going to review files right now, Muse,” Zhu whispers, jerking away when the eyepatch plants his hand on her shoulder.
“Our girl.”
“Chee Song Tong,” Muse whispers, “sponsors slavery, opium smugging, and assassination. These are assassins, Z. Wong.”
“What about the girl?”
“Let them take her.”
“Damn it, Muse, she’s the reason I’m here!”
“It appears you have no choice at the moment,” Muse whispers.
“It’s a goddamn shame!” the buxom blond woman shouts at the crowd. “You all oughta be ashamed!”
“Please step away, Z. Wong,” Muse whispers. “They don’t want you. I said go!”
“Too late.”
The wiry fellow and the fat man seize Zhu’s elbows. The eyepatch smacks Wing Sing across her face with the back of his hand.
“Jade Eyes,” Wing Sing whimpers.
Heart pounding, Zhu shoves the hatchet men away. She clutches the girl, anger parching her throat. Can she protect her? Or is she too late?
The girl clings to her, murmuring, “Jade Eyes.”
The eyepatch stoops, stares at Zhu. He flips up her veil, his eye widening when he sees her Chinese face, her irises gene-tweaked green.
The hatchet men hustle them into the brougham. The driver yells, whipping the horses.
With a lurch and a jolt, the brougham speeds away.
2
A Toast to the First and Last Chance Saloon
Daniel J. Watkins lights another ciggie as the Overland train bound from Saint Louis speeds down the last miles to the Port of Oakland, California. He plays with a miniature Zoetrope, a little drum whirling on a spindle. He peers at slits cut in the drum’s cardboard sides all around its circumference through which he can view watercolor paintings rendered in a sequence. The sequence merges through the persistence of vision, producing the illusion of continuous motion. Typically a toy like this shows a parrot on the wing or a peasant in country dress capering about. The clever fellow who marketed this toy in Paris painted a whore drawing black stockings up her bare legs and down again. Up and down, up and down.
But even the Zoetrope—which usually fascinates him—cannot cheer him now. The jolt of nicotine does little to relieve the throbbing in his head. Bloody train. Well. The Overland was a very fine train till he ran out of whiskey early this morning. Now the train lurches and rolls from side to side like a ship in a restless sea, and his stomach rolls in sickening counterpoise.
Daniel drags the ciggie down in three great gulps, stubs it out. He tucks the Zoetrope in his ditty bag, finds and lights another, humming the waltz from Sleeping Beauty in a scratchy tenor. Poor Tchaikovsky kicked the bucket in Mexico in ‘93 from that vile pox called cholera, which they say is contracted by drinking filthy water. Tchaikovsky had not been an old man. Daniel has resolved to drink nothing but bottled fluids during his sojourn in the West. Wouldn’t you know that Father—the eminent Jonathan D. Watkins of Saint Louis, London, and Paris--calls the waltz the work of the Devil. An inspiration for lurid passions among the young and impressionable. How very true. He hums more vigorously. Daniel adores works of the Devil.
In the dawn sometime after he discovered his grievous shortfall of potables, the Overland had stopped in Sacramento to pick up passengers. But the stopover wasn’t long enough to scare up a little hair of the dog. By the time he’d roused himself to a functioning consciousness, they were on their way again. Daniel pulls frantically on the ciggie. Must he arrive in San Francisco on vital family business shucked out, half-crocked, and airing his paunch like some overindulgent schoolboy? He is nearly twenty-two, after all, heading for old age and senility by swift and sordid leaps and bounds.
This will not do, sir, indeed it will not. Daniel stands, groggy, and surveys the passenger car. He roams the narrow aisle, spies the old cowboy who’s ridden the Overland out from Saint Louis, same as Daniel. A grizzled coot in rustic togs that have never known soap and water. Nor has the old cowboy bothered to shave since their departure from that thankfully distant city. Skinny bowlegs sprawling, he hunkers down in his seat, talking to himself, cackling, conferring with an invisible companion now and then. And, oh yes, nipping at something under his greasy topcoat.
In a word, the old cowboy looks promising. Daniel slides onto the seat facing him, grinning like all get-out with what he knows is a manly mustachioed face that charms the ladies and the gentlemen. Oh, he charms them all. He gives the old cowboy