Wagon Train Sisters (Women of the West) (14 page)

One man stepped forward. “No come to eat. We lookee for girl.” He was hard to understand, the way he spoke in a heavy accent with that sing-songy voice.

“May I ask her name?”

His mouth got an ugly twist. “Anming.”

Judging from the way he spat out the name, the girl must be in terrible trouble. Sarah could easily point to the whisky barrels outside and reveal where Anming was hiding. That way, she’d rid herself of any further inconvenience. Somehow, she couldn’t do it. That desperate expression on the poor creature’s face, those pleading eyes… No, she wouldn’t give her away. “She’s Chinese?”

Au Fung nodded.

“Then she certainly hasn’t been in here. Mrs. Butler wouldn’t allow it.” She gestured toward the rear of the restaurant and gave an elaborate shrug. “She’s not in the back, either. I was just out there.”

Had her lies worked? She held her breath. Au Fung’s eyes filled with suspicion. He peered into every corner of the large tented room. He turned to his companions and spoke a few words. She didn’t understand them, but the harshness of his tone, the tightness of his jaw, revealed his seething anger. At least he no longer seemed interested in her. The three turned and left the restaurant without another word. She let out her breath and sank to a chair for a moment to recover. Never had she seen such hatred on a man’s face. Anming feared for her life with good reason. After she’d calmed down, she finished fixing the plate and took it out back.

“Thank you, thank you.” Anming regarded Sarah with eyes full of gratitude.

The two sat crossed-legged on the ground, away from the whiskey barrels, in a secluded clump of pine trees and thick bushes. Sarah waited patiently while the girl, who’d obviously been starving, gobbled down her food. When she finished, Sarah asked, “Are you running away from that man, Au Fung?”

“I can never go back.”

“Why did you run away?”

Anming closed her eyes as if to shut out a flood of ugly memories. When she opened them, she sighed. “You don’t want to hear my story. You’d be shocked, a nice lady such as you.”

Sarah peered through the clump of trees. The Chinamen were gone, at least for now. Beatrice wouldn’t be back for a while, and no one else was around. There wasn’t much more she could do for Anming. Still, she couldn’t help wondering how the girl had ended up in such a desperate situation. “Go ahead. I want to hear it all.”

“All right, if you must, I’ll tell you.” The girl spoke with a Chinese accent, but unlike Au Fung, she spoke English with a pronunciation easy to understand. “I was born in Changsha, Hunan Province, China. Being a female child, I was practically worthless—just another mouth to feed. I stayed with my family until I was fourteen. Then a famine came, and the family nearly starved. I was the youngest daughter, so I was the one they chose for the slave traders. They sold me for fifty dollars.”

Sarah gasped. “How could your family do such a thing?”

Anming shrugged as if it was nothing at all. “They needed the money. In China it happens all the time.”

“But isn’t it against the law?”

“Of course not. There are slave traders all over China who buy girls from poor families. Mostly they send them to America. That’s what they did with me—put me on a ship to San Francisco, me and at least a hundred other girls. They jammed us deep in the hold. The food was awful. So was the smell. They wouldn’t let us up on the top deck. I’d have died for a little fresh air, but it never happened.”

“That’s terrible.”

“It gets worse. When we got to San Francisco, the customs officials stripped and searched us like we weren’t even human. Then the slave dealers took us to what they called a barracoon. That’s a large holding pen where they treat you like cattle. I’ll never forget the old women who looked after us—sallow old hags in black dresses with bunches of keys.”

“You were kept prisoner?” Sarah could hardly believe what she was hearing. “But surely that’s against the law.”

“You wouldn’t understand. The Chinese tongs in San Francisco are very powerful, very”—Anming sought the proper word—“frightening. The authorities don’t want to deal with them. If they do, it’s to take their bribes and look the other way.”

“So what happened to you?”

“They have auctions where men come to look and to buy. When my auction began, I was stripped, led in, and made to stand naked on a platform. They pinched and prodded me, all the time laughing, making insulting remarks about my body.” Anming clenched her fists, revealing an old anger buried deep within her. “If I live to be hundred—and I know I won’t—I will never forget the shame and humiliation of that day.”

“So you were sold?”

