The Bandit Princess (3 page)

“No.”

“But you said—”

“I tell you what,” he said. “I’m going to throw a bottle into the air. If you hit it, you can come with me.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

“Get ready.”

She braced herself, her hand hovering above her gun. Picking up a bottle, Clint said, “Ready?” and tossed it up.

She drew her gun but didn’t fire. When the bottle fell to earth, she walked over to it, pointed her gun at it, and fired. The bottle shattered.

“What was that about?” he demanded.

She ejected the spent shell, reloaded, and holstered the gun, then looked at him.

“I hit it,” she said. “You didn’t say I had to hit it while it was still in the air.”

Now he glared at her until he realized she was right. He’d simply said that if she hit it after he threw it in the air, she could go with him.

“We should tell the judge,” she said.

“You’ll have to wait until I make up my mind,” he told her.

“But you said—”

“I didn’t say I’d decided to go,” he said. “I still have to think about it, and the longer you talk to me, the longer it’ll take.”

“When will you know?”

“In the morning,” he said. “I’ll make up my mind overnight.”

She thought a moment, then gave in and said, “All right, I suppose I can wait that long. Shall we have supper?”

“I have to be alone to decide,” he said. “Making conversation is not going to be helpful.”

“I’ll keep quiet.”

“No,” he said, “you won’t.”

“You’re probably right,” she said. “I wouldn’t. I talk too much, I know, but—”

“Meet me in the dining room of my hotel,” he said, “at nine a.m. I’ll buy you breakfast and let you know.”

“All right,” she said. “Nine a.m. I’ll be there.”

They left the lot, now even more littered than before with broken glass and battered cans.

When they got to the street, they parted company. She went off to do whatever deputy marshals do when they’re not chasing down outlaws.

He turned and headed for the saloon. He’d just given himself added incentive to turn Judge Parker down.

 

 

 

Clint had a few more beers and then decided he should probably have something to eat, or else he’d be starving and it’d be too late to get anything.

“I haven’t been here in years,” he told the bartender. “Where’s a good place to eat?”

“Whataya want? Steak?”

“Usually,” Clint said, “but today I feel like something different.”

“Somethin’ different, huh?” the man asked. “I got just the place. You go out the front door, turn right . . .”

 

Clint followed the bartender’s directions and found himself standing in front of a restaurant called Garden of Delight.

“Chinese food,” he said. “That
is
different.”

He’d had Chinese food a few times before, but only in New York and San Francisco. Never anywhere in the South-west, or these parts. He’d seen Chinese restaurants in Denver and Saint Louis, but had not eaten there.

“Okay,” he said, “why not?”

He went inside.

The waitress was a lovely Chinese girl who spoke enough English to wait tables. The cook was an old Chinaman who spoke no English at all. Clint was the only customer in the place, so he was the beneficiary of all the waitress’s smiles and the old cook’s glares.

“He doesn’t like me,” Clint said, the one-hundredth time the cook stuck his head out the door to stare hard at Clint.

“Do not worry,” she said. “Even if he hate you, Grandfather cook good for you.”

It turned out to be true. Clint had a bowl of pork fried rice, another bowl of noodles she called “lo mein,” and she brought him generous portions of pepper steak and orange chicken. There were also snow peas, bamboo shoots, odd vegetables he never heard of, including “bok choy,” which she told him meant “snow cabbage.”

She also tried to get him to eat with chopsticks, but in the end she relented and allowed him to use a fork before all the food ended up on the table, or the floor.

Served with the food was hot Chinese tea, and while they didn’t have any beer, she did bring him a pitcher of water.

He consumed most of what she brought him, telling him that he was eating “family style.” He told her his family had never eaten like this. He didn’t tell her that the only family he’d ever had was an orphanage back East when he was a boy. Back then the biggest or toughest of the children ate the best. He was never the biggest, but he soon became one of the toughest so he wouldn’t go to bed hungry every night.

“Where are all the other customers?” he asked her when she brought him some more tea.

“We do not have any,” she said. “You first customer in long time.”

“How do you survive?”

“I do laundry,” she said, “and Grandfather very good with his hands.”

“So you both have work other than this restaurant?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s not right,” he said. “All of this food was delicious. There must be some other customers. The bartender at the Cactus Saloon sent me over here. Doesn’t he eat here?”

“He eat here once in while,” she said. “He send other men, but they no come in.”

“Well, they’re stupid,” he said, “or crazy.”

She giggled and said, “You nice man.”

“Well, you’re a nice girl, and your grandfather is . . . well, a good cook.”

“He love restaurant,” the girl said. “He be very sad when we close.”

“You’re going to close?”

She shrugged.

“Have no money to keep open. We close next week.”

“Well then, I can at least eat here until then, right?”

“You come,” she said, “I let eat for free. You nice man.”

“Not if I eat here free, I’m not,” he said. “Don’t worry, I’ll pay. In fact—” He stopped short. He had once ended up owning a doomed saloon by rushing in without thinking.

“What?” she asked.

“Never mind,” he said. “What’s your name?”

“Mai,” she said, pronouncing it “My.”

“I’m Clint. I’ll be back tomorrow to eat. And I’ll pay.”

“Okay,” she said with another shrug. “I see you tomorrow.”

Clint nodded and left the Garden of Delight.

