Bentley Little - The Burning

It was starting to get cold.

* * *

Williams stood over his wife's grave.

And spit on it.

It had been five years since he had killed the harlot, since he had taken advantage of his husbandly prerogative and strangled her until her filthy tongue had been hanging swollen from between her dead lips, and not a day had gone by since that he did not rejoice in her demise. She'd died hard. The way she should have.

But first she'd watched him kill her lover, Chin Lee.

Even now his blood pressure rose as he recalled how he had discovered them- in his own house! - mocking him, humiliating him, cuckolding him. She had to have known he'd come home, had to have heard him enter the house and walk through the parlor, then the kitchen, then the hallway, calling her name. But either she'd been so in thrall to her passion, or more likely in his view, she had wanted him to t discover her, and she had continued with Her unnatural coupling even as he burst into the room.

She'd been on her bed, completely naked in a way he'd never seen her before, legs spread wide, while ?' the Chinese servant lapped at her sex like a dog. He had never spied anything so disgusting, had never even heard of something so utterly perverse and depraved, and the animalistic cries that issued from her lips as well as the expression of passionate gratification on \ her sweaty face made him sick to his stomach. The Chinaman was naked, too, and when Alice saw Williams standing apoplectic in the doorway, and knew that she had been discovered in her sin, she had grabbed her lover by the shoulders, pulled him up and taken him inside her, gasping as his engorged organ | pierced her ready opening.

It was a direct taunt, a deliberate slap at his manhood, and if he had not been wearing his sword, things might have turned out differently. But the sword was drawn instantly and with anger, pulling easily from its oiled sheath, and Williams had sliced it across the Chink's brown back, satisfaction welling within him even as blood flowed from the cut and the coward tried to scramble off the bed to safety, screaming wildly.

This time, Williams had thrust rather than sliced, and the long blade slid easily and deeply into the servant's side. The screams were cut off, replaced with a gasping gurgle. He pulled the blade free, casually wiping it on the mattress, feeling like a man who had just crushed a particularly loathsome insect. Alice was screaming by now, her exposed stomach and breasts covered in Chinese blood, and he looked at her, watching her face as he delivered the fatal blow to the twitching, dying thing on the floor, shoving the sword through the center of the Chink's chest and leaving it there.

Then he'd turned to his wife.

Her cries had turned to whimpers, and she was hunched up against the headboard as if to protect herself, her wanton legs now seemingly glued together. But he was in the mood for justice, not mercy, and he'd strangled her with his bare hands, pressing his thumbs against her windpipe while she thrashed beneath him in an obscene echo of her earlier passion. By the time she started to claw at his arms, she had no strength left and was too weak to do any real damage. Her face turned red, then blue; her eyes bulged; her tongue protruded as she tried in vain to breathe.

And then she'd died.

He had allowed others to clean up the mess, not deigning to dirty his hands any further, although he had directed them in their efforts and made sure that his orders were followed to the letter.

Williams looked around at the other graves, content that the monument to his deceased wife was still the finest, largest and most elaborate in the cemetery. The servant was not buried here, of course. He was not buried anywhere. His body had been taken into the woods south of town and left there. The blood and the organs had attracted animals, and he had been eaten. His bones, no doubt, were rotting there even now, under exposure to the elements.

Williams smiled to himself with satisfaction.

But the smile faded as he heard the whistle of the mail train passing through the center of the city. It made him think of Jeb Harrison. The railroad president might think he knew business, but he definitely didn't know the Chinese, and if Williams was sure of one thing, it was that before the project's completion he would regret having hired those slant-eyed sons of bitches. They might seem like hard workers now, but down the line, when it was important, when they were really needed, the Chinks would not be there or would fail to do what was required of them and something would go horribly wrong. He knew it in his gut. You just couldn't trust the heathen Chinee.

Besides, this was an American railroad and should be built by Americans.

Even if they were micks.

The train whistle grew faint as it moved farther away, and Williams gave Alice's grave one last look. The half-formed notion he'd had earlier, the one that had been lurking at the back of his mind ever since, had been given additional consideration, had been thought through a little more. There was meat on those bones now, and he had no doubt that once he fleshed out the details, his idea would prove to be a most propitious one.

But for now he would just stay out of Harrison's way. And wait.

March 1867

"Whoooo Woooo Woooo WooooWooooo!''

They heard the war whoops before the hooves this time, which meant that the Sioux had been close and the horses were starting from a camp nearby rather than galloping over the plains. Johnny Fowles and the other three hired guns drew their weapons, readied their backup, then checked to make sure the rest of the railroad camp were doing what they were supposed to be doing. Those with rifles were taking up position near the other men who were busy securing supplies. The Chinese huddled together in their section of camp, looking confused the way they always did, and Johnny felt angry. They were like children, the Chinese, dumb children who didn't seem to be able to learn, and their complete inaction in the face of these attacks put everyone at risk.

It was cheaper to replace Chinese than food or wood or rails, and if it appeared that people or supplies were in danger, Johnny's orders were to sacrifice the Chinese first. But that was pretty damn hard when the Chinks remained as far as possible from the fighting, expecting to be protected like they were little princes and princesses.

"WhooooWooooWooooWooooWooooo!" The attackers were almost here, and though Johnny, Tibbits and Duncan were in position and ready, Maxwell, the other gun, was still fiddling with his ammunition. "Damn it!" Johnny swore.

"I can't send a message!" Peterson yelled from the telegraph table. "I think they cut the lines!"

And then the Indians were topping the rise, looking like ghosts in the massive cloud of dust that accompanied their galloping horses. Both the Sioux and the Cheyenne had started attacking railroad workers on a regular basis, and by far he preferred fighting Cheyenne. They had the bigger reputation as warriors, but they fought cleaner, more straightforwardly. They were easier to outfox. Sioux, on the other hand, were crafty. Rather than engage in a battle head-on, they would create diversions, try to outflank and out-maneuver, arrive in waves. He was always waiting for the other shoe to drop when he fought the Sioux and that kept his focus split, made him a less effective fighter, which perhaps was the intention all along.

Johnny sighted and shot, gratified to hear the weapons of the other hired guns sound almost simultaneously. Four dark figures in the front of the dust cloud went down, then two more, then three more-Then the attackers were upon them and he could not keep track. All was chaos, and the only thing he could do was lie low and shoot at whatever was on horseback. Rifle fire was going off in all directions, and screams of agony mixed in with the war whoops the Sioux used to intimidate their enemies. He couldn't tell who was who or what was what, but when the front of the fighting moved past him and he was forced to turn around and pick off successful intruders rather than repel an attempted assault, he saw that the telegraph table was no more and the cook's tent was down. He thought he saw Buster Thornton, one of the construction foremen, fall to a bullet and go under the hooves of a horse. He, Tibbits, Duncan and Maxwell were all still in action and unharmed, and the four of them fired away, dropping Sioux warriors right and left, scores of other railroad workers also joining in and killing the natives.