November 19th, 1878
The town was cold. The town was dark. The town was scared. And you only had to mention the name “Wu” once or twice before the town Marshall shit himself and hid under the bed…
Holden asks Marshall Heller if he knows anyone by the name Joshua – the Marshall responds in the negative, but for a moment seems genuinely confused.
The party proceeds to The Duchess, where they question Madame Chen on the whereabouts of Johnny Wu. She responds fairly noncommittally and provides the party with no real useful information. They decide to stay the night at St. Mary’s and head that direction but are accosted by a small band of Asians. After a brief conversation in Chinese with Ed, he attacks. The party slays all of the attackers save one, who they question. He reveals that Wu lives in a large mansion near Salina and only occasionally comes to Abilene.
Heller arrives and takes custody of the man, who no one believes will see the inside of the town’s cells.
The party arrives at St. Mary’s to find Beth Farley attending to a weeping woman over the mummified corpse of a man (much in the same way as the man who was watching the party when they first entered town). The woman exclaims “my husband was killed by them whores!”
After a while, they all came back. The Chinaman came over to me, telling me that the man he had followed had been watching the others, but when he had approached, he found the man dead. As if he had been dead for a very long time. I saw the body later, and it crumbled into dust when someone touched it.
Then we went off to another building where we spoke to a woman, and the black man asked about this man they all seemed to be looking for. The woman told us she was just paying him, like everyone else, but it was clear that she was not being honest with us.
After we left, we headed for their place of worship. Clearly, they thought we would be safer there. But on our way there, we were stopped by a man who looked much like the Chinaman with us. The two spoke briefly, and then the fight started.
There were several of them, but as many or more of us, and we killed most of them without any of us being seriously hurt. They fought like our Chinaman did, with no weapons save from their fists and feet. And though their fighting way seemed dangerous enough, it was less than effective against our bows and guns.