young woman was never seen again, and Ba was blamed for the incident, even though he himself was badly injured and spent more than three weeks in a hospital recovering. When he left the hospital, he no longer had a job, and his reputation in San Francisco's Asian community was in ruins. After trying without success to obtain help from the San Francisco police, he descended into the city's seedy Chinese underworld. Eventually, he bribed a Tong member, who put him on a trail that led during the next two years to several boomtowns in Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and, finally, New Mexico.

Chinese women were often carted from one mining camp to the next, where they were forced into prostitution and theft.

In time, Ba's money ran out, and he had to find a way to support himself as he made his wa...

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