Fool's Gold (35 page)

Pearl lingered a few moments in the church after Alicia had left, trying to pull herself together. She splashed her face with some of the water she had brought to put the flowers in and felt better able to face the world. She was almost through the door when she saw the group of men.

There were five men and three of them were wearing badges. One was brandishing a sheaf of papers in Alicia’s face, but Pearl was too far away to make out more than the odd word they were saying. Some instinct she couldn’t explain made her step back into the shadows in the porch. Then one of the other men turned and she knew she had not been mistaken; it was the big man with the scarred face. It was not so much his size or appearance that had alerted her but the threat that exuded from him even as he stood there.

She flattened herself against the wall, straining to hear what they were talking about, but it was impossible. She must fetch help, even if it was only Luis. At least he could fetch a gun. But before she could make a move, she saw Alicia climbing meekly on to a horse, without a fight!

No time for further thought; she must go at once and hope she could alert Luis in time. She slipped out of the doorway and into the tangle of shrubs nearby. As she ran, crouched low, she heard one of the men shout out. There was a sharp retort behind her and she fell to the leafy floor with a muffled scream. She had jarred her arm in the fall, but she scrambled to her feet and pressed on towards the ranch.

The shot reverberated around the valley and Chen Kai, with an oath, threw down the pack with the food in it and set off down towards the village at a great speed.

He could hear the sound of horses’ hooves echoing back from the buildings; no time to go back for a horse. He veered off towards the gate in the nopal hedge, the last place he could intercept anyone riding off the ranch.

He drew out his knife and waited. He was only just in time. When the riders came into view, he saw with rage and not a little fear that it was Fisher. He was holding the reins of Alicia’s horse tightly, so that she was forced to ride almost knee to knee with her enemy. And she was on the far side, where Chen Kai could not hope to cut her mount out. He cursed fluently.

Chen Kai shot out from hiding just as the group reached the gate in the nopal hedge. With a high-pitched curse he hurled himself at Fisher’s horse and tried to cut Alicia’s reins free.

Fisher drew back his boot and kicked him on the side of his head. As his body hit the ground, Fisher calmly drew his gun and shot him.

Luis staggered out of the trees, white-faced and breathless, just in time to see the posse disappearing in a cloud of dust.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Pearl staggered on towards the gate, her hair dishevelled and her dress torn and snagged by the clinging branches, struggling for every breath.

Her heart almost stopped beating when she saw Chen Kai lying motionless on the ground in the dust. As in a nightmare, she moved forward on legs that didn’t seem to belong to her and fell on her knees at his side, sobbing and wailing in high-pitched Cantonese.

The side of his face nearest her was battered and oozing blood and on the other side, Luis was trying to staunch a stream of blood with his kerchief. He looked at her across the fallen body.

‘I — I don’t think he’s breathing,’ he said fearfully.

‘He
must
be!’ she insisted fiercely, tearing his shirt open to place a trembling hand on his heart.

She lowered her head to lay her ear on his chest. ‘I think — I think he is still alive,’ she panted.

A soft breath stirred the hair on the back of her neck. ‘Always try the pulse in the throat,’ came a weak voice from behind her.

‘Oh, thank God!’

‘Tamsin?’ he asked fearfully, struggling to open his eyes.

‘Up at the ranch with Angelina,’ she reassured him.

He closed his eyes again, in short-lived relief. ‘If you’ve finished undressing me,’ he said weakly, ‘I’d better get up.’

‘But you’ve been shot!’ she protested.

‘I ducked,’ he grinned, putting a hand to his ear where the blood was beginning to run again. ‘Just grazed me.’

With Luis’s help he drew himself up, taking Pearl’s hand as he staggered slightly. Suddenly she winced and clutched her arm, looking down wide-eyed at the blood seeping through her fingers.

‘He shot me!’ she said stupidly.

‘One more item to his account,’ said Kai softly. ‘Luis!’ He turned to the lad standing beside him, pale-faced and anxious. ‘Back to the ranch. Send Xavier down with the cart. Can you find your way to the
agua caliente
?’ Luis nodded. ‘Find yourself a good horse and fetch the Colonel back. Tell him to follow me through the woods on the Sacramento road. I’ll leave him markers. I’ll take spare horses and supplies. Fast as you can.’

Luis set off at a run and Pearl sat down again abruptly.

‘Let me see.’

‘It is nothing!’ she insisted. He took no notice of her, kneeling beside her and ripping the sleeve apart.

‘No, not serious,’ he confirmed, tying his bandanna around it. ‘The bullet passed straight through. But you’ve lost a lot of blood and that makes you light-headed.’ He sat down beside her and took her hand. ‘No time to waste. Tell me what happened.’

‘I couldn’t hear much,’ she murmured weakly. ‘I was in the church and I couldn’t hear … When I tried to creep out to fetch help … this happened.’

