“But I saw a water wagon from the Calico Water Works Incorporated coming into town late this afternoon. Watson wouldn’t want Cicero and Kermit, or even their old dog, to see those women.”
“But he could hide them in a nearby canyon.”
“That’s a good place to start looking,” I said. “We’ve narrowed down the most likely spot he’ll be hiding out. Now here’s the second thing I was thinking. Do you know who runs the vigilance committee?”
His head bobbed again. He flicked ash onto the dirt floor. “The owners of one of the mercantiles, Slater and McCoy.”
“Good. So here’s my plan. You slip over to the mercantile, tell Slater and McCoy what’s going on . . .”
Lucky Ben Wong was getting real impatient, so you can forget about what I wrote down just a few minutes earlier about the Chinese being patient and polite and all that bunk.
“Why me?” he interrupted. “Why not you?”
“You’ve staked how many people in this town?” He didn’t answer, because I didn’t give him time to. “Slater and McCoy will trust you a lot quicker than they’d trust me.” I mean, I’d blowed a fellow through the window on the top floor of the bank building, which meant they’d have to replace that window—at Calico prices—before they could rent it to somebody else. And I’d been in the middle of that shoot-out that left eight men dead, and even if Mr. Slater’s brother did run the undertaking parlor, I didn’t think the citizens of Calico would find me the kind of stranger they’d trust. Besides, the story I’d just told Lucky Ben Wong was mighty hard to swallow, without some Irish whiskey or London porter to wash it down with.
Lucky Ben Wong didn’t say nothing to that, which I figured meant he saw my reasoning. So he went back to puffing on that cigar, and I went back to my plan.
“Have Slater and McCoy round up some of the best guns in Calico. They sneak over to that canyon near the water hole, and they ambush Whip Watson. Tell them not to give Whip no chance. Just open fire and shoot down them dogs. Well, maybe they don’t have to shoot Mister Clark. If they can help it, that is. Hit them hard and fast. Then the girls are saved, and Watson and his blackhearts are dead, and I . . . no, you . . . you are free to marry Jingfei and live happily ever after in your”—I wave my hand around his cans of coal oil—“your . . . palace.”
I sniffed. Damn place stank like coal oil.
Lucky Ben Wong wasn’t smiling. Fact is, his face had turned to stone, and got even harder the more explaining I done. Hell, I thought it was a great plan. The vigilance committee would lead the attack. I’d just stay here for a while, drink tea, maybe sleep a bit, perhaps see how the Chinese played poker. Here, in Chinatown, I wouldn’t be as likely to get killed as members of the vigilance committee.
“That is your plan?” Lucky Ben Wong asked.
“Yeah.” I frowned. Lucky Ben Wong was grinding out his cigar in an ashtray, and he was really destroying that cigar till there wasn’t nothing left of it but shreds of tobacco in the remnants of ash.
“Is it your wish to have my Jingfei killed? And thirty-seven other young American women?”
They wasn’t all American. I mean, I knowed at least one of them was a portly Hun. And there was a Welsh lady. Probably one or two straight off the boat from Ireland, and that don’t include the two Lannon twins from Savannah, Georgia, by way of County Cork.
“No,” I told him. “That ain’t my plan at all.” My plan, if that damned Chinese mercenary had been listening at all, was to get Whip Watson and his gunmen killed, excepting, if at all possible, Mr. Clark. And saving all thirty-eight girls.
“How many girls were killed when Crutchfield attacked Watson?”
“Well . . .” There was six. I knowed that. I’d helped Jingfei pull the bodies from the wreckage.
“And how many girls were killed when Watson attacked Crutchfield.”
“A . . . couple . . . or four.”
“Do you think Crutchfield wanted to kill those girls?”
My head shook.
“Do you think Watson wished to see four other girls killed?”
“No.” My voice become real quiet.
“Of course not. That would cut into their profits. Ricochets kill. Bullets have no conscience. If Slater and McCoy and the vigilantes were to attack the camp of the outlaws, even if Watson’s men were wiped out—”
“But maybe not Mister Clark,” I cut in. “Unless it just couldn’t be helped.”
