Can Such Things Be? By Ambrose Bierce
THE HAUNTED VALLEY
I - HOW TREES ARE FELLED IN CHINA
A half-mile north from Jo. Dunfer’s, on the road from
Hutton’s to Mexican Hill, the highway dips into a sunless
ravine which opens out on either hand in a half-confidential
manner, as if it had a secret to impart at some more convenient
season. I never used to ride through it without looking first to
the one side and then to the other, to see if the time had
arrived for the revelation. If I saw nothing - and I never did
see anything - there was no feeling of disappointment, for I knew
the disclosure was merely withheld temporarily for some good
reason which I had no right to question. That I should one day
be taken into full confidence I no more doubted than I doubted
the existence of Jo. Dunfer himself, through whose premises the
ravine ran.
It was said that Jo. had once undertaken to erect a cabin in some
remote part of it, but for some reason had abandoned the
enterprise and constructed his present hermaphrodite habitation,
half residence and half groggery, at the roadside, upon an
extreme corner of his estate; as far away as possible, as if on
purpose to show how radically he had changed his mind.
This Jo. Dunfer - or, as he was familiarly known in the
neighborhood, Whisky Jo. - was a very important personage in
those parts. He was apparently about forty years of age, a long,
shock-headed fellow, with a corded face, a gnarled arm and a
knotty hand like a bunch of prison-keys. He was a hairy man,
with a stoop in his walk, like that of one who is about to spring
upon something and rend it.
Next to the peculiarity to which he owed his local appellation,
Mr. Dunfer’s most obvious characteristic was a deep-seated
antipathy to the Chinese. I saw him once in a towering rage
because one of his herdsmen had permitted a travel-heated Asian
to slake his thirst at the horse-trough in front of the saloon
end of Jo.’s establishment. I ventured faintly to
remonstrate with Jo. for his unchristian spirit, but he merely
explained that there was nothing about Chinamen in the New
Testament, and strode away to wreak his displeasure upon his dog,
which also, I suppose, the inspired scribes had overlooked.
Some days afterward, finding him sitting alone in his barroom, I
cautiously approached the subject, when, greatly to my relief,
the habitual austerity of his expression visibly softened into
something that I took for condescension.
“You young Easterners,” he said, “are a
mile-and-a-half too good for this country, and you don’t
catch on to our play. People who don’t know a
Chileño from a Kanaka can afford to hang out liberal ideas
about Chinese immigration, but a fellow that has to fight for his
bone with a lot of mongrel coolies hasn’t any time for
foolishness.”
This long consumer, who had probably never done an honest
day’s-work in his life, sprung the lid of a Chinese
tobacco-box and with thumb and forefinger forked out a wad like a
small haycock. Holding this reinforcement within supporting
distance he fired away with renewed confidence.
“They’re a flight of devouring locusts, and
they’re going for everything green in this God blest land,
if you want to know.”
Here he pushed his reserve into the breach and when his
gabble-gear was again disengaged resumed his uplifting
discourse.
“I had one of them on this ranch five years ago, and
I’ll tell you about it, so that you can see the nub of this
whole question. I didn’t pan out particularly well those
days - drank more whisky than was prescribed for me and
didn’t seem to care for my duty as a patriotic American
citizen; so I took that pagan in, as a kind of cook. But when I
got religion over at the Hill and they talked of running me for
the Legislature it was given to me to see the light. But what
was I to do? If I gave him the go somebody else would take him,
and mightn’t treat him white. What was I to do?
What would any good Christian do, especially one new to the trade
and full to the neck with the brotherhood of Man and the
fatherhood of God?”
Jo. paused for a reply, with an expression of unstable
satisfaction, as of one who has solved a problem by a distrusted
method. Presently he rose and swallowed a glass of whisky from a
full bottle on the counter, then resumed his story.
“Besides, he didn’t count for much - didn’t
know anything and gave himself airs. They all do that. I said
him nay, but he muled it through on that line while he lasted;
but after turning the other cheek seventy and seven times I
doctored the dice so that he didn’t last forever. And
I’m almighty glad I had the sand to do it.
Jo.’s gladness, which somehow did not impress me, was duly
and ostentatiously celebrated at the bottle.
“About five years ago I started in to stick up a shack.
