Seeking if nothing else an escape from the rain, David walks up to the Masonic Temple and knocks, then tries the door.

In reply to Bill (msg #140):

Wildcat stands there for a moment, quite frankly stunned.  She at least puts her Colt away, and paces beside man before speaking again.

"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

Wildcat finds something to lean on, and nods to Fuller he can relax a bit.  "Well it may be your lucky day mister, while that's undoubtedly at least an assault charge, not too many men turn in their path before they do somethin' that can't be undone.  Private Wildcat Hawkins, Texas Ranger.  Ah'd be much obliged if you can tell me more about the incident itself, when, and who was involved, as I thank this may be th' first I heared of it, or if I have, I shoved it to the back of the heap wit' all th' other problems."

Elijah uncocks the hammer on his Colt and slides it back to the holster.  Free to relax again, he leans against the counter and taps out the ash on his smoke.  I suppose, with everything else goin' on, the strangest thing that coulda happened next would be criminals just walkin' in and confessing...   As the Ranger inquires, he can't help but add his own vote of curiousity, "Yes, do tell.  Confession's good for the soul, so I hear."

Remaining ever silent, Charging Bear just shook his head. This place really is coming unglued.

OOC: Still here!

In reply to Carl (msg #144):

"Hey, don't give me that look." Jack says. "I can feel your look. I ain't done nothin' wrong, just took care of my friend here."

"Yeah, like you took care o' me when you turned tail and ran like a jackrabbit last night?"

"Are you callin' me a coward, Ned?"

"Settle down, boys." Big Tom rumbles warningly, then shrugs. "Naw, I ain't seen it. I heard about it all, though. Isn't Ward lookin' it over or somethin'?" he drinks a shot, then shakes his head and sighs. "I tell you, that man is driftin' further and further from the safe shores o' reality. I mean that crazy symbol thing in the barn? What's all that about? Somethin' to make all a' them Enlightful Society nobs go swoonin'. Then he has us haulin' beeves in there, and there's these weird ol' lights from the barn for a bit, then we take 'em back out with the rest o' the herd. I just don't understand it all sometimes."

In reply to David Fletcher (msg #145):



The door of the Lodge opens. "Yeeeesssss?" says the very, very big man in a black pall-bearer's suit who opens the door and looks down on Mr. Fletcher. "Can...I...Help...You?"

In reply to Wildcat Hawkins (msg #146):

The man nods and steps inside. He sighs, then steels himself for his tale. he begins to speak, a flood of words pouring out of him.

"It was about three months ago. The preacher started runnin' his mouth off about Gus Shaw, which riled him up, I guess. Nate--that'd be Nathanial Frost--he done took a few of us up to the church. Now, I ain't naming no other names, as it's on the souls of them that joined in as to whether they want to come clean or not. But we were just there to put pressure on him. Make him see that leavin' town might be his best option, you see. The plan wasn't that no one would get hurt. But the preacher, he started this brimstone and hellfire speech, sayin' that we were takin' the wages o' sin from the devil's coffers by playin' with dark and unholy magic, and Nate didn't like that. Gus already wanted to run him through...he made this pact, you see, with some kind o' snake thing, to save his brother's life, and he don't like it when you say he done made a deal with the devil. But Nate, he held Gus back, and then said somethin' like, 'you wanna see witchcraft? I can show you witchcraft!' and then he muttered some strange old words and then drew down and shot the preacher with them Ghost Rock bullets he had made up. Just gunned him down. And we had to take the preacher's body an' dump it in the sea."

Carl just gives a lazy almost-smirk at Jack and nods to Tom's question, then waves vaguely around, stopping abruptly to put two fingers to his throat. "..." He puts a finger upright behind his skull a second, then shakes hi shead, tensing a little at the imagined drool of dead blood down his neck. "..."

Whatever the construct was, however, Carl began to suspect its crazy insistence of being an angel was some clue to its puropse. After all, if you built a thing to play piano that could go off on its own and talk, you'd punch into its...mind or basic phrases or whatever that it was a piano player, so who all found it wouldn't try to make it clean house or fire a gun. Stood to reason. So if you made it say it could protect from demons...

The mute just leans back and shrugs at Tom's rambling, but he doesn't look happy about it. "..." After a longish pause and more "begging" for liquor Carl leans forwards again, brow furrowed in thought - he flicks a thumb across his throat in a killing gesture that flows into one of setting aside, looks at the others with a question, pale and serious.
"?"
This message was last edited by the player at 21:01, Thu 02 Dec 2010.

