by F. M. Parker
“Levi, those men were two of those that were taking the girls from the waterfront to Chinatown,” Chun said, her voice quivering. “And they recognized me.”
“Are you sure?” He knew Chun was correct but wanted to hear it.
“I could never forget such strange faces. They will come back and force me to go away with them. I don’t want to leave you. What shall we do?”
Levi knew the danger was far greater than just taking her away. The men would kill Chun, and sever her head from her body to prove she was dead. He pulled her shaking body against him and held her. She had made a grievous error in coming out onto the street against his orders. But what was done was done. What to do now?
* * *
Levi stopped pacing back and forth across the office and picked up his rifle from the desk. “We can’t stay here,” he said to Chun who was anxiously watching him. “From the way those men acted they must not know you’ve been staying with Isaiah so we’ll go there. After that, we’ll figure out a safer place to hide you.”
He went to the window and pressed his face to the glass to look both directions along the street. The fog was thick and he could see only a short distance. He turned back to Chun.
“We’ve got to leave. Maybe we can slip away in the fog before the men block all the ways. Stay close to me.”
“I will,” Chun replied. The scar on Levi’s forehead made him appear fierce, but she knew he was a caring, gentle man. She had put him in danger and now she must not allow anyone to harm him. “I have my knife,” she said. “If the white men try to hurt us, I will fight them.”
“I hope we don’t have to,” Levi said. Chun’s dark, worried eyes held him, and he wanted to caress her, to take away the haunted expression. At that moment, he decided he would make love with her this very night, if they survived, and she was willing. First he had to find them safety from their enemies.
Levi went to the front door and cautiously checked outside. “I don’t see anybody,” he said. He took Chun by the hand and they stole off along the street.
They reached the first cross street and Levi looked both directions. His eyes wrestled with the fog and the dusk deepening to night. He started to move ahead, then halted, pulling Chun against him. He sensed an unseen menace and an ice shaft grew in his stomach. Men were there in the fog, men who would kill beautiful Chun. They would also try to kill him, but that had less importance.
A shrill whistle sounded ahead of them. An answering whistle came from behind.
“They’ve found us,” Levi whispered and lifted his rifle. Chun and he were trapped between two groups of foes. He would need all his skill with the rifle if he was to keep her alive.
“What will we do?” Chun whispered.
“Try to find a place to hide. We’ll check every door we pass. Pray hard that we find one that’s not locked.”
Hugging the wall, they slipped along the street. Levi’s eyes drilled into the deeper shadows that appeared out of the murk before them. Any one of them could be the hiding place of a gunman.
He slowed when the mouth of an alley took shape. As he reached to take hold of Chun to stop her, a pistol exploded from the gloom of the alley. Instantly Levi jerked up his rifle and fired a shot a foot to the right of the red flash. A groan reached him followed by the thump of a body falling. One man was down, at least wounded. But how many more were there? While he had spent time planning his move, had other men joined in with the first three to capture Chun?
A gun crashed twice behind them. Bullets spanged from the bricks of the building beside them, ricocheting away with the snarl of small, deadly animals.
Levi hurled himself down, yanking Chun with him onto the wooden planks of the street. A third bullet whizzed by over their heads.
The firing ceased as Levi rolled to his knees and brought his rifle up. His eyes probed the fog and the growing darkness trying to see an enemy. But there was no target, only the mist-laden night.
He heard the swift, scared breathing of Chun beside him. He caught her by the hand and drew her erect. He pressed her against the wall of the building and stood protectively in front. His nerves tingled with the seething, primal urge to kill as he stared into the blinding fog. But how could he kill his assailants when he couldn’t see them?
His attackers had the same problem, except they had only to wait, wait until daylight, if necessary, and then they would win.
However they wouldn’t have to wait because the night was brightening. Through the fog, Levi saw the faint outline of the top curve of the full moon just poking above the buildings lining the street. Adding to the danger, a slow wind had come alive and was sliding down the hill toward the bay. The cold fog brushed Levi’s face as it was carried along on the wind. In a few minutes, the protective covering of the fog would be gone and Chun and he would be naked before the guns of the hunters.
Even as Levi watched, the fog began to roll up into drifting ground clouds with clear zones forming in between. The sharp edge of panic stabbed him.
“Let us run, Levi,” Chun whispered.
“No, for then they would hear us and maybe see us.”
In the wall of the building by their side was a shallow, recessed alcove with a double-wide door set in its rear. An entrance to some type of factory, Levi thought. He tried the doors. Both were locked.
He pushed Chun into the alcove. “Stay there and don’t move,” Levi said. “I’ll draw them away before the fog lifts any further and they can see I’m alone.”
“Please don’t leave me,” Chun pleaded.
“I’ll be back for you soon. Now wait here for me.” He pressed her shoulders for encouragement. Levi raced across the street where the fog was thickest. A bullet zipped past, pulling at the waist of his coat. He bent low and bolted steeply right. God, how he wished he knew how many men were after Chun and him, and where they were hidden?
A shaft of moonlight angled down on the street. At the sudden brightening of the night, Levi saw a man duck into a doorway ahead. The opening was not deep and the shoulder of the man protruded. Then his head appeared as he peered along the street.
