Bandit Queen

by Jane Candia Coleman

  With the help of a cousin, Harry opened an herb store, dispensing medicines to his own race. But even there, in his little corner of Chinatown, he was suspected of acting as a physician, perhaps even selling abortifacients to white women. His shop was burned, and he hid for weeks in the home of his cousin, fearing for his life.

  Letters flew between California and Globe, where another cousin was prospering on a small farm. The mines and smelters were producing, the miners needed to eat, the cousin wrote. Together he and Harry could make a good living and perhaps, one day, when the laws were relaxed, they could send for their wives, those women who were waiting, their hope growing smaller with the passing of each month, each decade.

  And so, in a camp wagon drawn by two mules so ancient, so set in their ways, it took a miracle to get them moving, Harry left California, traveling at night, avoiding towns, and praying that he wouldn’t be stopped, robbed, or murdered on the road.

  How well I understood! As we sat on the wagon seat, piecing together our stories, it became clear to me that the world was a vicious place, and that the abused were everywhere—not just women like me, but entire races of people whose only thought was to stay alive. And if it was unorthodox, even illegal, for a white woman to work side by side with a Chinese, too bad! I’d take the chance and worry about the consequences later.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Like so many mining towns in the West, Globe had a violent history. The Apaches, now confined to the San Carlos Reservation, had more than once gone on the rampage, determined to keep the white prospectors out of their homeland. Many of the men who went into those lonely mountains in the early years never came out, or did so draped across the back of a mule. The Apache Kid, Al Sieber, Hunky-dory Holmes, Geronimo were still talked about as if they were alive, and so were Big Nose Kate, who’d run a boarding house, and the sainted Nellie Cashman who’d started the Buffalo Hotel and bankrolled miners only a few years before my arrival.

  Munson’s Chunk had, indeed, existed, as well as the mountain of silver ore that brought miners stampeding into the area, but when I got there, Globe had become a copper mining and smelting town. It was linked to the rest of the world by a network of twisting roads and rough mountain passes suitable only for mule trains, stagecoaches, and wagons. Everyone was waiting for the arrival of the railroad, an event that had been delayed for too long.

  Nature had also turned its violence on Globe. Floods, fires, destruction were common occurrences, as I had yet to learn. But on the day when Harry and I arrived and were welcomed by his cousin—a workhardened little man called, for some odd reason, Gilbert—I knew nothing more than that Globe, nestled in the mountains, was lovely and secluded, and that, if Al Burke tried to find me and jail me for assault, he’d never think of looking in a cook shack run by a Chinese named Harry Hu.

  My meals were free. I slept on a pile of quilts in the wagon, but once Gilbert and Harry set up business in an abandoned shed on the banks of Pinal Creek, I slept behind the big iron cook stove hauled all the way from California. I slept warm and untroubled and available to cook a meal for any hungry miner who came along.

  And they came in shifts, scoffing up food like starving animals, their elbows plunked on the oilcloth-covered tables, their faces covered with dust from the mines. Gilbert had furnished the tables and benches and set them out under a rude ramada. He also supplied vegetables and chickens for the stew pot, the bacon, beans, and beef that disappeared into the bearded mouths of customers almost faster than Harry and I could cook.

  Within a month my hands were red and cracked from washing dishes, and my legs ached constantly from long hours at the stove and waiting on tables. But I had no complaints. My bankroll was growing even though I sent a part to my mother every month.

  I also kept an eye out for Joe. I asked about him, except that I didn’t know his last name. I’d spent two weeks in a railroad car with a man whose full name I didn’t know. I had to laugh to myself about that, imagining what the dowagers back in Ohio would have to say.

  And then one day I heard a familiar voice. “Pete! I’ll be damned!”

  I turned, and there he was, as disreputable-looking as the first time I’d seen him—scruffy beard, his hands grimy, his fingernails caked with dirt.

  “Can’t you clean up before you come to dinner?” I asked with a grin to soften my words.

  Actually he looked no worse than the others—the smelter crews, the men who went down into the pits and came up sweating, covered with rock dust and the stains of the red earth.

