Shawn O'Brien Manslaughter (9 page)

Folks on the street smiled at Shawn O'Brien as he and Hamp Sedley walked along the boardwalk toward Sheriff Purdy's office.

“Seems like Broken Bridle approves of what you done to Becker,” the gambler said. “You're a local hero.”

“I guess he was strong-arming a lot of people,” Shawn said.

“I got a feeling he won't do it again,” Sedley said, smiling.

Shawn nodded, his battered face grim. “Next time, if there is a next time, my gun will do the talking,” he said. “Becker's the kind of man who takes a hell of convincing.”

“Hey, look at that,” Sedley said.

A little calico kitten rushed out of a general store and hid between Shawn's feet. The angry proprietor suddenly loomed in the doorway.

“Damned cat was into my butter again,” he said. “Is she yours?”

“No,” Shawn said.

“Well, looks like she is now,” the man said. He stepped back inside, muttering.

Shawn picked up the kitten. “She's purring,” he said.

“Maybe it's a he,” Sedley said.

“No, calicoes are nearly always female. We always had a few of them at Dromore. Good mousers.”

Shawn made cooing noises that Sedley thought him incapable of producing, tipped back his hat, and rubbed foreheads with the kitten.

“Pretty kittlin' that,” Sedley said.

“Do you want her?” Shawn said.

“Hell no. Cats make me sneeze.”

“Ow!” Shawn said. “She scratched me.”

Suddenly the purring bundle of fur was transformed into a roll of barbed wire, and he looked for a way to put her down without being mauled.

“What are you doing to my Annabelle?”

Sunny Swanson, in a pink silk dress and large, shady hat, snapped shut her parasol and used it to thwack Shawn across the shoulder.

“Give me my kitten!” she yelled, her face furious. “You . . . you animal abuser.”

“Take her!” Shawn said. “She's scratching the hell out of me.”

“Come here, Annabelle,” Sunny said. She took the calico and cradled her in her arm. “What did the bad man do to you, snookums?” she cooed. “Did he hurt you?”

The cat snuggled into the woman's arm and purred.

Shawn was outraged at Sunny's accusation. “Madam, I assure you—”

“Don't sorry me, Shawn O'Brien,” the woman said. “Maybe you can bully poor Burt Becker, but you can't bully me or my cat.”

Sunny swung her parasol like a club.

“And don't”—
thwack
—“try”—
thwack
—“to”—
thwack
—“kidnap”—
thwack
—“my”—
thwack
—“kitty cat”—
thwack
—“again!”

The woman lifted her head, sniffed, and stalked away in a snowy flurry of laced petticoats and the drum of high-heeled ankle boots.

Shawn looked after Sunny as he rubbed his tormented left arm and shoulder. “I bullied poor Burt Becker?” he asked.

“I told you not to touch the lady's cat,” Sedley said, looking smug.

Irritated, Shawn said, “You didn't tell me that.”

“But if I'd known it was hers, I would have.”

Before Shawn could utter the sharp retort at the tip of his tongue, a plump matron bustled between him and Sedley.

“I saw what happened, Mr. O'Brien,” the woman said. She had a large head, a plump body, and the alabaster fingers she laid on Shawn's shoulder were adorned with marcasite rings. “I have a good mind to slap that hussy's face.”

“It's quite all right, dear lady,” Shawn said. “It was all an unfortunate misunderstanding. I'm really quite fond of kittens.”

“To be assaulted like that and after what you've done for this town,” the matron said as though she hadn't heard. She leaned closer to Shawn and dropped her voice to a whisper. “Now see what you can do about those infernal drums.”

“I certainly will,” Shawn said. “I'll study on it right away.”

“And the Chinese over at the rail depot. Born troublemakers the lot of them.”

“I'll talk to them, too,” Shawn said.

“Give them harsh words, Mr. O'Brien, harsh words. Show them heathens what it means to be a Christian white man around here.”

“Depend on it, ma'am,” Shawn said.

“You got a laundry list of stuff to do, huh, Shawn?” Sedley said.

And Shawn angled him a look.

“Well, it's been nice talking with you, Mr. O'Brien,” the woman said. “And don't forget, harsh words, a white man's words.”

