Thunder Wagon (Wind River Book 2)

by James Reasoner

  Cole took a deep breath. "Well, I believe your boys have been responsible for those robberies, and for cutting off the ears of those railroaders. Every man who's been attacked so far was in the bunch that tried to cause trouble for you the night you got here."

  Still smiling, Wang Po spread his hands. "But there is no proof of this, Marshal, despite your belief, and you cannot act on what you Americans call a hunch. You must uphold the law."

  Cole felt frustration growing inside him. Wang Po was right; he had pinned on the badge, and that meant he had to do things right and proper—even though it was obvious his suspicions about the man's sons were correct.

  "All right," Cole said abruptly as a thought occurred to him. "But I don't reckon you'll mind if I take a look around." His eyes darted around the cramped room and fastened on the most likely hiding place. "Say, in that little chest there." He took a step toward the wooden chest with its carved lid.

  Wang Po moved to get in front of Cole, but the lawman was quicker. Not as quick, however, as the nearest of Wang Po's sons, who darted between Cole and the chest. A knife appeared in the young man's hand.

  Cole's left hand shot out and grabbed the young man's wrist, twisting the knife to the side. At the same time, Cole palmed out his .45 and chopped a blow at the young man's head. Before it could land, another of Wang Po's sons let out a high-pitched cry and leaped high in the air, his foot lashing out toward Cole. The kick caught Cole on the shoulder and staggered him. He let go of the man with the knife.

  "No!" Wang Po cried. "Do not do this!"

  It was too late to put a stop to the fight. Cole stumbled back against the wall of the shed, pressing himself against it so that they couldn't come at him from all directions. He didn't want to shoot anybody, but the way knives were appearing in the hands of Wang Po's sons as if by magic, he knew he might not be able to avoid hurting them.

  One of the blades flickered toward Cole. He ducked desperately. The knife thudded into the wall, its point sticking there, so that the hilt quivered from the impact. Cole thumbed back the hammer of his Colt and yelled, "Drop those knives, damn it!"

  None of them did, so he triggered off a shot into the ground at their feet. Wang Po's wife let out a scream and tried to fling herself across the room, maybe intending to get between Cole and her sons, but Wang Po caught her and held her tightly.

  The young men were still closing in around him, and Cole knew he had no choice. He fired again, the bullet catching one of the men in the shoulder and spinning him around. The rest of them stopped.

  "I know at least some of you speak English," Cole rasped. "I'll kill the next one who makes a move toward me."

  He should have brought Casebolt with him, he thought. He could have left the deputy outside to get the drop on the Chinese if they tried to make a fight of it—which was exactly what they had done. But it was too late to worry about that now; he was on his own.

  With three bullets left in the cylinder of his gun, and five very angry young Chinese facing him, all of whom were still holding knives.

  He had faced down worse odds before, Cole told himself. As long as they knew he was in command, there was a chance he would get out of this.

  "Wang Po!" he said. "Bring me that box."

  "My son is injured," Wang Po said stiffly.

  "You can tend to him—after you bring me the box."

  Wang Po s wife was sobbing and jabbering. He put his hands on her shoulders, moved her firmly to one side, then stalked over and picked up the carved chest. He carried it over to Cole.

  "Open it," Cole grated.

  His face as impassive as if it had been carved from stone, Wang Po lifted the lid and tilted the chest so that Cole could see inside it. Coins gleamed in the lantern light, and there were several wadded-up bills in the chest as well. There were also two ugly, dried-up things that had once been human ears, along with another ear that still had drying blood on it. It had been cut off, Cole knew, less than an hour earlier.

  "Why, Wang Po?" He couldn't stop the question, even under the circumstances.

  "Do you know what it is like to be spat upon everywhere you go?" Wang Po asked, his voice bitter. "Do you understand, Marshal, what it is like to be less than human in the eyes of everyone around you? The guests in the hotel, they eat my food, they praise my skill, but still my family and I are forced to dwell in this miserable shed. And why is this? Because we are not fit to live with white people! No," Wang Po concluded, answering his own question, "I do not think you know what this is like."

