The man who appeared out of nowhere took down the two hoodlums in almost an instant. This guy almost made Mason's eyes go straight.

"Hey, man, nice job!" Mason exclaimed.

"Nothing, it's just that these two guys are not very good at fighting." The man replied with a very strange emphasis on English.

Mason then saw clearly that the man was a yellow man.

"Are you an Indian?" Mason asked.

"I am Chinese, Chinese, have you heard of it?" The man said emphatically.

"Oh." Mason nodded. He remembered that there did seem to be such a country on the other side of the world. However, this man did not look like the Chinese he had seen in the atlas.

"You're Chinese? It says in the book that Chinese people wear pigtails. Not like you with your hair loose. Where is your braid?" Mason couldn't resist asking one more question.

The man furrowed his eyebrows as if he thought of something very unhappy. "Only Qing demons wear braids, authentic Chinese do not wear braids." The man replied through clenched teeth.

"Qing demons? What's that?" The two of them talked in this way. As they talked, Mason discovered that the Chinese man, who did not wear braids but had his hair in a ponytail, was a Christian. But his faith was problematic and needed to be properly guided.

That's how the two men met. Later, when Mason became a security officer at Blackwater, he remembered his friend in San Francisco, who was particularly good at fighting and had experience in cold warfare, so he wrote to Tai Yang and invited him to be his assistant. He wrote to Yang Tai and invited him to be his assistant. Yang Tai, who was not willing to spend his life in a Chinese restaurant, readily accepted his invitation. In this way, Mason was surrounded by a Chinese man with loose hair.

Mason's colleagues were surprised that Mason had found a Chinese man to be his assistant. Some of them didn't even believe that a small-looking Oriental could have expertise in fighting. You know, at that time, there were no Bruce Lee movies and Americans didn't know what Chinese kung fu was. However, Yang Tai soon proved his strength in action. Mason bet the other members of the team that none of them would be a match for the little man in a no-holds-barred hand-to-hand fight, and in just ten minutes, Yang Tai helped Mason earn two more months' salary.

This time, escorting immigrants is the first time Blackwater accepted a similar assignment. But for Yang Tai, this is not his first time doing something similar. When he was in China, before following Luo's outline of the rebellion, he had also done something like walking darts. In Yang Tai's opinion, escorting immigrants was not much different from bodyguarding, except that the main weapon was changed from a bull's tail sword to a rifle.

It was 5:30 that morning when the immigrants got off the train, and it was not yet fully lit. After lunch in the small town where the station was located, the caravan set off at about 1:00 pm.

The air was fresh and the early winter sun shone lazily on everyone's body. Looking at the vast prairie, watching the large weeds bullying with the breeze, all the immigrants were immersed in the beautiful fantasy of their future life.

However, such a beautiful fantasy did not last much longer and did not go far, the damn road conditions immediately let the immigrants can not cry out. Because of yesterday's rain, the roads were soaked. The first section of the road out of town is still gravel, still can walk, but after a while, the road conditions are getting worse, soon, the road is full of puddles, and some sections even simply become a mud puddle.

The leader of a caravan was stuck in the mud, and the people in the car jumped down in a panic to help push the car. But the car was too deep, the mud almost flooded the wagon's axle. Simply can not push.

"This will not work." Robson, who led the team, said, "We have to unload the cargo first, or the car is too heavy."

As the leader of the original shooting team, after the establishment of the Blackwater Security Company, Robson changed from the leader of the shooting team to the director of training Blackwater. Originally, like escorting immigrants and other things, the director doesn't need to go into battle but considering that this trip is the first sale of Blackwater, plus the company's members although most of them have experience as soldiers and have undergone some training, but after all, not many of them have been on the battlefield, and do not have the experience of carrying out escort missions. So as the training director Robson decided to personally lead the team to ensure the successful completion of the first mission, and also to accumulate first-hand information for the implementation of such missions.

The immigrants took the wagon off one after another, and then it took more than half an hour to get the wagon out of the mud. Then it was reassembled, one after another, and it took almost two hours. During this time, the escort team was carefully guarded near the caravan. Some immigrants offered to help push the car, but Robson unceremoniously denied the request.

