“Without what you came for?” the newsman said.
The bartender approached. “Beer OK for you, sir? Or do you want rotgut?”
“Beer, if it’s cold,” Cromarty said.
The bartender nodded. “Cold as a witch’s bosom. Be right back.”
Emmett picked up where Cromarty left off. “Yep, I guess you’ve seen him out and about in Reno once again. I had to let old Charlie go. Or did you even know we’d nabbed him?”
“Of course I knew—I’m a newspaperman.”
“And a mighty fine one, I’m sure.”
“So you confirmed my suspicions about Charlie’s brother then?”
“Beyond the shadow of a doubt.”
Cromarty nodded to the bartender as he set the beer in front of him. “Well, I hate to rub salt in a wound, but your man Charlie Blaylock is up there in his favorite saloon, barking at the moon, night and day.”
“In the Hyperion?”
“That’s right. He’s up there blabbering to anybody who’ll listen—and sometimes to folks who won’t—about how he bested Emmett Strong, the Texas pistolero, and his law dog friends. ‘Got away scot-free,’ he keeps saying.”
Emmett pursed his lips.
Juanito smacked him on the knee. “Don’t let it get to you, hermano. You’ve done a lot of good up here.”
“Oh, that’s true enough,” Cromarty said. “Rumors have drifted as far away as Reno about how a few fellas from Texas rescued some local Chinese girls from a band of notorious kidnappers. Lots of convoluted facts. Lots of speculation. But folks are talking.”
“That can’t be sitting well with Lucian McIntosh,” Sikes said through a fog of cigar smoke.
“No, it’s not,” Cromarty said. “Not at all.”
“Any scuttlebutt up there about McIntosh fixing to retaliate?” Emmett asked.
“That’s why I came down here, as a matter of fact.”
Emmett tilted his head. “More of Charlie Blaylock’s crowing?” From the corner of his eye, he observed Sikes and Juanito leaning in.
“Oh, no. Charlie learned the hard way you don’t go throwing McIntosh’s name around loosely. Apparently the bartender up at the Hyperion biffed him in the mouth real good the first time he heard him using the boss’s name injudiciously. I’ve got another source. ”
“And what’s your source say?”
Cromarty lowered his head and his voice. “Word is that McIntosh has been rotating gunslicks through all the major railroad stations round about. Watching for you gents. He doesn’t aim to let you leave alive.”
“This burg’s been good to us,” Emmett said. “But I have no intention of spending the rest of my days here.” He cast a glance at his pardners.
“Well, you might want to consider some other means of travel for the first leg of your trip. Stay off the railroads.”
“Appreciate you coming all the way down here to warn us, Cromarty. Got anything else for us?”
“The day’s not over yet, gents,” he said. “Who knows? You may end up having something for me.”
“Like what?”
“Haven’t heard word of another kidnapping in a couple of weeks now. Looks like you’ve effectively applied the brakes to Seth Blaylock’s activities, at least for the time being. If you’re not careful, you may shut him and McIntosh down completely.” He flashed a momentary grin.
“As far as I’m concerned,” Emmett said, “my business with that bunch is over.”
“Without seeing justice served?”
Emmett took a swallow of beer. “We dished out a bit of justice. Maybe not what we’d planned on to begin with, but…”
“Speaking of the unexpected, what’s this ballyhoo Charlie Blaylock keeps going on about—you and your own personal little China monkey, Mr. Strong? Just more of his blathering?”
“It’s Emmett.”
“Right. Emmett. So what’s the true story about the China monkey? You really take a liking to one of those Chinese girls?”
Emmett placed both palms on the table, turned his head, and glared. “First of all, Mr. Cromarty, I’m disappointed to hear you repeating such demeaning phraseology, even if you are quoting Charlie Blaylock. Secondly, yes, I gained the friendship of one of the young women we rescued. But it was just that—an innocent friendship. And it’s due to end soon, as my pardners and I must gladly make our way back to Texas.”
Cromarty fumbled at straightening his tie. “I-I apologize, Mr.—Emmett. I was in fact quoting Charlie Blaylock. And I admit it was in poor taste.”
