‘Come on, you’re just feeling tired, and upset. You didn’t kill Gordon Jarvis. Gordon Jarvis wasn’t anything more than a victim of his own life.’
‘No, you’re wrong. He was a victim of my life. The same way everybody else is. The same way I am, too.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Dan McReady. He glanced back at the circle of firemen.
‘I wish I could make it clearer. I wish I understood it myself.’ The wind began to rise, and the fog listlessly stirred. Collis’s dark curls were ruffled as if someone had run their fingers through his hair. ‘I feel as if I were standing on the footplate of some kind of terrible train,’ he said. ‘It’s running faster and faster, and no matter what I do I can’t stop it, even when it knocks people down.’
Dan McReady took out a crumpled cigarette. ‘That, my friend, is called fate. Everybody’s riding one type of train or another. Some of them are slow, and rusty, and stop at every damned crossing on the way. Others are shiny and fly down the line like hot shit. But believe you me, and I’ve found this out for myself, they all wind up at the same old station. And whichever way they go, fast or slow, plain or fancy, most folks find the ride ain’t hardly worth the price.’
Collis squeezed his eyes shut to try to restore some moisture under his lids. He said, ‘You don’t happen to want to fight this duel instead of me, do you?’
They parted on the corner of Montgomery and California. Dan McReady was going back to his boarding-house on Stockton, to change his shirt and shave. He promised to collect Collis outside the International Hotel a little after six o’clock, so that they could ride out to Lake Merced in good time for the duel. ‘Don’t drink anything,’ he warned, ‘and don’t try to go to sleep. Just take yourself a quick, cold bath, and put on some fresh linen. It’s easier to shoot straight in clean drawers. Don’t ask me why.’
Collis watched him walk off into the darkness. An upstairs window across the street was still lit, and someone was playing the viola, so sadly and sweetly that you could have imagined the love of his or her life had just been lost. Collis waited on the corner for a while, then started walking doggedly north towards the International, and an early breakfast.
On the breezy shore of Lake Merced, under a November sky that was the colour of a Heermann’s gull, the greyest and darkest of all the gulls, Grant Melford was already waiting with his seconds and his doctor when Collis arrived. The wind whistled through the pale grasses and made soft thundery noises in Collis’s eardrums. He stood by the wheel of their hired carriage while Dan McReady gave the driver two dollars and asked him to wait. Fifty yards away, in his black cape and high silk hat, Grant Melford was watching him with a concentrated frown. Collis tried to smile, although he didn’t know why.
At length, the carriage was driven away out of earshot, and Collis walked across the grass, closely followed by Dan, to say good morning. Collis was wearing his grey morning suit, freshly-pressed that morning by the hotel valet, and Dan McReady was dressed in a coat of brown herringbone tweed and a round white hat. He was smoking a cigarette.
Grant Melford’s face was pale and oval as a sago pudding. He looked as if he hadn’t slept. One of his seconds was a serious young college type, tanned, with a small moustache, who squinted out of clear blue eyes like a slightly maniacal badminton umpire. The other must have been a servant, because he stood a few paces back, and his morning suit was half a size too large for him. He was big-nosed, with curly coppery hair, and he said nothing at all, though Collis heard him grunt.
Even further away, on a small grassy embankment, the doctor waited like a buzzard on a branch. He was elderly, with fraying white hair and tiny spectacles. His old brown leather bag lay at his feet. He coughed a great deal as Collis inclined his head towards Grant, and towards his seconds, and as Collis said, ‘Good morning, gentlemen. A dull day to die.’
Grant gave a jerky nod. ‘Good morning, Mr Edmonds. Allow me to introduce Mr Snaith and Mr O’Rourke. Our medical practitioner is Dr Mince.’
Collis gave each of them a sloping smile. The doctor, unexpectedly, waved.
Grant took a deep, unsteady breath. ‘I suppose you’re not prepared to withdraw your remark of last night?’ he asked Collis.
Collis glanced at Dan McReady, but all Dan McReady could do was give him a small shrug, as if to say, ‘It’s your duel – if you want to fight it, fight it.’ The young college type, Mr Snaith, waited with a large mahogany box in his arms, his finger on the catch, keeping the lid closed until he had heard Collis’s answer.
