Black Dove Read Online Free PDF

Boss of the Plains over my ears and pulled it down so tight the brim covered my eyes. After a moment, I lifted it back up again.
    “Am I out?”
    “You’re out,” Gustav said, grabbing his hat back.
    I ran my fingers gingerly through my hair. The clump just over my face felt bristly and warm to the touch, and the skin over my
eyes
had a tingle that was slowly giving way to an unpleasant throb.
    “Now I know how a match feels.”
    “I’m so sorry,” Chan said again, apologizing to the right Amlingmeyer this time.
    “Oh, don’t worry ’bout it, Doc,” I said. “I guess I just have that effect on some people.”
    “It was an accident, really. I . . .”
    Chan spun around and rushed back toward the store we’d
seen
him leave a minute before—a small, jumble-stuffed affair with Chinese lettering over the door and what looked like a giant, hairy carrot hanging in the window.
    “Wait here! Please!” he called over his shoulder.
    He pulled out a set of keys, unlocked the door to the shop, and disappeared inside.
    “I sure hope he ain’t goin’ back for a shotgun,” I said.
    Old Red ambled over to the gutter and retrieved my hat. “Don’t worry. He’s such a sorry shot, I don’t think he could hit you with a
cannon
.”
    He handed me the battered bowler. It had landed top-down in an pile of brownish filth, and a few stringy strands of what looked like rotting jerky still clung to the crown.
    “I have been havin’ the damnedest luck with my lids lately.” I brushed the hat off and pushed a pair of fingers through its fresh, ragged holes. “Had two shot off my head in as many months. Maybe I oughta make like Johnny Appleseed and take to wearin’ a tin pot.”
    “Couldn’t look any dumber on you than that derby did.”
    “Awww, you’re just old-fashioned.”
    Off behind my brother, I noticed several merchants still staring at us from in front of their stores.
    “Don’t rush over to help me all at once, now!” I called to them. “You’ll step on each other’s toes!”
    I turned the other way and found more of the same: shopkeepers and their customers watching us warily, making no move to lend a hand or take to their heels, either one.
    I held up the bowler.
    “Any of y’all wanna buy a hat?”
    I got no takers—or any reaction of any kind, for that matter. Just more stares.
    “Quite an assortment of humanitarians they got around here.”
    “They’re used to mindin’ their own business, that’s all,” Gustav said. He knelt down and picked up Chan’s discarded derringer. “Ain’t that different from some of the cow-towns we been through.”
    “I suppose . . . only wouldn’t the local law have come around by now to see what’s what?” I took another look up and down the street and saw nothing but Chinamen, and not a one of them in blue. “I know Frisco’s supposed to be a wide-open town, but I wouldn’t think you could fire off a gun without bringin’ at least
one
copper a-runnin’.”
    My brother shrugged. “Maybe the po-lease don’t hear so good if the shot’s comin’ from Chinatown.”
    Chan came bustling out of his shop, a small, silver tin clutched in his hands.
    “Here you go, Big Red.” He thrust the tin out toward me. “A medicinal balm. It should keep the skin from peeling.”
    “Skin? Peelin’?” I touched my forehead lightly, my fingertips barely brushing against flesh. The sting was strong enough to make me wince. “Damn. Did my scalp get all scorchy?”
    “Well, I don’t know if it’s ‘scorchy,’ ” Chan said miserably, still holding out his “balm.” “But you do have a little . . .
color
up there.”
    “Looks like someone tried to iron out your skull,” Old Red said.
    “Oh, that is just dandy.”
    I eyed Chan’s tin suspiciously. In its center was a dollop of waxy, green paste. It looked like tallow mixed with mashed peas.
    “You say that’ll help it heal up?”
    “Oh, yes.” Chan scooped out some of the salve and stretched his