  “That’s a fine greeting!” He plunked himself down on a bench and took in my own appearance—the stained apron, my hair pulling loose from its bun, my face red from the heat of the stove and the humidity of the afternoon. “You ain’t exactly a sight for sore eyes, neither.”

  I let that pass. “Hungry?”

  “Enough to eat the asshole out of a skunk, begging your pardon. And none of that chopsuey stuff.” He cocked his head. “What’re you doin’ slinging hash for a Chinee? It’s supposed to be the other way around.”

  “Earning a living and glad of it!” I snapped.

  Early on there had been a lot of comment on Harry and me that I’d ignored. Explanations were useless in a society geared to hatred and fear of the Chinese.

  “Don’t get all fired up,” he said. “I was just curious. What happened to the songbird job?”

  I handed him a plate of meat and beans. “Things got uncomfortable, and I left.”

  “In a hurry like last time?”

  “Sort of.”

  “You get yourself in the damnedest predicaments for such a little critter.”

  That was true. I sighed. “I’ll be out of here some day. I’m saving up.”

  “You got any spare cash?” He swallowed a mouthful and waited for my answer.

  “Some. Why?”

  “I was fixin’ to ask for a loan.”

  “How much?”

  “Fifty bucks. I’ve got me a prospect that looks real good. You get so you know when you’re close. You can smell it. But I need a few things to keep going.”

  He sat there hopeful, and I couldn’t count the thoughts that went through my mind. What I said finally was: “How long have you been here?”

  He blinked. “You know as well as I do.”

  “And you haven’t hit anything?”

  Seeing where I was headed, he raised a hand to stop me. “I had some bad luck, is all. But not this time, and that’s a promise.”

  “Promises don’t put food on the table,” I said. “What’ll you put up as collateral?”

  “What do you want?”

  “A half share in those diggings you’re so proud of.”

  “Robbery!” he said. “That’s what it is.”

  But I’d learned a few things in the years I’d been on my own, and one of them was that I didn’t throw money down a hole in the ground. I sat on the bench across from him. “Who grubstaked you back in Phoenix?”

  “I knew you’d bring that up.”

  “It’s true, isn’t it?”

  He slammed his big hand down flat. “And who got you there? The fact is I damn’ near dug myself to death back in those hills. But now I’m onto something. In a couple months we could both be rich.”

  Could I really believe him? From the look of him, he wasn’t any better than a derelict, the kind you saw hanging around train stations, bumming quarters, working in saloons for a place to sleep.

  “I’ll think about it,” I said. “Come back tomorrow.” And then I felt mean, like I’d kicked a dog that was begging a handout. “Dinner’s on me.”

  He smiled at that. “I appreciate it.”

  “We go back a ways,” I said.

  He pushed himself up and away from the table. “You were good company, Pete.”

  “It’s Pearl now.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re still Pete to me. Scrawny and big-eyed.”

  Why did those words grab at me? Why did I get sentimental, rememberi
ng how he’d helped me, jollied me out of pain. I flapped the dishtowel I was holding at him. “Go on. Git!” I said. “See you at breakfast.” Then I turned to the man who’d come in and sat down at the next table.

  “What’ll it be?” He smiled, showing white teeth in a face tanned by wind and weather. “Some of that chop suey,” he said.

  I stared. “You like it?”

  “Yes.” His eyes glinted, pale blue like the chicory that bloomed in the fields of my childhood.

  “Why?”

  “It’s different. Don’t you get tired, eating the same things?”

  I shrugged, never having thought about what men put in their stomachs. Chop suey was only a general term for a plate of meat, vegetables, rice or noodles. Harry ate something like it at every meal, and I usually did, too, being too tired to care or notice what I was eating.

  “I’m just glad to be eating at all,” I said.

  He studied me for a minute, those blue eyes going from my head to my feet. Then he said. “You’re Pearl Hart. I heard you sing.”

  That stopped me. “Where?” I asked. “Where’d you hear me?”

