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  Both of them started off the wagon, but I turned the rifle barrel and pointed it at the big cuss. “Not you, mister. You stay and scratch the dog’s ears.”

  That’s what he started to do.

  “And you give me information.”

  He nodded. The driver was already at my horse. Keeping the rifle on the big one, I used my other hand to unloop the canvas strap so the skinny one could take my canteen to the back of the water wagon.

  “Is Whip Watson in town?” I asked.

  “Who?” the big one asked back.

  “You’d know if he was.” Which meant he wasn’t. Waiting then, because even with those buses loaded down with petticoats, parasols, and Gatling guns, he should have reached Calico by now.

  I didn’t expect Candy Crutchfield to be in town yet, not walking. Hell, she was probably dead in the desert. But I asked anyway.

  “Who?” both men answered. The skinny driver was hurrying back with my canteen.

  “Any women in town?” I asked.

  “What kind?” the big one answered.

  “Not boardinghouse operators,” I told them.

  They blinked.

  “Soiled doves!” I snapped.

  They blinked again. “Well,” the skinny driver said as he inched back toward the mule-drawn wagon. “You mean . . . Betty?”

  “No. Not her.” While the driver climbed back into the box, I took the canteen he had draped over my horn, pulled out the stopper, and let that tepid, awful, iron-tasting water go down my dried-up tongue and throat and into my empty stomach. Not too much, though. Didn’t want to get sick.

  I spit out some, because I knowed I wasn’t going to die of thirst, or pay for water, and told the driver, “You’d charge a man three dollars for this?”

  He shrugged.

  The big guy wore a bowler. I told him to fill his hat with water so my horse could drink. It taken him a lot longer to climb out of the wagon, and he had to ask the driver for instructions on how to get the water out of the back.

  “Same way we get it in,” the driver yelled back, “only in reverse.”

  I could have ridden to the Colorado River and back by the time Yago got to drink, but I kept my interview going during that eternity.

  “How’s The Palace of Calico?” I called out to either the skinny one, the big idiot, or hell, even the dog.

  “The what?” the dog answered.

  I’m funning you. It was the skinny driver who said that.

  “Big building. Wood frame. Going up at the end of town. Next to Miller’s store.”

  “It’s gonna be a palace?” the driver asked.

  The big one from the back of the water wagon said, “With princesses and knights and fairies?”

  I sighed. Holding up water wagons ain’t what it used to be.

  “Is it finished?” I demanded.

  “Fancy windows went in the other day,” the big one called. Then he yelled. “Hey, Cicero, how do I stop the water from coming out?”

  Cicero’s head shook, and he rubbed his temples with his thick, disgusting fingers. “Stick your finger in the dike,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Just turn the knob the other way.”

  “Oh.”

  Moments later. “Hey . . . that worked.”

  The dog whimpered. So did I. Hell, I think Yago rolled his eyes.

  “Listen,” I said, trying to show some patience. “Is there any strangers in town?”

  “Are there?” Kermit was coming around, water slopping over the edges of his brown bowler. He slid to a stop in front of Yago and held out the water for the Arabian to drink.

  “What?” I said.

  “He used to teach school,” Cicero said. “But got kicked in the head by a mule.”

  Yago drunk. I yelled, “Is there any strangers in town?”

  “Are there?” Kermit said, his face smiling. “Are there any strangers in town? Not, Is there. That’s just ignorant.”

  “Some new miners,” Cicero called out. He looked worried. Might have thought I was about to kill his pard, which, I must admit, had just crossed my mind. “Even some more damned Chinamen.”

  I lowered the gun. What I thought was a pretty good notion had struck me.

  “No gunmen, though?” I said. “Just miners?”

  “Gunmen?” Kermit stepped back, but that was all right because I didn’t want Yago to drink too much water. Especially the water that was to be stole, or even bought, from the Calico Water Works Incorporated in that wagon.

  “Not since the last shooting,” Cicero said. “That was some affray.”

  Affray? He must have gotten that from Kermit during one of his lucid spells.

  “Do you know that Colonel Wilson J. M. Drury, the famous writer, is in town?” Kermit said, lucid for a spell. “He’s writing a novel about what happened a week or so ago.”