That was before this one was built, and I put it in another
place. I set Ah Wee and a little cuss named Gopher to cutting
the timber. Of course I didn’t expect Ah Wee to help much,
for he had a face like a day in June and big black eyes - I guess
maybe they were the damn’dest eyes in this neck o’
woods.”
While delivering this trenchant thrust at common sense Mr. Dunfer
absently regarded a knot-hole in the thin board partition
separating the bar from the living-room, as if that were one of
the eyes whose size and color had incapacitated his servant for
good service.
“Now you Eastern galoots won’t believe anything
against the yellow devils,” he suddenly flamed out with an
appearance of earnestness not altogether convincing, “but I
tell you that Chink was the perversest scoundrel outside San
Francisco. The miserable pigtail Mongolian went to hewing away
at the saplings all round the stems, like a worm o’ the
dust gnawing a radish. I pointed out his error as patiently as I
knew how, and showed him how to cut them on two sides, so as to
make them fall right; but no sooner would I turn my back on him,
like this” - and he turned it on me, amplifying the
illustration by taking some more liquor - “than he was at
it again. It was just this way: while I looked at him,
so” - regarding me rather unsteadily and with
evident complexity of vision - “he was all right; but when
I looked away, so” - taking a long pull at the
bottle - “he defied me. Then I’d gaze at him
reproachfully, so, and butter wouldn’t have melted
in his mouth.”
Doubtless Mr. Dunfer honestly intended the look that he fixed
upon me to be merely reproachful, but it was singularly fit to
arouse the gravest apprehension in any unarmed person incurring
it; and as I had lost all interest in his pointless and
interminable narrative, I rose to go. Before I had fairly risen,
he had again turned to the counter, and with a barely audible
“so,” had emptied the bottle at a gulp.
Heavens! what a yell! It was like a Titan in his last, strong
agony. Jo. staggered back after emitting it, as a cannon recoils
from its own thunder, and then dropped into his chair, as if he
had been “knocked in the head” like a beef - his eyes
drawn sidewise toward the wall, with a stare of terror. Looking
in the same direction, I saw that the knot-hole in the wall had
indeed become a human eye - a full, black eye, that glared into
my own with an entire lack of expression more awful than the most
devilish glitter. I think I must have covered my face with my
hands to shut out the horrible illusion, if such it was, and
Jo.’s little white man-of-all-work coming into the room
broke the spell, and I walked out of the house with a sort of
dazed fear that delirium tremens might be infectious. My
horse was hitched at the watering-trough, and untying him I
mounted and gave him his head, too much troubled in mind to note
whither he took me.
I did not know what to think of all this, and like every one who
does not know what to think I thought a great deal, and to little
purpose. The only reflection that seemed at all satisfactory,
was, that on the morrow I should be some miles away, with a
strong probability of never returning.
A sudden coolness brought me out of my abstraction, and looking
up I found myself entering the deep shadows of the ravine. The
day was stifling; and this transition from the pitiless, visible
heat of the parched fields to the cool gloom, heavy with pungency
of cedars and vocal with twittering of the birds that had been
driven to its leafy asylum, was exquisitely refreshing. I looked
for my mystery, as usual, but not finding the ravine in a
communicative mood, dismounted, led my sweating animal into the
undergrowth, tied him securely to a tree and sat down upon a rock
to meditate.
I began bravely by analyzing my pet superstition about the
place. Having resolved it into its constituent elements I
arranged them in convenient troops and squadrons, and collecting
all the forces of my logic bore down upon them from impregnable
premises with the thunder of irresistible conclusions and a great
noise of chariots and general intellectual shouting. Then, when
my big mental guns had overturned all opposition, and were
growling almost inaudibly away on the horizon of pure
speculation, the routed enemy straggled in upon their rear,
massed silently into a solid phalanx, and captured me, bag and
baggage. An indefinable dread came upon me. I rose to shake it
off, and began threading the narrow dell by an old, grass-grown
cow-path that seemed to flow along the bottom, as a substitute
for the brook that Nature had neglected to provide.
The trees among which the path straggled were ordinary,
well-behaved plants, a trifle perverted as to trunk and eccentric
as to bough, but with nothing unearthly in their general aspect.
