Yuan Ti had gone crazy, but that wasn’t all. He was bigger, so big he had to bend almost double in order to run up the shaft.
“Keroseners. They were like these little lighted boxes of oil you put on your forehead with a strip of rawhide. You’d fold a piece of cloth underneath to keep your skin from getting too hot. And then someone came running out of the darkness, someone they knew. It was Yuan Ti. He was a funny guy, I guess—he made animals out of pieces of cloth and then put on shows with them for the kids. Yuan Ti had gone crazy, but that wasn’t all. He was bigger, so big he had to bend almost double in order to run up the shaft. He was throwing rocks at them, calling them names in Mandarin, condemning their ancestors, commanding them to stop what they were doing. Shih shot him with the foreman’s gun. He had to shoot him a lot before Yuan Ti would lie down and be dead. But the others were coming, screaming for their blood. Tak knew what they were doing, you see.”
