The brand consisted of a quarter circle on the bottom with an open square sitting on it. The inside of the square contained the letter P. Rocking Box P, Yester remembered Mr. Fontaine naming it.
Yester grinned at Nat. “Finally.” He eyed the hovel sitting only a few feet from the pen. A smudge of smoke came from a lopsided chimney. “Maybe Ketta is in there.” Even to his own ears the comment didn’t exactly sound like he hoped for it.
Nat raised his eyebrows. “If she is, she won’t like it. That place looks hog dirty.”
“I know.” Yester took a deep breath. “I’m gonna go see.”
“Should we get the sheriff? Or the town marshal?” Nat appeared a little worried by Yester’s brash intention. “What about those outlaws? You and me, Yester, I don’t think—”
Yester nodded. Reaching over, he drew his rifle from the saddle scabbard. “I’m going in armed. If anything happens, Nat, you tear on out of here and fetch the law.”
Nat shook his head. “We’ll go together.” He slid from his cayuse’s back, flipped the reins around one of the rickety rails forming the pen, and did the same with Queenie’s. “I’m ready.”
Setting his lips, Yester leaned the rifle over his shoulder. They’d each taken a step when the door of the hovel slammed open, and a man stepped out onto the porch. Yester was sure he’d meant to appear tough, but since the man stepped on a rotten board and sank through to his ankle, he was not impressed. Or maybe he meant intimidated.
The man, an old feller with a white beard and runaway hair, pulled his foot out, cussing roundly. When he got his breath back, he hollered, “You boys get away from that horse. He’s a killer.”
Yester almost laughed. Almost. “He’s no killer,” he said as he approached the old man. “What he is, is stolen.” As far as he could tell, the other man wasn’t carrying a gun, but who knew but what he had one hidden in a pocket or behind his back. Yester figured it was best to take no chances.
“This horse belongs to Patton’s Rocking Box P, and his name is Dusty.” He glared at the old man. “Outlaws stole him from Patton’s ranch two days ago, and we been following him ever since. You one of those outlaws?”
The man’s jaw dropped. “The hell you say. I ain’t no outlaw. I ain’t no horse thief, either. I paid for this here nag fair and square.”
Nat broke in. “Did you get a bill of sale?”
“Bill of sale? Bill of sale, you say? Why, why . . . what’s it to you young hooligans? You ain’t the law. You ain’t nothing but a couple of kids, one of which,” he added, peering closely at Nat, “is an Injun.”
Nat sighed audibly.
“We may not be the law,” Yester said, “but we sure enough can turn you over to the sheriff for a horse thief. Mr. Patton, he’s gonna be here soon. He’s a quick man with a gun. He sees you with his horse he’ll shoot you down in the twitch of an eye.” Yester poured it on. “He won’t have any trouble finding you, either, because I’m gonna send my partner over to the bridge to report to him. And I’m gonna sit right here with you and wait. I never saw anybody get shot before. It’ll be interesting.”
If it hadn’t already been white, Yester was sure the old feller’s hair would’ve lost all color in that moment.
“See here,” he said, then apparently lost track of his words.
“Unless . . .” Yester drew it out.
“Unless?”
“Unless you can tell me where to find the girl that came in with this horse.”
KETTA
Scared almost witless by the other girl’s cries, Ketta sped down the alley, careless of any noise she made. Freedom beckoned at the end, down where flashes of light shone from lanterns hung outside the few businesses, mostly saloons, still open.
Forgetting to breathe, stumbling over bottles and tin cans and other trash dumped there as if to deliberately impede her, Ketta gasped as she burst from between buildings.
Straight into Kuo’s waiting clutches.
She started to cry out, managing only a squeak before it was too late. Kuo’s hand covered her mouth, muffling all sound.
How had he come to be here at just this time? The wrong time. The question roared through Ketta’s mind. How? Why?
“I expected you to try something,” he said, as though he’d read her mind. “I thought I’d have to wait longer. You figured it out fast.”
Ketta wrenched her face away. “Let me go. I want my mother.”
His expression turned hard. “You’re mine now. Her time is done.”