“Apology accepted.”
“Well, then…Main thing I wanted to do was to warn you about the railroads. And to advise you about Charlie Blaylock’s boastful talk. Now if you don’t mind excusing me, I have an appointment with the newspaper editor here in Virginia City.” Cromarty stood and fished in his pocket.
“Don’t worry about paying for the beer.” Emmett patted his own vest pocket. “And Cromarty…”
“Yes?”
“Thanks for the information that led us to the young ladies’ kidnappers.”
“You’re very welcome.” He tipped his bowler. “My pleasure. Truly.”
Cromarty turned and clacked across the hardwood floors, leaving the half doors swinging on their hinges.
“Good to have the warning,” Sikes said.
“Indeed,” Emmett said.
Juanito sat silently, elbows on the table and fingers steepled.
“What’s on your mind, brother-in-law?” Emmett reached for his beer.
Juanito raised an eyebrow and spoke quietly. “What you said to Cromarty…Are you really giving up on Li Xu?”
“It can’t work,” Emmett said mechanically.
Juanito shook his head. “In five years, I haven’t seen you look so much like the old Emmett Strong—not until I watched that girl light the fire within you once again.”
“Yeah, well, it wouldn’t be right to her father. To have his daughter stolen away once again. It’d make me as bad as Seth Blaylock.”
Juanito scoffed. “Ridiculous. Your motives are nothing like Blaylock’s.”
Emmett slapped the table and leaned into his brother-in-law.
A few folks around the room turned and stared till they realized they weren’t going to get a show.
“Little China monkey,” Emmett said, his voice a biting whisper. “How could I be so selfish as to drag her out into a world that’ll constantly assault her with ugly words like those?”
“Is that it, Emmett?” Sikes asked. “Is that really it?”
“Charlie Blaylock is a jackass,” Juanito said.
“Yeah, well…lot of folks out there just like that,” Emmett said.
Sikes matched Emmett’s vehemence. “Well, what does Li Xu want? She’s a full-grown woman. She can make up her own mind about what she can handle and what she can’t.”
“She hasn’t seen the world like you and me, Sikes. She may be grown, but she’s innocent. Besides, they have their customs, their rules. If she—woman that she is—defies her elders, she’s finished in her society. It’d be near impossible for her to come back.”
“I don’t want you to regret this,” Juanito said. “Don’t make up your mind today, hermano. Give it another day or two.”
“I thought maybe we’d begin getting ready to leave tomorrow.”
This entire time, Emmett had been seated with his back to the door—an arrangement he normally took great pains to avoid.
Out of nowhere something deep inside told him to take a quick look behind him. He attempted to do so discreetly. But as he glanced back, a mustached fellow a few tables over—pretty close to the door—looked straight at him. With a smirk and a gleam in his eye, he raised his glass to Emmett.
Emmett pushed his chair back from the table and pivoted.
The fe
llow and his pardner—both heeled, both wearing the same cat-just-cornered-the-mouse grin—were now on their feet and ambling over in his direction. They halted just a yard or so away.
“Nice to see y’all again,” the one with the brushy mustache said. Then he bent over the table and in a hushed voice added, “Mr. McIntosh and Mr. Blaylock send their greetin’s.” He touched his hat brim. “We’ll be talkin’ with y’all some more real soon.”
He and his lanky amigo wheeled slowly and sauntered out of the saloon.
“Looks as though the fiesta’s not over yet,” Juanito said. “I think they both want to sign your dance card, hermano.”
“Do you recognize them, Emmett?” Sikes asked.
“I recognize ’em.”
“I do too—from the day we rode up to Lucian McIntosh’s front door.”
Juanito stood and watched the two cross the street.
“Yet another reason why I can’t bring Li Xu along,” Emmett said. “Much as I’d like to.”
Sikes shook his head. “Bring her along, leave her behind, they may pay her a call anyway. According to Cromarty, Charlie Blaylock’s already declaring the two of you a pair.”
Emmett marveled at how careless he had been—wandering around town with Li as though all the world were cloaked in innocence.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
As soon as they left the Silver Nugget, the two McIntosh men hurried toward their next stop—the Comstock Queen Hotel.
