Mojave

by Johnny D. Boggs

  The man in black repeated his words, making me wonder if he could read my mind—or just smell me. Then he said, “Lucky Ben Wong take care of Mister American Gentleman, yes, yes, yes. Follow me.”

  Seeing how I figured a dude from China maybe wouldn’t charge as much as a J. M. Miller or a barber on Calico’s Main Street, I followed the little fellow.

  Which took some doing. Lucky Ben Wong moved like a cat chasing a rat. Couple of times I was tempted to reach out and grab his pigtail, but thought that would be rude, and I had my hands full with all my new duds and such. He turned down that alley I’d spotted on our tour of Calico, run past the schoolhouse, and was bounding across the bridge.

  That’s where I stopped, hearing that bridge rattle, and watching it sway. I looked down, seen how far of a drop it was off this shelf, and wasn’t entirely certain that bridge would hold Lucky Ben Wong. There was people living down in the canyon. More rammed-earth adobes, smoke coming out of chimneys, some kids playing in the dirt. Chinese kids.

  “Come! Come! Come now!” Lucky Ben Wong was beckoning me to cross. “No worries.” He read my mind. “Bridge safe. Come. Come. Come.”

  I come. Reluctantly, but I come, and followed the man in black as he weaved his way between other earthen buildings. Clothes dried on lines. Good smells from another building reminded me of Jingfei’s supper. There was buildings with signs with chicken-scratch marks that I knowed was Chinese. An elderly woman smiled at me, and I tried to lift my hand to tip my old hat that I’d soon be rid of, but couldn’t quite make it without dropping my packages and such.

  Finally, I come to Lucky Ben Wong’s bathhouse.

  Give him this much: He was enterprising. He held open the black India rubber tarp that served as the door to his place of business, which wasn’t frame, and wasn’t stone, and wasn’t rammed earth. It was made of coal oil cans. Empty ones, I assumed.

  Didn’t like it none, but I went inside.

  Funny thing is, the water was hot, and the soap lathered up real fine, and all in all, turned out to be a fine bath. I scrubbed and scraped and got all the Mojave Desert off me, and here’s something I didn’t consider until after I paid Lucky Ben Wong a dollar for a hot bath, a shave, and a haircut.

  There’s no source of water in Calico. I didn’t know where the Calico Water Works Incorporated got its water, but, like the wood, it certain-sure wasn’t close. They hauled water in wagons, and sold it. The board of directors was likely richer than the mine owners. Only there’s no way a water wagon could cross that rickety bridge, and the canyon’s too steep for a wagon to make it down and up. That meant that Lucky Ben Wong hauled all that water hisself, dumped it in a cistern out back of his place. You figure how much work that takes. And he charged me only a dollar—in a town where I’d just paid $2.50 for a sixty-five-cent shirt.

  “Need grubstake for mine?” he asked after handing me a cup of hot tea. No charge for the tea, neither. It come with the price of the bath, haircut, and shave.

  “How’s that?” The tea burned my lips, but was tasty.

  “You come strike rich in Calico, right?” He smiled. I took back what I said about his mouth being too long for his face. He had a real nice smile.

  “No,” I said. “I’m not a miner.”

  On account that mining’s real grueling work.

  “Got a job,” I added. Thinking: But wish I didn’t.

  “Good. Good for you. But if change mind. If need stake. See me.” He tapped his fancy black shirt. “I stake everyone.” He smiled again, and as I was thinking that for a man who lives in a shack made of coal oil cans, that grubstaking line of his wasn’t paying too much, he tells me:

  “Made six hundred dollars already.”

  “Not bad,” I said, thinking if he got here in 1881 or likely ’82, that would figure out to be about . . .”

  “This month. Yes. Good month. But last month even better.”

  I lowered the tea. “You made six hundred bucks this month?”

  He give a real sheepish shrug and smile. “Month not over yet.”

  Laughing, I pushed up the brim of my new hat, having given my old hat and my old clothes to Lucky Ben Wong to burn, shook my head, and said, “I’m in the wrong line of work.”

  “What work you do?” Lucky Ben Wong asked me.

