* * *
Matters did not go quite so smoothly as Brian Pullen had predicted. Sergeant O’Malley spluttered and fussed awhile when handed the writ. “Ye should have delivered this to the stationhouse.”
“I tried, and was told everyone was out in the field—in Chinatown, to be exact. If your lieutenant is handy, I’ll be glad to give it to him.”
O’Malley looked one way and the next, then murmured, “He’s at that big red an’ gold gate at the front of this place, don’t ye know?”
“I came in another way. What do you say, O’Malley?” He turned to Heck Grange. “I have a little something for you, Chief.” He continued after slapping the paper into Grange’s hand. “It is a temporary restraining order stopping your railroad police from any punitive action against Misters Jensen and Longmont. They are to be left alone.”
Grange went scarlet in the face. “I take my orders from Cyrus Murchison, not some goddamned judge.”
Brian Pullen turned to Paddy O’Malley. “Sergeant, you know your duty. If these—hooligans violate this injunction, now or in the future, I’m sure you’ll do it.”
O’Malley’s broad Irish face beamed. He had always figured this Grange feller a bit too smooth an operator. It would be his pleasure to raise a few lumps on that oversized skull. He also recalled that the big one with the six-gun had been careful not to fire on any of his policemen. Might be there was somethin’ to what young Pullen said, not just some fancy lawyer tricks. He came to his decision.
“Ye’ll be movin’ yer men on now, Mr. Grange, won’t ye, now?” His brogue thickened with the assertion of his authority.
Heck Grange found himself up against someone impossible to take odds with. He deflated and pulled a sour face. “Yes. But we’ll get those two, you mark my words, O’Malley.”
12
By that time, the first of the Tong members had scaled the top of the temple wall. They went over with a shout and others scrambled to follow. Heck Grange made curt gestures to two of his henchmen and sent them off to round up their number among the railroad police detachment. He’d see to an end of this, he thought furiously. Cyrus Murchison owned more than one judge. What one had done, another of them could undo.
He headed off to care for that at once, tossing behind him a curt command to Earl Rankin. “Get ’em out of here, Earl.”
“Yes, sir, Chief,” Rankin answered, somewhat relieved. Being around all these roused-up Chinamen with hatchets made him nervous. A chilling shout from inside the compound added speed to his feet.
Watching first the railroad police, then the city police, withdraw, Louis Longmont nodded in approval. That feisty lawyer had some sand. He spoke to Quo Chung Wu. “Now, we catch the men of the Tongs between us.”
A shot came from inside the temple grounds and the volunteers in the marketplace started forward. Recognizing friends, no one made a move to get in their way. Louis Longmont had his shotgun and that of Brian Pullen. When he reached the young attorney, he handed one of the Parkers to him.
“Maybe we should have asked the police to stay to take charge of the Tong members,” Brian asked.
“Sometimes, it is not wise to think like a lawyer. I don’t think these students are in much of a mood to take prisoners,” Louis told him grimly.
Consternation mingled with doubt on Brian’s face. “But. . . these men have broken laws here for years. They deserve to be punished.”
“Dead is about as punished as one can get, mon ami, don’t you think?”
Brian paled. “I—uh—never looked at it that way before.”
“Start to, or you may wind up with a hatchet between your eyes.”
* * *
Unobserved, Xiang Wai Lee joined his underlings outside the cursed temple of those twice-cursed Chau Chu monks. His face grew thunderous as he took note of how few of the Society remained among the fighters. This could not be tolerated. His cheeks burned in sympathetic humiliation while he watched that puny lawyer take the face from both the police and their supposed allies from the railroad.
Then his expression hardened into bitter contempt. He had personally opposed the Triad Society joining forces with these foreign devils. What did they know of the honor and tradition of the Society? What, indeed, did they know of ruling by fear? A few, quick words sent new energy through his flagged-out men.
