Straight Outta Tombstone

by David Boop

  Yellow Jacket explained, “Coyote, I am carrying my children in my bag.”

  Coyote didn’t believe him.

  “No, Yellow Jacket. I don’t carry my children that way. You must have something good to eat in there.”

  “No, Coyote, I carry my children in the bag. Come close. You can hear them.”

  “Yellow Jacket, do you think I am stupid? You must have good food in the bag if you are trying to get me to believe that you are carrying your children in there.”

  “No, Coyote, no. I carry my children in the bag. Believe me.”

  Coyote would not believe him so finally Yellow Jacket, tired of arguing, conceded,

  “Coyote, you are too clever for me. The people had a feast and they gave me some fruit, all kinds of fruit to take home to give to my wife and children.”

  “I knew it. Yellow Jacket, why would you try to deceive me? Let me help you carry your fruit.”

  “No, Coyote, I can carry the fruit.” Yellow Jacket knew Coyote wanted the fruit for himself.

  “Yellow Jacket, I can carry your fruit for you. You look tired. Why don’t you rest and I’ll carry your fruit and when you are rested you can catch up with me.”

  So, Coyote took the bag from Yellow Jacket and started ahead while Yellow Jacket sat down to rest.

  Coyote walked until he couldn’t see Yellow Jacket anymore and then ran to his house. He was greedy and wanted all the fruit for himself. He placed the bag on a chair and eagerly opened it and thrust a hand in.

  “Oye!” he yelled. A wasp had stung him from inside the bag.

  “I must have put this bag on a thorn,” he muttered and reached into the bag again. A wasp stung him harder. He jerked his hand out of the bag and the bag ripped. All of Yellow Jacket’s children flew out and began stinging Coyote. Coyote waved his arms around and started running but the children of Yellow Jacket flew faster than Coyote could run. They were caught in Coyote’s fur and stung him and stung him and stung him. By the time the children flew back to Yellow Jacket, Coyote’s face and body was swollen and every part of him hurt. Coyote didn’t dare to show his face for a long, long time.

  The dandy was silent, looking at the girl. She and the old man also were quiet.

  “What, exactly, am I supposed to learn from that little tale?” The dandy came forward and stood over the girl. The heat must have been affecting him because he looked red-faced and sweaty. “What,” he barked, “am I supposed to learn from that?!”

  The girl stood up and faced the dandy.

  “What did you learn?”

  The dandy’s hand shot out and struck the girl, whose head snapped to the left.

  “Maybe you learned not to sass white folks. Maybe you learned not to tell your damn Injun tales to people who have better things to do than to waste time listening to them.”

  The girl slowly turned her head and stared at the man. The dandy stood in silence, suddenly uncertain, suddenly unsure.

  “Can’t believe I spent time listening to you two yeehaws.” He spat at the girl and it landed on her cheek, running slowly down to her jaw. The dandy turned on his heel and stomped down the dusty street. Cocheta wiped it off of her cheek, squatted, and carefully added the fluid to her powder design and stirred it. She cautiously added it to her bag and returned it to her pocket. Then she sat down near her grandfather, and closed her eyes. Her wailing, pleading, he’s innocent! The crowd cheering at the hanging. She, screaming; screaming and wailing, collapsing on the dusty ground as her father fell and the life was choked out of him. Later, her grandfather lifted her up from the ground and carried her home, one bright tear suspended on his wrinkled cheek. Her father—his only son. He walked all the way to their village and into the wickiup where they stayed for days, mourning her father, his son.

  * * *

  When dusk came, a woman came out of the store with a bag. She approached Itza-chu and Cocheta and handed it to the girl. Then she faced Itza-chu.

  “Da goTe, Itza-chu.”

  “Da goTe, Hetty.” he responded. “Thank you for the supplies.”

  The woman looked abashed. “Don’t think nothing of it. I had extra.” She looked around to see if anyone could hear her and said in a quieter voice, “I wish I could ask you to come into the store to, you know, get out of the heat during the day. It’d hurt my business, though.”

  Cocheta gave her a glare out of blazing eyes, but the old man understood.

  “We must all do what we can to survive. Thank you for your kindness to me and my granddaughter.”

