Beautiful Ghosts Read Online Free PDF Page B

side. “We can hide and be safe,” she said. “Shan and his friends will help us.”
    Strangely, the words silenced the crowd. Liya gasped, her hand shooting to her mouth, then exchanged an alarmed glance with Lokesh.
    “Shan?” the big herder shouted at her, then stepped to Shan and knocked off the wide-brimmed hat that had been obscuring his features. “Damn me!” he spat, then turned to those behind him. “This is the one? The Chinese who always intrudes in Tibetan things? She’s right, Shan will help us get out of this,” he said with a cruel grin, his scarred face looking wild and hungry.
    “Shan is going on retreat,” Lokesh declared in a plaintive tone and stepped between Shan and the herder.
    “Right,” the man growled. “With a chain and a pickax.” He turned to address the Tibetans gathered behind him. “He’s the one they’re looking for. There’s cash money on his head,” he declared, raising his voice. “One hundred American dollars. Enough to keep all of us fed for months.”
    Gendun began a mantra.
    Shan stared, his throat suddenly bone dry, looking from his friends to the fiery herder. “Who is paying?” he heard himself ask. Bounties were not uncommon in modern Tibet, whose communist masters had developed their own peculiar twists on market economies.
    “Only a rumor,” Liya said in a tight voice. “It’s Tan. People say you’re to be taken to Colonel Tan.” She looked up into Shan’s eyes. “You never go to town. Even if it were true we thought you would be safe staying up here. These people don’t know you. Didn’t know you,” she corrected herself, pain in her eyes.
    “It’s no rumor,” the herder snapped. “There’re papers in shop windows now.”
    “I’m sorry,” Liya said to Shan. “Tan must want you back. You just have to go deeper into the mountains. Your retreat. Go now,” she said, gesturing toward the bag.
    Shan’s release from prison had never been official. Liya meant back in hard labor prison, back to the 404th People’s Construction Brigade.
    Shan’s gaze drifted toward the bag bearing the mani mantra. He knew his friends had not been trying to deceive him by not revealing the bounty, nor trying to protect him. Bombs fell, bullets were fired, bounties were levied. To Shan, like his Tibetan friends, such things had become little different from hailstorms and winds, part of the harsh environment that had evolved in the world they inhabited. They might pull their hats down and quicken their pace, but they would not step off their path. The bounty would have as little significance to Lokesh or Gendun. What mattered to them was that Shan completed his month’s retreat.
    “Soldiers like that, if they get angry they’ll burn our houses, kill our herds,” the huge herder growled.
    Liya stepped beside Lokesh, in front of Shan. “We would not give up Shan any more than we would give up one of these monks,” she declared sternly.
    “You understand nothing!” the scar-faced herder shouted, glaring at Liya. “You never told us about what you planned here. It is the wrong time for monks and festivals. So naive!” he spat. “You brought this on by luring everyone here with false hope! The only chance to keep the soldiers away now is to give up Shan.”
    Jara’s wife appeared, holding the hands of their two sons, looking at her husband with an intense, searching expression. Jara took a step toward his wife, then looked down at his chest, seeming surprised to find one hand closed tightly around his gau. His head slowly rose as he looked at Lokesh and his sons, then he turned and sat cross-legged in front of Gendun. Two more herders, tough middle-aged men with bone-hard faces, pushed past Jara’s wife to join the big herder, eyeing Shan with hungry expressions. But the woman seemed not to notice them. She stared in wonder at her husband, still clasping his gau, and the joy slowly returned to her face.
    “A hundred American!” the scar-faced herder