Free Lone Star 02 by Wesley Ellis Page A

from beneath the canvas tarp where Ki had stashed him. As Ki ran past, his eyes locked with those of the commissioner.
    Smith reached into the watch pocket of his vest and pulled out a derringer. But Ki had never stopped running. Within seconds he was around the comer, and well out of range of the miniature firearm.
    Back near the Starbuck dock, Ki took the duty sheet out of his pocket to examine it. At the top of the sheet was inked the designation, Shipment #8452. At the sheet’s bottom was Smith’s signature. Ki next removed the splinter of wood he had cached away in the deep breast pocket of his suit coat. Stenciled upon it was the number 8452. Completing his souvenirs of the encounter was a small chunk of opium, pinched off from a larger block of the stuff, and now safely wrapped in a scrap of brown paper.
    In all, it was not enough to get Smith convicted, but it was a start in the right direction. Ki thought Jessie would be pleased.

Chapter 4
    Jessie spent several hours going from shop to shop along the Line, San Francisco’s six blocks of renowned stores that began at the Baldwin Hotel, paraded down Market to Kearney Street, and then wound its way around Kearney to Bush Street. She bought a wide selection of fabrics to be shipped back to the Starbuck Ranch, for herself and for her housekeeper, Myobu. The glittering window of a cutlery shop next caught her eye. Inside, she bought a matched set of Sheffield steel throwing knives. They were imported from England, and came handsomely displayed in a velvet-lined wooden case. The bone handles of the knives were suitable for engraving. Jessie arranged for the etching of the Circle Star insignia, a message of endearment from herself to Ki, and the date. This gift, as well, would be delivered to the Starbuck office, and then shipped to the Texas ranch.
    At a florist’s shop she ordered bouquets of orchids sent to both her own and Ki’s rooms. The stem, stoic samurai was also a Japanese; he would appreciate the beauty and grace of the floral arrangement even more than she did.
    As Jessie walked, she dodged the colorfully frocked shop and office girls who flooded the lunchtime streets. She modestly returned the smiles and nods of the dapper gentlemen strolling along in their fine suits and derbies. How delightful it was to encounter men armed not with Colts and Winchesters, but with walking sticks and umbrellas!
    The bay windows that were the most distinctive feature of San Francisco’s architecture greatly amused her. The jutting windows were designed to catch every glimmer of available light in this often gloomy city of gray skies and tall, shadow-casting buildings.
    Several times, Jessie dashed out into the center of the street, avoiding the dense traffic of horsedrawn cabs, private gigs, delivery wagons, and cable cars, in order to stare up at the stacked windows of the four-and five-storied buildings in this part of town. She had to remind herself that there were entire unexplored worlds above the ground-level shops. Not only watchmaking schools, painless dentists, and attorneys-at-law, but furriers, bootmakers, and fine jewelers.
    But the dresses, shoes, hats and parasols displayed in the picture windows along Market Street gave Jessie plenty of window-shopping. Although she could afford just about anything in the world she wanted, she found it more fun to look than to buy. Somehow, knowing that she could have anything made Jessie feel as if she needed less. But it was certainly fun to look!
    It was while she was standing beneath the awning of an exclusive silver and chinaware shop, evaluating the tea sets artfully arranged behind the store’s plate glass window, that she first noticed him. She’d been thinking about how her own silver serving sets, crafted in Mexico, were nicer than the ones being offered here, when she caught his reflection. He was across the street behind her, but he was staring at her, and Jessie’s instincts told her