Black Dove (5 page)

“Big Red?”

Then he looked down, goggling at his smoking derringer as if he had no earthly idea how it came to be in his hand.

He dropped the gun to the sidewalk as my brother came dashing up to join us.

“Old Red?” Chan said. “I . . . I’m so sorry.”

“Hey, don’t apologize to
him
,” I said as I stood up straight again. “I’m the one who almost got his melon drilled.”

Gustav swept off his Stetson and started beating me over the head with it.

“What the hell?” I snatched the hat out of his hands. “Why are
you
goin’ at me now?”

Old Red pointed at the top of my head. “Your hair’s still smokin’.”

“Sweet Jesus!”

I slapped my brother’s Boss of the Plains over my ears and pulled it down so tight the brim covered my eyes. After a moment, I lifted it back up again.

“Am I out?”

“You’re out,” Gustav said, grabbing his hat back.

I ran my fingers gingerly through my hair. The clump just over my face felt bristly and warm to the touch, and the skin over my
eyes
had a tingle that was slowly giving way to an unpleasant throb.

“Now I know how a match feels.”

“I’m so sorry,” Chan said again, apologizing to the right Amlingmeyer this time.

“Oh, don’t worry ’bout it, Doc,” I said. “I guess I just have that effect on some people.”

“It was an accident, really. I . . .”

Chan spun around and rushed back toward the store we’d
seen
him leave a minute before—a small, jumble-stuffed affair with Chinese lettering over the door and what looked like a giant, hairy carrot hanging in the window.

“Wait here! Please!” he called over his shoulder.

He pulled out a set of keys, unlocked the door to the shop, and disappeared inside.

“I sure hope he ain’t goin’ back for a shotgun,” I said.

Old Red ambled over to the gutter and retrieved my hat. “Don’t worry. He’s such a sorry shot, I don’t think he could hit you with a
cannon
.”

He handed me the battered bowler. It had landed top-down in an pile of brownish filth, and a few stringy strands of what looked like rotting jerky still clung to the crown.

“I have been havin’ the damnedest luck with my lids lately.” I brushed the hat off and pushed a pair of fingers through its fresh, ragged holes. “Had two shot off my head in as many months. Maybe I oughta make like Johnny Appleseed and take to wearin’ a tin pot.”

“Couldn’t look any dumber on you than that derby did.”

“Awww, you’re just old-fashioned.”

Off behind my brother, I noticed several merchants still staring at us from in front of their stores.

“Don’t rush over to help me all at once, now!” I called to them. “You’ll step on each other’s toes!”

I turned the other way and found more of the same: shopkeepers and their customers watching us warily, making no move to lend a hand or take to their heels, either one.

I held up the bowler.

“Any of y’all wanna buy a hat?”

I got no takers—or any reaction of any kind, for that matter. Just more stares.

“Quite an assortment of humanitarians they got around here.”

“They’re used to mindin’ their own business, that’s all,” Gustav said. He knelt down and picked up Chan’s discarded derringer. “Ain’t that different from some of the cow-towns we been through.”

“I suppose . . . only wouldn’t the local law have come around by now to see what’s what?” I took another look up and down the street and saw nothing but Chinamen, and not a one of them in blue. “I know Frisco’s supposed to be a wide-open town, but I wouldn’t think you could fire off a gun without bringin’ at least
one
copper a-runnin’.”

My brother shrugged. “Maybe the po-lease don’t hear so good if the shot’s comin’ from Chinatown.”

Chan came bustling out of his shop, a small, silver tin clutched in his hands.

“Here you go, Big Red.” He thrust the tin out toward me. “A medicinal balm. It should keep the skin from peeling.”

“Skin? Peelin’?” I touched my forehead lightly, my fingertips barely brushing against flesh. The sting was strong enough to make me wince. “Damn. Did my scalp get all scorchy?”

“Well, I don’t know if it’s ‘scorchy,’ ” Chan said miserably, still holding out his “balm.” “But you do have a little . . .
color
up there.”

“Looks like someone tried to iron out your skull,” Old Red said.

“Oh, that is just dandy.”

I eyed Chan’s tin suspiciously. In its center was a dollop of waxy, green paste. It looked like tallow mixed with mashed peas.

“You say that’ll help it heal up?”

