The Rock Child (35 page)

We faced each other just as Daniel gave us the introduction to a waltz. It was a Frenchy tune, the one Reeshaw played on the fiddle, which he called the “Red River Waltz,” which I bet the Cajun folks of Louisiana called by some other name, but by the luck of our celebratin’ evening, it was one of the few we both knew a little.

The miners didn’t care for any waltz, so they left the dance floor to us.

I took her in my arms and she smiled wonderfully at me. In the last week or so, when she’d got healthy, Sun Moon just glowed at me sometimes, and it made me giddy. It wasn’t glow enough to get her to listen to me about us going to Tibet together, but I loved it.

We launched out in that three-beat rhythm, circling the dance floor. We glided. We added an accent—up on beat three, vigorously back into the downbeat. I began to turn us slowly, and she followed right with me. Soon we were whirling as we circled, floating, soaring, waltzing. I fell in love with dancing at that moment.

I also loved Sun Moon. I looked into her eyes and saw love there, too,
but I didn’t know whether it was for me, for the moment, for the dance, or for all the hope she’d found the last week.

In loving to dance, Sun Moon was thoroughly Tibetan. On visits to her family she liked to do the
guozhuang,
which celebrated the harvest, the
xianzi,
and even to tap dance. This business of men and women dancing as couples was new to her, but tonight she was willing to cast off, to sail beyond the ways of her life and her people, to enter into a world of abandon.

She liked the waltz, which was graceful, elegant, and rhythmic at once. She liked moving in rhythm with another person, so that as a pair they became more than two individuals, a new being, one dancing creature. She liked being the center of attention of all the watching miners. She liked, for the moment, being touched by the father of her child.

She looked into Asie’s eyes, she felt the growth in her belly, and she pictured herself and her child in front of her convent, looking out over the mountains and breathing deep into the exhilarating alpine air. She spun, she lifted, she sailed, she dreamed.

The voice roared loud as gunshots. “Sign says everybody invited,” it boomed over the din. “I reckon that includes me.”

Sun Moon stopped on the rising third beat of the waltz, as though poised on the edge of a cliff. The music stopped. She saw clearly. She fell to her death, floating like a scarf.

Porter Rockwell.

Suddenly she knew that she had been waiting for that voice every moment, as one waits always, skin prickled, for the cold breath of death.

The crowd of miners fell back. Still raised on her toes, waiting for the downbeat that now would never come, she looked sideways. He stood just inside near the door, dressed in black. He seemed not a dark presence but a horrible black hole in the world.

He lifted his pistol with one long, straight arm, right at Sun Moon. Shorn of the dance, she stood motionless, frozen.

Lightning flashed from the muzzle.

In the same instant she felt Asie lurch violently. The roar smashed all music forever.

Sun Moon thumped hard on the floor on her back. Asie rolled them over and over each other into the crowd. The gun roared again.

Pain exploded in Sun Moon’s belly.

She felt for blood. She could not think of her own life, or of Asie’s, only the child.

Her hands came away dry.

I saw the miners had closed around us. They weren’t going to let Rockwell get another clear shot. They wouldn’t stand still for murder.

I shoved Sun Moon onto her knees, pushed her butt, and hollered, “Run! Run!”

We jammed through the crowd toward the back room. Some people made way, some even fell to the ground getting out of the way. Behind I heard a clamor, the sound of a big bunch of angry men. We’d have a little time.

Into the room where Tommy held the dinner. Through it, knocking tables and chairs aside. Into the kitchen. Down its narrow aisles into the back room, I didn’t know where in hell we were going.

We busted through the door and instantly I saw it was outfitted as an opium den. I shut the door behind us. On a kind of bed on the far side was what I wanted, Sir Richard. He was stretched out full, and now I saw he was stripped absolutely naked. Polly and Lu Pu-wai were propped at various angles, just as naked. The opium pipe stuck up from Sir Richard’s belly like a you know what.

“That shooting was Porter Rockwell!” I bellered at Sir Richard from a foot away.

Sir Richard opened his eyes at me. “Thank you,” he murmured. “Thank you very much,” and closed his eyes dreamily.

The door busted open with a bang. I knocked Sun Moon to the floor and flopped on top of her.

