Just before twilight, near the edge of the sands, the scrub desert in view, we passed a huge dune with a hole in it. Looked like a giant mouse hole at first.
“Never heard of a cave in a dune before,” said Fat Bob.
“That wasn’t there before,” said Sandro. “The wind must have shifted the sand and uncovered it.”
“Maybe a good place to set up for the night if it stays calm,” said the gunman. “Easy to defend.”
“Easy to be trapped,” said Sandro. Still, he moved his horse in its direction.
Guns drawn, we stepped into the shadow of the mouse hole. I don’t know what stopped me from just pulling the trigger of the LeMat. I wanted to kill the darkness. I was too exhausted to be as scared as I should have been. Sandro struck a match with his thumbnail. It flared suddenly, and then its glow dimly illuminated the cave.
At first, I felt like I was in church—the dark and the candles—but the rotten meat smell of the place put me off that notion pretty quick. My traveling companions’ faces in the candlelight were cut by deep ravines of shadow and made sinister. The match blew out and the dark clapped down. I almost fired my pistol. It took me a moment to catch my breath. Another match was ignited and held up toward the ceiling. The flame burned for a half minute. Enough time to judge from the beams and supports, the remains of a wooden walkway leading back into the rock that ran beneath the sands. It was some kind of old mine.
“La Madre Del Oro,” said Sandro. The light went out. I made to bolt, but Fat Bob put his hand on my shoulder and we stood there in the dark.
“A gold mine?” asked the gunman.
“The Conquistadores took a lot of gold out of this land.”
“Is it worth a look?” asked Bob.
“People have found gold nuggets in buckets in these mines,” Sandro said. “It was like the old Spanish soldiers left the area all at once in the middle of their work.”
“I have a little lantern strapped on my horse. Go get it, sonny.”
I was afraid to be in the mine, but I was more afraid to go outside by myself. I inched my way out into the last light of day, gun hand trembling. It took me twice as long as it should have to fetch the lantern. I kept looking over my shoulder and spinning full around in the process. Making my way back to the mine entrance, I noticed a cool breeze coming and knew we’d still be in the mine when night fell.
Sandro lit a match and Fat Bob held the lantern. A better light now filled the mine head. My compatriots moved over to where the shaft led down into the rock.
“These Conquistadores were rather small fellows,” said Bob, judging the opening.
“You’ll go first,” said Sandro.
“Franklin,” said Fat Bob. “You stay here and anybody comes in behind us, shoot them.”
“At least give me one match,” I said.
Sandro reached into his shirt pocket and retrieved one of the wooden strikers. I walked over and took it.
“A whole new vision of hell,” said Fat Bob. He ducked and held the lantern out in front of him. The light was slowly swallowed by the mineshaft, and I was left shivering in the dark. Eventually, my vision adjusted, and I could make out the entrance. When I sat down, gun in hand, facing it, I could see a star up in the sky. At every moment, I expected a sudden shadow to block it from view.
My mind reeled with possible ways to get out of there. For a moment I thought I’d just leave, get on my horse and light out away from all of it. After that, though, I had a better idea. I thought that if I fired the gun, they’d come running. I could tell them I saw someone lurking outside and took a shot at him. They might doubt me, I knew, but it would put a caution in them as well I suspected. And we’d leave. I lifted my gun, but before I could pull the trigger, I heard a shot.
It echoed up the mineshaft. That one report was followed by a whole volley of shots from at least two different types of guns. My first thought was they were shooting each other. There was silence for a brief time, in which—if I could have worked my legs—I would have run. Two more gun blasts came up from below followed by a terrible scream of agony. From deep down in the ground I heard the sound of scuffling. Then two more gun shots.
A moment later, I saw the light coming up the shaft. Dim at first but coming fast. It was Fat Bob. First thing I could make out was his hat had been knocked off. It became clear he had no gun in his hand, but held the lantern in one and clutched his throat with the other. He staggered forward as if he might fall. The lantern finally showed me his blood-drenched suit and shirt. He moved his hand, and I saw his throat had been torn away, a huge bloody gash. “Run, sonny,” he said in bloody bubbles, and then went over on top of the lantern, breaking it and smothering its flame.
