Mojave (10 page)

“Who's behind this?” Whip asked. “Who wants me dead? Besides you? Who wants my merchandise?”

“I . . .”

Slapped again.

Whip Watson backed away from the blubbering Canfield, picking up his blacksnake whip.

“One way or the other,” Whip told the marriage man, “you'll talk. How's it gonna be?”

“You'll kill me anyway.” Rogers Canfield sobbed.

“Maybe, but this way”—he gestured with the blacksnake—“you won't have any skin left on you. Ain't that right, Micah Bishop?”

The Winchester felt heavy in my hands. I swallowed down more bile and said, “Better tell him.”

“You won't kill me?” Rogers Canfield begged.

Whip cracked the whip, just a little.

Canfield slid back in his chair, raising his hands over his face. “All right!” He wet his britches. “Please. It wasn't my idea.”

“Never figured it was. You deal in
wedded bliss,
not assassinations.”

I didn't know nothing about what they was talking about, but I did know that Rogers Canfield had tried to get me killed. So I didn't care much for him. I moved away from the window, away from Whip's whip, and stepped into the open doorway. I looked down the hallway, half expecting the law to come racing up those stairs, but then I recollected that Calico had no law. No jail. Just seven dead men.

I tried to recollect where the undertaker's office was in this town. He'd have a right prosperous day.

“Who?” Whip Watson's voice jerked my attention back into the marriage broker's office.

“But . . .”

“Who?”

“I can't . . .” The whip cut a slice off Rogers Canfield's left knee. Wailing like banshees are always wailing, he gripped his knee and said, “All right! All right. It was her idea.”

Her? That caused me to straighten. It caused Whip to even step back a couple paces as he gathered up the blacksnake.

A moment of silence. Then Whip said, “Crutchfield?”

Rogers Canfield's head bobbed slightly.

“Son of a bitch.” Whip turned to me. “Candy Crutchfield,” he said. “Should have figured on her.”

I nodded. Just to do something. I didn't know Candy Crutchfield from Adam's housecat.

“Figures. Does she have merchandise, too?”

Whip had turned back to Rogers Canfield.

“She said she did. And . . .” Canfield's Adam's apple, raw and puckered and bleeding a mite from the whip, bobbed.

“And what?” Whip said.

Canfield's head turned, as if he expected the whip to slash again. “She said she'd take yours, too.”

Whip swore. “And you figured what the hell, more money for you.”

“No, Whip? I mean—”

“Stop it. You've told me all I need to know. Now I'm telling you something. I'll take care of Candy. But there are seven dead men, Canfield,” Whip said. “You're paying for the funerals. I don't give a damn about the six you sent to kill us. Throw them over the canyon wall with the rest of the garbage and let those China devils deal with them, but Guttersnipe Gary gets a pine box and at least four mourners.”

“Of course.” He pushed himself to his feet, leaning over, gripping his bloody leg. “I'll get the money right now.” He moved toward his desk. I saw the little pocket gun. So did Canfield. So did Whip. Figured the fool would make a try for it, but he went to a far drawer, pulled it open, withdrew a money box.

This got set on the desk, and he found a key, unlocked the box, pushed it open, and pulled out a handful of greenbacks.

“How much?” he begged.

“Hold it!” Watson snapped.

The paper money floated to the floor. Rogers Canfield done something else in his pants.

“I see that pistol.” Watson had put the whip over his shoulder, but his right hand had drew one of the Colts, cocked it, aimed it at Rogers Canfield's chest.

“I wasn't . . .” the broker stammered.

“Just so you don't get any notions,” Whip said. “Pick it up. Gently. And toss it into that spittoon.”

“Yes, Whip. Yes, sir.” Rogers Canfield done just like he was told. Well, almost. He never got to the tossing the pistol into the spittoon because as soon as he picked it up, Whip Watson shot him dead.

“He had a gun in his hand,” Watson said as he walked past me in the doorway, slipping the smoking .45 into his sash. “That makes it self-defense.”