Levi raised his rifle and fired. The man stumbled out into the street and fell.
* * *
Chun crouched in the darkness of the doorway and listened to Levi’s pounding feet fade away. A gun exploded and her heart cramped with fear for him. Had he been wounded, killed? She strained to see.
Something moved there in the street. It couldn’t be Levi returning. His footsteps had been much farther away. To her growing fright, the figure of a tall man materialized out of the fog in front of her. He stepped close and towered over her.
“So there you are, China Girl,” Turk said with a savage chuckle.
The man was a giant to Chun and she cringed back from his huge size. Then she steeled herself knowing she would have to fight the man, giant or not. She sprang to the far side of the building’s alcove. As she moved, she swiftly pulled her knife from its sheath inside her clothing.
Turk saw Chun’s hand appear clutching a knife. He laughed outright and thrust out a hand holding his long-bladed knife. A ray of moonlight glinted off the honed steel.
‘“Why you little, moon-eyed Celestial, you have no chance in hell of beating old Turk in a knife fight. I’m the best Frisco has. There are at least ten men that’d swear to that, if dead men could talk.”
Chapter 25
“Levi, help!” Chun screamed and held her knife ready to fend off the enemy poised to kill her.
She didn’t believe Levi could return in time to protect her, even if he should hear her cry. She must save herself, and knew that to have any chance to survive, she must get out of the small, recessed space of the double doorway in the side of the building, and into the street where perhaps her quickness might shield her from the reach of the man’s long arms. She sprang to the opposite end of the confining alcove with the intent then to dart past the man.
Turk anticipated Chun’s strategy of breaking clear
of the alcove. With one long stride, he blocked her path.
The man had moved much more quickly than Chun had thought possible and now she must fight her way clear. “Aii!” she cried fiercely and struck at the man with her knife.
Turk moved agilely to the side. Chun’s thrust missed.
Turk extended his arm and pointed the keen blade of his knife at Chun’s throat. There was no way the small woman could reach him with her knife. The dice had been rolled. She had lost and would die.
“Aiii!” Chun screamed wild and fear-filled and again stabbed at Turk. Again swiftly. Each time her reach was short of its mark.
Turk laughed blackly, then stopped. “Enough,” he said. “It’s time you lost your pretty head.”
As Chun swung yet again, the man slashed out and the razor sharp edge of his blade cut deeply into her extended arm. Her hand went numb. She lost the grip on her knife and it clattered down onto the street.
Turk stepped in. Chun tried to dodge to the side, away from the giant. She slammed into the brick wall of the alcove. Turk stabbed viciously with his long-bladed weapon. The knife penetrated Chun through the lower ribs, drove onward and tore free at her back. He grabbed his knife with both hands, and hoisting powerfully upward, lifted Chun’s body off the ground and over his head.
He looked up at Chun impaled on his steel blade. “That’s right, China Girl, kick your life away up there on old Turk’s knife. In a second, I’ll take your head and trade it for gold.”
* * *
Levi heard Chun cry his name in a voice so full of fear that he trembled. She screamed again, a shrill, harrowing pitch slicing the night. Then abruptly her cry ceased.
Caring nothing for the danger to himself, Levi raced toward Chun. She must not be hurt. No! No!
The fog before Levi thinned and a man became visible in the moonlit street. A man who held something aloft above his head, a slight body that kicked and struggled in the air. The small body was Chun, her long hair whipped about with the intensity of her battle to break free.
The man flung Chun down on the street and bent over her.
Levi slid to a stop and snapped up his rifle and fired. Turk’s crouching body jerked under the impact of the driving bullet. He fell backward away from Chun.
Levi sprinted ahead and knelt by the girl’s side. Gently he straightened her limp body. He saw the heavy stream of blood flowing from the knife wound in her chest.
“Oh, my God! Chun, speak to me!”
Chun stirred. Her eyes opened, black pools of pain in the night. “Levi, I’m terribly hurt,” she whispered.
“Hold on. I’ll take you to a doctor.” Tenderly he took her into his arms and rose to his feet.
Chun moaned with excruciating pain, a sobbing echo in the shadowy mist. “I think I will die.”
“No you won’t.” Levi’s throat was so constricted with sorrow that he could barely speak.
For the very first time he kissed her soft lips. He tasted the salt of her tears.
“Levi, why didn’t we make love?” Chun said, her voice thin as a ghost’s. “If we had, then my death wouldn’t be so awful.”
Levi drew her more closely to him. “You won’t die. We will yet make love.”
“We are too late,” Chun said in a sobbing, weakening voice.
Chun exhaled a fragile breath against Levi’s cheek. He waited, hoping desperately for another. None came.
“Don’t die,” Levi whispered. “Dear God, don’t let her die.” He placed his cheek to Chun’s. Her flesh was cold, and damp with the mist of the fog. He knew he had lost her. He held her tightly to him with the pain of his loss cascading through him.
Levi roused himself and glanced hastily around. He must get away from this place for the shots would have been heard by other enemies and they would be coming. With his vision blurred by tears, he staggered off along the dark street with Chun in his arms.
