Territory (45 page)

Her entrance stopped a conversation in midsentence; the night manager and a companion sat smoking with their feet on the unlit stove. From the fragment she’d heard, they’d either been comparing the merits of two racehorses, or two unusually colorfully named prostitutes.

Both men sprang up from their chairs and offered them to her. She could hear the rain hammering the roof. She could bolt for Miss Gilchrist’s and probably ruin most of what she had on, including her boots; or she could make it impossible for these men to get comfortable again.

A third possibility occurred to her. “No, thank you, gentlemen. I’m going to visit a horse of my acquaintance until the rain lets up.” She had a glimpse of their astonished faces before she headed for the back door.

The yard had deeper roof overhangs than the front of the building. Carriages and wagons sheltered in a big covered space on the right, beside the harness and feed rooms. On the left, lamplight showed a row of stalls, and closer to the office, boxes large enough for a horse to turn and lie down in. She’d put money on Fox’s horse being in one of those.

The first one was empty. She heard noises from the next: a rustle of straw, chewing, and a sound like wet and difficult breathing.

She peered through the bars in the upper half of the box stall door, expecting to see a sick horse. Instead, a small, dark-clad figure leaned against a horse, face hidden in the black mane. The horse was Jesse Fox’s, and the figure was Chu. And Chu was crying.

She must have made a noise. Chu whipped around and saw her. His eyes were red and swollen, and he gave a mighty sniff in lieu of blowing his nose. “What you want?” he snapped, hoarse with crying.

The scene shifted before her eyes. Nothing really changed, but the elements and their relation to each other settled into a new arrangement, one whose strangeness made her catch her breath.

“You’re a girl,” she said.

Chu’s mouth opened, eyes wide in horror. “No, no, lady! No girl! You mighty stupid!”

“I’m not, though. Did Mr. Chow know you weren’t a boy?” Mildred saw
Chu flinch at the dead man’s name, and knew why she was crying. “Yes, of course he did. You couldn’t have kept up the disguise without help. Was it his idea?”

Chu’s horror had grown into horrified fascination; she was watching Mildred as one might watch an earthquake in progress. Finally the girl nodded warily.

Jesse had thought Chu might be twelve at most. It was hard to tell in boy’s clothes and a queue, but Mildred found herself revising the estimate downward slightly. “Were you related to Mr. Chow?”

At that, Chu turned back to the horse and hid her face. “Go away,” she said, muffled.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t,” Mildred said in as matter-of-fact a tone as she could manage. She opened the stall door and stepped in, mindful of where she put her feet. “You can’t expect me to walk away from a mystery like this.” Chu still didn’t look at her, so she put as much regret in her voice as she could and added, “Besides, I forgot my umbrella at the newspaper office.”

Ah, there was the profile, and a glaring, sideways look. “Big stupid.”

“So I’ve told myself. Once the rains start, one ought to
sleep
with one’s umbrella. And I’ve lived here for over a year, so I ought to know better. Have you been in Arizona Territory long? Is this your first summer?”

“You fulla damn question.”

It’s a good way to stall for time.
What was she going to do about this? Whatever “this” was. Did Fox know his stableboy was a girl? What did it mean if he did? “It would be rude to talk about myself all the time,” she answered.

Chu scowled at her. “I got work. You goddamn talk someplace else.” The girl yanked a brush out of her jacket pocket and began to make ferocious sweeps of the horse’s already glossy side. The horse turned from the hay rack to look, as if in surprise.

Mildred had had experience lately with interviewing hostile persons. “Tell you what—I’ll talk about you, instead. Since you won’t tell me about yourself, I’ll have to guess. I think you were born in this country—California, most likely. You came to Tombstone with Mr. Chow, but you didn’t know Mr. Fox in San Francisco, so either you weren’t with Mr. Chow then, or he kept you hidden.” Mildred flinched inwardly, but she forced herself to finish what she’d started. “Since you won’t say anything about it, I assume your relationship to Mr. Chow was one that people would disapprove of. Were you his mistress?”

