A big yard-bull raised his bat to swing at the tramp standing by the handcar, holding on to his long bundle. The bum gestured as the bat arced down at him and the blow never connected. The bull looked down in surprise; he clutched only the handle of the bat in his hands, sheared off, a clean cut just above his knuckles. As he looked up, the bum swung his arms around again—a chink, fer Christ's sake—and the bull felt something go haywire with his left leg; he tried to take a step and the leg split in two above the knee; his whole leg from foot to mid-thigh tipped away from him and flopped onto the ground; an instant later, the man's balance gave out and he toppled like a felled pine.
This makes no sense, thought the bull. The chink has a sword in his hand. No pain yet but he couldn't breathe. He looked up and saw the sole of the chink's boot screaming toward his face.
Kanazuchi had no time to offer a prayer for the dead guard as another one charged up quickly behind him, weapon raised high. He dipped, back-kicked, and the out-of-control guard flipped over him and fell heavily; Kanazuchi grabbed the man's wrist and with a single twist removed his shoulder from its socket. A single blow across the bridge of the nose from the stick the guard had wielded drove a splinter of bone into his brain and silenced the man's screams.
Kanazuchi looked around, instantly analyzing the scene: Although they possessed far greater numbers, the men in the camp offered no resistance. None of the other attackers yet taking notice of him or the damage he'd done, preoccupied with the beatings. More of them darting in between the rail cars to his right. Fires flaring dangerously in the burning shacks in front of him. A cold, treacherous river at his back.
Cornered. Capture, overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of these men, carried a high probability.
Kanazuchi settled his breathing, remaining alert, wishing for nothing, escorting the fear from his body with every measured exhale.
There it was—an opening. A narrow gap in the attackers' formation under a water tower led to the rail bridge heading east. He would need to depend on the darkness and the chaos in the camp and keep the Grass Cutter out of sight in order to traverse the fifty yards.
Another guard took a run at him. Kanazuchi flowed to the ground, rose up underneath him and used the man's own momentum to toss him onto the roof of a burning lean-to. Moments later the man emerged screaming, flapping his arms like a bird, wrapped in flame. Distracted guards focused toward the burning figure and now he had his opportunity: Holding Grass Cutter in its sheath along the line of his pant leg, Kanazuchi began to walk across the yard.
Huddled beneath his spool, the guards hadn't found Denver Bob by the time it happened so he was the only man in the camp who saw the entire rush of the Chinaman clearly from start to finish. In the days to come, even with the leeway his eminence among his peers allowed him, it proved a tough tale for anyone to swallow. If the bodies of the seven bulls and the heads of the two Pinkerton men hadn't been left behind for all to see in the morning light, they would have called Denver Bob crazy to his face.
"The Chinaman moved like he was made out of liquid instead of solid flesh," Denver Bob grew fond of saying, but those were just words that did pale justice to a memory; as it was happening before him, he could hardly make sense out of what his eyes reported.
He walked calmly, with a lilting grace, like a man taking a stroll in the park. Every other body in sight making angular, frantic moves; men on either end of a vicious assault. Only by contrast did you even notice the figure moving placidly between them. Guards would catch sight of the man passing a foot away, reach out to swing a stick at him and before they'd taken the club completely back they were already on the ground, limbs snapped like kindling, faces broken. The Chinaman's arms and legs seemed to whirl out away from him in effortless patterns and then circle back; at one point he appeared to hang in the air. By the time he reached the edge of the yard and the two Pinkertons faced him down with their revolvers pulled, news had reached the rest of the bulls that something disastrous was happening in their midst.
That's when in a single smooth gliding motion the Chinaman pulled the sword out of its sheath along his pant leg, swung it around twice in a loop—you could see reflections from the fire glinting off its edges—and the heads of those Pinkerton men dropped like ripe melons.
The Chinaman ran. He was a blur. He was gone.
When they saw the wreckage he'd left behind, the fight gushed out of those bulls like a busted water bag. While they started to tend to their dead, the yard bums who could walk stumbled away into the night, scattering like shrapnel, carrying their bundles and what small fragments of the nightmare they had witnessed. As time went by, Denver Bob did the most talking; thanks primarily to him, in the world of the railroad bums, the story about the man with the sword who had saved the camp at Yuma passed into legend.
By dawn of the following day, a more practical consequence, the manhunt to track down this murdering Chinaman, was already under way.
NEW YORK CITY
Dazzling electric light displays lit up the span of the boulevard and revealed a street carnival of humanity crowding around the theaters and groggeries and dime museums and particularly outside the town's newest sensation, the five-cent Kinetoscope parlors lining either side of Broadway. Roving vendors hawked a warehouse of cheap movable goods—toys, shoes, scissors, suspenders, pots, and pans. Knife grinders threw sparks off their whetstones; ragpickers jangled the bells on their carts. Promenaders dined on baked apples, hot cross buns, steamed clams for sale out on the street. Winsome young girls offered cobs of hot corn—an attraction Innes did not fail to pick out of the mix. Some blew bugles to sound their wares, others wore block-printed sandwich boards, most depended on their voices; sharp, repetitive choruses cutting through the din.
Electric streetcar operators leaned on their horns and carved a path through the dense carriage traffic, edging jittery horses still not accustomed to their presence out of the way. Double-decked omnibuses trundled tourists looking for a thrill around the tangled midtown streets; every few yards of fitful progress brought a fresh sensation into view. Bohemians in berets and garish neckerchiefs. Gamblers and grifters sniffing out their next big play. Local toughs footpadding in striped sweaters and floppy gang hats. Preening swells in plaid suits, pearl-gray derbies, and matching spats taking the air with a dolly on each arm. Streetwalkers between jobs stumbling off their gin or hop. Irish cops patrolling a beat, bouncing their sticks off the sidewalk. A Salvation Army band pounding drums, fishing for recruitable strays. Pimps, rummies, newspaper boys, jugglers, runaways, Chinese cigar sellers.
"Can you imagine, Arthur?" said Innes. "Ten o'clock at night and the streets this full of life? By Jove, have you ever seen the like!"
Doyle watched Innes eyeing the parade, feeling a protective swell of affection for his brother's exuberance and untested innocence. Was there a danger he'd corrupt those qualities by leading him further down this path he'd begun to follow? He'd never mentioned a word to Innes about Jack Sparks or what they'd been through together, not even since Jack reappeared on the ship. Was it right to expose Innes to the sort of danger Jack courted as a matter of routine? Given his responsibilities to wife and family and his professional obligations, Doyle questioned whether he had any business putting himself in harm's way, either.
Sparks sat in the driver's perch above them, anonymous, cold. Doyle studied his face as he picked their way through traffic; he had harbored serious reservations about Jack's state of mind ten years ago: his obsessions, dark mood swings, his closeted appetite for drugs. He could only guess at what horrors the man had lived through since; he might have become perfectly deranged by now. Could he be trusted?