  “The Valverde. It was you?”

  I nodded slowly, wondering if he was a cop put on my tail by Al Burke.

  “Would you sing for me?”

  I looked him over carefully. He was well dressed, a cut above the usual diner, and obviously used to spending a lot of time outdoors. Probably not a cop, I decided. “It’ll cost you,” I said, and then was ashamed. He was earnest, and the look in his eyes was honorable. And there I was, greedy as a whore, demanding payment for a few minutes of pleasure. “I’m sorry,” I said. “What would you like to hear?”

  “I leave that to you.” His smile came again, slowly, shivering over his face like a ripple over a pool of still water, and making me tremble inside like he’d peeled off my skin and scratched my bones.

  “I’ll get your dinner first,” I said, and rushed into the cook shack where Harry was chopping vegetables.

  “He wants chop suey,” I said, my heart still fluttering. “And he wants me to sing.”

  Harry raised an eyebrow. “So-o-o,” he answered, drawing out the syllable and sounding pleased. “Sing pretty, then.”

  “You don’t mind?”

  He was astonished. “Mind? Mind? To sing, to make music is gift. Not to sing, very bad thing.”

  I gave up trying to figure out his logic, took off my apron, and smoothed my hair, and wished I had one of my pretty gowns—all because a stranger with blue eyes and hair the color of wheat had noticed me. I sang “After the Ball,” always a favorite, and Pinal Creek splashed and murmured, and the sky in the west turned the color of an old fire, fading away as the last notes faded, leaving us in twilight that seemed heavy with ghosts and old sorrows.

  Several men had stopped to listen, and they applauded and whistled. “More!” someone yelled. “Sing some more!”

  They were lonely, I realized, and starved for pleasure, and never mind that the saloons on Broad Street kept open night and day and had music aplenty. Many of them had left families to come and slave in the mines or in hope of a strike of their own, earning money to take back to their wives and children. I understood, and so I sang—and sang, until the stars came out and the moon rose over the Natanes Plateau like a pitcher that poured out silver light.

  When I finished, my customer put money on the table. “For you,” he said. “And thank you.”

  It was a bigger tip than I’d seen since I’d been in Globe, and I knew he was remembering what I’d said.

  “Please. No.” I pushed the money away. “It was awful, what I said. Bad-mannered. I don’t want your money, and I apologize.”

  “None needed.” He shuffled the bills absently, then met my eyes. “Would you take some advice instead?”

  “About what?”

  “Your friend’s claim.”

  “Joe?”

  He nodded, but said nothing.

  “What about him?” I sat down on the bench ready to listen.

  “I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation.” He smiled and looked around at the tables so close together there was no hope of privacy. “And I don’t think it would be wise to risk your savings on that claim of his.”

  In spite of myself, I felt a tremor of anger. Who was this stranger that I should listen to him?

  He read my feelings and leaned toward me. “I’m a mining man. It’s my job to know where the ore is, and I do know. Just like I know the claim he’s working is worthless.”

  I didn’t want to believe him. What I wanted was to be rich, to find buried treasure like in the romantic novels, and live in a mansion with many rooms and fancy wallpaper, the sound of my children’s feet loud on the stairs. For all that I’d been through, I was still that silly girl who believed in fairy tales.

  “Who are you?” I asked, needing a name as proof of something.

  “Cal Jameson. And I live near here when I’m not on the road.”

  “Looking for treasure.” I was mocking him, but he took me seriously.

  “You might call it that.”

  “Are you coming or going?” It seemed important to know.

  “Going. I’m just about finished here and leaving for Cananea.”

  That name meant nothing to me, but that fact that he was leaving made me feel as if I’d been grasping at straws and stood empty-handed.

  “Then I won’t see you again?” I asked.

  He smiled, and the moon seemed to take on light, and I noticed for the first time that there were moths dancing around the lanterns on the tables, dancing and singeing their wings.

  “I’ll be here a few days yet.”

  “Then I’ll sing for you tomorrow.”

  “I’ll look forward to it.”