  Dishonest, said me to myself, but just returned one of them sheepish shrugs and smiles back at Lucky Ben Wong.

  Then Lucky Ben Wong says to me, “Opium?”

  I blinked. I said, “Huh?”

  He pointed behind the washtubs toward a black table and some cots and some long pipes on the table, and somebody was on one of them cots who I hadn’t noticed before, and he appeared to be sleeping real sound.

  “No,” I said. “Thanks.”

  His round face bobbed. Maybe that, and not grubstaking miners, was how Lucky Ben Wong earned better than six hundred dollars a month. Or probably that’s how he could afford to charge a buck for a bath and grubstake miners.

  I finished the tea, set the cup on the saucer, and stood up to shake my savior’s hand. I was clean, properly outfitted for a lieutenant of Whip Watson’s, with a full belly, sober head. He reached up to shake my hand.

  “You see me soon,” he said, “but don’t wait long. Lucky Ben Wong soon be married. Soon be living in San Francisco. Be gone from Calico.”

  “Don’t blame you,” I said. We shook. “Congratulations and good luck.”

  I was stepping toward the door when the canvas flew open. The flash of a gunshot blinded me, and I cussed as I felt a bullet tear a hole through my new six-dollar hat.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I ducked right before another bullet punched past me and poked a hole in one of them cans of coal oil.

  Then I was lying flat on my belly behind a tub of dirty water, trying to get my Spiller & Burr out of my new, stiff holster. A bullet sang out, whined as it ricocheted off the tub, and dirty bathwater splashed on the sleeve of my blue shirt.

  The opium addict behind me muttered something that I couldn’t catch.

  Another shot flew wild, knocking the entire can out of the wall, creating a window that sent light and dust down on me.

  My watch was still ticking. Even better, I was still breathing.

  Lucky Ben Wong yelled, “Murder! Murder! Murder!”

  One of the gunmen snapped at him, “Shut up, Chinaman!”

  Another voice said, “Or I cut off your pigtail. Once we’re done here.”

  That told me some things. First, there was two killers. Second, I figured these guys had come gunning for Lucky Ben Wong, after all Lucky Ben Wong made a lot of money in these parts, and if you were going to rob someone, you’d rob him and not a bum like me. But those boys had come after me.

  Me?

  Would’ve made sense if they’d robbed me before I’d made it to J. M. Miller’s store. After all, I had forty dollars before I stepped inside the mercantile. Once I’d left, I had $6.19. After bath, shave, and haircut, I was down to $5.10, having tipped Lucky Ben Wong nine cents before I knowed how much he earned a month.

  All right, somewhere out in the Mojave Desert, in a wagon train led by a Mexican named Juan Pedro, I could count twenty-five men who’d likely kill for that bit of money. But in Calico? Where there were silver miners galore and Chinese men pulling in more than six hundred dollars a month? Kill a man for five bucks and change? Didn’t make sense.

  I pushed myself up, lifted the .36, and squeezed the trigger.

  “Murder!” Lucky Ben Wong yelled. “Murder! Murder!”

  One of the assassins cursed. Fired again.

  The opium addict yelled, “I am trying to sleep!”

  Now, I really hated to do this, but two men with guns was closing in on me. Later, I told Lucky Ben Wong that I did it to protect him, what with him crying out murder and all, I didn’t want those boys to shoot him since it was me they come after. But that was just a falsehood. I done what I did to save my own hide.

  In Calico, men built stone houses
without mortar, and I could see streaks of afternoon light shining through the walls, so Lucky Ben Wong didn’t use mortar in his construction, either, and if a bullet could create a window by knocking out a can, well, I wasn’t sure it would work, but the next bullet bounced off the tub behind me, and hit in front of me as I crawled along the dirt floor.

  After snapping off another shot, I got to my feet and ran straight for the wall.

  Lucky Ben Wong hadn’t put a rear door to his place, so the only way out was through the wall. Didn’t know if this would work, but it did. Lowered my shoulder, said a Hail Mary Full of Grace, sent another bullet at a figure rising from behind the barber’s chair in the corner, and smashed into that wall.