  "That's still no reason to go around cutting off people's ears," Cole argued. "Not to mention robbing them."

  "The money is a token, nothing more. The loss of an ear . . . that is a reminder which will stay with those men forever. A reminder of how they mistreated a humble man and his family for no reason."

  One of Wang Po's sons spoke up. "Our father knew nothing of this, Marshal. It was all the idea of my brothers and myself."

  "I don't reckon that's true," Cole said. "He knew what was in that chest, right enough."

  "Of course I knew," Wang Po declared. "What my son says has a kernel of truth in it. I did not know what they intended to do until the deed was already done the first time. But after that there was no way they could conceal the truth from my wife and me. I wished my sons would not do this thing, but I understand the rage that burns within them. I could not tell them they were wrong to seek revenge on those men."

  "Well, they're going to have to pay for what they did."

  One of the young men said, "We will not go to your jail, Marshal. We will kill you first."

  "That just means you'd get strung up from a gallows," Cole warned them. "Your ma and pa would probably be hanged along with you. That's not what you want, is it?"

  For a long, tense moment Cole stood there, his eyes locked with those of the young men watching him. Then, one by one, Wang Po's sons began dropping their knives. Wang Po and his wife knelt beside the youngster Cole had winged. The impending violence that had filled the air only seconds earlier seeped out of the room.

  "Marshal!" Billy Casebolt called anxiously from outside. "You in there?"

  "Yeah, Billy," Cole replied, lifting his voice. He angled his head toward the open door. "Take your family on out, Wang Po. We need to get your son down to the doc's so that bullet hole can be patched up."

  Glumly, Wang Po shepherded his wife and sons out of the shed, the wounded son being supported by two of his brothers. Cole followed them out and found Casebolt standing there, a shotgun in his hands and a confused expression on his grizzled face.

  "There won't be any more ears cut off around here," Cole told his deputy. "We've got an injured man. See that Dr. Kent takes a look at him."

  "Sure," Casebolt replied. "What about these other folks?"

  "We're going inside the hotel," Cole said. "Once that wound is taken care of, bring the fella back here. The rest of the family will be in one of the rooms; you can find out which one from the clerk."

  Wang Po shot a surprised glance at Cole. "What do you intend to do with us, Marshal? I thought we were going to jail."

  "Wind River doesn't have a jail," Cole told him. "Besides, I've got some other ideas."

  Casebolt spoke up, saying, "Reckon you've got a full plate already, Marshal, but I figured you'd want to know—that cavalry troop's back. Major Burdette wants to talk to you, and he's waitin' in the office."

  Cole stiffened. "Did they find out anything about those raids?"

  "Don't rightly know," Casebolt said with a shake of his head. "They rode in whilst Doc Kent and me was takin' that feller down to the doc's place. Burdette asked me where you were, and I told him I didn't know, but that I figured I could find you. That's when he said he'd wait for you at the office. Then, a few minutes after that, I heard a shot come from down here some-wheres, so I came a-lookin'."

  "All right, thanks. I'll go talk to the major in a few minutes. I've got this chore to finish first."

  Cole herded Wan
g Po, his wife, and four of their sons into the hotel. The other uninjured son went with his wounded brother and Casebolt down to Dr. Kent's. Cole warned Case-bolt to keep a close eye on them, explaining that they were behind the robberies and mutilations of the railroad workers.

  The clerk gaped at Cole and his prisoners as they entered the lobby. Cole said, "Give me the key to a vacant room."

  "What's goin' on, Marshal? I thought I heard a shot—"

  "You did. I'll take that key now."

  The clerk fumbled a key off the board and handed it across the desk. "Room Eighteen," he said. "That be all right?"

  "As long as it's got a lock on the door."