“No,” she cried, but he ignored her protest. Gripping her thin arm, he frog-marched her back the way she’d come, until she once again stood in front of the shed door.
“Go in,” he said. “Sleep. We’ll leave in the morning. Don’t try to run again. I’ll be here, and I’ll catch you. Or she will.” A gesture showed the restaurant woman’s approach. The threat was clear. He pushed Ketta inside before he turned and walked off.
To take up his post at the end of the ally, ensuring she remained his prisoner?
Figuring she didn’t have a choice at the moment, Ketta stumbled across the shed’s earthen floor and sat down, her head on her knees. She turned away from the woman who followed her in. The respite didn’t last long. Only until the first thwack of a whip across her shoulders.
More surprised than feeling the hurt, Ketta scooched backward.
“Stop it!” she shouted. “Stop it. You get away from me.”
Her protest served no purpose. Looming above her like a fairytale witch, the woman brought the whip down again. And again, harder. And then again and again.
Ketta lost count of the lashes. Pain washed over her with each new strike, even though she didn’t cry. And she didn’t scream, either, aside from that first surprised shout.
At last, the woman did stop. Breath ragged from her strenuous efforts, she bent down and hissed at her, “You be good now, or I come back with a club.”
Shock held Ketta silent, believing the old woman’s every word.
Somewhere out of sight, the other girl, the one she hadn’t even really seen yet, made a rustling noise.
The old woman whirled. “You. No speak.”
The rustling stopped.
The woman, showing a cautious nature, retreated without turning her back on Ketta. The door slammed shut, throwing the shed into ebony darkness. Outside, she heard the latch turn, then a hammering sound.
The shoddy door and walls couldn’t muffle voices from outside. Shouts. Some cuss words in English. Jibber-jabber impossible to understand. The old witch woman and Kuo renewing their argument.
So he hadn’t left, but only absented himself while the woman beat her. Ketta listened with a heavy heart.
This father was as bad as Big Joe. The only difference seemed to be that Big Joe slapped her himself, and Kuo left the beating to another.
At last, footsteps faded into silence.
After a while, a soft, a very soft whisper reached Ketta. “I said, ‘Shh, shh, shh.’ ”
“Why did you scream when I left?” Ketta asked over pain that spread like fire across her back.
The other girl’s snort was the loudest and most eloquent thing she’d spoken to Ketta. “She beat me, I don’t. I no want beating.”
Ketta guessed she couldn’t blame her for that. “You should’ve run away with me,” she said, not caring about her accusatory tone. “Together we both could’ve gotten away.”
“Not me. Cannot run,” the girl said, and now Ketta heard sadness in her voice.
“I would’ve helped you,” she said.
“No. No help for me,” the girl replied.
In the morning, as the first fingers of sunlight drove away the darkness, she found out why. The girl’s feet were malformed, curled into tiny clubs on the ends of her ankle bones. She was barely able to hobble to the privy, let alone run anywhere.
Ketta stifled a gasp, hands over her mouth. “Oh, my goodness,” she whispered. “Does it hurt?”
The girl nodde
d. “Many years. Not so bad now. At first, yes.”
“At first? You mean you weren’t born this way?”
The girl’s head drooped, like a flower too heavy for its stalk. “No. Mu qin do it. Wraps my feets, always, always. They grown round, not flat, like you.”
“Moo cheen?”
The girl hesitated. “Mother.”
“But why? Why would she do such a thing?”
“Worth more. Men like.” Her eyes closed. “Some men like.”
“But—” Ketta couldn’t go on. What kind of people would deliberately cripple a child. Their own child. Even Big Joe would draw the line before that.
Ketta decided she didn’t want to be Chinese. She wouldn’t be Chinese.
And that was final.
Kuo came for her just after dawn. They went into the pokey little restaurant before it was even open. The old woman and a male cook were already there, chopping and roasting and preparing for the day. The stove was already hot. The cook stirred up a batch of eggs with rice and vegetables mixed in, and poured a brown sauce over it. That was breakfast.
Her father lifted her onto the stool, giving her a sharp look as she winced away, but he said nothing to the old witch woman. Ketta, feeling a little braver, glared at her.
