by Tom Lin
Behind him an old man whose spine had been bent low by age and labor slid the deadbolt back across the door. He turned and made his way across the dimly lit room and sat down on a high stool by a bartop. He pulled his feet up, crossed his legs, and interlaced thin fingers in his lap. There was a strange and uncanny lightness to his movements, as though he were but a young actor playing an old man. “Come,” he said, “sit and rest.” He indicated the vacant stool beside him.
Ming obliged. “Where’s the gunsmith?” he asked.
The old man unclasped his hands and gestured to himself. “I am he.”
“I don’t recognize you,” Ming said.
“Nor I you.”
Ming peered at the old man a long time, trying to remember the face of the gunsmith he had known so long ago, finding that he could not even remember if the gunsmith he’d known had been young or old. But this strange man sitting cross-legged on his stool was not the gunsmith. Of this he was certain. And yet the old man sitting before him was familiar in a vague and disarticulated way, as though Ming had encountered him before, through haze, or perhaps in a dream long forgotten. Out of an instinct faster than thought his hand began to tend toward his gun and he considered whether to shoot the gunsmith down right where he sat.
“No,” said the old man, as though he had heard Ming’s thought. “Easy, my child.” The gunsmith lowered himself from his stool and went behind the counter to where a stepladder leaned up against the wall. “I know you now and here,” he said, “and I know why you’ve come.” He tilted his head up toward the guns. “I am to arm you, yes?”
Ming’s skin prickled and a pulse of strange and anxious energy passed through him. “Is that you, old man?” he said. The words almost caught in his throat.
“This I do not know.”
“Prophet,” Ming said. “It’s me.”
The gunsmith seemed not to hear him as he climbed the stepladder and took a rifle down from its supporting pins. “Henry repeater,” he said, leaning the weapon against his shoulder as he descended. He set the rifle down on the bartop and made to turn back toward the wall for another weapon when Ming darted out a hand and grabbed the gunsmith by the wrist.
“Prophet,” he said again, quietly now. He was half up out of his seat, leaning on an elbow across the bartop, the gunsmith’s wrist bony and paper-skinned in his hand. The old man wore a benevolent smile and his eyes were creased at their corners and Ming searched the gunsmith’s ancient face for anything that might resemble recognition. He let go and sat back onto his stool. “You ain’t remember me no more, do you, old man.”
“No,” the gunsmith said. He held Ming’s gaze a long time. “Tell me what you hoped I would remember.”
“I seen you die,” Ming blurted out, unable to help himself. His eyes stung and he knew there were tears at their corners and his voice sounded thick and unfamiliar. He looked at the gunsmith with a mixture of anguish and desperation and sheer endless exhaustion.
“Where?” the gunsmith asked.
Ming’s gestures were expansive, pointing out past the walls of that dim shack of an armory, past the flat valley, past the mountains jagged and chill. “Out there,” he said. “You died out there. East of them Sierras.”
The gunsmith gave no reply.
“And then I crossed them Sierras,” Ming said, partly to himself and partly to the gunsmith and partly to the darkness alone. “I killed Old Huxton and I buried a Chinese I found and I ain’t had nobody with me but myself the whole time.” He drew a breath slow and deep, let it out in a ragged staccato. “I didn’t have the chance to say it,” he said, his voice choking. “Couldn’t tell you to return.”
“Don’t matter none, child.”
“I left you out there.”
“You left a body out there, my child. That’s all.” He reached out and touched Ming’s shoulder.
Ming met his eyes. “Old man,” he said. “Cmon.” His voice was soft and pleading. “Ain’t you recognize me at all?”
The gunsmith shook his head. “No,” he said. “But I know why you’re here.” He walked over to the stepladder and dragged it across the floor to the adjacent wall and, after steadying it, began to climb again. He made to take down a long gun but his fingers could not reach. With a small grunt he leapt a little off his rung and swatted the gun down and caught it in his other hand as it fell. He came down the ladder and set the long gun beside the Henry on the bartop. “Scattergun,” he said. “Two shots.” The gunsmith took a handful of cartridge ammunition from a plain box and dumped them onto the bartop before carefully setting each cartridge standing on its end.
