Lynch Law

by Len Levinson

  He rode down the incline to the town and approached the Chinatown district. Thor continued to run swiftly, stretching out his legs, straining his neck. Stone saw the town draw closer, made out the shapes of buildings. He headed toward the back alleys where the sheds and privies were, figuring he had a five to ten minute lead.

  Reaching a tree in a backyard, he pulled back Thor’s reins, and the horse dug in his hooves and came to a stop. Stone jumped down from the saddle and pulled his rifle out of its boot. Thor snorted and blew air out of his rubbery lips. He turned his head around and showed Stone his long white teeth.

  Stone patted his gleaming black mane. “Thanks for the ride, old boy.”

  The horse’s large eyes were fixed on Stone as Stone ran toward the back of a building. Stone saw lights in the windows and figured somebody had to be there. He came to the back door and pounded on it with his fist. People jabbered in Chinese on the other side of the door. Dawson and his men weren’t in sight yet, but they should be showing up soon. Stone pounded on the door again.

  The door was opened by a middle-aged Chinese woman with the build of a mosquito.

  “What you want!” she said.

  Stone didn’t have time for an explanation. He leapt past her into the room and closed the door behind him.

  He found himself in a Chinese restaurant. Chinese people sat around tables and ate strange-looking food with chopsticks. All of them stared at him.

  The woman moved in front of him. “What you want!” she demanded. “This not white man part of town. White man go other part of town!” She pointed to indicate the direction she wanted Stone to go.

  “I want to see Hong Fat,” Stone said. “It’s important.”

  “Hong Fat not here.”

  “Can you get him for me?”

  “Hong Fat not here.”

  Stone realized the Chinese people weren’t going to help him, and Dawson would show up at any moment. He moved toward the window and peered outside. It looked as though he’d make his last stand here.

  He heard a chair scrape on the floor. A tall, middle-aged Chinese man dressed in white man’s clothes walked toward him.

  “What you want Hong Fat for?” he asked.

  “I need help.”

  “Why should Hong Fat help you?”

  “I did him a favor once.”

  The Chinese man turned around and said something in his language to another man sitting at a nearby table. The man said something in reply, and the first Chinese man looked at Stone again.

  “Are you John Stone?” he asked.

  Stone was surprised the man knew his name. “That’s right.”

  “I know who you are,” he said with a smile. “We will help you. What is wrong?”

  “Hank Dawson and his men are after me, and they’ll be here in a few minutes. They want to kill me.”

  “I am Jimmy Wing. Come with me, please.”

  Jimmy Wing walked toward an open doorway, and Stone followed him, wondering if Jimmy Wing was going to betray him for five hundred dollars. Jimmy Wing said something in Chinese to the people in the restaurant, and they resumed eating. Jimmy Wing and Stone entered the kitchen, where two cooks flipped food in strange spherical frying pans, fat spattering into the air. The cooks looked up at Stone for an instant and then returned to their work. Jimmy Wing spoke to them in Chinese, then led Stone to another door, opened it, and beckoned for Stone to follow.

  The door led to an alleyway. Stone and Jimmy Wing crossed it and came to another building. They approached a door and Jimmy Wing knocked. A window opened in the door and two eyes looked out. Jimmy Wing said something in Chinese. The door was opened.

  Stone followed Jimmy Wing into a long, dark corridor that exuded a peculiar fragrance. They came to a dark smoky room where Chinese and a few white men lay on the floor next to tall-necked opium pipes. The air was filled with sweet smoke so strong it made Stone cough. An old man with a long pigtail shuffled up to Jimmy Wing and started to say something, but Jimmy Wing waved him away.

  They came to a door on the far side of the room, passed through, walked down another corridor, and came to an office.

  “In here,” Jimmy Wing said.

  Stone entered the office and Jimmy Wing closed the door behind him. The office was furnished with a desk, a few chairs, and a sofa against the far wall beneath a shelf that held a black shellacked wooden statue of the Buddha.

  Jimmy Wing moved the chairs out of the way in front of the desk, and underneath the chairs was a thick maroon rug. He peeled the rug away, revealing a trapdoor. He opened the trapdoor, and Stone looked down at a flight of stairs that led to a basement.

