by Sharpe, Jon
“What is it?” Mai Wing asked.
“Don’t know yet,” Fargo answered. “Hush.”
The morning’s fire had long since burned down. Several figures were sprawled near it, and at first Fargo took them to be sleeping. Only when he emerged from the trees did he see the red splotches. He quickly drew rein.
“Damn.”
“Are they dead?” Mai Wing asked in horror.
“If they’re not,” Fargo said, “they’re wasting a lot of blood.”
Dismounting, he held on to the reins.
Arnold, Webber, and the Chinese men from the dungeon were all dead. By the looks of things, they had been beaten to death. Arnold’s face consisted of pulped flesh and broken bone. Webber’s throat was crushed.
“The Tong’s handiwork,” Mai Wing said.
“You sure?” Fargo didn’t see a single chop mark.
Mai Wing nodded and imitated striking her left hand with her right as if she were holding a hammer. “They used the flat side.”
Fargo didn’t see Tom Bannon anywhere. He did find drag marks, and the hoofprints of three horses. “The Tong who were after us,” he deduced, “found them instead. Must have taken them by surprise. The poor bastards.”
“This is partly our fault?”
“Bannon and the others should have been on their guard.”
Fargo set about gathering firewood. When Mai Wing saw what he was doing, she lent a hand. Soon flames crackled.
As he was putting on coffee, Mai Wing folded her arms around her bent legs and asked, “What will you do?”
“Nothing’s changed.”
“There is just you now.”
“It’s never just me,” Fargo said, and patted the Henry.
“I advise you to forget about Han. Let’s you and me leave this place. Later you can come back with the marshal you have talked about.”
Fargo grinned. “I’ve never been good at taking advice.”
“What can you do alone except die?”
Fargo shrugged. “We all do, sooner or later.”
20
Hunan was a beehive. Lights lit the streets and buildings. The opium den and the House of Pleasure were the most popular places in the camp.
From under a spruce at the west end of the canyon, Skye Fargo sat in his saddle, on the lookout for Tong. “I wish you’d listened to me, damn it.”
“You swear a lot,” Mai Wing said. “Do you know that?”
“Never noticed.” Fargo had tried to talk her into staying at the clearing but she refused. He sensed she was a bit spooked by the deep woods. She was also worried the Tong might come back. He’d balked at bringing her but he couldn’t leave her there if she didn’t want to stay. So here they were, about to bait the lion’s den together.
The north side of the canyon didn’t have as many cabins and shacks and tents. Fewer people meant it was safer for Fargo to wind along the side streets and cross the small tracts of woodland still standing until he came to the O’Brien place.
Once again he drew rein.
Several of the windows glowed. A shadow flitted across one.
“They are home,” Mai Wing whispered.
“So it seems.” Fargo wasn’t taking anything for granted where the Tong were concerned. “You stay here. And when I say stay here, I goddamn mean it.”
“There you go again.”
Fargo swung his leg up and over. He yanked the Henry from the scabbard, fed a cartridge into the chamber, and handed it to her. “Just in case.”
Mai Wing held it as if it were about to bite her. “I have never shot a gun before.”
Fargo demonstrated how to cock the hammer and instructed her in how to work the lever. She was still nervous. “I shouldn’t be gone long,” he said to set her at ease.
“Please don’t be. I feel safer when I am with you. You inspire confidence because you have so much of your own.”
“If you say so.” Fargo was scanning the house and the yard.
“I have never met a man with so much force of will,” Mai Wing declared.
“If you say so,” Fargo repeated himself. He wasn’t exactly sure what she meant.
“The force of life is strong in you.”
“You can stop now,” Fargo said. Palming the toothpick, he crept to the porch. He put his ear to the front door and thought he heard female voices. Checking the street, he rapped lightly. No one came. He rapped again, louder.
Suddenly the door opened and he was flooded in a rectangle of light. “Boyo!” Terrence O’Brien exclaimed.
“Keep your voice down,” Fargo cautioned. He wouldn’t put it past Han to have Tong watching their place.
“What is it?” Terry asked in concern.
Quickly, briefly, Fargo gave him the highlights. “Can I put my horse around back and bring Mai Wing in?”
“Need you ask?” the Irishman rejoined. “Our home is your home.”
Fargo wasted no time. Only when the Ovaro was tied where no one could see it and Mai Wing stood in the O’Brien kitchen did he relax a little.
“You poor dear,” Noirin said, touching Mai Wing’s cheek. “My husband gave us some idea of what you’ve been through.”
“They tortured you?” Flanna said, aghast. “How beastly can they be?”
“They are Tong,” Mai Wing said in her simple way. “They do anything they please to anyone they want.”
“They’re devils, by God,” Terry said. “And to think, I’ve stayed as long as I have.”
“Are you hungry?” Noirin asked.
Fargo admitted he could stand a bite to eat.
Mai Wing said, “This one would be most humbly grateful to fill her belly.”
“Don’t you talk cute, gal,” O’Brien said, and laughed his hearty laugh.
Fargo and Mai Wing sat at the table while Noirin and Flanna whisked about.