Which is what Whip told Mr. Slater out on the street. And since one of the other Brown Suits went upstairs to find the late Rogers Canfield/Ronen Kanievsky lying in his own waste and blood with a hammerless .32 in his right hand, the vigilance committee ruled the death of Mr. Canfield, plus those six other killings, as self-defense, and poor Guttersnipe Gary as a murder in which the culprits were now roasting on a spit in hell.

Mr. Slater was satisfied. Justice had been served. What's more, his brother happened to be Calico's undertaker, and there was enough money on Canfield's office floor to pay for eight funerals, especially since only Guttersnipe Gary would be given any mourners.

Me and Whip wouldn't be around to pay our last respects.

“Take the carriage to the livery,” Whip told me as we walked to where we'd left the buggy and Whip's black mare in front of the Globe Chop House. “Know the one?”

“Applewhite's?” I said.

“That's right.” He handed me a wad of greenbacks. “Leave the carriage there. Tell the owner that I want the leather spotless when we get back. And the horses grained and rubbed down every day. Then pick out the best mount he has. One that can carry you hard, fast, and far. Get a good saddle.” He glanced at the Winchester I held. “With a scabbard. And a saddlebag. Fill one bag with boxes of cartridges for that long gun.”

I hoped I could remember all that.

“I'll meet you inside Noel's saloon. Then we ride.” He said, “You want to speak to me, don't you?”

Which I knowed wasn't directed at me. Whip turned to look at a guy with gold-rimmed spectacles and ink-stained fingers.

“Yes, sir,” the man said. “If you don't mind. If you're up to it after all this . . . ahem . . . er . . . well, I'm with the
Calico Print.
”

Whip stepped onto the boardwalk. “Always have time for the press, sir. Let's talk in the saloon. I'll buy you a whiskey.”

 

 

The fellow at Applewhite's sold me a four-year-old zebra dun that he swore had some Arabian in him and wouldn't let me down. Course, the horse was actually six years old, but knowing what I knew about horseflesh, I figured he was right about this gelding's stamina. We haggled a mite, and I reminded him of Whip Watson's instructions for carriage care, and we finally come to an understanding and a price.

I sat on the top corral fence while he had one of his boys saddle the dun for me and made out my bill of sale. Then a voice called out right behind me, “Mister American Gentleman. Mister American Gentleman.”

Cringing, I dropped on the horse side of the corral, and saw Lucky Ben Wong bowing slightly, looking up apologetic. I figured he'd be mad as hell for me disturbing his place of business, leaving two dead men in Chinatown, and, well, doing some remodeling of his abode.

I pulled out some greenbacks from my vest pocket, stuck them between the rails of the corral, and said, “Sorry about your wall.” Which was true. “I didn't want you hurt, killed maybe, so that's why I left like that and . . .”

He shook his head. “No. No. Not your fault. Bad guys shoot at you. No. No money.” He shrugged. “Plenty money I make.”

Lucky Ben Wong's hands had been behind his back. As he brought them into view, I reached for my .36, but he didn't hold no weapon but my new hat with the new hole through the center. He stuck it toward me, and I thanked him as I took it, pulled it between the rails, and settled it on my head.

The man who may or may not have been Applewhite brought over the zebra dun and the bill of sale. I'd already given him the cash, and he said, “Pleasure doing business with you.”

“Likewise,” I said, and took the reins.

He frowned at the hole in my hat, then give an even more distasteful look at Lucky Ben Wong, and went back to talk to his boys, not even opening the gate for me, but Lucky Ben Wong did that, and I led the dun out of the livery.

“Is it true?” Lucky Ben Wong asked as I walked my new horse back toward the center of Calico.

“Is what true?” I said.

“That Mister Canfield, dealer in matrimony, now dead?”

I stopped to give Lucky Ben Wong a different kind of look. Then I remembered him telling me that he was going to get married.

“It's true,” I said. Adding a bald-faced lie: “Self-defense.” And walked some more.

“Lucky Ben Wong no lucky,” Lucky Ben Wong said, still walking alongside me. “Feel sad.”

I wet my lips. We were approaching a gun shop, where I could get some boxes for the Winchester in the scabbard, but stopped, and looked again at Lucky Ben Wong, waiting until he looked up at me.

He did. Tears filled his eyes. He sniffed.

