Boon by Ed Kurtz (smallest ebook reader txt) 📗

resting my head on my bedroll, but I took it up and pushed it over to the kid, who tested it out with her hands before laying her head down and, apparently, considering it workable for a pillow.

“Sweet dreams, kid,” I said.

“Meihui,” she whispered back at me.

“Huh,” I said. “That Chinese for good night?”

“No,” she said, pointing at her chest with her thumb. “It’s me. Meihui.”

“I’ll be damned,” I said. “Good night, Meihui.”

“Good night, Edward.”

“Meihui. I’ll be damned.”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

It was another two days’ ride from the first night’s camp after Sweeney’s Crossing. On the first day, we stopped over in the town of Burnside, which, like every other little Podunk town in that part of California, was built from the remnants of an old mining camp. The placers were all dug out by then, but now something like a proper town rose up from the ghost of what was, and they had pert near everything a little town needed—taverns and saloons, merchants of food and clothing, churches and cemeteries, a blacksmith and two livery stables. There were three hotels, and the first one we picked out gave us no trouble on account of our little party being only half-white right down the middle. I would never say that California was better than Texas even upon pain of death, but in this specific regard it won right over the old Lone Star State.

After stabling the horses and seeing after their grooming and feed, and taking into account supplies for the rest of the journey ahead including victuals, oats for the mounts, ammunition, and whatever else Boon could think up, our stake was starting to feel mighty light in hand. As such, all three of us bunked up in one room, which would have been heavily looked down upon just about anyplace I’d ever been whatever the color of the persons involved. There in Burnside, however, it seemed to most eyes that we were a case of a man, his Oriental mistress, and the accident that could happen to anybody in the heat of the moment. Most like they’d all seen it before, and while there were whispers and chuckles, nobody gave us any guff.

We took our dinner in the hotel restaurant, where it was determined that Meihui had never before been introduced to the art of the knife and fork. Chicken-fried steak was on the menu that evening, and the kid had the meat in both of her little hands before the plate ever touched the tablecloth. She sank her teeth into it and tore off a chunk like a wolf. At first blush I thought it was terribly funny and got to laughing, but for the life of her Boon looked about to cry at sight of the spectacle the child made. It was not that she was embarrassed by Meihui’s poor manners. Boon just understood.

“Here, honey,” she said, taking the kid’s hands in hers and wiping them clean with a napkin. She then took up her own knife and fork and demonstrated to Meihui how to use them. To her credit, the kid tried to do the same, but it just didn’t come natural to her. While I was laughing at what seemed like simply silliness, Boon saw that the girl had been living like an animal down there on the Barbary Coast. Treated like one, too. Or worse.

I wasn’t so hungry anymore after that.

After supper I wandered alone to the nearest of Burnside’s watering holes, a place called Dry Diggings after the town’s previous life. I had been thinking of what should be done with Meihui, who was in better shape with us than she had been, but that wasn’t saying altogether too much. Where we were headed amounted to danger and most certainly death for somebody or other, and I was starting to form the opinion that this was no place to take a kid like our new friend. Much of the weight from these ruminations seemed to lift away from me the moment I passed through the swinging batwing doors and laid eyes on the cornucopia of beautiful bottles lined up nice as you please behind a mustachioed bartender in an apron and sleeve garters pouring rye whiskey for an old drunk with a face full of gin blossoms. It was church to me. I could have wept.

And I was in no small way relieved to find no parts of the human body on display behind the bar, either.

I ordered the same rye and downed it fast. The amber fluid burned pleasantly in my throat. The second one I took slower. It was my method.

While I sipped it, a black-haired jasper with bushy eyebrows and patchy stubble sidled up to the bar and asked for a beer. While the barman poured it from the barrel, the fellow turned to look me over and grinned.

“Say,” he said, “ain’t you the fellow came into town with them two Chinese?”

“I am not,” I said, and left it at that. In point of fact, I had come into town with one Chinese girl and one Siamese woman, so it was not a lie. I turned my back to the man and continued to enjoy my rye, which was mighty fine as rye went.

“Here’s the thing about a question like that, mister,” the jasper went on, to my substantial dismay and chagrin. “That’s what they call a rhetorical question, which means I already knew the answer to it. Only reason I asked was to get the conversation started.”

“That so,” I said. “Well, I don’t much feel like conversating tonight.”

“Used to be there was lots of Chinese hereabouts,” he carried on, as though unaware I’d said anything at all. “This was back in the James Dry Diggings days, you understand. Worked the placers, them and the micks did. All the color went out and the chinks did, too. It’s how come I came to be so surprised to see a couple of them come into town with you, which is why I