Authors: Sarah McCarty
“Is it dead?” Lin called.
Fei didn’t know. She didn’t want to check. Its mouth, just inches from her foot, was big enough to take it off with a snap.
“Fei? You have to check.”
Yes, she had to check. Very cautiously, Fei tiptoed around the monstrous head. Blood seeped from the corners of its mouth and down over its snout from the knife wound to its eye. “I think it’s dead.”
“Check.”
How was she supposed to do that? She nudged it with her toe. It didn’t move.
“It’s dead.”
“Are you sure?”
She wasn’t sure of anything. “I do not kill pigs every day, Lin, but it’s not moving.”
Lin climbed down out of her tree. “Maybe it’s pretending.”
Fei had heard boars were smart, but had never heard that they could hold their breath. “It’s ribs aren’t moving.”
Lin came over, lifting her borrowed pants legs out of the water as she crossed the stream. She stopped a safe ten feet away. “It’s very ugly.”
Not as ugly as it had been when it was alive and charging her. “But good to eat.”
“Do you know how to butcher a pig?”
“I have seen it done.” Once. From a safe, clean distance.
Lin poked the carcass in the hindquarters. “You are going to need your knife.”
Fei rubbed her hands down her pants. They came away wet. She looked. Bright red blood coated her palms. Her stomach churned.
“Oh, my fathers! Are you hurt, Fei?”
“No.” She wiped her hands on the boar. “It’s not my blood.”
This close, the stench was overwhelming.
Lin knelt gracefully beside the carcass. “If you were a man, this would be a moment of which to be proud. Your first kill.”
Fei knelt beside Lin, still gasping for breath. “If I were a man, I think I would not be wanting to vomit right now.”
“You were very brave.”
“I was almost too scared to even run.”
Lin bumped shoulders with her. “But when you did, you ran like the wind.”
Relief bubbled over in laughter. “While you cursed the boar’s ancestors.”
“I was trying to slow him down, but there was no need. If you hadn’t stopped to poke him with the stick, he would’ve had to follow you all the way to San Francisco.”
Fei took another breath into her tortured lungs. “We should thank the ancestors for sending such a clumsy boar.”
“What are you going to tell Shadow?”
“That I have breakfast.”
Lin reached for the knife. Fei’s stomach heaved. “What are you doing?”
“You saved my life. The least I can do is cut the steaks.”
“Do you know how to do this?”
Lynn covered her mouth and smiled. “No, but I think, if you can learn to kill a wild boar with your bare hands, then I can learn to butcher it.”
Lin gingerly drew the knife from the pig’s eye. Blood and brain matter welled. They both gagged. “When he asks where we got the steaks, what will we tell him?”
Fei glanced at the bloody knife and then her cousin. “The truth.”
CHAPTER NINE
“Y
OU
GOING
TO
TELL
ME
now how you killed that hog?” Shadow asked, hiking Fei up more securely in his lap, enjoying the warmth of her bottom against his groin.
Fei shook her head. “I already told you.”
“You tripped.”
“Yes.”
“And he fell on your stick and then you fell on him and the knife just happened to stab him in the eye. Honey, I’ve been told enough whoppers in my life to recognize when I’ve been handed another.”
Again, a little shrug that told him nothing. “It is the truth.”
“And can you tell me how going hand to hand with a boar is staying out of trouble?”
“The boar picked the fight. I wanted a bath.”
He was glad she couldn’t see the smile on his face. She was fast on her way to unmanageable.
“You should not be so concerned with how I got it and just be glad that I did. The one rabbit you brought home would have left you with an empty belly.”
“Uh-huh. You realize that’s not going to get you out of trouble?”
“A full belly helps in all things.”
“Not with death.”
“I did not go looking for trouble.”
“It just found you. Again.”
She sighed. “Yes.”
“This isn’t your house or town, Fei. A lot of things can happen to you out here and all of the dangers aren’t human.”
“We are sorry,” Lin said from behind. “We did not see the harm.”
“Sorry isn’t enough. If I tell you to stay put, you stay put.”
Fei squeezed his hand. “I promise, next time I will stay put.”
Shadow didn’t want to know how scared she had to have been to make that promise.
“How long before we reach this town?”
“Changing the subject?” he asked with a cock of an eyebrow.
“Yes.”
She did make him laugh with that honesty of hers. “We should be there by sundown.”
“They are on the stage route?” Lin asked.
“Had enough of my hospitality?”
“It is not what I am used to.”
He just bet. “But think of the stories you’ll have to tell.”
“There have been adventures.”
“You don’t sound excited.”
“Fei is the one who loves the excitement.”
Yes, she was.
“While you prefer the quiet of home?”
“I like order.”
“Then you’ll be happy to hear they also have a telegraph. We can contact your kin.”
“Xei-xei.”
“Where will we stay?” Fei asked.
Most hotels did not allow Chinese to rent rooms.
“I have a friend who runs a boardinghouse. We’ll take rooms there.”
“This friend will not mind that we are Chinese?”
“There isn’t much that gets Ida in an uproar.”
“She sounds like a very nice woman,” Lin offered.
“You’ll like her,” Shadow informed them. “But before you do meet her, we need to go over a few things.”