  “Thirty men killed,” called out Cicero, who wasn’t lucid.

  “He’s staying at the Hyena House,” Kermit said. “Waiting on remuneration from his publisher for his last work for Beadle and Adams Five Cent Library.”

  The Winchester returned to the scabbard, and I nodded at the dog. “Thanks for your help, gentlemen,” I told Cicero and Kermit. “Don’t tell anybody that you saw me.”

  I let Yago lope up the hill, into the canyon, even pushed him into a gallop. Had to get away from Cicero and Kermit, or risk becoming stupid and ignorant. Well, I quickly decided that I was being harsh on those two boys. They had a nice dog. Didn’t mean no harm. And they had even give me an idea.

  Whip Watson wasn’t in town. Not yet. The Palace of Calico wasn’t finished. Maybe Whip was waiting for its completion, but that might take awhile. At some point, though, he would ride into town. Only he’d think I was dead. He’d think he could ride in, and start charging Calico prices for . . . well . . . you know.

  Yet if my plan worked, he’d be riding right into an ambush. I could get Calico’s vigilance committee behind me, but I needed someone who knowed who was who and what was what and how Calico run things. Someone who was trusted by everyone in town. Someone who trusted me. And I needed not to be seen by one of Whip’s boys, because even if Whip and the girls wasn’t in Calico, I had to think he’d have some spies lurking on that main street.

  That took me right to the Calico cemetery.

  As boneyards go, it’s more than fair. Big rock wall all around it. White cross on top of the wall with a nice, big gate. I reined in Yago, slid from the saddle, pushed open the gate, and let the horse inside.

  Then I closed the gate, looped the reins over the arm of the nearest crooked cross, found myself a shady spot, and sat down with the canteen of tepid water.

  Lots of towns I’ve been in, they have all sorts of cemeteries. There’s one for the Catholics and another for the Israelites. You’ll find another for the Negroes, and usually a real big one for all the paupers, the tinhorns, the cowboys, the gunmen. Calico only had one cemetery. Now, it was divided into sections. I saw the six-pointed star off in one corner, and figured that was for the Israelites. And the one without no markers, nothing, that had to be where the Chinese got planted. And way off yonder in the back, the biggest section of all, must have been Calico’s potter’s field. That’s where I saw the mounds of fresh dirt. Eight of them. Would have been backbreaking, sweaty work to dig all those holes, then shovel dirt and rocks back over the coffin, or tarp, or nothing but the dead men’s clothes. Just sticks in the ground for tombstones, with six of them already washed away or blown down. Made me wonder which of them mounds was Guttersnipe Gary’s final resting place, and if Rogers Canfield knowed he’d be spending eternity with gunmen and not alongside regular, law-abiding folks like “Here Lies Joe Turning, Killed in Cave-In, 1883” or “Whit Stacey, Struck by Lightning” or “John R. Robinson, Hanged By Mistake.” Calico’s finest.

  Wasn’t long till I heard the squeaking wheel of the Calico Water Works Incorporated wagon. Then I heard nothing. The sun sank, the wind began to moan, and I wa
ited in the graveyard. Which would unnerve quite a few people, I reckon, but I’d dragged dead bodies into a shot-to-hell omnibus in the middle of the night with angry coyotes and wolves and ravens and buzzards giving me their evilest eyes. I’d survived the Devil’s Playground, the worst sand dunes I’d ever seen except in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly, and the cruel Mojave Desert. I’d been whipped by Whip Watson and lived to tell about it.

  I wasn’t frightened by no ghosts.

  When the moon rose, I led Yago out of the cemetery, climbed into the saddle, and rode around the long rock wall. Rode into the canyon, which widened, then narrowed, then deepened.

  Soon, I saw lights and smelled food cooking, heard dogs yapping, finally growling and barking at me. I rode past the dismal huts, past the chickens and ducks. I came to the ladder that had fallen and taken Pink Shirt to his demise. Well, it wasn’t that ladder. Was a new one, sturdier, but still not built for the likes of me.

  I tethered Yago to a clump of creosote, put the hobbles on his front legs, taken the Winchester, and went up the ladder to the ledge, then up the steps in the rocks, and found myself in East Calico.