He didn’t care for my interruption, but got right down to his point. “There would likely be women hurt, killed. By stray shots. Or, as mad as this Whip Watson is said to be, he might begin shooting them down. To spite the vigilantes. To spite us.”
He was right, the little Chinese peckerwood. Whip Watson would definitely shoot down Jingfei. Because Jingfei wouldn’t be huddled behind some Columbus carriage’s back leather seat that smelled like fresh wax. She’d be right in the midst of things.
I stared at my tea.
“Well,” I muttered.
“We must have all of the girls out of harm’s way when we attack Whip Watson,” Lucky Ben Wong said.
“All right,” I agreed.
Lucky Ben Wong got right down to it, and, the more he talked, the more my head nodded, and the more I agreed that his plan was still a bit better than mine.
We would let Whip Watson go through with his original idea, let him parade the girls right down Main Street in those Columbus buggies. The mail-order brides would be escorted into The Palace of Calico, and once they were inside, then we’d open fire and gun down Whip Watson and all his boys, excepting, if at all possible, Mr. Clark. Behind the walls of The Palace of Calico, which Lucky Ben Wong assured me was built like a damned fort, those thirty-eight women would be safe from stray bullets.
“Yeah,” I said when Lucky Ben Wong fired up another cigar to wait for my critique of his battle plan, “but that’s a long wait, ain’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, Watson’s bordello ain’t finished yet.”
“Not quite,” he said, “but there are beds in the upstairs rooms, and the back bar is in the saloon. For what you tell me, that is all Whip Watson needs.”
I looked perplexed. “He has beds in the room . . . already?”
“Yes.” Lucky Ben Wong’s head bobbed rapidly. “One room has two beds in it. My cousin cleaned all the sheets and pillowcases for all of the beds yesterday.”
I sighed, then thought about the room with two beds, which, the way I thought, would be for the Lannon girls from Savannah, but quickly tried to put such wicked thoughts outside my head, and shifted the Winchester in my lap.
“It’d be better to wait until the place is all dolled up, though, don’t you reckon? With more than beds and fresh linens?”
Lucky Ben Wong’s head shook hard. “Whip Watson doesn’t have the luxury of time anymore. He has lost too much money already. He’ll want to start earning money now, rather than spend more.”
Made sense. I shrugged, then done some studying on more of Lucky Ben Wong’s plan.
“Well,” I said, “wouldn’t Whip Watson have some boys inside The Palace? When the girls started coming in?”
“Yes. He is no fool.”
“So . . . them boys . . . they’d have to get . . .”
“Killed,” Lucky Ben Wong finished my thought.
That tea didn’t taste so good about then.
“Listen, my friend Micah Bishop, Whip would have four men inside. Maybe five.” Lucky Ben Wong’s reassuring tone didn’t comfort me at all. “We could overpower them before they knew they were dead. Then ambush the men outside when the last of the brides are inside. It is simple. It is flawless.”
Maybe, I thought, but something else had begun to trouble me.
“When you say we . . . you mean Slater and McCoy and the vigilantes, don’t you?”
His head shook even before I was done finishing my question.
“We cannot trust Slater or McCoy,” he told me.
“Why not?”
“You mentioned that the late Rogers Canfield and Whip Watson and Candy Crutchfield had a silent partner in Calico, did you not?”
I allowed how that I’d likely mentioned that.
“What if McCoy is that partner? What if Slater is the villain? If we tipped the partner off, we would put your life, and more important, the life of my Jingfei and the lives of those other poor girls, in jeopardy.”
Now my tea was curdling. Running fingers through my wet hair, I asked, “So who’d we have inside the building?”
“You.”
“Against four men?”
“Perhaps five.”
“And outside?”
“Me.”
I couldn’t recollect how many men Whip Watson had remaining, even if I didn’t include Mr. Clark.
“That’s it?” I didn’t ask Lucky Ben Wong if he didn’t have no friends here in East Calico who he could trust.
“Kill Whip Watson is like cutting off the head of a rattlesnake. Kill him, the others are as good as dead. They will leave town at a gallop.”
