“Slow down, woman. You’re going to give the Doc a heart attack.”
“I’ve seen it all before,” the doctor said, but he was red in the face, and packing his bag. He straightened and turned to face them.
“I strongly suggest against this, but you’re both young and stupid.” He caught Bruce’s eyes. “Let her do all the heavy lifting, son.”
Chun Hua came to him and hugged him, his arms up until he dropped them and hugged her back, patting her on the head in a grandfatherly fashion, which was appropriate. “Don’t kill him granddaughter. I delivered both of you, and I don’t want to have to pronounce either of you.”
Outside, in the hall, he said to the guard, “If they need me, come get me, and no bullshit!”
“What about her?”
“She’s going to sit with her husband, and hold his hand. Do not disturb.”
The guard waved him down the stairs to the guard at the door to the wedding hall. Then he put his ear to the door, and leered.
***
Doctor Wong Yi Meng briefed the parents and other relatives, and then wandered off into a corner with an open window. He took out a pipe, filled it and lit it, and stood puffing. The man by the window, peering out, glanced at him and then back out into the night.
Behind him, Jules draped a table cloth over the private agent. He’d begged two silver coins off of the bad men, and they’d given up an eagle from the Bei Cheng mint, and a dragon from Shanghai. Jules placed them over the eyes, and lay the cloth back over the agents’ horrified expression, then stood. He went over to the Doc.
“How bad is he?’
“I’ll need to operate, to go after that bullet. But in the morning, when we have better light.” He held up his shaking hand. “It’s close to the spine, and I’ll want to get some sleep first,” he went on, softly. Jules winced.
“The girl is still up there?” There was a second question in there.
“Yes and yes,” Doc Wang said, and he shrugged. “I wanted them to have their wedding night, just in case that’s all they have left.”
***
“The little prince, of course,” Larry mused, a little while later, and a man grabbed Hei Bai by the shoulders. The boy tried to shake the hands off, but they pinched painfully into his shoulders and held him. Hei Bai and the bad man reached a non-verbal meeting of the minds, and they marched over to the door to the front hall.
“And little Cody Wyatt, too, since Bruce isn’t feeling to well. But we will take a Clinkenbeard,” he went on, and his eyes fell on Huck, and her little sister. Hei Bai held his breath.
“The little one.”
“Take me, and leave my sister!” Huck stepped forward, fists raised.
“Oh ho, what have we got here?” Larry said. He glanced at Hei Bai and said, “I think you should keep your eye on this one…” Then he noticed how tense the boy was, and too upset to hide it. “Or, did you already find yourself a little girlfriend?” As they both colored, he guffawed. “Excellent!”
Little Cody began to cry, and Melody hugged him. “Shush, it’s alright…”
“Leave them be!” Hei Bai shouted. “Taking little ones from their mothers isn’t honorable. Do you want people to say that Lawrence Boyle is a coward? I will say it, loudly and often.”
Larry backhanded him to the floor. “I’ve had enough of your lip, boy!”
There was a crack, and people turned to where Jules threw down the broken chair-back he had been resting his hands on, a moment ago. He pulled a splinter out of his right hand, and sucked on the wound. Then he looked up at Larry, and said, mildly, “Don’t mind me.”
Little Cody was screaming in terror, now. The kidnappers did not stop his mother from going to him, snatching him up from Melody. He buried his face. Melody wiped at her eyes with the palms of her hands, covering her eyes, trying to make the world go away, and trying to be brave.
Larry and his brother were conferring. Luke said, “This is better, brother. The little girl is holding up well, but that brat is just gonna be trouble. The two sisters will make ‘em think twice about messing with us, and we can handle two girls and that prissy little mannequin.”
Hei Bai sat up on the floor, not merely angry, but incandescently so. Bright green eyes caught his, across the room. Huck blinked twice, sternly, and blinked twice more, and mouthed, ‘Dong ma?’
Hei Bai banked his white-hot rage, and blinked back, once. She grinned an evil little grin, and stuck her tongue out at him, then wiped the smile off of her face. She went to join her little sister.
