America 1881: Legend of the West

Arcata is a lumber town on the Pacific coast.

It is adjacent to Humboldt Bay and surrounded by large forests.

Most of the Chinese who originally moved here worked as lumberjacks in some surrounding logging camps.

Huang Qingyun and the four or five Chinese young men behind him entered the town.

The people in this town don't seem very friendly.

An old woman collecting clothes stared at them.

Her skin was as dry as a dehydrated orange peel, lifeless.

The old woman gave them a vicious look, then hurried back to the house holding her clothes.

A man was resting on the railing in front of his house.

The overalls he was wearing were dirty and covered in mud.

When the man saw Huang Qingyun and the others, his expression was gloomy.

If I hadn't seen the guns carried by several of them, they would have come up to look for trouble.

After these Chinese people passed by, the man spat at their backs and cursed.

"Master Huang, I think there is no need for us to talk."

Lao Qi observed the situation in the surrounding town and whispered to Huang Qingyun beside him.

"I feel like people here don't welcome the Chinese back. There should be no possibility of peace talks."

"Now that we're here, we have to talk about it for a while. If we can't reach an agreement, it's not too late to talk about the rest."

Huang Qingyun replied.

Several people rode horses along the main road in the middle of the town.

Suddenly, several men with guns lazily appeared in the middle of the road and stopped them.

He Sanshui and several other young men subconsciously touched their guns.

"You guys are here to negotiate, right?"

A bearded man limped out from among several people.

His appearance reminded Huang Qingyun of a sewer rat, dirty and obscene.

"Yes," he replied, sitting on his horse.

"Then come with us." The man picked his nose and waved at them.

Huang Qingyun and others followed them to a logging camp outside the town.

The camp was very dirty, with wood and debris scattered everywhere on the ground.

Several people who were as slovenly as the cripple and looked like lumberjacks were sitting around the barrel.

They were playing poker on a barrel.

When they saw Huang Qingyun and the others entering the camp, they all looked over with dark eyes.

Apart from them, I didn't see anyone else.

"Please dismount, sir." The lame man turned his head and said to Huang Qingyun and others.

"He Sanshui, Xiao Liuzi, you guys stay outside, Lao Qi and I go in." Huang Qingyun ordered in Chinese.

He walked up to the two people and whispered to them: "If anything happens, run away immediately!"

He Sanshui and others looked stunned: "Master Huang, why don't we go in with you?"

Huang Qingyun patted his shoulder and shook his head gently: "No need."

He glanced at the lame man and those people, and laughed contemptuously: "These rotten people can't stop me and Lao Qi."

After saying that, he followed the lame man towards the tent in the middle of the camp.

Unlike other simple triangular tents in the camp, this is a large tent made of canvas.

Huang Qingyun and the others turned to the front and found a table inside, with two people sitting on the edge of the table.

One of the two men was wearing a khaki vest and had a pipe hanging from his mouth.

The other one held a dagger in one hand and was gnawing on the leg bone of an unknown animal in the other.

On the table to his right was a revolver.

Seeing Huang Qingyun and the others coming in, neither of them had the intention to stand up.

"Are you here to negotiate? What's your name?" The pipe-smoking man had a very arrogant attitude. He pointed to an empty chair next to the table and motioned for Huang Qingyun to sit down.

Huang Qingyun turned his head and found that the lame man had disappeared, leaving two or three people standing at the entrance of the tent.

"My name is Huang Qingyun, and I'm here to negotiate." He replied in English.

The pipe-smoking man frowned when he heard the name.

He came close to the man who was chewing bones until his mouth was greasy, and the two of them whispered.

"What do you do? What position do you hold in that, what, what guild?" the pipe-smoking man asked stammeringly.

"Should you introduce who you are first?" Huang Qingyun said calmly and calmly.

He glanced at the man next to him who was still chewing on bones.

The man was tearing at the flesh on the bones with no distractions, picking at it with his dagger from time to time.

"My name is Leadson Tuke, the leader of the militia here." The pipe-smoking man looked a little impatient.

The so-called militia is a self-organized local militia in the town.

In remote towns in the West, this kind of organization is very common. People who are usually farmers are militiamen when they pick up guns.

"Where is the sheriff of your town?" Huang Qingyun asked.

"I am!" The pipe-smoking man became even more impatient, "Hey, do you have the final say?"

"I have the final say." Huang Qingyun nodded, "I represent the Chinese who were expelled by you, so I came to negotiate."

Only then did the pipe-smoking man's face show some satisfaction.

"Fifty thousand dollars!" He held his pipe in his mouth and made a slap in the face, "If you give us this amount, we will let you come back!"

Huang Qingyun's face turned cold.

Fifty thousand dollars? This is a completely insincere number, which means that the other party has no intention of negotiating at all.

"A chamber of commerce as big as yours can't even come up with $50,000, right?" The pipe-smoking man grinned, revealing a mouthful of black rotten teeth.

"This number is too excessive, I can't agree to it." Huang Qingyun said simply.

"This $50,000 is not for me. You Chinese have taken away the jobs of those lumberjacks. This is compensation for them."

The pipe-smoking man looked malicious.

"Absurd! You beat our people and drove the Chinese out of here without any reason, and now you are asking us for $50,000?"

Huang Qingyun stood up.

"You are not sincere, so there is no need to talk about it, just say goodbye!"

"Boom!"

The man gnawing bones next to him threw the bones on the table and stood up.

He rubbed the greasy dagger in his hand on his clothes and stuck it on the table.

It seemed that the flesh on the bones had been stuffed between his teeth. He opened his mouth, put his fingers into his mouth and started to pick at his teeth.

This man's canines look strange, sharper than those of ordinary people.

He looks like a hyena in the wild west now.

This person is the notorious criminal in Hanif's information-"Hyena" Seth Marsh.

"You're here, do you still want to leave?" Marsh raised his head and looked at Huang Qingyun with eyes like dead fish.