Norman Partridge - The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

For a moment, it was quiet.

A low cloud of red dust hung between Midas and the stranger. Neither man blinked. There was no question who the stranger was looking at, no doubt about what he saw.

Midas waved his guns.

The men pulled the buck to the edge of the brimming pit, the heels of his scruffy boots not more than an inch from the precipice.

Midas took aim.

Two sharp clicks sounded as he cocked his pistols.

For a long moment, everything was very quiet. Midas smiled, letting the ominous silence hang there between him and the buck.

And then the buck’s shaggy boots started to scream.

Lie turned away from the window just as the white goblin cocked his pistols. She could not bear to watch her dark man die.

She wanted to weep, but this was no time for tears. There was no time for anything now. No time for sadness, no time for dreams. Only time to take what Father wanted. Take as much of it as she could carry.

Find a horse.

Escape before the white goblin came for her.

She moved on her tiny feet as always — slowly, carefully. Even the smallest steps were excruciatingly painful, each one a sharpened shard of bamboo piercing her foot. She was as unsteady as a babe, but she did not stop, did not allow herself to fall.

Across the room she moved. Slowly, carefully. She reached the palace of the Empress Dowager and removed the structure’s roof.

Inside was the stink of the white goblin’s gold.

Gold coins. Paper money, too.

And on top of it all, an abacus made of human bone.

Lie’s breath caught in her throat. She snatched up the horrid thing and threw it against the wall. The abacus shattered. Pieces fell, scattering across the floor. Only when the last sliver of bone rolled to a stop did she breathe again.

Slowly, carefully, she moved to the closet. Opened the door. Rummaged around.

The carpetbag she found in one corner stank of the white goblin, but it was empty. Soon she had filled it. Some gold, but mostly paper money. Riches as light as foolish laughter.

The goblin had burned her clothes, but it took no time at all to slip into one of his shirts, which on her was almost as long as a dress.

Fistfuls of gold coins had rolled into one low corner of the room, a magical pond shimmering there. Paper money was scattered on the floor like the leaves of autumn.

She knew that she should find a match. Burn some of the paper money. An offering to the Gods, for luck… But what she needed most of all was time. Only time could make her luck.

Lie knew no God of time, so she hurried onward.

Midas prodded the stranger’s shaggy boots with the barrel of his pistol. Stitched wings flapped madly. Beady red-black eyes glared up at Midas and his gun-dogs. Angry shrieks spilled from midnight lips. Razor teeth chattered like castanets as two-dozen tiny mouths snapped open and closed, longing for the taste of human flesh.

“Jesus!” one of the gun-dogs said. “His boots are made outta bats!”

Midas whispered, “I’ll be damned.”

“That’s a fact,” the stranger said.

Midas sneered at the black gunman. Four of the gun-dogs had ahold of the boy, pinning him to the ground. He wasn’t going anywhere, him and his smart mouth.

Midas grinned. Suddenly, he was real disinterested in the gunslinging buck.

The buck’s boots, though… now they were another story.

Again Midas poked at the fanged horrors, running the pistol barrel through a wave of bristly black hair, over a ridge of dangerous teeth. One of the hideous little mouths snapped closed, taking hold of the gun, chewing, razor teeth squealing over polished metal.

A held breath escaped Midas’ lips. Hell and damnation. He couldn’t believe it. Down in his drawers, his beaver rifle was getting real stiff, just the way it did when he got to studying one of those mail-order catalogs from the fancy ladies’ footwear emporiums back East.

Squinting, Midas studied the sin-black soles of the stranger’s boots from heel to toe. The rancher’s eye was well-trained when it came to such matters, and these gunboats appeared to be just about his size.

Such magnificent footwear could not be consigned to the bottom of a shit shaft, that was for damn sure.

“Get them things off his feet,” Midas ordered.

The gun-dogs regarded the writhing horrors — leathery wings flapping against tight stitches, teeth whipsawing this way and that in all those awful little mouths, nasty little screams slicing the evening air.

In a couple of eyeblinks, almost every hand had found a pocket in which to hide.

Midas spit in the dirt. “Damn your yella hides, boys.”

Red Bailey was the only gun-dog to be cowed by the insult. He snatched a bowie from his boot and offered, “Maybe I’ll just take ’em off at the nigger’s ankles.”

“We’d still have to get his feet out of ’em.”

“Then how about I just slice the damn things apart,” Red said. “We can sew ’em back together later.”

“No.” Midas scratched his chin. He needed some answers. Maybe there was a trick to getting the damn boots off of the buck’s feet. But if there was, the buck wasn’t going to tell him about it. And the threat of another beating was useless, because the buck had already stood up to the best they could offer. Besides, the poor boy had to know by now that he was bound to die, any way you figured it.

A grin creased Midas’ face. He should have thought of it before.

“Don’t do a thing ’til I get back,” he said, starting toward the house.

Lie slipped into the hallway, one hand on the wall, one hand holding the carpetbag. Swaying on her tiny feet, but moving forward. Gritting her teeth against pain that sliced and stabbed. Searching for a way out of the house other than the front door.

There were many rooms in the white goblin’s house. Too many. Like a Chinese palace where the rooms connected in almost impossible ways, designed by crafty architects who hoped to trap an eternity of luck.

Somewhere far behind her, she heard the front door opening. Then she heard the white goblin’s voice. “Those boots your nigger is wearing,” he said, and Lie heard his footsteps whispering over the Indian carpet in the main room, his boot heels ringing on the hardwood hallway that led to the bedroom. “I like the goddamn things. I really like ’em.” She listened as the bedroom door squealed open on dry hinges. “I want you to come outside with me, show me how he takes ’em off without getting his fingers chewed down to the nub — ”

The white goblin’s footfalls stopped suddenly. Lie could imagine the twisted expression on his face, his anger boiling as he realized that she was not in the bedroom.

His voice was like thunder. “WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU!”

She stumbled down the hallway, searching for an exit, each step agony. Behind her, heavy footsteps shook the house. Still, she did not slow her pace. Not until the white goblin himself turned a sharp corner. Not until his great shadow covered her like a shroud.

He made a grab for the carpetbag, but Lie refused to surrender easily. She forced him to fight for it. He had to pry it from her hand, finger by finger.

His free hand closed around her neck. “I paid for you!” he shouted. “You’re my property! Lock, stock, and barrel! That’s the deal!”