Mojave (24 page)

Soon, I saw lights and smelled food cooking, heard dogs yapping, finally growling and barking at me. I rode past the dismal huts, past the chickens and ducks. I came to the ladder that had fallen and taken Pink Shirt to his demise. Well, it wasn't that ladder. Was a new one, sturdier, but still not built for the likes of me.

I tethered Yago to a clump of creosote, put the hobbles on his front legs, taken the Winchester, and went up the ladder to the ledge, then up the steps in the rocks, and found myself in East Calico.

Course, I had to feel my way around. It's one thing when you're walking through Chinatown at night. Things look different than when you're in broad daylight and running from building to building, shack to shack, trying not to get killed by two hired assassins.

Eventually, I found a place I knowed all too well. For a second, I stood there amazed. I mean, Lucky Ben Wong had fixed up his bathhouse, which I'd damned near destroyed. Maybe that's why he used empty coal oil cans.

As I come up to the entrance, the makeshift door of India rubber tarp swung open, and I stepped aside, pulling my hat down low. Didn't want no one to recognize me, even East Calico.

“Look fine, look fine, best-looking gentleman in Calico.” Lucky Ben Wong was right behind this tall, stout gent in what appeared to be a brown sack suit. Lucky Ben Wong was dusting off Brown Sack Suit's shoulders with a fine linen handkerchief.

“Yes, yes, yes, look fine, fine, come.”

Brown Sack Suit grunted and hurried away from the house that smelled of dirty bathwater and kerosene. If he seen me, he give no indication.

Lucky Ben Wong kept bowing after the guy's back, till he rounded the corner, then Lucky Ben Wong straightened, started to go inside, but caught my shadow. He leaped back, and I stepped forward.

“Don't worry,” I whispered. “It's me.”

“Haircut?” he asked. “You look awful. Awful. Me fix. Me fix. Ask anybody. Haircut. Bath. What need you?”

“It's me, Lucky Ben,” I said.

He still didn't recognize me.

“Opium?” He grinned. “Best in California. No find good stuff even on Barbary Coast. Good stuff. Make you crazy.”

“Lucky Ben . . .”

“Stake? Miner? Want money? Come back in morning. No money business this time dark.”

By that time, I'd stepped into the light coming out of the cracks between the coal oil cans. That stopped him and his silly damned accent.

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “Micah Bishop, what in hell happened to you?”

Since I was already there, it seemed like a pretty good idea, so I had me a hot bath, and Lucky Ben Wong brewed up some real fine tea, rang a little bell outside what passed for that front door, and this Chinese girl appeared quick as a genie would in a storybook, and Lucky Ben Wong handed her all my clothes and told her to run to her ma's laundry and get my duds as clean as possible and return them immediately. I didn't tell them that the clothes wasn't mine to begin with, and I'd never heard of leather pants being sent to a laundry, mainly because I was pretty relaxed by this time. The water and soap burned at first, but before long the welts on my back, and the bullet hole through my arm, and the rope burns on my palms didn't hurt so bad. Felt rather content, or as content as I could feel with all that was going on—and all that would be happening soon.

No, I didn't smoke no opium.

Sitting, relaxing in the tub, sipping tea, I told Lucky Ben Wong all that had happened. But I kept that Winchester rifle leaning against the tub, cocked, ready . . . just in case I had been spotted. I mean, the last time I'd been at Lucky Ben Wong's place, I'd damned near gotten myself killed, and things like that I don't often forget.

Lucky Ben Wong had to pull up a stool, and sit down, head bowed, shaking his head as I dealt him my story. He didn't interrupt me once, the Chinese being real polite. When I was finished he stared at me and asked:

“You were alone with my Jingfei . . . at night?”

“No.” Almost spilt tea into the soapy, dirty water. “Never alone.” Hell, I had Peach Fuzz for a chaperone. And Candy Crutchfield.

“But she is all right?”

All I could do was shrug, and kind of hedge my bet, so to speak. “Well, she was. I mean she was alive.”

He nodded, and pushed back the little cap on his head.

“How many were killed?”

“Well,” I said, “that would take some tallying.” I hadn't kept track of all the bodies I'd loaded and cremated in that omnibus. “There was Peach Fuzz . . . the two Zekes—”

This time, Lucky Ben Wong lost his patience. “The girls.” I detected an edge in his voice. “How many girls were killed?”

“Six when the Conestoga rolled,” I told him. “Bonnie Little. Three others in the back of the horse-bus.” Didn't like thinking about those poor girls, but now I had to. “Couple others might have gotten scratched up or winged, but nothing that looked mortal.”

“And Jingfei . . . she was . . . unscathed?”

Well, now, I couldn't exactly say that anybody, male or female, had come out of that ruction unscathed. Granted, I didn't think none of them had been as mauled and mutilated as I'd been. Jingfei had caught some splinters in her leg, probably had a few more cuts and bruises, but as I done some studying and remembering, I was also looking into Lucky Ben Wong's eyes, and they'd had turned as hard as Jingfei's was prone to do. So I told him:

“She's finer than frog's hair cut eight ways.”