Collis cleared his throat. He felt as if he were someone else altogether. His chest was tight and he couldn’t find a way to release the pressure. The wind blew fretfully all around him, and a flock of terns allowed themselves to be tossed out over the ruffled surface of the lake like the thrown-away pages of a tragic letter.
‘No,’ Collis said. ‘I won’t withdraw.’
‘You’re adamant?’
‘I said no. Does no have any other meaning?’
Grant licked his lips. ‘Very well. Then I must ask Mr Snaith to give you a choice of pistols.’
Mr Snaith unclipped the catch and raised the lid of the mahogany box. He walked across the grass towards Collis and presented its contents with a face that was almost too grim to be taken seriously. If Collis hadn’t been so nervous, he probably would have laughed. He examined the box and wished the whole goddam business were over.
Nestling in green velvet were two long-barrelled pistols with varnished wooden handles. They were not at all decorative, and they smelled of thin oil. A brass plate on the side of the box said ‘Lafoucheux’.
Mr Snaith said, ‘Please choose one, Mr Edmonds. They are both loaded, and they both fire only one round each.’
Collis lifted the upper pistol out. He held it awkwardly, feeling the coldness and the weight of it. ‘Very well,’ he said, ‘I’ll take this one.’
Mr Snaith crossed back towards Grant Melford, and Grant took out the second pistol. The doctor, on his chilly embankment, started to cough again. It was two minutes after seven in the morning, and Collis was beginning to feel like going behind a hedge and relieving himself. It was bad enough fighting a duel without having a pain in the bladder as well.
Mr Snaith closed his box. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said in his clipped Boston accent, ‘I crave your attention for one moment only. The rules are that you should each walk twenty paces away, turn, and fire whenever you wish. That is all. May God have mercy on you.’
Collis looked down at his pistol. ‘I don’t even know how to fire the damned thing,’ he muttered to Dan McReady. ‘What do I do?’
Dan McReady pinched the cigarette out from between his lips with his finger and thumb. ‘That’s a Lafoucheux,’ he said. ‘They’re specially made for duelling, and they’re bastards. You only have to tickle their triggers and they’re off. So don’t, whatever you do, put your finger anywhere near the trigger until you’re aimed and ready to fire.’
‘I’m terrified,’ said Collis. ‘You know that? I’m damn well terrified.’
‘Of course you are,’ Dan McReady told him. ‘But don’t be scared so shitless that you forget what I told you. Aim leisurely, holding the pistol with both hands. Pull back the hammer with your thumb until it’s cocked. Then make sure your aim is true, and touch that trigger gently. That’s all. Now go blow the bastard’s brains out.’
Mr Snaith raised a red handkerchief. It snapped in the wind. ‘Are you ready, gentlemen?’
Grant Melford called out loudly, ‘Always ready, Mr Snaith, to defend my good name!’
Collis looked at Dan McReady and made a face. In return, he called out, ‘Always ready, Mr Snaith, to compound one absurdity with another!’
Mr Snaith gave Collis a disapproving squint, but then he held his handkerchief up high, paused, and brought it down to signal that the duel had begun.
Collis turned his back and began to walk. The turf was sloping and uneven. Ahead of him, in the distance, he
could see his rented carriage waiting, and it occurred to him that he could keep on walking, maybe breaking into a jog, and reach the carriage before anyone really understood that he was running away. Beyond the carriage were the peaks of Fern Hill, and beyond that, the city of San Francisco, hazy with the blue fires of breakfast. He coughed. He almost stumbled on a sandy hillock.
It suddenly occurred to him that he hadn’t been counting. How many paces was this? Twelve, fifteen? Supposing Grant Melford got his first shot in before Collis had even turned around? Nervously, Collis looked over his shoulder and saw that Grant still had his back to him and was still pacing away. He was taking long strides, and in his black morning coat he looked like a big plump crow.
This must be it. Nineteen, twenty, stop. Turn. And Grant Melford was turning too. Forty paces wasn’t nearly as far apart as Collis had imagined it would be. He could still see the pale frown on Grant’s face, and the mole on his chin. Oh God, this seemed all so peculiar.
