It’s a reputable boarding house and a good place to wait for your train to come through, especially for citified folks who don’t like to be reminded just how far from civilization they are, even as they prepare to step on board and get back to it. He catches sight of her on the stair, and it’s a shame about the fine windows and woodwork in here, ‘cause they’re not gonna last much longer.
Her face goes from green to white as she sweeps around, crinolines rustling.
“I thought you were-“
“Dead?” he says easily, smiling like a rattler behind the brim of his hat. Red satin and feathers or dusty leather and twill, a whore is a whore when she stakes a man out for the buzzards. Or leaves him with a room bill, a missing packet of deeds, and a sheriff banging on the door intent on stretching somebody’s neck, as the case may be.
That somebody being him, he can still feel the rope-burns from where his much-larger debts almost caught up with him on the gibbet.
“Not hardly. But you may want to rectify that, if you don’t wanna see what happens to thievin’ traitor sharpster girls who come down from the big city lookin’ to steal what ain’t theirs…” He waits for her to go for the pistol in her traveling-bag or the hatpins in her hair (and how she grew it out so fast he’ll never know, maybe those are horse-hair curls tumbling down)-
Instead she pulls the one maneuver he doesn’t anticipate and faints into his arms, leaving him stumbling back down the stairs as every man in the place looks up and a door swings open in the hall above. An old man in a waistcoat and bowler steps out, prodigious beard leading the way.
“Hurry up, my niece, we must be on time for- Zuka…?” Jet struggles desperately against the dead weight of the girl who hung him out to dry, and only succeeds in getting tangled worse. The old man’s expression goes dark and dangerous, and Jet starts looking for escape routes even as he can feel the noose slipping closer around his neck once more.
Part 1! (more to follow...)
It’s a reputable boarding house and a good place to wait for your train to come through, especially for citified folks who don’t like to be reminded just how far from civilization they are, even as they prepare to step on board and get back to it. He catches sight of her on the stair, and it’s a shame about the fine windows and woodwork in here, ‘cause they’re not gonna last much longer.
Her face goes from green to white as she sweeps around, crinolines rustling.
“I thought you were-“
“Dead?” he says easily, smiling like a rattler behind the brim of his hat. Red satin and feathers or dusty leather and twill, a whore is a whore when she stakes a man out for the buzzards. Or leaves him with a room bill, a missing packet of deeds, and a sheriff banging on the door intent on stretching somebody’s neck, as the case may be.
That somebody being him, he can still feel the rope-burns from where his much-larger debts almost caught up with him on the gibbet.
“Not hardly. But you may want to rectify that, if you don’t wanna see what happens to thievin’ traitor sharpster girls who come down from the big city lookin’ to steal what ain’t theirs…” He waits for her to go for the pistol in her traveling-bag or the hatpins in her hair (and how she grew it out so fast he’ll never know, maybe those are horse-hair curls tumbling down)-
Instead she pulls the one maneuver he doesn’t anticipate and faints into his arms, leaving him stumbling back down the stairs as every man in the place looks up and a door swings open in the hall above. An old man in a waistcoat and bowler steps out, prodigious beard leading the way.
“Hurry up, my niece, we must be on time for- Zuka…?” Jet struggles desperately against the dead weight of the girl who hung him out to dry, and only succeeds in getting tangled worse. The old man’s expression goes dark and dangerous, and Jet starts looking for escape routes even as he can feel the noose slipping closer around his neck once more.
“What ARE you DOING with my NIECE?!”