Our heroes awaken in the morning to find James building a funeral pyre for himself. He's already blessed a bullet against the evil possessing spirit, and seems dead-set on killing himself. The locals are watching nonplussed, although once they sort out what he's doing they seem willing to let him do it.
The posse, of course, is having none of it, and try every trick in the book to argue James out of it. Killing yourself is wrong. I'm damned anyway. You can help more people by staying alive. It's not about numbers. Maybe the shaman Born in a Bowl is sending us to can help. Maybe I'll kill more people before we get there. You can keep control, the devil's postpile was an especially evil place. The spirit is trying to take over right now. This is selfish. I should have made this decision before, then thirteen people would be alive. Finally, someone asks him the truly important question.
"Weren't you going to finish Grimme?" - Elder Tanner
This pretty much stuns him. After thinking about it, he asks Elder Tanner to promise to shoot him with the blessed bullet (in the head, of course) if he goes bad. Elder Tanner loads it into his Shopkeeper's Browning .45, the lone bullet in the gun, and promises to do so. Robert volunteers to do it if Elder Tanner is unable.
They proceed to Shan Fan, looking for a boat to take up to Oregon and the Columbia River. James's evil spirit, now hopping mad, tries to take possession of him several times, but without the postpile's influence fails. Their trip is uneventful until they are almost at the city at the beginning of the month of July, where they encounter some Chinese bandits.
They confuse the thugs by being completely unafraid, and say they'll pay a reasonable toll, say twenty bucks, but no more. The bandit leader seems like he might give in and take that when the posse starts toying with him - Joseph asks him to promise that they won't rob anyone else, and then James tells the leader he'll be shot first, and the leader just can't take that and lose face. So the bandits attack - eight on the road with the posse, three of whom have shotguns, and a rifleman covering them from up a low rise.
In two shots Robert has hit and killed the rifleman on the hill before he can shoot anyone. James meanwhile shoots the leader in the neck, causing him to drop his shotgun and fall to the ground clutching his wound. He goes on to shoot the hand off one of the other bandits, while Robert runs out of the melee to get some more shots off with his rifle.
In melee, Cady acquits herself quite well with her soul blast, killing two. Bart wings a couple and keeps from being knifed. Joseph takes a shotgun blast to the chest, but luckily the armor of god keeps him whole, and then narrowly avoids being beheaded. Tobey whacks with her machete, taking an ear off one but mostly being ineffective. All in all it's a pretty one-sided fight.
Afterwards there are only three alive - the leader, whose neck wound looks worse than it is, is patched up by Tobey and Bart. Another bandit with his foot shot off is too far gone to be helped by their medicine. Elder Tanner tries to heal one with his hand shot off, but though he succeeds in taking the wound, he can't heal it, and collapses bleeding from his hand for little visible reason. Cady and Tobey take him and the leader in to Shan Fan on the horses while everyone else stays to bury the bandits (and find their cache of loot, mostly in strange Chinese-style coins).
In town Cady and Tobey are lost among the mostly Chinese signage, until Sheriff Tony shows up and points them to a doctor. The doctor, an old Chinese guy, declares that Joseph has an imbalance in his chi, and takes him into the back room to stick needles in him. Tobey and Cady describe the encounter to Long-Haired Tony, who recognizes the bandit leader and thus doesn't give them any trouble about it. He gives them $20 in taels and recommends the Kirin Hotel - and tells them to let him know if they decide to stay somewhere else.
Eventually everyone else makes it into town. Cady goes to a pony express outfit that will take a message for her to Sacramento to be put on the telegraph there, so she alerts their Evil Master that they have one more coin. Over the next couple of days while they wait for Joseph to heal, she gambles at places called things like "Lucky Dragon" or "88 Club". Others find that there are three guardian angels on the docks, checking ships that come in, and that they've been there for a couple of weeks. It seems clear to the posse who they're looking for, but they don't do anything to confirm that. Also on the docks, they find that hiring a boat will cost a thousand dollars, which the party can almost scrape together, though it seems like too much to spend.
After Joseph is pronounced able to walk around (though he still has to come back periodically for foul tasting medicines) they go to the execution of the bandit leader - which is by beheading in Shan Fan. At the execution, they notice some disapproving Caucasians... who turn out to be Mormon! Elder Tanner is ecstatic, and goes to lunch with them.
At lunch he hears about the difficulty of converting heathens to Mormonism in Shan Fan, and tells them a little of his travels. After they clearly don't approve of the banshee story, though, he leaves out most of the really interesting parts. The local Mormons also want to know what happened to his partner? Turns out he got lynched in Kansas by locals, and it was returning from that event that put Elder Tanner on the train where he met the rest of the posse and got sidetracked from going back to Salt Lake.
This is clearly a terrible state of affairs, for Joseph to be wandering with no partner to help him. Though he tries to dissuade them, they have just the solution - young Elder Stivens (Michael Stivens) was sent to Shan Fan to help the ward, but with the situation in the city so heathen, it seems more productive for him to go on a more normal mission. Of course, he needs a partner for that, and Joseph needs a partner, and is already traveling... that settles it, Michael can go along. Elder Tanner can pick him up on his way out of town in a few days.
Joseph returns to the rest of the posse, who are less than thrilled with another Mormon missionary being added (except Cady, who is pleased for typical Cady reasons). The objections range from the fact that he clearly won't approve of the shaman and the huckster, to say nothing of the dead people, to a fear that he will be killed. Various schemes for scaring him off are discussed, mostly involving the dead people. Joseph is conflicted - there is something to those arguments, but a helper would be nice.