B
Y
THE
TIME
THEY
GOT
TO
TOWN
,
they were so well coached that Fei’s heart was in her throat. She was used to hostile stares when she came into a new town. Chinese were rarely welcomed with open arms. But what she wasn’t prepared for were the looks that Shadow got. He had timed their arrival for nighttime, when he’d be less likely to be recognized. It had made sense to Fei on the way in, but now that they were there, she didn’t see where night was helping, because the streets were full of drunken men looking for a fight. The way they were eyeing Shadow, and her, suggested that maybe they’d found it.
Keeping her head down, she silently urged Night on.
“Keep up, Lin,” Shadow ordered. Even his voice was different here. No undercurrents of laughter colored the deep baritone. Here it was flat and hard and…deadly, she realized.
Lin clucked her tongue. The mare picked up her pace.
It was not a friendly town.
From the right side of the street a man called out, “What’re you doing with a white woman, injun?”
Her heart sank. They couldn’t tell from that distance that Fei was Chinese. That would bring more trouble. Shadow kept riding. “Don’t look right or left, honey. Just ride.”
She kept her gaze locked between the horse’s ears.
“Lin, move that horse up here. Keep tight to me.” Lin didn’t hesitate. The boardinghouse was, fortunately, only four houses in, but word of their arrival was spreading up and down the street, stretching far beyond where they stopped. The house was a simple two-story building with a wide front porch, whitewashed walls and some of the most spectacular landscaping Fei had ever seen.
Shadow slid off the horse and held up his hands. She put hers on his shoulders.
She licked her lips, feeling the stares like a wall pressing in. “I did not know it would be like this.”
“It’s not like anything, honey.”
“They do not like us.”
“It’s my homely face they’re not happy to see.”
He turned and helped Lin down.
“Ain’t right, injun putting his hands on a white woman.”
The front door of the boardinghouse opened. A big woman with iron-gray hair came to the door, tall and heavy, dressed in a dark blue dress. In her arms, she cradled an old-fashioned shotgun. Stepping out onto the porch, she snapped, “You out here harassing my boarders, Paul Davis?”
“I ain’t harassing no one. Just making a stand for public decency. No injun’s got call to being so familiar with a white woman. Especially in front of decent folk.”
Fei turned around. “He is my husband.”
The crowd went immediately from amused to hostile.
“Shit!”
Grabbing her arm, Shadow gave her a shove up the stairs. “Go stand with Ida and keep your mouth shut.”
The old lady aimed her shotgun above her head into the crowd.
“Yes, get on up here, sweetie. No sense standing in the street.”
“You can’t be having those kinds of goings-on in your house, Ida,” Paul Davis called out. “It’s unnatural. No decent woman or man is going to stay there after such goings-on.”
Fei cringed, turned and gasped. Ida just snorted. So much derision captured in one short sound. Fei was impressed.
“Hell, Paul Davis, I let you stay here just last month with that spiteful wife of yours. If my business can survive that, I don’t see how this is going to even cause a ripple.”
The crowd laughed. Davis swore. Fei studied the woman named Ida. No wonder Shadow admired her. She was strong and unafraid, and commanded respect all by herself. This was the type of woman Fei wanted to be. This was the future she wanted for herself.
Davis spat. He was a skinny man with a big nose, wild beard and a bald head. “Never understood your fondness for that Indian, Ida.”
Ida didn’t miss a beat. “Well, I never understood your fondness for drink, so again, I would say we’re even.”
Fei watched as Shadow positioned himself between the steps and the crowd. Though he was standing, he gave the impression of being crouched and ready to fight. Her dragon. She looked longingly at her pack. A couple of sticks of dynamite would help the situation.
“Lin, get on up there with Fei.”
Lin hurried to comply. Her gaze followed Fei’s. “I thought Shadow took all your sticks,” she whispered.
“He took the ones I had in the pack at Culbart’s.”
He hadn’t thought to check her saddlebag after they’d left the burnt-out ruins of her home.
“She your wife, too?” another man asked.
Shadow straightened. The breeze whipped his hair about his broad shoulders as he stated, “She’s under my protection.”
Dragon.
A shiver of pride went through Fei.
“Coming into this town with two women you’re carrying on with, it’s not decent. We won’t stand for it.”
Shadow’s hand dropped to his gun. “
You
won’t?” he asked very calmly.
Davis backed up, looking around for support. Like rats deserting a sinking ship, people backed away until there was just Shadow and Davis caught within a semicircle of onlookers.
Ida shook her head and aimed the shotgun. “Paul Davis, you need to move along before I put a little lead in your ass.”
“You’re not scaring me away on this one, Ida.”
“The man brought his wife and his wife’s friend for a good night’s sleep. It’s no different than when you bring over your wife and your sister-in-law. Are you going to be telling me that you’re sleeping with both of them?”
“That’s scandalous talk!”
Ida just harrumphed and kept that shotgun pointed. “Well, you’re creating a scandal here on my porch. If you don’t want it thrown back at you, don’t be throwing it at anybody else. Now, it’s late, gentlemen, and my supper is waiting. So if you don’t mind, move along.”
“The sheriff isn’t always going to be able to protect you, Ida.”
“Then I guess I’ll just have to protect myself, but for tonight you need to take your nonsense and your alcohol and just go.”
“It ain’t right.”
“Right or not, do it.” With a wave of the gun, she ordered, “Someone help him find his way.”
A couple of men detached from the crowd and took Paul Davis’s arms. Ida waited until they crossed the street before lowering her shotgun, taking Fei’s hand and shaking it.
“Ida Bond.”