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 meat on the bone had got stuck in his teeth. He opened his mouth, put his fingers into his mouth and started to pick 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.

His hand reached for the revolver on the table.

"Clang!"

Before he could get the gun, Huang Qingyun suddenly raised his leg and kicked the table over.

He had already realized that the two men were ready to take action, so he took the initiative.

The table fell on the pipe-smoking man on the other side, knocking him and his chair to the ground.

Marsh stepped back and bent to pick up the revolver that had fallen to the ground.

But Huang Qingyun kicked him to the ground again.

He put his knee against Marsh's back, picked up the dagger from the ground, and put it against Marsh's neck.

He had already seen that this man was the one who really had the final say here.

And the seventh brother on the side also moved very quickly.

He raised his gun and pointed it at the other people in the room.

Huang Qingyun pulled Marsh up from the ground, and the sharp blade of the dagger left a bloody mark on his neck:
"Tell your people to get out of here! Put down your weapons!" Huang Qingyun said calmly.

Marsh still rolled his eyes and waved his hand downwards at his men:

"Just like he said, put your weapons down and move away!"

The pipe-smoking man who had just fallen to the ground stood up and yelled:
"Don't even think about running away!"

Many armed militiamen suddenly appeared in the woods outside the camp.

However, the men at the door of the tent had already laid down their weapons.

So the gun in Lao Qi's hand was instantly pointed at the pipe man.

The two men pointed their guns at each other.

"Come on! Two for two! Damn it, let's see who dies first!" Lao Qi's Adam's apple moved and his expression was extremely ferocious.

Huang Qingyun exerted a little force in his hands.

The bloodstains on Marsh's neck became more obvious.

"Scatter! Scatter!" he shouted to the people around him.

Huang Qingyun dragged him and Lao Qi out of the tent.

The militiamen have surrounded us.

"Tell them to stand back!"

Facing this large group of people, he did not feel the slightest fear, just like when he faced the Hunan Army that was several times larger than his own in Sanhe Town!
At the same time, he shouted to Xiao Liuzi and He Sanshui who were confronting the enemy behind him:

"Quick! Get on the horse! Get ready to go!"

Upon hearing the news, several young men mounted their horses, guns in hand.

Huang Qingyun dragged Marsh slowly towards his horse.

The militiamen and Marsh's subordinates did not dare to act rashly. They could only watch Huang Qingyun and Lao Qi slowly approach Yingkou.

It is probably less than ten steps away from Yingkou.

Huang Qingyun observed the opposite side carefully, his hands ready to take action at any time.

"boom!"

There was a sudden gunshot.

In just a moment, Huang Qingyun's body suddenly stiffened.

Lao Qi opened his eyes wide, and he saw in disbelief that a flower of blood had bloomed on Huang Qingyun's back.

A bullet entered Huang Qingyun's back from below and pierced his lung.

The one who fired the shot was the lame man, who was squatting in the shadow of a box to the side of Huang Qingyun, with smoke coming out of the muzzle of the gun in his hand.

Huang Qingyun used all his strength and slashed the dagger in his hand, cutting Marsh's neck.

Marsh fell to the ground, blood gushing from his wound.

There was a burst of gunfire and several bullets hit Huang Qingyun at the same time.

Huang Qingyun couldn't support his body and knelt on one knee on the ground.

He was no longer able to speak, and used his last bit of strength to wave at the people behind him, asking them to leave quickly!

The seventh brother who was closest to him rushed forward and tried to rescue him.

However, another bullet hit Huang Qingyun's neck.

The blood spurted out and couldn't be covered.

This former TPJ general, who had been through many battles, fell in a foreign land.

Old Seven was also hit by several bullets and fell to the ground, unable to move.

"Master Huang!"

"Old Seven!"

He Sanshui and his men fought back at the militiamen and members of the Knights of Labor, while trying to rush over and take back the bodies of the two men.

But the bullets from the opposite side became more and more frequent, and the militia gradually approached them.

He Sanshui gritted his teeth.

He shouted at Xiao Liuzi and the others, "Go! Otherwise, their deaths will be in vain!"

Everyone rushed out of the camp.

The militia had no horses and could not catch up with them. They could only fire a few rounds symbolically and watch them run out of their range.

The pipe man's pipe had long disappeared, and he walked up to the bodies.

Standing next to the corpse like him was the lame man who shot and killed Huang Qingyun.

"If those people return to San Francisco, they will probably be retaliated by the Chinese." The pipe-smoking man took a deep breath.

The lame man put the gun back into his waist with an expressionless face: "I have said long ago that O'Neill's idea was stupid. He should have killed all the Chinese a few weeks ago. Why did he have to go through so much trouble and kidnap them?"

It would be best if those Chinese came to retaliate. Wouldn’t the Knights of Labor then achieve their goal?

I’m afraid they don’t have the courage!
"Then how are you going to explain the death of 'Hyena' to O'Neill?" The pipe man looked at Marsh's body again.

The lame man said nothing.

Some of his thoughts were not suitable to be expressed out loud.

It would be better if he died, because then there would be one less person to share the money with.