Even while the qua’lo argued over the meaningless bits of paper, the Tongs united and rushed the walls. A smile broke his stony expression a while as he recalled that glorious day when his Celestial Hatchets had come down through the hills and stormed that other Chau Chu temple. Blood had run in rivers and the riches of the frugal monks had been theirs. It had financed their journey to this strange land of foreign devils and established their power in San Francisco. Truly the Goddess of Fortune had smiled upon him that day. Just as she had done in making it his destiny to be away when these students and the two qua’lo had attacked.
Xiang had viewed the destruction and death only minutes before. “This must not happen,” he had hissed to his second in command, Tang Hu Li. “We must find our brothers and see that they bring me the heads of these white devils.”
Now, he observed that busy hands had been at work on the gate and went that way. A gunshot roared from inside and his followers ducked low. Xiang made a stately figure as he advanced without even a flinch. As he had calculated, it inspired the drove of hatchetmen. They stormed through the open gate and flowed across the lawn. Only one firearm barked in defiance.
What of the other man? Out of ammunition, or injured? Either way, it boded fortuitously for the Triad. Xiang had moved up in the Society since coming to America. Under his bloody direction, the wasteful inter-Tong warfare had been ended. Now he ruled over all three in Chinatown, and had liaison with Tongs in other cities. He had literally murdered his way to the top, with more than fifty killings to his credit. One day a network would extend from every Chinese settlement in every major city in this country. And he would rule it all. The euphoria of his recurring fantasy lifted him even now.
Then reality came crashing back as a segment of the inner face of the compound wall suddenly lost its integrity and crashed downward onto seven Tong warriors. They died, screaming horribly. Dust billowed and obscured the front of the temple. Yellow-orange flame lanced through the murk and another member shrieked and grabbed at his chest. Xiang looked anxiously around him in consternation.
A second later, two shotguns blasted from the gateway through which Xiang had walked only moments before. To his left a stout Tong hatchetman’s head turned into a red pulp. Another groaned softly and sagged to the ground, his white shirt speckled with red. All Xiang could do was hurry forward into the mouth of that deadly six-gun. As he did, he broke with tradition. From his coat pocket he pulled a light-framed .38 Smith and Wesson. He had found it useful in his rise to power for the sort of killing he usually did. Right here, he had doubts of how effective it would be, though better to have it out and ready than not to have it at all.
He might have regretted that line of thought if Smoke Jensen had given him time.
* * *
Smoke saw the distinguished man with the long black queue swaying behind his head start up the steps to the temple. He also saw the small revolver in his hand and the deferential way the other Tong gangsters behaved toward him. Rage glittered in the ebony eyes, and the face held a cruel cast. This had to be the bossman of them all!
“Ho, Coolie-Boy!” Smoke taunted him. “It’s me you’re looking for. Face me like a man, not a dog.”
Xiang Wai Lee hissed a command in Cantonese and made a harsh gesture that scattered his minions. “So, white devil, you have some courage, after all. You have a twisty mouth.” His accent gave the English words an unpleasant flavor. “Are you brave enough to fight me in my own style?”
Smoke nodded at the Triad leader. “You have a gun in your hand, use it.”
Insolently, Xiang thought, Smoke returned his own six-gun to its holster. It proved too much
for Xiang’s pride. He took another step toward Smoke Jensen and raised his gunarm. Taking careful aim, he squeezed on the trigger. Slowly the hammer started backward. Then the impossible happened.
With lightning speed, Smoke Jensen drew. Before Xiang’s hammer reached its apex, the big Colt roared and blinding pain exploded in the chest of Xiang Wai Lee. He staggered and took a step back. His own weapon discharged. The slug gouged stone from a step above him. An unfamiliar numbness began to spread through him. Was this what his enemies had felt before they’d died?
He banished the thought with a Chinese curse and tried to raise his arm to fire again. A flash of excruciating pain exploded in his head and a balloon of blackness quickly filled it. Xiang Wai Lee went over backward and rolled head over heels to the bottom of the steps. His dreams of a Tong empire went with him.
* * *
With the death of Xiang Wai Lee, the fight went out of the Tong members. The three nearest to where their leader had been slain spread the word quickly. Then, shouting their defiance and rage, they spent their lives in an attempt to avenge their leader and recover his face. They made the terrible error of attacking Smoke Jensen all at once. He welcomed the first one with a bullet, his last, which split the Chinese thug’s breastbone and riddled his heart with bone chips.