***
They rode off, with Hei Bai and Huck tied to their horses, which were led by their traces. Melody rode in front of Larry, who tipped his hat to them. “Don’t go getting any ideas. Just think of this as an adventure. In a week’s time, you’ll be telling all your little friends the tale.”
Melody made nice, but she touched her nose when Larry wasn’t looking, and they were. She mouthed the words, ‘Ren Shan.’ Man Mountain. Hei Bai blinked once, and realized that Huck had done the same.
“You’re enjoying this,” He accused her, his voice low.
“Maybe I am. It’d be a whole lot more fun, if Melody were back in Shanghai, or Home.”
“Man-mountain? She means Jules?”
“Yeah. Le homme geant, the giant man. The little rodent can sure turn a phrase.”
“Little rodent? That’s not a nice thing to call your little sister.”
She looked at him sideways, and said, teasing, “Are you sure you’re a boy?”
Hei Bai reddened.
“Yeah, you’re so cute, when you blush.” She giggled, and he sputtered.
***
Bruce lay awake. Chun Hua lay beside him, warm skin on his, and he was comforted. The darkness held their future, inky black with unknowable depths to it. Hope was her heartbeat, slow and sure. He listened to it, and fell asleep.
Jules slipped away to the little studio where he lived. He slept here, and taught the little master his lessons here- reading and writing, math, etiquette, plus defense and attack, both open-handed, and with small and large blades. Jules took down the swords, his and Hei Bai’s, looked at their blades, slid them back in their scabbards, and wrapped them for travel. He went to his gun cabinet, a battered steel and composite box with digital thumb-locks and USAF on the side, opened it and considered a shotgun, military version, combat assault weapon. He left both the CAW and the sniper rifle, and took a pistol, checking it for ammo, and all three remaining clips. This would be up close and personal, with his objectives mixed in with targets, and he did not want to hit any of the children.
He packed the gear away and stood. Doc Wong was standing by the open door.
“Not much time for talking, Doc. And, no offense, old friend, but you’ll slow me down, even…” and he trailed off.
“Even if you just might need me, before it’s done.” Wong held up his hands, which were steady, now. “Sometimes… Skill is important, and counts for a lot. Heart, it counts for a lot, too. But, sometimes, skill and heart are not enough. I know that you understand this, Jules.”
“That I do.” He remembered something, and pulled another jingling bag from a drawer. “That agent had family, of a sort.”
“We all do, of a sort.” The Dow took the bag, and added, “Do what you can. That little boy is half-brother to my granddaughter, and she loves him, too. He’s also another baby that I delivered.”
They shook hands, western fashion, and bowed, in the Chinese fashion. They heard horses and turned to see a woman on horseback, leading two additional mounts.
“My ride is here,” Jules said, and both old men chuckled.
Miss Lois reined in next to Jules, and looked down, for once, into his eyes. “My lady wishes you luck, and sends her love. This is from me,” She added, and leaned over to kiss him.
Lois remembered a little dog that she once had, and the hopeful expression that it had whenever she shared a tidbit with it, as if to say, that tastes like more!
A similar expression was on Jules’ adorably ugly face for an instant, replaced by annoyance.
“We don’t have time for this foolishness,” he complained. Both Lois and Doc Wong laughed. The Great Jules Le Croix didn’t like that any more than Hei Bai did.
“Get down from there,” he growled, and she slipped down, momentarily in his arms as he helped her off of the horse. The horses whinnied, stomped their hooves, and shook their manes, snorting. “Even the damn horses are laughing at me,” grumped.
***
The kidnappers made camp shortly before dawn, to rest up through the day. They seemed to be confident, despite the problems with the job, and joked around, about how they would spend their cut. Morale might have been very good, but the bad men were tired, and settled down quickly.
Hei Bai held a sleeping Melody in his arms. Her sister had snuck off, against his protests. They were bound, but the guard had dozed off. Hei Bai could sympathize. It had been a long day.
Idly, he examined the sleeping child’s features, and saw the ones which she shared with Huck. Bright Eyes. He traced the character for ying, ‘brave’, and was torn between ‘mouse’ and ‘bird’, for the second character. He brushed a hair aside and traced the character for ‘heart’, xin, instead. Brave Heart.