"We are now in a dangerous location, not only near the Sioux settlement but also near the bandit gang activity. So I have to keep our men fit to defend against any possible danger." Robson explained. However, from the expressions on the tired faces of the migrants, they did not seem to approve of Robson's explanation.

After the car was pulled out, after walking for only an hour, another big car broke down.

"It's getting dark, it's going to be hard to make it to camp on time today." Robson said to Mason, "We are going to camp in the wilderness, you go open the map to see what is suitable for a camping place."

Mason pulled out a map from a cowhide tube, examined it carefully, and replied, "Captain, two kilometers further on, there is a piece of high ground where we can camp."

"Let's see," Robson reached over and looked, "Well, there's no better place we can get to before dark. Let's camp there."

When it was almost dark, the team finally arrived at the small plateau, which is a few dozen meters high slopes, because the surrounding is higher than a little, so the top of the small slope is relatively dry. In addition, this place has a very good view, and the terrain is also relatively conducive to defense, so the choice of this place to set up camp is not wrong.

Under Robson's command, the migrants formed a circle of 15 caravans as an outer defense barrier, and then others set up tents in the circle surrounded by the caravans. Others built a fire and cooked dinner. And the guards pulled up a rope with a small bell on the outer slope.

The winter night came extraordinarily quickly, and in a flash, it was all dark. This kind of darkness in the wilderness is unimaginable to those who are accustomed to the lights of the city in modern times, and it is not an exaggeration to say that you can't see your fingers. Orion had risen to the zenith, and along the line of Orion's three bright stars, the unidentified star Sirius could be seen shining.

The guards of Blackwater were not as comfortable as the immigrants at this time. The immigrants fell asleep almost as soon as they fell after a tiring day, but the guards of Blackwater could not rest, they had to take shifts to keep watch.

Mason and Yang Tai were scheduled to keep watch in the second half of the night, so as soon as she finished eating, she rushed to find a place to lie down. Although not pushing a cart, but just riding a horse on the muddy road for a day, but also exhausted. So as soon as he laid down, he did not have time to think in his head "I want to catch up on sleep", he had fallen asleep.

I don't know how long I slept, in a haze, Mason felt like someone was pushing him. He reluctantly opened his eyes, and heard Robson's voice: "Change of guard, it's your turn, be careful."

Lights were forbidden in the camp at night, to reduce the risk of fire, but more importantly to avoid exposing targets to potential enemies - Indians and bandits.

"Oh." Mason got out from under the blanket, dressed in the dark, and grabbed his MacDonald 1857 rifle. Then he lifted the tent and walked out.

It was cold outside, but unexpectedly brighter than the first half of the night. Because the second half of the night, half the moon rose in the sky, so the darkness receded, the vast wilderness also faintly emerged, and even the deadly road is also faintly visible.

Mason saw Yang Tai also burst out of his tent. He was holding a double-barreled shotgun that fired deer ammunition, with a machete hanging from his waist - his marksmanship was not good, and it was easier to hit the target with the shotgun.

"It's cold, isn't it?" Mason said to Yang Tai, "The good thing is that there is a moon in the second half of the night, not as dark as the first half of the night, even if there is a situation that can be seen."

"We can see others, and those who have a heart can see us better." Yang Tai replied, "I would rather no one could see."

The night passed quite peacefully, with no Indians and no bandits to attack. The reason for this is very simple, night warfare is full of variables and requires a high degree of organization, neither the Indians nor the gangs have such a high degree of organization, for them, there are too many uncertainties in night warfare to take such a risk.

But the peaceful situation changed the next day. In the morning, when the caravan was ready to leave, the sharp-eyed Mason saw two men on horseback following them in the distance. This is not a good sign, if these two people are normal travelers, they will certainly catch up with the caravan, because in such a wilderness, no matter what, together is always safer. And these two people always follow from far away, the caravan goes fast, they also go fast, the caravan goes slowly they also follow slowly - this is not a good thing.