It didn’t sound like nothing I’d bet on, but I kind of rubbed the rifle in my lap.
“What do you think of my plan?” Lucky Ben Wong asked with boyish enthusiasm for what struck me as a dumb plan, but, I had to admit, it was better than mine.
I shrugged. “Might work.” Although my plan, even if it meant having to trust Slater, McCoy, and the vigilance committee, would, in theory, mean that I’d stand a better chance of not getting killed.
“Good.” He held out his hand. “You will need more bullets, I imagine, for your long gun.”
Standing on weak knees, I somehow pitched the rifle to him. He nudged it into the crook of his arm, then his right hand disappeared behind his black silk shirt, and when it returned, it held this fancy-engraved .41-caliber “Swamp Angel” pocket revolver, and I thought he was about to shoot me dead for no good reason when the chimes outside his front door started singing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
He swung around, dropping the rifle, heading to the partition that separated his coal-oil-can building. Right before I blowed out the light, I saw him swinging back toward me, but then it was too dark to see nothing except streaks of light coming through the sides of the tarp.
The chimes sang again.
Quiet as I could, I crawled along the floor, fingers out searching, finally touched the fore-stock of my rifle, which I snatched into my hands.
“Micah?” Lucky Ben Wong whispered. “Where are you?”
“Right here,” I told the darkness.
I could hear him breathing, and the chimes sounding again.
“Could be,” I told him, “the girl with my duds.”
“No,” he said. “Not her.”
“Well, I got the rifle. Want me to start shooting?” I knowed how easy it was to shoot through what he had for walls. Doors, too.
“No.”
Another sigh, then Lucky Ben Wong slipped through the tarp and moved toward the rubber tarp. I found myself a better position, sidling over to where Lucky Ben Wong had been, sticking the Winchester’s barrel through the slit between canvas and coal oil cans, and drawed a bead on Lucky Ben Wong’s front door.
Soon as that chime-ringer stepped inside, I’d shoot down the cur without a call.
Lucky Ben Wong slipped the gun behind his back, but kept his right hand on the grip, then moved carefully to the tarp, put his left hand on the cloth, called out. “Yes. Yes. It late. Very late. Come back tomorrow.” He had slipped into that bad English again.
I couldn’t hear what the person outside said, but it was something that staggered Lucky Ben Wong. His hand come off the grips of that “Swamp Angel,” and he was pulling open that front tarp as fast as humanly possible, and a figure stepped inside, and the front door closed.
Me? I almost dropped my rifle, then I come through the partition.
“Jingfei !” me and Lucky Ben Wong cried out at the same time.
“Micah!”
Made me forget all my aches and injuries and wounds that was going to leave some remindful scars. Jingfei run right past her betrothed and greeted me warmly. “I knew you’d make it out of that desert. I just knew it.”
I give her one of my awkward shrugs.
“I didn’t know if I could trust Mister Clark,” she said.
Now my shrug wasn’t just playacting awkward, it was for real. “Mister Clark?” I asked.
“Yes.” She turned back to Lucky Ben Wong, who wasn’t looking none too happy at the reception I’d gotten and he’d missed out on. I mean, Jingfei didn’t kiss me or nothing, but you’d expect her to greet the man who’d paid good money to get himself a wife a little better than brushing him aside to come hug a stove-up gambler dressed in a robe that was too small for him.
“I bribed Mister Clark one hundred dollars.” Back at me, she said, “For not killing you.”
He hadn’t killed me, and now I knowed why. I also knowed that he was not a man to be trusted. He’d told me that I owed him, but I didn’t owe that swindler nothing. He’d been paid a lot of money for not killing me. Hell’s bells, the law in Las Vegas, New Mexico Territory, had put up only seventy-five dollars for my capture—and that was for murdering (it was self-defense, I swear) a fellow and busting out of jail before they could hang me.
“My Jingfei,” Lucky Ben Wong said, and she faced her husband again. They spoke in Chinese, softly, and done some bowing at each other. Then they approached each other, studying the other’s features. Jingfei was a good four inches taller than Lucky Ben Wong. Prettier, too. They spoke some more Chinese, then Lucky Ben Wong was looking past her and at me, and it wasn’t no friendly look.
