Black or Oriental—it’s all the same.Max, made to realize his place all over again, wondered how he was supposed to get past this.Right then Mary spoke up, face flushed.“It's not like we aren't paying. Since when does a business sort people by skin?”“Whatever the wife says, Orientals aren’t allowed. That’s how it is.”“Tch. This isn’t the only inn in town. Let’s go somewhere else.”“Everywhere else will be the same.”The bouncer drawled on, putting on airs.“In Jackson County—no, anywhere in Missouri—you won’t find a place that takes Orientals. If you push it, maybe a barn. Don’t waste your breath. Stay here. Be grateful we don’t slight the Irish.”“Honestly—how is that even a thing you can say?”Mary’s voice rose, but the bouncer dug a finger in his ear and let it slide right out the other.So even the Irish are served cold.Not all whites are the same kind of white.Even in his former life, the upper crust of America was centered on those called WASPs—White Anglo-Saxon Protestants.Most Irish were immigrants fleeing the potato famine. Not as bad off as Max, but James’s family wasn’t exactly treated well either.Max calmed Mary and spoke.“As he says, it’ll be the same anywhere. You three stay here. I can spend the night in the wagon.”“Well now, quick on the uptake for an Oriental.”When the bouncer sneered, Max lifted his eyes to the sky for a beat.I can’t go yanking a gun for every little thing…He carved patience into himself and pushed the Harris family into the inn.Conall looked at him with a long face.“Are you really gonna stay in the wagon?”“Yeah. Just bring me some supper later.”No point dragging them from place to place on his account when the result was obvious.Missouri was part of the South where slavery was legal.And this Jackson County had fought a war with the Mormons besides.All the more a place thick with discrimination.Religion, race, slaves. A full combo set.Max firmly bundled the Harris family inside and headed for the wagon standing by the barn.That evening.James came out to the wagon.His hands held a tray piled with food.“Mary packed this and that. I don’t even know what to say.”“Beats sleeping on the street. Don’t worry about me.”“Here, take this first.”Looked like he meant to eat together—James put bread and meat in his own mouth as well.Smiling, Max spoke.“You said you knew someone in Kansas?”“A comrade from the Mexican War. I was in the rear, minding weapons and supplies, but we saw our share together.”The Mexican–American War in 1846.With that victory, the United States took six states from New Mexico to California.Back then, to make money, James left his wife and five-year-old Conall and went off to war.“You’re still young, so maybe you don’t know, but the horrors of war are truly awful. When the guns thundered at Palo Alto and the shells fell into the enemy ranks, I could barely keep my eyes open to watch.”Anyone listening would think a Hyunmoo-3 just hit.What they used at Palo Alto was an M1841 12-pounder (5.4 kg) howitzer firing a bursting shell with twenty-seven iron balls.No match for modern weapons, but it’s true American artillery played a decisive role in that war.“But worse than war was the discrimination. Being Irish meant scorn and persecution.”“Religious?”England was Protestant, Ireland Catholic.“Well, mixed reasons. ‘White niggers,’ they said. Drunken layabouts with hot tempers. I heard that sort of thing as often as gunshots.”“More variety than ‘Oriental coolie.’”James chuckled and nodded.“Still, I didn’t despair. There’s an Irish saying: There are no strangers here, only friends you haven’t met yet. So you keep your mind right and—”“Tch. So we’re eating dinner without you, and what are you doing out here?”Mary came up, lips jutting.James flinched. Max spoke under his breath.“If you want to hear nagging, get married; if you want to be praised, die. That just came to mind.”“Oh? However did you know that one?”“Right? That’s an Irish proverb.”James and Mary stared at Max like he was a curiosity.“I had a friend named Eric, Irish.”“Met him in California?”“Well… something like that. But he’s dead now.”No, he won’t even be born for another hundred-twenty years.The mood chilled, and Max fixed his eyes on the bottle Mary carried.No way…“Is that beer?”Mary smiled and nodded.Max’s eyes went red at the rims.“He did that over bread, and now beer? How much can a boy your age know about drink?”“I’m not underage. What about Conall?”“Out cold the moment his head hit the pillow.”Dark laid thick over the town.In the wagon parked by the inn’s barn, a little drinking party kicked off—consideration for Max, who would’ve been left to sit alone.“Ahhh. This is what beer’s supposed to taste like.”“Please. Anyone would think you’ve been drinking for decades.”“You’ve always had a way of not acting your age.”Lamp oil’s acrid smell spread through the wagon,and Max brought up what mattered to James.Since they’d decided to settle in Kansas, it was something they had to hash out.“What do you two think about slavery?”“That’s out of nowhere.”Mary looked put out, but Max kept his face serious.“From where I’m sitting, you’re on the abolition side. Am I right? This really matters.”“Hm. As you say, our family’s for abolition. Discriminating by skin isn’t God’s will. We’re all people.”Max nodded at James’s answer.“I’m asking because of what’s about to happen in Kansas.”“What’s about to happen?”When a new state formed, the United States had agreed to draw the line at 36° north—free states above, slave states below.And the newly made territories of Nebraska and Kansas both lay above 36°.Which meant they should automatically become free.But—“The problem is, if that happens, the slave states get outnumbered.”Right now the score was twelve to twelve.So suddenly, they decided to put a big decision like this to a popular vote. Naturally, the slave states in the South had rammed that through.