Night Hawk (16 page)

“Afraid so, but it will be the last one.”

They began the walk to the door. “I'm holding you to that.” Maggie was so weary of all the travel. “And how far is your ranch from Cheyenne?”

“Two days by horseback.”

She sighed. “Goodness, but I've come this far, so what's another few days?”

“It will be worth it. I promise.”

“I'll be holding you to that as well.”

They deboarded, and while Ian talked with the conductor about where to buy tickets for the trip to Cheyenne, she watched knots of travelers being greeted by those who'd come to meet their arrival. Some of the men from the smoking car passed by and tipped their hats her way before disappearing into the crowd. Justin Taylor stood a few feet away talking to a well-dressed man and woman who she supposed were his sponsors. He must've felt her presence because he glanced her way, then deliberately turned his back. She rolled her eyes. She hadn't seen him since Bunny's set-down. He'd left the car right after and never returned. She assumed he'd taken a seat elsewhere.

Ian finally had the information they needed and Maggie was about to turn to him when the sight of Carson Epps hobbling on a cane in the thick of the crowd stopped her in mid-motion. She had no way of knowing whether he was departing or arriving. Their gazes met and his widened like the moon. In the same motion he turned around swiftly and scuttled away in the opposite direction like a bug seeking a place to hide.

“What's so amusing?”

“Nothing. Just happy.”

She watched him scour the crowd as if he were still curious about whatever it was she'd seen, but she didn't say anything, so he led them away.

Back in Kansas City Maggie had been impressed by the size of the depot, but the one in Denver put it to shame. It was as crowded as a big city.

According to the information pamphlet she picked up on their way to retrieve his stallion, Smoke, the depot consolidated the traffic of thirteen other stations. The cavernous building boasted a one-hundred-and-eighty-foot central tower, a clock on the front of the beautiful Romanesque structure so large it looked to be the size of her barn back home, and electric lights! She found the glowing fixtures fascinating.

“Everything of value in the West runs through here,” Ian told her as they waited to be given access to the cattle car. “Timber, silver, gold, beef. If the West needs it or produces it, it comes through Union Depot.”

They finally retrieved Smoke and went to buy tickets for the trip to Cheyenne.

After Ian paid for them, the agent handed them over. “Train leaves tomorrow around three in the afternoon, folks.”

Outside, he said to her, “By this time tomorrow we'll be on our way.”

She mounted up behind him and he slowly guided the stallion into an area of the city built near the depot. It was early evening. The hotels and businesses they passed were a bit run-down, some were constructed of beams worn gray by the weather. She knew from the pamphlet that the city had a grand opera house and many luxurious hotels, but so far, she'd seen nothing but a few rouged-up girls standing in doorways, and lots and lots of saloons, boasting names like the Gold Nugget and Miner's Paradise in signs of red neon. “What part of the city are we in?”

“Poor side. Have a friend who owns a boardinghouse a few block ups, or at least she did the last time I was in town. Name's Jade. We'll spend the night there.”

“That's a different-sounding name. Is she Chinese?”

“Yes. I met her during the Hop Alley race riot back in '80.”

“Where was this?”

“Right here in Denver.”

“A race riot in Denver? How'd it start?”

“As a fight between some Chinese and White pool players A White man wound up dead. No one's sure how, or even if he did die, but once word spread, all hell broke loose.”

While she listened, appalled, he told her about the mob of over three thousand men that tore through Denver's Chinatown, or Hop Alley as it was called because of the opium dens, like one of the plagues of Egypt. They burned and sacked businesses, and assaulted the residents while shouting, “Stamp out the yellow plague!”

“And you were here during all that?”

He nodded. “I met Jade when I took her youngest brother up on my horse two steps ahead of the mob.”

“Was anyone killed?”

“One Chinese man. Authorities said he died from being kicked to death. The Chinese say he was lynched.”

“Where were the police?”

“Doing their best, but there were only eight men on duty that night. Firemen came and turned hoses on the rioters but that didn't stop them, either.”

She was pleased to hear that not all of the locals were in the mob, though. Some citizens did their best to shelter their Chinese neighbors, like saloon owner James Veatch and Madam Lizzie Preston.

“She and her girls kept the mob from storming her place by arming themselves with champagne bottles and high-heeled shoes.”

Maggie offered a bittersweet smile in response to the image in her mind. “How long did the rioting last?”

“All night. Might have been longer if the town council hadn't appointed Dave Cook acting police chief.”

According to Ian, the city had no chief of police, so Cook, a former marshal was given the post. “After he took the oath, he enlisted fifteen of his men and a bunch of gunfighters, including myself, and we waded in. By morning it was over.”

Maggie shook her head. “I had no idea.”

“The worst part is that Jade and her family moved to Denver after fleeing a similar riot in Los Angeles back in '71. Eighteen Chinese were killed in that one. She said lynched bodies were hung all over the city.”

Maggie was very familiar with the atrocities perpetrated on her own family, but to learn that the Chinese were being subjected to the same violence and fear was surprising and sad.

Jade's boardinghouse was located next to a laundry that bore her family's name. There were two menacing-looking Chinese men holding rifles out front, so when Ian and Maggie dismounted, he said to her, “Stay here for a moment and let me find out if she still lives here.”

The men watched him as he approached and he noticed them tighten their hold on the weapons. “I'm a friend of Jade's. Is she here?”

“What's your name?”

“Preacher.”

“Wait here.”

One man went inside while the other remained at his post. Ian wondered again about the armed guards. Had there been another riot? His last visit to Denver had been nearly three years ago, so he had no idea what might have transpired during that time.

The man who'd gone inside returned promptly with Jade. She greeted Ian with a smile and extended hands, which he took in his.

“So good to see you again, Mr. Bounty Hunter. How are you?”