Chu turned away from the horse. Instead of the angry face she’d expected, the girl looked baffled. “Huh? Were what?”

Oh, dear. She’d forgotten the language barrier. And it had been hard enough to say the first time. “Were you Mr. Chow’s … lover?”

It might have been the word, or the pause before it, or Mildred’s tone. Chu flushed dark as a thundercloud and threw the brush. Mildred dodged, but it hit her in the shoulder anyway. Fox’s horse shied and fetched up against the far wall of the stall with his ears back.

“You dirty big-nose bitch, think like that! I no fuck nobody! Chow Lung good man, great man, take care me, you no speak his name, you dirty mouth!” Chu was screaming by the end of the speech, but screaming came too close to crying, and tipped over the edge. She collapsed into the straw, weeping so hard she barely had room to breathe.

Mildred dropped to her knees and put her arms tight around the girl. “I’m sorry. I didn’t really think there was anything improper between you and Mr. Chow. I just wanted to make you mad so you would talk to me.”

The horse seemed to find the sight of the two of them crouched in the straw disturbing; he stayed on the opposite side of the box and watched them. The girl, in contrast, suddenly relaxed in Mildred’s arms and cried freely into her shoulder.

“You haven’t had anyone to talk to about him,” Mildred guessed.

Chu shook her head without lifting it from Mildred’s shoulder.

“You could have talked to Mr. Fox. I think he misses Mr. Chow, too.”

“No. Maybe I say something, he tell I no damn boy. I no talk to him so much.”

“It might be that he’s already guessed,” Mildred suggested hopefully. Then at least Mildred wouldn’t have to tell him.

Chu lifted her head from Mildred’s shoulder, her swollen features eloquent of scorn and disbelief. “Hah,” she said.

“No, you’re right. Of course he hasn’t.”

Chu shook her head sadly. “Everybody stupid, too. Why not you?”

“I don’t know. Hasn’t anyone ever guessed before?”

“I shut up plenty. Stick to horses. Nobody know, only Chow Lung.”

“Oh, dear.” Chow Lung had been Chu’s only friend, the only person she could speak freely with, and he was gone. If she had to live under the same conditions, Mildred thought she might do something desperate. “Is Chu your real name?”

Chu gave an odd little shrug. “I keep.”

And here,
Mildred thought,
we are. Now what?
“Would you like to come home with me tonight? I worry about you here alone.” Though Miss Gilchrist’s
response to the arrival of a Chinese child at her door would be anything but cheerful and welcoming.

Chu frowned, thinking. “No, safe here,” she said at last. “Look funny, go your house. I goddamn stableboy.” She smiled at Mildred, a watery but genuine expression, and clambered to her feet.

Mildred rose, too, and refused to look down at her skirt for stains. “I have to tell Mr. Fox the truth.”

“No, no! He kick me out!”

He might. It would be justifiable. It might be the only proper thing to do. “You can’t go on pretending to be a boy and not tell him. It’s … it’s like lying.”

Chu frowned. “So?”

Oh, dear.
“One ought not to lie if one can help it. Especially not to people one wants as friends. Mr. Fox was good friends with Mr. Chow, and I think would be your friend, if you let him.” She was aware she was promising a great deal in Jesse Fox’s name.

Suddenly she remembered—Kate Holliday had as good as accused Fox of dealing in some kind of witchcraft. He had certainly been comfortable enough with the notion of the supernatural to know what she’d experienced in the foyer of Schieffelin Hall, and to suggest an explanation that was anything but scientific. It was nonsense; it was impossible. But true or not, how did it affect Chu’s situation?

“What do you know of Mr. Fox?” Mildred asked carefully.

Chu shrugged. “He kind. I know from Sam.” She jerked her head toward the horse, which had relaxed when she and Mildred had failed to do anything threatening. “Chow Lung say he smart. I not see so much.”

Mildred bit her lip to keep from laughing. “Did Mr. Chow say anything about what Mr. Fox does?”