He said something in a most unpleasant tone.
She said something right sharp back at him, which caused him to step back toward the wall of cans.
“Maybe I should leave.” Actually, I had no intention of going nowhere.
“No.” Jingfei looked back at me. “We haven’t much time.”
“How did you escape Whip Watson, Future Wife?” Lucky Ben Wong asked.
“I bribed Mister Clark with another hundred dollars,” she answered, “but I must go back to camp.”
That caused my heart to jump. Lucky Ben Wong’s, too. He sang out, “Why?” I cried, “No!”
“If I’m not back, the other women will be in danger,” she said. She give Lucky Ben Wong one of them soulful stares, and turned to me with my own personal pleading look that nobody could resist. “I must be back before morning. I just came to find you, Future Husband, my savior.” No, she wasn’t talking to me. Back looking at that little dude in his black silk with his head shaved except for that queue. “They will be bringing the girls to town . . . tomorrow.”
I cussed.
“What time?” Lucky Ben Wong asked.
She sighed. “I do not know. Afternoon would be my guess. But it could be morning. They have been very busy getting the girls . . . ready.” The last word she spit out like poison.
“Then we could get the vigilance committee and have them ambush the camp.” I come back to my original plan. “Where is Whip’s camp?”
She give me a look that wasn’t soulful, and wasn’t incredulous, nor pleading, but was kind of, well, horrified. Her look had me deciding that Lucky Ben Wong was right all along, so I changed my tune in a hurry.
“No, no, that’s a bad idea. Women could get killed. We’ll have to think of another plan.”
Which got me an evil glare from Lucky Ben Wong.
“I have a plan,” Jingfei announced.
A wave of exhaustion overtook her, and she had to sit in a wicker chair in the corner by me. Lucky Ben Wong hurried to the teapot and poured her some tea, and I dipped back behind the tarp, fumbled my way through the dark, found a washcloth that I hoped wasn’t too dirty, and brung it back to the other room, wringing it out as I walked, catching another one of those mean looks from Lucky Ben Wong. Hell, the floor was dirt. Wasn’t like I
was ruining some fancy rug or nothing, dripping water, and maybe some blood on it.
I handed the cloth to Jingfei, who stared at me, then smiled. Then set the rag on the table beside her, and sipped some tea.
That’s pretty much when she saw where she was. She looked around this part of the room, Lucky Ben’s personal quarters, and then she looked at the walls, and the doors, and she handed me the teacup, then turned to her betrothed, and she said, “This is where we will live?”
“How many gunmen will be with Whip Watson?” Lucky Ben Wong asked.
By that time, we was all sipping tea again, in the front parlor room. From a pocket in my robe, I pulled the watch I’d taken off one of the dead men—kept real good time—and seen that it was 12:25. Jingfei said it had taken her two hours to get from Watson’s camp in the canyons to town, and another half hour to find Lucky Ben Wong’s place in the dark.
“Seventeen,” she said.
“Is that including Mister Clark?” I asked.
“No, he’s on our side.”
Which likely had cost her another hundred dollars, and that got me staring at her suit of moiré, and I figured she had to have a money belt. I mean, I didn’t think Mr. Clark would take a letter of credit or nothing like that. Most men of his poor upbringing and low morals dealt in cash.
“And Doctor Kent,” Jingfei said, “he will help us, too.”
Wasn’t sure I trusted either of them sidewinders. If she mentioned Juan Pedro as an ally, I’d have to speak up.
“Whip Watson will be in town first, to get the people ready,” Jingfei told us. “They plan on parading us up the street, one at a time, in those dreadful carriages. Do you know what he plans to do with us?”
We both did, but she didn’t give us time to answer. “He says the contracts you”—she nodded at Lucky Ben Wong—“and all the other husbands signed had a clause that if the matrimonial agent died before delivery of the brides, the contract was null and void.”
“So the husbands would be out of the money,” I said.
“Yes.” Her tone got real steely. “But we women will be out of something much. . . .” Her lips and eyes tightened.
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