“Lucky Ben Wong,” I said, “just what in hell is going on in this here town?”

He stepped back, and I feared he might run off, but he motioned to a ton of hay—didn't know where they found hay in this desert, either—in an empty lot between the livery and the gun shop. He went halfway down, then sat on a bale. I tethered the dun to the fence so he could eat for free some of Applewhite's hay, since Applewhite had tried to sell me a four-year-old horse that was really six.

Lucky Ben Wong sat, head down. I leaned against the picket wall of the gun shop, bending my left leg, resting the sole and heel of my boot against the wall. Then the little Chinese dude looked up.

“Rogers Canfield,” he said, “deals in mail-order brides.” Only when he said it, he didn't sound like most Chinese dudes I've heard talking. That pidgin English—which some folks accuse me of speaking— had a Chinese accent, certain-sure, but it wasn't broken. And Lucky Ben Wong didn't look like he was about to cry. He looked mad. I dropped my leg, and hooked my thumb in my new $7.33 gun belt, next to my holstered Spiller & Burr.

“What happens,” he asked me, “to me and everyone else now that Mister Canfield is dead?”

That's when I knew what kind of merchandise Whip Watson was hauling in those four Conestogas.

 

 

One time me and Big Tim Pruett had wintered in a cabin high up in the Sangre de Christo Mountains in Colorado, on account that the law was chasing after us down below, and the only thing we had to read was a copy of the
Matrimonial News,
Kansas City edition.

All right, we didn't read too much. Mostly looked at the pictures.

Of the girls. Not the men.

There was folks making twelve dollars a year, and folks making five hundred thousand dollars (which me and Big Tim Pruett figured was an exaggeration, like the Applewhite guy's judge of a horse's age). Folks of all ages, with lonely hearts, just wanting human companionship. Pretty girls, young and old, ugly girls, young and old, wanting to marry. And men, young and old, handsome and wretched-looking, wanting . . . well, you know.

So, say Big Tim Pruett saw a picture of a girl he fancied. He'd write a letter, send it to the
Matrimonial News
office in Kansas City, with the number of the advertisement he fancied wrote down on the envelope. The editor would forward the letter, I guess, to the gal. Maybe the gal would reply. Anyway, before you knowed it, the girl would show up and Big Tim Pruett would get hisself hitched.

That's one way to do it. My preference was to find a soiled dove who didn't charge too much and who was cleaner and prettier than Betty and then be gone next morning or maybe after ten minutes. The other way to do it was the way Lucky Ben Wong done it.

“I paid Mister Canfield five hundred dollars,” Lucky Ben Wong said. “He found her for me. He said he was bringing her into Calico. We would be married, and then I'd sell all my interests, all my claims, even my place in East Calico. We would move to San Francisco.”

“And live happily ever after?” I said with a smile.

He smiled back. Yes, sir, he had a real pretty smile for a Chinese man. “Not in California,” he said. He pulled his pigtail around so I could see it. “This is why I have my queue. It is a sin to cut your queue. In the old days, you could be killed for cutting your hair.”

Which struck me as odd, since Lucky Ben Wong had just cut my hair for $1.09.

“But that's in China,” I said. “You're in America.”

“But like most people from my country, we do not wish to remain in America. We hope to return after we have made our fortune.”

“And you have?”

The pigtail went behind his back. “And I have found love.”

“Why the phony broken English?” I asked him.

As he reached inside his shirt, he shrugged and answered. “It's how you Americans expect us to talk.” He pulled out a locket that hung on a rawhide cord, pulled it over his head, and passed it to me. I turned the locket over, and sucked in my breath.

“My Jingfei is very beautiful,” Lucky Ben Wong said, “is she not?”

“She is.” I could only whisper.

“Jingfei means . . .”

“Quiet Not,” I whispered, still staring at the image.

When I handed the locket and thong back to him, he was giving me a cold, calculating stare. I said, “You pick up things in my line of work. Names and such.” And bullet wounds . . . and jail sentences . . . and the clap . . . “Where is she from?”

“Trinidad, Colorado,” Lucky Ben Wong said.

“Never been there,” I lied.

