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“You’re welcome.” Colt had heard there was a Chinese doctor in Green River, the only one of his race in the Territory, but knew nothing about him.
One of the soldiers said, “Dr. Lee, we’ll rejoin Lieutenant Spalding. If you need anything let the guards outside know.” And they departed.
“I was just getting ready to take a break. Care to join me?”
Colt noted the exhaustion in Crane’s face. “Sure.”
Behind the tent were two charred wooden benches next to a fire that was heating an enormous pot. A man was stirring the contents with a long piece of wood. “Soup,” Crane explained as he and Colt sat. “Vegetables courtesy of the governor and the army. The least they could do.”
“Do you have anyone assisting you with the patients?”
“Other than a few volunteers, no. The two doctors who live here helped during the height of the killings but when the mob threatened them, they left.”
Off in the distance, Colt saw two Chinese and a small group of soldiers digging.
“Graves,” Crane said. “Until the soldiers arrived this morning, we were told we had to bury our own.”
“The lieutenant said you’re still finding bodies?”
“Yes. When I arrived, they littered the ground here. Some intact, others were without heads, limbs, genitals. We had to run off dogs to retrieve others.” He was silent for a moment as if remembering the carnage. “These Americans are savages,” he whispered bitterly. He met Colt’s eyes. “But then your people already know this.”
Colt nodded. The United States was only twenty years past the horrors of slavery, and although his father’s side had been free before Emancipation, his mother’s side had been free for only a generation.
The man stirring the pot handed Crane a steaming bowl of the soup and said something to him in a gentle tone. Crane took the offering. “He’s encouraging me to eat.”
The man spoke again and Crane translated, “He said if I fall our people will be lost.”
Colt wondered if there were any other doctors willing to risk the wrath of the mob to help, but assumed not.
Colt was handed a bowl of soup, too. He thanked the man, and he and Crane consumed their portions silently.
For the next twelve hours, Colt and Crane treated burns, stitched gashes, set and plastered broken arms and legs, and did the best they could with the limited supplies on hand. Colt learned that Crane had been trained in traditional Chinese medicine, and in White medicine in France. He also explained the theories behind the needles. “Some are placed to relieve pain. Chinese healers have been using them for centuries, much to the skepticism and derision of the White doctors.”
Colt watched as Crane gently worked one into a spot on a man’s arm. Colt admitted being skeptical, too, but upon checking the patient later, noted the man appeared more comfortable.
It was well past dark by the time they decided to get some sleep. “I’ll take the first watch,” Colt said. “You’ve been at this almost two days straight. If something happens that I can’t handle I’ll wake you.”
Crane nodded, took one last look at the tent filled with his countrymen, and stepped outside to bed down.
Whit stopped by the following afternoon with details on the negotiations between the miners, the Chinese, the governor, and the railroad representatives. “They put all six hundred Chinese miners in Evanston on a train and are sending them to safety in San Francisco. None of them want to stay in the Territory and who can blame them?”
Crane said, “That’s good news.”
Colt agreed.
“There’s even been a few arrests.”
Colt thought that even better news.
But the hope of that afternoon turned to ash later that day when the Chinese learned they’d been victims of a cruel hoax. The train supposedly taking them west from Evanston to San Francisco had in fact been traveling east, and when the boxcars opened they found themselves in Rock Springs. The Union Pacific needed their labor to mine the coal that kept their trains running, and had lied to get their way. The furious Chinese refused to return to the mines. The White miners re-formed their mobs and threatened to kill any Chinese who did return because there were more Chinese working below ground and for less pay. The governor who’d brokered the first peace took the coward’s way out and returned to the territorial capital of Cheyenne, saying the standoff was a labor issue between Union Pacific and its workers.
Over the next few days, Crane’s and Colt’s patients improved but the situation in town deteriorated. The Chinese refused to leave the boxcars and in retaliation the company stores stopped selling them food, hoping to starve them into surrendering. The White miners went on strike and stationed their armed mobs at the mouths of the mines. There’d been a similar strike in 1871 when the railroad bosses hired in Scandinavians at a lower wage, but the Scandinavians, English, and Welsh were now united against the Chinese. The U.S. government sent in more troops to keep the peace, but the jeering and threats continued. When the Chinese demanded back pay as a condition to return to work, Union Pacific refused and threatened to evict them from the boxcars. The mines at Rock Springs were the company’s largest producers and the stoppage was negatively impacting their profits.
In the end, Union Pacific won by threatening to fire any worker, Chinese or White, who didn’t return to work, and promised that those who refused would be barred from working for the company for the rest of their life. A handful of Chinese remained adamant and left town. The rest, needing to accumulate enough money to return to their families in China, were forced back into laboring for a company that had lied to them, and in a place where their countrymen had been burned out and slaughtered.
Colt packed up his belongings in preparation to return. He felt good about helping Crane and his people but he was physically and mentally exhausted. He missed his family and the comforts of home.
Crane walked up as Colt hefted his bedroll onto the back of his horse. “Thank you for your help, Dr. Lee.”