  The cans collapsed, and I was bouncing outside off cans, smelling the coal oil, rolling over, kicking an empty can out of the way, aiming the Spiller & Burr through the hole I’d just made, but didn’t see no gunmen coming out because the roof was collapsing and dust was rising thicker than the walls of Jericho, and over the rattling of tin and the ringing in my ears, and the shrieks of half the population of the Chinese section of East Calico, I made out Lucky Ben Wong’s “Murder! Murder! Murder!” Only now, he was likely expressing what he’d like to do to me for ruining his home/barber shop/bathhouse/opium parlor.

  The boys inside seemed learned enough to know better than to go through the hole I’d made, and the dust wouldn’t stay there forever, so I got up, damned near tripped over two more cans, and moved away from the rubber front door, running behind the building of cans, gun in hand.

  As I ducked behind some laundry, I heard more cans rattling, and somebody cussing, and figured the two assassins had made it outside and was coming after me. Long underwear slapped my freshly shaved face. I went through it, ducked underneath a pair of Levi’s, and turned a corner, leaning against one of those adobe houses to catch my breath.

  After I inched my way to the western edge of the shack, I raised the gun, already cocked, and listened. Folks were screaming, hens kept squawking, and a few dumb people across the path stood in front of their homes or businesses pointing at me, yipping like gossips in their foreign tongue.

  Unless those two killers were blind, it wouldn’t take them long to figure out where I hid.

  I could see the bridge across the canyon, but I’d have to run down this footpath to get to it, and that would invite a bullet to my back. Stay here, and some innocent folks was bound to get hurt, possibly killed. Hell, even more important, stay here and I was guaranteed to get dead.

  That’s when I seen another Chinese person, a small woman carrying two babies in her arms, run beyond the houses and the café and the finger pointers. Run straight for the canyon’s edge, then started down, she did, and I recollected those buildings and people on the canyon floor.

  Of course, I gave the woman and her two kids plenty of time to make it down those steps or ladder or whatever the hell it was because I sure didn’t want them to get hurt on my account. Well, maybe I didn’t give them that long, because I ran across the street, looking back toward Lucky Ben Wong’s place. Caught a glimpse of one of the man-killers.

  He wore a Mexican sombrero and a pink shirt.

  Almost caught a bullet in my gut in addition to a glimpse of that bad man.

  I fired back, then was behind the brown wall as a bullet struck the corner and kicked up brown dust.

  “I seen him, Paul!” Pink Shirt talked like a gringo, not a Mexican. “He’s heading for the canyon.”

  Which was exactly where I was going.

  At the edge, I looked down, seen the steps carved into the canyon wall that dropped to a ledge about six feet down. Perfect. I jumped. A bullet sang above me, and I landed on the shelf, knees buckling, pitching forward flat on my face. I almost went over the side myself, which was a fifty-foot drop and would have killed me, but somehow stopped myself from sliding off to eternal damnation.

  Unfortunately, the Spiller & Burr went over the edge.

  Spasms of pain shot through my knees and legs, but I couldn’t worry about that now. I came up, and found the ladder that led to the pit.

  Ladder. Built like that rickety bridge.

  Great.

  Ever clumb down a fifty-foot ladder? With people above you wanting to shoot you dead? And no friend waiting down below gripping the ladder to hold it steady so it don’t tip over and send you flying?

  Not something I recommend, but I had no choice. I grabbed hold, lowered myself, felt the rungs where I’d planted my feet groan and bend. The ladder was built by Chinese and for Chinese and I was an American, not fat but sure not skinny, and certainly heavier than any person who’d gone down this death trap—even a woman with two kids.

  Halfway down the ladder, I thought: How in hell did a woman climb down this rickety death trap with two little babies?

  Lots of Americans don’t think much of the Chinese. Oh, they like their food and their laundries, and maybe their opium, but they don’t care much for their culture, their pigtails, their pagan ways of thinking. But they are some people. As I hurried down, I kept thinking that Jingfei could have done just like that Chinese woman with the two babies. Chinese women are a wonder.

  I slid the last fifteen feet, burning my hands, hitting the ground hard, and falling to my left. Right beside the Spiller & Burr.

