Выбрать главу

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.)* And necessary. '-

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 hoped it had.

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 allowed to see him.

The mud in the pits gurgled and bubbled, some of it brown, some of it gray, some of it white.

"Lot of deer carcasses been thrown in there," Gifford said. "Elk, too. So's they wouldn't attract the buzzards. I imagine a fair number of local boys have tossed other things in as well." He looked meaningfully over at Williams. "Not a one of them has ever bubbled to the surface."

He let that sink in.

"I'd bet there's room in them pits for a lot more."

Williams smiled. "I'll bet there is," he said.

After stopping in Kentucky and Virginia, he continued on to Washington, D.C., where he found, to his surprise, that Harrison had already been speaking in private to some of the congressmen whom Williams had intended to approach about the Chinese problem.

Apparently, the railroad president had learned a few hard lessons lately and had come to see the error of his ways.

Just as Williams had predicted.

Nothing had been decided, nothing was set in stone, and as was always the case with politicians, no one was willing to commit to a specific course of action. Still, the general consensus seemed to be that once the railroad was finished, something had to be done, and that was probably the best that could be hoped [ for.

For now.

May 10, 1869

It was a day of celebration for America, and Harrison wished he could be everywhere at once. Parades were planned for Chicago and New York City, where hundreds of people were expected to line the streets to commemorate this historic occasion. In cities all along the route, picnics and festivities to rival Independence Day would be occurring, and in Sacramento and Omaha, the two ends of the line, even greater galas were scheduled.

But on this important day, his place was here, at Promontory Point, where the lines would finally be joined. Despite having had to blast through the Sierra Nevada and navigate some of the most dangerous and unforgiving terrain known to man, the Central Pacific had finished its half of the railway first, on April 30. They'd been waiting for the past week and a half for the Union and United Pacific workers to hurry and finish their portion. Harrison attributed it to the fact that the Central Pacific had more Chinese. If there was anything those Chinks knew, it was dynamite, and their expertise with explosives had helped the line through many a rough patch.

Although Harrison found that worrying as well. Thousands of soon-to-be unemployed foreigners with extensive knowledge of explosives was not a situation he found comforting.

He looked over the heads of Doc Durant and Iceland Stanford to see Chester Williams deep in conversation with one of the generals who had come West with a regiment of men and was now standing near the Union locomotive with assorted other dignitaries. He still didn't trust that man. There'd been rumors in Washington that he'd been trying to secretly negotiate backroom deals involving the railroads, but nothing seemed to have come of it. He was glad of that. The last thing he wanted was to be in business again with that blowhard. Harrison took his wife's arm and turned away, not wanting to catch Williams' eye accidentally and have the man come over to him.