Levi did not know how long he carried Chun. Sometime later, he found himself leaning on the door of the house where he and Errin lived. He entered and lay Chun tenderly on his bed.
He sank weakly down on the bed beside the body of the girl. Chun had captured his heart, and yet he hadn’t made love to her. He would always regret that. She had been right in scolding him. Now there would only be memories of her. They would be memories that he would always cherish. He placed his arm lovingly over her.
* * *
Errin awoke in the Beremendes hacienda constructed decades before on the high flank of Mount Mocho. He lay breathing the cool mountain air that held the odor of the good earth with which the walls of the hacienda were built. And he smelled the sweet aroma of the yellow flowers Celeste had placed in a blue vase on a table when she had shown him where to sleep. He climbed out of bed, and humming as he relived the evening before with Celeste, dressed in the flame light of a tallow candle.
He grinned ruefully as he compared his life today with those when he had been a highwayman in England, and a prisoner in Australia. Though the dangerous game of highwayman was gone forever, he had to admit to himself that he would miss the exhilaration that always came during the robberies. He laughed out loud as remembrance came of the expressions on the faces of the rich men when he took their gold and jewels. For a moment he wondered what was in him that called so loudly for action.
He left the bedroom and went along the dark passageway to the front entrance of the hacienda. He stopped in the doorway and looked at Celeste who stood in the courtyard in the night’s silver moon-glow and silently stared out over the San Joaquin Valley. He still found it hard to believe that this beautiful woman had given him her love.
Errin watched Celeste for a few seconds longer and then went to her. “So you’re a person who also rises early,” he said.
Celeste caught his hand and held it. “I like to stand here and think of what my grandfather built so long ago and to see the morning sun come up over the Sierra Nevadas. To me this land must be the most beautiful place in all the universe.”
“I think so too.” Errin looked at her in the soft splendor of the setting moon. And you are the most lovely woman in all the universe.
They were quiet, holding hands and feeling the pleasant nearness of each other as the yellow moon fell behind Mount Mocho. To the east the sky gradually brightened as the dawn came gliding in. The chatter and chirrup of the night creatures slowed and stilled. There was total silence in that short span of time when the night creatures were going to sleep and the daytime ones were not yet fully awake.
The sun lifted its stunning head above the Sierra Nevadas. Bright rays slanted down into the valley and extinguished the lingering shadows of the night. The morning sky was a brilliant blue, swept clean by the storm of yesterday.
“There go your men to work,” Errin said, watching her vaqueros come out of the cabins, and other men, recent hires, come from tents erected farther down the side of the mountain.
“I need many more men.”
“I’ll get them for you,” Errin said. “One of the Chinese tong leaders in San Francisco has asked me to find jobs for two hundred of his people. They’re hard workers and will get your land ready.”
“I can’t pay their wages this year.”
“I can. I’ll have them here in two or three days.”
Celeste looked at Errin. He saw her considering how to answer. Both of them knew how very important her answer was to their lives. Was she going to let him help her?
“All right,” she said. Her gaze again went to the men and mules winding down the road leading into the valley.
Errin saw the dimple that was part of a smile form in Celeste’s cheek that was turned toward him. By accepting his help, she had acknowledged their relationship as permanent. He was barely able to contain the shout of pleasure that rose in his throat.
Errin too focused on the men and mules. Celeste had established a camp of tents for the workers from Sacramento on a bench below the cottages of her vaqueros. The wives of the vaqueros prepared morning a
nd evening meals for their husbands, and also for the new workers. Errin knew he would have to set up a separate camp and kitchen for the Chinamen when they arrived.
“Come with me and I’ll cook your breakfast,” Celeste said.
“Do you feel well enough for that?”
Celeste laughed and squeezed his hand. “I did something more strenuous than that last evening. And here at home on the mountain, I am healing swiftly.”
“All right, but you must let me help you.”
“I would like that. First go and wake Vicaro so he can eat with us.”
“I hope the old bandit doesn’t shoot me when he wakes.”
“He has indeed shot men. Several of them. I believe he now wants only to live out the rest of his life in peace.”
“So do I,” Errin said.
* * *
Ignacio reined his running horse into the stone paved courtyard of the hacienda. He dragged the mount to a clattering halt near the patio where Celeste sat talking with Errin and Vicaro.
“Senorita Celeste,” he shouted. “Come quickly. They are in danger.”
“Who’s in danger?” Celeste asked, hurrying out into the courtyard.
“Our vaqueros. Men with guns have beaten Mavro Carmillo, maybe to death, and are driving all the other workers from your land.”
“Who’s doing this?”
“Three Spaniards. They say they will shoot any man who works for you.”
“Go saddle my mare,” Celeste exclaimed, her fury rising. “I’ll get my pistol and go back with you and stop them.”
“No, senorita,” Vicaro said, coming up beside Celeste. “This is something that I’ll do. You must allow me for my debt to your father is not yet paid in full.”
“Then we’ll both go. Two guns are better than one.”
“You’re not strong enough,” Errin said. “But you’re right about two guns being better than one. I’ll go with Vicaro and help him deal with those men.”
“I’ll go and that will make three guns,” she said.