I didn’t need any further orders. I was out of the cave. In a split second, I decided to take the Arabian—it had the rifle, was bred for the desert, and had no stinking weight of Bastard George tied on back. I jumped up into the saddle. Before giving the horse my heels, I turned to the mine entrance to see if Sandro might emerge. Instead of the Mexican, two other figures came out of the mouse hole. They were tall and thin with long heads. One got down on the sand and sprang toward me like a human rabbit. It bounded twice, and I was in shock, watching it. Then it snarled and leaped high in the air. I saw it flying toward me, watched for only a heartbeat its deformed face and sharp teeth, before I lifted the LeMat, flipped the little lever, and shredded that face with a barrel of grapeshot. The creature made a high pitched whimper that set my horse to running. I tried to look back and see if the monster’s companion was coming after me, but by then the mine opening was lost in the dark, and I was flying across the desert on the Arabian.
I don’t know what direction I rode in. I may have gone in circles for a day or two. At one point I woke and found the horse gone. I staggered along, cradling the Sharps in my arms like a lover. After that, I remember falling into the sand. There was a dream of being run down by Apache. A woman’s voice in an odd language. Water.
I woke in the Apache village. They’d found me unconscious in the desert and, since I was alone, they decided to rescue me. I spoke to them through an Indian fellow, Goyathlay, who knew English very well. When I was finally well enough to speak to the elders, I was brought before them and asked to tell about what happened to my friends.
They saved my life, so I couldn’t lie to them, although I wanted to. I told them everything that happened.
Goyathlay told me they wanted me to describe the thing from the mine. Through him I told them, “I only saw it for a second. Around its eyes and down across its nose and lips it had the beaded skin of a viper. Its eyes, just black buttons.” I made a circle with my fingers. “Skin looked pale and leathery, and it had a kind of fish fin at the back of the neck. Webbed fingers, I think. Other than that, and the fact its teeth were all sharpened, it could have been a man. Oh yeah, and it leaped like a rabbit.”
When I was done, the chief looked around at his council and shook his head. Looking over to me, he spoke, and it was translated. “The white man is not good for much he said, but they do have fierce demons.”
“Do you know it?” I asked.
The chief listened to the question and said, “No. It must have come with the Spanish. Slaves for their gold digging.”
A few days later, I was better. They took the Sharps and told me if I ever came back they would kill me. The chief wanted to know what I was going to do. I knew I couldn’t return to Las Cruces what with the deputy and the whole posse dead and no Bastard George. They’d think I did something wrong. I told the old Mescalero that I was going to California and make a killing on gold.
He spoke a few words and laughed raucously.
I asked Goyathlay what the chief had said, and he told me, “He says you’re stupid.”
I relayed to him that my parents had told me the same thing.
When I left the village, the chief handed me a roll of folded American money and patted me on the shoulder. I inquired where they came across the cash a
nd was told, “Dead white men are generous.” They also gave me back the LeMat but caught and kept the Arabian. Two men and Goyathlay took me a three-day journey on horseback to a spot where I could cross the Colorado River on the rope ferry by Fra Cristobal.
I made it to California and took to prospecting near John Fremont’s gold fields in Mariposa. After spending two years at it (I won’t say how much gold I dug or didn’t), I heard a story from a fellow prospector about a situation at one of Fremont’s mines where an entire crew of Mexican workers he’d brought in were slaughtered and eaten by something that came up from deep in the Earth. No one else believed the tale, but it was enough for me to pack up and head back East. All the way across the country those creatures pursued me in my dreams, and even now, safe at my dead ma and pa’s homestead, Deputy Gordon, Sandro, Fat Bob or the monsters themselves sometimes emerge from the darkness of my mind.
