Six Guns Straight From Hell - Tales Of Horror And Dark Fantasy From The Weird Weird West (19 page)

Long Night in Little China

by

Joel Jenkins

Lone Crow knew better than to draw upon one Tong hatchet man, let alone three. Yet there he was, standing in the streets of Little China, hand resting on his eagle-butted Colt revolver facing down three fighting men of the Hop Sing Tong.

They wore low broad-brimmed hats of black, the braided tails of their hair snaking over their shoulders and down their backs. The long silken belts they wore were thrust through with hatchets and knives, but the center tong fighter cast aside the long-haired Chinese girl who was struggling in his grip and Crow could see the pistol grips of a pair of Colt Navy revolvers jutting forward.

Crow had seen one other gunfighter wear his gun butts forward and he was fast enough to rack up a string of kills and an impressive reputation, but in Crow's opinion he would have been even faster if he would have worn his gun handles back. Still, Crow had been in enough gunfights to know that winning was more about the accuracy of the shooter than the speed of the shooter. Those that had accuracy were deadly and those that had both were nigh on unstoppable.

“
Leave the woman and I'll let you live!” shouted Crow, but he knew that the
boo how doy
fighting men of the tongs would not be so easily cowed, even by a red man with the demeanor of a savage.

“
She belongs to Hop Sing,” said the Chinese gunman, and to emphasize the fact, he booted the girl in the belly and sent her sprawling in the mud. “She is the tong's to use or abuse. No white man or Indian slave has claim to her.”

The girl pushed herself to her hands and knees, the oval of her sublime face framed by curtains of dark hair, and her lips again formed a desperate plea for help. Crow was aware that the tongs brought in young girls by the boatload, for gold fever wasn't the only lust that afflicted the forty-niners. In China, girls could be purchased from hungry families for twenty dollars and they would fetch ten times that in San Francisco, or be put immediately to work in the stalls or parlour houses of Jackson and Washington Streets.

“
I'm making claim,” said Crow and he knew that he needed to make an ultimatum. “I'm counting to three and if any of you are still in my sight I'm going to start shooting.”

Before Crow had reached the count of two, a pair of hatchet men were charging upon him from either flank. He hadn't seen any gun holsters on either of these tong killers, but it was possible that they had a hold-out hidden in their belt or among their loose blouses. Most of the
boo how doy
preferred to fight with hatchet or knife, but that didn't mean that they weren't, perhaps, even more dangerous than the Chinese gunfighter who stood his ground at the center and began to draw his pair of Navy Colts.

Each step of the sprinting tong warriors carried them closer, clots of earth spewing from their feet, and hatchets raising in their hands. Crow burst into action and his Eagle-butted Colt .45, blessed by a prophet in the salty wastes that night the dead came reeling from the grave, leaped into his hand as if by its own volition. He moved to his left so that if the Chinese gunfighter's draw was fast, his aim would be hindered by the body of his sprinting ally.

Crow ducked and a hatchet went whirling by his shoulder, then Crow fired two shots into the chest of the hatchet man, and he fell stone dead, face first in the muck at Crow's feet. Before the dead hatchet man had settled in the mud, Crow turned his aim to the second fighter, who had delayed the throw of his axe while his companion was standing in the way.

Flame belched from the barrel of Crow's .45 and a bullet caught the second hatchet man at the bridge of his nose and he toppled like a burlap bag of corn from the shoulder of a tired farmer. A bullet tugged at Crow's hat and pulled it from his head. Long hair that had been tucked beneath spilled out like the unfurling wings of a raven. If Crow had not been in a crouch that bullet would have caught him in the throat or chest.

The tong gunman held a pistol in each hand and began firing with more enthusiasm than accuracy. The road spit globs of mud as bullets spattered about Crow. The Indian wheeled about and took careful aim and sent his last three bullets winging toward the tong gunman. The first ricocheted from the head of a hatchet concealed beneath his blouse, the second pierced just beneath the ribs and the final bullet caught in the gunman's lung. The Chinese fighter reeled and went to his knees, his guns sagging in his grip.

His enemy was still conscious and holding a pair of pistols, and Crow was out of ammunition. He could reload, but in those precious seconds, his enemy might gather enough moxy to shoot him down. Crow caught sight of a hatchet jutting from the belt of the dead tong fighter at his feet and he plucked it out of the sash. Crow was no stranger to the hatchet, though he preferred the balance of a tomahawk, which he had been trained with since his youth. Still, he plucked it up, and threw it, whirling, over the head of the Chinese girl. It missed her by scant inches, then the axe caught the tong gunman full in the face, splitting his skull to the teeth, and then he fell backward into the muck of the street.

Before Crow took another step, he opened his pistol and shook the empty shells onto the street. He methodically reloaded his pistol, scanning the street with sharp eyes lest more trouble appear. The buildings were a mixture of tents and rude wooden structures packed together in an interminable hodgepodge that possessed no discernable rhyme or reason. There were a number of spectators, standing on the stoop of a Chinese laundry and others who had poked their heads out of their tents when they had heard the sound of gunfire.