  He got up, bowed, and strode off along the narrow path toward town. I watched until the darkness took him.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Joe was back the next morning before the coffee in the big enamel pot had finished boiling. I’d lain awake a long time, thinking about what Cal Jameson had said, and had decided he was right. Still, there was a bond between Joe and me. What to do?

  I gave him two extra eggs and a large helping of bacon. “Twenty dollars,” I said. “That’s all I can lend you.”

  He mopped up his egg with a hunk of bread. “Beggars can’t be choosers.”

  “I’ve got to think about my babies.”

  He stopped chewing. “What babies?”

  “I have two. They’re in Ohio with my mother.”

  “A hell of a mother you are,” he said. “Why ain’t you back there with them? And where’s their daddy? Or don’t you know?”

  “Don’t you talk to me like that!” Suddenly I was crying.

  “Shit!” Like most men, Joe was horrified by tears, reduced to cussing.

  “Take your money!” I shoved the twenty dollars at him. “Go on! Only don’t forget where it came from.”

  “Aw, Pete,” he mumbled, but I was too far gone in my own misery to pay him any mind.

  I got up and walked around the corner of the tent and ran smack into Cal Jameson.

  He put out his hands to steady me. “Are you hurt? What’s the matter?”

  It was the feel of him, solid, warm, that shook me. “Nothing,” I got out. “Everything,” and leaned against him without shame.

  “Tell me.” He pulled out a handkerchief and, without asking permission, wiped my face.

  Between sobs, I told the whole story. He said nothing, just listened, and, when I’d finished, he said: “Poor girl. What a load you’ve been carrying.”

  “I’m tired.” It seemed like I’d been fighting as long as I could remember, and all so I could stand here outside this tent and cry on Jameson’s shoulder.

  “Stay here a minute.”

  I sat, too discouraged to disobey.

  When he came back, he said: “You have the day off. What would you like to do?”

  I couldn’t think, just shook my
head.

  “Come on, then. Let’s go for a drive. Then I’ll take you to lunch, and you can sit and be waited on for a change.”

  He meant it! I looked down at my calico skirt and old shoes, the white apron that hadn’t been washed for a week. “Wait,” I said. “Please.”

  He understood. Cal was a man thoroughly considerate of women.

  Inside the shack, I washed my face and redid my hair, difficult because I was shaking—with excitement, with the breathlessness that comes with possibility. I put on a fresh shirtwaist and a walking skirt of deep red gabardine, and the best boots I had. Then, smiling, I went to meet him.

  He had a horse and buggy hitched beside the road, and at sight of them I laughed. “You planned this!”

  “Sort of.” He helped me in, picked up the hitch, and got in beside me. “Where would you like to go?”

  The weather was glorious, the sky dotted with small white clouds that threw purple shadows onto the mountain slopes. “Anywhere,” I said. “You choose.”

  We headed out of town and then turned west. The horse was fresh and trotted smoothly on a road cut between steep hills. The yucca was in bloom, tall torches of white flowers, and everywhere I looked I saw the golden showers of the paloverde trees.

  “I love this country,” I exclaimed. “It’s not desert at all. Not with flowers like this.”

  “And not if you take the time to appreciate it,” he added. “Most people don’t.”

  “I’m glad. All the more for the rest of us.”

  He grinned at that. “There’s plenty of room. Don’t worry about being overrun with people. And especially not where we’re going.”

  “Tell me.” I clutched the side of the buggy as we swung onto a narrow trace made almost invisible by blowing grass.

  “My house,” he said. “I needed to check it before I left and thought you’d like to see it.”

  We crossed a shallow stream, then drove through a thicket of paloverdes, their green branches and yellow blossoms making a canopy overhead. Looking up, I wished I could gather a bouquet and take it back with me, the fragrance, the delicacy of twigs and flowers, and the humming of bees. There was so much beauty in the world, enough to balance the ugliness and even, perhaps, tip the scales. But you had to be aware, to “take the time” as Cal had said. I sighed to myself, a deep sigh of total content.