THE IMPERIAL ENGINEER Page 12

  "There's a meeting tonight."

  Tony looked up from the article he was reading. "A meeting? About what?"

  Eagleton looked at the paper in his hand. "It says here that it's to discuss the Chinese problem. I've a feeling it'll be well attended."

  Tony sat back, fighting the sick sensation in his middle. "I guess I didn't really believe it would happen here." He tapped his pencil on the desk. "I suppose I'd be conspicuous by my absence?"

  "I could make your excuses, say I'd given you an assignment that couldn't wait."

  "No. Thanks anyhow, Mr. Eagleton. I'll go, if only to find out just how bad it is. But if they start to organize any sort of action, I'll... well, I just don't know what I'll do. I'd like to stay as far out of it as I can. But..." He shook his head.

  "A man's got to follow his conscience," Eagleton said. "I'll meet you here after supper. We'll walk down together." Tossing the flyer on Tony's desk, he nodded and left.

  Was his employer going to support whatever action was taken against the Chinese? Or oppose it? Tony shook his head. Even after six months in Abner Eagleton's employ, he hadn't figured the man out.

  After that Tony got precious little done. Of course, believing in what he was doing would have helped. Eagleton was still insisting a steam plant was the best choice for power generation in Hailey, and had assigned him to research possible designs. He'd written for information and it was slowly trickling in. As he read he became more and more convinced that the only possible source of electrical power for the area lay in the many high-gradient streams pouring out of the mountains surrounding Hailey.

  For such a smart, forward-looking man, Eagleton was curiously blind about some things.

  He ate supper at Mom's, a two-bit eating house where food was plain and plentiful. It was not a place where members of the business community were likely to congregate, which suited him just fine. He had a feeling he'd get a belly full of Hailey's business community tonight.

  There was a speaker, he saw when he walked into the meeting. A snake-oil salesman, if Tony had ever seen one. He claimed to be a leading citizen of Rock Springs, and a front line fighter against the Chinese menace.

  He could talk, though. In a matter of minutes, he had the audience in the palm of his hand.

  "Imagine if you will, my fellow businessmen, your livelihoods stolen from you by unscrupulous dealings, by prices so low your customers are lured away in droves." He paced back and forth on the stage of the theatre, exhorting the audience like a seasoned tent-meeting preacher.

  "These coolies live on a nickel a day, and of that they spend four cents on their vile opium... They lay away their money to send their bones back to China, instead of investing in the communities in which they live...They come from a part of the world that is the source of every vile plague and pestilence known to man... They have no loyalty to our great nation, for they worship their ancestors and those ancestors are buried in the sacred soil of China..."

  After a while his words washed over Tony, like a vast, unstoppable flood of hatred--hypnotic, carrying him back to another time, another place. A rough crowd of miners surrounded him, yelling words he had not understood then, but which were graven on his memory...

  "Git a torch!"

  "Yeah, scorch the little varmits!"

  He tensed, ready to run as soon as a chance was offered.

  "Damn right," a miner yelled. "Filthy slant-eyed heathen."

  "Comin' in and takin' work from white men," another cried.

  Tao Ni made a dash for freedom, scooting between two men. But before he could break free of the forest of legs, a big-bellied miner caught him by his queue. He screamed as he was snatched off his feet to dangle, kicking wildly.

  "Lookee here what I cotched!" the miner crowed, holding him high.

  "Hand him here," another shouted. He was swung high, was passed from hand to hand, screaming in terror, until he was once again in the center of the mob, dangling above Su Mei, who crouched in the mud, held there by a hand on her queue.

  "You reckon them pigtails is strong as rope?"

  More laughter.

  The crooked man who held Su Mei said, " Give your'n a poke. See which'n pulls the hardest."

  A sharp jerk on his queue sent sharp razors of pain down Tao Ni's spine, then he was tossed into the mud beside Su Mei. Before he could scramble to his hands and knees, he was held again, while hard hands knotted his queue to hers.

  A hard boot shoved him away from her. The crowd opened in front of him and he could only think of escape. He ran. Or tried to.