“Oh, yes.” Chan scooped out some of the salve and stretched his goop-covered fingers up toward my face. “Please. Allow me.”

I let him smear the stuff over my forehead. Almost instantly, the stinging faded. There was a price to pay, though.

“Good god, Doc,” I said, giving the air a sour sniff. “What’s in that stuff, anyway?”

“Herbs. Ground roots.” Chan stepped back and inspected his handiwork—which gave him an excuse not to look me in the eye. “This and that.”

“Well, the ‘this’ stinks and the ‘that’ reeks.” I jammed my ruined derby down over my head. It chafed against my burn, but I was alright with some discomfort if it would stifle the stench. “How do I look?”

“Fine,” said Chan.

“Ridiculous,” said Gustav.

I sighed.

“Truly . . . I am so very sorry,” Chan said.

I waved a hand dismissively. “Oh, it was an accident. No need for more apologies.”

“It’d be good to hear a
reason
, though,” Old Red said.

For the first time, Chan seemed to be aware that we had an audience. His gaze darted up and down the street, at the other Chinamen out gawping at us like kids watching a circus parade.

“Yes. Certainly. Perhaps we could discuss it over a meal. I was just heading out for lunch, and I’d be honored if you’d join me. As my guests, of course. To make up for what happened.”

“Alright,” Gustav said with a nod. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, sounds good, Doc,” I threw in. “Why, if it’ll get us a free meal, you can take a potshot at me any time.”

Chan smiled weakly and headed back to close up his shop again. I caught a little glimpse of the inside, and it sure didn’t seem like any doctor’s office I’d ever seen. Bins and baskets lined the walls, all of them full of what appeared to be nuts, berries, and roots. Given that Chan called himself a doctor, I assumed it was a pharmacy . . . though one that looked like it was run by and for squirrels.

When Chan was done locking the door, he led us around the corner to a quiet, dimly lit restaurant—and one of the finest meals I’ve ever had.

Now, Chinese cooking was nothing new to me and my brother. Every city of any size in the West has its share of chop suey shacks, and Old Red and I track them down whenever we can, for Chinese food sports twin virtues men of our means can ill afford to ignore: It’s hot and it’s cheap.

But the eatery Chan took us to was a far cry from the drafty lean-tos we’d come to expect when sniffing out our next plate of chicken chow mein. It was clean, for one thing. And fancy, too—brightly colored tapes-tries hung from the walls, and every last bit of woodwork was festooned with ornate swirls and curlicues. The other customers were a prosperous lot, by the look of them—plump, chatty, and cheerful. A few were even dressed American-style, like Chan.

All stared openly as we took our seats.

Chan did the ordering in his mother tongue, talking to the waiter so long he may as well have saved himself the bother and just said, “One of everything, please.” And indeed that’s what it looked we were getting when the food started showing up. We were served soup, rice, dumplings, buns, and such a bewildering array of vegetables and meats I quickly lost track of what was what.

Chan whipped up quite the wind as the plates came and went, rattling on about how this or that dish had been prepared, which ingredients were local and which imported, the proper way to hold the “chopsticks” the Chinese did their eating with, and the special healing properties of a good cup of hot tea. Everything, it seemed, except why he’d tried to put a hole in my noggin not a half hour before.

Of course, I was too busy packing on fat for the winter to worry about pinning Chan down. But Gustav’s got about half the appetite I do and four times the curiosity. So naturally he was first to finish with the food and dig into the mystery.

“Thank you, Dr. Chan. That was a right tasty meal. I’m just glad my brother could be here to share it with us. You know . . . him almost havin’ his head shot off and all.”

Chan’s shoulders sagged, and it seemed only something taut and
unyielding in his gut kept him from slumping face-first into a mound of white rice.

“Yes. That was most unfortunate.”

The Chinaman’s usually light accent thickened, his voice suddenly sounding strained, labored, as if the words were sticking to his tongue like nut butter.

“I suppose I’ve been . . . on edge ever since my experience on the Pacific Express.”

“I understand entirely, Doc. It’s mighty unsettlin’ seein’ the Reaper take a swing at you.” I pointed at the last pork bun. “Anyone got their eye on that?”

Chan shook his head and Old Red rolled his eyes, so I snatched up the fluffy white doughball and tore into it.

