The Company men share the cost to pay Black Dog’s debt. Black Dog remains with the Company and vows to change his ways. For a while, he works hard helping at the laundromat, but he soon becomes irritable and disappears again, rejoining the opium dens. Moon Shadow notes that his problem is the “inability to control himself” (78). After two years in America, Moon Shadow assumes the responsibility of collecting the customers’ bills around the Tang town. One day, he encounters Black Dog, who tells him a story about opium. The conversation leads to a disagreement, and Black Dog becomes furious and hits Moon Shadow, knocking him out and stealing the money he carries. When Moon Shadow awakens back at the Company, the men correctly suspect that Black Dog is the culprit, and Moon Shadow finally admits it. Windrider expresses his exasperation with the criminal brotherhoods that harm Tang people and reveals that he once belonged to the Sleepers when he was young.

He decides to avenge his son and goes to the Sleepers, demanding to see Black Dog. In the ensuing struggle, Moon Shadow’s intervention saves his father’s life, but when Windrider kills a member of the Sleepers in self-defense, he and his son must both leave the Company to prevent the gang from retaliating against their community.