  Hetty dipped her head and watched them walk into the street, sighing. Passersby side-stepped to avoid them, to avoid their dark skin and strange ways. The girl’s hands curled into fists but Itza-chu just chuckled and they walked off into the darkening night.

  * * *

  The dandy stepped out of the saloon into the shadowy night. He was aggravated. All that money he had lost on the faro game and he had lost it to that damn cowboy with the blue bandanna. The dandy was convinced blue neckerchief was cheating but try as he might, he could not see how the man was doing it. He was doubly angered because he wanted to cheat but he spent all night watching that dad-blame bandanna man. Damn. He stumbled. Too much whiskey, too. He hiccoughed sour breath. Pay for it tomorrow.

  He meandered slowly down the street, not quite in a straight line, headed for the hotel. Maybe that pretty little Annie was still around. The dandy was cheered by this thought and picked up his pace a bit more. Pretty little Annie with the pert nose and the soft shoulders. As he walked down the street he thought he heard a buzzing sound. The dandy looked around and saw nothing. The buzzing stopped. Huh. I must be more drunk than I thought, hearing things. He entered the hotel and informed Mrs. Hope that he would like to see pretty little Annie in his room as soon as she was available. Mrs. Hope was pleased and agreed that Annie was a charmer and she would come to his room as soon as she was free. The dandy went to his room content.

  * * *

  Itza-chu and Cocheta had finished their meager dinner and were sitting in their drafty wooden house. Itza-chu missed the warm, domed wickiup of his vanished village, but the white government had built the wooden houses hastily and they were ill-made, cold, and depressing.

  Cocheta took the bag from her skirt pocket, kneeling on the dusty floor, and began to recreate the design that she drew earlier that day, before her story with the dandy, this time mixing the powder with his spit and loathing. She sang and chanted over it. The fire gave its reddish light and the shadows jumped and danced over the girl and her work, climbing higher and higher on the walls. The silhouettes leaped and growled and at times they looked like the old spirits coming together—Ganhs, the mountain spirits; White Painted Woman; Child of the Water; Naiyenesgani, the Creator God; and, most importantly, the god of war, Tobadzistsini. Cocheta sang with eyes closed and with a power that would have surprised the white man. She sang of loss, of love, of sorrow. She sang of the injustice and the loss of balance, and finally, she sang of revenge. Itza-chu watched her as the black night passed. The sheriff shook his head slowly, sadly. After several hours, a wind entered the hovel spinning and spinning—a wind when there was none outside.

  * * *

  The dandy came outside when the moon had passed and the night was still and dark. Pretty little Annie had exceeded his every expectation and he no longer felt the hurt of loss and drink. He stretched his arms to the sky and breathed in the silent night air. Taking a leisurely stroll up the still street would do him well and then he would sleep. He loved the night and its possibilities. A wind skittered the dust on the street and gave the dandy a chill. He rubbed his arms as the gooseflesh raised, and then the breeze was gone.

  He walked to the end of the street and, turning around, he felt a nip on his neck. Slapping it with his hand, he thought, “Damned ’squito.” He turned to return to the hotel but he felt another sting, this time harder, on his outstretched hand.

  “Damn!” he cried. Another one—was it a bite or a sting
—on his face and suddenly he didn’t want to be in the dark and lonely night any longer. He quickened his pace but almost immediately he was set upon by many things, they felt like insects, stinging, biting. The pain was enormous and he waved his arms wildly, trying to cover his head and face, but to no avail. They were everywhere. They stung through pants and jacket. They found their way inside his shirt. Some even managed to get inside his nice, shiny boots. He jumped, he danced, he jigged trying to avoid the swarm. He was in agony. His eyes were so swollen he could barely see. His nose was a mist of pain. He grabbed handfuls of his hair and pulled it out, trying to dislodge the hoard that had burrowed in and were stinging his scalp. His knees buckled and still they hounded him. One entered his ear, and when he tried to yell, two more found his mouth, and then his throat. He could not breathe! He collapsed on the ground, gasping for breath, clawing at his throat, legs thrashing, until slowly, so slowly, he stopped moving at all and the only movement were the lights and shadows playing on his nice, shiny boots, blood red boots, now covered with dust.

