Fool's Gold by Glen Davies

European medicine with traditional Chinese healing and select what is best from each. If I could have stayed there and worked with my own people, I would have been happy. But I was a native and could not qualify and so I had to leave.’ He chuckled reminiscently. ‘I fell out with the Crown authorities and the Mission, then I compounded my crime by telling the local overlord that I thought no more highly of his ancestor worship than I did of the Anglicans! The one action they ever agreed upon was that the colony could dispense with my presence. They found me a ship on which I could work my passage to Hawaii. I stayed there awhile — there is a large colony of Chinese among the Kanakas in the Sandwich Islands — but my appetite for travel had been whetted and so I joined another ship and came here to Gum Shan, the land of the Golden Mountain.’
    He picked up a long twig and snapped it in half and half again until it was no more than a pile of bark and fibre.
    ‘That’s another reason why the Americans don’t like me — I’m still a free man. I worked my own passage and owe no allegiance to the companies. The democratic Californians find it easier to deal with Chinese immigrants who know their place — even though that place is virtual slavery.’
    ‘So you came to make your fortune in the gold fields?’
    ‘One man’s fortune is a hundred men’s disappointment,’ he said drily. ‘No, I don’t really know why I came. Sometimes I think it is worse here than in China. No matter how hard the Chinese work, how much trouble we go to not to vex the Anglos, they despise us. If they are drinkers, they despise the Chinese who smoke opium — yet what difference is there? They will stake a whole mine on the turn of a card or roll of a dice, and still despise the Chinese for gambling at Mah Jongg — yet what difference is there? They despise the white who does no work — yet they despise the Chinese more because they will work the abandoned claims and tailings a white man will not look at; they drive them from the mines, and they must become cooks or launderers to pay off the debts to the Companies. They pin their faith in a drunkard like Doctor Walker and his ilk, but they won’t let me nurse them because I am a “Chinee”.’ He hunched his long body forward and stared down at his hands for a moment.
    When he looked up again, a smile crinkled the edge of his almond shaped eyes. ‘And now I am becoming maudlin, like the best drunken American.’ He reached behind the tree and swung a half-empty whiskey bottle in front of him. ‘If you are brought up among the yang-kuei-tsu , the foreign devils, it is easy to pick up their bad habits,’ he laughed.
    Alicia woke early the next morning. Tamsin was still sleeping peacefully in her straw-filled drawer. Outside, the birds were singing and she felt, for the first time in years, hope stir afresh within her. It was a new day. Without Robert, a new life.
    She rose quietly and stretched. She washed in the little brook that ran down from the spring and fetched more fresh water from the source, ready to mix with the ground beans for when Tamsin woke.
    She had a sudden longing for a warming cup of the sage tea that Chen Kai brewed, for the autumn air was chill this morning. But there was no sign of her companion. She suspected that he had drunk rather more than he was accustomed to and overslept.
    She skipped up the steps and began to explore the cupboards inside the wagon. After all, Tamsin’s family had lived here: there must be utensils and stores. And some fresh clothes for Tamsin. So far, Chen Kai had always changed the child’s bindings, but it was surely time that she pulled her weight.
    The inside of the wagon was lined with cupboards. In the first, she found some cups and pitchers, rough plates and bowls and some knives and spoons, but it was what she found in the locker behind the seat that caused her to let out a whoop of triumph.
    In a large latched box were