Mikhail stepped aside and followed the bartender back into the hotel lobby. The bartender circled behind the front desk and carefully fitted a flimsy pair of wire-rimmed glasses over his nose. "You need a room, a bath, a shave, or a whore?"
"Tell me about your rooms."
The bartender pulled out a quill pen and inkwell and opened a ledger. "We got two shared rooms on the second floor, two double wide beds in each. Two men per bed for six bits a night. Got one spot open in one and two in the other. You'd be sharing with those men in there." He nodded toward the saloon.
Mikhail shook his head. He would rather sleep in the livery with his horses.
"We also got six single rooms. They're smaller, of course, with only one small bunk in each. Two of those have windows. The rest are already occupied."
"How much?"
"Rooms with windows are three dollars a night. Them without are two fifty."
"I prefer a window. How much for a bath and shave?"
"Bath is four bits for guests. Shaves are provided by one of the ladies. You'll need to negotiate, but it's reasonable." He read Mikhail's face, dipped the pen in ink, spun the ledger, and handed Mikhail the pen.
"What about laundry?" He signed the ledger, Count Mikhail Diebitsch-Zabalkansky, immediately sorry for having done this. It was a reflex signature from his past, and he was too tired to stop in the middle.
The bartender looked at the signature, shook his head, and handed Mikhail a room key. "Second floor, second door on the left." He pointed at the stair. "Just set your dirty clothes outside the door. They'll pick 'em up and have 'em back by morning. We got a nice Chinese laundry right across the street."
Mikhail set a five-dollar coin on the desk. "This should provide for the room, the bath, and the laundry."
"Yes sir, with enough left over for breakfast." He smiled. "We got eggs in Weaverville."
Mikhail climbed the stair and found his room, small, as promised. A single bed pressed against the wall to one side. There was barely enough room to cross from the door to a small table with a fixed window behind. An empty wash basin and oil lamp sat on the table. The narrow window had no curtain.
A large tree near the window blocked most of the street. It was getting dark already. He tossed his canvas roll onto the bed and lit the lamp, trimmed the wick, and set the glass chimney back into place.
He opened his roll, took out a clean pair of long johns, stripped down to the long johns he was wearing, put his mink coat back on, locked his door on his way out, put the key into his inside pocket, and walked down the hall barefooted.
Lit wall sconces and an open door guided his path. A large potbellied stove stood in a niche opposite the open door.
Two Chinese women in white robes knelt in a corner of the long, shallow room. One nursed a baby. The other woman stood, took his clean long johns, set them on a long bench, closed the door, and smiled. She brushed past Mikhail and tugged at the back of his coat, helping him undress. He let the coat fall and she hung it over the bench.
Another set of clothes hung at the far end of the bench, with a man's boots underneath.
The woman with the baby stood and laid her infant in a basket, smiled, and helped pull him toward a curtained opening. He grabbed his coat, deputy papers, badge, money, and room key inside, and followed them into a cubicle with a copper bathtub. Steam drifted up from clean water.
He draped his coat over the curtain rod.
One of the women unbuttoned the front of his long johns. The other pulled from the back, peeling off his dirty underclothes. Both spoke softly in Chinese.
Standing naked in front of two women he did not know felt discomforting; worse with them talking about him.
He tested the water with his toes. The water was hot.
They pushed from behind, forcing him into the tub. Not too hot.
Both women laughed softly about something, maybe oily dirt spreading across clean water.
"You want shave?"
He did not know which one had asked. "Da, yes." It did not matter how much.
He settled and tried to relax, nervous about two pretty Chinese girls bathing him.
A man and a woman spoke softly on the other side of the wooden patrician. It was hard to hear their words.
One of the women with Mikhail scrubbed a bar of soap into a washcloth while the other poured water over his head and shoulders. They worked together washing his hair, his face, his shoulders, pouring warm water over him, relaxing him.
He stiffened when they pulled his legs apart to wash his backside and his genitals, being careful. He relaxed. Being clean down there felt good.