  Several miles away, the old man watched his granddaughter as she slept.

  * * *

  Hetty came out to give Itza-chu his supplies and she was replete with news of the horrible death of the dandy from the hotel. It seemed he had come outside in the late night and been attacked by something.

  “It was horrible,” Hetty said. “You should have seen him. All swoled up like he’d been dead for a week. Doctor said it was wasp stings or yellow jackets or some such thing. Awful.” Her voice lowered. “They said he’d just been with one of Mrs. Hope’s girls and she just started screamin’ and carryin’ on and just fainted right there on the street. Horrible. I could hardly even look at him.”

  “Wasp stings,” the old man disagreed, taking his bag, “wasp stings. Wasps do not fly at night.”

  “Oh,” wondered Hetty, “well, what else could it be? Poor man. Poor, poor man. Imagine what he went through before he died.”

  Itza-chu stood silent.

  “Oh, I’ve got one more thing; just hold on.” She ran into the store, hiking up her skirts.

  The old man looked at his granddaughter but she just looked at the dirt under her feet.

  Hetty came back out with some calico in her hands. “Look, Cocheta, I have a new skirt for you. Look, pretty colors.” She handed it to the girl. The girl stood mute.

  Itza-chu said, “Granddaughter.”

  Cocheta raised her head. “Thank you.” She passed her hand over the crisp material. “Thank you.”

  “Doesn’t say much, does she?” Hetty remarked. “Cocheta. Real pretty name,” she chatted, trying to get a smile out of the girl. “Cocheta. What does that mean, anyhow?”

  The girl raised her head and smiled mirthlessly, her eyes glittering. Hetty felt suddenly that the girl was old, older than her years, older than her grandfather and the hills and valleys surrounding the town. She shivered. She’s just a little girl.

  “Your name,” she stammered. “What’s it mean, darlin’?”

  “The Unknown,” the girl replied.

  THE KEY

  PETER J. WACKS

  Yuma, Arizona; The New West.

  Tuesday midday.

  The saloon doors swung open, dust blowing in on the wind from the street. Noonlight framed a young Chinese woman, dressed in a Stetson, a Chinese frog button shirt, and wearing chaps over her pants. Her nose was buried in the new H. G. Wells novel, The Time Machine. A pistol sat holstered on each hip, pearl inlaid dragons on the grips. Despite her slight stature and youth she seemed to fill the entryway.

  The room was packed with furniture that had aged poorly, and people that had aged worse. They tried to ignore both the woman and the off-tune notes sadly floating out of the player piano. The young woman tipped her Stetson to the room in general, never taking her nose out of the book, then walked to the long wood bar. Every step was a swagger. She knew something no one else did, and it was obvious in the confidence of her stride.

  She hooked a stool with her foot, sliding it out and sitting down, then rapped her knuckles once on the bar top, signaling the barkeep. Glancing quickly at the bottles and dirty mirror behind the bar, she shifted slightly, positioning to be able to see the room as she slid the novel into a pocket.

  The barkeep, a tall lanky man whose sun-wrinkled skin told of a life never lived in comfort outside of the territories, raised an eyebrow and spat. He walked over to the stranger and leaned on the bar, hands placed wide. “Get ya a drink?” he asked lazily.

  The stranger pulled some coins from the lower pocket of her shirt, then stared at them for a moment. “Pretty sure you don’t take wen here, as calculating a rate of exchange then delivering the coinage for a spendable medium would be tedious at best…What about pesos? High silver content, imminently spendable.” Her clipped accent was Chinese, but still had a hint of the local lilt to it.

  The bartender jerked back as though he had been slapped. “Pesos? You obviously just crossed from Mexico, as your kind ain’t allowed immigration, and I wouldn’t be offering those around. Ain’t ya heard we ain’t none too friendly with Mexico?”

  The stranger shrugged and dumped the coins back into her pocket. “Well then. Since my silver isn’t any good here, perhaps I can trade a tale for a glass of whiskey?”

  The barkeep frowned. A Chinese gunfighting woman was a rarity, but this was Yuma, where every week some new mysterious stranger wandered into town with a tale of adventure. “Stranger, this is Yuma. Stories are cheap and whiskey’s expensive. You ain’t the first, not by a long shot, to try that.”

