Mojave (8 page)

I finished the tea, set the cup on the saucer, and stood up to shake my savior's hand. I was clean, properly outfitted for a lieutenant of Whip Watson's, with a full belly, sober head. He reached up to shake my hand.

“You see me soon,” he said, “but don't wait long. Lucky Ben Wong soon be married. Soon be living in San Francisco. Be gone from Calico.”

“Don't blame you,” I said. We shook. “Congratulations and good luck.”

I was stepping toward the door when the canvas flew open. The flash of a gunshot blinded me, and I cussed as I felt a bullet tear a hole through my new six-dollar hat.

I ducked right before another bullet punched past me and poked a hole in one of them cans of coal oil.

Then I was lying flat on my belly behind a tub of dirty water, trying to get my Spiller & Burr out of my new, stiff holster. A bullet sang out, whined as it ricocheted off the tub, and dirty bathwater splashed on the sleeve of my blue shirt.

The opium addict behind me muttered something that I couldn't catch.

Another shot flew wild, knocking the entire can out of the wall, creating a window that sent light and dust down on me.

My watch was still ticking. Even better, I was still breathing.

Lucky Ben Wong yelled, “Murder! Murder! Murder!”

One of the gunmen snapped at him, “Shut up, Chinaman!”

Another voice said, “Or I cut off your pigtail. Once we're done here.”

That told me some things. First, there was two killers. Second, I figured these guys had come gunning for Lucky Ben Wong, after all Lucky Ben Wong made a lot of money in these parts, and if you were going to rob someone, you'd rob him and not a bum like me. But those boys had come after me.

Me?

Would've made sense if they'd robbed me before I'd made it to J. M. Miller's store. After all, I had forty dollars before I stepped inside the mercantile. Once I'd left, I had $6.19. After bath, shave, and haircut, I was down to $5.10, having tipped Lucky Ben Wong nine cents before I knowed how much he earned a month.

All right, somewhere out in the Mojave Desert, in a wagon train led by a Mexican named Juan Pedro, I could count twenty-five men who'd likely kill for that bit of money. But in Calico? Where there were silver miners galore and Chinese men pulling in more than six hundred dollars a month? Kill a man for five bucks and change? Didn't make sense.

I pushed myself up, lifted the .36, and squeezed the trigger.

“Murder!” Lucky Ben Wong yelled. “Murder! Murder!”

One of the assassins cursed. Fired again.

The opium addict yelled, “I am trying to sleep!”

Now, I really hated to do this, but two men with guns was closing in on me. Later, I told Lucky Ben Wong that I did it to protect him, what with him crying out
murder
and all, I didn't want those boys to shoot him since it was me they come after. But that was just a falsehood. I done what I did to save my own hide.

In Calico, men built stone houses without mortar, and I could see streaks of afternoon light shining through the walls, so Lucky Ben Wong didn't use mortar in his construction, either, and if a bullet could create a window by knocking out a can, well, I wasn't sure it would work, but the next bullet bounced off the tub behind me, and hit in front of me as I crawled along the dirt floor.

After snapping off another shot, I got to my feet and ran straight for the wall.

Lucky Ben Wong hadn't put a rear door to his place, so the only way out was through the wall. Didn't know if this would work, but it did. Lowered my shoulder, said a
Hail Mary Full of Grace,
sent another bullet at a figure rising from behind the barber's chair in the corner, and smashed into that wall.

The cans collapsed, and I was bouncing outside off cans, smelling the coal oil, rolling over, kicking an empty can out of the way, aiming the Spiller & Burr through the hole I'd just made, but didn't see no gunmen coming out because the roof was collapsing and dust was rising thicker than the walls of Jericho, and over the rattling of tin and the ringing in my ears, and the shrieks of half the population of the Chinese section of East Calico, I made out Lucky Ben Wong's “Murder! Murder! Murder!” Only now, he was likely expressing what he'd like to do to me for ruining his home/barber shop/bathhouse/opium parlor.

The boys inside seemed learned enough to know better than to go through the hole I'd made, and the dust wouldn't stay there forever, so I got up, damned near tripped over two more cans, and moved away from the rubber front door, running behind the building of cans, gun in hand.

As I ducked behind some laundry, I heard more cans rattling, and somebody cussing, and figured the two assassins had made it outside and was coming after me. Long underwear slapped my freshly shaved face. I went through it, ducked underneath a pair of Levi's, and turned a corner, leaning against one of those adobe houses to catch my breath.