“Whatcha doin’?” Melody asked, sleepily.
“Do you have Chinese name, from when you were learning to speak my language?” He asked her.
“No,” she said, in a way that made the statement into a question, and he thought of his friend, Owl.
“My English name is ‘Henry’,” he told her.
Melody smiled, and began to sing, softly. “Henry the eighth I am, I am…”
He shushed her, and looked over to the guard, who stirred, then settled again, and began to snore.
“How do you like Ying Xin, ‘Brave Heart’?”
Melody smiled and breathed, “Braveheart,” and fell back to sleep.
Huck crept up to them and settled next to Hei Bai. She was cold, where they touched at the hip, and she leaned against him, pulling the blankets over the three of them. She saw his face and whispered, “I’ll bet I could warm my hands from the heat off of your face, bashful.” She was smiling, and looked dwon, fondly, at Melody.
“You’re good with her. She likes you.”
“She’s a good kid. What?”
Huck was frowning. “You think that that’s such a good thing, don’t you? You are so much alike.”
“What’s wrong with behaving yourself?”
“You give other people too much control over you, even if they love you, or you love them.”
Hei Bai didn’t know what to say to her, so he changed the subject. He knew, in his bones, that this was a conversation that they would have again. There was something vaguely comforting about that. He knew, somehow, that, down the years, he and Huck would remain themselves.
“What did you find out?”
“You want the bad news, or the worse news?” She said, sarcastically.
“Jules says, when making a report; proceed from what is urgent to what will become urgent, what you know to what you suspect, from broad to specific. He was teaching me to write, so the advice seemed like the rules my brushstrokes, and I remember it every time I set down to write. I think that that was what he intended.”
In her mind’s eye, Huck saw a giant pick up a rifle and hold it like a brush. He wrote in red, not black, all over the landscape. Then she remembered to breathe.
“I saw Larry meeting with a militia captain, and he handed over a bag. I think that he’s bought off some of the pursuers. He’s also getting the bandits up, and ready to move out.”
***
It was coming on towards dawn. In the East, the sky was getting light. Jules thought about Hei Bai, Black-White. There was a definition of dawn, in the Koran, if he remembered correctly, that dawn was when you could tell the difference between a black and a white thread; the border between night and day. He had told Hei Bai about the black and white threads, and dawn. He had not talked about hope, but maybe the boy had seen it, on his face. Jules prayed that he had.
“You know everything, don’t you, Jules?”
“No, Little Master. But I do know what’s important, and I will try to teach you.”
***
They were on the trail just as the sun came up. It’s red face poked over the pretentious hill called Bei Dong Shan. Larry wished that he had had time to send more than one man over there. It made his scalp crawl, thinking about one potential sniper.
He realized that many of his men were looking that way, too, ruining their vision with bright splotches, and then looking to their back trail, resting their eyes. He started, and blinked, as he looked ahead and to their left, three eighths of the way around from the rising sun, and saw movement.
Melody saw more. “Le homme geant!” She sang out joyfully, and squirmed. As Larry tried to pin her with his elbows and rein his horse off of the trail, she pulled and dropped one of his revolvers, then pulled the second as he swore, tossing it behind them and shouting, “Le magnifique (markswoman)!”
“What the hell?”
Larry caught her, finally, and carried Melody off the horse with him, in a dive for cover. Shots were being fired, and a bullet passed through the air where his head had been. He fell to the ground with her, but she got free and ran.
“Melody! Stay low!” her sister shouted.
Hei Bai and Huck were on the ground, hands still tied, but behind some cover. Huck had the revolver in a two-handed grip. Hei Bai stared at her. Her expression was blank, and she let out a breath and fired three times. Every man that turned, to track Melody as she ran, died.
The little rodent tackled her sister and spun her halfway around. Huck was gasping, down behind cover, and then she threw up. Melody took out a rag she had begged from the bandits to clean up with, and wiped at her sisters’ mouth.
