Dragons Teeth Crichton 2017 (WWT)

“What?”
“I think everybody know you here. People in laundry say talking you move boxes to this place.”
Johnson froze. Of course they knew. He’d merely exchanged one room in town for another. “Kang,
you know my wagon?”
“Yes, yes.”
“It’s at the stable. Can you get it and bring it here?”
“Yes.”
It seemed he returned only a few minutes later.
“Tell your friends to load the boxes as fast as possible.”
Kang did that, and soon the wagon was loaded. Johnson gave them a dollar and told them to run
away. “Kang, stay with me.”
Chinese Town was larger than it looked, with new streets being built constantly. Kang showed him
how to guide the wagon through the narrow lanes. At one point they stopped as four horsemen went by
in a hurry in the street ahead.
“Look for you, I think,” said Kang.
They eased out onto a side road, and in a few minutes they came to the tall pine where Johnson had
buried Little Wind. The ground was still soft, and he and Kang gently exhumed Little Wind, holding
their breaths as they pulled him out of the hole. The stench was wretched. The ten boxes took up the
space of about two more graves, and Johnson widened the hole he had made for Little Wind and
stacked the boxes as evenly as he could. Then he laid Little Wind on top of the boxes, as if he were
sleeping atop them.
If I had my camera and it was daytime, I would take a photograph of that, Johnson told himself.
He piled the dirt back over Little Wind, spreading it around so the excess would not be so
apparent, then brushed pine needles over the spot.
“This is our secret,” he told Kang.
“Yes, but it can be a better secret.”
“Yes, of course.” Johnson pulled a five-dollar gold piece from his pocket. “You do not tell
anyone.”
“No, no.”
But he did not trust the boy not to talk. “When I leave, Kang, I will pay you another five dollars if
you have kept the secret.”
“Another five dollar?”
“Yes, the day I leave Deadwood.”