A Bright Tomorrow (15 page)

There was no thought of leaving Peking. If to stay meant massacre, to leave the compound meant destruction. At once activity in the legations increased. A detachment of marines aided in the evacuation of the Methodist compound. Seventy-one missionaries and a large number of converts, including 124 Chinese schoolgirls, were brought into the quarter and lodged in the small chapel of the British legation.

The British compound, commanding a good field of fire and not dominated by the Tatar Wall, had been selected as the key defensive position. Crowded into it were some nine hundred persons, plus a large number of ponies, mules and sheep, and one cow—all this in three acres of land with a normal population of sixty people.

It was a frantic scene. Carts containing household furniture jammed into the area, and peasants swarmed about, unloading their belongings. One building was assigned to the French, another to the Russians, a third to the Imperial Customs. A group of men huddled over maps and planned strategy. Dr. Morrison made space on the tile floor for his mattress, heaping his supply of books nearby.

Then as darkness fell, heavy firing commenced in the east, near the Austrian legation. Amos was standing beside Sergeant MacClintock, and the two of them turned to face the sound of the guns.

“Well, looks like the siege of Peking has begun,” the marine remarked. “God help us all!”

Amos was thinking about the sheet of paper that Sir Claude had shown him earlier. This sheet listed the total strength of the legation guards. With his reporter's sure memory, he could see the list clearly:

He thought of the masses of enemy troops, some of them well armed, that now ringed the city, and said with a wry smile, “God will have to do it, Joe. Otherwise, we don't have a prayer!”

The siege seemed to last forever, though by actual count, only five weeks had passed by the time the fighting finally ended. Each day life had grown more oppressive. Food was in short supply, sanitation impossible, privacy forgotten. To make matters worse, the defenders never got a clear look at their attackers, hidden in the streets and buildings of the city. Rooftops and trees limited the view from the legations to less than one hundred yards, and this blindness increased the sense of isolation.

Casualties had mounted steadily as machine gun and rifle fire ripped into the legations. It was on a hot afternoon in July that Amos—on guard with the marines—was suddenly aware of something happening down the street.

MacClintock had seen it too, and whispered, “Stay alert now. They'll be coming soon.”

“Maybe they won't charge,” Willie Summers offered hopefully. “Maybe they'll pull back.” He was thinking of home and secretly wishing he were there.

Sir Claude MacDonald came hurrying forward. “Look…the Boxers are wheeling an artillery piece into place!”

MacClintock shook his head. “We're in trouble, Stuart. We've got nothing that can reach that gun. It's one of them new Krupp cannons!” The cannon barked and over to the right, a section of the wall blew up. “Keep your heads down!” MacClintock ordered.

The defenders could do no more than crouch in the rubble as the rapid-fire cannon spoke again and again.

MacClintock looked at his men, his face mask-like. “That gun's got to be knocked out. I'm goin'…but nobody has to go with me.” He threw himself over the wall without hesitation, and Amos followed. Even as he went over the wall, he was thinking,
Why am I doing this?
He noted that Willie Summers, his face pale as paper, was one of the three marines who had come tumbling after him.
He's as scared as I am,
Amos thought.

The five men dodged into an alley. “We'll get on top of that building—see?” MacClintock said. “We can pick those gunners off from there.”

“But they'll just start again when we pull back, Joe,” Amos argued.

“Yeah, so I'm going to spike the cannon! Now, you birds get into position. When you knock the gunners out, I'll go fix that cannon so them Boxers can't ever use it.”

Amos shook his head. “You can't make it! There's lots of riflemen supporting that gun. They'll cut you down!”

“You knock them off if they try it, Stuart.” MacClintock grinned at Willie, who was staring at him. “Summers, I appoint you corporal,” he said. “You're in command…now get going!”

Summers swallowed, but he drew himself up proudly. “Come on, let's get those jokers!”

Amos and the marines scrambled to the roof of the building the sergeant had mentioned and lay down flat. “Gosh!” Summers breathed. “Sarge was right…look at that!”

Looking down, Amos saw that they commanded a clear view of the cannon crew, who had no idea they were in danger.

“Now, get the crew, then keep your eyes open,” Summers ordered. “Them Boxers will pop up to get a shot at Sarge! I'll take the officer. Bibb, you take the guy with the red scarf—” He went on identifying the enemy soldiers. “We'll all fire on my signal. Don't miss! When the five soldiers go down, I'm hoping them Boxers will think the gods have turned against them. All right, aim…fire!”

Amos drew a bead on the chest of one of the Chinese soldiers, and at the signal, pulled the trigger. It was almost mystical—or so it must have seemed to the onlooking Boxers—for every member of the crew fell to the ground, either dead or wounded.

