Tracking Apache Joe by George Arthur

Author:George Arthur [Arthur, George]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Robert Hale
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

Anson Hawkstone stretched upon a cot, his head on a filthy pillow. He lay on his left side, holding the opium pipe loose. On another cot opposite him lay a wrinkled bald Chinese man who also held a pipe. An oiled-filled lantern hung between them, putting out a pathetic pale-yellow glow. Between them on the floor, they each had their open quart jar with small smoking thimbles of dark semi-fluid inside. The room, about fifteen-feet square with a dozen cots in two rows, connected behind a Chinese laundry. Only three cots were empty. The room was smoky and hot, carrying the smell of opium smoke and unwashed men, making Hawkstone sweat. Men coughed, some groaned. The laundry room in front sat along narrow China Town Alley off Washington Street near downtown Tucson. Clapboard buildings on each side stood three storeys high. Windows were open which allowed Chinese language voices to carry along the alley. Summer was all but gone.

That was what Hawkstone remembered. He had not had another clear thought in weeks.

Through a murky haze, he relived worthless years that had been his life over and over. He did it for self-pity, so he could continue to feel sorry for himself. Since he was worthless, it was fitting he should lose any small grasp he might have had at a satisfying life. He had not gone on a rampage of killing because in those early days he had been very young and very stupid. He was older now and he chose to wallow in himself and churn over how badly life had treated him. That kind of thinking required little effort. He did not have to draw his Colt and shoot anybody. He could lie on the cot and inhale opium and never have to leave the inside of his head.

Mia Chang, the Opium Girl, looked after him. She was more than the Opium Girl. She had told him that in her small village near Hong Kong, her father suffered a devastating fire that destroyed his restaurant. Without money or business, he was forced to sell his two youngest daughters. When they arrived in Arizona Territory, the sisters were separated and never saw each other again. Mia Chang came to the laundry in Tucson for work but was quickly made a sing-song girl and moved with other girls to the house of Kin Duc. Now, as an added duty, she came to the opium den behind the laundry, operated by the seventh mistress of Kin Duc. Not yet twenty, she allowed Hawkstone to slide his hand along her bare leg under her clothing. She hugged him when he told her he needed it. Her intimate sweetness – which he declined – carried a price of two dollars, and on occasion, she admonished him.

‘Look at you, Hawkstone. How can I give myself to you completely when you are like this? You do not belong here. This is where old men come to waste the end of their lives.’ She nodded to the aged Chinese man across from him.

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