Bentley Little - The Burning

Amazingly, impossibly, the Chinese stood in their section of camp completely untouched, watching what went on as if from within a protective shell. They remained stupidly in place, while everyone else valiantly tried to fight back against the aggressors.

Finally, as always, the Sioux retreated. They always seemed to know the point at which the damage they inflicted would be greater than the losses they suffered, and they invariably quit before the equation shifted. He fired after the fleeing horses and was gratified when one last warrior went down, his horse continuing on riderless.

The fight was over-for now-but it soon became apparent that they'd suffered more losses this time than ever before. Three men were dead, over a dozen were seriously injured, and quite a few were walking around telling anyone who would listen that they were quitting, that no amount of money was worth risking slaughter. A fire had been started at the north end of camp and two tents were ablaze, but now the Chinese were finally getting involved, relaying buckets of water from the creek, and it would be only a matter of minutes before the flames were out.

The goal of the Sioux had been to stop or at least forestall the building of the railroad, and at that they'd been partially successful. The tool wagon had been overturned and quite a few of the implements were either stolen or broken. You had to admire that on some level. Remaining so concentrated that even amid the chaos, in an extremely limited amount of time, the Indians had been able to wage such a specific and successful attack was indeed impressive. .

"Fowles!"

Johnny looked over to see Duncan walking toward him grinning, pistol holstered, two rifles over his shoulder. "Ten!" he crowed. "All kills!"

Johnny nodded tiredly, acknowledging the other gunman but not deigning to answer. The man was a braggart and without a doubt the most self-centered person he had ever met. Even with all of the disaster surrounding him, Duncan could see only how he was personally affected. And, characteristically, he believed he came out of it a hero.

Someone had already ordered the Chinese to gather the fallen Sioux, and the small pigtailed men were moving in pairs to pick up the deceased and take them to the tracks, where Maxwell and some of the lower hammer-swinging brutes would cut them open and leave them for the buzzards. Johnny walked past the dead and dying bodies. He would never admit it to another living soul, but deep down a part of him sympathized with the Indians. This had been their land for God knows how long, and now strangers were building a railway line right through the middle of it. He would have fought back, too, if he'd been in their situation.

A hand clapped him on the back, and Johnny spun around, nearly drawing his pistol, but it was only Tib-bits, and he relaxed a little, drawing a deep breath.

"It's over," the hired gun said. "Relax. I just came to commiserate."

"Sorry. I'm still there."

"I know." Tibbits, with his sad eyes, always looked like he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, and for all Johnny knew, he was. The two of them never talked about the past-or the future- only the present, but despite the man's protestations to the contrary, Johnny always got the feeling that Tibbits didn't really like killing, that he wished he'd gone into some other line of work.

As opposed to Duncan.

The younger man came between them, throwing a muscled arm around the shoulders of each. "Can either of you beat my ten?"

Johnny shook his head. The truth was, he'd never been a man to keep track. It was not something of which he was proud; it was merely what he did.

Tibbits sighed heavily. "I don't rightly know."

Duncan chuckled conspiratorially. "Well, we know Maxwell ain't even going to come close." The chuckle turned into a manic laugh that set Johnny's teeth on edge.

"Chinks weren't much help," Tibbits noted, choosing to ignore Duncan.

Johnny nodded. "Gets under my craw sometimes."

"Good workers, though," Tibbits said.

He watched two of them pass by, carrying a gutshot Sioux toward the tracks. "Yeah," he said. "I guess they are."

Another Indian raid.

Harrison was so angry and frustrated he felt like hitting the wall. This time, they hadn't attacked the crew or the camp but had damaged the rails two days east of line's end. It had been a surprisingly primitive assault, conducted not with modern weapons or stolen explosives but with rocks and sheer manpower that had been used to seriously damage the tracks. A supply train headed west toward Wyoming had been derailed, all four cars overturned. Though the engineer and the other four men on board had escaped thanks to a bevy of pack animals that had been on their way to the workers' camp to replace those lost in recent attacks, by the time agents of the railroad returned to survey the damage, the cars had all been burned and adjacent tracks piled high with debris.

Now he had to get a crew to repair the damage before another supply train could be sent to the workers-which would delay construction for at least a week.

Assuming he could find workers willing to brave the threat of attacks.

He could always ship some Chinese over there. They did anything they were ordered to do. And for pennies on the dollar. The Chinks were so happy to be in America they were willing to take on any shit job that was thrown at them.

Harrison stared out his office window at the rail yard. What about that, though? There was no way he could finish this project on time without the Chinese. Six thousand of them were on his payroll right this moment, he didn't regret for a second hiring them (but a lot of them were coming over now, and thanks to railroad work, they were dispersing across the country. He hated to admit it, but maybe that blowhard Chester Williams was right; maybe there was some sort of reason, some long-term goal. America was a big country and still largely unsettled. They'd had to kick out the British, the French and the Spanish to get where they were today, and they were still trying to put down these Indians. Maybe the Chinese were thinking ahead, planning for the future, hoping to get a piece of the pie and settle a large portion of the land themselves.

I hated to think he was contributing to that.

But what could he do about it? He owned a railroad company. It was his job to keep the trains moving, not decide who was to settle where.

Still, this was his country, and he didn't want to see il tinned. As obnoxious as Williams was, the man nnyhi have a point. The next time he was in Washington. Harrison decided, he'd bring it up with people who might have some ideas on the subject, who might have some answers, who might be able to do something about it.

July 1867

O'Hearn stood above the navvy, kicking him as hard as he could while the Chink tried to scramble away. "When I say now, I mean now!" he shouted, emphasizing each word with a boot to the backside. He had no idea if the worker understood what he was saying or even if he'd understood the original order, but it felt good to get his frustration out this way, and he continued kicking even after the man had become unconscious.

The translator, as usual, was sick and useless, sweating with a fever in one of the Chinese tents. O'Hearn didn't think he'd ever seen a more womanly man. The son of a bitch was probably a eunuch. Didn't they do that kind of thing over there in China?

The peculiar thing was, the other Chinese seemed to never get sick. Either that or they just didn't show it. His men had had the dysentery and assorted stomach ailments for half the season. But those Chinks just kept on toiling day after day, unchanged and unfazed, like machines. It was probably because they'd brought all their own food with them, with all of those weird herbs and shit. They even boiled their water before drinking it. If that food they cooked hadn't been so goddamn disgusting, he would have asked them to cook for the whole camp, but he wasn't about to subject his men to that heathen slop.