“I’ll help,” said the voice of Gentleman Dan. “Sir Richard is useless. Let’s go!”

PART FIVE

GOING HOME

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

We ran. I mean
ran
. Without you being scorched by flame spat out of a gun barrel, you have never run.

Full tilt we bolted out of the Heritage the back way, huffed along behind the other buildings, foot-and-arm-flapped downhill, gasped along a level street, rushed into the scrub brush, and busted gut up the rough terrain of the dark mountain, following Daniel.

We had no hell nor heaven idea where Porter Rockwell was behind us, but we knew damn well he would be coming. Coming and coming and coming.

We didn’t have time to wonder where Daniel was taking us. He led the way with a wonderful assurance, like a man whose poise embraced even fleeing headlong from destroying angels. I just had to accept that as Daniel. Also seemed like his lungs found more wind than mine. I could scarcely keep up, and Sun Moon was hanging on to my hand and heaving her chest up and down.

“Not much farther,” said Daniel evenly. He knew the way so well the blackness of the night didn’t even matter.

We followed him to a steep, jumbled, broken-up place. He pranced through the rocks nimbly. Turning around first to make sure we were right with him, he squatted, then duck-walked forward, and disappeared. This was his first surprise.

Sun Moon darted right in behind him. She must have had the cajoolies bad as me. But I grabbed a big breath, like it might be my last, and dived into the earth.

Light. Daniel already had a candle lit, which was his second surprise. “You’re safe for the moment,” he said, and led the way forward down a tunnel. We followed, but I didn’t like it. I have never been one for bowels, bowels of the earth or any other kind, nor for closed-in places, nor for dark places. The shaft was all in one.

Pretty quick we came to a junction where a drift forked off to the left. In the mouth of this drift Daniel reached, got two more candles, lit them, stuck them on small ledges, and revealed his tiptop surprise. A tank of at least five gallons caught water from a trickle and held it. A tick mattress stretched out on the rock floor, with blankets tucked neatly around it, and a pillow. Several tins of oysters stood on a ledge, next to a drinking cup and some eating utensils. Books flanked these.

Water, food, light, a bed, and … Well, it felt like a tomb. If you find yourself in a tomb, however, water, food, light, and a bed are a good start.

Sun Moon and I sat down to catch our breath. I was keeping an eye on her, what with her fever and this hard running and all.

“How are you feeling?” Daniel asked.

“Terrified,” said Sun Moon. Her breath caught as it came out, and I could hear the tears behind it.

“You are completely safe here.” He must have decided we could use some easing of mind. “No one knows I have this place, no one at all. I like somewhere to be absolutely alone, to read, to think, just to be. This is it.”

Well, that was Daniel. Seemed precious.

He opened both arms to include the whole area. “This mine belongs to me. It looks abandoned, but I prefer to think of it as lying in wait. I bought it for nothing. When the mountain’s veins run this direction again, it will be worth something.”

I was seeing a lot new about my friend.

He studied our faces. “So tell me about the shootist,” he said.

“He wants to me kill me,” said Sun Moon.

“I gathered that.”

“By now he probably wants to kill
us,
” I added.

“He’s been after me for nearly a year,” she said.

“A
year?
”

“Porter Rockwell,” says I.

Daniel arched an eyebrow toward us. “If you’re going to have an assassin after you,” he says, “you may as well get the best.”

I kept quiet while Sun Moon told her story. I had no idea how much she’d want to tell Daniel, and felt pleased she offered so much of it.

Her style was simple and truthful. She told briefly how she was abducted from her homeland, taken to Canton, shipped to the United States and then to Hard Rock City. How she’d been sold to Tarim for purposes of prostitution.

Daniel gave her all his attention.

“The first night Tarim drug me. Then men gamble be first to take me.” Sun Moon made an effort to keep her voice soft and even. “As winner undress me, I wake up and kick, bloody his nose. It is Porter Rockwell. He cut me.” She touched the scar on her face with one finger. “Tarim beg I be spared as valuable property. Rockwell swears if he sees me again ever, ever, he kills me.”

She swallowed. “After months with Tarim I escape. Rockwell see me near the Great Salt Lake, try kill me once, then twice. The Mormons hold him in jail to keep him from kill me. They say I am escaped. Yet he travels a thousand miles to fulfill oath.”

