A Bargain with Bandit Ping; A Doctor Shadows Adventure

by Teel. James Glenn

"Come in, sit down, smile and talk of pleasant things," The Chinese Bandit Ping said, a wide grin on his pock marked face, "Or I will shoot you through the head."

The man standing in the door of the inn was backlit, his features a question mark except for his tall stature. The dry wind that whistled down from the valley walls washed around the broad shoulders of the stranger, sending wisps of dirt from the road into the rustic inn.

The Bandit Ping made a broad welcoming motion with his pistol and the stranger stepped in through the door at the silent command. Once inside the candlelight in the tavern revealed the stranger's features to be Caucasian movie star handsome. Though his countenance was chiseled his skin color was an unhealthy grey as were his piercing eyes that were like chips of flint.

"And of what pleasant things should I speak, Bandit Ping?" The grey stranger spoke in flawless Cantonese but his demeanor and clothes marked him as American. He seemed unperturbed by the pistol pointed at him.

"This thug wants to talk mostly about himself," one of the four others who occupied the Manchurian country inn said in Dutch accented English. She was a woman past middle age dressed in a colorless dress and quilted Chinese peasant's jacket and clutched a worn leather bible to her as if it were a sick child. She had the earmarks of an old China hand. Her features were as drab as her mousy brown hair and with some untold sadness in the depths of her brown eyes. "And most of it is horrid exaggeration."

The Bandit Ping laughed a deep roar of mirth that filled the main room of the tiny inn like thunder. His skin was the color of old ivory, his brows thick and bushy and his fleshy mouth had a wide smile that exposed crooked teeth. "Is not a man to be proud of his life's work and all he has done?" The Han asked.

He wore indeterminate layers of clothes beneath crisscrossed bandoliers of bullets. A brown leather vest over a quilted jacket and at least two shirts made his true size hard to judge but he had obviously not missed many meals in his life. He and the grey skinned arrival studied each other with the deliberation of stalking predators. The towering new arrival was dressed in grey field shirt and jodhpurs. His silver grey hair was swept back from his high forehead in a widow's peak and worn long. He reminded those watching of a great grey wolf ready to pounce.

"The Bandit Ping has little need to sing his own song," the grey goliath said, "he has others to do that for him."

The bandit bristled like a wild boar.

"So I am known," he said with suspicion, "Perhaps you will tell me what the songs say?"

He gripped his pistol a little more tightly and used it to motion the grey man to take a seat. The tall man sat at a table where a Chinese peasant couple was huddled together fearfully. They were young, but what was visible of their drawn features spoke of a hard life. The wife kept her face turned away, her long hair all but hiding it.

"The Bandit Ping is famous," the grey man said, "or perhaps infamous is more correct, throughout all of China."

"So?" the bandit said, "tell this unworthy one more of this song."

"He is known to have been the dog of the Japanese in the Changbei Mountains near the Korean border," the visitor continued, "Killing and stealing with his followers at the beck and call of the Sons of the Rising Sun."

"More a jackal than a dog," the last occupant of the room spat. He was an older man whose dignified bearing and clipped English marked him as a White Russian from Harbin City, forty miles to the east. His bearing was upright bordering on rigid. He wore a monocle and weather worn civilian coat in a manner that echoed a life in uniform.

"This esteemed one is not hearing happy things," The Bandit Ping said. He maintained a jovial expression on his features, but his voice took on an edge.

"Jackal, dog, wolf," the grey man said, "what does a single name matter? This brigand of legend burned and looted on the southern edges of China and became known for his savagery, for never retreating and, oddly for a bandit, never breaking his word."

"Aha!" the bandit roared, "you see the truth is all in the tone of the telling!" He took a swig from a tankard of wine without taking his eyes from the group cowering before him.

"So why is it that the fury of Fukien now roams the border wastes of Fengtien between Harbin City and Mongolia?"

The bandit shrugged his shoulders. "Life is ever changing," he said philosophically, "I had a disagreement over a village I destroyed within sight of a League of Nations observer with my employer in the South—a very contrary Japanese."

"Aren't most of them these days?" The grey man said. He gestured to a water pitcher on the bar and Ping nodded assent. The American stepped to the bar and took a cup to fill it. While he poured the liquid into the cup, he noticed the body of the innkeeper lying face down behind the bar. There was a bullet hole in the back of his head.

When the bandit saw the direction of the grey man's gaze he shrugged again, "The tavern keeper was a stubborn man and would not listen to reason." He said, "I am sure he was not part of my bargain."

"Bargain?" the grey man asked. He sat down at a new table, alone, a little away from the other four.

"Yes, "the Bandit Ping said, "it is the reason I am here in this hovel of a pig sty; I have made a bargain to hold all here who come this day by sundown. I was told the one who hired me would then say who is to die."

"Aha,' the grey man said in a gentle jibe at the bandit "and who hired you?"

"Aha," the bandit said with no acknowledgement of the jibe. He took another swig from the tankard. "This I do not know." He pulled a piece of paper from within the folds of his clothes. He waved it vaguely at the tall American. "This unworthy one received this letter (yes Ping can read—he was in mission school when young) that says to come to this place and hold, without hurting the people who come here, and wait; then the one who sent this will tell me who is to die." He pulled a second piece of paper out with more reverence. It was half a bank note of a high denomination torn carefully down the middle. "The letter says I will receive the other half when the death is done."