“The pretty girls went first. I was pretty then, so there were lots of bids for me. That was before…” Anming’s eyes clouded with pain as she touched the awful scar on her face. “Some of the highest bids came either from wealthy merchants who wanted another concubine or the high-class brothels where life wasn’t so bad. The ugly girls, like the ones who were crippled or scarred by smallpox, went straight to the cribs. That’s the lowest of the low. I was lucky. A rug merchant by the name of Lee Chuen bought me and kept me as a mistress for nearly six years. It wasn’t so bad there. He had a nice home, and he was kind to me. One of his wives was especially kind. She’s the one who taught me how to read and speak English.” Her expression saddened. “She died in childbirth. Lee Chuen hardly waited a day to replace her. His new wife’s name was Wong Ah Sing. From the start, she couldn’t stand me. Jealous, I suppose. Everything I did annoyed her, no matter how hard I tried.” A rueful expression crossed her face. “Sometimes I didn’t try so hard. I talked back. Not a good idea when you’re nothing but a lowly slave.”

“So then what happened?”

“Wong Ah Sing hired two men from the tong.
Boo how doy
—hatchet men.” Anming paused for an ironic little laugh. “Nice lady that she was, she hired them not to kill me but just to mutilate me a little.” She touched her scar again. “They took a hatchet to my face. I was lucky they didn’t chop off my fingers like they do sometimes. After that, I was worthless. Lee Chuen was a kind man, but even he could no longer stand to look at me.”

“But that’s so unfair.” The horror of Anming’s story shocked Sarah to her soul. She wouldn’t have believed it except every stomach-turning word held the ring of truth. “How could such terrible things go on in this world? I never knew.”

“Most people don’t. How could they? The tongs are secret societies. Nobody knows all that goes on. A month ago, Lee Chuen sold me to Au Fung. He works for the tong and runs cribs in a lot of the mining towns. He brought me to Gold Creek in a wagon with some other girls—ugly ones like me, end-of-the-line girls. We got here two days ago. I refused to work. Au Fung gave me a day to decide if I wanted to live or die.”

“He would have killed you?”

“Easily, but what choice did I have? Girls who work in the cribs aren’t treated like human beings. They’re forced to take on one man after another—excuse me, ma’am, but that’s the truth of it. They’re forced to do all sorts of unnatural things a lady like you has never heard of. They get roughed up by brutes, punched and kicked and tortured, and nobody cares. Then they get too old, or they get sick from the disease you get from that kind of work. They’re bound to get it, and when they do and can’t work anymore, they’re either thrown out on the street or told to commit suicide.”

Sarah slapped her hand over her mouth. “That’s so hard to believe, but it must be true. You couldn’t make up such a horrible story.”

Anming nodded with understanding. “Do you see why I ran away? I refused to work even one night in the cribs even though I knew Au Fung would come after me.”

“So where will you go? You must have a plan.”

“I don’t.” With a matter-of-fact shrug, the girl continued, “There’s no escape for me. I have no money. Even if I did, do you think a lowly Chinese slave girl would be allowed in the shops to buy food? Do you think they’d let me ride in a stagecoach so I could leave town? I’m trapped. All I can do is hide during the day and sneak out at night to search through somebody’s garbage for food. With any luck, Au Fung won’t catch me.” She lifted her chin. “The trouble is my luck ran out a long time ago.”

For a time they sat in a silence broken only by the soft ripple of the flowing river and the occasional bird’s caw. Sarah sat frozen, deeply affected by Anming’s story. She herself had seen the evil in Au Fung’s face. She wished she could help in some way, but fear knotted inside her just thinking about the San Francisco tong that mutilated faces and cut off fingers. Au Fung would show no mercy to anyone who tried to help an escaped Chinese slave. But on the other hand…

How could she not try? Anming might be frightened and destitute, yet she’d shown the strength to fight back rather than meekly accept her fate. But helping the girl would not be easy. Sarah couldn’t do it alone, but who could she turn to? Jack, Hiram, and Pa were working their claims and wouldn’t be back for days. Beatrice was a kind, generous woman in many ways, but she’d made clear her low opinion of anything Chinese. Ma? Out of the question. Becky? Sarah could laugh. Fat chance her stoned-hearted sister-in-law would go to the aid of a Chinese slave girl.
That leaves just me
.

“Anming, I…” The words caught in her throat. With a determined breath, she forced them out. “I’m going to help you.” What was she getting into?
Look at me now, Thursday Afternoon Ladies Literary Club
. She reached to take Anming’s small hand in her own. “We must get you out of Gold Creek. Meanwhile, I want you to stay right here, and for heaven’s sake, stay hidden. Tonight I’ll bring you food and a blanket.”

