Free Fool's Gold by Glen Davies Page B

help you, of course.’ She passed a weary hand across her eyes. ‘But …’
    ‘Plenty time think, missie. Have to wait anyway.’
    ‘Of course. To be sure we don’t carry the infection.’
    They stayed in the camp for three days, she with the baby in the wagon and he in his tent farther away across the gulch. They lived on the food she had brought up with her and the little that he had left. There was no milk for the baby, but he brewed up a strange gruel out of ground beans and some herbs that he picked. It seemed to agree with little Tamsin.
    The first day they did little but sleep and eat, for if Alicia was tired, then the Chinaman, Chen Kai-Tsu, was exhausted.
    On the afternoon of the second day, she sat on the steps of the wagon, the baby on her knee, trying to work out a tale for the folk of Sonora which would not involve Chen Kai-Tsu.
    ‘I could take the child to Angelina — she’ll know a Mexican woman who’ll take her in.’
    A shadow passed across Chen’s face. ‘In Sonora? Picture lady not like them there. Think they all her-et-ic.’ He struggled with the word. ‘She a Batt-Batt …’
    ‘Baptist?’
    ‘So.’ He nodded. ‘She believe her God protect her.’ He laughed scornfully. ‘She better have trusted my herbs against the cholera!’ She had never heard him speak so freely and rather suspected he had been drinking. Soon after, he fell asleep, leaning against the slender tree-trunk.
    He did not stir for hours. Then, as the sun began to dip below the rim of the hills behind them, the baby cried and he stirred in his sleep. Quite clearly she heard him say: ‘Even the pigs don’t foul their own troughs, but Anglos, they foul their own wells!’
    She fed the baby, put her in the wagon to sleep and when he awoke she was sitting in front of him, watching him with a puzzled frown.
    ‘Missie?’ His eyes were alert and wary.
    ‘Chen Kai-Tsu, I think you should drop this “missie” nonsense. This act of the meek Chinese coolie simply will not do. Twice now when you have been off your guard, I have heard you speak perfect English!’
    He jerked his head up and for the first time she saw the shadow of fear in his eyes.
    ‘An opinion I would prefer you to keep to yourself, ma’am,’ he said coolly. ‘With the general run of Americans in the mines, it pays to be what they expect: a meek, ignorant Chinese coolie. Exceptions are liable to be subjected to even worse treatment than the rule. Twice I have set up a small drug store, a botega , to sell simple medical supplies to the miners. Twice they have burnt me out. They think it unsuitable that a Chinee should claim medical knowledge, even the most basic. The last time, three of my people died.’
    ‘Then why stay?’
    ‘Like most of us here, I guess. Where else would I go?’
    ‘Is your family here in California?’
    ‘Never had a family. I’m a foundling, picked up on the banks of the Pearl River. Maybe the son of peasants who died in one of our endless famines, or maybe I was the unwanted product of one of the western missionaries or traders.’
    ‘You’re certainly taller than the average Chinese!’ she agreed. ‘Who found you?’
    ‘A very kind, very good old man who took me in and raised me.’
    ‘A doctor?’ she hazarded.
    ‘Not a doctor as you would imagine a doctor to be!’ he laughed. ‘But a healer, yes. He was a follower of K’ung Fu Tzu — Confucius — what you in the West call a philosopher, a wise man. He taught me much. But he was old and he died.’
    ‘What happened to you then?’
    ‘I went to Canton and tried to get work there, but I was still young and not strong enough. I was handed over to the British — you understand they have had great power there since the Opium Wars — and they sent me to a Mission in Hong Kong. They fed me, educated me — on their terms! Because of a shortage of western doctors, I was eventually allowed to work in the Mission Hospital. A marvellous opportunity; I could compare