Shawn touched his hat. “I'll heed your advice, ma'am,” he said.

After the woman was gone, Shawn glared at Sedley and snorted, “Laundry list!”

“Well, you can bully Burt Becker all you want, but lay off the Chinese folks who do my shirts,” Sedley said.

“You look like you've just been hit by a runaway freight train,” Sheriff Jeremiah Purdy said.

“You should see the other guy,” Shawn O'Brien said.

“I did. He's in bad shape.”

“Becker called it, Sheriff,” Shawn said.

“Yes, I know.”

“I've got a question to ask,” Shawn said.

“Ask it,” Purdy said. He looked uncomfortable.

“Who is Jane Collins?”

“If you ask that question, you know who she is.”

“You and she were walking out together.”

“We were . . . are . . . engaged to be married.”

“Where is she?”

Purdy tried to find a way out, but found none. “I don't know,” the young sheriff said.

“Burt Becker has her. Isn't that right?”

“No,” Purdy said. Then, after a moment he hung his head and said, “Yes. Becker has her . . . somewhere.”

“And that's how he keeps you in line?” Shawn said.

“If anything happens to Becker, anything at all, my fault, somebody else's fault, Jane dies.”

“Where is she?”

“I don't know. If I knew where she was I'd go after her.”

“Would you?”

“Of course I would. I'm a man, not a boy.”

“Purdy, in my opinion you don't stack up to being any kind of a man. I reckon all you do is sit in that chair and plan your future political career. Well I have news for you. Our country doesn't need leaders like you. We have enough of your kind already.”

That last struck a nerve. The young man slammed to his feet, anger staining his cheekbones. “Damn you, O'Brien, Jane is my fiancée and the woman I love,” he said. He shoved his glasses higher on his nose. “I'd die for her if that's what it took to free her.”

“Where is she?” This from Hamp Sedley who was eyeing the sheriff with little enthusiasm.

“I told you, I don't know.”

“Then get up off your ass and go look for her,” Sedley said. He glanced at the .32 on Purdy's desk. “And take along a bigger gun.”

Purdy sat again. He was no longer mad.

“I have looked for her, all over the country and around town. Jane is nowhere to be found.”

“Did you search the Chinese encampment?” Shawn said.

“Yes, I did. She wasn't there, either.”

Sedley was not a man to mince words. “Maybe she's dead already,” he said.

Purdy nodded, his face bleak. “I've faced that possibility. If Jane is dead, Burt Becker won't leave Broken Bridle alive.”

“You'll need a bigger gun,” Sedley said.

“It's not the caliber of the gun that counts, Mr. Sedley, it's the caliber of the man using it,” Purdy said.

Shawn and Sedley exchanged glances but left their thoughts unspoken.

“I promised to give you the help you needed, Purdy, and I'll live up to that promise,” Shawn said. “Hamp and I will scout around town and hunt for your girl.”

“If we find her we'll tell you and you can rescue her,” Sedley said. “Be her knight in shining armor, like.”

“Hamp, let him be,” Shawn said. “He's got things to think about.”

Sedley raised his voice. “Think about! Why—”

The door slammed open and a man poked his head inside. “Sheriff, it just happened! A man rode through the Chinese camp and killed two men and wounded a woman.”

“A white man?” Purdy said, rising from his chair.

“As you and me,” the messenger said.

“Mind if we tag along, Purdy?” Shawn said.

“Suit yourself,” the sheriff said.

He grabbed his pouched revolver and shoved it into his pocket.

The railroad companies, constantly losing skilled men to the gold camps, had in 1866 desperately recruited Chinese laborers to lay their tracks. To everybody's surprise the Chinese turned out to be excellent workers, swinging picks and shovels with a strength that belied their slender frames. The Fremont, Elkhorn & Missouri Valley Railroad had recruited their Chinese labor from San Francisco and Sacramento, then directly from China.

Now, fueled by alcohol and opium, the Orientals felt that the company had abandoned them, and the tent city was a volatile mix of resentment, poverty, restlessness, and suppressed rage.

All this had gone mostly unnoticed by the white community of Broken Bridle, but as sheriff, Jeremiah Purdy was better informed and more aware of the seething cauldron that was Chinatown.