  A bullet kicked up dust a few inches from my feet, and rolling on my back, I spied Pink Shirt and the other fellow, a man with a brown hat—what other color could he be wearing in Calico?—and a Winchester rifle.

  Pink Shirt had fired his pistol. He was leaning against the top of the ladder, trying to get a better aim. I was picking up my revolver, blowing dirt from the cylinder, and trying to cock the .36 without busting my thumbs. Not that I’d be able to hit a man, or two men, or a damned elephant fifty feet above me with a pistol. What did I have left in the chambers? Two shots? Three? Paul With The Winchester fired. The bullet slapped between my legs. Pink Shirt was leaning, cocking his pistol, but he had as much of a chance of hitting me as I did of shooting him.

  Didn’t matter, though. ’Cause soon as I cocked the Spiller & Burr that ladder was moving off to the right, and Pink Shirt was yelling like a girl as he went over with it, and Paul With The Winchester had stopped cocking his rifle and was reaching out for Pink Shirt’s extended left hand, but not too far, because Paul With The Winchester didn’t want to get pulled into the abyss hisself, and I scrambled up and run toward the west side of the canyon, causing ducks and chickens to squawk and cackle and a couple of dogs to bark, while Pink Shirt screamed all the way down and Paul With The Winchester yelled, “Artemis! Nooooooooooo!” Behind me come the crunch that ended Pink Shirt’s life.

  Then I heard Paul With The Winchester yell, “You son of a bitch!” A bullet killed one of the ducks in front of me. Blood and feathers landed on the left leg of my new $3.79 striped woolen britches.

  Keep this up and I’d have to find a Chinese laundry.

  Which I’d just run past.

  Another round sent brown dirt from the side of that hovel into my eyes, but I got to the back and stopped, catching my breath, rubbing the dirt so I could see better, thinking how lucky I was to still be alive.

  I smelled the smell then. The stink of human waste.

  The trash pile Guttersnipe Gary and I had seen where the dog-men had been fighting wasn’t the main dump for Calico. That was here. In I guess what you’d call Lower Chinatown. They simply dumped their chamber pots and other refuse over the side.

  The ten or twenty Chinese who lived here had to live with this smell. The other twenty or thirty who lived at the top of the ridge had things better, especially if you were Lucky Ben Wong and earning all his money.

  After I spit the taste out of my mouth, I laughed. Said to myself, “Now you’ve really stepped into a pile of sheep-dip.” Or something similar.

  Paul With The Winchester couldn’t climb down to where I was since the way down was smashed alongside the smashed Pink Shirt’s body, but I’d have to find
the ladder that led up to Calico proper. I blew more dirt from the Spiller & Burr. I could see that ladder. It stood right next to the bridge. I took a chance and looked behind me. More of those finger-pointing Chinese men and women stood atop the far ledge, showing everybody where the late Pink Shirt had landed and died. Paul With The Winchester was nowhere to be found.

  To the north, the canyon seemed to widen and then curve. Once the Chinese settlement ended, though, so did all cover. Go that way, and I’d surely get killed. Stay here, and I’d be a sitting duck, and I’d already seen what Paul With The Winchester could do to a running duck with his rifle.

  I could just wait here. But didn’t like the smell, or the thought of dying in a pile of...

  So I looked back west and south. Saw the ladder. Nobody—I mean nobody—was up top near the bridge. I guessed how people in Calico didn’t care if the Chinese killed each other in East Calico or Lower Chinatown.

  Crouching, I leaped across the path to the next building. No one shot me dead. I put the revolver in my left hand to wipe the sweat off my right palm, then bent over and plucked the two duck feathers off my $3.79 pants. The .36 returned to my right hand, and, still squatting, I looked up to see an old Chinese woman sitting in front of a kettle that was smoking over a fire. She stared at me. At least she didn’t point no fingers.

  I said, “Morning, ma’am.”

  She said, in perfect English, “It’s afternoon, idiot.”

  I thanked her anyway, and moved to the next building.

  Looking behind me toward the eastern shelf, I saw buildings and smoke and some people running this way and that. The finger pointers was gone, and, for the moment, the bridge was empty. I looked off toward the north. No Paul With The Winchester anywhere.