After I inched my way to the western edge of the shack, I raised the gun, already cocked, and listened. Folks were screaming, hens kept squawking, and a few dumb people across the path stood in front of their homes or businesses pointing at me, yipping like gossips in their foreign tongue.

Unless those two killers were blind, it wouldn't take them long to figure out where I hid.

I could see the bridge across the canyon, but I'd have to run down this footpath to get to it, and that would invite a bullet to my back. Stay here, and some innocent folks was bound to get hurt, possibly killed. Hell, even more important, stay here and I was guaranteed to get dead.

That's when I seen another Chinese person, a small woman carrying two babies in her arms, run beyond the houses and the café and the finger pointers. Run straight for the canyon's edge, then started down, she did, and I recollected those buildings and people on the canyon floor.

Of course, I gave the woman and her two kids plenty of time to make it down those steps or ladder or whatever the hell it was because I sure didn't want them to get hurt on my account. Well, maybe I didn't give them that long, because I ran across the street, looking back toward Lucky Ben Wong's place. Caught a glimpse of one of the man-killers.

He wore a Mexican sombrero and a pink shirt.

Almost caught a bullet in my gut in addition to a glimpse of that bad man.

I fired back, then was behind the brown wall as a bullet struck the corner and kicked up brown dust.

“I seen him, Paul!” Pink Shirt talked like a gringo, not a Mexican. “He's heading for the canyon.”

Which was exactly where I was going.

At the edge, I looked down, seen the steps carved into the canyon wall that dropped to a ledge about six feet down. Perfect. I jumped. A bullet sang above me, and I landed on the shelf, knees buckling, pitching forward flat on my face. I almost went over the side myself, which was a fifty-foot drop and would have killed me, but somehow stopped myself from sliding off to eternal damnation.

Unfortunately, the Spiller & Burr went over the edge.

Spasms of pain shot through my knees and legs, but I couldn't worry about that now. I came up, and found the ladder that led to the pit.

Ladder. Built like that rickety bridge.

Great.

Ever clumb down a fifty-foot ladder? With people above you wanting to shoot you dead? And no friend waiting down below gripping the ladder to hold it steady so it don't tip over and send you flying?

Not something I recommend, but I had no choice. I grabbed hold, lowered myself, felt the rungs where I'd planted my feet groan and bend. The ladder was built by Chinese and for Chinese and I was an American, not fat but sure not skinny, and certainly heavier than any person who'd gone down this death trap—even a woman with two kids.

Halfway down the ladder, I thought:
How in hell did a woman climb down this rickety death trap with two little babies?

Lots of Americans don't think much of the Chinese. Oh, they like their food and their laundries, and maybe their opium, but they don't care much for their culture, their pigtails, their pagan ways of thinking. But they are some people. As I hurried down, I kept thinking that Jingfei could have done just like that Chinese woman with the two babies. Chinese women are a wonder.

I slid the last fifteen feet, burning my hands, hitting the ground hard, and falling to my left. Right beside the Spiller & Burr.

A bullet kicked up dust a few inches from my feet, and rolling on my back, I spied Pink Shirt and the other fellow, a man with a brown hat—what other color could he be wearing in Calico?—and a Winchester rifle.

Pink Shirt had fired his pistol. He was leaning against the top of the ladder, trying to get a better aim. I was picking up my revolver, blowing dirt from the cylinder, and trying to cock the .36 without busting my thumbs. Not that I'd be able to hit a man, or two men, or a damned elephant fifty feet above me with a pistol. What did I have left in the chambers? Two shots? Three? Paul With The Winchester fired. The bullet slapped between my legs. Pink Shirt was leaning, cocking his pistol, but he had as much of a chance of hitting me as I did of shooting him.

Didn't matter, though. 'Cause soon as I cocked the Spiller & Burr that ladder was moving off to the right, and Pink Shirt was yelling like a girl as he went over with it, and Paul With The Winchester had stopped cocking his rifle and was reaching out for Pink Shirt's extended left hand, but not too far, because Paul With The Winchester didn't want to get pulled into the abyss hisself, and I scrambled up and run toward the west side of the canyon, causing ducks and chickens to squawk and cackle and a couple of dogs to bark, while Pink Shirt screamed all the way down and Paul With The Winchester yelled, “Artemis! Nooooooooooo!” Behind me come the crunch that ended Pink Shirt's life.

