by Marc Graham
I yanked Rigel to a halt and climbed down next to an old man. Belatedly, I recognized him as the buzhang who had performed our wedding. His knees were pulled up to his chest and he rocked gently back and forth.
“Shue-fu,” I said as I knelt beside the old man. “Uncle, what has happened?”
The old man kept rocking and beating the sides of his head with his open hands. I shook him until he looked at me, and his eyes slowly dawned in recognition.
“Mae?” I said.
“Zai na bian. Over there.” He pointed toward the heart of the crowd.
I helped him up and handed him Rigel’s reins. The old man dragged himself out of his self-pity as he saw the panting, sweating, bloodshot-eyed beast that had flown me across the countryside. He led the limping horse toward the river’s edge while I pressed through the crowd.
The people stood aside as I passed by, until I reached a cluster of men huddled in a loose circle.
“What’s happened?” I demanded, drawing blank stares until I repeated myself in broken Mandarin.
The men averted their eyes and stepped aside to reveal several figures lying on the damp grass. Ugly wounds glistened brilliant red in the dappled light that filtered through the leaves. I instantly recognized Zhang Shu, and hurried to kneel by his side.
“Yuefu,” I said, taking his hand and pressing my handkerchief to the gash in his head. “Old father, what has happened? Where is Mae?”
“Nyishu?” he said, his eyes unfocused, pupils uneven. “My son, is that you?”
“Shi, yuefu, it’s me,” I said. “Where is Mae?”
“Yi-di,” he cried, seized with pain and rage. “Barbarians. They violated the DuanWu. We tried to make them go, but they would not. Ching Ting tried to talk to them, but they would not listen. The chief, he—”
The old man tensed with pain and squeezed my hand in a feeble grip before going on.
“He insulted my Ching Ting,” he said. “He tried to shame her. She fought back, scratched his face. I tried to pull her away and someone did this to me.”
He put his fingers to the wound on his head, and I saw that his other hand had been crushed in the fight. He began to ramble and drift, and I tried to keep him with me just a bit longer.
“Where is Mae, Father?” I said. “Yuefu, dao na Ching Ting?”
“Ching Ting?” he repeated.
His eyes danced about, then locked into place, focused on something behind my shoulder. I turned to look, and his good hand gripped mine as another wave of pain overcame him. As quickly as it began, the seizure ended and the old man’s body went slack. His grip loosened and his head lolled to one side, eyes still fixed on the point behind me.
“Shu?”
I cupped the slack jaw in my hand and shook gently, trying vainly to get him to look at me.
“Yuefu,” I demanded, and roughly shook his shoulders—still with no response.
I bent my head to his chest and mouth, searching for some sign of life, but finding none. I swallowed my grief, bit back my rage and folded lifeless arms across the still chest. I closed his unseeing eyes and pushed myself unsteadily to my feet.
“Where is she?” I asked a man who stood nearby.
He looked mournfully down at Shu, and I grabbed him by the shoulders, nearly lifting him off the ground.
“Answer me, God damn you,” I cried. “Where is she?”
His eyes went wide with fear. Several of his compatriots rushed in to help, but he stayed them with a word and a look.
I set him back on his feet, and compassion replaced the fear in his eyes. He took my hand and led me toward the river bank, where a group of women moaned and wailed. I expected to see Mae’s soft profile and delicate features, but saw only a tangled litter of banners and pennons lying on the ground, shaded by the overhanging branches.
As I moved closer, the shadows began to resolve. I could make out shapes beneath the paper and fabric—human shapes. The man led me to the far side of the mourning circle, knelt by one of the shapes and pulled me down beside him. He pulled back the shroud and my heart stopped.
Mae’s eyes were softly closed, her lips slightly parted as in sleep. The sleeves and front of her dress were torn, exposing her fair skin to the dappled light, the moving shadows the only sign of life in her face. I could see no wounds, though. I was sure there’d been a mistake. Perhaps she had merely swooned. Surely she was otherwise fine.
