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ghosts.
He couldn't bring himself to kill. They were only mice. So he carried them to
the jeep and locked them inside. Soon they filled the back and front seats,
sniffing and clawing at the windows, trying to escape.
When he had cleared the surrounding desert, he entered the deserted hogans he
found here and there, driving the mice out with the gong and cleaning the
interior with brittle-bush whisks.
In the deepest part of the night, Remo came across a solitary wind-scoured
headstone.
It was a simple slab. It stood alone in the desert beside a eroded hump of red
sandstone that lay at the end of the depressed crust of sand.
There was a name on the stone. No date, just a name. No stonecutter had carved
the name. The letters were too irregular, but they had been carved deep and
with great force.
The name was Dawn Starr Roam.
Remo knew instinctively it was the name of his mother.
On that spot, a thousand emotions both cold and hot running through his bones,
he broke down and wept bitterly angry tears over what he had never known and
only now truly missed.
NEAR DAWN, a light rain fell from the desert sky, and Remo opened his eyes to
see Vega and Altair burning faintly on either side of the Milky Way.
He sat up. And in the sand beside him the gong suddenly rang. It was very
faint. Nothing seemed to have struck it. Unless it was raindrops.
The faint sound faded. Then it came again. Nothing struck the bar of steel.
Unless it was a ghost.
Remo stood up. And to the west he heard the sound of the gong's mate coming
across the sands.
"Chiun. He's calling me."
Grabbing the gong, Remo pulled the mallet and struck it in response. Then he
took off over the sand, toward Red Ghost Butte. The carrying gong note pierced
the still air again, and the gong in Remo's hand answered.
The notes blended into a single sustained cry that didn't subside until Remo
reached the cave mouth.
There stood the Master of Sinanju, his face a shell of sorrow and unconcealed
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pain.
"Don't tell me...." Remo said thickly.
"My sorrow..."
Remo squeezed his eyes tight as fists. "Nooooo."
". . . is only as great as your joy," Chiun continued aridly. "For you have
gained a father, and I have lost my only son."
Remo's eyes popped. "He's alive!"
Chiun nodded. "He awaits you within."
Remo started in. "Well, c'mon"
"No. It is not for me to do this. I will remain here. For it is the seventh
moon and it is my custom to bathe in the bitter tears of Kyon-u and Chik nyo,
whose sufferings I understand only too well."
Chapter 24
Two days later three men rode into the Sonoran Desert on horseback.
Sunny Joe Roam took the lead. Remo rode on his right. Balanced on an Appaloosa
pony, Chiun followed at a respectful distance, his face creased with pain like
crumpled paper.
The sky was utterly cloudless, and in the clear desert air objects and people
possessed an unnatural clarity, as if cut from glass. Overhead the sun beat
down like hot jackhammers.
"I owe you two my life," Sunny Joe said after a while.
"Our blood is the same color," said Chiun. "More than that, I owe you some
answers."
Remo said nothing. It was a subject no one had wanted to address in the two
days that old Bill Roam had recuperated from the Sun On Jo Disease.
"For you to understand," Sunny Joe began, "you have to understand who I am.
Long, long before the white man came, my ancestor Ko Jong Oh arrived in this
desert. He came from the land that comes down to us as Sun On Jo. They say all
us redskins are Asians originally. So I always figured he came across the
Bering Strait from somewhere in China. Anyway, Ko Jong Oh settled down here
among a tiny group of Indians and married one. We think they were head
pounders."
"Head pounders?" Remo said.
"That's what we call the Navajo, on account of they used to bash in the skulls
of their enemies. That's to differentiate them from the Hopi, whom we call
cliff squatters.
"Now, Ko Jong Oh was a mighty warrior and magician, and he took this tribe
under his wing. In gratitude, they took the name Sun On Jo. He taught the Sun
On Jos the ways of peace. War and fighting and killing were forbidden. Only Ko
Jong Oh and each eldest son descended from him were allowed to fight. And only [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]