I had never before seen a ruby that could double as a doorstop. It was larger than my fist.

More stones appeared from various hideaways, wrapped in bits of shopping lists or still damp with earth. One man spat out a blood red, polished gem that he had kept safely tucked under his tongue through several beers.

I knew little about rubies except that they had many imitators and so my interest was half-hearted at best. They agreed among themselves that America had huge money and fixed their asking prices. We agreed to disagree and settled back to admire the pretty stones. We were, they explained, sitting on an enormous ruby mine with outcroppings in farmers' fields throughout the province. The one-legged man was the local dealer. When he had sufficient stones he made his way to Hanoi where he sold them by the pound, like pork.

When at last I stumbled to bed I dreamed of laughing pigs with ruby eyes and handcuffs made of mangled motorcycle chains.

______________________________

A month later I was back in Hanoi. I wrote a guess-what-happened-to-me-the-other-day letter about the rubies to a geologist friend of mine. Three weeks later he showed up with a scratch kit and a big wad of cash. We got on my bike and went ruby-hunting.

I planned our arrival to be completely unexpected, for fear that we would be sold fakes or perhaps robbed. We cruised through Yen Bai on a back road, made a random left turn, then another. At last we found ourselves laboring up a footpath barely wide enough for the bike's tires. I got off, knocked on a farmer's shanty, and asked if we could buy rubies.

Ten minutes later we were surrounded by at least a dozen farmers, each with a handful of uncut gems. We had already decided how to carry out the transactions: Larry would decide which gems to buy. He would hand them to me with some coded assessment of their worth. I would carry the gems away from the crowd (their owners following) and bargain for them in Vietnamese. When I had reached agreement on four or five gems I would back away, pull just enough money out of my bag, and pay.

Within half an hour we had bought 23 gems for between $5 and $60 each. Six of them were cut "star" rubies. I made a final purchase and turned around to look for Larry. All I could see was a crowd of muscular Vietnamese men - perhaps fifty of them - shouldering and shouting in a huge, unruly mass. Larry was somewhere in the middle. I suddenly realized the position I had put him in - newly arrived in Vietnam and with very little travel experience, he had none of my confidence in the country or its people. Despite his courage in coming to visit me - he was the only one of my friends who did - Vietnam had put him under considerable stress. I hadn't seen him really relax since he arrived in Hanoi. And there he was, lost in the middle of a seething mob of Vietnamese men who were shouting at him in a language he didn't understand. I panicked.

I waded into the crowd, pushing and elbowing my way to its center. I arrived to find Larry sitting on a stool, six rubies in his hand and a huge smile on his face, completely oblivious to the jostling men around him. A geologist and his rocks. I should have known.

A few minutes later several men arrived on shiny new motorbikes with heavy gold chains around their necks. They came to a stop just beyond the fringe of the crowd and watched in silence. Trouble.

Then one young man approached Larry with four cut gems laid across his open palm. Someone gave him a shove from behind and he pitched forward, scattering the gems. There was instant pandemonium. I reached into the melee and extracted Larry. Four seconds later we were on my bike and heading out at top speed. An hour after that we were on the train for Hanoi.

When Larry returned to America he took the six star rubies with them. He called me from Boston to tell me that he had had one of the rubies assessed at a jewelers - for $2,300 dollars. Shortly after my return to America he sent all 23 rubies to be examined at a gemnological institute in California. Three turned out to be fake. We were told that they had probably came from America. Since we had arrived in Yen Bai without warning and two of the three fakes were among the first rubies we bought, it was clear to us that fakes were already scattered among the real rubies right at the source. And since there was no way to tell a fake ruby from a real one out in the field, going back for more was too great a risk.

Did we make enough money to pay for the trip and buy a couple of convertibles? Well, no. You see, in all the excitement I made one fatal miscalculation. I completely forgot how hard it is to separate a geologist from his rocks. Larry still has the rubies. Sometimes he takes them out and plays with them. He's had one made into a ring. I gave two to my mother for a pendant. The rest will probably never make it to a gem show. That's fine with me. I have in return the memories of Larry's visit - of taking the train high into the mountains, forging rivers, and sitting around a Hmong fire. I will never forget the smile on his face in the midst of that unruly crowd. He's the only one of my friends with whom I can share those memories.

On my next trip I'll be hiking the ancient Inca highway, across the Andes from Ecuador to Chile. I hear there's gold in Peru. Perhaps I'll write another letter...