Ming pressed cold fingertips to his eyes and scrubbed his face with his hands. He looked up at the gunsmith again. “You were blind before, you know.”
“This I do not remember.”
Ming chuckled. “Course not.” He squinted at the gunsmith counting out brass cartridges before him. “Who the hell are you, old man?” he said at last.
“Take heart, my child,” the gunsmith said, ignoring Ming’s question. “Your labors are nearly finished.”
“I’m tired, old man.”
“I know.” The gunsmith indicated the ammunition and the weapons on the bartop. “For you,” he said. “Two for the scattergun, sixteen for the Henry.” He came round the counter and sat down again on his stool. “She’s there,” the old man said, “with Abel and Gideon. The child too. Their office is just out of town. You ought to be there by noon.”
Ming nodded without comment and stood. He stuffed the ammunition into his pockets and slung the guns crosswise over his back before walking to the door. His fingers felt blindly for the deadbolt in the dim.
“Man out of bounds,” came the gunsmith’s voice from behind.
Ming turned to look at him, feeling a smile beginning to tug at the corners of his mouth. “Yes, old man?”
“Fight free.”
60
He lay in the dirt outside the Porter brothers’ office until break of evening, watching men come and go. At last as the sun was beginning to redden he rose and glancing up and down the deserted road he strode to the door of the office and there at the threshold paused for a moment.
Fight free, the gunsmith had said.
He readied the Henry, seating the riflestock into his shoulder and sighting down the barrel. Once more he looked up and down the hardpack road. There was no one around. He moved back a few yards from the door and squared up to it, drew a deep breath and felt his body relax, his muscles quick and limber, ready to be set into motion. Ming took two quick steps forward and kicked the door wide open.
The clerk manning the front desk burst out of his seat, his chair clattering as it slid backward. “He’s here!” the man shouted, his voice fearful.
He made to draw a little derringer at his hip and without breaking stride Ming raised his rifle to his eye and shot the clerk through the chest. The wall behind him darkened with a spray of blood and the man gave a quiet grunt and fell back, his body limp, his eyes fixed and unfocused. Ming cranked the lever of the Henry and a smoking brass shell flew out the ejection port and he shot the clerk again through the jaw before he could hit the ground. Men began to shout to one another upstairs, their footsteps loud on the ceiling, and as one set of boots rushed down the hallway upstairs Ming tracked the sound through the ceiling and fired. Someone screamed and hit the ground with a loud thump and shots came punching wildly down through the ceiling, raining splinters down on Ming. The wounded man upstairs screamed all the while. Ming fired again into the ceiling and the screaming subsided to a subdued moaning.
Keeping the rifle locked to his eye Ming strode quickly over to the wall behind the clerk’s slumped body and scanned down the hallway, drawing a bead on the stairwell at the far end. His ears were still ringing from the gunfire. Muffled shouting upstairs: “Get down! Kill him, kill him!” A man came down the stairwell, his boots like rolling thunder, and when he dropped into view Ming fired and caught him in the leg and tripping he s
lammed into the floorboards at the base of the stairs. Ming cycled the Henry and fired again and the man ceased moving. On the other side of the wall behind him a man swore a string of oaths and Ming crouched low and drove a fresh round into the chamber and fired through the wall he’d been leaning against. The man spilled head and shoulders through the doorway to the room and Ming stood up and fired again and the man’s head jerked violently, a small hole punched into his temple. The sounds of more men rushing to meet him. Eight rounds left in the Henry. He slashed across the doorway and watched the other end of the hallway. There was a room that way, its door still swinging slowly on its hinges. The man he’d shot through the wall must have come from there.
He stepped out from cover cranking the lever of the Henry and passed through the doorway, the spent shell bouncing on the floor behind him. In two strides he reached the room that the man had come from and entering he swept his rifle across and found no one. There was a commotion from the stairwell, men cursing loudly as they descended the wooden steps. Soon they would flood into this room and he would have nowhere to run. He had to cross the hallway.