His look didn't change.

“She wasn't hurt,” I said. Not saying, but thinking,
Too badly.

“That is good.” He bowed. “That is good. I thank you, Micah Bishop. My Jingfei thanks you.”

I finished the tea and reluctantly climbed out of the tub. Lucky Ben Wong fetched me a real soft towel and one of them nice silk robes. I dried myself off and put on the robe, waited for that girl to come back so I could get dressed in clothes fit for a man to wear.

Then I sat down on the bench, and pushed away the opium pipes, keeping that Winchester on my lap. When Lucky Ben Wong returned, handing me a cup of tea, he couldn't take his eyes off my rifle.

“You are nervous?” He nodded at the long gun.

“Careful,” I told him.

He fired up a cigar and plopped down on the stool again.

“So there are thirty-eight brides? Between these girls being transported by this Watson man and this Crutchfield woman?”

“That sounds about right.”

His head shook. “And this Palace of Calico . . . it was to be . . . a . . . a . . . a . . . ?”

“That's right.”

“But you cannot make anyone do what one does not wish to do? This is America, is it not?”

“It's California,” I told him.

“My Jingfei would never do what they wish her to do.”

I smiled. He read “Quiet Not” the same way I did.

“She'd rather die,” Lucky Ben Wong said. “She would die first.”

Which killed my smile. I set the China cup on some drool left by the last person to partake of Lucky Ben Wong's opium.

“Well, Watson thinks I'm dead. So I've been trying to come up with a plan—so that Jingfei don't have to do nothing drastic and dramatic and all.”

He leaned forward. “You are good at planning?”

I shrugged, then nodded, then had to shake my head. “Not really . . . but there are the vigilance committee.”

“Is,” he said.

I said, “How's that?”

He said, “There is the vigilance committee. Not are.
Are
is plural.
Is
is singular.”

“I see,” I said. What I saw was me beating the hell out of Lucky Ben Wong and Kermit Of The Calico Water Works . . . Incorporated During A Lucid Moment.

“That's why I'm here,” I went on. “I don't know Calico. I don't know this country. Watson said he had sent his girls, the ones he had left, to hole up in some canyon around these parts. Then he was bringing in Crutchfield's gals and the six Crutchfield had woman-napped, and, of course, your Jingfei. They'd meet up in that canyon.”

He sighed. Puffed on the cigar. Shook his head.

“There are many canyons in these mountains.” Holding up his right hand, he started with the thumb and progressed to his fingers. “Wall Street Canyon . . . Mule Canyon . . . Odessa Canyon.” Me? When counting on my hands, I always started with my pointer finger as my Number One, and I'd knowed some who'd use their thumb as Number One, but I'd always used my thumb for Number Five, but Lucky Ben Wong started with his pinky finger as Number One, which was just real strange.

I stopped him. “He has thirty-eight girls with him,” I reminded him. “He'll want to parade them into town. That's why he had those Columbus Carriages—cost three hundred dollars for one in Prescott.”

“Some of the canyons are big enough to hide not only thirty-eight women, but wagons and horses and mules—”

“And gunmen and Gatling guns,” I reminded him.

“Those, too.” His head bobbed.

“But if he's gonna parade them women down Main Street, get the men folk all excited . . .”

Lucky Ben Wong got my meaning. “He'd want them fresh. Clean.” That's why Lucky Ben Wong run a bathhouse.

“That's right.” I smiled.

“He'd need water.”

“Which ain't common here.”

“Five miles from here.” He waved his hand in what I took was the general direction of where this town got its water.

“But I saw a water wagon from the Calico Water Works Incorporated coming into town late this afternoon. Watson wouldn't want Cicero and Kermit, or even their old dog, to see those women.”

“But he could hide them in a nearby canyon.”

“That's a good place to start looking,” I said. “We've narrowed down the most likely spot he'll be hiding out. Now here's the second thing I was thinking. Do you know who runs the vigilance committee?”

His head bobbed again. He flicked ash onto the dirt floor. “The owners of one of the mercantiles, Slater and McCoy.”

“Good. So here's my plan. You slip over to the mercantile, tell Slater and McCoy what's going on . . .”

Lucky Ben Wong was getting real impatient, so you can forget about what I wrote down just a few minutes earlier about the Chinese being patient and polite and all that bunk.

“Why me?” he interrupted. “Why not you?”

“You've staked how many people in this town?” He didn't answer, because I didn't give him time to. “Slater and McCoy will trust you a lot quicker than they'd trust me.” I mean, I'd blowed a fellow through the window on the top floor of the bank building, which meant they'd have to replace that window—at Calico prices—before they could rent it to somebody else. And I'd been in the middle of that shoot-out that left eight men dead, and even if Mr. Slater's brother did run the undertaking parlor, I didn't think the citizens of Calico would find me the kind of stranger they'd trust. Besides, the story I'd just told Lucky Ben Wong was mighty hard to swallow, without some Irish whiskey or London porter to wash it down with.