In reply to The Stray (msg #150):

"Indeed you can.  I am David Fletcher of New York City, here is my card.  I have had pleasant associations with the New York Lodge, and wanted to pay my respects to the lodge leader."

In reply to Bill (msg #151):

The weight of the man's words had multiple impacts on Wildcat, but the one that crept to the front was the thought that Damn, there's absolutely no containment of this mess possible by now whatsoever.

She'd suspected it for a while now, but she didn't have the benefit of being in Blackthorn all the time to realize the true gravity of it all.  She'd been the victim of her own optimistic nature.  Hank One-Eye Ketchum himself couldn't keep this quiet.

The only thing for it was to try to put it down.  But perhaps this was just such an opportunity.  After a respectful pause, she started again.

"Sometimes yer too close to a situation to see what the right path is.  Th' scripture done said If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him.

"The point of that is, the rebuking has to come from someone else.  You can't see it yerself when yer so close to it.  Now ah'm as guilty as anyone.  I ain't better than no one else.  It's our sinful nature to ignore things we don't like to hear, and it takes a willful decision to accept them as true.  But the point is, ya done good.  It takes a lot to do what ya just did."

In reply to David Fletcher (msg #153):

The giant looks at the card, then tucks it into his pocket. "I See." He says in a voice that shakes the floor. "The Malviosin Is Home This Evening. He Lives At The Circle W Ranch, Two Miles South Of Town. The Society Meets Tomorrow Night. You May Meet Him Then, Or Visit Him At Home."

"Damn." Tom says. "Do anyone know where the thing came from?"

The three Dust Adder consider Carl's question.

"You know, I don't think so." Ned says. "At least, we haven't lost any stock since we caught them rustlin' bluebellies."

"Jethro found the body of a Mountain Lion this morning," Jack says, "Just after the posse went off to catch Nathanial. Looked like it had crawled on to the property to die. Ain't been no prairie ticks about since last year, come to think of it."

"Yeah, I don't miss them." Tom grumbles. "Always hated watchin' them things pop out o' some poor steer's belly."

"Why do you ask?" Ned says.

In reply to Wildcat Hawkins (msg #154):

"Yeah, I suppose you're right about that." Bill says. "It took me nearly dyin' to realize just how low I done sunk, which is why I want the chance to make things right."

"So that's why I want to offer my services as a Deputy to the Marshal, if he'll have me."

Carl raises a hand to the heavens and lets it fall to show his complete ignorance, recalling Ward's words as he does.

He wrinkles his nose a little at the mention of prairie ticks - yeah, those were bad old days - but just sets one hand on the table thoughtfully, drumming his fingers to hide the shake, clearly agitated about something. He then holds up his hand and looks around the others with an expression that requests tolerance, tilts his head a little and gestures at Tom as example. "..."

In reply to Bill (msg #157):

"Well I'm the closest thing to 'in charge' as we have at the moment.  Yer hired."

In reply to Carl (msg #158):

"Yeah." Tom says. "Well, after all the shit we seen, crazy begins to seem downright normal. What's on your mind?"

In reply to Wildcat Hawkins (msg #159):

"Really?" The man says. He breaks into a grin. "Oh, thank you ma'am! thank you! I promise, you won't regret having me on!"

In reply to Bill (msg #161):

"Now, yer first item of business, tell me about the Dust Adders."

Kat sits down and indicates he should do the same.  She's got some hours of sitting here to kill, and this could be good to know.

In reply to Wildcat Hawkins (msg #162):

Bill looks a little confused at the question, then shrugs. "I don't figger there's that much to tell, Ma'am. We're just a bunch o' cowboys now, just real close is all. Most of us were miners 'till the Wendell people pulled out, then tried our hands at the railroads, so I suppose you could call most of us veterans o' the Rail Wars. Sure, some o' the guys got some shady pasts...Nate, he always bragged he done stole the secrets o' witchery from one o' Black River's gals, Jesse was accused o' cattle rustlin' by some overeager deputy near Nacogdoches, and Gus...well, I won't speak more o' Gus. But they ain't bad folk...mostly. Just folk who've been done wrong by the big companies. Now we work for Ward, who tries his best to keep the town afloat with his ranch. We inspect the stock, keep rustlers at bay, chase off them goddamn sheep herders what crop the grass so low it don't grow again, and do odd jobs around the town."

