shuttered, fortified, almost deserted, once again resumed its feverish activities. In the theaters, funny men made jokes about the labor trouble. In the East strikes had abated. All seemed safe and orderly again.

But San Francisco had yet to deal with Dennis Kearney.

Dennis, born in County Cork just thirty years before, filled adventurous roles since his eleventh year, mostly on the so-called "h.e.l.l-s.h.i.+ps"

which beat up and down the mains of trade. In 1868 he first set foot in San Francisco as an officer of the clipper "Shooting Star." Tiring of the sea he put his earnings in a draying enterprise. This, for half a dozen years, had prospered.

Suddenly he cast his business interests to the winds. Became a labor agitator.

Francisco Stanley, who had sought him, questing for an interview since morning, cornered him at last in Bob Woodward's What Cheer House at Sacramento and Leidesdorff streets. It was one of those odd inst.i.tutions found only in this vividly bizarre metropolis of the West. For "two bits" you could get a bed and breakfast at the What Cheer House, both clean and wholesome enough for the proudest. If you had not the coin, it made little difference. One room was fitted out as a museum and contained the many curious articles which had found their way into Woodward's hands. Another room was the hotel library; the first free reading room in San Francisco.

At the What Cheer House all kinds of people gathered. Stanley, as he peeped into the library, noted a judge of the Superior Court poring over a volume of d.i.c.kens. He waved a salute to tousle-haired, eagle-beaked Sam Clemens, whose Mark Twain articles were beginning to attract attention from the Eastern publishers. Near him, quietly sedate, absorbed in Macaulay, was Bret Harte. He had been a Wells-Fargo messenger, miner, clerk and steam-boat hand, so rumor said, and now he was writing stories of the West. Stanley would have liked to stop and chat ... but Kearney must be found and interviewed before The Chronicle went to press.

Presently a loud, insistent voice attracted his attention. It was penetrating, violent, denunciatory. Francisco knew that voice. He went into an outer room where perhaps a dozen rough-clad men were gathered about a figure of medium height, compactly built, with a broad head, s.h.i.+fting blue eyes and a dynamic, nervous manner.

"Don't forget," he pounded fist on palm for emphasis, "on August 18 we organize the party. Johnny Day will be the prisident. We'll make thim b.l.o.o.d.y plutocrats take notice." He paused, catching sight of Stanley.

Instantly his frowning face became all smiles. "Ah, here's me young friend, the reporter," he said. "Come along Misther Stanley, and I'll give yez a yarn for the paper. Lave me tell ye of the Workingmen's Trade and Labor Union."

He kept Francisco's pencil busy.

"There ain't no strings on us. We're free from all political connections. We're for oursilves. Get that."