Barlowe Station

Dirt jolts to attention again as the gun goes off. It’s not that he thought something had come upon them, but rather that something else… someone else… might have heard it, and come to investigate. He wondered if the train driver might be scared off by such a thing too, and frowns to himself. Then there was Blossom…

He steps over the man as he rifles through the lock box.

"Hell of a lot more than I’ve got on me." he says, with a whistle. He wondered what this soon-to-be-Marshal might think of them divvying up the dough!

Kane shrugs at Delilah's admonishment. "I had to test my new pistol."

Examining the contents, he declares,"Yup. Money sure wasn't the motive. Look what's inside this here box. On second thoughts maybe we can do that after we see what's going on in the outhouse. I hope my gunshot didn't startle her too."

Kane heads over there.

Delilah is looking to the inside of the outhouse with a handkerchief to her face when the men arrive.

"That there pistol, and that there money? They got an owner, Victor. He might be dead or worse, but still. Hold off playin' finders keepers until we understand what's happened to the poor man, and give a hand here, pry up them boards."

"Well now Delilah, I ain't said nothing about keeping the lockbox. Doin' a bit of investigatin' is all. But the pistol ... well I've taken quite a shine to it. Yes, siree. If the owner is dead, he won't notice."

Kane takes the kerchief that's around his neck and pulls it up enough to cover his nose and mouth. Pulling out his Bowie knife he sets about the task of prying up the floorboards.

"Wheweee, that's a mighty stench!"

Kane, a sodbuster stalwart enough to climb into the hole, finds the body of the station master beneath the filth.

Kane must make a Vigor roll at –2 or gain a level of Fatigue due to the stench and generally disgusting circumstances. This Fatigue can’t Incapacitate and goes away after an hour of breathing fresh air.

"The pigs smelled a good deal better than that! What on earth is down there?" Dirt asks, scrunching up his face. He shuffles a little distance away from the wafting stink!

Kane does his best to breathe through his mouth despite the risk of ... well he wouldn't give words to the thought or he might hurl up his stomach contents.

"Whoa!" The gentle splash of outhouse fluids accompanies his exclamation. "There's a body down here. Someone give me a hand getting it out. And be quick about it before I pass out from the stench!"

Delilah is still covering her face with her hanky as she nods. "I knew it! Somethin' just didn't feel right here. We'll need to let the local Sheriff or Marshal know about this."

The woman has no fear of getting her hands dirty, but nor is she keen to just dive into the offal and refuse beneath the shithouse. And so she calls down into the darkness.

"Hold on Victor, I'll see if I can lay my hands on a rope!"

Finding rope and helping Kane get the body out of the outhouse water is difficult labor-wise, but you manage to get him tied off and hauled out onto the grass.

The body is likely of the stationmaster, but it will take some ponderin' to make sure of that for certain.

Give me a solid reason of investigatin' his identity and no roll will be required. If you want to determine a possible cause of death, you'll need to clean him up some and make a Healing roll.

Delilah couldn't get that rope quick enough as Kane struggled not to gag at the smell. Wrapping it around the body and climbing out of the hole after what felt like an eternity in the disgusting muck, Kane declared that he needed a bath.

"I gotta strip, wash myself, and somehow git these clothes washed or find new ones. Anyone see a stream, a pond a hotel a house with a bath?"

"Train driver could probably throw a bucket of water of you!" Dirt offers, and can’t help but smile at the man’s misfortune. He took one for the team…

"I bet he could identity this poor fella here too." he says, less jovial. As he gets a waft of the man’s stinking clothes, he shuffles a little further away, and makes for the private quarters they had searched over already.

"Reckon this fella must have a change of shirt and what have you." he says, before rushing of to grab a change of clothes for the man.

Sure enough, the engineer identifies him. "That's Zeke alright. Ain't an end I ever wish for, getting dumped in the sloop. I'll have to report that in Varney Flats just down the line. Cryin' shame is what it is."

Kane can find a bucket and take water from the tower to wash off. Soap from the station masters house. Get somewhat clean anyway.

"Anyone that might have wanted that done to him?" Dirt asks, conscious that he might be stepping on the Marshal’s toes with such questions.

Still, he’d bumped enough men off throughout his life to know that it was safe bet the answer was ‘yes’.

Ruby stays well back from the disgusting events unfolding in and around the outhouse. She has an embroidered handkerchief--embroidered with initials that are not hers--held to her nose and mouth the entire time. Once Kane is about to wash off, Ruby sighs as a glimmer of conscience overrides her drive to make money. She pulls out of her bag a dark green bottle labeled "Squeaky Clean Ablutions" and hands it over. "Use this when you wash. It'll get the smell out. On the house, just this once. Mostly because it will benefit myself to not have to smell you," she adds to make sure these people didn't think she just did things out of the kindness of her heart.

"If you rinse off the body I can take a look to see if I can find what happened. I know a little bit about the human body."

With all the goins' on, the body haulin' and washin' up and corpse inspectin', future Marshal Delilah Dillon spends a moment with the engineer and Dirt.

"Or just mean sorts prone to this brand of bad behavior?" the woman asks as a tag-a-long to Dirt's question. "They didn't take his money or ransack his little house. It's a weird one. Like they had it in for him or somethin'."

"Revenge, could be." he says, knowing he had been the avatar of many a man’s revenge in his time.

"To put a man in an undignified place like that…" he says, as if the idea is plain. Whoever did it didn’t like the man much, or wanted to hide him for just enough time to get away. Else they would have dug a hole in the desert for him.

Kane had found some water to douse himself with and along with Ruby's "Squeaky Clean Ablutions" and a fresh set of clothes that Dirt had found for him, he went back to the shack and cleaned up. Being in there again set him to thinking.

Walking back to the group he said "We ain't checked the vegetable garden. And we still haven't figured out why so many people, some of them barefoot, might have been here in the first place and then there's them claws on the shack door. Ruby's right. We should rinse off the body and take a looksee. Maybe these folks wanted a free ride on the train and the stationmaster told 'em where to go for. They killed him, dumped him in the hole and got on the train."

The engineer says he doesn't know Zeke well enough to reckon if he had it comin' or not.

Ruby examines the somewhat cleaned up body, and identifies a number of enormous, rat-like bites. However, if so, the creatures that made them would have to be nearly six feet long!

Ruby squats down to inspect the body once he was washed up. Covering the body are large pairs of puncture marks close together, each one the width of a finger, and flat instead of round. "Well, I'll be damned. That's not something you see every day. See these puncture marks? Looks like bite marks from two flat front teeth. Something like a rat, beaver, or mole might make. Judging by the length of the punctures I'd say the animal must be about the size of a grown man. Sure hope that ain't right. Anyone hear about man-sized, buck-toothed rodents?" She stands up and looks at everyone.