“Lucky? How so?” Malcolm asked, his voice as raspy as Dobbins’s voice had been.
“Because he could have kilt you if he had wanted to,” Turley said.
“How’d a Chinaman learn to do stuff like that?” Andy asked.
“He is a Shaolin priest,” Elmer said.
“A priest? He’s a priest ’n he can fight like that?” Andy said. “He sure as hell ain’t like no priest I ever seen.”
“Yeah, well, how many priests have you seen, anyhow? I’ll bet you ain’t set foot inside of a church in four or five years, if ever at all. But he’s not that kind of a priest. Here, you two boys have a lemon drop,” Elmer said, taking a couple of pieces of candy from one of the two sacks, then holding them out toward Malcolm and Dobbins. “If you just suck on ’em real slow, it’ll make your throat feel better.”
Malcolm waved him away. “I don’t need no damn candy. What I need is a whiskey,” Malcolm said as he got up and started toward the nearest saloon. Dobbins and Turley followed him.
“I told you,” Turley said. “You men wouldn’t listen to me, but you can’t say that I didn’t warn you.”
Elmer noticed that they were heading toward Fiddler’s Green.
“Come on, Wang, let’s me ’n you go down to Lee Fong’s ’n have us a good dinner.”
Wang and Elmer climbed into the wagon, then drove down to the other end of town toward the Chinese restaurant.
Chapter Fourteen
By the time Turley and the other two stepped into the saloon a moment later, word had preceded them about their encounter with Wang.
“I don’t normally do this,” Biff Johnson said. Biff owned Fiddler’s Green Saloon. “But I’m goin’ to give you three boys a drink on the house. I figure you could use one, seeing as you boys were outnumbered in the fight you were just in.”
“Outnumbered? What are you talking about?” Dobbins asked with a rasp.
“I’m told that there were only the two of you. Is that right?”
“Yeah, two of us, one of him.”
“I have seen Wang fight before, and figurin’ that he was the one you were fighting, then, for all intents and purposes, you were outnumbered.”
“Who . . . who is that Chinaman, anyway?” Andy asked. Andy, who had been one of the spectators, followed the three Twin Peaks men down to Fiddler’s Green. “That old feller said that he was a priest of some kind.”
“Wang Chow is a priest, but not the kind of priest you know about.” Biff chuckled. “Though to be honest, I doubt you know about any priests at all. Anyway, a Shaolin priest is something special. All they do all day long is practice martial arts.”
“Art? You mean like pain tin’ ’n such?” Malcolm asked.
Biff chucked. “No, I mean practice fighting. If there had been ten of you, Wang would have prevailed.”
“Lord Almighty,” Andy said, shaking his head almost reverently. “I ain’t never seen, nor even heard of, anyone like that.”
“I must confess that though I had heard of them, Wang is the first such practitioner of the art that I ever actually saw,” Biff said.
“I was in here once when somebody took it in mind to throw Wang out,” Turley said. “I seen then, what he could do. You should have listened to Mr. Gleason and me.”
“That old coot? What the hell does he know?”
“He knew that you were making a mistake,” Biff said with a chuckle. “But there was no way anyone could have told you so that you would have believed it. It was something you had to see for yourself.”
“Yeah, well, I seen it,” Dobbins said. “What does that Chinaman do, anyway? He ain’t a cowboy, is he?”
“He’s a cowboy when he has to be, but the truth is, Wang Chow is the kind of man who can do anything,” Biff said.
* * *
When Turley, Malcolm, and Dobbins returned to the Twin Peaks ranch, word of their adventure in town had preceded them, and they were met with laughter and a lot of derisive calls.
“Hey, Malcolm! Is it true that a little Chinaman whupped you ’n Dobbins?”
“Hell, I heard he done it ’n didn’t even break a sweat!” another shouted.
There were many more taunts and jibes from the other hands, then Turley got word that Houser wanted to see him.
“Yes, sir?” Turley said a few minutes later as he stood across the desk from Houser in the ranch office.
“Is it true what they are saying, about you letting Malcolm and Dobbins be humiliated by a Chinese man?”
“Humiliated?” Turley paused for a moment then added, “Yeah, I guess that is the way I’d put it.”
“You are my foreman, Mr. Turley. For you to allow two of your men to be humiliated by a mere Chinese man, is not conducive to discipline.”
“Yes, sir, that may be so. But in the first place, Mr. Houser, I know Wang Chow, and I knew what he could do if Malcolm ’n Dobbins went after ’im. I tried to tell ’em, but they wouldn’t listen to me. ’N in the second place, you told me yourself that neither Knox, or Malcolm, or Dobbins worked for me. ’N since I’m not their boss, there wasn’t nothin’ I could do about it except try ’n talk ’em out of it, ’n I did, only that didn’t work out all that well. You see, the thing is, this here Wang feller ain’t what you would call a mere Chinaman. He’s a priest.”
“A priest?”
Despite himself, Turley chuckled. “That’s what ever’ one says, soon as they hear he’s a priest. But he ain’t the kind of priest you think of, when you hear the word. I mean, he don’t wear no collar or nothin’. But accordin’ to Mr. Johnson at the Fiddler’s Green, Wang Chow trained for most of his life to fight, only it ain’t like ordinary people would fight. It’s a special kind of fightin’ ’n Johnson