  Course, I had to feel my way around. It’s one thing when you’re walking through Chinatown at night. Things look different than when you’re in broad daylight and running from building to building, shack to shack, trying not to get killed by two hired assassins.

  Eventually, I found a place I knowed all too well. For a second, I stood there amazed. I mean, Lucky Ben Wong had fixed up his bathhouse, which I’d damned near destroyed. Maybe that’s why he used empty coal oil cans.

  As I come up to the entrance, the makeshift door of India rubber tarp swung open, and I stepped aside, pulling my hat down low. Didn’t want no one to recognize me, even East Calico.

  “Look fine, look fine, best-looking gentleman in Calico.” Lucky Ben Wong was right behind this tall, stout gent in what appeared to be a brown sack suit. Lucky Ben Wong was dusting off Brown Sack Suit’s shoulders with a fine linen handkerchief.

  “Yes, yes, yes, look fine, fine, come.”

  Brown Sack Suit grunted and hurried away from the house that smelled of dirty bathwater and kerosene. If he seen me, he give no indication.

  Lucky Ben Wong kept bowing after the guy’s back, till he rounded the corner, then Lucky Ben Wong straightened, started to go inside, but caught my shadow. He leaped back, and I stepped forward.

  “Don’t worry,” I whispered. “It’s me.”

  “Haircut?” he asked. “You look awful. Awful. Me fix. Me fix. Ask anybody. Haircut. Bath. What need you?”

  “It’s me, Lucky Ben,” I said.

  He still didn’t recognize me.

  “Opium?” He grinned. “Best in California. No find good stuff even on Barbary Coast. Good stuff. Make you crazy.”

  “Lucky Ben . . .”

  “Stake? Miner? Want money? Come back in morning. No money business this time dark.”

  By that time, I’d stepped into the light coming out of the cracks between the coal oil cans. That stopped him and his silly damned accent.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said. “Micah Bishop, what in hell happened to you?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Since I was already there, it seemed like a pretty good idea, so I had me a hot bath, and Lucky Ben Wong brewed up some real fine tea, rang a little bell outside what passed for that front door, and this Chinese girl appeared quick as a genie would in a storybook, and Lucky Ben Wong handed her all my clothes and told her to run to her ma’s laundry and get my duds as clean as possible and return them immediately. I didn’t tell them that the clothes wasn’t mine to begin with, and I’d never heard of leather pants being sent to a laundry, mainly because I was pretty relaxed by this time. The water and soap burned at first, but before long the welts on my back, and the bullet hole through my arm, and the rope burns on my palms didn’t hurt so bad. Felt rather content, or as content as I could feel with all that was going on—and all that would be happening soon.

  No, I didn’t smoke no opium.

  Sitting, relaxing in the tub, sipping tea, I told Lucky Ben Wong all that had happened. But I kept that Winchester rifle leaning against the tub, cocked, ready . . . just in case I had been spotted. I mean, the last time I’d been at Lucky Ben Wong’s place, I’d damned near gotten myself killed, and things like that I don’t often forget.

  Lucky Ben Wong had to pull up a stool, and sit down, head bowed, shaking his head as I dealt him my story. He didn’t interrupt me once, the Chinese being real polite. When I was finished he stared at me and asked:

  “You were alone with my Jingfei . . . at night?”

  “No.” Almost spilt tea into the soapy, dirty water. “Never alone.” Hell, I had Peach Fuzz for a chaperone. And Candy Crutchfield.

  “But she is all right?”

  All I could do was shrug, and kind of hedge my bet, so to speak. “Well, she was. I mean she was alive.”

  He nodded, and pushed back the little cap on his head.

  “How many were killed?”

  “Well,” I said, “that would take some tallying.” I hadn’t kept track of all the bodies I’d loaded and cremated in that omnibus. “There was Peach Fuzz . . . the two Zekes—”

  This time, Lucky Ben Wong lost his patience. “The girls.” I detected an edge in his voice. “How many girls were killed?”

  “Six when the Conestoga rolled,” I told him. “Bonnie Little. Three others in the back of the horse-bus.” Didn’t like thinking about those poor girls, but now I had to. “Couple others might have gotten scratched up or winged, but nothing that looked mortal.”