Carl drums a moment longer, then flicks his hand up to trace the coils of a snake in the air, meeting eyes. He taps his chest, wrenches at something invisible, then briefly touches where a badge would be, indicates something rising. "..."

Carl makes eye contact again, gives half a shake of the head and a grim-looking nod towards the town centre, hand flicking in a gesture of something burnt up. He looks dubious, but then nods across to Jack and checks he has the others' attention. "..." Again the law gesture, then the indication of the underside of a hat and again a serpent. Carl leans forward, frowning, gestures up, throw away, a fist. Then a wave out to the ranch, an indication of Tom, watching faces. He gestures something going or passing on, then the flick of the thumb across the throat again. "..."

He lets that sink in. There's a quick wave out towards the ranch before Carl's frame relaxes a little, grey eyes holding the others' a few moments each before he resumes casually scrounging liquor.

In reply to Carl (msg #164):

The Three Dust Adders huddle around Carl. Tom pulls out a small stack of bills and passes them over to Old Crazy Pete. "Hey, Pete! Why don't ya go to the show at the Oriental? I hear they got some right pretty gals dancin' there...and for the right price, you can get a 'dance' in private!"

Pete eyes the money suspiciously, but having been host to the Dust Adders before knew there were times when it wasn't healthy to be a fly on the wall, so he picked up the wad of cash, slips it into his trousers, and heads out the door. "I tell you what man don't go drinking me out o' my dang ol' stock while I'm gone now, ya hear?" he says, then skedaddles.

Ned looks a bit ill at Carl's suggestions, while Jack has picked up some kind of twitch.

"Do...do you think we're all infected?" Jack asks. "I-I mean, we've all eaten beef from the ranch, and Ward sells a lot of it to the town..."

"You think too much." Big Tom says. "Yeah, we got Deadders again, but think about this...we never did find out what caused that first batch to rise up, and they were all kinds o' dead, old and new, some dead afore Ward showed up in Blackthorn. And what about the Ghost Rock we had them rustlers digging up for us? I heard that Rock can do some pretty strange stuff to folk."

"Wait." Ned says. "Ghost Rock?"

"What, you didn't know? We found a few seams o' Ghost Rock in the mine, but it was past the cave-in...near where that bone thing was. We were having the rustlers dig it out for Ward's experiments, so that if that bone thing came back it'd get them instead o' us. Ward was tryin' to suss out how big that load was...he was talkin' some big things for reopenin' the mine if it were prac-tic-a-ble. Until then, Ward wanted to keep it quiet. Then them bluebellies escape, and all hell breaks loose."

"If it's the cattle makin' people get up again," Jack says, "Why ain't it done for Charlie? Or Jesse?"

"Well, I'll pass the word on to keep an eye out for cows doin' a walker when they shouldn't be, but I dunno...maybe it only works on certain people."

In reply to Bill (msg #163):

Wildcat listened.  That helped, confirmed what she suspected.  What was obvious to him was still new information for her.

"I'm that 'overeager deputy' partner, or I were, I s'pose.  I will set you straight on one thing, deputies don't accuse people of cattle rustling, deputies are sent to arrest folks accused of cattle rustling.  Jesse wanted to kill me earlier today.  Ah didn't want him to.  Guess which one of us got what we wanted fer Christmas."

Wildcat pauses, but not long enough to let him answer yet.

"Ah think Blackthorn has been under this system so long, you folks done forgot what the rule of law is.  The rule of law is that when you got two folks fussin' over somethin', like Ward and th' sheep herders, ya go get a third party, the sheriff perhaps, wit' no interest innit one way or th' other, to resolve the problem.  It ain't the threat or the oppressor, at least it's not supposed to be.  I know it ain't always perfect but it ain't always wrong or evil neither.

"Now mebbe ya'll can mind yer own business and ya should, but th' problem is things are going on here, terrible things, that ain't gonna stay in Blackthorn.  Ya ever heard that yer right to throw a punch ends about half an inch in front of mah face? Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake."

Wildcat stops talking at that point as she wants to see this curious fellow's reaction to it.  Granted he's only one man, but if he'll listen maybe others can too.

In reply to Wildcat Hawkins (msg #166):

The man looks down to the ground. "Yeah...poor Jesse." he mutters, then shakes his head and looks back up at the Ranger.

