“Are you deaf?” Crick asked. “What makes you think I need to check at the courthouse? I just told you the facts, and after conferring with the law”—he waved his pistol impatiently—“I’m told that the claim is indeed mine and you are the claim jumpers. By law I’m entitled to shoot you dead like so many rats right where you are. But as I am unwilling to shed blood needlessly, I’ll let you hand over the gold and spare your worthless lives. I may even let you keep on working this deposit for me if you agree not to pull a stunt like this and deny us our gold in the future.”
Without any warning that he was going to do it, Obee fired his gun. The shot shattered the rocks at the feet of the boy who had angrily shouted at Logan earlier. Obee and Crick doubled over in laughter as the boy jumped back and dropped his pickax, giving out a startled yelp. A piece of shattered rock had cut his hand, and he slowly sat down on the ground, staring incredulously as the blood from the wound in his palm quickly soaked the tan sleeves of his shirt. A few of the other Chinamen gathered around to tend to him. Lily barely managed to stifle her own scream. She wanted to turn around and run back into town, but her legs would not hold her up if she didn’t hug tightly the tree she was hiding behind.
Logan turned his attention back to Crick. His face had turned an even darker shade of red, so that Lily was afraid that blood would pour from his eyes.
“Don’t,” he said.
“Hand over the gold,” Crick said, “or I’ll make him stop breathing instead of just getting him dancing.”
Logan casually threw the shovel, which had been dangling from his hand until now, behind him. “Why don’t you put down your gun, and we’ll have a fair fight?”
Crick hesitated for a moment. If it came to that, he thought he could take care of himself in a fight, having survived enough brawls in New Orleans to know exactly how it felt to have your ribs stop a knife. But Logan was taller by about a foot and heavier by about fifty pounds, and though that beard made him look ancient, Crick wasn’t sure whether Logan really was old enough to have his reflexes slow down. And in any case Crick was a little scared of the red-faced Chinaman: He looked angry enough to fight like a crazy man, and Crick knew enough about fights to know that you didn’t come out of fights with crazy men without at least a few broken bones.
The plan was going all wrong! Crick and Obee knew all about Chinamen, having spent years in San Francisco. They had all been scrawny midgets, giving him and Obee barely more trouble than a bunch of women, which was not surprising considering all they did was women’s work: cooking and laundry, and not one of them had ever put up a real fight. This band of Chinamen was supposed to fall down on their knees and beg for mercy as soon as he and Obee slowly walked out of the woods, and hand over all their gold. The red-faced giant was ruining their plan!
“I think we have a pretty fair fight right now,” Crick said. He pointed his revolver at Logan. “Almighty God created men, but Colonel Colt made them equal.”
Logan untied the handkerchief around his beard, unrolled it, and tied it around the top of his head like a bandanna. He took off his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. The leathery, brown skin covering the wiry muscles on his arms was full of scars. He took a few steps toward Crick. Though his face was redder than ever, his walk was calm, like he was taking a stroll at night, singing his songs back in front of Lily’s house back in Idaho City.
“Don’t think I won’t shoot,” Crick said. “The Missouri Boys don’t have a lot of patience.”
Logan bent down and picked up a rock the size of an egg. He wrapped his fingers around it tightly. “Get out of here. We don’t have any of your gold.” He took another few calm steps toward Crick.
And in another moment he was running, his legs closing up the distance between him and the gunmen. He cocked his right arm back as he ran, looking steadily into Crick’s face.
Obee fired. He didn’t have the time to brace himself, and the force of the shot threw him on his back.
Logan’s left shoulder exploded. A bright red shower of blood sprayed behind him. In the sunlight it looked to Lily like a rose was blossoming behind him.
None of the other Chinamen said anything. They looked on, stunned.
Lily’s breath stopped. Time seemed frozen to her. The mist of blood hung in the air, refusing to fall or dissipate.
Then she sucked in a great gulp of air and screamed as loud as she could ever remember, louder even than the time she was stung on the lips by that wasp she hadn’t seen hiding in her lemonade cup. Her scream echoed around the woods, startling more birds into the air. Is that really me? Lily thought. It didn’t sound like her. It didn’t even sound human.
Crick was looking into her eyes from across the river. His face was so filled with cold rage and hatred that Lily’s heart stopped beating.
Oh God, please, please, I promise I’ll pray every night from now on. I promise I won’t disobey Mother ever again.
She tried to turn around and run, but her legs wouldn’t listen to her. She stumbled back, tripped over an exposed root, and fell heavily to the ground. The fall knocked the air out of her and finally cut off her scream. She struggled to sit up, expecting to see Crick’s gun pointed at her.
Logan was looking at her. Incredibly, he was still standing. Half of his body was soaked with blood. He was looking at her, and she thought he didn’t look like someone who had just been shot, someone who was about to die. Though blood had splattered half of his face, the other half had lost its deep, crimson color. Still, Lily thought he looked calm, like he wasn’t in any pain, though he was a little sad.
Lily felt a calmness come over her. She didn’t know why, but she knew everything was going to be all right.
Logan turned away from her. He began to walk toward Crick again. His walk was slow, deliberate. His left arm was hanging limply at his side.
Crick aimed his pistol at Logan.
Logan stumbled. Then he stopped. The blood had soaked into his beard, and as the wind lifted it, droplets of blood flew into the air. He took a step back and let fly the rock in his hand. The rock made a graceful arc in the air. Crick stood frozen where he was. The rock smashed into his face, and the thud as the rock cracked open his skull was as loud as Obee’s gunshot.
His body stayed up for a few seconds before collapsing into a lifeless heap on the ground. Obee scrambled to his feet, took a look at Crick’s motionless body, and without looking back at the Chinamen began to run as fast as he could deep into the woods.
Logan fell to his knees. For a moment he swayed uncertainly in place as his left arm swung at his side, useless for stopping his fall. Then he toppled over. The other Chinamen ran to him.
It all seemed so unreal to Lily, like a play on a stage. She thought she should have been terrified. She should have been screaming, or maybe even fainted. That’s what her mother would have done, she thought. But everything had slowed down in the last few seconds, and she felt safe, calm, like nothing could hurt her.
She came out from behind her tree and walked toward the crowd of Chinamen.
WHISKEY AND WEI QI
Lily wasn’t sure if she would ever understand this game.
“I can’t move the seeds at all? Ever?”
They were sitting in the vegetable garden behind Logan’s house, where her mother wouldn’t be able to see her if she happened to look out the living room window as she finished her needlework. They were both sitting with their legs folded under them, and Lily liked the way the cool, moist soil felt under her legs. (“This was how the Buddha sat,” Logan had told her.) On the ground between them Logan had drawn a grid of nine horizontal lines intersected with nine vertical lines with the tip of his knife.