CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
After Shawn O’Brien recounted his conversation with Morrow, Ford Platt said, “So how do we play it?”
“That’s easy to answer,” Shawn said. “We head for Chinatown and open the ball.”
He paused with a foot in the stirrup and said, “Ford, you ever heard of this Simon Badeaux feller?”
Platt shook his head.
“How about you, Hamp?”
“Draws a blank with me,” Sedley said. “Morrow said he’s a gun, huh?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“We’ll take care of . . . whatever the hell he’s called,” Platt said. “You concentrate on Cobb.”
Shawn swung into the saddle and looked down at the little man.
“I think Morrow believes that I can’t shade him,” he said.
“We can always get the marshal involved,” Sedley said.
“And tell him what? That we need his help to kill a man?”
“I can arrest him,” Platt said. “I have the power.”
Shawn smiled. “Something tells me that Hank Cobb won’t care to be arrested today.”
Platt’s face was deeply lined by conflicting emotions.
“Shawn, if you want to ride away from this, there isn’t anyone here going to blame you,” he said.
“I appreciate that, Ford,” Shawn said. “But the man who was responsible for Holy Rood and the deaths of so many still walks the earth. So long as his shadow falls on the ground, I can’t step away from it.”
Platt nodded. A fly buzzed around his head. “Well, you got sand, Shawn.”
“No, I don’t. I’m scared to death. Now mount up and let’s ride.”
The main street of Silver Reef was busy with people, but they walked slowly in the building heat as though they’d lost their sense of purpose.
The rapid closing of the silver mines had gutted the town and everyone but the most hopeful or unintelligent knew it was headed for oblivion.
A pretty woman wearing a green silk morning dress, a lacy white parasol shading her porcelain skin, gave Shawn a bold look from under the black fans of her eyelashes as he rode past.
But he didn’t notice her. His mind was focused on Hank Cobb.
Chinatown was a collection of shacks sprawled hit or miss across a sandy flat, hemmed in to the west by rolling hills, to the east by the timbered breaks of the Hurricane Cliffs.
It was in the heart of silver country, a vast area where glittering fortunes had been made and lost for a decade.
The Chinese, most of them former railroad construction laborers, had lived south of Silver Reef since 1879. They’d found work in the mines and now many were packing up and getting ready to move on, some of them back to China.
When Shawn and the others rode into the dusty settlement, about two hundred people still remained but the only stores in town, a grocery and a dry goods, were as yet open for business.
The sun was bright, the sky blue with only a few cotton ball clouds, yet a pall seemed to hang over the town, and Shawn knew that the cause could only be Hank Cobb.
A few men and woman, slender as reeds, walked around, but they did not raise their heads or show any interest when the three white men dismounted outside the grocery store and stepped inside.
The store smelled sharply of spices and of the dried ducks that hung like little brown soldiers in an orderly row above the counter.
Behind the counter stood a young, pretty girl with coal-black hair pulled back in a severe bun. Her huge brown eyes moved to Shawn’s guns and she breathed rapidly, her small breasts rising and falling under the pink silk shirt she wore.
Without a sound, the girl reached under the counter and dropped a small, white coffee sack on the counter that clinked in the silence.
“That is all there is,” she said. “My grandfather has no more.”
Shawn picked up the sack and hefted it in his hand. When he opened it up, he saw a dozen gold and silver coins.
“Why did you give us this?” Shawn said.
The girl looked frightened.
“My grandfather has no more. It’s all been taken.”
“Who took your grandfather’s money?” Shawn said.
“The white man who killed Qiang Cheung, our mayor.” The girl’s eyes flashed. “As if you did not know this.”
“The man who killed your mayor, is he called Hank Cobb?” Shawn said.
The girl shook her head and looked lost.
“I do not know what he’s called.”
Shawn laid his left arm across his chest.
“Does he carry his arm like this?”
This time the girl nodded. “Yes, it hangs from his shoulder in a cloth.”
“That’s our man,” Ford Platt said.
“Where is he, this man?” Shawn said.
The girl opened her mouth, but the words died on her lips.
“Don’t be afraid,” Shawn said. He pushed the sack across the counter. “We don’t want your grandfather’s money.”
“The man you seek lives in the house of Qiang Cheung.”
An old Chinese man walked through a bead curtain that swayed back into place when he stepped behind the counter.
He had a wispy white beard that hung from the pointed chin of a wrinkled face the color of parchment. He wore a plain white shirt over a black, floor-length robe of some kind and a round cap balanced on the crown of his tiny, well-formed head.
“Is he there now?” Platt said.
Beside him, Sedley made a show of studying the dried ducks, but his hands were clutched in front of him, betraying his growing anxiety.
“He is there,” the old man said. “The people bring him tribute.”
He shrugged thin shoulders. “All the young men have gone to find other work, and only the women and the old like me are left. Who is to tell this man Cobb no?”
“I will,” Shawn said.
“He will kill you if he can.”
“I know.”
The old man reached behind his neck and untied a jade medallion, carved with the symbol of an eagle perched on a rock amid a turbulent sea.
“If you were my own son I would give you this,” he said, extending the talisman to Shawn. “It is reserved for heroes and it will give you strength and protect you in battle.”
“I am honored,” Shawn said. He tied the string around his neck and the medallion hung on his chest.
“Warrior,” the old man said, smiling as he stepped back. “I have offered sacrifices to the great goddess Mazu to send me a man such as you and she has answered my prayers.”
“Well, let’s hope so, mister . . . ah . . .” Shawn said, slightly embarrassed.
“My name is Tian,” the old man said.
Shawn touched the medallion. “Thank you for this, Tian.”
“Yeah, thank you, Tian,” Hamp Sedley said. “Something tells me we’re gonna need it.”