I shook her shoulders gently and whispered her name, trying to wake her. When that failed, I took her hand in mine, but the cold, sallow flesh gave no response. Finally, I wrapped an arm around her and eased her body against my chest, cradling her head with one hand.
A damp, sticky mess met my hand. I pulled it back to find it covered in blood and bone and gore. I swallowed the gorge that rose in my throat, unable to breathe or think. Or see.
Or be.
When my breath returned, it was in choking sobs that I released in a fierce roar that echoed across the shady grove as I rocked Mae in her final slumber.
Morning dawned cool and clear. The sky was a flawless blue unmarred by a single cloud. A gentle breeze swept down from the mountains, bringing with it the fresh scent of a place untouched by human hands.
The Chinese cemetery in Oakdale was situated just south of the Stanislaus River, between the stagecoach road and—fittingly—the railroad grading. Atop rough-sawn planks stretched between pairs of sawhorses, ten figures lay wrapped in gauzy, white grave clothes. Shu’s body was distinguished by the white lambskin apron tied about his waist, and by the smaller body that lay beside him. Mae and her father would share a common grave, together in death as they had been in life.
Several dozen crew members gathered around, along with members of other crews who, like Dave and me, wore the white gloves and leather aprons of Shu’s brother Masons.
“The last respects given to the dead are useful as lessons to us who remain. From them, let us gain instruction.” The new elder spoke the words in Mandarin, but I knew the English version by heart. “Death has established dominion over all the earth, yet in our folly we fail to remember that we are born out of death, and to death we must return. May our thoughts be raised from sorrow to the heights of that divine light, that we may prepare ourselves for the great transition that awaits us all. Let us seek the will of Almighty God, whose grace and power are unbounded, and before Whose judgment seat each of us must stand.”
I turned away from the graveside while the master recited the benediction, and stalked toward the open gate.
“You’re not staying till it’s over?” Dave asked as he came alongside me.
“I’ve said my good-byes,” I said as evenly as I could manage, and stripped off my gloves and apron. “No sense kicking my heels, waiting to throw some dirt.”
“Ceremony’s still going on, though,” he said. “They’re still paying their respects.”
The singsong lilt of the Mandarin benediction floated on the early summer air, a serene contradiction to the storm that raged inside me.
“I know,” I said after a deep breath. “But you know what comes next.”
Dave shook his head. “I’ve never been to a brother’s funeral before.”
“The master is invoking the brethren to be true and faithful,” I said. “To speak what is good.”
“Sounds nice.”
“And he’s charging them to live in love and, when the time comes, to die in peace.” I shook my head. “I can’t accept that charge yet. He’ll quote Job, ‘The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away.’ I prefer Moses: ‘I will render vengeance to mine enemies.’ ”
Dave weighed the words, then nodded and gave a heavy sigh.
“I’ve set up a meeting with the marshal and Thomson’s uncle,” he said. “It seems Stephen had a fit of remorse and might be able to give enough information for an indictment against Garrett and the others.”
I snorted at that.
“And just what do you think the odds are of that happening in this count
y?” I said. “In this state?”
Dozens of Chinese had been killed in race riots over the past few years. The only charges to stem from the murders had been for creating a public disturbance.
“Look, Jim,” Dave said, “we have to do this within the law. That’s the way it’s got to be, and it’s the way Mae would want it. You know that.”
“Don’t you dare talk to me about what she’d want.” I spat the words, inches from Dave’s face.
He didn’t flinch.
“If we do this,” he said, “we have to do it legally. Otherwise, we’re the ones who’ll swing, while her killers go scot-free. Is that what you want?”
I had no answer.
“I know you need vengeance, Jim. So do I. So do all those folks up there.” He gestured back toward the grave site. “But, if we’re gonna do this, we have to do it by the rules, if at all possible.”
“And what if it’s not possible?” I said.
The Yankee’s eyes narrowed at that, and the look on his face was one I hadn’t seen since the war.
