“That was something I could not abide and I decided it was time to quit,” he said.
That sparse statement earned him the approval of the good citizens of Broken Bridle, and a few offered to buy him a drink. But when in his cups Loop Eakins was a talking man. And Pete Caradas sat at his usual table and listened to his every word.
“I tell you,” Loop said to a respectable-looking man in gray, “that whole damn hillside is gonna come down and bury them Chinamen. I told Clouston that back at the hills but he wouldn’t listen to me.”
“He’s digging for gold, I understand?” the respectable man said.
“Yeah, and he’s got a whole cliff face undercut, maybe for a half mile. Part of the overhang showed a crack this morning.” Eakins shook his head. “Damn it all, when it comes down it will bury a thousand Chinese miners under a mountain of rock, or I’m not standing here drinking this whiskey.”
Eakins looked around the saloon to sample the reaction to his dire prophecy. When his eyes fell on Caradas they lingered a moment, long enough for the graceful draw fighter to crook a finger in his direction.
“Come here,” he said.
Loop Eakins had seen Texas draw fighters before, and this one with his strange, dead eyes bore the stamp. He crossed the floor as the men behind them talked among themselves, then he said, “That’s the honest truth, mister. Them Chinese are doomed, every man, woman, and child of them.”
“Did you take part on the attack on this town last night?” Caradas said.
“No, sir, I sure didn’t,” Eakins said. “I was guarding them Chinese I told you about.”
“Is your glass empty?” Caradas said.
Eakins drained his whiskey and grinned. “It is now.”
“Good,” Caradas said. “Then get on your horse and leave town.”
“Now see here,” Eakins said. “I’ve got friends in this saloon.”
“Can you tell time?” Caradas said.
Eakins glanced at the clock above the bar. “Sure, it’s ten minutes till midnight.”
“If you’re not gone by the time the hands meet, I’ll kill you,” Caradas said. “And think yourself lucky. If you’d been with the trash who rode through Broken Bridle you’d be dead by now.”
Eakins was ashen. He spread his arms and appealed to the men at the bar. “Gentlemen, this won’t do,” he said. But every back was turned to him and he read the signs.
Caradas, an exclamation point of danger, rose to his feet.
Eakins’s eyes got big and he turned, slipped on the floor, picked himself up, then ran for his life. When Western men are asked about the Eakins Streetcar scamper, a few say Loop dropped out of sight and was never heard from again, others that he died of yellow fever in 1889 while working for the French as a laborer on the construction of the Panama Canal. But most say, “Who gives a damn?” And that’s where the matter must end.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
“You came here at this hour of the night, pounding on my door, to return my gun?” Shawn O’Brien said. He examined the Colt. “After you fished it out of the mud you cleaned it real well and I’m much obliged.” Then, apologetically, “I’m sorry I didn’t clean yours.”
“No matter,” Pete Caradas said. I very much doubt if you’d have cleaned it to my satisfaction anyway.”
Shawn let that slide and said, “Drink?”
Caradas nodded. “Make it a large one, O’Brien. I ran a bluff with an empty gun tonight and that wears on a man.”
Shawn handed Caradas a brimming glass, ushered him into the hotel room’s only chair, then said, “Tell me about this Eakins ranny.”
“About him, there’s not much to tell,” Caradas said. “He says he quit Thomas Clouston, then he told me about the Chinese.”
“Let me hear it,” Shawn said.
Caradas repeated what Eakins had said, then he added, “The bottom line is that if half a mile of overhanging rock decides to come down, it will kill a lot of Chinese.”
Shawn was silent for a while considering the implications of what he’d just heard, then he said, “What do you expect me to do about it?”
“I don’t expect anything,” Caradas said. “I’m just telling you.”
“What if I rode along the bottom of the overhang and tossed dynamite into the undercut?” Shawn said. “The whole thing might come down.”
“Yeah, on top of you, O’Brien,” Caradas said. “And there’s half a mile of cliff. You’d need to carry a heap of dynamite.”