“I hear him plenty damn mad at Mr. Fox. Big damn waste, he say.”

Mildred thought that over. “Because he’s training horses instead of being a mining engineer?”

“Be what?”

“A mining engineer. Someone who tells people where to dig mines, and how to do it.”

“Ohhhh.” Chu nodded slowly. “And find water, and place for house and grave for good luck. Yes, Chow Lung, too. He try to teach Mr. Fox.”

Mildred felt the same expression on her face as Chu had worn a moment ago. “I’m sorry. What was Mr. Chow trying to teach Mr. Fox?”

“What you say. Right? How to use magic in ground.” Chu stamped her foot twice on the stall floor and grinned.

“No, not magic—” Mildred stopped herself.

Chu was saying that Chow Lung had been a magician—a
magician
—and was upset because Jesse Fox ought to be one, and wasn’t.

And Kate insisted that Wyatt Earp was one, and Jesse was another. Mildred had seen Wyatt Earp engaged in magic. He’d attempted to change her perception of it, also through magic. Jesse had acknowledged it, corroborated the impossible evidence of her senses. They couldn’t all be in cahoots, Chu, Kate Holliday, Wyatt Earp, and Jesse Fox. And they weren’t all deluded, unless Mildred was deluded as well. There seemed to be only one conclusion to be drawn, the one she least wanted to be true.

“Miss?” Chu said, and tugged lightly on her sleeve. “Miss? You okay?”

“Yes,” Mildred said, her voice cracking. “You understand, it’s very hard to believe … to believe in magic.”

Chu frowned. “No. Easy. Everybody Chinese know. Big noses crazy, is all.”

She could declare, as others did, that the Chinese were foolish and superstitious. She could chalk Kate’s account up to drink. She could assume that what she’d seen of Wyatt Earp on the porch the night of the ball was a product of the dark, the lightning, wrought-up nerves, and champagne. And she could decide that Jesse Fox had tried to play an unpleasant joke, to get her to say she believed in nonsense so he could make fun of her for it.

But it took four explanations, each one independent of the others, to answer all the questions. Only one theory covered everything, and that was Chu’s, and Kate’s, and Jesse’s.

Knowledge, Jesse had said, was some protection. She owed him an apology.

She swam to the surface of her murky thoughts to find Chu looking at her a little sideways. “You’re probably right,” Mildred told her. “Big noses are crazy. But if you only ever have other crazy people to talk to, how would you know?”

“Huh,” said Chu. “Please, you no tell Mr. Fox?”

Mildred sighed. “I won’t tell him right this minute. You and a few other people have given me a lot to think about, and I want to go home and do that. Promise me you won’t try something foolish, like running away, in the meanwhile?”

Chu’s brow furrowed, but she said, “Okay. Promise.” She stuck her hand out at Mildred.

Mildred stared at it, confused.

“Drover do all time like this,” Chu said impatiently. “They say, ‘Okay, I do,’ shake on it.” Mildred put out her hand. Chu shook it vigorously and beamed. “Lots time they spit.”

“You needn’t, really,” Mildred hastened to say.

Chu drooped a little. “I spit good. No, I spit
well.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” She looked out into the yard. The eaves no longer streamed water; they’d settled to an irregular drip. “I have to go home. Chu, if you have trouble, or need help of any kind, you can come to me. Come to the white house with blue porch posts on Safford, at the end of the next block, and ask for Mrs. Benjamin.”

Chu shook her head. “No say that.”

“No?”

“No remember.
Pin-Ja-Min?”
Chu repeated, mincing the syllables, and made a rude, dismissive noise.

Oh, dear,
Mildred thought. Continuing acquaintance with Chu would probably have her doing it regularly. “Millie, then,” she offered. “Ask for Millie.”

“Mei-li,” Chu said carefully, and nodded. “Okay.”

Mildred felt she ought to do something more, but short of tucking the wretched child into bed, she couldn’t think of a thing. “Good night, then,” she said, and headed for the door, Safford Street, and the likelihood of a sleepless night.

 18