The bandit rose and paced just out of reach of the prisoners. He watched them with cold eyes for any sign of resistance, delighting in their expressions of horror at his proximity.

"Don't you think shooting the innkeeper might be construed as 'hurting?" The grey man said. His tone was calm but mildly scolding as one would talk to a child.

"But he did not come here," the Bandit Ping said, "The tavern keeper was here already so the bargain has not been broken." The certainty of his jailhouse logic was evident on his face when he stopped before the grey giant. Ping stayed a little further away from the American than he had from the others.

"And Bandit Ping is known to always keep his bargains." The grey man finished.

"Aha!" the brigand said, "So." He stared at the angular features of the taller man, searching his memory. "This one knows you, round eye." He said, "How are you called?"

"The press sometimes call me 'Dr. Shadows'" the American said in English.

"The Ghost Healer!" Ping said with a breathless gasp. He spoke in Cantonese using the Chinese transliteration of the name, "Aha!" He stepped further back from the tall man though his smile broadened. "This one's fame will grow even more if you fall by my hand: the Japanese in Changbei have a bounty on your head." He raised his pistol to point the barrel between the American's eyes.

"Was not your bargain to harm none until told who?" Dr. Shadows spoke with no indication in his tone that having a gun pointed at him was unusual.

"So!" the brigand said, "yet the sun sleeps soon so perhaps you also." Bandit Ping brightened with the thought.

He took in the rest of the occupants with and expansive gesture. "These are all sheep to be fleeced as one wills," he said, " but you are a fine wolf pelt for Bandit Ping to hang from his ample belt." He patted his broad waist and smiled jovially. "If you are not the one I am hired to kill, then when that thing is done I will take your head as well and it will be a happy day for my wallet."

"I've had considerable success in keeping my head attached despite many attempts by the Japanese," Dr. Shadows said with a hint of smile on his lips, "So you are welcome to try."

"Aha!" Bandit Ping said, "We will see."

The shadows lengthened in the valley outside the rustic inn as Bandit Ping lectured the hostages at length about his 'heroic' and numerous exploits.

"The business of kidnapping in Harbin City is alright with the White Russians," he said, " as long as there is money to be had; then the 'guest' is freed." His pockmarked features lit up at this sagely wisdom. "If not, it is a tiresome thing to have to leave the body in a public place as an example."

"You rotter!" The Old Russian stood bolt upright. "You talk about it as if killing a human being were just throwing away a cigarette."

"Sit down, old man," The Bandit Ping said, "or I will stub you out like a cigarette."

"Now, now," Dr. Shadows said himself rising to take a step forward. "Remember the terms of your bargain."

The brigand swung the gun back to menace the grey man. "I will do as I do," he said, "and I will take your head in trade for this contract if I have to." He called over his shoulder, "Sit down, old man."

The Russian stood where he was and even defiantly took his own step forward.

"Bandit Ping has given you an order and does not care if he has to hurt you just a little bit!" The Han criminal said as he turned, "You will obey!" He aimed deliberately at the legs of the old man and began to squeeze the trigger.

Suddenly Dr. Shadows moved. His motion was like quicksilver, almost faster than the eye could follow. By the time the Bandit perceived the movement, the grey Goliath snapped a knife hand blow at the wrist of the gun hand. The pistol flew from his grasp and clattered across the flagstone floor.

The Bandit Ping reached for a belt knife but again the grey man's speed foiled him, snatching the blade from the sheath and tossing it across the room.

"What now, Ghost Healer," the bandit said in challenge, "Will you face Bandit Ping as legend to legend then?"

"No," Dr. Shadows said, "not me; my pain is deep but not as deep as theirs."

The Bandit turned now to see that the other four had risen. The drab woman opened her bible to remove a pistol from it. The Russian removed a saber, broken five inches from the hilt from under his coat. and the peasant couple each produced blades.

"What, these sheep?" The criminal said. "I am Bandit Ping! I have killed hundreds, robbed thousands. I am unstoppable. Should I be afraid of a few sheep?"

"You should be afraid of the sheep you have turned into wolves," Dr. Shadows said, "The General whose son you kidnapped and killed; the missionary whose school you burned in your youth after you assaulted her and killed her husband." The occupants of the inn began to move slowly toward the brigand like nightmares alive.

The peasant wife's face was fully visible now, a hideous scar bisecting her left eye and dripping down her cheek the color of molten lead.

"Or me," the grey man said, "whose plane your men shot down on the Korean border and then bayoneted my parents who had survived; your men never found me."

The Bandit stared at the approaching figures, uncomprehending that any could challenge his legend. He turned to look at the grey American. "You are a devil to have challenged the legend that is Bandit Ping and live."

The scarred wife was the first to strike. She used the same dagger that the Bandit Ping had used to disfigure her and gut her baby, months ago when he destroyed her village in the south. Then the General plunged his son's broken sword into the man's back. Finally the woman who had taught him to read the letter that had trapped him fired her husband's pistol once through the black heart of the bandit.

"I've been called worse than a devil," Dr. Shadows said, " by much better than you."

After they finished with their empty revenge and justice was done, they dumped the carcass that had been Bandit Ping in a shallow grave out back of the inn. Before the Earth was shoveled onto the memory of the beast, Dr. Shadows dropped in the other half of the bank note. After all, a bargain is a bargain.