It should be noted that this log contains more than the usual level of prostitution, terrible innuendos, and general naughtiness. If you don't feel qualified to read that sort of thing, you'd better stop.

On the other hand, with the number of people getting shot and killed so far, if you're going to be squeamish about bawdy houses then you need to check your hat to see if your brains are in it.

Things start out innocently enough. Elder Tanner returns to the house where the local Mormons live and asks to speak to Jebediah (the older man who is in charge) privately. He them goes to some effort to explain that he feels bound to follow the gentiles (Mormon for "not Mormon") who he is traveling with, they've saved his life, and so on. He expounds on how he thinks that this is God's mission for him. And he says that he'll return to Salt Lake to discuss these things with the higher-ups after going to Oregon. Really. He promises.

Jebediah isn't really impressed. He notes Elder Tanner's evasions and lack of specifics about just what he has faced with his traveling companions, and is told he wouldn't believe it anyway. He's incredulous that Joseph thinks that he has some sort of mission statement from God. He demands Joseph return to Salt Lake at once for some straightening out, but Joseph refuses and in the end he merely says dark things about his report and that he won't compel Joseph through violence. Needless to say, young Elder Stivens won't be going along with a man so close to the edge (if not over it).

Elder Tanner has to return to the posse and tell them the good bad news (or the bad good news) that they won't be traveling with Elder Stivens. He also has failed to refill his Book of Mormon supply, though later Cady gets him two by going to talk to the local Mormons and pretending to be interested. No evil spirits are even involved in the book fetching, just a little deviousness, so that's okay.

That evening, Cady and Bart work the gaming tables and do pretty well by pretending to be unassociated. Bart's ability to transmit information without speaking proves especially useful, and Cady wins a fair bit of money. As the game breaks up, they note a strange Chinese man who has come into the saloon. Dressed in a suit, with his hair slicked back, and carrying a suitcase, this man seems out of place... pretty much everywhere. He is quite handsome, though, and Cady drifts to the bar to listen to him trying to get some information from the bartender. He's clearly looking for a reliable sort of desperado, but doesn't really speak the language (Sneaky, that is, his English is fine).

At the gaming table, Bart chats with the rest of the miners who have been cleaned out by Cady. One of them recognizes the unusual Chinaman from a dime novel: that's Suitcase Lee. What does he keep in the suitcase? Whoop-ass, apparently. He's with the New Tomorrow Triad, or so it is believed.

Meanwhile, Cady has slowly gotten the extremely shy Lee to tell her what he's here after. It turns out he's looking for some young women who were kidnapped by pirates and sold into prostitution here in Shan Fan, but he's too well known to try to rescue them himself. He's extremely embarrassed to mention such things to a woman, and finally he says something which could be misconstrued to imply something lewd about Cady and flees into the night in embarrassment. Cady pursues him, and Bart moseys along afterwards "to protect the virtue of a white woman" or something.

Cady catches up to Lee and explains that she has a whole crew of people who are into this sort of hero thing, including Bart, who conveniently arrives. They drag Lee back to the Kirin Inn and he tells his story over again. The young women have been in Shan Fan for around two weeks. He isn't sure where they were sold, but has a lead that it has Flower in the name. He has a list of places like that in Shan Fan: the Shy Flower House, the Sunflower Tea House, and the Dragon Blossom House. He also has photographs of the women in question.

The next day Cady dresses up as a man and does some scouting. In the morning, only the Sunflower Tea House is open, so she goes there first. There she is served some extremely overpriced (but good) tea, and treated to some traditional Chinese music. She is also asked if she wants some "special tea" and says not right now, but she might want to examine the options for later in the evening. Sure enough, the options are a bevy of pretty Chinese women, but they seem somewhat older than the women that Lee is looking for. All in all, a fairly high-class establishment that doesn't seem to be imprisoning its help.

The other two establishments require the assistance of evil spirits. Her Penetrating Gaze spell works well enough to see that the Shy Flower House is quite run-down inside, with some fairly run-down women smoking opium or sleeping. They look a little old, but she can't see into the back of the building. The Dragon Blossom seems more likely - Cady spots an upstairs room that is padlocked shut. She also spots some burly male helpers, and an older woman doing the books. She returns to report to the posse and Lee.

There follows much debate about what to do. The men are most in favor of jumping to conclusions and charging the front door, slaying merrily as they go and hoping for the best. Tobey and Cady seem to feel that the damage is mostly done already, and a stealthy approach will lead to less gratuitous bloodshed.

"A few more rapes, a pile of bloodshed. I hate making these decisions." - Tobey
"That's easy. A pile of bloodshed." - James

Eventually a plan is settled on where Cady (disguised as a man) will go in with Joseph (undisguised as a reluctant young man) and try to get as many of the young women they are interested in for Joseph's first experience. Bart and James will go in with similar missions. Once alone with the women in question, they have notes written by Lee to give them, and then plan to smuggle them out the back, where the cavalry (Lee, Robert, and Tobey) will be waiting. In preparation for a quick escape from the city, they sell all but one horse and load their equipment aboard the fishing boat that Lee traveled to the city in.

