The Chinaman from the mercantile.
Cuno grunted. “I’ll be damned.”
“You want meat?” The man’s voice was husky and deep. “You take.”
Cuno stared at the bow and the arrow, his curiosity about how the man had gotten his hands on such implements tempered with annoyance at having the meat shot out from under him. He glanced at the deer and shook his head. “It’s yours.”
Cuno rested the Winchester over his shoulder and walked back the way he’d come.
Later that night, the snow stopped and the sky cleared, leaving high wisps of clouds smearing the light of a half-moon and dimming the stars. The air was damp and cold. The creek gurgled over the rocks. The fire felt good as Cuno and Parker, hunkered down in their heavy coats, washed their beans and biscuits down with strong, hot coffee.
“That’s the problem with you young colts, you’re slicker’n snot with a hogleg, but ye ain’t worth spit with a long gun.”
Cuno was about to respond when he lifted his head suddenly. Quietly, he set his plate and fork on a rock in the fire ring and grabbed the Winchester leaning beside him. He snapped a shell into the breech. Parker snapped his eyes up and threw up a hand, palm out, beans dribbling into his beard.
“I was just joshin’, son!”
“Quiet,” Cuno admonished, expressionless, staring over the oldster’s right shoulder. He raised his voice. “Come in slow.”
Silence except for the fire’s snaps and breathy gutter. Parker craned his head to follow Cuno’s gaze into the shadows near the wagon. Behind Cuno, one of the mules brayed.
A diminutive figure materialized from the shadows—a small, bandy-legged man with a peaked hat and dangling earflaps. The Chinaman moved slowly into the firelight, the flames bringing out the pale yellow of his face. He bowed his head repeatedly, a cautious cast to his gaze. He carried some kind of pack on his back. The short bow was slung over one shoulder, and feathered arrows from the quiver poked up from behind one shoulder.
“I bring meat. We share, huh?” He shrugged the heavy pack off his shoulder. Not a pack, but the rolled hide of the little buck he’d shot, secured with rawhide straps. “Meat for fire?”
Cuno depressed the Winchester’s trigger, leaned the rifle against the log beside him. He glanced at Parker. “Why not?”
The Chinaman shuttled his gaze between them, grinning, then dropped to his knees, setting the rolled hide on the ground before the fire. He untied the rawhide straps securing the bundle, and flipped out the corners, revealing the dark meat expertly carved, several small roasts tied with sinew. Nothing had gone to waste. The heart, lungs, liver, tongue, and even the gall bladder were there, gleaming succulently in the fire’s umber glow.
“Would you look at that?” Parker rubbed his hands together. “That looks good ’nough to eat raw!”
“We no eat raw.” The Chinaman set his bow and arrows against the log on which Cuno sat, and stood. Sliding a knife from a sheath beneath his quilted coat, he scuttled off into the darkness.
Sipping their coffee, Cuno and Parker listened to the man thrashing around in the pines, trampling brush and snapping branches. The night was so quiet that they could hear his industrious grunts and sighs above the creek’s relentless murmur.
A few minutes later, he shuffled back into the firelight. He carried two long aspen sticks under one arm. In his hands he was sharpening another long stick with a wide-bladed, bone-handled knife.
When he had a good point on the stick, he knelt before the venison chunks, picked through the roasts, then skewered a fist-sized hunk of tenderloin onto the stick he’d just sharpened. Smiling and bowing, he handed the stick to Cuno, breathing sharply and making soft, satisfied sounds through his parted lips. His thin, stringy chin whiskers brushed his chest.
Cuno took the stick. “Obliged.” He held the roast over the fire.
The Chinaman sharpened another stick, skewered another fist-sized roast onto the end, and handed that stick to Parker, who’d watched the man like a hungry dog awaiting a dropped scrap. Parker accepted the stick with an eager grin, several beans still crusted in his beard, and held the meat out over the fire.
Parker shook his head, his blue eyes sparkling in the firelight. “There ain’t nothin’ like venison when you thought you was gonna have to hit the hay on beans!”
Cuno gave him a wry look from beneath his brows. The old man’s grin faded, a contrite look taking its place as he returned his eyes to the meat beginning to smoke at the end of his stick.