“Seems to me you wasn’t just ‘on edge,’ Doc,” my brother said. “You was
prepared
. I mean, you didn’t have that hideout gun back on the Express, did you? And either you’ve put on some weight the last month or you’re wearin’ some kinda paddin’ or armor under that suit of yours.”

Chan squirmed nervously in his chair, his fidgeting creating strange bulges and ripples in his clothes so obvious even I finally noticed them. The doctor
was
wearing something heavy and stiff under his shirt.

“I see your eye for detail is as sharp as ever,” he said. “Yes, I bought a gun. And a chain-mail vest. For protection. Hard times are coming for this country—and that means
very
hard times for the Chinese here. After the last Panic, two thousand members of the Anti-Coolie League marched into Chinatown and tried to burn it to the ground. The League doesn’t have that kind of strength again . . . yet. But every day, more of my countrymen are beaten senseless by hoodlums from North Beach and the Barbary Coast. I’m not going to let that happen to
me
.”

“Good for you, Doc,” I said through a mouthful of pork bun. “Half the time, all you gotta do to rid yourself of bullyin’ riff-raff is stand up to ’em.”

“And the other half of the time, the riff-raff slits your throat,” Gustav snipped at me. Then he turned back to Chan, and his voice softened. “Still, I gotta wonder . . . why would you think them ‘hoodlums’ would come after
you
?”

“Well, it’s not just me, of course. They’ll abuse any Chinaman they can get—”

Old Red shook his head, and Chan trailed off into silence.

“Before you popped off your shot at my brother, he shouted to you,” Gustav said. “Called you by name more than once. Yet you drew on him anyway. Which says to me you ain’t just afraid of bein’ roughed up randomlike. You think someone’s gunnin’ for
you
.”

Chan’s gaze drifted down to the table. Aside from that, he didn’t move—or speak.

“You got money problems, Doc?” my brother asked him. We were at a corner table, with no one else nearby, yet he dropped his voice down whisper-quiet all the same. “Owe somebody, maybe? Somebody
mean
?”

Chan stayed so utterly still it looked like he was in a staring contest with a plate of fried pork.

“Look. Me and Otto, we know why you was on the Pacific Express,” Gustav went on gently. “Found out the whole story ’fore the train took that dive over a mountainside. You was bringin’ back arty-facts from the Chinese exhibit at the World’s Fair in Chicago. Got ’em on loan—and guaranteed their safe return with your own cash, we was told. So when the Express wrecked . . . well, I was just wonderin’ if that wrecked
you
. Cuz if it did, maybe we could help out somehow.”

Of course, out here in the West, sticking your nose into another fellow’s financial affairs is roughly akin to sticking your finger in his eye. So Chan would’ve been within his rights to upend the nearest plate of delicacies over Old Red’s head.

“Thank you,” he said instead. He finally tore his gaze from the tabletop and looked at my brother, his expression somber. “You are very kind.”

Then his face changed, the lips curling into a wry smile, the flesh around his nose and eyes crinkling.

The eyes themselves, though—they remained just the same.

“But don’t worry about me,” Chan said. “I haven’t been ‘wrecked.’ Simply derailed temporarily. As the saying goes, I’m poorer but wiser. More poor than wise, perhaps, but I’ll even the scales again one day. And that’s all there is to it, really.”

He picked up his chopsticks and used them to nab himself another morsel of sauce-smeared pork.

“And what of you two? I didn’t see you mentioned in any of the newspaper articles about what happened on the Express. Are you still working for the railroad?”

My brother glanced over at me, raising one eyebrow ever so slightly.

That’s all there is to it?
he was saying.
I think not
.

I replied with what to most men’s eyes would’ve looked like a simple twitch of the shoulders. Gustav, however, would recognize it for what it was: a resigned shrug.

You can lead a Chinaman to water
. . . , I was saying.

“There’s a reason you didn’t read about us, Doc,” I said aloud. “The story they wrote up in the papers is grade-A S.P. bull crap. Here’s what
really
happened.”

Chan did his best to be a good audience as I filled him in on what he’d missed after getting tossed off the Pacific Express. He popped his eyes and gasped and shook his head in admiring wonderment in all the right places. Yet there was a feeling of play-acting about it—that overexpressive quality you notice too late when you’ve been boring the pants off somebody.

Not that I thought Chan wasn’t interested. My tale simply couldn’t compete with whatever was preying on the man’s mind.