Then I heard Paul With The Winchester yell, “You son of a bitch!” A bullet killed one of the ducks in front of me. Blood and feathers landed on the left leg of my new $3.79 striped woolen britches.

Keep this up and I'd have to find a Chinese laundry.

Which I'd just run past.

Another round sent brown dirt from the side of that hovel into my eyes, but I got to the back and stopped, catching my breath, rubbing the dirt so I could see better, thinking how lucky I was to still be alive.

I smelled the smell then. The stink of human waste.

The trash pile Guttersnipe Gary and I had seen where the dog-men had been fighting wasn't the main dump for Calico. That was here. In I guess what you'd call Lower Chinatown. They simply dumped their chamber pots and other refuse over the side.

The ten or twenty Chinese who lived here had to live with this smell. The other twenty or thirty who lived at the top of the ridge had things better, especially if you were Lucky Ben Wong and earning all his money.

After I spit the taste out of my mouth, I laughed. Said to myself, “Now you've really stepped into a pile of sheep-dip.” Or something similar.

Paul With The Winchester couldn't climb down to where I was since the way down was smashed alongside the smashed Pink Shirt's body, but I'd have to find the ladder that led up to Calico proper. I blew more dirt from the Spiller & Burr. I could see that ladder. It stood right next to the bridge. I took a chance and looked behind me. More of those finger-pointing Chinese men and women stood atop the far ledge, showing everybody where the late Pink Shirt had landed and died. Paul With The Winchester was nowhere to be found.

To the north, the canyon seemed to widen and then curve. Once the Chinese settlement ended, though, so did all cover. Go that way, and I'd surely get killed. Stay here, and I'd be a sitting duck, and I'd already seen what Paul With The Winchester could do to a running duck with his rifle.

I could just wait here. But didn't like the smell, or the thought of dying in a pile of...

So I looked back west and south. Saw the ladder. Nobody—I mean nobody—was up top near the bridge. I guessed how people in Calico didn't care if the Chinese killed each other in East Calico or Lower Chinatown.

Crouching, I leaped across the path to the next building. No one shot me dead. I put the revolver in my left hand to wipe the sweat off my right palm, then bent over and plucked the two duck feathers off my $3.79 pants. The .36 returned to my right hand, and, still squatting, I looked up to see an old Chinese woman sitting in front of a kettle that was smoking over a fire. She stared at me. At least she didn't point no fingers.

I said, “Morning, ma'am.”

She said, in perfect English, “It's afternoon, idiot.”

I thanked her anyway, and moved to the next building.

Looking behind me toward the eastern shelf, I saw buildings and smoke and some people running this way and that. The finger pointers was gone, and, for the moment, the bridge was empty. I looked off toward the north. No Paul With The Winchester anywhere.

The lucky thing, appeared to me, was that on the west side the canyon wall wasn't more than forty feet high. Ten feet shorter than the east. All I had to do was climb up without getting killed.

A couple of buildings stood next to the canyon wall, but I had to cover about thirty yards with nothing for cover but a few piles of turds and trash.

Then come a sound from Calico proper, and I looked up at the backs of buildings. No longer did I catch the sounds of saws and hammers from the soon-to-be palace of Calico. There were shouts, barking of dogs (or men who thought they was dogs), and even a scream or two. A moment later, I heard it again. Gunfire. Three shots. Four. Five-six-seven-eight. Maybe a few more.

Out loud, I said, “And this town don't need a jail?”

Then I ran.

Well, I didn't expect to make it. The way I figured things, Paul With The Winchester was sitting on a chair in the shade in East Calico, maybe smoking some opium, but likely just waiting to find me. Bring up his rifle, jack a round into the chamber, and put me out of my misery.

Didn't happen. I made it to the first shack. Tried to steady my breathing. Waited. Waited. Waited. Finally, I hopped over to the next building and still wasn't dead. From the inside of the shack come voices yacking at one another, talking back and forth, man and woman, bitching like husband and wife. Didn't want them to get hurt by Paul With The Winchester when he started blasting.

The ladder was right there. Ten yards away, forty feet high. I sucked in a deep breath, figured it to be one of my last, and run for the ladder. I got there, turned around, looked up toward the east, didn't see no assassin, didn't feel no bullet. Keeping the Spiller & Burr in my right hand, I reached up for the highest rung I could reach.