  All the fight seemed to have gone out of the Chinese. Their shoulders slumped in despair as Cole took them upstairs at gunpoint and locked them into Room 18. The room had a single window, and Cole wished he had someone to watch that window from outside. It didn't open onto a balcony or a set of fire stairs, though, and Cole thought it unlikely either Wang Po or his wife would be up to making such a drop to the ground. He didn't expect the young men to desert their parents, either.

  When he returned downstairs, the clerk came out from behind the counter and asked, "What'd them Chinamen do, Marshal?"

  "I'll talk that over with Mrs. McKay." Cole gave the key back to the man. "Deputy Casebolt will be bringing the rest of the bunch back here in a little while. They go in Room Eighteen with the others."

  The clerk bobbed his head up and down. "You bet. I can handle that."

  Cole stalked out of the hotel, weariness gripping him. He had figured out who was behind the attacks and had captured the thieves without too much bloodshed, but damned if he knew for sure what to do next. He had an idea, but he didn't know if anybody involved would like it

  That would have to wait for a while, however. Cole headed for his office, figuring that Major Burdette would be getting a mite impatient by now.

  That was definitely the case, Cole saw as he stepped into the marshal's office a few minutes later. Burdette was pacing back and forth in the small room. He swung around to face Cole, an angry frown on his face. Trail dust clung heavily to his uniform.

  "Hello, Major," Cole greeted the officer. "Find out where those tracks went?"

  "I think you probably know the answer to that," Burdette snapped.

  Cole shrugged as he moved behind his desk. "I can guess. Billy didn't say anything about you having any prisoners, nor about any of your men being shot up, so I'd say you lost the trail somewhere after following it for a good ways."

  "We rode across miles and miles of some of the most godforsaken wilderness I've ever seen!" Burdette said bitterly. "The trail led to the southwest from Sawyer's ranch. I thought several times we had lost it, only to find it again later. But then we reached a stretch where the ground was solid rock, and that was the end of it. There were no more tracks to follow."

  Cole was a little disappointed. He had been hoping that Burdette would catch up to whoever had killed Sawyer's men and stolen the Texan's stock, because Cole was convinced Two Ponies and the other Shoshones hadn't had anything to do with it.

  "So you haven't eliminated the Shoshones as suspects," he said.

  "Of course not. We have no more answers than we did before. I decided to return to Wind River to see if there had been any further developments while we were in the field."

  "Any more raids, you mean?" Cole shook his head. "None that I've heard of. We've had some trouble here in town, but I rounded up the ones responsible for that. They don't have anything to do with your problem." Cole sat down. "Did Sawyer ride with you?"

  "No, but he sent his foreman and a couple of his men. They've already ridden back to the ranch with the news. There was no point in them coming all the way into town with the troop."

  "Sawyer's liable to mount an expedition of his own against the Shoshones," Cole cautioned.

  "Not if he knows what's good for him. He'll just have to be patient until we can prove what the savages are up to."

  Cole chuckled humorlessly. "Patient and Kermit Sawyer don't go together very well, Major. What do you intend to do now?"

  "We're going to patrol the area regularly, and I may try to talk to this Two Ponies your deputy mentioned."

  Cole nodded, a little surprised Burdette was being so reasonable. The major had seemed the type to jump the gun, right from the first.

  "At any rate, I wanted to let you know about our lack of success so far," Burdette went on. "But rest assured, Marshal, we will get to the bottom of this matter."

  "I'm sure you will, Major." Cole stood up again. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got an errand to run and some local law business to take care of."

  "Of course. Anything I can give you a hand with?"

  "Nope." Cole thought about Simone McKay. "This is something I'm going to have to handle myself."

  Chapter 16

  Cole hesitated at the front door of Simone McKay's house on Sweetwater Street. He had worked out what he wanted to say to her on the way over here, but he had no way of knowing how she was going to react. He was beginning to believe that he didn't know Simone as well as he had thought he did.

  The housekeeper answered the door, as usual, but tonight Simone had not yet retired for the evening, so Cole was ushered straight into the parlor.

  Simone looked up from the divan where she was working on some embroidery and greeted him with a smile. "Good evening, Marshal," she said. "Please, have a seat. What brings you here tonight? Not more trouble, I hope."