 

Back at the Cactus Saloon again, he had a beer and thought over the offer he’d almost made to Mai and her grandfather.

Clint owned saloons and hotels throughout the West—well, parts of them. He had co-owners in all his ventures, and his shares of the profits were banked for him by his partners—all people he trusted—so he could get to them where he was. He had almost offered to buy into the Garden of Delight, but why buy in if it was already doomed? He had to give it some more thought.

His friend Rick Hartman was a good businessman. He owned Rick’s Place in Labyrinth, Texas, and he owned it free and clear, with no partners. It was the only way to succeed in business, he always said.

“I don’t split my profits with anybody,” Rick said.

But Rick owned one establishment and ran it himself. Clint owned several and ran none of them. He left that to his partners.

Up to now he had a piece of three saloons and two hotels. No restaurants. If he decided to invest in the Garden of Delight, it would be his first.

That is, if they’d have him as a partner.

He finished his beer, decided that it had been a long day, and left to go to his hotel to turn in.

 

 

 

He was reading a short story collection by Robert Louis Stevenson when there was a gentle knock on the door.

Gentle or violent knocking, he always reacted the same way. He grabbed his gun from his holster, hanging handy from the bedpost, and walked to the door.

“Who is it?”

“It is Mai,” a gentle voice said. “From the restaurant?”

“Mai,” he said, opening the door. She was standing in the hall with a shawl over her cotton dress. He looked both ways and then back at her.

“Mai, what are you doing here?”

“I thought . . .” she said, then stopped. “May I come in?”

“Are you sure?” he asked. “I mean, a man’s room—”

“How would I get into the man’s bed if I do not enter the man’s room?”

“The man?”

“You, Clint.”

He was stunned. She took advantage and slipped in past him. He closed the door and turned to face her.

“You will not need the gun,” she said, looking amused.

He walked to the bedpost and holstered it. He was both barefooted and bare-chested, wearing only his Levi’s.

“You look confused,” she said. “I thought we had a—how do you say it?—a moment?”

“Mai,” he said, “you’re lovely, but I didn’t expect—”

“No,” she said, “I did not expect it either. But you are nice man, and you touch me here.” She pressed her hands to her heart. “And I try to be more like Western girls.”

“Well, most Western girls don’t come to men’s rooms,” he said.

She shrugged.

“Then I not try to be like Western girls. I just be like Mai.”

She took off her shawl, then unbuttoned her dress. She had the dress peeled down to reveal her bare shoulders, and the slopes of her small breasts and brown nipples, when she stopped.

“You want I should go?” she asked.

“No,” he said, “I don’t want you to leave—not if this is what you really want.”

“Oh,” she said, pushing her dress down to her waist, “this what I want.”

He crossed the room and helped her get naked, then stepped back. She was tiny, and exquisite. Her breasts were perky, and perfectly formed. The bush of hair between her legs was as black as the hair on her head, which hung past her shoulders in a straight, shimmery curtain.

She moved closer to him, put her small hands on his chest. She used her palms, rubbed his nipples, then slid her hands down over his sternum until she reached his belt. She undid it, then stepped back so he could remove his trousers and be as naked as she was.

They came together then, hot flesh against hot flesh, kissing. Rubbing, touching. He lifted her, intending to take her to the bed, but she wrapped her legs around his waist and slid down on him, taking him inside her slick, hot pussy. He slid his hands beneath her ass and began to fuck her that way. She held on to his neck and bounced up and down on his hard cock, letting her head fall back, her long curtain of hair hanging almost to the floor.

He turned and walked to the bed and, without disengaging, took her to the mattress. There they stayed all night, getting acquainted and getting very little sleep . . .

 

In the morning they lay in bed together, having made love again for he didn’t remember how many times. She was insatiable and he did his very best to keep up with her all night.

When the sun came up, she got off the bed and began to get dressed. He asked, “We’re done?”

“I must go and open restaurant,” she said. “You leave town soon?”

“Very soon.”

“You come back?”

“I will.”

“You come see Mai when you come back,” she said.

“I will,” he promised.

She laughed, bounced onto the bed to give him a kiss, and bounced away before he could grab her.

“You have Chinese girl before?” she asked.

“Once or twice.”

She pouted, saying, “I not special?”

“Mai,” he said, “you’re very special.”

“Good,” she said.

She ran to the door, turned, blew him a kiss, and was gone, leaving her sweet smell behind.

He fell asleep.

 

 

 

Being visited by Mai had kept Clint from giving thought overnight to Judge Parker’s request, so when he woke up two hours later, he did just that.

The fact of the matter was he had once thought of Belle Starr as a friend. If her daughter Pearl had fallen in with the wrong people and gotten herself in trouble, how could he walk away and leave her on her own? What would he ever say to Belle if Pearl found herself at the end of a rope—providing, of course, that Belle didn’t end up there first.

He had arranged to meet with Deputy Eads for breakfast at nine so he could see Judge Parker before that. He washed and dressed, left his hotel, and walked to Judge Parker’s office. The guard let him in this time without a word.

Parker was seated at his desk, looking as if he’d been there all night, except for the fact that his black suit was clean and his white shirt crisp. His eyes, however, were bloodshot, his face haggard. The man needed some rest.

“ ’Morning, Judge. You been to bed yet?”

“Washed my face, changed my clothes,” Parker said. “That’s about as close as I come these days. You make up your mind yet?”