They turned him and washed his back, pouring pails of water over him, rinsing him clean with their hands.
They laid his head back on a towel and rubbed his shoulders, relaxing him even more. He closed his eyes while one scrubbed soap into his whiskers. The razor felt sharp and comfortable.
"You, mister," said a man's voice. "You that fella with the nice fur coat? I watched you ride into town. Name's Preston Dawes. Me and Horace Talpin was sitting on the porch. I come in for a bath right after you registered. You some kind of count or something?"
Mikhail could not answer, with his neck being shaved.
"Me and Horace is town deputies. You need anything, you come see me. Horace don't know horse drop from boot wax." Deputy Dawes waited for an answer.
Mikhail still could not speak.
"Hey mister, you speak any English?"
The Chinese girl stopped to wipe the razor on a damp towel and Mikhail said, "I do. My apologies, she was shaving my neck."
Dawes chuckled. "Like I said, you need anything, you come see me."
"Thank you. I will remember this name, Deputy Preston Dawes."
"We got some real nice Chinese skin upstairs. Nice and young. Smooth as silk. Only cost a dollar per deposit." Deputy Preston Dawes chuckled. "Take one to your room for the night, if you want. That's only five dollars. They're nice and clean, younger than them two you got there. Them two's got babies. I got WuMa over here. Funny name, WuMa. She thinks she's still private stock." He chuckled.
The ladies with Mikhail held up clean towels and motioned for him to stand.
He climbed out of the tub and let them dry him. He liked it. They helped him into his clean long johns, one buttoning up the flap in back, the other buttoning the front. He liked that, too.
Deputy Preston Dawes said, "What's your business here, anyway?"
He no longer liked Abe Warner's prospecting story. "I represent a group of investors from Europe. We look to secure stock in some mining operations; maybe here, maybe farther north." He slid into his mink coat, picked up his dirty underwear, and pushed the curtain aside.
Deputy Preston Dawes, a stocky man, sat on the long bench pulling on his boots. "You got plenty of money, then?"
"This trip is exploratory."
"Not really a good time of year." Dawes stood and adjusted his sloppily-fitted clothing.
"I will visit the assayer's office in the morning. I will read his reports and make my recommendations."
Dawes turned sharply away and reached behind the other curtain. "Come on, WuMa."
He roughly dragged a pretty Chinese girl out of the second washroom, not caring about witnesses.
She wore a white robe like the others, and was struggling to free herself. "No. Me no like. WuMa only take Randy."
Dawes grabbed her hair and yanked her toward the door. He opened the door with his free hand and dragged her into the hallway. "He give you over to me, so stop your wallowing. You're just a common girly, now." He yanked hard, using her hair to control her.
Mikhail did not like this.
She did not like Deputy Preston Dawes, kicking and yanking to free herself.
Dawes slapped her face hard.
Her face instantly swelled red. Quiet tears flooded her cheeks. Her mouth twisted, still kicking and yanking against his grip.
Mikhail had come for SuLin, maybe too late.
Deputy Dawes raised his fist to strike WuMa again.
"Enough!" Mikhail grabbed the deputy's raised arm and spun him back into the bathroom. He dropped his dirty laundry on the floor and backhanded the deputy across his mouth.
The backs of the deputy's knees buckled against the bench and Dawes sat. His eyes filled with rage and he scrambled to his feet, reaching inside his coat for a gun or a knife.
Mikhail slapped him again and sat him back down. "How does this feel, Deputy Preston Dawes?"
Blood trickled from the deputy's nose. He swiped with the back of his hand and looked at it. He reached inside his coat again, too slow.
Mikhail grabbed his arm, yanked him back to his feet, and twisted his arm behind his back. The slightest added pressure would dislocate his shoulder.
Dawes howled from the pain.
Staying close behind for control, Mikhail forced the deputy into the upstairs hallway and pushed him away.
The deputy spun back with his knife held high, squared up to Mikhail, and grinned.
