Ralph Compton - West of the Law

McBride decided it was time to investigate Trask a little further, a first, minor skirmish in his coming war with the man. He lit the lamp in the room and gingerly shaved his battered face by its dim flicker. Then he slid the Smith & Wesson into the shoulder holster, put on his hat and headed outside. He mingled, unnoticed, with the miners crowding the street and stepped into the alley beside the Golden Garter.

Shannon had said that the Chinese girls had been visiting a fortune-teller behind the saloon, but she was probably repeating what Trask had told her. If there was a fortune-teller’s shack back there, McBride was sure it was the place where the girls were held before being shipped out on an eastbound train.

Yet how was that possible? Surely the girls would wail and holler and beg passersby for help, attracting unwanted attention. Trask had to have found a way to get them to the train station without causing too much fuss.

The moon had not yet climbed into the sky and the alley was dark, pooled in shadow. Something small squeaked and scuttled at his feet as McBride passed the corner of the saloon and found himself in an open area of ground. A brewery wagon was parked to his right, its tongue raised. A few upended wooden barrels stood close by. About twenty yards ahead of him, he could make out the vague outline of a shack with a crooked tin chimney sticking through the steeply angled roof. There was no light showing in the single window to the left of the door.

On cat feet, McBride stepped closer to the shack. Laughter and loud talk drifted from the saloon and the night spread so quiet around him he could hear the click of the roulette wheel and the rattle of dice.

Above the door of the lathe and tar-paper cabin a crude, hand-painted sign proclaimed:

MADAME HUAN ~ Palmistry

McBride tried the door. It was locked. He walked around to the rear of the shack, found that there was no other entrance and returned to the door. There was no one around and he was invisible in the darkness. McBride leaned his shoulder against the door and pushed. It held firm. He pushed harder. Wood splintered and the door swung open on its rawhide hinges.

It was dark inside and the place stank. McBride took a chance on not being seen from the saloon and thumbed a match into flame. He discovered an oil lamp and lit the wick, alarmed at the amount of light that flooded into the room. If Trask or one of his men happened to be passing by . . .

He forced that thought from his mind. There might be something in the shack that would explain how Trask kept the Chinese girls quiet.

He was standing in the middle of a small room, a narrow door opposite him. The only furnishings were a rusty iron stove, a table, a chair and a cot, enough to convince anyone who glanced inside that someone lived here.

McBride guessed that there was no Madame Huan and that the shack was always locked. He doubted that the miners cared about having their palms read and never came near the place.

Swiftly crossing the room, he opened the narrow door and was immediately hit by a feral stench, the smell of the young women who had been confined there for days at a time.

He raised the lamp. Half a dozen thick posts had been driven into the dirt floor of the tiny room and from each hung a pair of iron shackles. There was a shelf to his right, with several syringes, cotton, spoons, candles, narrow leather straps and bottles laid carefully on it. Only one of the bottles still had a handwritten label, which said, Citric Acid .

Desperately McBride tried to recall the lectures he’d attended on heroin addiction. The citric acid was used to break down black tar heroin so it could be injected—he remembered that. The heroin was placed in the spoon and then the acid and a little water were added. A spoon was held over a candle flame until the heroin dissolved and afterward a tiny piece of cotton was used to soak up the liquid. The addict drew the heroin from the cotton with a syringe, hoping to filter out particles of tar and other impurities. The heroin was then injected into the arm or leg, or sometimes directly into the neck.

Injection was the cheapest method of administering opium, but it created a greater dependency on the drug and as the user’s tolerance grew, more and more was needed to get the same effect.

The Chinese girls had come from San Francisco, probably from the notorious and vicious Barbary Coast waterfront. After getting off the boat, they would have been raped repeatedly, beaten and forced to endure heroin injections. Once dependent on the drug, they would become compliant and be willing to do anything to get more.

Trask obviously controlled the young women with heroin. The drug made them obedient and docile and they could be shipped east on trains without trouble. On each trip one or two of his men must travel with the girls, a plentiful supply of heroin at the ready.

It was a neat setup and a profitable one. The girls McBride had seen herded into the alley had spent some time chained to the posts and were already gone. It was of no concern to Gamble Trask that all four would be dead within a couple of years.

Cold anger rising in him, McBride knew it was too late to help the girls who’d been here, but he would make sure Trask would never use this prison again. He lifted the oil lamp high, ready to throw it against a wall. But he never completed the motion.

A shot from the direction of the outside door hit the lamp and it shattered apart in his hand, hurling sheets of flame. Burning oil hit McBride on the shoulder and his coat flared. He threw off the smoldering coat as the dry tar-paper walls around him caught fire, surrounding him with raging cascades of flame. Smoke hung thick and black in the air as McBride lurched out of the room.

Another shot slammed, but curling clouds of smoke obscured McBride and the bullet whined past his head, buzzing like an angry hornet. He drew his gun as he stumbled toward the door. It banged shut just before he reached it, scorching tongues of fire licking at him.

McBride barged through the door, ripping it from the hinges, and ran outside. Behind him the shack was an inferno. A tangle of men was piling out the door of the Golden Garter and he thought he heard someone call his name. He did not wait to find out. Footsteps pounded off to his left and he went after them.

Away from the street it was very dark. Ahead of him the footsteps slowed and then fell silent. Crouching low, his skin crawling as he expected a bullet at any moment, McBride was alone in the night with only the stars watching him. He heard a commotion and the clank of buckets back at the saloon as men fought to put out the fire, but he kept on moving.

Counting Jim Nolan, three men had now tried to kill him and his patience had worn thin. He planned to catch up with the man ahead of him, and shoot him or beat him to a pulp with his fists. Then, as he’d done with the young cowboy, he’d deliver him back to Gamble Trask.

Lamps were lit in the stores along the street and their back windows cast rectangles of yellow light on the ground as McBride passed. A few scattered cabins and shacks also showed gleaming windows, but around them lay canyons of darkness. Off to his left, a dog barked in sudden alarm. McBride turned and stepped toward the sound, his gun ready.

A cabin lay just ahead of him and beyond it, only the inky blackness of the plains. As he got closer McBride saw the dog staring intently into the gloom. The dog started to bark again and the cabin door opened and a man in shirtsleeves came out and looked around him. Hidden by the dark, McBride stayed where he was. Finally the man called the dog inside. The animal walked to the door reluctantly, growling as its eyes continued to search the night.

After the cabin door slammed, McBride holstered his gun. It would be suicide to walk out into the dark after a man who could even now be waiting in ambush. He’d learned that lesson when he went out in the dark after the cowboy who had killed Theo. It was not an experience he cared to repeat.