Dead Man's Gold and Other Stories Read Free

earrings, and soon she convinced herself the New World did offer fine opportunities for her son. There he would overcome his childhood fears and become a man every villager would respect.
    Chung reached the New World and saw Chinese waiting at the docks with cloth-tied bundles. When he asked directions to the newest gold fields, the men laughed.
    â€œYoung fellow, haven’t you heard? The gold rush is finished! All the gold is gone, shipped to bank vaults in big cities. All you’ll find here is gray rock and wild animals. You’d better head home with us.”
    But Chung couldn’t. His parents had borrowed large sums to buy his passage. They expected good news. If he returned empty-handed, the villagers would label him a failure and a greater coward than ever.
    He found his way to Chinatown, to a store that rented plank-board beds to travelers.
    â€œUncle,” he said, “is it true there is no gold left?”
    The storekeeper nodded grimly, but Chung insisted, “There must be work here.”
    â€œA little. Were you a farmer’s son?”
    He nodded.
    â€œThen there is nothing for you.”
    The young man bristled. “Why do you say that?”
    â€œYou lived on a farm where sunshine warmed your back, did you not? You stood tall and gazed across green and golden fields, did you not?”
    â€œI did.”
    â€œWell, this job lies deep underground, with foul air and no light. Human skin turns pale and black at the same time. Every month, sometimes every week, a man is killed. The work is very dangerous.”
    Chung quelled his panic and stammered, “I’m not afraid.”
    A slow ferry chugged up the island, and a train carried him to the mine. Through the trees he saw flashes of sparkling inland water. Then he heard the jangle of bells, tinny but urgent as a temple on fire. Chung’s heart began to pound.
    He stumbled off the train into the stench of rotting eggs. When his eyes stopped watering, he saw the ground crisscrossed by railway tracks running helter-skelter — into a yawning cave, into sheds with long rolling tables, and down toward a harbor. Ornery locomotives rumbled by, dragging carts of shiny black rock. Their heavy wheels bit into steel and screeched until loads were dumped with a deafening roar. Chimneys poked from brick buildings and spewed storm clouds of steam and smoke. From the looming darkness of the mine echoed a metallic thunder —clank, clank, clank, clank — as if a monstrous heart throbbed deep down there.
    That night, Chung did not sleep. The hissing steam and cranking machines went on without stop. His hands grew cold and stiff as the hour for going underground drew near.
    In the morning, he went to the cage that dropped into the mine, but he trembled so badly that his hammer and hand-drill rattled like a teacup and saucer. When the miners hooted, Chung grit his teeth and said to himself, “I would give anything to be brave!”
    He gripped the iron bars as pulleys squealed like pigs being slaughtered. During the descent, the air cooled and dampened and turned sour. Above him, the shaft entrance shrank to a pinprick, and the men’s faces turned gray, then black before vanishing altogether. A familiar fear gripped his body. No one heard him mutter, “I would give anything not to be frightened!”
    Finally, the cage stopped and the men were sent into a maze of low tunnels. Chung donned a lamp-hat reeking of fish oil. He crawled through mud, under wooden beams and past carts dragged by weary mules. His fingers groped for the miners ahead.
    I have arrived in hell, he thought. Hundreds of ghosts must hover here at their death sites. Again he muttered, “I would give anything to have courage!”
    The coal seam sank deep into the ground, so the miners lay on their bellies and aimed their tools by touch. At the slightest creak, Chung froze, expecting the roof to collapse, expecting to be buried alive. But nearby