Smoke sat down and waited as Lee tossed a few chunks of wood into the stove to build up the fire. Then the small, wiry man began pumping water directly into the tub. After the tub was about one-third full, he scooped out a bucket of water and put it on the stove to heat.
“Soon water be hot enough to make bath good,” Lee said.
Smoke nodded, then bent over and started to remove his boots.
“Lee, you no-count Chinaman son of a bitch! Are you back here?” a man yelled, pushing through the curtain.
“Here, Mr. Dawes, what are you doing?” the barber called out from the other side of the curtain. “You can’t go barging back there.”
“You just stay the hell out of this, Bob. That damn Chinaman owes me five dollars and I aim to collect it.”
“I no owe you fi’ dollar. You try sell me clock that not work. I give clock back to you.”
“Huh-uh. You bought the clock and you’re goin’ to pay me for it.”
“Sir, this gentleman is preparing my bath,” Smoke said. “If you have business with him, I would prefer you take care of it at another time.”
“I’m about to take me five dollars out of this Chinaman’s flesh,” Dawes said. “But if you get in my way, it won’t bother me to take it out of yours first.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t like that,” Smoke said.
“Ha. I wouldn’t think you would. Now you just stay the hell out of my way and let me take care of my business here.”
Dawes grabbed a three-legged stool by one of its legs and lifted it over his head, then started toward Lee, who, with his arms folded across his face, was reacting in horror.
Smoke tapped Dawes on the shoulder, and Dawes turned around with an angry sneer. “I told you to stay the—” That was as far as he got before Smoke took him down with a powerful blow to the chin. The punch knocked Dawes out and, grabbing his feet, Smoke pulled him toward the back door, then motioned for Lee to open it.
“He be very angry when he wake up, I think,” Lee said.
“Yes, I expect he will be,” Smoke said. With the door opened, Smoke dragged the unconscious man across the alley, then dumped him in the high weeds on the other side.
Earlier, Bobby Lee had been napping on the cot in his jail cell when he heard the shooting, and he sat up, wondering what the shooting was about. Shortly after the shooting, he could hear some commotion out on the street, and though the conversations seemed to be intense, he wasn’t able to hear clearly enough to make out what was happening.
“Deputy!” he called. “Deputy Beard! You out there?”
Finally, after several calls, Beard came into the back of the jail.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“What was the shooting?”
“You ain’t heard?”
“I heard gunshots. I don’t know what it was all about.”
“Sheriff Wallace just kilt your friend.”
“My friend? Which friend? ”
“Ha! Like somebody like you has got so many friends that you don’t know who I’m talking about. I’m talking about Andy Emerson, that’s who I’m talking about.”
“What? Wallace killed him? Why? What did Andy do?”
“You might know that the sheriff told him not to come into the Gold Strike and get drunk no more. So what Emerson done is, he went over into Chinatown and was playin’ that gamblin’ game them Chinamen like to play. The sheriff seen him there, then told him he was arrestin’ him for gamblin’ at a place that didn’t have no license. Only Emerson said he wasn’t goin’ to be arrested and he started walkin’ away. The sheriff yelled at him, give him a chance to stop, but he didn’t. So the sheriff shot up into the air to warn him. Well, when he done that, Emerson commended to runnin', so the sheriff shot him.” Deputy Beard laughed. “Hit him dead center.”
“That doesn’t seem like much of a reason to be shootin’ anybody,” Bobby Lee said.
“Ha, that’s funny,” the deputy replied.
“Funny? What the hell is so funny about that?” Bobby Lee asked, the expression on his face reflecting his confusion over the remark.
“I mean, here you are about to hang, and you’re worried about whether or not the sheriff had reason enough to shoot Andy Emerson. Most especial when you consider what kind of a fella Emerson was.”
“Emerson was a good man at heart,” Bobby Lee said. “I never was able to understand why the sheriff disliked him so. And it surprises me to hear that it went so far as the sheriff actually shooting him.”
“He was a damn drunk who didn’t know his place,” Beard said. “And the only thing that surprises me is that the sheriff didn’t shoot the son of a bitch any sooner.”
Beard was still chuckling as he went back to the front of the building, closing the door behind him. Bobby Lee returned to his bunk, then lay back down. He thought about dying, and wondered what was just on the other side. Would Emerson be there, waiting for him? Would his ma? Would his sister?
Bobby Lee hadn’t been to church in a long time. He wished now that he had paid a little more attention when he had gone.