Fight free.
Ming took a few paces to pick up speed and exploded out from the room, raising his rifle to his eye as he strafed sideways across the hallway, cranking and firing again and again into the men as their own bullets drummed into the wall behind him. A moment later he was behind cover again, leaning against the wall in the entry room, the clerk’s body still splayed out on the floor. His rifle was empty. He tossed it down and grabbed his scattergun and stepped out again into the hallway. Three men dead before the stairwell now and an injured man moaning as he was dragged up the steps by his wrists, blood running from his leg. The injured man began to shriek incoherently when he saw Ming sprinting down the hallway, clawing at the hands that were lifting him and pointing at Ming with a shaking and bloodied finger. The man dragging him up the stairs dropped him and went for his holster and stepping to the foot of the stairs Ming caught him in the chest with a blast of the scattergun and the man thumped onto the stairs and then tumbled down them. Ming pressed the muzzle of the scattergun to the injured man’s forehead.
The man’s hands flew up weakly to hold the gun, smearing his bloody handprints on the barrel. His eyes were wild and terrified. “Don’t shoot me, please, please don’t shoot me,” he begged. “Please don’t shoot me, please don’t shoot.”
“Shut up,” Ming growled, “keep your voice down.” He jerked the gun free of the man’s blood-greased hands and pressed it back against the man’s skull and the man clasped his hands together and closed his eyes and under his breath he continued to beg Ming not to shoot him. “Is she here?” Ming demanded.
The man swallowed hard and nodded.
“Where?”
“Upstairs,” the man choked out. “She’s upstairs with the baby.”
“And Abel and Gideon?”
The man nodded frantically.
Footsteps paced upstairs and Ming glanced up to track them, then turned his gaze back to the sniveling man on the steps. “How many of you are left?” he said.
“I don’t know,” the man said in desperation, his voice rising in pitch and volume. “I don’t know, I don’t know.”
“I said keep your damn voice down,” Ming said through gritted teeth. He lifted the man’s chin with the barrel of his gun and stared coldly into the man’s eyes. “You lyin to me?” Ming asked.
“I ain’t lyin I swear it I ain’t lyin,” he gibbered, on the verge of tears.
Ming withdrew the gun from the man’s head and looked around, counting the bodies in his head. Seven. The man was still whimpering. Ming asked him how many men the Porters had working for them here.
“Eight,” the man blurted out, seemingly relieved that he knew the answer.
“That include you?”
The man nodded.
Ming bowed his head a little. The ringing in his ears was beginning to fade. He turned and aimed his scattergun at the bodies lying in the hallway behind them and placed a finger on his lips to hush the wounded man and then fired into the floorboards. Gently he set the scattergun down on the steps and drew his revolver. “Tell em you got me,” he said, his voice low. He tilted his gaze upward, indicating the Porter brothers. “Go on.”
The man kept his eyes on Ming’s face and called up the stairs. “I got him,” he said lamely. His voice was thin.
“Again,” Ming commanded. “Louder.”
“I got him,” the man repeated, louder.
A door creaked open upstairs. “That you, Walt?”
An electric rush ran through Ming’s body when he heard the voice. Abel Porter. “Answer him,” Ming snarled, his voice barely audible.
“Aye,” the man called up.
“Who’s left?” Abel asked.
“Just me, sir,” the man answered.
“Well, hell,” Abel said, his voice suddenly bright, “come on up and collect your bounty.”
The one Abel had called Walt looked panicky at Ming.
“Say you’re coming up,” Ming said, his thumb cocking back the hammer of his gun.
The man’s face blanched at the sound and he shook his head in dread terror and began to babble half-formed pleas for Ming not to kill him.
“Shut up,” Ming hissed, but the man did not stop.
“Walt!” called Abel. “You all right?”
There was the sound of a hesitant footstep emerging from the doorway upstairs and Ming reached out and clamped a viselike hand over the whimpering mouth of the injured man, who began to scream in earnest.
“Walt!” Abel shouted, a tinge of alarm in his voice.