  The shouts grew louder, the voices more excited. "Half an ounce on the leetle one!"

  "I'll take that. He ain't got a chance."

  "Be still, Tao Ni," Su Mei cried. "They want us to struggle. Stop pulling!"

  He could not stop fighting to free himself. Sobbing, he fought to get away. Then he was in the mud, face down, with her on top of him. Still he fought, screaming.

  "Be still, small one," she murmured, over and over. "Be calm."

  Fear made him strong. He almost got away.

  "Be still. I will not let them harm you," she soothed.

  He heard the words but did not believe them.

  "Hold on there!" called a commanding voice, so compelling that he stopped fighting, so powerful that the miners seemed to shrink back...

  As if hearing that voice again, Tony Dewitt came back to the present, knowing this fight would be his. Neither Soomey nor Silas would be here to save him this time.

  Chapter Eleven

  The carols and the wassail, the prayers and the games, the generous hospitality, Hobby-Horse and the Lord of Misrule, Maid Marian and Santa Claus, are a curious medley of the old and the new...This is the spirit of Dickens's Christmas, and of Thackeray's, and, in a great degree, of Irving's, touched in all of them by the modern humanitarian sentiment...the lighting of the Christmas trees and hanging up of Christmas stockings, the profuse giving, the happy family meetings, the dinner, the game, the dance--they are all the natural signs and symbols, the flower and fruit, of Christmas...