The witch woman glared at Kuo and smiled evilly at Ketta, revealing several broken teeth. Ketta hoped someone had knocked them out for her, and that it had hurt.
Kuo shook his head. “Eat,” he said.
So, she did, and although Ketta wouldn’t have said so for the world, the food tasted good.
Finished with their meal, Kuo paid the woman, several coins passing from his pocket to hers. Avoiding his touch, which had hurt, Ketta slipped from the stool while his back was turned.
He grasped her hand as they left, holding it tightly enough that she had no chance to wrench away. A horse waited at the rail outside the café, twitching its tail against flies. Not the dun horse, she noted, that he’d stolen from the rancher, but a bay. Ketta spared a thought for Beau, left so many miles behind. She figured Big Joe had probably already gotten Beau and his other horses back. And that meant he’d have no reason to pursue Kuo or any of his men any further. It also meant Yester wouldn’t be coming. Maybe the other rancher would, but even if he caught up, what difference would she make to him? He’d have no reason to care about her.
She was doomed. She knew it.
“Ride behind me,” he said, swinging into the saddle. “That way I won’t be rubbing your back.” He grinned a little. “Yes. I know it’s sore. I knew she’d beat you. But it won’t happen again.” Inexplicably, he added, “I’m not leaving you here. You’re worth more.”
Reaching down, he offered his hand. Ketta ignored it.
“Mad at me, child? Your own fault. You must learn to obey. Chinese girls learn early to do as they’re told, as their fathers tell them. Come. Let me help you up.”
I won’t be Chinese. I won’t.
But the old witch woman’s sudden presence behind her made her straighten and shy away. The woman flourished her whip at Ketta and smiled.
Slowly, ever so slowly, Ketta extended her left hand to Kuo, allowing him to pull her onto the horse behind him.
Another kind of punishment coming her way, she thought, trying to settle. Pinched by the saddle, for one. The welts left from the old woman’s whip, for two. And for three, the pain in her heart. Her courage was seeping away like water after a rain.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: YESTER
The white-haired old man was full of bluster and shifty-eyed as he looked from Yester to Nat and back again. “What little girl?” he said. “I ain’t seen any little girls. What would one of them be doing down here by the river? What did she do? Steal this horse?” His guffaw sounded like a donkey with a throat infection.
Yester knew he lied, the problem being to force the truth out of him. This, he thought, was the hard part of being young. Old blowhards like this one didn’t try very hard to hide their lies.
He turned to Nat. “You want to go wait for Patton or should I? Either way, one of us needs to stay with the horse. Make sure he doesn’t disappear again. Better go tell the sheriff, too.”
Nat put on his fiercest look. “I will stay. Be glad to. I’ll watch this one, and the horse. Can I borrow your rifle? I might need it to shoot any marauding varmints.”
“Sure.” Yester handed the rifle over. Nat took it with a grin.
“Now see here,” the old fellow started, but as Yester made a move to mount Queenie, he changed his attitude. “Wait just a minute.”
“You got something to say?” Yester figured Nat’s fierce expression must’ve worked well. That and the rifle, which seemed to accidentally point in a certain direction. He stopped with his left foot in the stirrup.
“There was a kid,” the man said. “Not right here. But Tug McClure, that’s the feller sold me this horse, rode in with this other feller. That one, a Chink who goes by the name of Kuo, had a kid perched on the back of his horse. They didn’t come close. I can’t say whether it was a shemale or not.” His eyes shifted back and forth and finally rolled upward. “McClure said he owned the horse. Why wouldn’t I believe him? Just ’cause he’s one of them negroes?”
Kuo. Yester felt a leap of excitement. He knew that name. But he said, “A negro?”
The riverboat captain had talked about a negro, too. The same one he’d seen in Pullman? It seemed likely. Did that mean Ketta was on a steamboat heading down to Portland?
Yester felt like pounding himself on the head. The boat. Where the captain had said he’d sold a ticket to a black man. Would there be more than one negro taking a boat on any single day? Yester doubted it.
“Yeah, negro. You heard of them, I suppose,” the man said sourly. “We fought a war over ’em.”