“I came here to help this town, and that includes the Chinese,” Shawn said. “Hell, I can’t turn my back on them.”
Caradas took a long sip of his whiskey. “They’re only heathen Chinamen, not Christian white folks.”
Shawn smiled. “You don’t believe a word of that.”
“No, I guess I don’t,” Caradas said. “What about Saturday Brown? He’s the Deputy United States Marshal, maybe we can let him work it out.”
“Brown is a loose cannon,” Shawn said. “He’d deputize what’s left of the men in this town and go charging into the hills to save little yellow people. He’d only get himself and everybody else killed.”
Caradas sighed. “Well, if we don’t get the Chinese out of Clouston’s grasp they’ll all die. But if there’s nothing we can do, then there’s nothing we can do.”
“Not with a gun or dynamite . . . but just maybe . . . just maybe . . .” Shawn said, his forehead wrinkled in thought.
“Don’t keep it to yourself, O’Brien. Let’s hear it.”
“Pete, where do you get those fancy shirts of yours washed and ironed?”
“Right here in town. The Chinese lau—” Stunned, Caradas shook his head. “No, O’Brien, no! You can’t send an old man, his wife, and three daughters into those hills to rescue their countrymen.”
Shawn smiled. “Of course not, but the old man speaks Chinese and we don’t. Suppose he infiltrates the camp and tells his people what’s about to happen to them, explains the danger of a rock fall.”
“Don’t you think the Chinese already know that?” Caradas said. “They’re being forced against their will into the undercut by Clouston’s gun hands.”
“Well, it won’t hurt to talk to the laundry man,” Shawn said. “What’s his name?”
“I call him Sammy Chang,” Caradas said. “And I guess everybody else does.”
“I’ll get dressed,” Shawn said. “Let’s go talk with him.”
“Now?” Caradas said, surprised. “It’s after midnight.”
“You’re right, Pete. The clock has already struck midnight for Broken Bridle and I’m willing to try anything.”
“Hell of a job for a Town Tamer,” Caradas said.
“Hell of a job for anybody,” Shawn said.
It seemed that the Chang family were light sleepers because the patriarch himself answered the door at the first knock. He looked to be about fifty and was fully dressed in indigo-dyed pants tucked into knee-high boots and a matching loose-fitting shirt. He recognized Pete Caradas immediately.
“Your laundry not ready, Mr. Caradas. You come back afternoon,” the man said.
He made to shut the door but Caradas stopped him. “We need to talk with you, Sammy,” he said. “It’s urgent.”
“What about? Shirts?”
“No. About Thomas Clouston.”
Recognition dawned on Chang’s face. “Then you’d better come in,” he said. He led the way into his dark home, situated just behind his laundry business. A hallway that smelled of incense and vaguely of boiled rice ended in a locked door. Chang produced the key, opened the door wide, and he walked inside, telling his two visitors to follow.
The room was in pitch darkness, but Chang felt around and lighted a lamp that spread an orange glow into every corner. Shawn’s eyes were immediately attracted to the two huge Tranter revolvers on the table in the middle of the floor. Beside them lay a double shoulder holster rig and a supply of .577 ammunition. The cartridges looked like miniature artillery shel
ls, and Shawn had seen their like before. When he lived in England an army officer returning from India had a pair of such Tranters, though his were highly engraved and plated with gold. The powerful revolvers were strange weapons to find in the home of a man who washed shirts for a living.
Chang’s shrewd black eyes noticed Shawn’s interest in the guns and said, “In China I had the honor to number among the imperial bodyguard of the noble emperor Xianfeng. These were my weapons.” He smiled at Shawn’s slight look of puzzlement. “Yes, we also carried swords, but the British and Germans soon taught us that firearms kill much more efficiently.”
Chairs were placed around the table like a conference room, and Chang asked Shawn and Caradas to sit. The door opened and his wife, pretty but now graying, entered with a tray bearing a teapot and tiny china cups. Chang registered no surprise at the entrance of his spouse, as though he’d expected it. The woman poured pale green tea into the cups and handed them first to the guests and then her husband.