“I'm well, Jade. And you?”

“They haven't killed me yet, so I suppose that means I'm doing okay. Who's that by your horse?”

“A friend. Maggie Freeman.”

“Not a wife?”

He shook his head.

“Well, she is still welcome.”

He ignored her teasing for the moment. “Why the armed guards?”

She sighed. “We've had a bit of trouble lately. Come on in and I'll tell you about it.”

He beckoned to Maggie. They left Smoke to be looked after by the armed guards and followed Jade inside.

Maggie thought Jade quite beautiful. She was small in stature and dressed in a long-sleeved waist-length black garment with a high collar. Beneath it were loose-fitting trousers that brushed the worn slippers on her feet. Her black hair, drawn back from her face, matched her eyes.

The room she ushered them past first appeared to be a parlor. It was well furnished with a settee and colorful lacquered vases and lamps sitting atop small carved wood tables.

She then led them around a tall wooden screen, carved with birds and flowers, and into a small room centered by a long table covered by an embroidered gold cloth. Against the walls were side chairs carved out of similar gleaming wood that had lovely embroidered cushions embellished with flowers and birds on the seats. Maggie got the sense that the furnishings had come from China because she'd never seen anything like them in an American home.

Jade gestured them to take seats. “Would you like something to eat?”

Maggie was famished and was pleased when Ian said yes.

She left them alone and Maggie asked, “She seemed disappointed that I'm not your wife.”

“She thinks I need to marry.”

“Why?”

“Says I need sons.”

“Ah.” Maggie thought back on the passionate moments they'd shared and realized she could very well be carrying his child. Deciding not to think about that, she turned her mind away.

“You okay?” he asked, as if having seen the clouds crossing her thoughts.

“Little tired,” she said, which was not really a lie.

“I'll go over to the telegraph office once we've eaten and send word to my friend Charlie to meet us in Cheyenne.”

“I can't wait to see your place and to meet Georgie. Thanks for offering me the position.”

“Every community needs a good teacher.”

Jade returned with a tray holding bowls of rice that were topped with vegetables and succulent pieces of chopped fish. The tea was bracing and smooth.

“So,” Ian began, “why the guards?”

“The new crime boss. Name's Soapy Smith. Wants the Chinese to pay him protection.”

“From whom?” Maggie asked.

“Him. And because I've been refusing, he's been taking his anger out on some of the other business owners. There have been threats and a few fires, but once we took a couple of shots at his thugs, they've left us alone, at least lately.”

Ian asked, “What about the police?”

“Oh, they come and say all the right things, but they aren't going to do anything. Many of them are on his payroll.” She paused and looked at Ian. “I'm thinking of pulling up stakes and going back to California. The Exclusion Act is making living very difficult.”

Maggie had read about the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, but just in passing, so she knew little about the details. “The act forbids Chinese immigration, am I correct?”

“Yes, for ten years, and denies us the right to return here should we go to China for any reason.”

“So if someone who lived here had to go back to China to, say, bury their father, they can't come back to the States?” Maggie asked with surprise.

“No. The bigotry practiced against us is in many ways just like the bigotry your race endures. We are lynched, arrested without reason, beaten and jailed, and accused of everything from being the cause of White men not being able to find jobs, to the spread of disease. We are also denied citizenship. Forbidden to marry outside of the race, too.”

Maggie shook her head at the wrongness of that.

“So back to California?” he asked.

“Yes. Since the forties, the Chinese there have been forming these associations to help one another, but only recently have they been able to exercise real power. There's a group in San Francisco that seems very promising and I believe that's where I'll go. They call themselves the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association and have been somewhat successful in counteracting some of the violence. They are also mounting legal challenges to this disgusting Exclusion Act and what we call the Chinese tax.”

She must have seen the confusion on Maggie's face.

“The first immigrants were men who came to America to work in the mines and gold fields and to lay track for the railroads. The California government needed to fill their coffers so they issued a tax on foreign born, non–United States citizens. Since the Chinese are legally barred from citizenship, we were the only ones made to pay it. Back then, my father and uncles made six dollars a month in the mines. The tax took half.”

“What happened if they didn't pay?”

“The tax collectors would take their homes and property. Some Whites masqueraded as tax collectors and took property illegally. California law prohibits us from testifying against Whites in court, so we couldn't take the complaints to the courts.”

Ian said, “The Exclusion Act is nothing more than legalized bigotry.”

Maggie thought about men like Frederick Douglass and Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce and their efforts on behalf of their people. “Do your people have any champions?”

“Not in the government. President Hayes vetoed the first version of the act back in '78, but the forces lined up for its passage were like dogs with a bone, and in '82 they prevailed. Now I hear there's a move afoot in Congress to add even more restrictions.”

Maggie could see the fire and anger in Jade's eyes and so offered, “My father said that one day, America is going to have to live up to the promises of the Constitution.”

Jade replied, “He may be correct, but it doesn't appear as if it will happen anytime soon.”

Maggie had to agree.

Ian asked about her brothers.

“They still can't return to America.” She explained to Maggie that her twin brothers had left for China in '81, a few months after the riot, to fetch their two younger sisters and bring them to the States, but the act was keeping them out. “I'm hoping that if and when the act is struck down, I can see them all again. In San Francisco I have a few family members, so that's one of the reasons I wish to relocate there. I miss my brothers very much.”

Maggie remembered her mother's sadness when recounting how her family and other tribal members of the Kaw had been forced to leave for the Indian Territory. There was a similar note in Jade's voice. The United States government and the people in power apparently didn't care that their unfair policies were separating families and making day-to-day life difficult. She wondered if they ever would.

After they were done with their food, Ian stood. “I need to send a telegraph. Is the office in the same location?” he asked Jade.