Williams dragged it out, amused by the sheriffs discomfort. 'Would you like something to drink, Mr. McGrath?'
'No, sir,' the sheriff answered.
'I think I'll have a brandy. I always find that brandy soothes my nerves. Are you sure you wouldn't like to join me?'
'Uh, sure. I mean, thank you, Mr. Williams.'
Williams smiled, poured the drinks, then sat down in the smoking chair opposite Lane's. He took a slow, deliberate sip of his brandy. 'I asked you here because I would like to discuss a situation that I believe has become intolerable. I am speaking, of course, of the miner in Hells Canyon. Merle, I believe, is his name. People call him Crazy Merle.'
'Yes. I'm aware of Merle.'
'Are you also aware that he consorts with a Chinese woman, against the laws of California and the laws of nature?' He leaned forward. 'They have a half-breed child, an abomination under God, and they are flouting their sin right under our very noses!'
Lane was obviously at a loss. 'Merle's crazy but he don't cause no trouble. At least not that I'm aware of,' the sheriff added quickly. 'He mostly keeps to himself and we don't hardly see him except when he comes down for supplies every few months.'
'That is not the point I'm making, Mr. McGrath.'
The sheriff was silent.
'It is no longer tolerable to me that this evil and depravity exist in our fair corner of the world. We are abetting this wickedness by allowing it to continue and pretending we do not know what is going on.'
'You want me to evict Merle?' Lane asked, starting to catch on. 'From his own legal claim?'
'I want more than that,' Williams said.
And smiled.
They went up Hells Canyon on horseback and on foot, the sheriff and his two deputies in the lead, Williams marching right behind, rifle in hand. A goodly portion of the town tromped behind them as they made their way up the winding road, and Williams was gratified to see such a response. There'd been nothing but support yesterday at the town meeting, but talk was easier than action, and sometimes what people said they'd do and what they did were two different things.
The miner could have shot at them from his cabin, but the throng was dozens strong and even Merle wasn't that crazy. Besides, the sheriff announced their arrival at the head of the canyon by shouting out, 'Merle! We need to talk!' as though this were some sort of mobile town meeting and they'd all come this far just to palaver.
The crazy bastard fell for the lie.
He wasn't stupid enough to meet them unarmed, but with one blow to the head from the butt of his Winchester, Lane knocked the miner to the ground while one of his deputies took the man's weapon.
There was no sign of the Chinese woman or the daughter, but Williams and a host of townspeople searched in and around the cabin until the two were discovered huddled in a corner of the small mine that Merle had dug out of the cliffside.
When all three of them were subdued, Williams^ stood on the front porch of the cabin and explained' the situation, speaking loudly enough for even those; in the rear to hear.
He sentenced the Chinese to death.
Merle put up a fight, so crazy now that he seemed to think he was actually in love with the woman. He kicked backward, then thrust himself forward and broke free of the sheriffs grip. His rifle had been confiscated and was well beyond his reach in the hands of Cole Blackman, the grocer, but Merle was quick and wiry and scrambled away from Lane, grabbing rocks from the ground and throwing them as hard as| he could at everyone around him.
Lane shot him in the leg, bringing him down.
Then things happened fast.
Claude, the haberdasher, brought forth a rope and,| with the help of Jacob and two other men, dragged Merle to a dead tree and strung him up.
Williams hanged the girl himself, putting the noose around her neck as she whimpered and cried. The woman was screeching in that obnoxious babble those people called a language, and he roared that someone needed to shut her up. Little Erskine, the deputy sheriff, drew back his hand and hit her hard across the mouth. Blood gushed out from her split lips and broken teeth, but the screaming didn't stop until the deputy punched her in the stomach. Williams looked into the little girl's dark slanted eyes, saw her tears-then pulled the rope hard, jerking her into the air. She danced above them, looking for all the world like a music hall performer. Everyone was pointing and laughing, and Williams laughed, too.
Then they hanged the woman. She kicked and fought, and he noticed beneath her dress that she wore no undergarments, that her sex was open and exposed for all to see. A wave of disgust passed over him. He was reminded of Alice and how she'd opened herself to their servant, allowed him to lick her down there like an animal, and when the woman finally died, he felt no small degree of satisfaction, laughing with the others as she pissed herself.
The outing had been a rousing success. Not only had they rid the county of a madman, a Chink and a half- breed, but he had finally instilled in his fellow townspeople the importance of keeping more Chinese from coming to America and getting rid of the ones who were already here. They were not only evil; they were devious. They'd taken jobs building the railroad that should have gone to American workers, and they had even insinuated themselves into marriages with American men. Crazy Merle might have been a step above feeb, but his devotion to that Chink wife was absolute, and it was only a matter of time before the foreigners set their sights on society's other outcasts and then, in good time, regular people.
They had to be stopped now.
His assessment was met with universal agreement.
It was impossible to extrapolate from this one incident that people in other towns in other parts of the country would feel the same way, would come to see the light if they were only exposed to the truth, but he thought it was worth a try, and though winter was |,, not quite over and travel conditions were still harsh, he had to do what he knew in his heart was right.
He headed east.
Williams traveled from California to Kansas, finding receptive audiences in each town he visited along the way. He stayed away from the big cities with their modern ideas and wrongheaded notions. He went instead to God-fearing communities where decency still held sway, and was rewarded with crowds that seemed to grow larger as his journey progressed, as though news of his message had preceded him.
As perhaps it had.
As he
He found a particularly warm welcome in rural Missouri, where anti-Chinese sentiment already ran high. He had not expected to find many Chinee so far from the Pacific Ocean, but in Selby and its environs there were apparently several Chink families living in bunkhouses on the bad side of town, the adults working in laundries and restaurants, the children running wild. And the fact that they had already migrated this far inland made him realize the urgency of his mission. It was in Selby that he met a man named Orren Gifford, an angry young buck with the gift of gab who was a carpenter by trade but was passing himself off as a preacher because the pay was better and the work was easier. He and Gifford led the townspeople in a rally where, in one night, they succeeded in getting the timid town fathers to pass a resolution barring Chinks, kikes, niggers and wops from Selby. Not only were they not allowed to own land or marry; they could not work here or even stay overnight. Jimmy Johnson, the normally milquetoast mayor, ended up in front of the crowd next to Gifford, yelling at the top of his lungs, 'Any one of 'em who sets foot in our fair town will end up tarred and feathered and riding out on a rail!'
The crowd ate it up.
The next morning, Gifford took Williams outside of town to a series of mud pits. It had been rumored for years that Indians had once used the pits for healing baths, like they did at some of those fancy health spas out West, but the boiling mud was far too hot for a person to sit in, and when a local farmer's boy had fallen in a few seasons back, walking with his dad on the way to town, he'd died instantly. By the time the farmer found a big enough branch to fish him out with and a boulder to balance the branch over, the flesh had been stripped from the boy's bones. The kid looked like he'd been in a fire, and the sight was so bad that even his own mama hadn't been