"Look. I knows you mean well, but I figger you're goin' about it all wrong. These men here, they been bent over and screwed, if you'll pardon my French. You ought to go ask Gabby what happened when he tried to make a plea to that 'fair and impartial law' against the Wendell Company stealing his claim out from under him. The Law there took the Wendell people's money, then turned him out into the streets."

"Or maybe you can explain to them why the last Marshal afore Evans up and vanished on them. He just up and left us, high and dry, after that range business got settled."

"And hey, I seem to recall we all fought a tiny war over the issue of who gets to tell who what to do. What was that war called again? Great War o' Southern Independence? War o' Northern Aggression? And we got some veterans o' that elephant here, who figger they done earned the right to do as they please. You wanna go tell 'em they're wrong?"

He pulls out a cigarette, lights it, and takes a drag. "But yeah. I agree that there are things we got goin' on here that ain't fit for decent folk. I just think that goin' in and tellin' folk that the things they thought their whole life through is wrong ain't the way to get things done...it just makes people ornery. The people here ain't bandits. We don't go ridin' about the High Plains murderin' and thievin' and causin' all manner o' commotion. We're just folk who got a little place to protect, a place that's been kicked around like a mangy old dog that's had enough and just nips back at whatever comes near. If'n you wanna teach that dog not to nip, you gotta treat it kind, 'cause hittin' it more won't do no good."

"Leastways that's what I figger, anyhow. I figger I can do the most good by warnin' the Law when it's got out too much stick and not enough carrot." He takes another drag. "So you got's to ask yourself...what are you here to do? You here to bring the Law to Blackthorn? Or are you here to make Blackthorn a better place?"

"They're one and the same sir.  The war was about accountability to others.  The damn Yankees didn't act like they was accountable to Texas or the Carolinas or wherever very much now did that?  That's the problem here on all sides.  I believe ya that ya been bent over and screwed.  But I ain't seen too many people here, from here, who've done something about it in the past, but who ain't really done anything about it presently.

"The war's a perfect example.  Sure for a little while we just sort of did what we had to do, but eventually we had us a president an' everythin', and we put a group of men in charge and said that's how we was gonna move forward.  Ya'll act like the war's still on.  You got rid of the bad elements, but ya ain't built nothin' to replace it with.  T'ain't nobody in control of this place at all if'n preachers can be kilt fer no good reason an' nothin' ever done about it.  You sir are the first person I have seen here who is trying to actually rebuild himself, and this place.  If there's a few more like you, there's some hope.  I think ya'll will find yer way if'n some more of ya try."

Wildcat shrugs.

"Look feller, we could argue this 'til Doomsday.  I didn't mean to rile you up, I just wanted to see if you'd listen without tryin' ta shoot me and ya did, that's all I'm worried about.  As fer the rest, there's just some differences in the way folks look at things that ya can't solve by jawin' about it.  Some folks fear the Lord, some are heathens.  Some folks hate the negro or the redskin or the Chinaman or all of 'em, other folks don't reckon the colored people ever done nothin' to them to deserve such scorn.  No amount of barkin' at a knot is gonna change anyone's minds on some things, but I'm in a line of work where I don't have the luxury of too much self doubt.

"But what's more important right now is we got us a problem of Biblical proportions here.  I think your boss man Ward is at the heart of it and don't realize it.  Ah think if'n I can talk some reason into Ward, we can make this mess stop.  Th' quiet one, he's supposed to be talking to th' other Adders to let me go out there and jaw at him tomorree.  Now ya can help us out with that effort, but there's things you can do here in town that would help.  There's plenty of evil to go around."

Carl waves Jack's fear away - not entirely dismissive, but panic's not useful right now - and nods to Tom to indicate yes, he'd been thinking about that...Carl waves a slow swirl in the air like gathering clouds, then taps the sawdusted floorboards with a boot, indicates something flashing to earth, thoughtful.
"..."

His fingers drum pensively on the table at the talk of rock, then still, index finger tapping twice for attention. He gestures at Tom, then taps at the nearest metal object, catching eyes. "..." Carl makes a grabbing gesture over his lungs, then shakes his head and looks puzzled. After a moment he nods back townwards a little and looks around with a question. "?"

Then the silent man's jaw sets and he looks grim.
"..."
He taps his chest and moves his hand to his shotgun a moment as he leans back, deadly serious.