A few loose bowlders, which had detached themselves from the
sides of the depression to set up an independent existence at the
bottom, had dammed up the pathway, here and there, but their
stony repose had nothing in it of the stillness of death. There
was a kind of death-chamber hush in the valley, it is true, and a
mysterious whisper above: the wind was just fingering the tops of
the trees - that was all.
I had not thought of connecting Jo. Dunfer’s drunken
narrative with what I now sought, and only when I came into a
clear space and stumbled over the level trunks of some small
trees did I have the revelation. This was the site of the
abandoned “shack.” The discovery was verified by
noting that some of the rotting stumps were hacked all round, in
a most unwoodmanlike way, while others were cut straight across,
and the butt ends of the corresponding trunks had the blunt
wedge-form given by the axe of a master.
The opening among the trees was not more than thirty paces
across. At one side was a little knoll - a natural hillock, bare
of shrubbery but covered with wild grass, and on this, standing
out of the grass, the headstone of a grave!
I do not remember that I felt anything like surprise at this
discovery. I viewed that lonely grave with something of the
feeling that Columbus must have had when he saw the hills and
headlands of the new world. Before approaching it I leisurely
completed my survey of the surroundings. I was even guilty of
the affectation of winding my watch at that unusual hour, and
with needless care and deliberation. Then I approached my
mystery.
The grave - a rather short one - was in somewhat better repair
than was consistent with its obvious age and isolation, and my
eyes, I dare say, widened a trifle at a clump of unmistakable
garden flowers showing evidence of recent watering. The stone
had clearly enough done duty once as a doorstep. In its front
was carved, or rather dug, an inscription. It read thus:
AH WEE - CHINAMAN.
Age unknown. Worked for Jo. Dunfer.
This monument is erected by him to keep the Chink’s memory
green. Likewise as a warning to Celestials not to take on airs.
Devil take ‘em!
She Was a Good Egg.
I cannot adequately relate my astonishment at this uncommon
inscription! The meagre but sufficient identification of the
deceased; the impudent candor of confession; the brutal anathema;
the ludicrous change of sex and sentiment - all marked this
record as the work of one who must have been at least as much
demented as bereaved. I felt that any further disclosure would
be a paltry anti-climax, and with an unconscious regard for
dramatic effect turned squarely about and walked away. Nor did I
return to that part of the county for four years.
II - WHO DRIVES SANE OXEN SHOULD HIMSELF BE SANE
“Gee-up, there, old Fuddy-Duddy!”
This unique adjuration came from the lips of a queer little man
perched upon a wagonful of firewood, behind a brace of oxen that
were hauling it easily along with a simulation of mighty effort
which had evidently not imposed on their lord and master. As
that gentleman happened at the moment to be staring me squarely
in the face as I stood by the roadside it was not altogether
clear whether he was addressing me or his beasts; nor could I say
if they were named Fuddy and Duddy and were both subjects of the
imperative verb “to gee-up.” Anyhow the command
produced no effect on us, and the queer little man removed his
eyes from mine long enough to spear Fuddy and Duddy alternately
with a long pole, remarking, quietly but with feeling:
“Dern your skin,” as if they enjoyed that integument
in common. Observing that my request for a ride took no
attention, and finding myself falling slowly astern, I placed one
foot upon the inner circumference of a hind wheel and was slowly
elevated to the level of the hub, whence I boarded the concern,
sans cérémonie, and scrambling forward
seated myself beside the driver - who took no notice of me until
he had administered another indiscriminate castigation to his
cattle, accompanied with the advice to “buckle down, you
derned Incapable!” Then, the master of the outfit (or
rather the former master, for I could not suppress a whimsical
feeling that the entire establishment was my lawful prize)
trained his big, black eyes upon me with an expression strangely,
and somewhat unpleasantly, familiar, laid down his rod - which
neither blossomed nor turned into a serpent, as I half expected -
folded his arms, and gravely demanded, “W’at did you
do to W’isky?”
My natural reply would have been that I drank it, but there was
something about the query that suggested a hidden significance,
and something about the man that did not invite a shallow jest.
And so, having no other answer ready, I merely held my tongue,
but felt as if I were resting under an imputation of guilt, and
that my silence was being construed into a confession.