He went rubber-legged and sprawled halfway up on the steps. Then the hatchetmen discovered that their enemy had a hand-ax of his own. With his last round expended, Smoke reholstered his six-gun and pulled his tomahawk free. A well-made, perfectly balanced weapon, the ’hawk had been made by a master Dakota craftsman. The head was steel and it honed down to a keen, long-lasting edge. Genuine stone beads dangled on rawhide strips from the base of the haft.
That ’hawk had saved the life of Smoke Jensen more times than he could recall. Old Spotted Elk Runs, who’d made it, told him; “I fashioned this in the proper time of the moon, said all the proper prayers, even gave of it a bit of my blood to drink. So long as you prove worthy to own it, this warhawk will never fail you.”
Knew what he was talking about, too, Smoke reckoned. It had a fine balance and sure, deep bite. A Tong assassin named Quon Khan had learned the hard way when he’d closed in on Smoke and raised his own Tong hatchet. Quon had come up against wooden handles before, but this time his studded iron haft failed to perform its usual magic.
When he swung, Smoke Jensen parried with the Sioux warhawk. The Osage orangewood of the handle was springy and incredibly tough. It bent slightly—the best war bows were made from the same wood—and held. Smoke used the moment of stalemate to punch his enemy in the chest. Air whooshed from Quon’s lungs and dark spots danced before his eyes as he tried to reply with a kick.
Then Smoke make a quick disengagement by bending his knees and pivoting to his left. Every knife fighter knows that save for a period of sizing up an opponent, the actual engagement lasts only seconds. So it was for Quon Khan. As the pressure of his attack eased on Smoke’s ’hawk, the mountain man struck his own blow. The keen edge of the warhawk sliced through knuckles and laid bare a long portion of forearm.
Quon screamed and dropped his weapon. Instantly, Smoke struck again. White Wolf’s Fang—the Dakota craftsman had insisted that Smoke give his tomahawk a name, for strong medicine, he had maintained—struck Quon and split his skull. The blade sank to the haft. It cleaved Quon’s brow and split a part of his nose. Immediately, Smoke wrenched it free, with the aid of a kick, and turned to face his third opponent, while Quon sank in a welter of gore.
Bug-eyed, the skinny teen-aged thug with a bad rash of pimples froze in astonishment. No one, especially a qua’lo, could move so fast and strike so hard. Only two in the Triad Society had reputations for such prowess. And this foreign devil was not one of them. He felt his knees go weak and a warm wetness spread from his crotch, down both legs, as the huge qua’lo turned his attentions toward him. To his consternation, the white fiend smiled, then spoke.
“Do you want to live?” Dumbly the Tong brat nodded affirmatively. “Then drop that thing and get out of here.”
At first he hesitated. He raised the hatchet in a menacing manner, and the big qua’lo took a step forward. That decided him. His Tong hatchet clanged on the stone step and he turned tail. Black, slipperlike shoes made a soft scrabble on the walkway of crushed white rock. Quon looked neither to left nor right, and certainly not behind, as he took flight. First one, then another of his comrades saw him and joined in.
Spurred on by the steady boom of the shotguns, they cleared the temple grounds in what became the first of a concerted rush.
* * *
Apprehension began to fill Agatha Murchison when a messenger arrived from Chief Grange’s railroad police. It had been at midnight, and she had awakened to the rumble of her husband’s bass voice, clear down in the front hall.
“At last, by God, we’ve got them cornered. Get back to Grange and tell him to keep pressing. I want those two finished off tonight. Tell him I want regular reports.”
Cyrus Murchison had seen the man out, then padded through the house to the two-room suite next to the kitchen that housed the cook and her husband, the butler. He roused cook and put her to preparing coffee. Agatha had managed to remain in bed for another three-quarters of an hour. A voluminous velvet robe over her nightdress, she came to where Cyrus awaited further news in the breakfast room. The coffee service, her good porcelain one, sat on the table, along with three cherry tarts left over from dinner. Cyrus looked up at her entrance.