Mikhail pulled back his toes and kicked with the ball of his bare foot. Contact with the deputy's wrist sent the knife perilously close to the deputy's face.
The deputy shook it off and stubbornly shifted the knife to his other hand. He backed away and reached inside his coat with his right hand.
Mikhail stepped forward and punched the deputy as hard as he could in his gawking face.
Dawes flew backward, crossed the threshold of the main stair, and tumbled, grunting and bumping off treads on his way down.
Mikhail followed closely.
Dawes let go of the knife, trying to catch himself. He finally reached a landing where the stair changed direction. He jumped to his feet and raised his pistol, the hammer still down.
Mikhail stepped close and punched his face again.
The deputy flew into the railing and tumbled backward over it. He landed sideways on a chair and splintered it.
Mikhail stood to the rail, ready to jump over and finish this. It was not necessary.
The deputy sprawled unconscious, his gun nowhere in sight. Probably under his fat belly.
Mikhail turned back up the stair, not caring about possible witnesses.
MOLLY'S BED FELT HARD and smelled of pine needles. Her green eyes looked into him, searching.
My God, I love her.
"That's him, alright." This was a man's voice.
Mikhail woke from a deep sleep.
Deputy Preston Dawes stood over Mikhail with a lamp. A fresh cut across the bridge of his swollen nose centered between puffed, purple rings under both eyes. Dawes stepped back and a pick handle skipped off his elbow.
Mikhail rolled.
The pick handle grazed his shoulder and smacked into the pillow.
Dawes danced backward, shaking his arm, and dropped the lamp.
Mikhail instinctively rolled his back over the pick handle, pinning it between his upper back and the bed.
Another man yanked on the pick handle, but could not free it.
"Don't kill the son-of-a-bitch," said someone from behind. It was too dark to see. "Not before we find out about the money."
Mikhail kicked and the man with the pick let go. Mikhail kicked again. Something crunched and gave way.
"Aye, God," snarled Dawes, unmistakable.
Mikhail jumped to his feet with the pick handle and looked for a target.
Another man in a broad-brimmed hat stood in the open doorway.
Mikhail punched with the end of the pick handle and struck the face below the hat. The man in the hat dropped to his knees and fell facedown.
A third man, bigger than the first two, moved into the doorway and pulled a gun from the front of his pants.
Mikhail spun and used the pick handle to smash out the window.
A gunshot rang as Mikhail leapt through broken glass. He hit the tree and tumbled from limb to limb on his way to frozen ground.
PRESTON DAWES STRUGGLED to his feet, blood flowing from his nose. He stumbled and nearly fell backward over the limp body of Horace Talpin.
Randy Bartow stood at the table in front of the window, lighting and trimming the lamp. Luckily, when Dawes got kicked on his nose again, the lamp he'd dropped had landed on top of him and gone out. Nothing broken, nothing burned.
Struggling to pull his flintlock from this stupid belt, Dawes stepped had on Talpin's neck.
Talpin didn't feel it. He couldn't feel anything right now.
Randy looked out the window and Dawes said, "Think you shot him?"
Randy stood back from the window. "No."
Just bad luck.
The man had to be a fool to mess with Randy Bartow and his deputies. He'd learn quick enough, it being a small town and all.
Dawes staggered around Randy and squeezed his shoulders through the window opening, wiping blood and tears from his face, trying to see.
Two dark figures hurried across the road from the laundry and disappeared under the stupid tree, down there with that stupid foreigner. "I can’t see nothin'." Dawes pulled his bleeding, freezing face back inside.
Randy Bartow stood by the door, looking inside the foreigner's fur coat. He pulled out a leather purse, looked inside, and stuffed the purse into his vest pocket.
Dawes said, "You want me to go down there?"
"No hurry." Randy stepped close to the lamp to read a slip of paper. "Says here, this man's a California Ranger appointed by the State Supreme Court." He folded the paper back into the inside pocket of the coat and put the coat on, looking at it, rubbing up and down the arms, feeling the fur. He smiled.