Just then a cold shadow fell upon my cheek, and caused me to look
up. We were descending into my ravine! I cannot describe the
sensation that came upon me: I had not seen it since it unbosomed
itself four years before, and now I felt like one to whom a
friend has made some sorrowing confession of crime long past, and
who has basely deserted him in consequence. The old memories of
Jo. Dunfer, his fragmentary revelation, and the unsatisfying
explanatory note by the headstone, came back with singular
distinctness. I wondered what had become of Jo., and - I turned
sharply round and asked my prisoner. He was intently watching
his cattle, and without withdrawing his eyes replied:
“Gee-up, old Terrapin! He lies aside of Ah Wee up the
gulch. Like to see it? They always come back to the spot -
I’ve been expectin’ you. H-woa!”
At the enunciation of the aspirate, Fuddy-Duddy, the incapable
terrapin, came to a dead halt, and before the vowel had died away
up the ravine had folded up all his eight legs and lain down in
the dusty road, regardless of the effect upon his derned skin.
The queer little man slid off his seat to the ground and started
up the dell without deigning to look back to see if I was
following. But I was.
It was about the same season of the year, and at near the same
hour of the day, of my last visit. The jays clamored loudly, and
the trees whispered darkly, as before; and I somehow traced in
the two sounds a fanciful analogy to the open boastfulness of Mr.
Jo. Dunfer’s mouth and the mysterious reticence of his
manner, and to the mingled hardihood and tenderness of his sole
literary production - the epitaph. All things in the valley
seemed unchanged, excepting the cow-path, which was almost wholly
overgrown with weeds. When we came out into the
“clearing,” however, there was change enough. Among
the stumps and trunks of the fallen saplings, those that had been
hacked “China fashion” were no longer distinguishable
from those that were cut “’Melican way.” It
was as if the Old-World barbarism and the New-World civilization
had reconciled their differences by the arbitration of an
impartial decay - as is the way of civilizations. The knoll was
there, but the Hunnish brambles had overrun and all but
obliterated its effete grasses; and the patrician garden-violet
had capitulated to his plebeian brother - perhaps had merely
reverted to his original type. Another grave - a long, robust
mound - had been made beside the first, which seemed to shrink
from the comparison; and in the shadow of a new headstone the old
one lay prostrate, with its marvelous inscription illegible by
accumulation of leaves and soil. In point of literary merit the
new was inferior to the old - was even repulsive in its terse and
savage jocularity:
JO. DUNFER. DONE FOR.
I turned from it with indifference, and brushing away the leaves
from the tablet of the dead pagan restored to light the mocking
words which, fresh from their long neglect, seemed to have a
certain pathos. My guide, too, appeared to take on an added
seriousness as he read it, and I fancied that I could detect
beneath his whimsical manner something of manliness, almost of
dignity. But while I looked at him his former aspect, so subtly
inhuman, so tantalizingly familiar, crept back into his big eyes,
repellant and attractive. I resolved to make an end of the
mystery if possible.
“My friend,” I said, pointing to the smaller grave,
“did Jo. Dunfer murder that Chinaman?”
He was leaning against a tree and looking across the open space
into the top of another, or into the blue sky beyond. He neither
withdrew his eyes, nor altered his posture as he slowly
replied:
“No, sir; he justifiably homicided him.”
“Then he really did kill him.”
“Kill ‘im? I should say he did, rather.
Doesn’t everybody know that? Didn’t he stan’
up before the coroner’s jury and confess it? And
didn’t they find a verdict of ‘Came to ‘is
death by a wholesome Christian sentiment workin’ in the
Caucasian breast’? An’ didn’t the church at
the Hill turn W’isky down for it? And didn’t the
sovereign people elect him Justice of the Peace to get even on
the gospelers? I don’t know where you were brought
up.”
“But did Jo. do that because the Chinaman did not, or would
n’ot, learn to cut down trees like a white
man?”
“Sure! - it stan’s so on the record, which makes it
true an’ legal. My knowin’ better doesn’t make
any difference with legal truth; it wasn’t my funeral and I
wasn’t invited to deliver an oration. But the fact is,
W’isky was jealous o’ me” - and the
little wretch actually swelled out like a turkeycock and made a
pretense of adjusting an imaginary neck-tie, noting the effect in
the palm of his hand, held up before him to represent a
mirror.
“Jealous of you!” I repeated with ill-mannered
astonishment.
“That’s what I said. Why not? - don’t I look
all right?”