  "I'm afraid so," Cole replied as he lowered himself carefully into a fancy, fragile-looking wing chair. "I've just been down at the hotel."

  Simone laid aside her needlework and peered at him intently. "What's wrong?"

  "Another railroad worker was attacked and robbed tonight. Reckon you've probably heard about what's been going on. The fella had an ear cut off, just like what happened to two other men in the past week or so."

  "That's dreadful! And you say this incident tonight happened at the hotel?"

  Cole shook his head hurriedly. "Reckon I'm getting ahead of myself. The holdup was in an alley on the other side of town. But this time I was able to find out who did it, along with proof that they were responsible for the other attacks, too."

  "And that was someone at the hotel?" Simone demanded, making the logical connections from what Cole had told her so far.

  "I'm afraid so." He nodded. "Wang Po's sons are the ones who have been jumping those railroaders."

  Simone stared at him in surprise and disbelief. "But that's not possible!" she exclaimed after a couple of seconds. "They're such polite young men."

  "Maybe so, but they're mighty proud, and they've got a code of honor as strict as any Indian's. All three of the men who were attacked were in that bunch that tried to run Wang Po and his family out of town the first night they got here. The robberies and the business with the ears were those boys' way of paying 'em back."

  "And you say you have proof of this?"

  Cole nodded. "I found some of the money they'd stolen, along with . . . well, along with the ears they'd cut off, stashed in a box in that shed where they're living now." He hesitated, then added, "I hear that was your idea."

  "I'd had some complaints from the guests," Simone responded absently.

  "I heard you said they shouldn't be living under the same roof with white folks."

  Simone made a face and said crisply, "I'm a businesswoman now, Marshal. I sometimes have to say things I don't necessarily agree with in order to keep other people happy. You should understand what a delicate matter it is to deal with the public."

  "I'm starting to," Cole said grimly. And he didn't much like it, either, he added to himself. He was used to dealing straight with people, but the more folks came out here to the frontier, the more difficult that was getting to be.

  "What are you going to do about this?" Simone asked. "Have you arrested Wang Po's sons?"

  "I've got the whole bunch of them locked up in a ro
om at the hotel," Cole said. "Except for the one I had to shoot—"

  "You killed one of them?" Simone was aghast.

  Cole shook his head. "Just nicked him in the shoulder. Billy took him and one of the other boys down to Dr. Kent's to get the wounded one patched up. He's probably got them back at the hotel with the others by now. As for what I'm going to do with them . . ." Cole stood up, unable to perch in the chair any longer.

  He strode back and forth across the thick rug on the parlor floor as he continued, "I want this kept quiet. If those railroad workers get wind of it, they're liable to form a lynch mob. As long as they're on strike, they're going to be bored and drunk, and that's a bad combination. So I want to get Wang Po and his family out of town without anybody knowing why."

  "You're not going to press charges against them?"

  "Not if they'll agree to leave and go back to California."

  Simone frowned. "I went to considerable expense to bring Wang Po here so he could work for me, Marshal."

  "Yes, ma'am, I thought about that. But he's not going to be able to cook for you if he's strung up from the branch of a tree with his boys."

  "You're the marshal. It's your job to prevent such things from happening."

  "That's what I'm trying to do," Cole said, hanging on to his temper. He didn't want to argue with Simone. He had hoped she would be reasonable about this.

  She looked down at the floor for a long moment, then lifted her head and nodded. "You're right, of course. The best solution is for Wang Po and the others to simply leave Wind River. Someone may figure it out eventually, but by that time they'll be far away."

  "That's what I thought," Cole said, grateful that she had come around to his way of thinking.

  "All right," Simone said. "I'll give them enough money to get them back to San Francisco. They still have their wagon and their mules, so they can load up their few belongings and leave first thing in the morning."

  "At first light," Cole agreed. "And the less said about this, the better."

  "Yes, you're right. What about the money they stole?"