Word would get back to the tongs quickly, figured Crow, and it wouldn't be hard for the tongs to identify an Indian wearing a duster and a cowboy hat.

Crow retrieved his hat, shook off the mud and placed it on his head. He trudged over to the woman and helped her to her feet. She couldn't have been more than eighteen or nineteen years of age. Despite her dishevelled robes and mud-flecked hair, she possessed a supernal beauty which radiated beyond the dirt and the mire which stained her clothing. Her features were fine, her teeth even and white, and in her presence Crow had a difficult time remembering the faces of any of the beautiful women he had known, even his childhood crush, Sky Raven, whose face had continuously haunted him since that day his tribe had been exterminated by their old tribal enemies and he had been cast, a lone child, into the wilderness to fend for himself.

The young woman spoke broken English, but for some reason Crow found it as easy to understand as if she had been speaking his own native language. “Thank you, stranger. I owe you my life.” She bowed her head. “I am at your disposal.”

“
You know English?”

“
My family lived by the great sea and I learned some from the visiting sailors,” she said. “And I had many months to learn it when I was sold into slavery and cast into the hold of the English ship,
Far Trader.
Eventually I found
myself in this strange land.”

Crow began to walk, figuring it best to find his way out of Little China before word of his exploits spread. “Where were the hatchet men taking you?”

“
To be one of the wives of Hop Sing. They said that, at least, I would not be a common crib-girl. I'd rather die than fall to such a fate. It is said that when Hop Sing tires of his wives, he sends them to the parlors or cribs.”

“
I can't imagine anyone tiring of you,” said Crow. Still, he'd heard stories of Hop Sing, a brutal man with a reputation for having access to dark magics. He cast a long glance over his shoulder as they wound their way out of Little China. This was going to put a crimp in his plans. A rather lovely crimp, but he was visiting San Francisco on business and it was going to be difficult to carry out his commission if he was dragging a pretty piece of calico through the scrub. There were a lot of testy gold hunters in the hills and valleys who would just as soon shoot first and ask questions later if they thought someone was intruding on their claim.

She put her hand on his shoulder, her fingers were cool where they brushed past his collar and touched his neck, but the contact seemed ambrosia to his senses and he caught her gaze, suddenly enraptured by the dark deep pools of her eyes. “I don't mean to be any trouble. If you just let me stay with you, I promise that you won't regret it.”

The India
n shook himself free of her entrancing gaze. “I already regret it...” Then he saw the hurt expression on her face and wished he hadn't spoken so quickly. “Don't misunderstand me. If time backed up ten minutes and I were presented with the same choice I would
rescue you again. No woman deserves to be sold into such a fate. But the Hop Sing Tong is not to be trifled with. They'll send their
boo how doy
after me and this time they won't make the mistake of arming themselves only with hatchets and knives. They'll
send their gunmen―all of them―after me. I've got to leave San Francisco and probably, even, California on a fast horse.”

“
Take me with you,” she pleaded. “I am a respectful woman. I excel at cooking and cleaning and have the skill to make my husband a happy man.”

“
I am called Jing-Wei Hsein. Jing-Wei means small bird.”

“
And Hsein?”

“
That name is not so easily translated,” she said, an expression of consternation appearing on her face.

Crow rolled her name over his tongue. “Jing-Wei. It is a lovely name. Odd, isn't it, that we're both named after birds?”

“
I am sure that it is not coincidence. Our lives were meant to intersect. It was fate.”

“
Perhaps, but what brought me to San Francisco was a missing man. I hadn't intended to entangle myself with the tongs.”

“
Perhaps I can help you find this man,” said Jing-Wei.

“
Are you also a hunter of men?” asked Crow, a smile playing at the corner of his lips.

“
No, but my father is a Taoist sorcerer like Hop Sing. He is one who takes the left hand path, an evil man, and in his presence I learned some of the secrets of his magic. I can use these secrets for some good purpose just as well as he can use them for his evil purposes.”

“
A Taoist sorcerer? You're full of surprises, Jing-Wei. Is it your sorcery that caused me to face down three tong hatchet men in that street. Is it your sorcery that convinces me to keep you at my side, despite my better judgment?”

“
It is your innate goodness that caused you to face down those tong killers,” said Jing-Wei. “You're a good man, a holy man. I can sense it now, there is the power of God in you, but still you wrestle with your own desires.”

He was the last of his tribe and though he had found some friends among the enclaves of the West, he dwelt with the constant dread that they would be plucked away, just as were the white settlers that had adopted him after the massacre that had destroyed his tribe. So he pre-empted the impending loss and pushed away his friends and disappeared into the beckoning embrace of the wilderness, the solitude of which he both feared and sought.

“
It's in your name,” said Jing-Wei and she straightened the robe she wore. “There is much in a name, even secrets.”

Crow paused, uncomfortable with the direction the conversation was heading. He gestured toward a narrow alley that wound between stained canvas tents and makeshift shacks. Wood smoke drifted on an errant breeze and curled around the Indian's limbs. “I've got a tent behind the Leaning Horseshoe Stable. The yard is fenced and the owner keeps a close eye on my things. The accommodations aren't much...”