Dragons Teeth Crichton 2017 (WWT)

“Yes. Ling Chow has tool shed, very strong and just new, it has lock and no windows except small
windows at the top.”
“Where is it?”
“Behind Ling Chow restaurant.”
In the middle of Chinatown. It would be perfect. Johnson felt a rush of gratitude. “That’s very kind
of you, I appreciate your offer very much. No one else in this town will even—”
“Ten dollar a night.”
“What?”
“Ten dollar a night. Okay?”
“I can’t afford ten dollars a night!”
Unblinking: “You can.”
“That’s outrageous.”
“That’s the price. Okay?”
Johnson thought it over. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”
“At this time, I still had more than a thousand pounds of fossils,” Johnson later recalled.
Ten boxes weighing about a hundred pounds each. I hired Kim Sing’s boy, Kang, to help me with the
wagon. I paid him two dollars for the afternoon, and he earned it. He kept saying, “What is this?” and
I kept telling him it was old bones. But my story didn’t get more persuasive. I also didn’t know there were
so many Chinamen in Deadwood. It seemed to me their smooth impassive faces were everywhere,
watching me, commenting to each other, standing four deep around the tool shed, peering from
windows in the surrounding buildings.
Finally when all the crates were stacked neatly in the tool shed, Kang looked at them and said, “Why
you care so much?”
I said I didn’t know anymore. Then I went to the Grand Central for dinner, and returned to the tool
shed at nightfall, to keep my evening watch over the dinosaur bones.
He did not have long to wait. Around ten, shadowy figures appeared around the high transom
windows. Johnson cocked his gun. There were several figures outside; he heard whispered voices.
The window creaked open. A hand reached down. Johnson saw a dark head appear in the narrow
glass. He aimed his gun.
“Get away, you bastards!”
A sharp giggle startled him. They were kids, Chinese kids. He lowered his gun.
“Get away. Go on, get away.”
The giggling continued. Scraping footsteps, and he was alone again. He sighed. It was a good thing
he hadn’t shot hastily, he thought.
There was more scraping.
“Didn’t you hear me? Get out of here!”
Probably they didn’t speak English, he thought. But most of the young ones had passable English.
And the older ones spoke a lot more English than they were willing to admit they did.
Another head at the window, shadowy.
“Get away, you kids!”
“Mr. Johnson.” It was Kang.
“Yes?”
“I have the bad news for you.”