Grant Melford was raising his pistol. Collis had been so distracted by the ritual of the duel that he had almost forgotten what he had to do. But he saw Dan McReady standing there placidly in his brown tweed coat and his round hat, and he remembered his warning. Don’t put your finger anywhere near the trigger until you’re aimed and ready to fire … Aim leisurely, holding the pistol with both hands.
He had hardly brought his pistol up when there was a sharp snap, like somebody slamming a book shut. Collis winced, in spite of himself, and a surge of hot fear flooded right through his body. He waited to be hit, forgetting in his fright that any shot which struck him would have reached him and felled him before he heard it.
Nothing happened. Collis peered across the grass towards Grant Melford, and saw that he was standing there with an expression of almost comical horror, his thick eyebrows raised and his mouth open in a perfectly round O. A puff of white smoke was escaping across the grassy landscape behind him. He must have touched the sensitive trigger of his Lafoucheux before he had taken aim, and his shot had gone wide.
A slight echo came back from across the lake. A flurry of birds had risen in the distance, and now they were settling again. Mr Snaith and Mr O’Rourke turned their heads of one accord and looked at Collis with almost as much theatrical dread as Grant Melford. Collis stood where he was, straight-backed, with the long-barrelled pistol clasped in both hands, aiming directly at Grant Melford’s head.
Collis, in that moment, had an insight into the meaning of real power. He didn’t have the slightest intention of killing Grant Melford now. That would have been brutal and pointless. But Grant Melford didn’t know that, and according to his own melodramatic code of conduct, Collis would have been quite justified in shooting him down at his leisure. He stood there, the poor boy, his arms down by his sides, his face caught in a spasm of honour. Collis made an elaborate show of taking a good long aim down the barrel of his pistol, and he could sense the terrible suspense, and the agony of each unfired moment.
What Grant Melford and his seconds didn’t understand was that if Collis killed him, Collis would have accepted Grant’s ridiculous premise that caustic remarks could be expunged only by shooting at people in fields; and, far worse, he would have thrown away the best opportunity he had yet had for coming to grips with the Melford family. An enraged Laurence Melford was one thing, but a Laurence Melford who would have to admit a grudging gratitude that his son’s life had been spared – that would be something else altogether.
Mr Snaith said, in a strained voice, ‘You may fire when ready, Mr Edmonds.’
Collis called back, ‘Thank you, Mr Snaith.’
He could see Dan McReady smoking and watching him with mild interest as he raised the Lafoucheux high over his head and fired it straight up into the sky. It kicked his wrist and let out a stunning bang.
Mr O’Rourke suddenly began to clap, but he stopped as soon as Grant Melford glared at him. Suffused with outrage now, and crimson instead of white, Grant came stalking across the grass towards Collis and stood there with his fists on his hips.
‘You didn’t have to do that, you know,’ he said loudly. ‘There’s no honour in shooting deliberately wide.’
Collis lowered his empty gun. He smiled. ‘You’re only annoyed because I made you look like an idiot. But I would have looked an even bigger idiot if I’d killed you. Now, can we consider this matter settled?’
Grant took a deep breath. ‘I suppose that etiquette demands that we have to.’
‘Well, that’s very good,’ said Collis. ‘Did you remember to bring the champagne?’
Grant looked at him, and Collis realized with surprise that the boy’s lower lip was trembling.
‘I – I only brought – one glass,’ Grant said.
Tears filled his eyes, and he quickly turned away, and hurried past Mr Snaith and Mr O’Rourke towards his carriage, which was waiting by the shore. The doctor coughed, picked up his bag, and walked slowly after him. Collis stood watching him go, and nobody else seemed to know what to do next.
Eventually, Mr Snaith came over to Collis and held out his hand for the pistol. Collis lifted the Lafoucheux, looked at it, and then gave Mr Snaith a small shake of the head.
‘A souvenir,’ he said. ‘A small reminder that the pursuit of honour for its own sake can lead to sudden death at the hands of people you hardly know.’