I saw shivers run up and down her little body.

“I sorry be trouble to you,” she said.

Daniel answered evenly, “My fiancée was a prostitute. The one regret of my life is that I didn’t protect her.”

At that moment I saw into Daniel’s soul, and the word came up for me again. Flabbergastonia. A rich man who was a musician. Who fell in love with mulatto prostitute. Ran away to Virginia City. Bought up a mine on the sly, maybe more than one. Kept a cave to be private in. Put his neck on the line to help us. Flabbergastonia.

“I’d best go,” he said. My heart lurched a little—we were going to be left alone in this hole. “If I reappear soon at the Heritage, they may not realize I took you off. Everything you need is here. I will come back with intelligence and supplies in the morning.”

“We can’t stay here forever.”

“No. When I return, I’ll bring the means for us to flee Virginia City.”

Sun Moon and I looked at each other. Would it never end? Skeedaddling, skipping town, blowing the place, running like hell, all we’d been doing for months.

I looked at Daniel. “Thank you for ‘us.’” It was a comfort, but not enough.

“You’re welcome. I’ll get your things from the hotel.”

We looked at each other, each wondering about our gold.

“I’ll get everything we can carry,” said Daniel pointedly.

“What about Sir Richard?” asked Sun Moon.

“I don’t know,” said Daniel. “If I can find him. If he’s on his feet.”

Then he was gone into the shadows of the shaft.

For some reason I felt we’d seen the last of Sir Richard, and that hurt. I gushed out my breath.

Sun Moon touched my hand.

What came into my mind was foolish, but I said it. “I wanna go home to bed.”

She eyed me for a moment. “I don’t think we know where home is any longer,” she said. “Either of us.”

They listened to Daniel’s footfalls fade. When there was nothing but eerie silence, she supposed he’d slipped out into the night, into the kind of darkness she and Asie could not have. Daniel had the vast reaches of the stars. She and Asie were trapped in a dark hole.

Without a word Asie found some more candles and a forged holder with a point for sticking into cracks. Sun Moon helped him light and mount them. She felt the fear waving up and down in her chest. She thought of Asie’s word for it,
willywoolly,
and smiled to herself. Even six candles made no difference—the dark still felt like something caught in her throat.

Partly to ease this feeling, she rummaged in the tinned food. Yes, there was something besides oysters, which she knew Asie hated. Tomatoes. He ate those, and Sun Moon picked at the slick creatures that came from shells. Funny, she thought. Tibet was as far as you can get on this planet from an ocean, but she liked oysters. Though she wasn’t hungry, eating was a comfort.

Soon there was nothing to do but go to sleep. How else would the long hours go away? What else could do they do but lie still and listen for friend or enemy?

She looked at the narrow mattress, the thin blankets. Autumn was cold in the mountains, tonight would be chill in this shaft.

Asie followed her gaze. “I’ll sleep here,” he said, and lay down with
his back to the ledge, his side on the hard stone floor, and his head on his hands for a pillow.

She smiled tenderly. “Let’s both sleep on the bed,” she said. She reached for his hand. He took it tentatively, searching her eyes. She had to smile. “No, no touching,” she said.

She showed him. Both fully dressed, on their backs, blankets to the neck, not touching anywhere. She wiggled herself into a more comfortable position and felt him do the same. She took a deep breath, let it out, felt him do the same again. They waited.

At last she took his hand with hers. “No touching except for this,” she said. “Good night, Asie.”

She could sense his uncertainty. For a long time neither of them slept, neither moved, neither spoke. The touch of hands felt precious.
Tomorrow perhaps I will die. Or Asie will die. Tonight we touch each other in love
. She stirred without actually letting her body move.
Tonight I cradle the child in my belly
.

At last she felt his body relax and heard his breathing grow long and rhythmic. Then her body softened, and she slept lightly.

When she woke, she noticed first that their hands were still interlocked. She opened her eyes. The tunnel was not so dark. Not light, but perhaps half of twilight. She thought of the distance to the half-concealed entrance, not far. She listened and heard nothing, absolutely, except for Asie’s breathing. She lay and heeded the silence.