"Looks real good on you, Randy. Real elegant."
Randy stretched his arms. The sleeves from his wool jacket showed.
It'd fit me better.
Randy took off his hat and put on the foreigner's fur cap, feeling for fit. It fit good.
Randy closed the door and lifted down a shoulder holster outfit with a new Colt revolver. After looked at it, he handed the holster rig and pistol to Preston. "Here, wear this from now on."
Preston took the holstered gun.
Randy said, "Get Talpin up and get yourselves cleaned up. Then, go over to the livery and seize his property." He looked at Preston for a long bit, probably remembering their earlier conversation. "You did say he rode into town with a packhorse."
"That's right. He rode in on a real nice horse, pulling a loaded packhorse behind." Dawes looked back out the window. "There they are."
Three dark figures hurried up the hill behind the brewery.
"I seen 'em. Looks like maybe them two Chinese is helping him; that Chinese doctor and his pretty little daughter."
"You two confiscate his property, then get out there and find him. Bring him to me. We need to find out why he's here before you kill him."
"I like that." After what the foreigner did to Preston, it seemed proper for Preston to be the one to kill him. He'd use the foreigner's own gun to do it.
Randy'd always been righteous. Just plain good luck.
Chapter Twenty Six
"Wanda, if I could undue what I did, I would." Winston Bray had wearied of his wife's daily battering. "What do you want me to do?"
"Doesn't matter what I say." She sat in her rocker near the fire, knitting him another pair of wool socks. "You never bothered to ask me why I went up there. You'd rather go an talk to the sheriff."
Woman!
"How many times I have to say it? I called out to you, but you just sat there. All those smoking needles sticking into your neck scared the tar out of me."
"For the first time in years, I have no headaches. He gave me the best doctoring I ever had, and what happened? They're probably up there starving to death."
Yeah.
Winston leaned into his stone mantle, fingering the polished blue granite piece in the center, the etched Masonic symbol. No comfort in it. "How much money we got?"
"We can't afford it, if that's what you mean."
Winte
r had run long this year, and stalled his construction business. Trying to work their claim on the Trinity in frozen ground and snow had never panned out. "What, then?" He turned from his fireplace and watched her knit.
She knew he wanted to talk about this. "What about all your Masonic brothers? Can't they help?"
Winston had been hired to build Hocker House and the pharmacy a few years earlier. The second floor had been added above the pharmacy a year later for their Masonic lodge. "Most of us don't believe in direct charity. We look to help in other ways."
She knew that, having heard it a hundred times in a hundred different ways. She set her knitting on the lamp table and glared at him. "I don't mean that. I mean, what about this sheriff and his deputies?"
Winston thrust his hands into his pockets and turned back to the fire, not willing to discuss things his lodge would never step into. A few brothers had discussed the matter, but they all feared reprisal. Nobody wanted to die to save a few Chinese girls from prostitution, somehow ignoring the principle precept of Free Masonry—that all men stand on the level before the all-seeing eye of God, even if they're Chinese.
Winston Bray and others had seen the Chinese community as being lesser human beings. It was a shameful thing, and he knew it.
Then there was the other problem—nobody wanted to stand against Randy Bartow and his deputies.
Three soft knocks at the door spun him around.
Wanda stopped knitting. "Who's that, this time of night?"
Neither of them recognized the knock. Three more knocks sounded the same, soft and quick.
Winston crossed the room and opened the door.
The Chinese doctor's daughter shivered from the cold, with not much help from her quilted coat. "We have no place to go. They kill him." Her wide eyes begged.
Winston knew she was in trouble. He had no idea what to do. Trouble here came only from Randy Bartow and his deputies, probably right behind her.
Wanda shoved him aside and opened the door wide. "What is it, child?"
"They kill him. They kill my count. We have no place to go."
Her father helped another man, looming closer from the darkness and steady snowfall.
DELIBERATE JUSTICE: The American Way Page 25