Zeke smoothed down his mustache and said to his spindly pardner, “Couldn’t hear too much of what that newspaperman said, but it sounded as if he was puttin’ them Texans on the alert.”
The lanky one’s gangly gait was stilted, getting ahead then slowing down to let the shorter-legged Zeke catch up with him. “Maybe Mr. Newspaperman needs to disappear.”
“Not till the boss gives the go-ahead.”
“People have accidents all the time. Boss can’t get all riled up at us if the newspaper fella meets with some kind of accident, can he?”
They were only steps away from the Comstock Queen now.
“Just hold your horses. I’ll ask the boss about the newspaper fella. Right now we gotta find that Chinaman. Told me to meet him at the kitchen door somewhere back here.”
Zeke took a hurried look up and down the street before leaving the boardwalk and following the alley to the back of the hotel. At the back door he gave a sharp rap. Moments later, Chin—the Chinese fellow who had carried Emmett’s baggage upstairs when he, Juanito, and Sikes had first arrived in Virginia City—opened the door cautiously. After a quick glance over his shoulder, he stepped into the back alley.
“You got what we want?” Zeke asked.
Chin looked from Zeke to the other McIntosh man and back. “Yes, I have. But this very dangerous for me.”
“Now don’t go gettin’ yourself all worked up.” Zeke drew a small bag of coins from his vest pocket and stuffed it into Chin’s hand. “All you gotta do is tell us what rooms them Texas boys’re stayin’ in.”
Chin bounced the purse of coins in his palm, then dropped it into a pocket beneath his apron. “Boss man room number 205. One with bad leg room 206. Mexican room number 207.”
“All right. You done good so far now, Ching—”
“Chin, sir,” the Chinese man cut in. “Name not Ching. Chin.”
The other McIntosh man started laughing, revealing a missing tooth right up front.
Zeke chuckled too. “Yeah, well, Chin, Ching, Ching-a-ling—it’s all the same, ain’t it? Anyways, you done good so far, but I need you to tell me somethin’ else now.”
Chin’s nostrils flared, but he said nothing.
Zeke dropped his fingers into his other vest pocket and pulled out another bag of coins. He swung it by the drawstring in front of Chin’s eyes. “I can promise you, there’s more to come if you keep helpin’ us out like this.”
Chin nodded, keeping his head low. “What else help?”
“Just tell me one more thing: Where can I find that little China girl Emmett Strong is so sweet on? Hmm?”
When Chin lifted his head to meet Zeke’s gaze, his eyebrows were knitted. He quickly lowered his eyes again and said, “Don’t know who you talk about.”
“Oh, you know,” Zeke said. “From what I hear, everybody in Chinatown knows her. She was one of the last two to come back. Emmett Strong traded Seth Blaylock’s brother to get her back. The feisty little one.”
Chin rubbed the side of his nose. “What you do with this Chinese girl?”
“Now look here,” the one missing the tooth said, moving his hand to his holster. “Never mind what we do with her. You just spit it out.”
Zeke elbowed him and said, “Jim, shut up. I’ll handle Mr. Ching here.”
He dangled the coin purse in front of Chin again. “So you do know her. C’mon. Where can I find her now? I won’t hurt her. Just got some words for her, that’s all.”
“You just talk to her? That all?”
“That’s right. Just talk.”
Chin hesitated a moment more, then without looking up snatched the coin purse from Zeke’s hand. “Xu’s Golden Dragon Café. Over there Union Street. Past L Street.”
Zeke elbowed Jim again. “See? You just gotta know how to negotiate with these folks. That’s all.”
Chin now waved the coin purse. “You think Mr. McIntosh sell me this girl?” He tucked the coins away with the others he’d been given.
“Sell her…to you?” Zeke eyed Jim. “I told you we was just gonna talk to her. What makes you think—”
Without waiting for Zeke to finish, Chin bowed. “We talk later.” The Chinaman turned on his heels and rushed inside the hotel.