Keeping hold of his hand, she turned onto her shoulder and looked at Asie. His eyes fluttered. He sighed. He turned toward her, and they looked into each other’s eyes. From this short distance she could see all the colors in his irises, iridescent, brown with flecks of yellow and green. They were very beautiful, in a way a mandala.
I have looked into his eyes from so close twice before,
she thought.
This time is purer, better
. The irises pointed to the pupils, which opened to the pure consciousness. In their blackness she felt his inner being.

She said softly, “I love you, Asie. Whether death comes to me today in Washo, soon in California, or many years from now in Tibet, I will carry my love for you until that day, and cherish it.”

She saw the movement of the eternal behind his eyes.

Her lips trembled. In their delicate quiver she could feel words forming. They were,
I am carrying your child. Our child
.

I cannot. I cannot
. She stilled her lips by force of will.

I felt giddy and confused. When Sun Moon said, “I love you,” feelings washed over me like warm waves. When she spoke of death, I got the willywoollies. And now she was
not
saying something. But
what?

I wanted to hear, “I will marry you.” Or, “Come with me to Tibet.” Or just, “I want to be with you.” Or, “Make love to me.”

But none of those was what I saw in her eyes. I didn’t know what in kingdom come I was seeing.

Sound!

I came back to reality with a jolt.
Footsteps!
I listened to the rhythm, listened to the weight, listened for any clue.
Daniel? Or Rockwell?
We sat up and looked.

The steps came toward us, loud-soft, THUD-thud, like DAN-iel, ROCK-well, DAN-iel, ROCK-well. A long, long shadow played crazy-like on the shaft walls. DAN-iel, ROCK-well.

A tall, ominous shape loomed out of the darkness.

“Good morning,” came the voice of Gentleman Dan. “It is a fine day to travel.”

He had two knapsacks dangling from one arm. When I opened the one he gave me, I saw my belongings. First I checked my only weapon—I’d used some of the money to buy me a fine hunting knife in a scabbard, for all the good a knife would do me against the likes of Porter Rockwell. Then I checked for the gold pieces. They were safe in the waistband of my pants and the split leather of my extra belt and the knife scabbard. When you’re on the run, coin of the realm comes in handy.

There was also a miner’s cap with a candle mounted for light.

Then I saw, I guess we both saw, that Daniel was eyeing us funny, in bed together, dressed or not. Or maybe it was because I was in my Sunday best and she was in her fancy gown and showy earrings. The bird cages in her hair had fallen off somewhere.

We turned out of bed in opposite directions. I saw Sun Moon making sure she had her gold coins, too. It was going to be what we got out of our weeks in Washo. A poor trade for getting into Porter Rockwell’s gun sights.

“The man Rockwell is no braggart,” Daniel said. “I found him at the Heritage still, drinking. He wasn’t inclined to talk much, except to offer a reward for information on your whereabouts. I kept his glass full without getting anything in return.”

“You talked to him?”

“Like a comrade,” said Daniel. “He’s a curious case, so dark of soul, so isolated, so miserable.”

I wasn’t inclined to hear anything made me feel sorry for the Destroying Angel.

“I did find out he’s been all the way to San Francisco looking for the three of you. He’s determined.”

“Is he gonna chase down Sir Richard?” I must admit to hoping he would split off on that trail, which was a sorry way to feel.

Daniel smiled tightly. “Captain Burton is in Chinatown with Tommy Kirk, dallying in lotusland.”

My heart sank. I’d been holding on to hope that Sir Richard, however disaccommodated he might be, would rally and stand with us.

“I made sure, in fact,” Daniel went on, “that a scoundrel told Rockwell where Burton is. I also warned Tommy, who has put up a heavy guard. If Rockwell tries to get to Burton, that will be everyone’s good fortune.”

I’d got past the point where I believed in luck, excepting bad.

“No tricks work with Rockwell,” said Sun Moon. She’d arranged everything in her knapsack and was closing it. “He come for me. Come, come, come. I know. I must face him.”

I looked at her woefully. “And?”

She shrugged. “Don’t know how come out. Must face.”

I guess I looked hangdog at that.

“Now we go. He catch one day, now we go.”

We put on our miners’ caps and Daniel lit her candle. I wondered at men who would live their days or nights by such poor light as this. But for now there was nothing for it. Daniel struck a match and extended it toward my head.