  “Down there,” Jimmy Wing said.

  Stone hesitated. It looked like a dungeon.

  Jimmy Wing smiled. “You are the man who saved Hong Fat from Wayne Dawson, when Wayne Dawson was beating him up. You help one of us, so now we help you.”

  Stone descended the steps into the cellar, and the trapdoor closed over him. It was dark, and he heard the rug and chairs moved into place over his head. He made out the shape of a cot against the far wall, and sat down upon it, laying his rifle over his knees.

  He still wasn’t sure Jimmy Wing wouldn’t betray him, and there was no way out of the cellar except through the trapdoor. He saw a candle on a little table near the head of the cot, and lit it. The walls were red brick and the floor hard-packed dirt. Some crates were on the other side of the room. The air smelled damp and musty.

  Stone reached into his shirt pocket and took out his bag of tobacco. He was safe for the time being, but wondered how long it would last.

  The Indians were dismounted, holding the reins of their horses and looking at the ground. Occasionally a few of them would get down on their hands and knees and examine hoof prints. They were approaching the Chinatown section of Dumont, and behind them were Hank Dawson and his men on horseback.

  Chinese people looked fearfully out the windows of buildings at the horde of men moving toward them. The Indians found the spot where Stone had left his horse, and followed his trail to the back of the restaurant.

  “He go in here,” one of the Indians said to Hank Dawson.

  Dawson climbed down from his horse and yanked out his Colt. His men followed his example, preparing their rifles and guns for shooting. They looked at the windows of the building where the restaurant was, and saw Chinese people staring back at them. Dawson turned to Atwell, and Atwell walked up to the door and opened it. Atwell aimed his gun straight ahead and stepped into the restaurant, followed by Dawson and his men.

  The small restaurant quickly became crowded with gunmen. Dawson swaggered to a table where a Chinese family was trying to eat, and kicked the table over onto them. Dishes and bowls crashed to the floor and the Chinese people stood, chow mein and chunks of fried beef clinging to their clothes.

  “Where is he?” Dawson demanded.

  A little Chinese woman wrung her hands as she shuffled meekly toward Dawson. “Where is who?” she asked in a trembling voice.

  “John Stone!”

  “I not know him!”

  “A big white man! He was just here!”

  “I not know him.”

  “Liar!”

  The woman cringed in front of Dawson, and he wanted to pistol whip her, but turned to Atwell instead. “Search the place! He’s around here somewhere.”

  Atwell relayed the orders to his men. Some went upstairs, others bullied their way into the kitchen. Dawson sat at a table and lit a cigar. He tried to put himself in Stone’s shoes and figure out what he’d do.

  He realized that Stone wouldn’t dare go to the white man’s part of town, because he wouldn’t last a minute there. Anybody who owned a gun would try to shoot him for the five-hundred-dollar reward. So he’d come to the Chinese section, where he thought he’d be safe, but whatever gave him that idea? Dawson would track him down if he had to tear Chinatown apart board by board.

  His men returned from the kitchen and upstairs.

&nb
sp; “He ain’t here,” Atwell told Dawson.

  “If he ain’t here, he’s in one of these other buildings. Spread the men out and tell them to search through Chinatown. Rip the goddamn place to pieces if you have to, and tell the chinks I’m offerin’ five hundred dollars to the one who’ll tell me where John Stone is hidin’.”

  Dawson’s men stormed out of the restaurant and into the surrounding buildings, breaking down doors. They barged in on Chinese people sleeping in their beds, searched through kitchens, closets, cellars, and attics. The men showed no courtesy or gentleness. They shot through walls, in hopes of finding secret hiding places. People who protested were punched in their mouths, and if the cowboys saw something they fancied, a watch, piece of gold jewelry, or an ivory knickknack, they put it into their pockets.

  Dawson accompanied Atwell and one of the groups of men, but Dawson didn’t do much actual searching. He mostly sat and puffed his cigar while his men terrorized Chinese people and tore their homes apart.

  The marauding army smashed through Chinatown, destroying anything that impeded their progress, beating up those who dared protest, throwing pots and pans, upending trunks full of clothes, pushing children out of their way, breaking open casks of soy sauce, tearing down wallboards, abusing women and humiliating their husbands.

