“When you go through the valley of the reeds, or perhaps before then, you may be stopped by some men. If you are, they will ask you if you have seen two men with a pushcart. All you have to do is say no. As you can see, we are four men with a pushcart, so you won’t even have to lie. Can you do that?”
“Hai. Yes, Samurai-sama.”
Kaze held out the coppers, and the peasant reached forward with both hands cupped together. Kaze dropped the coppers into the old man’s hands. The peasant put his hands together and brought them up to his forehead in a sign of gratitude. “Rest assured, Samurai-sama, I shall say nothing.”
“Good.”
Kaze rejoined the group and started moving the pushcart down the path.
“You should have killed him,” Hishigawa said. As a samurai, Kaze had the right to kill any peasant for any reason.
“Perhaps,” Kaze observed mildly, “but so many men have already died on this journey, and there is no need to add another. Besides, I don’t like to use a dead man’s sword to kill another.”
Darkness fell before the men reached the mountain path branch, so they pulled the cart off the path and fell down around it, exhausted. Hishigawa told Hanzo to get the iron pot from the cart and make some tea.
“It’s all muddy,” Hanzo said.
“Nonsense,” Hishigawa said. “Only tea water is boiled in that pot.”
“Well, it appears-”
“Don’t bother,” Kaze said. “We shouldn’t make a fire tonight anyway. If we stay quiet and the bandits come down the trail tonight, they’ll miss us in the dark. If we make a fire, they’ll certainly see us.
After some grumbling by Hishigawa, Kaze prevailed, and the men made a meager supper of some cold brown rice that Hanzo and Goro had brought with them.
The next morning, Goro was up first. He looked about him in the half-light of dawn and saw that all the others were still sleeping soundly. Stealthily, he got up and crept to the pushcart. He looked at the strongbox on the cart, reached out with one hand, and speculatively fingered the rope tying the treasure chest to the cart.
“Even if you took some, I’d find you.”
Goro jumped in surprise, spinning around to find the ronin standing behind him, watching him.
“You scared me, Samurai-sama!” Goro said. “I was, ah, I was …”
“I promised you gold,” Kaze said, “but you must earn it.”
“I wasn’t thinking about stealing!”
“Of course not. Now come with me into the woods so we can gather some roots for breakfast.”
Early in the morning the men returned to the branch in the path and turned onto the road to the mountain. Soon the path grew stonier and started rising in elevation, which made moving the push-cart harder. The men were pushing the cart up a path cut into the lower slope of a volcanic mountain. The gray rock was pierced with sparse outcroppings of the most tenacious plants, but otherwise it was bare and forbidding. The desolate nature of the surroundings silenced even Goro and Hanzo; the only sound was the grunting of the men, the creaking of the cart wheels, and the rush of a river, down the slope from the path.
Hot and thirsty, the men stopped the cart. Goro picked up the water jug from the cart and peered inside. “It’s almost empty,” he said.
Kaze pointed down to the river, rushing at the foot of the path. “There’s an unlimited supply of fresh water,” he said.
Goro and Hanzo made their way down the long incline to the river with the jug to fetch fresh water. All the way down the slope, the two men were arguing.
“When we get paid for this job, I think we should pool our money and start a business,” Hanzo said.
“Well, I want to keep my money and enjoy myself. We’ll be in Kamakura and can have a lot of fun. If we have enough, I might want to go and see the new capital, Edo.”
“Wasting money on pleasure is not the way to wealth. We should save it for a business.”
“What business?”
“How should I know? We’ll decide that after we see how much money we get. The samurai said gold.”
“The samurai didn’t even have copper. He had to get the money for the old peasant from the merchant. The merchant said copper.”
They reached the river. It was full from the recent rains and flowing swiftly. Goro got on a large rock, bent down, and dipped the jug into the swiftly flowing current to fill it. Standing up, he said, “Regardless of whether it’s gold or copper, I want to have a good time with it.”
“You’re stupid,” Hanzo said. “A business is the right thing to do with it.”
“You don’t even know what business to be in. You’re the one who’s stupid!”
“I am not!”
“You are too!”
His face red with anger, Hanzo gave Goro a push. Goro, off balance because he was holding a heavy jug, staggered backward, slipping off the rock and into the rushing river. He was instantly swept up by the river’s current, moving downstream at a rapid rate.
“Help!” Hanzo screamed. He looked up the slope at Kaze and Hishigawa. “Please help! Goro can’t swim, and neither can I!”
Kaze handed his sword to Hishigawa and started running down the road, following Goro’s progress in the river. When he caught up with the hapless peasant, he plunged down the steep slope to the river, keeping to his feet with amazing balance.
“Try to hold on to a rock,” Kaze shouted to Goro.
The peasant heard the command and tried to flail out and secure himself to a rock. He wasn’t able to, but his efforts slowed him down as Kaze leapt from rock to rock in an effort to reach the peasant. Finally, seeing that he was as close as he was going to get by acting like a mountain goat, Kaze plunged into the foaming river.
Swimming with the current, Kaze avoided being thrown against the rocks that studded the stream. Right before he reached Goro, the peasant disappeared under the water. Hanzo, who could still see the two bobbing heads moving ever farther away, gave a great groan when he saw his friend disappear under the swirling water.
Kaze reached the spot where Goro had vanished and dove under the water, frantically searching for the peasant. He realized that he could be dashed against a rock or drowned himself, but he focused on trying to save the quarrelsome peasant and put such considerations out of his mind. He looked about underwater, but the water was too turbulent and murky. He surfaced to see if Goro had made his way to the top again, didn’t see him, took a quick breath, and dove under the surface once more. Reaching out into the swirling water, his hand brushed against a piece of cloth. Propelling himself forward with a powerful kick, he grabbed the cloth with his strong grip and held on to it with tenacity.
Breaking the surface of the water, he hauled the peasant, gasping and coughing, back into the sweet air.
Kaze swam to a quiet eddy in the river and dragged the peasant onto the shore. Goro continued to cough, spitting up water.
Hanzo, who had made his way downstream, rushed to the side of his friend, holding him in his arms. “Goro, Goro! Please forgive me! It was stupid of me to push you. Please say you forgive me.”
Goro looked up into Hanzo’s face, then spit up a mouthful of water into it.
“You idiot!” Hanzo said.
“You were the one who just said he was an idiot.”
“I said I was stupid to push you. That’s not the same thing as being an idiot.”
“Well, then you’re stupid.”
“If I’m stupid, then you’re an idiot.”
Kaze shook his head and started making his way back up the stream to the place where Hishigawa was waiting with the pushcart. He was sitting on the money chest, resting his feet as Kaze came up the slope.
“I can see the peasant didn’t drown,” Hishigawa said casually, pointing to Goro and Hanzo, also making their way up stream and still arguing. “This has been a terrible waste of time.”
Kaze said nothing but took back the sword from Hishigawa and also sat on the cart to rest. Goro and Hanzo made their way up the slope, miraculously stopping their bickering. They came up to the cart and dropped to their knees in front of Kaze. They bent down with their hands on either side of their heads and touched their foreheads to the ground in a deep kowtow.