When the Chinaman was roasting half the liver on his own stick, sitting Indian style before the fire, Cuno glanced at the bow and arrow leaning against the log to his left. “Well-put-together shootin’ tools you got there.”
The Chinaman looked at the short bow and the quiver, and chuckled huskily. “Very sharp…and very quiet.”
“If I didn’t know better,” Parker said, inspecting his meat, “I’d say you was part Injun.”
“I work the railroad with the son of an old Indian chief,” the Chinaman said, slowly turning the stick so the liver cooked evenly. “A Cheyenne brave. He taught me to make bow and arrow, to hunt.” He shook his head with gravity. “To be very quiet!”
Cuno turned his own stick and said dryly, “You learned right well.”
“I am Kong.”
Cuno held out his hand, and the Chinaman shook it. “Cuno Massey. The old man with the dirty beard yonder is Serenity Parker.”
“You can call me Serenity,” the old man said, shaking the Chinaman’s hand. “What brings you so far from the railroad, Mr. Kong?”
The Chinaman’s eyes lost any semblance of humor as they stared at the liver browning nicely in the licking flames. “I have daughter, but my wife die. I quit railroad. It is hard life for child. I come to mountains, prospect for gold.” He shook his head. “I find none, so I work in saloon. Now, saloon burn down. Bad men burn it down. Take my daughter.”
Cuno turned his gaze to the Chinaman gritting his teeth as he stared angrily into the flames. “This happen recently?” the freighter asked.
Kong nodded.
“Big gang of men?” Serenity gazed at the Chinaman now too. “Call themselves The Committee?”
Scowl lines cutting deep into his forehead, Kong looked at Parker, then at Cuno. “You know these men?”
“Know of ’em.” Cuno lifted his coffee to his lips, and sipped. “I’m gonna kill ’em.”
The Chinaman furled his brows as he stared at Cuno.
“They killed his partner,” Serenity explained. “Cuno an’ me are on the vengeance trail.”
“Vengeance trail.” Kong spoke the words slowly, then again, as if memorizing them. His voice quivered with emotion. “I know this trail.”
“It’s a hard one,” Cuno said. “Not one you tread lightly.”
“No,” the Chinaman agreed, removing the liver from the fire. He set it on a rock and cut it with his knife. “But one I must tread quickly. My daughter is strong, and she will fight. They will kill her.”
He slipped a chunk of liver into his mouth and, holding the skewered meat in his other hand, gained his feet. With his free hand, he reached down and slung his quiver over his shoulder, then his bow.
Serenity stared up at him, aghast. “You ain’t headin’ off again already, are ya?”
Kong tore off another chunk of meat and chewed hungrily. “I must keep moving. Must catch up with my daughter.” He squatted down, stuffed his coat pockets with meat chunks, and straightened. “Rest of meat yours. Obliged for fire.”
Cuno frowned up at him. “This vengeance trail ain’t to be taken light, or too fast. Especially when you’re only armed with a bow and arrow.”
“No time waste!”
“You best bed down here tonight,” Serenity urged. “You can ride out with us in the mornin’. Hell, we’re all after the same gang.”
“No time waste,” Kong insisted as he scrambled back off the way he’d come. He stopped and turned back, bowing. “For fire,
cooked meat…much ’bliged!”
Then he was gone.
When his footsteps had dwindled, and there was only the crackling of the fire and the constant, hollow rush of the stream, Serenity looked at Cuno.
He shook his head and bit off a chunk of meat from his stick. “That’s one crazy Chinaman.”
11
EARLY THE NEXT morning, Serenity Parker lifted his head from the balled burlap he used for a pillow, and peered out from beneath the freight wagon. A wooden cracking and heavy, regular breathing sounded on the other side of the fire in which the coffeepot chugged and gurgled.
Serenity blinked as if to clear his vision, and stared through dawn’s milky, shadowy wash where the still, damp air was scented with pine smoke and fresh coffee.
On the other side of the fire, Cuno Massey hung by both hands from a low pine branch, his boots dangling a foot above the ground. The burly, young freighter was naked from the waist up. As he pulled himself toward the branch, the heavy muscles bunched and balled in his arms and shoulders, drawing the slablike pectorals up toward his neck.