  The stranger nodded, then spoke loudly enough for the whole room to hear, over the warbly piano. “I am here to tell you a tale of a man named Hummingbird, and his best friend Inazuma. Some of you may have heard of them. They are my godparents.”

  The barkeep’s eyebrows raised. He had indeed heard of them. Who was this girl, making claims like that? He grunted, and grabbed a bottle of whiskey. “Perhaps you is a bit more mysterious than most as comes in here. Go ahead.”

  She smiled, a quick twitch of her lips, then inclined her head and spoke to the room. “I will share a tale with you all, about some really big fellows. If you decide it’s worth a drink when I’m done, buy away. If you don’t, fair enough. I’ll tell you this though, it is true. Every word. Believe those words or not, it’s up to you. Now listen carefully. For I’ll tell you in the order they experienced it, which isn’t the order it happened, and if you don’t listen carefully—you’ll likely miss what actually transpired. It started fifteen years ago…”

  22:17 Thursday; British Consulate Warehouse at Canton Docks

  Lightning cascaded across the copper dome of the rooftop. An energetic maelstrom, from the thirty-foot-tall Tesla coil shielded in a massive Faraday cage and the thunderstorm overhead ejecting its rage across the city of Guangzhou, made the very air sizzle and hum.

  Outside the cage, Hummingbird fought for purchase along the slippery roof, his clockwork arm dangling, wrecked and useless, barely attached to the acupressure plates on his chest and back. One of the tradeoffs of being five foot two and less than a hundred and thirty pounds was being quick, not solid. He looked around warily; most of his enemies seemed dead. All but one, in fact.

  One.

  His foot slipped, dropping him to one knee, an actinic glare and ozone smell presaging a crackling doom. He leapt wildly as a lightning bolt tried to kill him.

  Gnashing his teeth at the storm, he shouted. “Inazuma! Watch out!”

  The six-foot samurai caught the warning in time to see a massive bolt of raw power rip through the sky and arc off the coil’s cage toward him. Inazuma threw himself forward, instinctively protecting the young crying girl by his side, and buried his katana into the copper roof on the far side of the small ventilation platform she huddled on. Heaven’s cruel arc struck home. Ina formed a perfect shield—and circuit—around the girl, protecting her from the deadly voltage.

  He was far less fort
unate. Bright light struck the katana, traveling to the copper roof and up the sword to Inazuma’s hand. The samurai was thrown, lifeless, across the dome, slipping down the side and plummeting to the street so far below. Hummingbird watched, frozen in disbelief. Rage threatened to overwhelm him as he crawled forward to the limp form of another of his companions.

  He crouched over the man and slapped his face furiously. The thin, well-dressed man didn’t move. “Dammit, Tesla. Wake up! Fix this, you bastard! You promised the storm would power the Key with no problems and then we could get it the hell out of here!”

  Hummingbird’s ministrations halted abruptly as a blade emerged from his chest, blood quickly washed away by the storm. He looked down. What?

  A man spoke behind him. “She is mine, little American,” he said in a thick Russian accent. “Dosveydanya.”

  Hummingbird looked to the eleven-year-old crying on the platform. “I’m…sorry…” he said, fighting a losing battle to not collapse atop the senseless Tesla.

  As he fell forward, his vision blurred, but he saw the girl stand up and throw her arms wide. Energy arced off the coil, met by a bolt from the sky, and the girl vanished in a blinding light as the Faraday cage exploded.

  Time slowed down for Hummingbird, raindrops creeping to a halt as they tried to fall to the roof. The tableau was frozen, Tesla just inches below him, gears flying from the explosion all frozen in amber, suspended in midair.

  Hummingbird blinked, pulling his pistol in the space of that motion, and spun, pulling the trigger. The scraggly Russian impaler’s hand erupted and his blade went spinning into the night. Hummingbird finished his fall onto Tesla, pistol falling from his fingers, and closed his eyes.

  09:32 Thursday; Guangzhou Central Constabulary

  “I say, old chap, been in the wars?” Biggleton snapped his fingers, the sharp noise bringing Hummingbird back to the conversation.