When Purdy arrived he was met by an angry mob that formed a wall of men, women, and children around the small bodies of the murdered men. There was no sign of the wounded woman.

A mob is a many-headed, savage beast, and when the yelled threats and hoarse cries for revenge die away to a low threatening growl a peace officer knows he's in big trouble.

And Jeremiah Purdy knew it now.

The young sheriff then did something that surprised Shawn O'Brien.

He pulled the .32 from his pocket and fired a shot into the air.

It was a calculated risk, but it paid off. The crowd quieted, seemingly stunned.

Purdy knew no Chinese but in English he yelled, “Somebody talk to me!”

A tiny, wrinkled old woman stepped forward. She wore an oversized coolie hat that made her look like an overripe mushroom. “What do you wish us to say?” she asked. Her voice was fragile, her accent decidedly English, the result of a missionary school.

“Can anyone describe the men who did this?” Purdy said.

The old woman turned to the crowd, a sea of angry faces.

She spoke in rapid Chinese that to the Western ears of Shawn and the others sounded like the discordant twanging of an out-of-tune banjo.

A man replied, drawing pictures in the air with his hands.

When the man finished—and spit at Purdy's feet the period at the end of his last sentence—the old woman said, “There was only one murderer, a big man on a brown horse. He was a white man.”

“
Taimu,
” Shawn said, using the Chinese honorific for
Grandmother
, “where did the white man go?”

“That I saw myself,” the woman said. She pointed northeast, in the direction of the Rattlesnake Hills.

Purdy shoved his revolver back into his pocket and said, “Tell your people I will find the murderer and bring him to justice.”

A man, tall and broad for a Chinese, stepped forward. He carried a heavy spike maul, a knife in his waistband, and a chip on his shoulder.

“You will bring him here to face our justice,” the man said. He wore a battered plug hat and his English was perfect.

“No. Whoever this murderer is, he'll be treated according to the law of the United States,” Purdy said.

The big man grasped the twelve-pound maul tighter and took a step forward. Then another.

Shawn O'Brien tensed. The Chinese had gotten himself within swinging distance, and the spike maul could crush Purdy's skull like an eggshell.

“You will bring him to us,” the man said. He pointed to the two dead men. “Chinese blood is on his hands and the right of vengeance is ours, not yours.”

Behind him, the mob growled its approval.

Things were getting out of hand fast, but Purdy seemed oblivious.

“If he is found guilty, you will see him hang,” he said. “I promise you.”

Sedley, looking uneasy, whispered to the back of Purdy's head, “Hell, boy, you ain't one for backing up, are you?”

The big Chinese man's face was a mask of fury. Using a very fast motion he readied the hammer for a swing.

Shawn didn't think. He reacted. He drew and fired...

Not at the man, but at the steel head of the spike maul.

Bullets are mighty capricious, but the big .45 behaved better than Shawn had dared to hope. The lead
spaaanged!
off the maul, turned almost at a right angle, and hit the brim of the big Chinese man's plug hat. The hat, spinning, was blown off his head, spiraled a couple of feet into the air, and then, like a stricken bird, fell to the dirt.

“The next one goes right between your eyes, Chinaman,” Shawn said.

It was an empty threat, a desperate, box seat play when he could think of no other. Shawn knew if he killed the Chinese, in its present mood the mob would tear him apart.

But it had been an incredibly lucky shot and it took the fight out of the big Oriental. He stepped back and examined the head of the maul with wide eyes, a thin trickle of blood running from his hairline.

Purdy seized the moment.

He told the old woman to translate for him, then said, “I promise that after I bring in the murderer, we will talk again.”

It was a risky throw of the dice and for a moment the situation hung in the balance, the crowd drawn tight. But it was a bad time for Dave Grambling, the restaurant owner, to show up with half a dozen of his heavily armed vigilantes.

Beside him, Shawn heard Sedley whisper, “Get ready. The ball is about to open.”

“We're right behind you, Sheriff,” Grambling said. “Just say the word.”

Then, an instant later, he heard the flat statement of Grambling's shotgun hammers clicking to full cock, a sound that stirred the nervous crowd as though a rattlesnake had been cast among them.

“No! I don't want that!” Purdy yelled, swinging around to confront the man. But he was a split second too late.