“You needn’t have discomfited yourself, my dear. It is only a matter of business.”
“What sort of business, Cyrus?”
“The usual,” Murchison evaded, and began to demolish the tarts one after another.
“I’m worried, Cyrus,” Agatha announced. “Ever since this alliance you worked up with Gaylord and Titus, you’ve been a changed man. It seems you never have time to rest. . . or for me.”
Murchison’s face crumpled and he put aside the fork, with its burden of red cherries and crust. “That’s not so, my dear. I think of you always. Lord knows, there are enough reminders around my office. As you know, I have replaced that old tintype with an oil portrait of you, and there are those new-fangled glass plate photographs. And we do have many nights together.” He looked miserable.
“‘Many,’” Agatha repeated. “But not like it used to be, not most nights. What is this about fighting in Chinatown?”
“You overheard?” Murchison asked, his face suddenly drawn and secretive.
“I could not help but hear, with all the noise you two were making. Whatever have those heathen Chinese to do with your railroad?”
That prompted a harsh, albeit evasive, reply. “Outside of the fact that a lot of them helped build it, nothing.”
“Then why are your men mixing in their affairs?”
Murchison’s brow furrowed and he took a moment to contain himself. “It is not their affairs. Two very dangerous men, who mean harm to the California Central, have been seen there. Grange sent some of his men after them. Somehow it got the Chinese aroused.”
“I shouldn’t wonder. After all, it is the only place they may live as they are accustomed.” A sudden insight came to her. “Was there any shooting?”
“Of course there was shooting,” Murchison responded testily.
Agatha replied mildly. “Then I don’t blame the Chinese for being upset.” For her it was the end of the subject.
In his usual manner, Cyrus also saw it that way, this time with relief. They sat in silence a while, until the knocker resounded through the hallway loudly enough to be heard in the breakfast room. Cyrus rose to answer the summons. Agatha clutched at her lace handkerchief. Worry teased her mind. She seriously believed this alliance to be a terrible mistake. It had an aura of something illegal about it. For all his standing among the elite of San Francisco, Agatha knew that there were limits set by the power structure that could not be crossed with impunity. For a moment, a secret smile lifted the corners of her
mouth.
For all the frivolous nature of the lives of society women, Agatha Marie Endicott Murchison had a fine, quick, and active mind. She had learned early to mask it under the usual vapid expressions practiced by her chums at school. Agatha Marie Endicott had been a lively, lovely young girl. She wore her long blond hair in the stylish sausage curls of her youth and had a trim figure. She had never gone through that leggy, coltish stage in her early teens. She had been lithe and graceful at her matriculation at her debutante ball at the end of May in 1860. It was there that she had met the dashing, handsome older man who would become her husband.
Cyrus Roland Murchison came from wealth. Old money had resided in his family for three generations. His great-grandfather had made the family fortune in whaling on Nantucket Island. His grandfather had added to the vast resources by pioneering a railroad in New York State that eventually put the Erie Canal out of business. His father had answered the siren call of the California gold fields and moved his fledgling family—his wife, his eldest, Cyrus, and three siblings—to Sacramento.
Quincy Murchison soon found he had no eye or hand for prospecting. When subterranean mining began, he fell back on the family talent. He engineered and supervised the installation of tracks for ore cars. He expanded to trestle bridges and eventually worked for Leland Stanford on his Union Pacific Railroad. Cyrus Murchison had followed in his father’s footsteps. He had attended Harvard and an advanced technical institute and had been working as an engineer for the UP for a year when he attended the cotillion where he met Agatha.
For her part, Agatha Endicott maintained a cool demeanor, though her heart pounded at each glance at her ardent suitor. Cyrus had fallen in love at first sight. When the ball ended, he asked permission to call on her. Coquettishly, she had stalled him, said she must consult her social calendar. Two days later, she’d sent her calling card around to the Murchison mansion, now located in San Francisco. On the back, she had penned a brief message.
“Friday? A carriage in the park? Eleven o’clock of the morning.”
Power of the Mountain Man Page 38