His face was red, veins forking above the bridge of his nose.
When his chin grazed the branch, he lowered himself slowly, until his arms stretched straight above his shoulders, his boot heels brushing the ground. He sucked a deep breath through his teeth and hoisted himself back up toward the branch.
Parker blinked again, ran a hand across his mouth. “What in the name o’ God’s got into you?”
Massey brushed his chin against the branch three more times, then dropped, boots hitting the ground with a single, solid clomp. He brushed his hands together, and grabbed his shirt and hat from a mossy boulder.
“Just keepin’ in shape for mule wrestlin’. Come on, old man. Time to get up. Coffee’s done and the sun’s nearly up.”
“You’ve gone ape on me, boy. Sure ’nough.”
“My pa taught me that exercise—a pull-up they call it—when I wrestled and boxed for extra money summers back home. If you’re good, maybe I’ll teach you.”
“I ain’t no hairy-assed ape like some!”
Cuno reached under the wagon, pulled out his bedroll and the saddlebags he’d used for a pillow. Tossing both into the wagon box, he prodded the old man with a boot toe. “Come on, Serenity. If I’d known you were gonna lay around all mornin’ like Jay Gould, I’d have sent you home when I first spied your mangy carcass falling off my tailgate.”
Serenity rolled over and threw his blanket over his old, gray head. “It’s too early and my ole bones are chilled.”
When Cuno spitted some of the venison over the fire, and the fumes wafted over the wagon, the old man rolled out of his soogan, working his nose and smacking his lips. In a few minutes, he’d tugged his boots on and crawled out from beneath the big Murphy, wrapping a blanket over his shoulders and hitching up his pants.
“Ah.” He grinned, clapping his butternut-gray hat on his head. “Always did like the smell of venison on a cold autumn morn.”
An hour later, the sun was up and the snow was all but melted off, leaving light mud and occasional fog wisps in its wake. The fog was especially thick over the creek, which they hugged on their right, rising up like steam from a slow-boiling river.
The mules were clomping smartly along a flat, making good time, and Serenity was singing an old Southern hymn, when pistol and rifle fire snapped on the other side of the creek.
Cuno hauled back on the mules’ reins. Serenity stopped singing and turned his head to the right, furling his bushy brows.
“What the hell you s’pose that’s about?”
Cuno stared across the creek, toward a low, pine-covered rise about a half mile ahead. Two more shots sounded, then two more.
Could be hunters, but somehow the shots sounded angry. Like men shooting at men. Not likely to be Committee members, but they might as well check it out.
Cuno slapped the reins across the mules’ backs. As the team trotted out, Serenity reached under the seat for his double-bore, and broke it open, making sure both barrels were loaded with wads.
Hearing several more shots, they rode for a half mile before crossing the creek at a rocky ford and mounting the northern bank spotted with wild currant and shagbush. Cows began to appear, a few skinny heifers and one-year-old steers overgrazing the stream banks. Probably a settlement near. Gradually, angry voices rose from dead ahead.
Gaining a shady cottonwood copse, Cuno stopped the team and sat listening. The voices seemed to originate from the other side of the trees.
He wrapped the reins around the brake handle, grabbed his Winchester, and leapt to the ground. “Stay with the wagon.”
Cuno jacked a round into the Winchester’s chamber, off-cocked the hammer, and jogged through the trees, angling toward the direction of the rising din. One man seemed to be doing most of the yelling. A pistol spoke intermittently—a .36-caliber, judging by the report.
Once past the trees, Cuno bounded up a low hill pocked with rocks, piñon pines, and junipers. Near the crest, he swiped his hat from his head, hunkered down beside a square hunk of sandstone, which had probably tumbled off the northern ridge, and peered down the other side of the hill.
A makeshift tent camp—with a few a plank shacks and the usual smelly privies and trash heaps and scrounging mutts—stretched across the flat beyond the hill’s base. Cattle cropped the tough, brown grass around the camp’s perimeter, having already ravaged the creek bank.
The little settlement was deserted at the moment. Probably every prospector who called the place home had gathered at a tall cottonwood on Cuno’s side of the village, fifty yards from the hill’s base.