Hei Bai didn’t know what he was doing, really, but he took the revolver from Huck, and, reaching around from cover, pointed it at the bandits, pulled back the hammer, and fired. It leaped in his hands and the bullet buried itself in a tree trunk over the heads of the bad men. He tried again, and missed again, then ducked as bullets reached for him. Breathing hard, he said, “Oh, sweet Buddha…”
Jules was suddenly among them. He looked to Hei Bai, and the sisters, and said to Huck, “Stay with us, girl. You’re doing good.” He smiled, and looked at Hei Bai. “In fact, I hereby draft you all into the US Air Force. Consider yourselves the youngest recruits, ever.” He was wearing his sword, and tossed a bundle to Hei Bai. When he unwrapped it, it was his sword, and looked up to see Jules standing with the long blade in his left, aiming and firing the pistol into a rush of bandits. “Free them, free yourself.”
Jules shot the pistol empty, and dropped it, passing the sword to his right hand as the last man in the rush came at him. The bandit sneered and aimed. “You brought a blade to a gun fight? Stupid!”
He shot Jules and the big man parried. By dumb luck, or divine intervention (and he had told Hei Bai that God looked out for fools and small children), the bullet deflected off of the blade, shattering it. It still tumbled into Jules’ shoulder, but before, it had been headed for his heart.
Jules staggered, and looked in wonder at the stump of his sword. “I don’t believe I just did that.” He threw what was left of his sword into the face of the man who’d shot him, and backed away. Hei Bai went past him, his blade out and thrusting up, under the rib-cage, teeth bared as the tip of it found the bandit’s heart. The man looked very surprised, as the boy pulled it back out, and he toppled backwards. Huck was moving again, and firing.
Hei Bai pulled back, dropping the sword and hugging Jules, who staggered some more. “Jules!” he cried, and wept.
“Time to go, Little Master.” He indicated the horses he’d brought, one of them in a lather. Hei Bai helped Jules up into the saddle of one of the remounts, somehow. “Hei Bai, see to your guests.”
&
nbsp; “I don’t care about them!” Hei Bai had never lost control like this before, and it scared him every bit as much as the situation. There was so much blood!
“I thought that I taught you better,” the old man said, sadly. Stung, Hei Bai looked up into that craggy face.
“Duty, always duty.” Jules grimaced and squeezed his bloody shoulder. “Life has no meaning, except for what we make for ourselves. Remember that, Little Master.”
“Yes, Jules. I will.” Hei Bai went to Melody and got her up into the saddle of the other remount. Then he held the horse while Huck swung up behind her. “Gun,” she said, passing him an empty revolver. Somehow, she now had two. “Reload,” she added, not looking to see if he was going to do so. She began to pick her targets with care, making each shot count.
Hei Bai raided the dead bandit’s gun-belt to fill the revolver, fingers shaking. He kept the belt, and looking around, saw the pistol that Jules had dropped, and his sword. The pistol he tucked away, and the sword and scabbard he grabbed up, wiping it quickly and sheathing it. That went over his shoulder, and he handed the belt and revolver to Huck. “Xie-xie,” she said, belt going over her shoulder, and she fired the last bullet in the revolver she had. “Hurry!” she said, as she threw the empty. “Melody, you’re driving.”
“Certainement, jie-jie.” Melody touched the reins. The horse looked around at her, then decided she had a great idea, and broke into a gallop. Hei Bai climbed in front of Jules, and tried to keep up, the tired third horse following.
***
“We’re not going after them,” Larry said.
“But we can get them back!” Junior shouted.
“I’m not inclined to throw good money after bad. I’ve spent all the blood and treasure I care to.” He looked to the south, and added, “But this ain’t over, not by a long sight.”
***
They reached home in the late afternoon rain, in the company of a very twitchy militia captain, who kept looking away when Huck glared at him. She spoke with Jules, and he with a sergeant, and they took him quietly.
Doc Wong was tired from surgery, and he merely directed his lovely assistant, Miss Lois, as they saw to Jules’ shoulder. He told the man to rest, and smiled to himself at the hopeful look on Miss Lois’ face, but Jules told them that he needed to report.