“It’s a shame about Tom Bannon,” Terry said. “I shudder to think what they might be doing to him.” His face clouded. “And to think they had Arnold and Webber in that dungeon of theirs all this while. They deserve to die, every last one of the bastards.”
“Your language, Terrence,” Noirin scolded from over by the stove. “There are ladies present, in case it has slipped your mind.”
“I’m sorry, woman. But damn it all, this has my dander up.” Terry leaned on the table. “What are your plans, boyo?”
“To leave Mai Wing with you and go after the blacksmith.”
Terry nodded. “I’m going with you.”
Noirin stopped breaking eggs and turned. “You’d go off and leave us by ourselves?”
“Fargo, here, needs my help,” Terry said. “He can’t go up against those diabolical Tong alone.”
“I suppose.” Noirin glanced at Fargo and gnawed on her lower lip.
“You’re staying here,” Fargo said to Terry.
“Why? I have a shotgun and plenty of buckshot.”
“There’s less chance of being spotted if there’s only one of us,” Fargo said, which wasn’t entirely true.
“I want to go and I’m going and that’s final,” Terry gruffly asserted.
“No,” Fargo said. “You’re not.”
“No one tells me what to do, by God.”
“I just did.”
Terry puffed out his cheeks and glowered but it was mostly bluff. “Damn it, boyo,” he said, and deflated. “It’s not right.”
“The women come first,” Fargo said. “Or do you want your wife and daughter to go through what they did to Mai Wing?”
Terry glanced at her, and blanched. “If Han and his Tong so much as touch a hair on their heads, I’ll blow them all to kingdom come.”
“With a shotgun?” Fargo said, and grinned.
“No. With the black powder I have stored.”
Fargo sat up. “The hell you say.”
“Mr. Fargo, please,” Noirin said.
“He does that a lot,” Mai Wing threw in.
“How much black powder are we talking about?” Fargo wanted to know.
“Two kegs of the stuff. I bought it early on in case any of the prospectors had blasting to do. But no one wanted to buy any.”
“Well, now,” Fargo said.
A pot of coffee had been on the stove, keeping warm, and Flanna brought him a cup. She also set down cream and a bowl of sugar. “Word is all over camp about the Tong you killed.”
“That it is,” Terry said. “It was all anyone who came into the store talked about.”
“Tell him about Lo Ping,” Noirin said.
“He stopped by to ask if we had seen you,” Terry related. “Him and those Hu brothers. I told him we hadn’t seen hide nor hair of you and he must have believed me because he left without causing trouble.”
“But we’re under suspicion,” Noirin said. “Now more than ever.”
“The Tong haven’t liked us from the beginning, dearest,” Terry said. “What’s your point?”
“That we can’t afford to stay another day. As soon as Skye gets back, we should pack and go.”
“As if Han will let us leave before he’s good and ready to let us.”
Once again Fargo nipped their dispute by saying, “First things first. You let me deal with the Tong. Then you can make up your minds whether to go or not.”
“You’re awful confident,” Flanna said.
“That is exactly what I told him,” Mai Wing said.
Fargo poured cream into his coffee and added a spoonful of sugar and gratefully sipped. A plan was forming but each step had to be carried out just right or he’d end up in an unmarked grave.
Noirin was preparing eggs and sausage. Flanna toasted bread and brought jam to the table.
Famished, Fargo ate as if the meal would be his last. Which, come to think of it, it might.
“What I’d like to know,” Terry brought up, “is how the great and mighty Han expects to get away with his dirty deeds once the federal marshals hear about them.”
“That’s just it,” Fargo said with his mouth full. “There won’t be anyone left to turn him in.”
“Exactly so,” Mai Wing said. “My people will not do it, not only because they fear Han and the Tong. They do not trust your people.”
“Why on earth not?” Niorin asked.
“A lot of whites do not like us because we are not white. I have seen a lot of hatred in the short time I have been in your country.”
“The law is the law,” Terry said. “It doesn’t care what color a person is.”
“My people do not know that.”
“They need to learn it, then. They’re Americans now.”
“That is just it,” Mai Wing said. “They aren’t.” She paused. “As much as I despise Han, I must admit he is shrewd. He has carved out a slice of China here in your wilderness. Once he has disposed of the last of the whites—”
“You mean us,” Terry said.
“—he will rule Hunan as a mandarin of old. And there will be nothing your law can do to touch him.”
“We’ll see about that,” O’Brien said.
“Two things,” Fargo said. “Do you have a revolver I can use? And is your store locked?”
“I have a Colt upstairs you are welcome to use,” Terry said. “As for my store, do you think I’d go off and leave it open for every scoundrel to help himself?”
“I’d like the key.”
Terry’s eyebrows met over his nose. “Have you ever used the stuff before?”
“A few times.” Fargo spread jam on a slice of toast and bit off a piece.
“It has to be done just right. You don’t want innocents hurt.”
“What are you talking about, Father?” Flanna asked.
“A fitting end to Emperor Han,” Terry replied, and laughed. “I’d pay money to see it.”