Robert does a little more scouting before they go in, entering the spirit world, which is strangely Chinese in these parts. He encounters some Fu lions who give him a choice between seeing a dangerous spirit who knows a lot and a safe spirit who knows less. Robert chooses dangerous, and meets an apparently dead Chinese woman who confirms that the young women are at the Dragon Blossom. She then tells him her story, in which she is kidnapped, forced into prostitution, and eventually killed by a man... Robert chooses this moment to make a quick exit, before the spirit does something to him.

In the evening, the plan hits a snag almost immediately when the bouncers won't let James take his guns in. He ends up with the cavalry. Bart and Joseph give their guns to Robert, and Cady didn't have any to begin with, so they go in. They meet the proprietress, named Madame Ping, who is the middle aged woman that Cady saw at the books. She is very helpful about Joseph's first time and agrees to let him survey the various options.

Which leads to another snag. Despite Joseph and Cady playing their roles well, they only recognize three of the women they are looking for - not to say that the others aren't available in the offered lineup, but that as Caucasians they aren't that good at recognizing Chinese faces, especially from photographs. They end up with one each from the ones they do recognize, and Bart picks up the third from observing them. Everyone is sent upstairs, where things only get worse as each of them discovers that the young women they're with doesn't remember Lee and doesn't want to leave (at least, that's what they can tell from not speaking the same language).

Elder Tanner, with his knowledge of Mandarin, is most successful. He manages to find out that his young woman came with four friends, one of whom is still locked up for being bad. He even gets her to fetch another two friends for some group fun, thus getting (he thinks) more of the young women he is looking for. But they're uninterested in leaving, seemingly brainwashed.

Bart and Cady have rooms at the back of the house that overlook the back alley. Cady makes some hand signs to indicate restraint and escaping after the woman doesn't show any interest in the note from Lee, and ends getting her to fetch a variety of interesting leather implements. Bart actually gets the back window open and leans the young woman out of it to talk to Lee, who confirms that it is the right girl but that she doesn't remember who she is. Meanwhile, Elder Tanner gets the three girls in his room to promise to do what he says, and is about to start his plan when he hears the yelling.

Which turns out to be Bart. Madame Ping has come into his room, and declared that he is a bad man, clearly very bad. He's worried that things are about to take a turn for the weird and kinky, but it's much worse than that. After Madame Ping lets down her hair, it doesn't stay down, but forms tentacles... and when she opens her dress, it reveals that she's all mouth - a vertical toothy one, running almost from throat to crotch. The hair grabs Bart, and that's when he yells.

The hair hauls Bart into Ping's horrible mouth, where she seems about to swallow him but spits him out after mauling his arms. Apparently she doesn't like dead people. Cady casts Achilles's Heel on the thing and gets an answer implying that only things that are the same as her can hurt her (this is later borne out, only women can damage her). Meanwhile, Lee has battered in the back door and applied his suitcase to many of the guards downstairs, clearing a way for the posse to thunder up to the second floor where Bart is. Unfortunately, by then Ping has spat out Bart and her hair has dropped, and from the back she looks like, well, an attractive woman with an open kimono.

"We came in because Bart saw a naked woman?" - James

Bart sees everyone's confusion and makes a sawing motion at his neck. While the others are reluctant to jump her immediately, Tobey has no such qualms and promptly chops Ping's head off from behind. The body falls, and everyone is treated to the view of Ping's horrible mouth. Robert and Lee can't really take it and run out again, Robert with a horrible feeling that any woman could be a monster underneath.

Elder Tanner, meanwhile, has gotten the key to the upstairs room. He and Bart go to free the captive there, while Cady herds the rest of the prostitutes out into the back alley. They're strangely subdued, almost stunned, and Cady worries that Madame Ping isn't really dead and is drawing power from them somehow.

The prisoner turns out to be a firecracker of a girl who insists on spitting on Ping's body (now covered with a curtain). She quails when she sees the body, but keeps things together better than Robert and Lee did. Unfortunately, by then the body has reunited with its head and comes back to life.

Ping slaps Tobey, using her hair like a whip, and Tobey isn't able to get a good hit in with the machete in return. Cady tries to channel her soul blasts through the firecracker woman, without much success. And Elder Tanner is grabbed and half-swallowed, only his Armor of God saving him from a mauling. This is also when it is discovered that men can't hurt Ping, as James's bullets have no effect. Luckily Cady's soul blasts knock Ping down again, and this time they give one of James's guns to the firecracker and she shoots Ping with it. This is enough to kill the demon for good, and it dissolves into a pool of blood.

Tobey and Bart notice their evil spirits questing for some sort of power left behind. They don't try to take it, but neither do they leave the area, and eventually Tobey gets it, and her hair develops the ability to form into a tentacle. She shows this to Bart, later, who pronounces it creepy.

Meanwhile, Robert, who has just been getting better when a horde of young women was herded at him by Cady (when she was getting them out of the house) is in a horrible state of nerves. Cady sneaks up on him and blows in his ear (in revenge for a misstatement of his earlier about her disguise skill). It's the last straw, and he gets on his horse and rides off, with both silver coins in his possession as well as Elder Tanner's Browning .45 loaded with James's silver suicide bullet.

LB: It wasn't really revenge, those were just two different instances of causing trouble. In the first case, Cady was sort of hoping to rattle Robert (who she has sort of decided is her personal arch nemesis) by pointing out he was telling lies about her, and see if Eagle came and smote him. Sadly, if it's just a mistake, it doesn't appear to cause too much angst. In the second case, that was for sheer mischief value.