  Hank Dawson and Jesse Atwell, plus eight of Dawson’s gunfighters, kicked in the door of the whorehouse. Semi-clad young Chinese women screamed and ran in all directions as their customers struggled to put on their clothes, wondering what all the commotion was about.

  The madam, an old Chinese woman in a purple silk dress with a high collar and a slit up the side, advanced toward Hank Dawson.

  “What you do?” she demanded. “Why me?”

  Dawson pushed her out of the way, and the old woman went sprawling to the floor. Dawson’s men shot holes in furniture, looked in closets, and stampeded up the stairs to the second floor, where they searched rooms, looked under beds, poked their rifles behind the drapes.

  Dawson’s men worked themselves into a frenzy. They knew John Stone was somewhere in the vicinity and all they could do was vent their fury against the people they ran up against. They slammed their rifle butts into the faces of Chinese men and ripped the dresses off the prostitutes.

  On the first floor of the whorehouse, Dawson bent over the madam and grabbed the front of her dress in his big hairy fist. She lay on the floor beneath him, her eyes wide open with terror.

  “Where is he?” Dawson replied.

  “Where is who?”

  “John Stone!”

  “I not know him!”

  “Liar!”

  Dawson backhanded her across the mouth, and the old woman shrieked like a wounded animal. Dawson couldn’t bear the sound, and backhanded her again.

  The woman whimpered and held her hands to her bleeding mouth. Jesse Atwell and several men clomped down the stairs.

  “He ain’t here,” Atwell said wearily.

  Dawson chomped his cigar. “Let’s move on.”

  They left the whorehouse and barged through the front door of the next building. A sweet, smoky fragrance assailed their nostrils as they marched down the corridor, opening doors, searching rooms. The rooms were tiny and crowded with cots on which Chinese men slept. Dawson’s gunfighters tipped the beds over and kicked the Chinese men, who covered their heads with their hands to protect themselves from the blows.

  At the end of the corridor they came to a locked door. Dawson stepped forward and banged the handle of his pistol on it.

  “Open this goddamned thing up!” he said.

  The little window in the door slid open and two slanted eyes looked out. The little window slid closed, but no one opened the door. Dawson stepped back and Atwell aimed his rifle at the doorknob, firing three shots. The doorknob shattered and sparked, and the corridor filled with gunsmoke. Atwell threw his shoulder against the door, and it burst open. A Chinese man stood a few feet down the hall, a pistol in his hand. He hesitated a moment, and that was all Atwell needed. Atwell fired two quick shots, and the Chinese man staggered, his knees knocking together. The Chinese man dropped his pistol, sagged against the wall, and dropped to the floor.

  Dawson and his men trampled the dying man as they made their way down a smoke-filled corridor. They came to the opium den and saw men lying on the floor in a stupor next to their pipes.

  Dawson wrinkled his nose at the smell of the opium, and felt disgust for the men lying on the floor. He kicked one of them in the ass.

  “You filthy son of a bitch!” Dawson snarled, but the man on the floor didn’t move a muscle; he was in a deep trance.

  The little old man with the beanie and pigtail shuffled toward Dawson and bowed. “How I can help you, sir?” he asked in a quavering voice.

  “Where’s John Stone?”

  “I not know him.’

  “I’ll give you five hundred dollars if you tell me where he is.”

  “I not know him.”

  Dawson hit the old Chinese man on the temple with the barrel of his gun, and he collapsed at Dawson’s feet.

  Dawson sat on a heavy wooden chair, lit another cigar as he listened to his men demolishing the building. In the distance he heard the screaming of women. It seemed as though John Stone should’ve turned up by now.

  It was clear to him that the Chinese were hiding Stone. He didn’t know why, and then a wild idea entered Dawson’s brain: Maybe he should set fire to Chinatown! That would flush John Stone out of his hiding place, but then Dawson realized that a fire would be difficult to control, and it might burn down the rest of Dumont also.

  Dawson didn’t want to burn down Dumont because he owned most of the real estate and it represented a great deal of wealth. It would be like burning money, and Dawson loved money.