That satisfied him, and he slipped the thong and locket over his head, and I watched Jingfei disappear inside his black silk shirt.

I got a little more curious. “Did she have to pay Canfield, too?”

His head bobbed. “Two hundred dollars.”

I whistled. Had I known all the money that could be made dealing in wedded bliss, I might have chosen another line of work.

“Canfield promised to bring your intended here?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“He'd pay expenses?”

His head shook. “No. I sent Jingfei the money to get to Prescott.” He even pronounced it right. Press-kit. Instead of Press-cot. “That's in Arizona.”

“Why not all the way here?” I asked.

“Because Mister Canfield said he had enough brides that his wedding present to us would be to arrange for transportation from Prescott to Calico. He was a good man, this Mister Canfield.”

He was a boil on my butt, I thought. Then I said, “Enough brides?”

He nodded. “I am not the only one who found his true love through the late Mister Canfield.”

“How many other . . .” Had to stop myself from saying
suckers.
Instead, I said, “ . . . gents here are expecting brides from Canfield?”

“Does it matter?” Before I could answer he said, “But one man who came to partake of the opium, when he was in a deep state of delirium, he said, ‘Two dozen brides are coming to Calico.' Then he said some very things disrespectful about women in general. And Mister Canfield.”

I tried to savvy and sort all this out. All I got was a headache, so I started rubbing the bridge of my nose.

“With Mister Canfield dead,” Lucky Ben Wong said, “I fear Jingfei will not come to marry me. Our deal—”

“She's still coming.” I dropped my hand, and give Lucky Ben Wong the best smile I could muster. He looked back at me like he didn't understand. Course, I wasn't sure I understood anything at all. Still, I told him, “Watson's bringing her.” He didn't know Whip, and I wished I didn't. “Man I work for. The man who killed Canfield . . . in . . . self . . . defense.”

He blinked. Stood on weak knees, and said to me, “But I still owe—”

I cut him off, all incredulous: “
More money?
”

His little head bobbed quickly. “Yes. Yes. The money I paid Mister Canfield was a down payment.”

A down payment on a wife. Hard to figure. I was pushing up my new hat with the hole in the middle, and now my head was really hurting. Lucky Ben Wong kept right on talking. “The contract I signed with—”

“You signed a contract?”

“But of course. It is how business is done in America.”

Hell, I hadn't asked Whip Watson for no contract. Wasn't even certain if I'd shook his hand.

“How much do you owe?”

He told me he owed $250. That made a bride in Calico, California, worth $950. Lessen the expenses the late Rogers Canfield had paid Whip Watson to haul his
merchandise
in from Prescott.

Only thing I could do was put my hand on Lucky Ben Wong's shoulder, give it a squeeze, and tell him, “Don't fret. I'll bring Jingfei in. That I promise you.” Like my word was good for anything.

But the little man accepted it, bowed, thanked me, spoke some Chinese, then, since a couple of fellows was coming down the street toward the gun shop and in earshot of us, went back to his busted-up English.

“Lucky Ben Wong feel lucky. Me thank Mister American Gentlemen. Must go. Must go. Must fix house.” Some more Chinese, and he was running, down the street, and I was moving to the bale of hay, and gathering the reins, and leading my new gelding the few feet to the hitching post.

 

 

As I stood at the counter of Wechsler's gun shop, waiting for my boxes of .44-40 cartridges for the late Paul's Winchester, I done some studying.

Whip Watson was delivering twenty-four brides to Rogers Canfield, and various other sundries to other merchants. Rogers Canfield, however, had also entered an arrangement with some witch named Candy Crutchfield. I tried to recollect that conversation Whip was having with Canfield before Whip had ended the conversation with a .45 slug through Canfield's heart.

Whip had asked Canfield if she had merchandise, too, and Canfield had said, “She said she did.”

So maybe that meant Candy Crutchfield was bringing in her own load of brides. And she had bribed Canfield into hiring some worthless man-killers to put Whip Watson and his employees—in this case, me and Guttersnipe Gary—out of business. Hadn't worked out quite the way Crutchfield and Canfield had figured, thanks to Whip Watson.