The crowd of fifteen to twenty men milled in a close group. Several carried rifles. A few wore pistols strapped to their hips. One man triggered shots into the air while whooping loudly, as though to keep the gang’s blood surging. Others carried shovels or hickory ax handles.
Cuno dropped his right knee to the ground, and swept a lock of sandy-blond hair from his right eye. Most likely a shovel fight. Miners liked nothing more than to bash one another’s skulls in with shovels. If they were really pissed and really drunk, they’d sling pickaxes.
On his last trip, Cuno had seen what was left after a pick fight. Until he was told better, he’d assumed a hog had been butchered.
Cuno was about to straighten up and head back to the wagon, when the crowd shifted curiously. The center opened slightly, and two men in hats led another, bare-headed man toward the sprawling cottonwood. Cuno stayed hunkered down, staring into the crowd, holding the Winchester across his thighs.
The man with the pistol must have emptied his cylinder, because the gun had fallen silent. The crowd roared louder, as if to make up for the lack of pistol fire. Barking dogs ran amidst the prospectors, and two young boys on a horse watched from the village side of the meadow. A rope was thrown over a branch of the cottonwood. Several men milled around the base of the tree.
Suddenly, the crowd opened around the bare-headed man, shouting even more loudly than before. The bare-headed man suddenly rose straight up toward the branch above, kicking and clawing at the rope around his neck, jerking this way and that. Short-cropped black hair capped a round face. He wore baggy duck trousers and fur-trimmed moccasins.
Cuno’s heart thudded. Kong.
The crowd whooped and clapped.
Someone shouted, “Let the heathen suffocate!”
“Teach him to steal my mule!” yelled another.
Cuno took several quick, deep breaths as he snapped the rifle to his shoulder. He let out a long breath, held it, aimed, and squeezed the rifle’s trigger.
The Winchester jumped and barked. Cuno stared through the billowing powder smoke as the slug smacked into the cottonwood’s trunk, spraying bark.
Quickly, Cuno levered another shell, aimed, and fired.
The slug sliced the rope above Kong’s head cleanly. The Chinaman dropped, disappeared amidst the crowd, most of whom had jerked around to star
e in the direction from which the shot had come.
Cuno pushed himself to his feet and, ejecting the spent shell, held the rifle straight out from his hip in one hand as he strode down the hill. He slid the barrel around the crowd, threatening, and slitted his eyes beneath the shading brim of his hat.
The man who seemed to be the necktie party’s leader stepped forward—a short, pudgy man with a thin red beard and floppy-brimmed green hat. He wore an old Civil War model pistol on his hip. “Who the hell’re you?”
Cuno paused about twenty feet from the crowd, kept his rifle butt snugged against his belt, its hammer at full cock. “I’m the Chinaman’s guardian angel.” He lifted his head to see into the crowd. “Kong?”
A grunt sounded. The crowd parted as the Chinaman bolted through it, heading toward Cuno, his black-haired head bobbing around most of the other’s men’s shoulders. When he surfaced, he ran past the leader, who promptly stuck his right boot out. Kong’s left ankle hit the boot and, hands tied behind his back, the Chinaman fell headlong into the sand and sage.
The leader stepped forward, turned sideways, and poked an angry finger at Cuno. “That son-of-fuckin’ Han tried to steal my mule! Now, in a minin’ camp, the law for horse thievin’ or mule thievin’—”
“Or any kind of thievin’!” shouted someone from the crowd.
“Or any kind of thievin’,” agreed the leader, nodding, “is hangin’. You got no right to interfere!”
A wagon clattered along the trail to Cuno’s left. He turned a quick glance. Serenity Parker had pulled the wagon up to the edge of the meadow, the two-bore resting across the oldster’s thighs. He hauled back on the reins, stopping the mules, and sat scowling toward the crowd.
Cuno turned back to the leader, canted his head toward the Chinaman, whose eyes were swelling, blood trickling from his cracked and swollen lips.
“His daughter was kidnapped,” Cuno said mildly. “I’m sure he’d have returned the mule when he got her back. Wouldn’t you have, Kong?”
The Chinaman had gained his knees and was glancing around anxiously. He looked at Cuno and nodded. He raised his chin toward the necktie party’s leader and nodded again vigorously. “I return! I return!”
.45-Caliber Deathtrap Page 9