‘Tell me what you saw. And heard.’

‘The man with the badge spoke of … Coloma, I think. Yes and something about Park …’

‘Parker. Yes, it begins to make some sense. And Fisher … Did he hurt her?’

‘No.’ A frown marred her smooth forehead. ‘Chen Kai, she did not fight at all. I could not understand it. She just went with them — without a struggle.’

‘I don’t believe it!’

She snatched her hand away, deep hurt in her eyes. ‘So! I am a liar as well as a whore!’

‘Pearl, don’t!’

She was crying silently, rivers of tears coursing down her cheeks, her shoulders hunched in misery.

‘Pearl, I never meant it that way! It’s just that you were Li’s …’

She would never have said it if she hadn’t been lightheaded with the loss of blood. ‘I was
not
!’ she protested. ‘Never! Not then, not now!’

‘But — you’re betrothed to him!’

‘Only because it was what you wanted!’ she said fiercely. ‘And I wanted to please you. But you taught me well, Chen Kai-Tsu. You said that this was the land of free people. So I
will
be free! I won’t marry Li, not to please you or my father!’

He gazed down at her with a strange look in his eyes, but before he could speak Luis galloped into the clearing, followed by Xavier with the cart.

Pearl had to be helped to the cart, but they were soon up at the house and she was delivered into Angelina’s capable hands.

A bare quarter of an hour later, Chen Kai looked into her room. Pearl lay back on the bed, her face as pale as the bandage on her arm.

‘Is she asleep?’ he asked Angelina softly.

Pearl opened her eyes wearily and tried to speak.

He crossed to the bed and took her hand. ‘We will talk when I return,’ he promised. On impulse he bent forward and dropped a kiss on her forehead. ‘And Pearl …’ She looked up. ‘
Ngo ho chung yi nei
!’ he said softly.

‘About time you told her,’ said Angelina as he left. ‘An’ don’t look so surprised! Tell someone you love ’em, sounds the same in any language!’

Out in the yard he checked the saddlebags on the spare horses: supplies, guns, ammunition, his medicine box and a variety of strange items whose purpose Xavier, who had been sent to collect them, could not fathom. He sprang into the saddle, took the reins of the spare string in his hand and, putting his heels to the horse’s flanks, set off down the slope.

*

The sun had almost set by the time the Colonel caught up with Chen Kai. He had brought only Kerhouan with him and their horses were sweating and blown, for they had ridden directly from the
agua caliente
.

‘Alicia?’ he demanded.

‘Safe for a while.’

‘Your trail was good,’ muttered Cornish. ‘How far ahead are they?’

‘Only a little way,’ replied Chen Kai. ‘But from here we go on foot.’

‘How many?’

‘Still only five. Three men with badges, besides Fisher and another of his men. And Pearl says they had papers.’

‘Law officers? He’s learnt a lot by his association with Lamarr.’

‘Jack …’ he hesitated. ‘Pearl says she did not resist him.’

‘So he must have used some threat other than the purely physical.’

‘Can’t just kill Fisher then?’ said Kerhouan regretfully.

‘No,’ replied Cornish emphatically. ‘First we find out what hold he has over her. Then I deal with him, for she’s never going to be secure while he’s around. But Fisher is mine. Understood?’

They nodded.

He looked thoughtfully at Chen Kai’s bloodstained face. ‘Five to two,’ he said heavily.

‘Don’t count me out, Jack!’ said Chen Kai, eyes glittering feverishly. ‘I know a few tricks worth half a dozen men. You’ll see.’

Chen Kai led them forward through the trees. After about five minutes he motioned them to silence and dropped flat on his stomach. Down in the clearing below two men were gathered around a camp fire, cooking something in a pan. Two others were deep in discussion in the shelter of a poison oak. Nearby stood the fifth man, gun in his hand, keeping a keen eye on Alicia.

Chen Kai stopped Cornish’s hand even as it moved towards the gun. ‘Out of range,’ he said swiftly. ‘Be patient. Your moment will come.’

*

Alicia sat with her back against the trunk of a huge redwood. Her eyes gazed blindly into the distance, seeing not the men moving around the camp-fire, nor even Fisher looming on the far side of the clearing, but only the still figure of Chen Kai lying in the dust.

If she could only get hold of a knife or a gun! If she couldn’t kill Fisher she could at least turn it on herself. Anything would be better than to be in Fisher’s power again.

Her guard crossed the clearing with a cup of coffee for her but she would not take it.

‘C’mon,’ he urged. ‘Drink the coffee.’

She shook her head stubbornly.

‘What’s the odds?’ he shrugged. ‘Might as well drink it as not. Make you feel better.’

She looked at him levelly.

‘You know what he’s going to do with me, don’t you?’ she asked.