“Then we by-God change the rules.”
We mounted our horses, and I took a last, dry-eyed look toward the cemetery. Fate had already stolen so much from me. Now, as the first shovelfuls of dirt were tossed into the hole, it robbed me of the ability to cry over my wife’s grave. I wanted to curse at the sky, to pray—like Job—that I’d never been born. But all I could manage was a prayer for Mae’s safe passage, and a plea that I might soon be with her.
As I turned Rigel away from my heart’s grave, a dragonfly darted at me from a bed of wildflowers. I looked at it from the corner of my eye as it settled on my shoulder. Its iridescent wings sparkled blue and green in the sunlight. It rested there for several seconds, wings flicking slowly up and down before it again took flight. It hovered a moment by my ear, and the gentle whisper of its wings left a soft kiss against my skin.
“I’ll find you as soon as I can,” I whispered.
Then the dragonfly was gone, darting across the river to be lost against the western horizon.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Alpine County, California—February 1875
I stared through the brass-bound tubes of the binoculars, toward a telltale column of smoke. The thin plume rose from a cleft among the jagged eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada range. The smoke might have been lost in the cloud cover, but its cut against the grain of the sky was like a jagged scar that caught my eye.
“What do you think?” I handed the binoculars to Dave, who scanned the bit of sky.
“Not a big fire,” the former Union scout judged. “Probably just a couple of men. Looks to be in a pretty good position behind that bluff, so there’s no way to say for sure.” He gave the binoculars back to me and rubbed his eyes with gloved fingers. “But this ain’t exactly the kind of weather to be going out for a nature walk. There’s no mines in these parts, and no game to be found this far up. So if they ain’t mining or hunting, chances are pretty good it’s our men.”
I nodded my agreement, and nervous anticipation twisted my gut.
“All right. Let’s make for that grove of trees,” I said, and pointed toward a thin stand of pines. “We’ll work our way down from there.”
Dave nodded and led off. I clucked my tongue for Rigel to follow, and the two other men—Paul Kimball and Tuck Foster— fell in behind. I rubbed a glove on the eagle-crested shield that hung from my coat. The tin badge still felt unnaturally heavy after more than two years.
With Stephen Thomson’s help, indictments had been brought against Charlie Garrett and a half-dozen other men. My fears were borne out, and the men were charged simply with creating a public disturbance and destruction of private property—for the railroad’s axe handles they’d damaged while using them on Mae and her father, I supposed.
Justice looked certain to be miscarried until Charlie and his band failed to show up for their trial. The judge was a founding member of the Stanislaus Asian Exclusion League and no friend to the Chinese. Deeper than his intolerance of Orientals, though, was his hatred of disorder and indifference toward his court. He’d declared the men fugitives, added murder and conspiracy to the list of crimes, and had the local US marshall swear Dave and me as deputies.
Since then, we’d tracked down—and brought to some semblance of justice—five of the men. Only two remained: Charlie Garrett and his little brother, Pinky.
“Looks like they’re staying put,” Dave said as we tied our horses to the skinny pine trees and tromped through the snow-packed slope above the sheltered camp.
“Yep, but if they’ve run this far, they must know we’re still on the trail, so don’t anyone go getting careless.” I checked the action on my rifle to drive the point home. “You men tack on around the left side,” I said to Foster and Kimball. “Dave and I’ll go right.”
Nervous nods acknowledged the order.
“Look,” I added, sensing the tension in the air, “we’ve been here before. Not in these conditions, granted. But there’s no difference between what we’re about to do and what we’ve done a half-dozen times before. We go in, we tell them to throw down and we go home. Simple as that.”
“But this is different,” Tuck Foster said, his eyes fastened on the toes of his boots. “The others might get fined, might do some time. But Charlie? He’s the only one up against a murder charge—ten of them, in fact. He’s got real skin in the game, and he knows it.”
“True,” I said. “He’s smart enough to know he might have a rough go of it if he stands trial. He’s also smart enough to know I’m not about to let go of the scent.”