He assumed a mocking attitude of studied grace, and twitched the
wrinkles out of his threadbare waistcoat. Then, suddenly
dropping his voice to a low pitch of singular sweetness, he
continued:
“W’isky thought a lot o’ that Chink; nobody but
me knew how ‘e doted on ‘im. Couldn’t bear
‘im out of ‘is sight, the derned protoplasm! And
w’en ‘e came down to this clear-in’ one day
an’ found him an’ me neglectin’ our work - him
asleep an’ me grapplin a tarantula out of ‘is sleeve
- W’isky laid hold of my axe and let us have it, good
an’ hard! I dodged just then, for the spider bit me, but
Ah Wee got it bad in the side an’ tumbled about like
anything. W’isky was just weigh-in’ me out one
w’en ‘e saw the spider fastened on my finger; then
‘e knew he’d made a jack ass of ‘imself. He
threw away the axe and got down on ‘is knees alongside of
Ah Wee, who gave a last little kick and opened ‘is eyes -
he had eyes like mine - an’ puttin’ up ‘is
hands drew down W’isky’s ugly head and held it there
w’ile ‘e stayed. That wasn’t long, for a
tremblin’ ran through ‘im and ‘e gave a bit of
a moan an’ beat the game.”
During the progress of the story the narrator had become
transfigured. The comic, or rather, the sardonic element was all
out of him, and as he painted that strange scene it was with
difficulty that I kept my composure. And this consummate actor
had somehow so managed me that the sympathy due to his
dramatis persone was given to himself. I stepped forward
to grasp his hand, when suddenly a broad grin danced across his
face and with a light, mocking laugh he continued:
“W’en W’isky got ‘is nut out o’
that ‘e was a sight to see! All his fine clothes - he
dressed mighty blindin’ those days - were spoiled
everlastin’! ‘Is hair was towsled and his face - what
I could see of it - was whiter than the ace of lilies. ‘E
stared once at me, and looked away as if I didn’t count;
an’ then there were shootin’ pains chasin’ one
another from my bitten finger into my head, and it was Gopher to
the dark. That’s why I wasn’t at the
inquest.”
“But why did you hold your tongue afterward?” I
asked.
“It’s that kind of tongue,” he replied, and not
another word would he say about it.
“After that W’isky took to drinkin’ harder
an’ harder, and was rabider an’ rabider anti-coolie,
but I don’t think ‘e was ever particularly glad that
‘e dispelled Ah Wee. He didn’t put on so much dog
about it w’en we were alone as w’en he had the ear of
a derned Spectacular Extravaganza like you. ‘E put up that
headstone and gouged the inscription accordin’ to his
varyin’ moods. It took ‘im three weeks,
workin’ between drinks. I gouged his in one
day.”
“When did Jo. die?” I asked rather absently. The
answer took my breath:
“Pretty soon after I looked at him through that knot-hole,
w’en you had put something in his w’isky, you derned
Borgia!”
Recovering somewhat from my surprise at this astounding charge, I
was half-minded to throttle the audacious accuser, but was
restrained by a sudden conviction that came to me in the light of
a revelation. I fixed a grave look upon him and asked, as calmly
as I could: “And when did you go luny?”
“Nine years ago!” he shrieked, throwing out his
clenched hands - “nine years ago, w’en that big brute
killed the woman who loved him better than she did me! - me who
had followed ‘er from San Francisco, where ‘e won
‘er at draw poker! - me who had watched over ‘er for
years w’en the scoundrel she belonged to was ashamed to
acknowledge ‘er and treat ‘er white! - me who for her
sake kept ‘is cussed secret till it ate ‘im up! - me
who w’en you poisoned the beast fulfilled ‘is last
request to lay ‘im alongside ‘er and give ‘im a
stone to the head of ‘im! And I’ve never since seen
‘er grave till now, for I didn’t want to meet
‘im here.”
“Meet him? Why, Gopher, my poor fellow, he is
dead!”
“That’s why I’m afraid of
‘im.”
I followed the little wretch back to his wagon and wrung his hand
at parting. It was now nightfall, and as I stood there at the
roadside in the deepening gloom, watching the blank outlines of
the receding wagon, a sound was borne to me on the evening wind -
a sound as of a series of vigorous thumps - and a voice came out
of the night:
“Gee-up, there, you derned old Geranium.”