“There goes Sergeant MacClintock!” Summers yelped. “Now…get them Boxers!”

Amos fired as rapidly as he could find a target, and the effectiveness of the marines' fire drove the Boxers from the scene, leaving twenty of their men on the ground. Meanwhile, MacClintock made a wild dash for the cannon. They saw him attach something to it, then light a match and touch it to a fuse. He whirled and was halfway back to safety when a bullet from an unseen sharpshooter knocked him down. At the same instant, the explosive he'd fixed to the cannon went off with a tremendous roar.

“Willie…cover me!” Amos yelled.

He threw down his gun, darted down the stairs, then turned into the open field. As the rifles of the marines chattered, two more Boxers fell from the branches of a tree.

Reaching MacClintock, Amos was relieved to see that the sergeant was alive. He had a bloody thigh, but he was conscious. “Come on, Joe, climb aboard!”

Amos yanked the marine to his feet, bent and lifted him to his shoulders, then began to run. MacClintock was a heavy man, but Amos wasn't aware of the extra weight. His feet struck the dust, sending up tiny puffs. Near his head, like bees humming was the whine of bullets. The wall was only ten feet away. He kept on, spurred by the thought of safety. “He got him! He got him!” He could hear the marines clearly.

Then he was at the wall…but even as he reached it, a giant fist struck him a tremendous blow in the side. Amos pitched forward, pushing MacClintock to the ground, then crawled in front and grabbed the sergeant's wrists. “Come on, Joe!” he grunted, and with one final lunge, the two cleared the distance.

“You hit, Amos?”

Looking up, Stuart saw Willie Summers's pale face, his freckles standing out like a badge.

“He got it in the back,” MacClintock said in a thin voice. “Better get both of us out of here.”

At that moment, reinforcements arrived—twenty Italian guards. The officer took one look at the two wounded men and snapped, “Get them to the hospital. We'll take care of things here.” His dark eyes gleamed, and he nodded, “We saw it all. There'll be a medal for both of you.”

Amos felt himself losing consciousness, the pain razor-sharp. He forced his eyes open and studied the officer, then whispered something.

“What did he say?” the officer asked.

Willie Summers grinned. “He said he'd rather have a ticket to the good old U.S. of A!”

Amos drifted off into a warm oblivion, unaware of his jolting ride to the field hospital, where Dr. Morrison dug the slug out of his side. Nor did he know Rose when she bathed his face and sat beside him all through the night.

A
mos awakened slowly, reluctantly coming out of a deep sleep. His mouth had a sour taste, and when he tried to lick his lips, they felt like dry paper. A sudden desire for water overtook him, and when he opened his eyes, his surroundings swam into focus.

He was lying on a single cot in a room with only one window through which he could see no more than an inky blackness. A single coal oil lamp, turned low, penetrated the darkness, and when he turned his head, he squinted, making out the forms of several men in cots like his own.

Next to his bed was a small table. Seeing a glass there, his thirst became acute. He rolled over on his side, but as he reached for the glass, pain exploded in his side like a bomb. Involuntarily, he expelled a grunt of pain and fell back, gritting his teeth until the wave of agony subsided.

“Amos…are you awake?”

The whisper was followed by a cool hand on his brow, and he opened his eyes again to see Rose bending over his cot. She was wearing a white dress and had appeared so suddenly and in such a spectral light that, for one confused moment, Amos thought he was dead. Then the touch of her hand reassured him, and he nodded. It took an effort to speak, but he mumbled, “Drink…!”

Picking up the glass, Rose poured some water into it, then carefully supporting his head, put the glass to his lips. “Be careful,” she warned. He gulped thirstily, draining the glass, and when she refilled it, he drank that as well. “How do you feel?”

“Rotten.” Amos found, however, that the water had lubricated his mouth sufficiently for speech. Although his head was pounding and his right side throbbed with every movement, he began to struggle to sit up. Rose helped him into a sitting position, and he stared at her from hollow eyes. “I remember getting hit,” he said. “How long have I been out?”

“Just since yesterday,” Rose replied. “Are you hungry?”

“Yes!”

She smiled at the urgency in his tone. “That's a good sign. I'll go get you something to eat.” She left the room, and he lay there quietly until she returned with a tray. “This is still warm,” she said, handing him a bowl. “Do you need me to feed you?”

“No, I can do it.” He took the bowl and was astonished to find how hungry he was. As he ate, he asked, “No sign of the relief force, I take it?”

“Not yet.”

She waited until he was finished, then said, “Breakfast will be in a couple of hours, then you can have something else. I did find a little coffee.” She handed him the cup. “Everyone is talking about what a heroic thing you did, Amos, saving Sergeant MacClintock's life.” He shrugged and sipped his coffee, and she realized her praise had made him uncomfortable. “The sergeant is in the cot on the end.”