“You think the free states will sit still for that? Something ugly is coming.”“I get your worry. But if no one in Kansas owns slaves, who’d vote for it? The election for Kansas’s delegate to send to Congress was just the other day. I expect an abolition man won.”It was the election to pick Kansas’s representative to the federal House. But Max, who knew the result, shook his head.“The vote was rigged. People from slave states will have moved in just to cast ballots.”“No—would they really go that far?”“You said the voting’s over, right? You’ll see when you see the result.”James and Mary fell into thought, and Max wet his throat with beer in silence.The next day.“There really an Oriental here?”“I’m telling you, I saw him yesterday working out in front of the wagon.”A handful of kids peered around the wagon.Max cracked gritty eyes, scratched his wild hair, and sat up.When a ragged man sat up in the wagon, the children spooked and scrambled back.They had sticks and rocks in their hands, eyes jittering as they weighed throwing them or not.Now even brats look down on me.Max, rubbing his face with dry hands, suddenly bulged his eyes.“Wraaaah!”“Run!”The kids bolted, and Max snorted, hopped down from the wagon, and went to the barn. There, a big trough sat for watering the horses.Midwinter had a proper skim of ice on it.“Ahh, that’s brisk.”More than the cold, the feel of dust washing off was satisfying. He washed his face and chewed the end of a twig for a good tooth-scrub.Then—“Who said you could use that water?”The bouncer came sauntering over.“A man’s gotta wash.”“Those horses cost ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) more than your hide. Besides, scrubbing a dirty Oriental doesn’t show anyway.”Max stepped in close and thrust his face forward.“Don’t you see the shine on this skin?”For a second the bouncer looked baffled and cocked his head.“Got some gall, haven’t you. Feeling tall because you’ve got an Irish master behind you?”“I’m no slave.”Strength gathered in Max’s eyes.Their gazes struck. The bouncer flicked a glance at Max’s waist and spoke.“You thinking of trying that ornamental piece?”“Does it look ornamental to you?”“I heard a story. California’s crawling with stupid Orientals who tore holes through their soles pulling a gun.”“My feet are fine.”“Guess you haven’t drawn yet. Heh heh.”The bouncer sneered and kept on.“Kid. I’ll charge your master for the water you used. And a bullet will be in your forehead before you clear leather with that iron.”He turned and headed back toward the inn.Max drew from his waist and—“Bang!”He made the sound with his mouth, then hooked a finger through the trigger guard and ran a backspin into a flat spin, bleeding off stress.Just then James showed up,a tray with breakfast in his hands.“Whoa. That’s something.”Tongue clicked in awe as the revolver flowed from the spin back into the holster.“From your face, you look good and mad.”“As if. Anyway, I’m sorry about you bringing food every meal.”“Sorry, nothing. But listen…”James set down the tray, his face going hard.“I checked the result of the Kansas House election.”Max already knew how it came out.“As you said, a man favoring slavery was elected. I also heard folks moved over en masse from Missouri. More ballots than eligible voters—damn it all…”“Fraud. And the next one will be the same.”In four months they’d run the legislative election.So far it was a breeze. Soon it would be a typhoon tearing across Kansas.“You asked me because you already had the answer, didn’t you?”“I’m no god—how would I know the answer? But there are a few choices.”Go somewhere other than Kansas.Hold a neutral stance on slavery.Or take an active stand and fight on the free-state side.“In Kansas I’ve got a job and a roof promised. Hard to uproot after coming all this way. Granted, you may feel differently.”“Then do this. Take no position at all on slavery.”“And if I have to choose?”“Then you stand with the free state. No matter what.”Certainty colored Max’s voice.James didn’t ask more. He nodded.“I’ll do as you say.”James already acknowledged that Max had a sharp read on affairs and a fine head for judgment.And the speech they heard in the square let James be even more certain Max’s warning wasn’t for nothing.“No matter how the free states rave, in the end Kansas’s House chose our side! The wise people of Kansas have made the right decision!”It was as Max and the Harris family passed through the town square.The orator bulged the veins in his neck and preached the righteousness of slavery to the gathered crowd.“It is our manifest destiny, our calling and duty, to open up the vast West! And after we sweat blood to make this land, who, tell me who, is it thanks to that dogs and pigs of slaves are fed here?”“Kill every bastard who defends the blacks!”“Hear, hear!”Mary tugged on James’s arm, not wanting to hear more.“Let’s just go.”“Uh—yeah…”Those gathered clapped the speaker on and gladly joined in mocking slaves.James felt out of place in that air.After the popular vote in four months, this will be worse…If their mania collided, as Max said, a blood-wind would blow. Everywhere around them, it was nothing but talk of slavery in Kansas.James glanced at Max.He wasn’t looking at the speech. He was looking past it—at the group coming up behind, mounted.Ten armed men.At their head, a young man neat in a bow tie, sporting a fine, well-trimmed beard.

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