Chapter 9
He returned to Sacramento the following Monday, tired, and almost glad to be back. It was much warmer inland, and he stood on the deck of the paddle-steamer with his coat unbuttoned. The steamer edged in towards the Front Street embankment, its paddles churning up the muddy river into brown foam, and the longshoremen and idlers watched it come in, leaning against trees and posts as if they were trying to form a human alphabet.
Collis saw Wang-Pu waiting for him in the shade of a red-berried elder, in a morning coat and hat. A few yards away, tethered to a rail, was Jane McCormick’s horse and carriage, which Wang-Pu must have borrowed. The implications of that weren’t lost on Collis, and he smiled to himself. The homely Mrs McCormick appeared to have missed him.
Before he disembarked, Collis talked to the steamer’s mate, a man with a striped jersey and a head the colour and shape of a brass pot. He wanted his cargo of hardware unloaded as smartly as possible, and taken down to No. 54 K Street. He gave the mate two five-dollar gold pieces, which the mate pinched between his black-edged thumbnails, as a kind of impromptu assay, and then dropped into a chamois bag tied around his neck.
Collis walked down the plank, and Wang-Pu came forward and raised his hat. ‘Good afternoon, Mr Edmonds. A pleasant journey?’
‘The ship’s piano was out of tune and the oysters were off, but apart from that, yes.’
‘Mrs McCormick sends her compliments.’
‘So I see.’
They walked across the dust of Front Street to the carriage and climbed aboard. Wang-Pu snapped the whip at the horse’s ears, and they turned and trotted south towards K Street. The afternoon sun shone through the spokes of the wheels, and through the rustling leaves of the elders and bitter cherries.
‘Mr Jones has been asking after you, too,’ said Wang-Pu.
‘Oh, yes?’
‘He says he wants to go to Washington in February, and that he’s booked your tickets on the California already.’
‘That’s presumptuous of him,’ remarked Collis.
‘Maybe,’ said Wang-Pu.
Collis turned and looked at him. ‘Why only maybe? What do you know about this that I don’t?’
Wang-Pu looked back at him blandly. ‘If you must know, I heard from a Chinese friend of mine in San Francisco. He wrote me about a certain warehouse fire on Davis Street, not so many days ago. I have the letter here, in my pocket. I wish you could read Pekingese, because the letter is full of very subtle implications. One of the characters has the unusual meaning: “that which was already consumed was consumed again”.’
Collis pursed his lips, but then relaxed and smiled
. ‘It seems nobody can keep a secret from you.’
Wang-Pu snapped the whip. ‘Secrets are the stock in trade of the Chinese people,’ he said. ‘We deal in secrets the way you deal in gunpowder and nails.’
‘So you told Theodore Jones that I was probably back in business?’
Wang-Pu nodded. ‘I gave him to understand that if you had been prepared to take advantage of Mr Teach by arranging to sell him your burned blankets, and then to burn them a second time, to conceal the fact of their first burning, then your interest in building the Pacific railroad must be almost as strong as his. If not stronger.’
‘So he bought the tickets to Washington on your recommendation?’ asked Collis.
‘You could say that.’
Collis thought for a moment. ‘What’s your interest in this? Really?’
Wang-Pu was climbing down from the carriage and readjusting the slightly jaunty angle of his hat. ‘My interest, Mr Edmonds? Only in fulfilling those things which have already been foretold.’
‘What’s been foretold? That Theodore Jones would drag me off to Washington because some interfering Chinaman told him it might be a good idea?’
‘You mustn’t take offence,’ said Wang-Pu. ‘Everything that happens is predicted. I consulted three fortune-tellers. All were in accord.’
‘What did they tell you? To look out for a New York greenhorn in a silk hat?’
Wang-Pu was silhouetted against the setting sun. Its rays burned from his left shoulder like a dazzling epaulette. His figure was slight and lean, and his head was that almond-shaped oval of the northern Chinese.
‘They spoke in symbols, as they always do,’ Wang-Pu said. ‘But they told me that I would be the first among my people to see the gate through the distant mountains, and that in the company of a white devil, I would lead hundreds of Chinese in the building of the greatest pathway this world has ever known. They said I would touch the robes of great glory.’
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