‘Look, I’m sorry.’ He shifted uncomfortably, trying to avoid her eyes.

‘You approve of his way of getting a woman?’ she jeered.

‘If I’d’ve known, I never would’ve …’

‘Then let me go!’ she implored him.

‘I daren’t. Sheriff swore me in and I gotta do what he says. Sheriff, he could make things pretty tough for me — and my woman’s carryin’ …’

‘She’d be proud of you, pimping for Fisher!’ she said disdainfully. ‘Better hope his eye doesn’t fall on her next.’

‘Damn you, don’t have the coffee then!’ he exclaimed angrily, dashing the contents of the cup onto the ground. He strode back to the fire, but try as he might, his eyes kept returning to the huddled figure at the foot of the giant tree. When the food was cooked, he took a plate across to her, but she turned her head aside.

He turned away with a shrug to eat the food himself. Fisher ambled across the clearing, a ghastly leer twisting the scarred features, and sat next to the woman. He reached for her and she whimpered as she tried to move away from him. The guard growled angrily in his throat.

In the undergrowth nearby, Cornish raised his gun.

‘
Non
!’ whispered Kerhouan. ‘Chen Kai is not yet in position.’

Cornish ground his teeth together in frustration and lowered his sights.

Fisher pinned her arms cruelly behind her back, openly enjoying the terror he was inducing in her.

The young deputy threw down his plate with a curse and his hand hovered suggestively over the holster on his hip. ‘Leave her be!’ he commanded. ‘She’s in the Sheriff’s custody. Ain’t no call for you to paw her around if she don’t want it!’

‘Kinda simple, your deputy, ain’t he?’ laughed Fisher. ‘Better tell the kid who’s runnin’ this!’

‘Lay off, Dave!’ growled the Sheriff.

‘But it ain’t right …’

‘Morgan! I said lay off!’

There was a small explosion and a blinding flash and the two men on the far side of the fire staggered back, coughing and gasping, their eyes streaming. When at last the acrid fumes had dispersed, they mopped their streaming eyes and looked up to find themselves staring down the barrels of two very businesslike Adams revolvers held rock-steady in Cornish’s hands. Twelve bullets between them at close range. They put their hands above their heads without demur.

Alicia, who had looked away as soon as the flashes began, opened her eyes to find Kerhouan with his rifle at Fisher’s neck. She scrambled to her feet and out of his grip and nearly fell over when she saw Cornish.

‘Oh, Jack!’ She shook her head in disbelief. She wanted to run across to his side, away from Fisher’s evil presence, but she knew she must not distract his attention until all the men were disarmed.

The young deputy who had come to her aid stood irresolutely between the two groups, overwhelmed by the speed of the attack.

‘Unbuckle your gun-belt, deputy,’ commanded a quiet voice from the shadows behind. ‘One hand.’

Alicia’s eyes widened as Chen Kai strolled out of the trees.

‘Oh, Chen Kai! I thought you were dead!’ she cried. And yet who else could have done that trick with the magnesium flares?

‘Closer to it than I ever want to be again!’ he grinned, never taking his eyes off the young deputy until the gunbelt had been kicked aside.

One by one, Chen Kai searched them for arms, drawing throwing knives from inside boots, emptying guns of their bullets with a flick of the wrist. Then he dexterously tied their wrists together behind their backs while Kerhouan and Cornish kept their guns trained unwaveringly on their captives.

‘You’re interfering with a lawful arrest!’ blustered Sheriff Hooper as Chen Kai tied him up.

‘The Supreme Court Judges are goin’ to be real interested to hear what you’ve been up to,’ commented Cornish casually. He crossed to Alicia’s side and put a comforting arm around her. He took her left hand and ran his finger around the gold band. ‘Like to tell me why you kidnapped my wife, or will you save that for Sacramento? Or no, perhaps I’ll take you into San Francisco,’ he mused. ‘I know the Vigilantes were going to disband, but Hell, I’m sure William Coleman will open up again for an old friend.’

The mention of the President of the Vigilance Committee, an upright and influential man with a deep hatred of crooked law officers, was sufficient to break the sheriff’s nerve.

‘I never knew she was your wife!’ he said hoarsely. ‘Never meant her no harm! Just doing my duty. Serving warrants duly issued.’

‘Only one doing his duty was your deputy here!’ snapped Cornish. ‘Now you’ve a decision to make — whether you’re going to proceed against my wife or not. But I warn you, she’ll have Crocker to defend her. You going to stand against her?’

Hooper said nothing.

‘You won’t get away with this, Cornish!’ swore Fisher, struggling against the ropes that bound his wrists. ‘I’ll get her, I swear it!’

Cornish looked hard at the Sheriff. ‘How about it? Tear up those warrants and I’ll let you go. Or we go see William Coleman.’