The sound of rapid footsteps upstairs then and the click of a revolver’s hammer being drawn back. There was no more time. Ming lifted his hand from the man’s mouth and jammed the muzzle of his revolver between the tobacco-stained teeth and fired and the man’s limp body began to slide down the stairs. Ming was already flying up them, gun in one hand, the other braced against the wall. He was approaching the top of the stairs just as Abel stepped out of his office with a gleaming revolver and Ming fired three times pointblank into Abel’s chest and the revolver flew out of his hand and he crumpled to the floor. Ming cleared the last few steps in a single bound and closed the distance to Abel in three well-measured strides and on the fourth his boot met the bones of Abel’s face. Blood poured from the shattered nose.
Ming kicked Abel’s revolver down the steps and crouched low to his ruined face and grabbed a fistful of his beard and dragged him upward. “Where’s Gideon?” he barked.
Abel began to laugh, at first a pained, wheezing sound, and then a full-throated laugh, even as blood ran freely from the corners of his mouth.
Ming slammed his head against the wall. “Where’s Gideon?” he roared.
Abel shrugged, his face a mask of derision. He started laughing again. His eyes darted down the hallway and just as Ming followed his gaze a thunderclap blast of lead shot cracked past his head and blew a fist-sized hole through the wall. A column of sunlight erupted from the opening, flooding the room with light and momentarily blinding him. Ming dove as another blast rocked through the hallway, narrowly missing him as he tumbled headlong into an empty room.
Footsteps approached down the hallway. “Come on out, you sonofabitch,” jeered a voice. Gideon.
There was the sound of a scattergun being broken open and brass cartridges clattering to the floor. Crouching, Ming reached his hand out into the hallway and fired blindly twice, kicking himself for wasting the rounds before the gun had even stopped bucking. He cursed under his breath—he knew better. He rose, took a few deep breaths, braced himself against the wall behind him. Judgment clouded by fury was no judgment at all.
“Missed me!” Gideon shouted, followed by laughter, cruel and sharp. “Hell, you been out of practice, Ming.” Then the click of his scattergun snapping shut.
Deftly Ming exchanged the still-warm spent cylinder of his Remington for his second and
last cylinder. He breathed in deep, calmed by the familiar weight of his gun ready and lethal. Then he leaned his head back and closed his eyes a moment.
“You come into my place of business?” Gideon said. “You come in and kill my men, kill my brother, my own flesh and blood!” he bellowed, his voice rising. “You endanger my wife and my son? And you think I ain’t gonna stop you, you coolie bastard?” His footsteps paused just behind the threshold. “Come on out, you yellow sonofabitch!”
Ming opened his eyes and pulled back the hammer of his gun. He did not move. For a moment there was silence and then the faint and muffled wailing of a baby.
“Hear that?” Gideon said. “Ain’t no one takin that away from me.”
With a flick of his wrist Ming sent the empty cylinder skittering across the floor and into the hallway and Gideon fired at the sound and another geyser of wood splintered into the air. Ming lunged into the hallway and fired once into Gideon’s chest and with his free hand he gripped the barrel of the scattergun and gave it a brutal twist. The trigger guard caught Gideon’s finger and snapped it at the knuckle and he roared in pain and the scattergun fell to the floor and Ming fired twice more into his chest.
Gideon took a faltering step backward and stopped, swaying gently. Blood ran down his shirtfront, dribbled from the corners of his mouth. He glanced at the scattergun lying by Ming’s feet and frowned in concentration, as though trying to answer a riddle. “You—” he began.
Ming shot him again and now Gideon sat down hard, his body slumping to one side. His eyes followed Ming, dimming all the while, bewildered and scared. His lips formed words without sound and Ming bent low to Gideon’s face to hear them.
“Ada,” he was saying.
Ming rose and collected the scattergun and broke its action open partway. One round left. Gideon’s feet twitched and his gaze wandered through the hallway looping and unfocused, indifferent to the world. Ming pressed the barrel of the scattergun to Gideon’s temple and fired. Half of Gideon’s head vanished and all was silent now but for the baby still crying behind a closed door at the end of the hall.