“You hear that?” Jim guffawed. “That little gopher thinks he’s gonna buy a girl Mr. Lucian’s got his eye on. Like hell.”
Zeke shrugged. “Don’t matter what he thinks. We got what we need. Now let’s go pay the China girl a little visit before Mr. Emmett Strong decides he’s had enough beer for the afternoon.”
Jim spat out a stream through the gap where his tooth used to be. “I’m right behind you.”
Minutes later Zeke and Jim pushed their way through the front door of Xu’s Golden Dragon. Zeke grinned when he spied Li Xu off to the side spreading a clean tablecloth over a table next to the wall.
When she looked up, she gasped and froze in place.
Just then Yong Xu came hurrying out of the kitchen. He glanced at Li without breaking his stride and stopped only feet from Zeke and Jim.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his dark eyes studying the two. “Lunch is over. And we are not ready to serve dinner yet. You can come back later.”
Zeke let a grin crawl slowly across his face. “Maybe we don’t want dinner. Maybe we just came in for a little snack.” He leered at Li.
Jim snickered.
Yong’s fists tightened.
“We hear there’s some special Chinese cakes that American fellas have takin’ a powerful likin’ to lately. Thought we might see if we take a likin’ to ’em, too.”
Yong’s gaze remained steeled on Zeke as he spoke firmly to his daughter. “Li, go to the kitchen.”
Li had only taken a single step when Jim bounded for the kitchen door to block her way. A table and two chairs toppled and banged to the floor in his wake.
“Come, Li,” Yong said, spinning and marching toward the kitchen himself.
Zeke followed closely. Just before the kitchen door, he snagged Yong’s arm, whipped him around, and pushed him roughly up against the wall. He leaned on him, one hand on the Chinese man’s chest and one on the wall above his shoulder.
“You listen here,” Zeke said. “I got a message for you and all your little China friends: when Mr. Lucian McIntosh wants somethin’, he gets it.”
At that second, a tapered metal stick hissed
through the air and embedded itself in the wall only an inch from Zeke’s hand.
Zeke pushed Yong into Jim’s grasp and spun to face Li. She was still only a step from where she had been. But her arm was poised to release a second metal throwing stick. She gripped several more of the projectiles in her other hand.
“You reckon you’re faster with them sticks than I am with my six-gun?” Zeke asked, his tone now gruff, his hand hovering over his holster.
Li said nothing, but her eyes expressed loathing.
Zeke stared for several long seconds. Then he burst out laughing.
“I swannee!” he said. “Jim, you just never know what to expect from these China folks, do ya?”
“Nope,” Jim said. “You sure don’t.”
Zeke patted his holster. “Tell you what, Mr. Chinaman, little China girl, we’ll be back in a fashion. Meanwhile, y’all might wanna be extra careful. Oh, and next time you see him, you might wanna tell that Texan, Emmett Strong, it’s time for him to go on home.”
He eased his way toward the door, keeping his hand right over his six-shooter. “C’mon, Jim,” he said. “I got you covered.”
Jim shoved Yong Xu hard and grinned. “Like my friend said, we will be back.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
When Emmett, Sikes, and Juanito stepped out of the Silver Nugget Saloon into the bright white midafternoon glare, Emmett wasn’t prepared for what awaited his eyes. There, right next to the hitching rail, arms crossed, stood Li Xu. She was dressed in her Western boys’ clothes, but she made Emmett’s stomach do a flip-flop.
He had planned to hurry over to Chinatown to speak to her and Yong as soon as he got Sikes squared away back at the hotel. Whether or not her father had advised him to stay away, he had to alert them to new developments involving McIntosh and his men. The last thing he expected was for her to come find him, especially since he had provoked her to the point that she’d run away from him at the end of their conversation that morning.
Clearly she wanted to talk now.
“Where to?” he asked. “Chinatown? Somewhere else?”
Indifferent to what any so-called upstanding citizen might think of him for being sweet on Li, he was still apprehensive for her sake—more so now because of Cromarty’s report and the visit from the McIntosh men than because of any social taboo.
Strong Convictions: An Emmett Strong Western (Emmett Strong Westerns Book 1) Page 27