  Harper's New Monthly Magazine

  - December 1883

  ~~~

  Katie's younger brother and sister arrived on Sunday. They had ridden out, because yet another heavy snowfall made the roads impassible to carriages. "I doubt we'll see Micah," Merlin said as he unsaddled their horses.

  Lulu was helping Regina rub down her pinto mare. "If he has the sense God gave a goose, he won't even try," she agreed. "I doubt he'd get out of Cherry Vale, the way it's been snowing." The mountain valley where her younger brother farmed the original Lachlan and King homesteads was two days' travel to the north.

  "I guess we'll only need one leaf for the table," Katie remarked later, when Lulu and Regina asked her what they could do to help. "We invited the Breedloves--I don't think you've met them--but I don't imagine they'll even try to get here. They live up on Camas Prairie."

  No one mentioned Tony.

  Even the four Savage children couldn't make enough noise to fill the house like the laughter of the combined families had in the past, Lulu decided the morning of Christmas Eve. Was this a sign of times to come, with the families scattered to the four winds?

  As if reading her mind, Regina said, "I wish Iris and Rhys had come home, don't you?" The two youngest Lachlans were both still in school back East. Rhys studying to be a doctor, Iris trying to decide between social work and teaching, neither of which she was excited about.

  "And Gabe," Lulu agreed, "although I doubt we'll see him for years yet. He's having too good a time playing spy." Her quiet older brother had surprised everyone by following in Buff Lachlan's restless footsteps, working for the Coalition, a quasi-official organization fighting white slavery, drug distribution, and other international crimes that might endanger the fragile structure of civilization. "I wonder if he managed to meet the folks. The last letter I had from him said he planned to."

  "I got a letter from Ma last Friday," Katie
said as she collapsed into a chair next to Lulu. "She said they were going to celebrate Christmas aboard the Chinese Duchess. They were to pick Gabe up at Bombay yesterday."

  "Bombay? I thought he was in Algiers?"

  Katie shrugged. "I don't know about that. But it was definitely Bombay where they were meeting him."

  "Why are you surprised, Lulu? Gabe never stays anywhere more than a week." There was a definite sour note in Regina's voice. Is she still pining for Gabe? I hope not.

  "Oh, did I tell you that your mamma rode an elephant, Lulu?" Katie chuckled. "Ma said she took to it as if she'd done it all her life."

  Regina made a laughing comment, but Lulu could only think of the other family member who wasn't here. The one nobody mentioned.

  Would he be alone tonight? Or would he take that pretty young girl to a party somewhere? Minnie? Yes, that had been her name. The one he'd been with at the dance the night before the fire.

  Had his burns healed? Had they left scars?

  Lulu reached for another piece of fruitcake. Ordinarily she disliked the overly-sweet dessert, but for some reason this year it tasted good. Everything tasted good, in fact. She was hungry all the time.

  "I guess we ought to talk about it," Katie said, dabbing up the last crumbs of scone with a moistened finger. "We've been walking around the topic ever since you got here."

  "About what?" Lulu knew, but had used every tactic at her disposal to delay the inevitable.

  "About why I didn't invite Tony for Christmas. Luke doesn't understand, you know. He thinks you're being overly sensitive."

  "So do I," Regina said. "Lulu, he's family. Just because the two of you can't deal with the way you feel about each other doesn't mean he should be made to feel like an outcast."

  "I didn't ask you not to invite him," Lulu protested. "We'd have been polite to each other if he'd come."

  "And you'd both have been miserable," Katie said. "That's why I decided he shouldn't be here. It's bad enough, the way you're mooning around. If he'd been doing the same, do you think any of us could have enjoyed Christmas?"

  "I'm sorry I've been 'mooning about.' But for your information, it's not Tony Dewitt I've been thinking about. Don't you ever read the papers? Doesn't what's happening to the Chinese all over the West worry you?"

  "Of course it does, and we'll do what we can to help if anything like that happens here," Katie said. "What I don't understand is why you're not doing more. I'd have expected you to be involved, not sitting on the sidelines writing letters and making speeches." She cocked her head. "Seems to me that all speeches do is inflame the situation. They get folks all het up and ready to fight. Doesn't it make more sense for you and those like you to work to calm tempers and sort out complaints?"

  "There is a certain element of truth in the statement that the Chinese work cheaper than everybody else. That doesn't sit well with men who have families to feed," Regina added.

  "That's not the point!"

  "Sure it is. It's the most telling argument against the Chinese I've heard. I'm not saying I agree with it," she said, as Lulu opened her mouth to rebut. "Just that a man whose children are hungry or who can't pay the rent is not going to feel kindly to those he sees as the cause of his troubles."

  "Then maybe he shouldn't spend so much of his paycheck at the saloon," Lulu snapped.

  "Oh, lordy, we're not going to get into an argument about temperance," Katie said, slapping the tabletop. "In fact, we're not going to argue about anything. I would like an answer to my question, though, Lulu. What good do you see in all those letters and articles you're writing? Will they stop the riots?"

  Her throat tight, Lulu shook her head. "No, but they're all I can do," she admitted. She buried her face in her hands. Took deep breaths until the churning in her belly stopped. "I never told you about why I left the South, did I?"

  Regina shook her head. "I assumed you were offered something better in Washington. You didn't seem to be getting anything done down there anyhow."

  "I guess you could say that." She laughed, and covered her face again when the laughter turned into sobs. "It was terrible. I was staying with Reverend and Mrs. Thomas. He was in charge of the Relocation program in that district.