WHAT I ASSUME YOU SHALL ASSUME
KEN LIU
Idaho Territory, Circa 1890
AMOS
The ray of light came over the eastern horizon like a sunrise, like the door to a dank jail cell cracking open, like the sweeping fiery sword before an angel of judgment. It elongated into a thin, bright, yellow wedge that washed out the stars and revealed the shining parallel tracks before it, dividing the vast, dark continent into halves, leaving behind the endless vegetal sea of the Great Plains and plunging heedlessly toward the craggy, ancient, impassive peaks of the Rockies.
Only then did the piercing cry of the steam whistle finally reach Amos Turner on the hill a half-mile away. His mass of untrimmed white beard and shaggy hair was momentarily illuminated, making his face—full of deep lines carved by the winds of many winters and summers spent in a saddle in the open—seem like a snow-capped mountain in the wilderness.
“Whoa,” Amos said, and patted Mustard’s neck as the mare snorted and skittered back a few steps. The ground trembled as the locomotive rushed by, pulling behind it cars laden with the goods and people of the East, contentedly dreaming of free land and fresh starts.
But to Amos, the train seemed a malignant serpent, a belching, unfeeling monster, a long and heavy chain that ended in shackles.
“Time to go on.”
Gently, he turned Mustard west and began the long journey into the unknown. Soon, the sound and light of the locomotive faded away, and he was again alone with his thoughts under a sky studded with brilliant stars, the way he preferred.
* * *
The ponderosa pines and Douglas firs grew denser as the days passed. This used to be gold-mining country, and from time to time the horse and rider came upon abandoned mining camps next to streams, now full of the late spring meltwater. Some nights, Amos chose to camp in one of them, sitting alone amidst the abandoned shacks while he fed Mustard a handful of oats; chewed a rabbit leg or sipped venison stew; and puffed on his pipe long into the night as he sat by his lone fire, the light dancing against the shadowy cliffs of his face, the crackling of logs the only sound in the darkness.
This particular morning, the fog had rolled in, and Amos felt as though he and Mustard were floating in a sea. The deer trail that they had been following also seemed to dip and twist more than usual. Since he had no particular destination in mind, he allowed Mustard to go wherever she pleased.
“Slow down, girl,” Amos advised. “Don’t rush and hurt yourself.” He felt uneasy, being unable to see more than a few yards into the fog.
But Mustard liked the taste of the grasses and shoots along the trail, many of which were new to her, and she picked her way slowly through the mist and carefully sniffed each plant to be sure it wasn’t poisonous.
“Smart,” Amos said, leaning forward and lightly scratching her withers.
He looked up at the sky, trying to see the sun, but the fog refracted the light so that it came from every direction at once, and he could not tell east from west.
A passing breeze momentarily revealed a ghostly figure in the mist, like a fish seen through murky water.
“Who goes there?”
There was no response. Amos straightened in the saddle and reached for his Winchester. Is it a mule deer, a bear, or a Shoshoni hunter?
A stronger breeze tore away more of the mist, and a man appeared, standing between two trees. He was tall and lean, and there was a long white scar dividing his face diagonally. He politely tipped his hat to Amos, but Amos noted the gleaming handles of the pistols at his belt, ready to be drawn.
Amos drew back on Mustard’s reins, signaling her to back up. He kept the rifle pointed at the sky.
“Just passing through,” Amos said. “Fog here always this thick?”
The man between the trees chuckled. “It’s especially bad today.” But his voice held no mirth. “Not the best day for hunting,” he muttered in a lower voice.
The man’s tense posture hinted at something darker. Amos didn’t want to linger. “I’ll be on my way then. Anyone else down the trail I should know of? Don’t want to be shooting at shadows in the fog.”
“There are a few more of us if you go down that way,” the man said. “We’re hunting vermin. You don’t want to be hurt accidentally. Best you go back the way you came.”
Amos sat still on his saddle. “I reckon it’s best I keep going where I’m headed. You see, I’ve already been where I came from.”