Yester had no reply to that. “Did you ‘buy’ the other feller’s horse, too? When you ‘bought’ the Percheron?”
“Nope. He didn’t offer it up for sale.”
“Where’d they go after you ‘bought’ the horse?”
The old fellow grinned. “Well, the negro got on board the White Queen, and away it went, downriver. Guess you’ll have a hard time catching up with him.”
Yester tensed. Looked at Nat. “Remember, Nat? Captain said he sold only the one ticket. That means Ketta and . . . and her kidnapper are still around. Somewhere.”
“We’ll find her,” Nat said. The rifle, the point of aim having lowered a bit during all the talk, raised into shooting position again. “Where did the friend and the kid go?”
“How would I know?” The old fellow was back to bluster. “I weren’t keeping track of them. My business was with McClure.”
Nat poked the rifle barrel into his chest. “Make a guess.”
The man batted at the rifle barrel and backed out of reach. A shrug prefaced words. “Dunno. Maybe Chinatown.”
“Chinatown?” Yester’s heart dropped. “Where is that?”
This time the man sounded almost satisfied. “No place you want to go, sonny. We burned that damn heathen Chinatown to the ground back in ’83. But they’re like vermin. They come right back.” Then he added thoughtfully, “We keep ’em penned up pretty good in there, and they don’t take kindly to whites coming in.”
But he went on to tell them which street and precisely where to find it. Yester figured he hoped they’d find trouble there.
If he hadn’t spotted the sheriff’s office right on the way to Chinatown, the old fellow and Patton’s horse might’ve gotten away free and clear. But he did spot it, a pokey building with a deputy sitting right out front in the sun, so that Yester felt duty bound to stop. Given Patton had been good about supplying him and Nat with food for their journey, it didn’t strike him as neighborly to simply pass by. If all went well, the Percheron would find its way home in the next day or two.
The worst part was the search for Ketta being slowed for a half hour or so while Yester explained the circumstances.
“Yeah, yeah, I kn
ow who you mean. I’m acquainted with Ol’ Pa Reilly,” the deputy said. “This isn’t the first time he’s ‘bought’ a horse with a questionable bill of sale. Rocking Box P, you say? A rancher by the name of Patton? Reckon that would be Horace Patton, with a spread about thirty miles west of here. Seen that black Percheron of his before. About twice a year his missus hitches it to a carriage and drives into town.”
Apparently able to supply his own identification of man and horse without their help, Yester and Nat continued on toward the street Ol’ Pa Reilly had identified as Chinatown. Oddly enough, Yester had walked through a bit of the street the day before, but now it seemed strange and wicked to him. Whether he imagined so or not, he fancied he caught the odor of burning opium. Not that he knew what it smelled like. But everybody knew Chinamen regularly frequented opium dens, so that’s where Yester began his search.
The people here lived in hovels. Or so was Yester’s impression as they reached the street Reilly had called Chinatown. Hovels, with garbage dumped in the streets and bodies slumped in the alleys. Opium addicts, he surmised. He’d read about them. Sometimes they were dead. His nose turned up.
“Do I hear hogs?” Nat asked. Keeping a careful lookout on a pigtailed man walking about wearing what looked like a black nightshirt, he kept his pony’s nose right up beside Yester’s mare. The man’s eyes were fixed on Yester, and only Nat’s close proximity kept the Chinaman from coming between them.
“I think so.” The grunting came from behind one of the more rundown buildings. One whose roof sagged right to the point of falling in. Smoke rose from a crumbly chimney, fragrant with what might’ve been apple wood. As if on cue, a sudden shrieking squeal rose over the other noise, then abruptly shut off. Yester shuddered. “Yep, you hear porkers, all right.”
“Don’t think I want to try the bacon off that one,” Nat said. Then, “Look out!”
Yester, startled by Nat’s yell, dug his heels into Queenie and twisted in the saddle. The quick maneuver was just in time to avoid the blade of a small knife slashing at the ties holding his bedroll on the back of his saddle.
“Hey,” he yelled, as, thwarted, the knife wielder darted away. “Thanks,” he said to Nat.
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