When she left, Shawn introduced himself, then asked Chang if he was familiar with the mining going on in the Rattlesnake Hills.
Chang said he was and added, “I am aware that the man called Clouston forces the Chinese to work like slaves and has hanged many as examples to those who would refuse. There were leaders among the Han, but they have all been killed. But I, who was bodyguard to an emperor, can lead them.”
“That’s why you have the revolvers on the table?” Shawn said.
“Yes. For the first time in twenty years I will buckle on my weapons and help my people. In the service of my emperor I killed eighteen men. Soon I will kill more.”
Chang was a small, intense man, well-muscled as a bodyguard should be, but he had the eyes of a poet, deep as black pools in moonlight, and when he spoke his voice was as soft as a nun’s Act of Contrition in church.
“Sammy, do you know about the greenstone undercut?” Shawn said.
“Yes, and about the fault in the overhang,” Chang said. He smiled. “The Han are a small, dark people; we come and go in the night and no one notices us. There is nothing about the man called Thomas Clouston that I haven’t learned. Why do you think that the ore cars have not arrived? North of us many Chinese work for the Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley Railroad. It was a simple matter to disable the ore cars.”
“Mr. Chang, you have devious ways,” Shawn said, grinning.
“Ah yes, the Chinese are a wily people,” Chang said. “Now, you have finished your tea? Good. You gentlemen have been an enlightening distraction, but I must be on my way.”
He picked up an old Union Army knapsack, laid it on the table, and loaded his holstered revolvers into it. The ammunition followed and then a greasy paper sack of corn cakes.
“You need a horse, Mr. Chang?” Shawn said.
“No, I will walk so the dark will better conceal me. If I leave now I can reach the Rattlesnake Hills before dawn.” He placed a conical, bamboo straw hat on his head, then said, “I must go.”
Realizing he had little time, Shawn said, “Tell us your plan.”
“It’s simple. I will lead the Han in rebellion against their slave masters.”
“But when? We can help.”
“I don’t know when. As soon as possible. Within a few days. It depends how quickly I can organize my people. They are not gunmen, Mr. O’Brien, and I don’t want to lose any of them.”
Chang stepped to the door but Pete Caradas stepped in his way. “Sam, just have them get up and leave, say about this time tomorrow under the cover of darkness. They did it here.”
“They were not guarded by riflemen here,” Chang said. “But it is a thought and perhaps I will find a way.” He nodded. “Farewell, gentlemen.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Dr. Thomas Clouston decided the trembling depot agent was criminally insane and a danger to civilized society.
“What do you mean, the ore cars are broken?” he said.
“Broken. That’s what I heard. I telegraphed back up the line for a hundred miles and the word I got back from the other agents is that the cars can’t be moved until they get a repair crew down from Casper.”
His face black with anger, Clouston stared out at the tumbled heaps of greenstone dumped beside the track. Another wagon had just pulled in and a couple of Chinese women sullenly added to the pile. Millions of dollars’ worth of ore lay next to the rails as far as the eye could see, a useless pile of rock unless it could be loaded and sent to the crusher.
The Rocky Mountains normally protect Wyoming from severe weather by blocking air masses from the Gulf of Mexico, North America, and the Pacific Ocean. But around the Rattlesnake Hills summer thunderstorms are frequent and now another threatened, adding to Clouston’s angry state of mind. To the north the sky was deep purple, almost black, and behind that smoky white clouds rose in massive ramparts, as though somewhere a great swath of the world was burning.
Fat drops of rain ticked around Clouston as he ordered Lark Rawlings to bring the depot agent closer. Rawlings, grinning, pushed the little man nearer. “You gonna hang him, boss?” he asked.
“No. I want this gentleman to do something for me,” Clouston said.
Thoroughly frightened the agent wrung his hands and said, “I’ll do anything. Please don’t hurt me.”