Anming’s jaw quivered. She blinked back tears. “What will you do?”

“I’m forming a plan.” A lie. As of this moment, her mind was blank. All she knew was if Anming stayed in Gold Creek, sooner or later Au Fung would find her. Somehow, some way, the girl must be smuggled out of town, and soon, but to where? When? How? All Sarah’s life, someone was always there to solve her problems. This time she’d have to figure it out for herself.

By the time Sarah went to bed that night, she’d considered and discarded countless ideas that went nowhere.
Disguise Anming in white woman’s clothing, put a sunbonnet on her head, buy her a ticket on the stagecoach
. No! The tiny Chinese girl would never pass as a white woman.

Find a small boat. Send Anming down the river to safety
. No! The river turned into rapids below.

In the middle of the night, when she was half asleep, out of nowhere a plan that might very well work popped into her head. That was it! It would be dangerous, but then, what plan wouldn’t be? The more she thought, the more she decided it was worth a try.

* * * *

The next morning, when she had a spare moment, Sarah slipped from the restaurant with a plate of food. She half expected Anming would be gone, but she was still hiding in back of the whiskey barrels. Sarah gave her a confident smile. “I have the perfect plan. It won’t be long before you’ll be gone from Gold Creek and in a place where you’ll be safe.” If only she could be as positive as she sounded.

She had grown to like Li, the eighteen-year-old son of the laundry owner next door. The young man never seemed to rest. When he wasn’t serving tables in the restaurant, he was working long hours helping his father in the laundry. He never complained, although he once said he wished his father could find more help, not only for his Gold Creek laundry but for the laundry he owned in Hangtown. With his pidgin English, Li wasn’t easy to talk to, but Sarah had made it a point to learn a bit of pidgin herself, just so she could understand him.

After breakfast, when the dishes were cleared, she drew him aside. “My wanchee help, Li.” She minded each word carefully.

The young man squinted in concentration. “You wanchee help?”

As best she could, she explained about Anming. Not everything, only that she knew of a young Chinese girl who needed to leave town and who very much wanted to work. If his father, Fatt Cheng, could take her to Hangtown, she’d be happy to work in his laundry there. Sarah reached in her pocket, pulled out a five-dollar gold piece and displayed it in the palm of her hand. “My pay five dolla.”

Li nodded as if he understood. “You wait.” He left for next door to talk to his father and soon returned. “He say ten.”

Fatt Cheng would do it! A vast relief swept through her. No matter that he asked for more money. Anything to make Anming safe again.

“My father ask where is girl.”

Li’s question caused a twist in her stomach. She could be making a terrible mistake. Far as she knew, Fatt Cheng and Au Fung didn’t know each other, but she could be wrong. Maybe the Chinese in this town all stuck together, in which case, Au Fung could be getting an earful right now. She had no choice, though. In the well-ordered life she used to know, she would never think of taking such a risk. But that was the old Sarah, the never-take-chances Sarah.

She told Li all he needed to know.

* * * *

Even at midnight, miners seeking a good time crowded the main street of Gold Creek. Sounds of music, shouts, and rowdy laughter poured through the open doors of the saloons. The bars were crowded, the gambling tables full. Miners milling about, some staggering from too much drink, took no notice of a laundry wagon driven by a Chinaman rolling slowly up the street, stopping in front of The Miners’ Heaven Restaurant. Sarah, Anming by her side, crouched in the shadows. “Let’s go,” Sarah whispered. They ran to the wagon. Fatt Chen, who held the reins, threw them a quick glance. “You makee hide quick.”

With Sarah’s assistance, Anming crawled in the back. Before she hid herself beneath a pile of laundry, she whispered, “How can I ever thank you?”

“I don’t need to be thanked.” Sarah pulled one of her three remaining gold pieces from her pocket. “Here, take this.”

Anming took the coin. “I owe you so much. Some day I’ll repay you.”

“Thank you, but I doubt we’ll ever see each other again.”

“Yes, we will. I will repay you. That’s a promise.”

“Take care, Anming. Good luck.” Sarah watched as the wagon rolled away. If all went well, they would reach Hangtown by dawn. Anming would be all right. She’d have a job in Fatt Cheng’s laundry. It wasn’t much of a job, working over steaming kettles and hot irons all day, but anything would be better than working the cribs.