“How is he?”

“Oh, not bad. Both of you were lucky, the doctor said. No bones hit. You'll be up and around in a week.”

Amos drank the coffee slowly, savoring the strong flavor. Except for the sound of heavy breathing, the room was silent. From the small window came a sound of a gun firing, distant and muffled. Rose sat beside him, watching him, and he wondered how long she'd been in the room. The light from the lamp gave her skin a mellow glow and sculpted the planes of her face, giving an oriental cast to her eyes, deep in the sockets. She had always been quiet, Amos thought, and now he saw how attractive and reassuring that quality was. He disliked talkative women, those who couldn't bear a single instant of silence, and there was something pleasant about the way she just sat there, letting time run on.

Finally he said, “Have you heard from Nick or Anna?”

“Anna writes me sometimes. She's worried about Nick. Did you know he had been arrested?”

“No…but I'm not too surprised. He's in with a hard bunch.”

The food had made Amos drowsy, and he lay there, relaxed. He found that the bullet had done more than tear his flesh; it had weakened his spirit in a way he could not explain. For one thing, his anger with Rose was gone, and he wondered about that, for it had been with him for a long time. He was very weak, and as he slipped off, he reached out his hand and mumbled, “Rose?”

“Yes, Amos?” She leaned forward, took his hand and waited, but he was already asleep. When she tried to pull her hand away, he tightened his grip, and she let her hand rest in his. For a long time, she sat there looking down into his face. He was thinner, and the wound had dealt him a hard blow, but she still thought he was fine-looking. Not handsome, but his features were strong and gave the impression of sensitivity. With her free hand, she brushed a lock of his hair back from his forehead.

He's a good man,
she thought, letting her eyes rest on his face.
I can never have him now
…
but I can always remember that he loved me once.
The thought saddened her, and she gave his hand a squeeze, released it, then rose and left the room.

The siege continued without respite. Sir Claude estimated that the Boxers had fired more than two hundred thousand rounds at the compound, and the result was a steadily mounting casualty list, with thirty-eight fighting men killed by the end of July, and fifty-five more badly wounded.

With no sign of relief and supplies dwindling, the embattled prisoners found it almost impossible to keep their spirits up. The huge walls surrounding them loomed larger, seeming to close in each day.

“It's like–like being in a big
rat trap!”
said Willie Summers, who had come in from his post to eat with Amos. “If we could just get a good shot at those…,” he broke off abruptly, glancing at Rose Beaumont, who appeared with a bowl of soup.

She put the bowl in front of him, smiled, and said with a glint of humor in her greenish eyes, “Finest Mongol pony soup in town, Willie.”

Summers looked down at the mixture and shook his head in disgust. “If anyone had ever told me I'd be eatin' pony soup…”

Amos was amused at the young marine. “Better than bird's nest soup,” he commented, lowering one eyelid in a sly wink at Rose.

Summers stared at Amos, jaw dropping.
“Bird's nest?”
he demanded. “Well, if that ain't just like these Chinamen!” Nevertheless, he ate his soup with gusto, then shoved back from the table and regarded Amos. “When you comin' back to work?” he asked. “Seems like you been soldierin' on us long enough.”

“We heroes have to take care of ourselves, Willie.” Amos grinned, for he had learned to make light of his accomplishment. He had healed rather slowly, for the bullet had not gone squarely in, but had turned, ripping a gaping tunnel in his side and back. For the first week, every movement had been pure agony, but when the flesh began to knit, he could move about with some degree of ease…as long as he didn't make any abrupt motions.

The days passed slowly, but even in the midst of constant crisis, Amos was undergoing some sort of metamorphosis that puzzled him. For long hours he lay on his cot with nothing to do but think. He could sleep only so many hours, and even at night he lay silently pondering what was happening to him. By nature an introspective man, he was aware that something unusual was going on inside. Even that mystified him, for he had been a man of the mind, assuming that only mystics or people with great religious inclinations, like his mother, were moved in the “spirit.”

In his enforced idleness, Amos came to understand something that he would never have known if his busy life had not been brought to an abrupt halt. Sorting out the skeins of his history, he began to realize that his restlessness for the past few years was rooted in a kind of inner emptiness. This came as a shock, and at first he shook off the idea. But as he pondered the matter, he realized it was true.

“A man has to have something more than work,” he mused. “He can fill his life up with things, but those things don't ever seem to be enough. Guess that's why I've been chasing all over the world…looking for something over the next hill.”