“I have no intention of hurting you,” Clouston said. “Do you see the rails stretching away in the distance? I can tell you do, smart fellow. Now, you walk those rails north until you find my ore cars and then you expedite their repair. Understand?”
“But . . . but I could walk for a hundred miles,” the little man said.
“Then you’d better get started, hadn’t you?” Clouston smiled. “Make tracks as they say.”
“Please, mister, I’ll work the telegraph . . . I’ll . . . I’ll find the cars. I could die out there.”
“No doubt, but if you don’t start walking I’ll”—Clouston’s tone changed from almost bantering amusement to the harsh whisper of a man possessed—“chop off your head.”
The agent backed away from Clouston, his hands in front of him as though he warded off evil, his face stricken with horror.
“Mr. Rawlings, see our envoy on his way if you please,” Clouston said.
Rawlings grinned and mounted his horse. He rode between the rails and hoorawed the little agent like a puncher cutting a steer out of brush. The railroad man turned and ran, tripped and fell, and then ran again.
Finally Rawlings drew rein and watched the agent go as fast as his short legs could carry him. He rode back to Clouston and said, “How long do you think he’ll last out there, boss?”
Clouston shrugged. “Who knows?” Then, with a straight face, “May God go with him.”
Thunder crashed and beyond the shelter of the rock overhang rain drummed on the hat and slicker of the mounted rifleman who stood guard on this section of the diggings.
Sammy Chang swung his pick into the greenstone seam and levered free a large chunk. Here and there the stone was rotted and crumbled easily to the touch, and the hillside was dangerously undercut, the terrifying weight of the creaking cliff ready to crash to ground. All along the half-mile length of the undercut, hundreds of men picked away at the rock and women and children lifted up the ore and carried it to the waiting wagons. Once every two hours the diggers were allowed a fifteen-minute break when they bolted down a few rice cakes before returning to the menacing undercut. Their guards looked bored and uncomfortable in the teeming rain but held the butts of rifles upright on their thighs, and their cold, uncaring eyes were restless.
Talking on the job was an offense that called for a vicious beating, but the man working next to Chang whispered out of the corner of his mouth, “It must be soon. Six dead men in the tents this morning.”
Chang nodded. The Han were being systematically worked to death in the cut and as the work and danger increased so would the death toll.
“It will be soon,” Chang said. “The suffering will end.”
“It will be soon,” Chang whispered without turning.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Deputy United States Marshal Saturday Brown wanted to send another wire to Medicine Bow demanding confirmation that his first message had been received. But there was no sign of the depot agent and that irritated him considerably. But perhaps he was already in the telegraph office.
“Damn rain,” Brown muttered as he slogged through muddy ground to the flat-roofed cabin that passed for the train station. A tin sign on the wall nearest him advertised the benefits of Mrs. Fannie Tyler’s Elixir for the Ague and All Female Ailments. The marshal thought he saw a shadow pass across the darkened window to the right of the sign and pegged it as the missing agent’s. He took a couple of steps, then stopped again as the heaps of greenstone beside the track caught his eye. Brown walked closer to the rails and saw that the rock piles continued for a considerable distance along the track. At that time there were no freight wagons in sight.
Saturday Brown pondered the greenstone. Apparently it had been dumped here for a later pickup by ore cars. But why not unload the stone directly from wagons into the cars and save many hours of backbreaking work? Then Brown knew what had happened: The freight train hadn’t shown up and Thomas Clouston had no way to transport his ore.
The marshal looked in the direction of the Rattlesnake Hills, then studied the terrain around the depot. In the distance rolling hill country but closer brush flats, wide open, made for rifle sights. Brown did a joyous little jig. Hot damn! This is where he would fight Clouston, right here, on ground of his own choosing.
“Hey you!” A tall, bearded man with a life-hardened face stood at the door to the office and glared at Brown. “What the hell are you doing here?”
The marshal played the doddering old codger. “I was looking for the agent. I want to send a wire to a dear cousin who’s been keeping poorly.”
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