“The important thing now,” Fargo said, “is that you stay with the women and not let anything happen to them.”
“Any of those bastard Tong try to come through my door, they’ll do so without their heads.”
“Honestly, Terrence,” Noirin said.
“If a man can’t swear on the eve of battle, when can he swear?”
“Battle?” Flanna said in amusement. “You make it sound as if we’re going to war.”
“We are,” Fargo said.
21
There were more Tong guarding the Pagoda than ever. Not just out front but out back as well.
On his belly in a ditch forty yards from the rear of the tower, Fargo slipped his hand into his boot and drew the Arkansas toothpick.
Guards, yes, but no lanterns or lamps had been lit out back. It was a mistake that would cost them.
Fargo had fought Apaches. Lived with Apaches. Ate and made love and hunted with Apaches. And no one, anywhere, was stealthier. Apaches had no peers when it came to stalking and to hiding in plain sight. Some folks claimed they could turn invisible, which was ridiculous. They could do the next best thing—blend into any terrain so that they appeared to be part of it.
Fargo used their trick now. He crawled up out of the ditch and snaked from one patch of ink to the next. He moved incredibly slow. Slow was the key to not being spotted. He moved so slowly, it took half an hour to cover thirty feet.
The two Tong loafing on either side of the rear door were talking in low tones. Occasionally one or the other would laugh or chuckle.
Another half an hour, and Fargo was close enough to see that they were leaning on their shoulders facing each other, and had hatchets at their waists.
Fargo girded himself. He was set to spring when the door opened and out stepped Lo Ping.
The pair of Tong snapped straight as if they were soldiers on parade.
Lo Ping spoke to them and one answered. He gazed all about, made a short comment, and wheeled. The door shut after him.
Fargo wondered what that was all about. His best guess was that Lo Ping was making his rounds and checking with the guards to see that all was well.
But now the pair was more alert. One stretched and the other flexed his legs a few times.
Fargo either had to wait until they went back to leaning and talking, or do what he did. He was up in a blur and drove the toothpick’s double-edged blade into the chest of the man who was stretching. He twisted, yanked it out, and was on the second Tong before the first realized he had been stabbed. The second man turned right into the toothpick. Fargo sank the sharp steel to the hilt in the man’s throat and slashed outward.
It had been beautifully done. Neither managed to utter an outcry. They thrashed a bit, and the second man gurgled and bubbled fountains of blood.
The door was heavier than it looked. The smart thing for the Tong to do would have been to bolt it. He’d never be able to bust through without a battering ram. But they were overconfident and hadn’t.
Chinese lanterns hung from pegs at intervals. The scent of incense hung heavy in the air, and muffled voices issued from the Pagoda’s bowels.
Fargo drew the Colt. He wouldn’t use it unless he had to. One shot, and every Tong in the place would be down on his head.
Finding the stairs to the dungeon wasn’t difficult. Getting there was.
Twice Fargo heard someone coming. The first time he ducked into an alcove screened by hanging beads. He barely had time to steady the swaying strands when several Tong filed past. The second time he darted into a room that contained nothing but hatchets, row after row of them, hanging on the walls, enough to outfit an army.
He encountered no one on the stairs.<
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A single lantern cast feeble illumination over the dungeon. All the barred doors save one were open—it was the door to the cell he had occupied with the blacksmith.
Dreading what he would find, Fargo peered in. Someone was in there but he needed more light to see whom. Taking the lantern from the wall, he held it close to the bars.
Tom Bannon hung in shackles. He had been beaten about the head, neck, and shoulders to where he didn’t resemble the man Fargo had left at the clearing earlier that day. Beaten so bad, he was close to death’s door. His eyes were shut, his breathing labored.
“Bannon?” Fargo whispered. “Can you hear me?”
The blacksmith didn’t reply.
While the door wasn’t reinforced, if he tried to kick it in he’d probably break his leg before the wood gave way.
Fargo was about to turn and go in search of Lo Ping, who carried a large key ring, when he remembered that after he’d freed Arnold and Webber and the Chinese prisoners, he’d tossed the guard’s keys into a corner. He wondered. Hurrying over, he moved the lantern back and forth. And there the key ring was, unnoticed in the shadows.
“Bannon?” Fargo said again when the door was open. He went over, wincing at the pulped flesh and broken teeth and bashed head. Certain the blacksmith was dead, he turned to go.
“Fargo?” the apparition croaked.
“I’m here.”
One eye was swollen shut, the other barely visible. “The sons of bitches,” Bannon said.
“I’ll take you down and get you out of here.” Fargo went to try the key in a shackle.
“Like hell,” Bannon wheezed.
“I can’t leave you like this.”
“You know what you have to do.”
“Hell,” Fargo said.
“Do it.”
“Bannon, I—” Fargo stopped. Words were useless.
“Do I have to beg? Is that it? If it was you hanging here I wouldn’t like it but I’d do it for you. Do it for me.”
“I’d have to use my knife.”
“Do it, damn you.” Bannon’s voice broke and he begged in a whisper, “Please.”