Barlowe Station

"You folks making your own way from here?" Dirt asks, talking a little more freely with the others now than he had in the first leg of the journey.

"I expect you’ll be wanting to find a law man." he says to Dillon. "You want me to help cart that body over to them?"

"Yes, if you'd be so kind," she gives Dirt an appreciative smile, glad that she doesn't have to deal with the body. "I'll come with you though to find the law. I think it will be that building there," she points at a sign on a building directly behind the train station building.

Upon arriving in Varney Flats, Kane replaces the hat that he perched on his knee throughout the long ride and gazes out the window.

"Hell this place ain't much of a town neither. Do they even have a lawman? That body's gotta be gettin' pretty rank by now, not that it weren't before..."

"Should be one, yup," Dillon says to Kane, then Reyes spies the Marshal's office while Briggs offers to help lug the body. "Much obliged," DD says politely to him, fixing her own hat back on her head before she disembarks and heads for where they stored the body. No shrinkin' violet, she plans to help Dirt carry the poor station manager straight to the local Marshal.

"We’d get it where it’s going a little faster with the help of a big strong fella such as yourself." Dirt says to Victor, and gives the Marshal a wink when the man isn’t looking.

He huffs and puffs the distance to the law office, working hard to keep the body moving while also trying not to huff in any of the fumes.

"My pleasure. Cant say this is what I expected to be doing when I boarded that train, mind."

Up goes the kerchief after Kane loads up a fresh plug of tobacco, as he helps carry the deadweight of the deceased stationmaster.

"Me neither," Kane says to Dirt, wondering how in the heck he gets hisself into these crazy situations.

As you approach the Marshall's office, you see a man step out from beneath the shadows of the telepgraph building. He walks slowly over watching you enter the Marshalls.

There is a one-room office in the front which contains a desk, two chairs. and a bunk to one side. A rack on the wall beside the front door holds three Winchester ‘73 rifles and two double-barrel shotguns. A barred door to the rear of the office leads to a short hall with three jail cells. Currently only one of the cells is occupied.

Behind you, you hear the man from outside say, "I'm Deputy Parrish. That's a mighty suspicious looking parcel you're bringing the Marshall."

"Afternoon, Deputy," Delilah says, walking back out onto the porch as she dusts off her hands and skirts. "That there's a dead man is what that is," she says thumbing over her shoulder, indicating the corpse. "The station manager from Barlowe Station, just down the line there. We found the whole place abandoned when the train stopped to take on water, and it turned out someone -- or somethin' -- murdered this poor man. We thought the Marshal might want to know. He or she about?"

Dirt rubs his hands down the front of his shirt, in an effort to wipe the death off himself. He keeps his mouth shut while the two lawfolk talk things out. Sometimes the fellers they set up out these ways don’t like to hear much from the likes of Dirt.

Kane does what he always does after chewing for a spell and spits out a long dark stream of tobacco before entering the office, noting the rifles and shotguns in the rack. Upon hearing the chatter outside, he goes back out.

"Howdy, Deputy. What Delilah here says is true. We came upon this poor man," he says, pointing to the body. "Dumped in the outhouse he was. Messy business getting him out of there."

Parrish spits in the dirt as if to get the outhouse stink out of his nostrils. "That's a hella way to go. Sheeeet, why you gotta bring him here? Nah, I know what you're saying. Let's find him a place to rest before we can bury him."

He leads you over to the church and has you place him just inside the fence of the graveyard, in the shade. "Marshall McBride headed out to check on the Larkin family homestead. It’s out where Knaggs did his business and no one’s heard from them in a couple of days. Oh, Knaggs. Lady you have the look of law about you. You interested in a job?"

"Knaggs? Who would that be now?" Kane asks after Parrish answers his own question.

The deputy looks at Kane, waiting for DD to respond, but he says, "He's the prisoner we have in the jail. The only one, but he's a murderer. "

Something's off about Varney Flats, but Delilah Dillon can't yet put her finger on just what it is. Something's happened here, some tragedy, she can smell it. Her father always had that sixth sense, and always told his little girl she did too.

"Good eye. Come from a family of lawmen," the woman says to Parrish after he names Knaggs a murderer. There's been a killing then; at least one. "I'm just on my ways to Good Intent, if you know whereabouts that is. I've got a new job there -- Marshal. Meanin' I don't have no badge just yet, but tell me... what's the business? Goin' up to look in on these Larkins, after Marshal McBride?"

"I got a little bit of a problem. As I was just sayin, there’s this murderer in the town jail, buffalo hunter named Abner Knaggs. Killed some settlers. He’s going to swing when the circuit judge gets here in a few days, but I’m afraid the townsfolk might not want to wait for the judge, if you know what I mean."


He opens the wrappings around the station master, examining him while he talks.

"You see, Mayor Varney hates the buffalo hunters. He thinks they’ll keep us from gaining ‘respectability.’ Knaggs claimed he was a buffalo hunter, but he was really a low-down dry-gulchin’ murderer. The mayor sees a chance to rile the town against the hunters and figures a lynching is just the thing for it."

He flinches at the stink, but sees the wounds, and whistles at the damage.

"Marshal McBride would've kept Varney in line, but he went out to check on the Larkin family homestead, as I said. It’s out where Knaggs did his business and no one’s heard from them in a couple of days."

He wraps the body back up and gathers dust and dirt to wipe his hands

"You and your friends help me tonight, keep an eye on the jail and scare off any lynchin posse that comes? I got a $100 in reward money for Knaggs I can give you. Marshall and I ain't eligible no how, since McBride brought him in himself. "

This was just the kind of work that Dirt was good at. The kind of work that he used to be good at, he reminded himself. Scaring off regular folk. Oh, they got angry once in a while, and came around full of piss and vinegar but a bullet over their heads usually let the piss out of them quick enough.

"This Mayor that might stop by… He got a lot of say in this town?" Dirt asks. The man was the mayor, so he supposed yes. "Trying to get a feel for how big a posse we might expect."

Kane looks at Dirt, Delilah, and Ruby, but his mind is already made up.

"We're here ain't we? I say we help Parrish. Hell, you're almost the law yourself Delilah anyways. Good practice."

"Mayor Sam Varney ain't neither pop'lar nor disliked. He'll have to work to get folks, er, worked up, but I'm worried he'll get enough to make it a problem."

"You set on gunnin’ folks down, if comes to that? Including that there Mayor." Dirt asks the uncomfortable question.