  Dawson wracked his brain and tried to figure out what to do. All he could think of was continuing the search for John Stone, who had to be someplace in Chinatown. Dawson clamped his nicotine-stained teeth down on his cigar.

  Atwell walked up to Dawson. “We found Jimmy Wing,” he said.

  Dawson had sold property to Jimmy Wing, and knew him fairly well. Jimmy Wing was the wealthiest Chinese man in Dumont, and a leader of the Chinese community.

  Dawson followed Atwell into the corridor, and a new thought entered his mind. He’d negotiated with Jimmy Wing in the past, and maybe he could negotiate with him now. Jimmy Wing had always been a reasonable man, and knew everything that happened in Chinatown. Perhaps they could cut a deal.

  Dawson walked into Jimmy Wing’s office, and Jimmy Wing sat calmly behind his desk, his hands folded before him. He wore a white shirt, and his straight black hair was cut short, without a pigtail. Several of Dawson’s men were in the office, pointing their guns at Jimmy Wing. A closet door was open and clothing lay on the floor. Papers, pencils, books, and ledgers were also scattered about.

  Dawson approached Jimmy Wing’s desk and stood on the rug in front of it. “Guess you’re surprised to see me here this time of night.”

  Jimmy nodded. Three shots erupted outside in the street. There was loud maniacal laughter, and then the scream of a woman.

  Dawson grinned. “My boys are havin’ themselves a little fun.”

  Jimmy Wing’s face was like rock.

  “I guess you don’t like what’s goin’ on,” Dawson said.

  Jimmy Wing didn’t reply.

  Dawson sat on a chair in front of the desk and leaned forward. “You tell me where John Stone is, and I’ll call my men off. We’ll leave Chinatown, and your friends and neighbors won’t be bothered anymore. But if you don’t tell me where John Stone is, we’ll get rougher.”

  “Who’s John Stone?”

  “Don’t git me mad, Jimmy.”

  “I don’t know who he is.”

  Dawson blew a cloud of cigar smoke at Jimmy Wing. “My men are givin’ your people a bad time out there, and you can stop it if you just tell me where the son of a bitch is.”

  “I don’t kno
w what you’re talking about.”

  Dawson wondered why Jimmy Wing wasn’t cooperating. Maybe there were too many people in the room. Maybe he didn’t want to say anything in front of so many witnesses.

  Dawson turned to Atwell. “You stay here with me, and pick two other men. The rest of you get the hell out of here.”

  Atwell selected Al Burkers and Billy Finch to remain in the room, and the others filed out the door. Dawson held out his silver cigar case to Jimmy Wing. “Want one?”

  Jimmy Wing shook his head.

  Dawson looked at Jimmy Wing and tried to measure him. Jimmy Wing had come to town penniless about fifteen years ago and got a job in a laundry. He’d saved his money, invested in opium, made deals, and now was rich. Dawson realized he’d been using the wrong approach with Jimmy Wing, who was essentially a businessman. When dealing with a businessman, you had to talk money.

  “You tell me where John Stone is, and I’ll give you five hundred dollars, cash on the barrelhead.”

  “I told you I don’t know who he is.”

  “Six hundred.”

  Jimmy Wing said nothing.

  “Seven hundred. A thousand.”

  “I can’t help you.”

  “I always thought you were a smart chink, but guess I was wrong.” Dawson pulled out his gun, aiming it at Jimmy Wing’s head, cocking the hammer with his thumb, and it made a loud click. “John Stone killed my son, and if you don’t tell me where he is, I’ll kill you.”

  Jimmy Wing’s face showed emotion for the first time, as he looked at the gun in Dawson’s hand, but then his countenance returned to its usual placid cast.

  “You’re just another slant-eyed chink son of a bitch as far as I’m concerned,” Dawson continued, “and you got three seconds to make up yore mind. Tell me where’s John Stone, or I’ll put one right between yore goddamned eyes.” Dawson aimed his gun at Jimmy Wing’s head and said, “One!”

  Underneath Dawson’s feet, below the trapdoor, John Stone stood on the stairs looking up. He knew Dawson was directly above him, heard the hammer being cocked and Dawson’s voice counting. Stone raised his arms and placed his hands against the trapdoor.

  “Two!”