“Suit yourself,” the man said. “But don’t get involved in business which ain’t yours.”
* * *
As Amos went on, the trees grew denser, the trail turned more twisty and the fog thicker. Mustard moved forward gingerly.
He noticed bits of paper fluttering in the branches lining the trail. Reaching out, he took hold of a few. They were full of dense, tiny print, and appeared to be pages from law pamphlets of some kind.
Whereas, in the opinion of the Government of the United States the coming of Chinese laborers to this country endangers the good order of certain localities within the territory thereof…
…the coming of Chinese laborers to the United States be, and the same is hereby, suspended; and during such suspension it shall not be lawful for any Chinese laborer to come, or, having so come after the expiration of said ninety days, to remain within the United States…
Like most matters pertaining to the law, the crooked, impenetrable sentences seemed to Amos to pile one upon another, twisting and turning, writhy and snakish, growing foggier and foggier the more he read. He threw the papers away.
Mustard splashed across a small stream. Amos gazed at the water, looking for fish. Maybe this would be a good place to camp for the evening. It was getting late, and Idaho spring nights were chilly.
A clump of bushes rustled somewhere up the hill.
Amos was just about to shout out a warning not to shoot, that he was no vermin, when the bushes parted, and a human figure stumbled out and rushed at him.
He almost shot at the figure before realizing that it was a woman, who wasn’t dressed like the Indians and not like the settlers either. She had on a loose, gray dress, cut in a manner Amos had never seen, long strips of cloth that wrapped around her legs like large bandages, and black cloth shoes.
A few steps from him, she collapsed to the ground, and a knife fell from her hand.
The woman thrashed and struggled to sit up.
They stared into each other’s eyes.
Amos saw that she was probably in her fifties, short and lean. Her clothes were drenched in mud and her left shoulder was a bloody mess.
Some kind of Oriental, Amos thought.
“Damn it,” the woman croaked. “Thought the words would hold you longer.” Then she collapsed and stopped moving.
* * *
YUN
Yun dreamed.
In her dream she was again fifteen, a Hakka girl lying—dying really—under the hot sun.
But she did not sweat. The field she was in was as dry as her body. It hadn’t rained for three years, but the governor still refused to release the grain from the I
mperial warehouses.
All around her, the lifeless land was stripped bare, as though a swarm of locusts had passed over it. Every shred of tree bark, every blade of grass had been eaten, and the bodies of men and women were strewn about, their bellies filled with dirt, the last meal of desperation to assuage the demons of hunger.
Could it be? A line of ants appeared in the distance. She licked her lips, her tongue dry and heavy as a stone. She would wait until the ants got closer, and then she would eat them.
The ants came closer, grew, and became a line of marching men, their banners flapping and shimmering in the heat. She watched them approach, thinking they were like soldiers descended from heaven, like wandering hsiake that the traveling storytellers always spoke of, who toured the land to right wrongs.
“Drink, Sister,” one of the men said, and held a cup to her lips. She drank and tasted rice, as cool and nourishing as ganlu dripped by Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy. She felt every pore in her body scream with the almost-forgotten pleasure of food and water.
“We’re soldiers of the Heavenly State of Taiping,” the man said. “We worship the Heavenly Father and Jesus, His Son. Tienwang, Jesus’s Brother, has been sent to deliver us from the Manchus.”
Yun remembered the tax collectors who had come the fall before, warning the villagers about the Taiping Rebels and their dangerous leader Hung Hsiu-ch’üan, who called himself Tienwang, the Heavenly King. Anyone who dared to oppose the Manchu Emperor and support the rebels—really just brazen bandits—would be put to death by being sliced a thousand times by a knife. And oh, of course the Emperor’s taxes still had to be paid, even if it meant taking away the last cup of rice left in the family’s grain jar.
“Thank you, Master,” she tried to imitate the unfamiliar words of the man. “If you give me another drink, I will join the Heavenly State of Taiping and become your servant forever.”
Dead Man’s Hand Page 36