Finally he realized that Rose was at the core of his problem, and it didn't take him long to conclude that the bitterness spawned by her betrayal had been a cancer eating away at his spirit. For long hours, he thought of the early days when he'd fallen in love with her and of the wonder of that love. Then came the war…and nothing in the war had been more devastating than his rejection by Rose.

But she wasn't all of it. He had never forgotten the times when God had seemed to reach out and touch him. He thought again of that time when he had asked God for a job and had been given one instantly! He thought of his mother, how she'd faced every difficulty with a serenity that was baffling to him.

And he thought of Faye O'Dell, whose bones now lay in a shallow grave in Cuba. Despite Rose's words, he still grieved over the lad.

And now, sitting at the table as Rose and Willie bantered with each other, he thought he saw in Willie some of the same vulnerability he'd seen in O'Dell. He had never inquired into the boy's belief about God, and when he brought his thoughts back to the present, his attention sharpened as he heard the two speaking of religion.

“Guess I'll go to heaven,” Willie was saying. “I ain't done lots of bad stuff.”

Rose shook her head slightly. “That's not the way to get to heaven, Willie. Jesus said, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father, but by me.' That's why Jesus died—to save sinners. And we're all sinners, Willie.”

“But…some are worse than others!”

“Yes, that's true, but it's not how
bad
our particular sins are. As a matter of fact, some of the things we think are the very
worst
sins may not be as bad in God's eyes as some of the
little
sins,” Rose said pensively. “We think it's terrible to kill a person…and it is, of course. But I've known people who were so cruel to their family for years that God must have wept. Yet they were in good standing with man. No, we're all disobedient to God, and the only way to get back in good standing with
him
is to have our sins forgiven.”

Willie shook his head. “Miss Rose, I'm just dumb, I guess. But I can't see how a man dying two thousand years ago can make
me
good.”

Amos nodded. “I've wondered about that myself,” he murmured and was aware that Rose turned her eyes on him at once.

“I know it's difficult to understand,” she said earnestly. She hesitated, then asked, “Did you know that the Jews sacrificed a lamb to God? Well, the Book of Hebrews says it's impossible for the blood of animals to take away sin.”

“Why'd they do it, then?” Willie demanded. He was leaning forward, his eyes riveted on Rose.

“Because God commanded them to. But for hundreds of years, with thousands of lambs slain, not one sin was ever washed away by the blood of those animals. But all the prophets God sent kept telling the Jews to hope, that one day a Messiah would come, One who would save his people. And in the Gospel of John, the first chapter, we learn that all those prophecies came true. ‘The next day,'” she recited with glowing eyes, “‘John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.' And that's what Jesus did—he took away the sin of the world.”

“But why do the preachers talk about hell if Jesus took away sin?” A look of bewilderment crossed Willie's face. He had been afraid for days, not of death so much as the shadow that lay beyond death. He had admired the calm assurance of Rose Beaumont and the other missionaries and longed for that same peace.

“Jesus said one time, ‘Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life.' Come to Jesus—that's what you have to do, Willie,” Rose explained. “It was all I
could
do. I was so deep in sin I knew I could never make things right. I could only cry out to Jesus…and the instant I did, he came into my heart. Ever since that moment, I've had peace.”

Willie looked down at the table, his face drawn. His lips were trembling, and he was embarrassed by his display of emotion.

But Rose had seen this happen many times. She drew her chair close to his and began to tell him how to find Christ. After a brief time, Amos heard her ask, “Would you like to be saved, Willie? To know that you're going to heaven when you die?”

Willie's shoulders were tense, but he nodded his head.

“Then pray in your heart. God wants to save you. Just ask him to as I pray.”

Amos was astonished. He sat there staring at the two. And then he became aware that his own hands were trembling and his heart was beating faster. He felt short of breath, and then the impulse struck him to do exactly what Willie seemed to be doing—he wanted to call on God!

Instantly it was clear that this was the root of his troubled spirit. He knew that for years he'd been running from God. And he had the awful feeling that if he didn't call out to God now, he would never be able to do so. It was, somehow, his last chance!

Amos resisted the overwhelming sense of urgency…or he tried to, but he could not control his trembling, and as Rose kept on mentioning Jesus, the very
sound
of that name brought tears to his eyes.

Suddenly he knew that this was not merely a matter of life or death—this was for all time, for eternity. A sense of fear that he might miss out on the greatest of all things swept over him, and he began to pray. It was not a neat, orderly prayer, but a desperate cry, as from a man going down for the last time.

Amos never knew how long he sat there, for he lost all sense of time and place. But as he prayed, a strange sensation of peace began to grow inside him. At first it was a very tiny thing—buried in his doubts and fears—but somehow it swelled until it filled his whole soul.

He looked up, his eyes filled with tears, to find Rose looking at him, and he whispered, “I–I just asked God to save me!”