Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station

a
three-story building, and its water fell like a silver curtain to the rocks
below, making all the appropriate sounds, but there was no sun here, the
mountain rose steeply on the left, like a wall, and the narrow paths cut out of
the earth held puddles of water from the fall, and looked slippery and
dangerous.
    Mr. Li, showing it to them proudly, said, ”This is where we picnic after
the horsemanship of the Kazakhs. We stop to leave the beer here in the mountain
stream to cool it for you.” Mr. Kan was already unloading cartons
from the bus and carrying them one by one toward the water.
    ”Will they be safe?” asked Jenny.
    Mr. Li laughed. ”Oh yes! On weekends there are many students here from
the university, but today, no.” He added as an afterthought, ”Very dangerous
walking here, the rocks extremely slippery. Only two weeks ago a student fell
from above and was killed.”
    Mrs. Pollifax’s gaze sharpened and she glanced quickly at Peter. She
thought, This is where it will happen, then, this is where Peter disappears.
A shoe, a jacket left behind, some indication of a fall... Peter was
staring intently at the rocks and at the rushing water, his eyes narrowed, his
face expressionless.
    ”But for now,” said Mr. Li, gesturing them back into the bus, ”the show
of horsemanship please. Too early for lunch!”
    Herded into the bus they set out again, and soon met with open space
that slowly widened and broadened until they drove up and into a breathtaking
expanse of green meadow-land that stretched as far as the eye could see, lined
on either side by mountain ridges. Mrs. Pollifax felt at once a sense of relief
to see the sky again, and the sun. She heard Malcolm say, ”This resembles Switzerland —it’s
amazing!”
    Perhaps, yes, thought Mrs. Pollifax, except that several yurts occupied
this end of the long stretch of meadow, and the faces of the men approaching
the bus were swarthy and highcheekboned and they wore blue Mao jackets and
scuffed boots. Mr. Li conferred with them, announced that the demonstration
would begin very shortly, pointed to elevated areas along the meadow, and
suggested that they stroll there and wait.
    ”Stroll and wait,” repeated Iris, grinning as she jumped down from the
bus. ”Have we been doing anything but?”
    ”Travel fatigue,” suggested Malcolm sympathetically. ”We’ll all get our
so-called second wind in a day or two and be off and running.”
    ”Well, that will beat strolling and waiting,” teased Iris.
    Mrs. Pollifax said nothing; the picnic area and the waterfall had added
a sense of oppression to the anxiety with which she’d begun her day, and she
felt that her entire being had given itself over to waiting, waiting for Peter
to engineer his disappearance. I must stop watching him, she thought,
and seeing how cheerful he looked she felt almost cross with him. They reached
one of the more inviting knolls and sat or sprawled on the grass while off to
their right, in the distance, the Kazakhs began to group with their horses,
talking and laughing among themselves.
    ”It looks terribly macho,” said Iris suspiciously, watching them.
    Joe Forbes had brought out a pair of binoculars and was peering through
them. ”Two of them are women, though,” he told her, ”and hooray, they’re going
to begin now.”
    The demonstration began, and proved so superb that Mrs. Pollifax almost
forgot about Peter for the next half an hour: the Kazakhs galloped down the
meadow to show off their splendid mounts, then held several good-natured races,
followed by a game of tug-of-war over the pelt of a sheep. This, explained Mr.
Li, had in older days been tug-of-war over a live sheep, but this they were
spared.
    ”Terrific horses,” Peter said. ”Wouldn’t mind trying one of them myself.”
It was the first time Mrs. Pollifax had heard him speak since they’d left
Urumchi.
    ”Oh could we?” breathed Iris eagerly. ”I’ve ridden all my life!”
    Mr. Li looked shocked. ”Oh—impossible,” he said flatly.
    Iris said, ”The show’s over, do let’s try! Mr. Li, come along and
translate for us, okay?”
    Mrs. Pollifax lagged behind as the others surged down the slope to meet
with the Kazakhs; she was beginning to feel bored and restless, which she knew
to be the result of her rising suspense: since she found suspense difficult to
deal with she simply wanted this day to be gotten through as straightforwardly
and quickly as possible, and to see it interrupted by this