I scanned the other men’s eyes, and only Dave returned my gaze.
“One way or another,” I said, “it ends today.”
“We ain’t had to deal with two at once before,” Dave observed, breaking an uneasy silence. “How best to go about it?”
Kimball snorted at that.
“Pinky Garrett ain’t but a snot-nosed, wet-behind-the-ears pup,” he said. “He’s like to be scared out of his wits by now— what wits he had to start with, that is. Probably throw down as soon as he sees us coming.”
“Maybe,” I allowed. “But a scared man’s unpredictable. He doesn’t reason rightly. And, depending on what Charlie’s filled his head with, Pinky might be more scared of a jury—or even Charlie himself—than he would be of four men with guns. I say we find cover on either side of them and call out. Give them a chance to throw down and come out easy. We might be able to talk them down, but I don’t want anyone exposed.”
Heads nodded as the men stamped their feet and blew into their hands. I pulled my oilcloth duster tighter about me.
“All right, then,” I said. “You two head on down that way. You’ll probably be in place before us, so just find cover and hold steady. I’ll call out once we’re in position. We take it good and slow and, with luck, we’ll be heading down the other side by noon.”
It took twenty minutes for us to get into position. The hip-deep snow was made nearly impassable by a deep ache that seemed frozen in my bad leg. When we finally took cover in the brush at the left-hand approach to the camp, it took another five minutes for me to catch my breath. I strained my ears to pick out any manmade noise over the whisper of the mountain breeze and the hum of running water in the deep ravine below, but could hear nothing.
I looked over to Dave, and took a deep breath when he gave me a nod of agreement.
“Charlie Garrett.” My voice seemed strangely muted by the thin air and thick snow cover.
A flurry of activity answered the summons—a scuffle of feet, the clatter of tinware falling to the ground, and the distinct clack of rifle hammers being drawn back.
“Charlie and Pinky Garrett,” I shouted again. “We’re here to bring you in. Throw up your hands and come on out.”
“Well, Jimmy Robbins, is that you?” Charlie’s voice rang in that deadly, comical lilt I’d learned to hate.
“This ain’t a social call, Charlie,” I hol
lered back. “We’re here to take you in, same as Carson and Jenkins and the others.”
“They got Robbo?” a younger, shakier voice cried out.
“That’s right, Pinky,” Dave shouted back. “And they all came along real peaceable, just like you ought to do. No need to make things any harder on yourself.”
“But they’re gonna hang us,” Pinky protested, panic in the edge of his voice.
“Not necessarily,” I answered, sickened by the truth of my own words. “Charlie’s the only one up for murder. You and the others will likely be free before springtime.”
“But you said . . .” Pinky’s voice dropped to hushed tones, answered by a growling rumble.
I took advantage of the exchange and signaled Dave. I inched out from the thin cover, dragging myself by the elbows toward the rocky hollow. From my new position, I could just make out Kimball and Foster, crouching on the other side of the encampment. I motioned for them to move up even with me.
“Pinky,” I called again, using my voice to mask the men’s movement, “there’s no point in running any farther. Come back with us nice and easy, and it’ll go better for you. It all ends here, today.” I tried to make the words sound more like a promise than a threat. “Just throw down your guns and come out.”
A moment’s hesitation.
“They ain’t gonna hang me?”
“They won’t hang you,” I promised, and breathed a little easier at the thought of at least one surrender.
Another rumbled exchange hinted at the threats of the older brother.
Pinky’s plaintive argument was punctuated with a sharp, “Dammit, Charlie, I’m going.”
The crunch of snow approached the opening to the hideaway.
“I’m coming out,” Pinky shouted. “Coming out.”
The tentative steps grew more and more confident as they neared the edge of the camp, and the younger fugitive toddled toward the waiting arms of the law.
He stepped into sight, a shotgun held by the barrel in his left hand, both arms stretched away from his body. He saw me, and I nodded for him to come all the way out.