  "We'd found a place for half a dozen families, out in Kansas. Because the situation was explosive--for some reason some of the locals were against the Negroes leaving--we had to get them away quickly. I'd made all the arrangements, but wasn't able to find any way to transport them out of the county. They were going to have to walk about sixty miles, to where we could put them on a train.

  "Reverend Thomas housed them in his church until the weather cleared. Not all of his parishioners approved of what he was doing, unfortunately. They saw him bringing trouble down on the church, and all they wanted was to be safely ignored.

  "Somehow word got out that the Negroes were hiding in his church.

  "That was when the Ku Klux Klan was just getting organized in the county. One night they burned a cross in front of the church. Reverend Thomas said it was a warning, but not to take it seriously.

  "We should have.

  "The weather had been fierce for days. Gale winds, even some snow. There were half a dozen small children in the group. Two infants. One of the women was pregnant. We kept them in the church except on Sundays, when they had to hide in the woods. For three weeks we prayed for decent weather.

  "The Klan came first. Late one night fifteen men in white sheets and pointed hoods rode up. They set another cross afire, then shouted for the people in the church to come out. It was cold, almost freezing, and raining."

  Closing her eyes, she again saw the leafless branches swaying in the wind, heard the sharp pings of ice crystals against the windows. Those in the church had only a small stove for warmth and must have been huddled around it.

  "Reverend Thomas went to talk to the men. He tried to reason with them. While he was talking, some of them went into the church--into the church, mind you, where anyone should find sanctuary--and brought everyone out. They took away all the blankets and quilts, made those poor people stand in that freezing rain with nothing to warm them except the burning cross.

  "Mrs. Thomas and I were in the house. She had twin babies, only six months old, and was terrified for them. She begged me to stay indoors with her, and I did. I was so frightened. Afraid someone would see..."

  Katie grasped her hand. "I can imagine. If they'd realized..."

  "I should have gone out. Maybe I could have--" She fought the tears that clogged her throat. "He was praying for the mob. Standing between them and the people he was trying to protect." She closed her eyes, saw the image clearly, for it was graven into her memory.

  "They rode him down. That good man...that saint. They rode him down and left him to die in the mud. Then they-- Oh, God! They killed them all. But the women...

  "We ran. I carried one of her babies. I was so frightened." A shudder wracked her body. "I was so glad...so glad we had to save the babies, because it meant I didn't have to stay there and try to help. I'm still afraid. I can't...."

  She felt Katie's arms go around her, heard Regina's words of sympathy and understanding. And then everything faded...

  "Time to wake up."

  Lulu opened her eyes. Regina stood in the doorway. From behind her came laughter and the sound of a child singing. For a moment she was confused, then she remembered the morning. Most of it, at least. "What happened? Did I pass out?"

  Regina came to perch on the edge of the bed. Her hand. Cool and gentle, stroked Lulu's forehead. "It was the strangest thing. You were talking along, and the words came slower and slower. They just sort of trailed off, and you sat there, eyes wide open, but like you were asleep. I carried you in here. You seemed to be sleeping normally, so we just let you. I hope you're not sickening for something."

  "I feel...fine, I guess. Groggy."

  "Good. I'm to tell you that tonight you're not supposed to think about the world's ills, just about roast goose and pumpki
n pie and chokecherry preserves. There's hot water in the ewer. Get yourself all fancied up. Dinner's in about an hour."

  "Oh! But I was going to help--" Lulu realized she'd slept while the other women had prepared an enormous dinner.

  "That's all right. You can wash up." She went out, but paused just before shutting the door. "Wear the green gown."

  Lulu found that she felt much better than she had since arriving. Perhaps all that had ailed her was exhaustion. The journey from Portland had certainly been taxing. She washed and dressed, glad she had stored her evening gowns in Boise when she moved to Hailey. At least she had something to dress up in. By the time she emerged, Katie and Regina were starting to put food on the table.

  She helped, so she didn't see anyone but the two other women until Katie called the family to dinner. Just bringing a bowl of mashed potatoes into the dining room, Lulu almost dropped it when Luke and Merlin and Tony came in together.

  She wore green and gold, the rich colors making her skin glow. Although the food-stained apron concealed much of the gown, Tony could see that it dipped low in front, showing the rich upper curves of her breasts. Her arms were bare, almost to the shoulders, and her waist was cinched in to an impossible slimness. How could she breathe, he wondered, even as his body reacted to the shape of her, the wonderfully, perfectly female shape of her.

  He responded automatically to the greetings from Katie and Regina. "I got Luke's telegram a couple of days ago, but wasn't sure I could get here. They're running the snowplows full time all along the lines."

  "Worst winter I ever saw," Luke agreed. "We'll be feeding hay if we get much more snow."

  Lulu set down the bowl and turned to go back into the kitchen.

  A perverse urge made him say, "Aren't you going to say hello?"

  "Hello, Tony. How are you?" she recited, as if by rote.

  "I'm fine, now that I'm here. We need to talk."

  "We have nothing to say to each other," she said, slipping past when he would have caught her hand. "I'm needed in the kitchen."

  "What's goin' on?" Luke said. "She acted like you're the last person on earth she wanted to see."