Lucky Ben Wong didn't say nothing to that, which I figured meant he saw my reasoning. So he went back to puffing on that cigar, and I went back to my plan.

“Have Slater and McCoy round up some of the best guns in Calico. They sneak over to that canyon near the water hole, and they ambush Whip Watson. Tell them not to give Whip no chance. Just open fire and shoot down them dogs. Well, maybe they don't have to shoot Mister Clark. If they can help it, that is. Hit them hard and fast. Then the girls are saved, and Watson and his blackhearts are dead, and I . . . no, you . . . you are free to marry Jingfei and live happily ever after in your”—I wave my hand around his cans of coal oil—“your . . . palace.”

I sniffed. Damn place stank like coal oil.

Lucky Ben Wong wasn't smiling. Fact is, his face had turned to stone, and got even harder the more explaining I done. Hell, I thought it was a great plan. The vigilance committee would lead the attack. I'd just stay here for a while, drink tea, maybe sleep a bit, perhaps see how the Chinese played poker. Here, in Chinatown, I wouldn't be as likely to get killed as members of the vigilance committee.

“That is your plan?” Lucky Ben Wong asked.

“Yeah.” I frowned. Lucky Ben Wong was grinding out his cigar in an ashtray, and he was really destroying that cigar till there wasn't nothing left of it but shreds of tobacco in the remnants of ash.

“Is it your wish to have my Jingfei killed? And thirty-seven other young American women?”

They wasn't all American. I mean, I knowed at least one of them was a portly Hun. And there was a Welsh lady. Probably one or two straight off the boat from Ireland, and that don't include the two Lannon twins from Savannah, Georgia, by way of County Cork.

“No,” I told him. “That ain't my plan at all.” My plan, if that damned Chinese mercenary had been listening at all, was to get Whip Watson and his gunmen killed, excepting, if at all possible, Mr. Clark. And saving all thirty-eight girls.

“How many girls were killed when Crutchfield attacked Watson?”

“Well . . .” There was six. I knowed that. I'd helped Jingfei pull the bodies from the wreckage.

“And how many girls were killed when Watson attacked Crutchfield.”

“A . . . couple . . . or four.”

“Do you think Crutchfield wanted to kill those girls?”

My head shook.

“Do you think Watson wished to see four other girls killed?”

“No.” My voice become real quiet.

“Of course not. That would cut into their profits. Ricochets kill. Bullets have no conscience. If Slater and McCoy and the vigilantes were to attack the camp of the outlaws, even if Watson's men were wiped out—”

“But maybe not Mister Clark,” I cut in. “Unless it just couldn't be helped.”

He didn't care for my interruption, but got right down to his point. “There would likely be women hurt, killed. By stray shots. Or, as mad as this Whip Watson is said to be, he might begin shooting them down. To spite the vigilantes. To spite us.”

He was right, the little Chinese peckerwood. Whip Watson would definitely shoot down Jingfei. Because Jingfei wouldn't be huddled behind some Columbus carriage's back leather seat that smelled like fresh wax. She'd be right in the midst of things.

I stared at my tea.

“Well,” I muttered.

“We must have all of the girls out of harm's way when we attack Whip Watson,” Lucky Ben Wong said.

“All right,” I agreed.

Lucky Ben Wong got right down to it, and, the more he talked, the more my head nodded, and the more I agreed that his plan was still a bit better than mine.

We would let Whip Watson go through with his original idea, let him parade the girls right down Main Street in those Columbus buggies. The mail-order brides would be escorted into The Palace of Calico, and once they were inside, then we'd open fire and gun down Whip Watson and all his boys, excepting, if at all possible, Mr. Clark. Behind the walls of The Palace of Calico, which Lucky Ben Wong assured me was built like a damned fort, those thirty-eight women would be safe from stray bullets.

“Yeah,” I said when Lucky Ben Wong fired up another cigar to wait for my critique of his battle plan, “but that's a long wait, ain't it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, Watson's bordello ain't finished yet.”

“Not quite,” he said, “but there are beds in the upstairs rooms, and the back bar is in the saloon. For what you tell me, that is all Whip Watson needs.”

I looked perplexed. “He has beds in the room . . . already?”

“Yes.” Lucky Ben Wong's head bobbed rapidly. “One room has two beds in it. My cousin cleaned all the sheets and pillowcases for all of the beds yesterday.”

I sighed, then thought about the room with two beds, which, the way I thought, would be for the Lannon girls from Savannah, but quickly tried to put such wicked thoughts outside my head, and shifted the Winchester in my lap.

“It'd be better to wait until the place is all dolled up, though, don't you reckon? With more than beds and fresh linens?”

Lucky Ben Wong's head shook hard. “Whip Watson doesn't have the luxury of time anymore. He has lost too much money already. He'll want to start earning money now, rather than spend more.”