  “And Jingfei . . . she was . . . unscathed?”

  Well, now, I couldn’t exactly say that anybody, male or female, had come out of that ruction unscathed. Granted, I didn’t think none of them had been as mauled and mutilated as I’d been. Jingfei had caught some splinters in her leg, probably had a few more cuts and bruises, but as I done some studying and remembering, I was also looking into Lucky Ben Wong’s eyes, and they’d had turned as hard as Jingfei’s was prone to do. So I told him:

  “She’s finer than frog’s hair cut eight ways.”

  His look didn’t change.

  “She wasn’t hurt,” I said. Not saying, but thinking, Too badly.

  “That is good.” He bowed. “That is good. I thank you, Micah Bishop. My Jingfei thanks you.”

  I finished the tea and reluctantly climbed out of the tub. Lucky Ben Wong fetched me a real soft towel and one of them nice silk robes. I dried myself off and put on the robe, waited for that girl to come back so I could get dressed in clothes fit for a man to wear.

  Then I sat down on the bench, and pushed away the opium pipes, keeping that Winchester on my lap. When Lucky Ben Wong returned, handing me a cup of tea, he couldn’t take his eyes off my rifle.

  “You are nervous?” He nodded at the long gun.

  “Careful,” I told him.

  He fired up a cigar and plopped down on the stool again.

  “So there are thirty-eight brides? Between these girls being transported by this Watson man and this Crutchfield woman?”

  “That sounds about right.”

  His head shook. “And this Palace of Calico . . . it was to be . . . a . . . a . . . a . . . ?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But you cannot make anyone do what one does not wish to do? This is America, is it not?”

  “It’s California,” I told him.

  “My Jingfei would never do what they wish her to do.”

  I smiled. He read “Quiet Not” the same way I did.

  “She’d rather die,” Lucky Ben Wong said. “She would die first.”

  Which killed my smile. I set the China cup on some drool left by the last person to partake of Lucky Ben Wong’s opium.

  “Well, Watson thinks I’m dead. So I’ve been trying to come up with a plan—so that Jingfei don’t have to do nothing drastic and dramatic and all.”

  He leaned fo
rward. “You are good at planning?”

  I shrugged, then nodded, then had to shake my head. “Not really . . . but there are the vigilance committee.”

  “Is,” he said.

  I said, “How’s that?”

  He said, “There is the vigilance committee. Not are. Are is plural. Is is singular.”

  “I see,” I said. What I saw was me beating the hell out of Lucky Ben Wong and Kermit Of The Calico Water Works . . . Incorporated During A Lucid Moment.

  “That’s why I’m here,” I went on. “I don’t know Calico. I don’t know this country. Watson said he had sent his girls, the ones he had left, to hole up in some canyon around these parts. Then he was bringing in Crutchfield’s gals and the six Crutchfield had woman-napped, and, of course, your Jingfei. They’d meet up in that canyon.”

  He sighed. Puffed on the cigar. Shook his head.

  “There are many canyons in these mountains.” Holding up his right hand, he started with the thumb and progressed to his fingers. “Wall Street Canyon . . . Mule Canyon . . . Odessa Canyon.” Me? When counting on my hands, I always started with my pointer finger as my Number One, and I’d knowed some who’d use their thumb as Number One, but I’d always used my thumb for Number Five, but Lucky Ben Wong started with his pinky finger as Number One, which was just real strange.

  I stopped him. “He has thirty-eight girls with him,” I reminded him. “He’ll want to parade them into town. That’s why he had those Columbus Carriages—cost three hundred dollars for one in Prescott.”

  “Some of the canyons are big enough to hide not only thirty-eight women, but wagons and horses and mules—”

  “And gunmen and Gatling guns,” I reminded him.

  “Those, too.” His head bobbed.

  “But if he’s gonna parade them women down Main Street, get the men folk all excited . . .”

  Lucky Ben Wong got my meaning. “He’d want them fresh. Clean.” That’s why Lucky Ben Wong run a bathhouse.

  “That’s right.” I smiled.

  “He’d need water.”

  “Which ain’t common here.”

  “Five miles from here.” He waved his hand in what I took was the general direction of where this town got its water.