"Just a beer for me." Gabby says. He was tired. It had been a long time since the days he could stay up this late at the drop of a hat, and he wanted to unwind a bit.

Daniel didn't have Gabby's age to hinder him, but he did have a desire to sleep at a reasonable hour given how late they were up he prior night. "Same." He pointed to Gabby to make certain they understood to whom he was referring.

He rapped a couple times on the wooden bar, "Well, that weren't so bad, eh? I kinda like this here lawin' gig. Easier pay'n barberin'. So far." He again knocked on the nearest bit of wood as he tempted fate to prove him wrong.

"Here ya go," he said, bringing  by the requested beverages. He carried the whiskey glasses over first, then the beers, and finally came by with water for Coraline and for Sky Dog as well. As he handed the glass to the Siberian, he said, "I think you've had enough beer for a lifetime." He counted out the change for Randolph.

As he slid the coins back to the reporter, the relative peace of the night was shattered by a piercing scream that came from upstairs in the saloon. "Well, shit," he said, with a jump. "Damn, that don't sound good."

The scream continued, stopping, and resuming followed by a series of unpleasant shrieks and sobs. It was a woman's voice.

Sky Dog gave a wry twist of a smile to the comment, quiet, content and briefly fascinated by the novelty of water in glass...then a hideous scream sent him loping up the stairs, big ugly knife already in hand.

Korpi blinked awake on the end of the bar and looked after him, confused. "Kor."

The few milling patrons that were there still all looked towards the deputies and the stairs.

The native was first up the stairs, hearing only the continued screams as he went up. At the top of the saloon there was a small hallway, with three rooms of modest size on either side, but the disturbance was coming from one on the end of the hall. When Sky Dog burst in the door, he found a woman pointing wildly at a man's body on her bed. The sheets were stained red, and blood still dripped on the floor.

A man's body lay on the bed, his head and arms severed but nowhere to be found, and the window was shattered. The woman's hysterical screaming and sobbing didn't stop, but she fell to her knees.

Gabby's out of his seat fast enough to make his drink spill. He unslung his shotgun as he rushed up the stairs...he hadn't had to use it at all today, but it looked like he'd need to start. He was just behind Sky Dog entering the room...and was caught off guard by the body.

"Oh, hell." he muttered.

The shaman took in the corpse and at once looked to the nearer corners of the room, giving the other angles of ceiling and floor a good stare before circling round to the woman and crouching before her, knife still tucked ready alongside his forearm.

"Quiet...quiet, quiet, quiet." Sky Dog sought her gaze, tried to bring her to focus. "Yes? See, here is cold iron, here you are whole. Do you hear me?"

The woman stopped screaming at Sky Dog's tone and his words, but she remained transfixed as she stared at the corpse and continued to sob. She bore a bruise on her face, and there was some blood on her but otherwise she seemed unharmed.

Sky Dog's head turned enough to get Gabby in his peripheral vision, the small movement bird-sharp. "Maybe you will tell Dog Eye there is a corpse, Uncle?"

"You need not go down yet, lady...did he strike you, the dead one?" The shaman's tone remained gentle, speaking more for the noise than in expectation of reply so soon.

Darling thinks there are plenty of people in the hall and the room.

"Coraline, stay with the woman. Morgan, will you take charge here?"

He looks around for a back stairway. If he sees one, he goes down it to the back door. Otherwise, he runs out the front and around to a spot below the broken window. He's watching for a man moving fast with an axe or knife or bloodstains and trying not to disturb any tracks once he gets there.

As he runs, he draws his revolver.
This message was last edited by the player at 03:27, Fri 01 Mar 2013.

The woman sobbed loudly, her sobbing occasionally interrupted by incoherent mumbling,  seemingly unable to respond to Sky Dog at all.

Randolph couldn't easily find a back exit or stairway, so he had to run down the front stairs. Outside in the front he found a large milling crowd had gathered and they seemed to be generating some kind of commotion. Running past them and back around the building where the window overlooked, he didn't find anybody, but broken glass was there in abundance.
This message was last edited by the GM at 11:48, Mon 08 Apr 2013.

Korpi perked up at all the running about and flew after those exiting to see what the game was, picking up the warm draught from the saloon roof to soar over the lights and commotion of Dodge.

---

Upstairs, Sky Dog watched awhile then offered his free hand for the contact.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:32, Thu 28 Feb 2013.

There hadn't been much foot traffic back behind the Dog Eye Saloon, if any, so there were some footprints that were set forth there on the ground, clear to read for the experienced eye. The city slicker ordinarily wasn't the best tracker around, but at that moment it seemed like he was reading an open book.

Korpi wheeled, moonlight playing over her feathers. The little iron devil with all the shiny round things seemed to be running along a certain set of tracks, so she raced him to the corner of Chestnut Street and perched on a rooftop, pleased with her swiftness. "Ha! Ha! Ha!"

The raven took off and circled wide just for fun, swooping higher in case there was more excitement afoot.

Randolph crouched for a moment to study the tracks, then started following them at a good pace down the alley, but losing them in the heavily trodden dust of Chestnut Street. He returned to the Dog Eye.

Korpi stayed out, pausing on a roof here, a frongage there, memorising where choice morsels might be found when the town finally quieted for the night. A backalley scuffle attracted her attention; full of just-woken energy and a taste for mischief, the bird dropped silently into the shadows nearby and joined in the fighting noises with a fine firearm impression:

*krotoclik* "Ha! Ha!"

Morgan walked carefully around the bed, trying to study the details of the scene, specifically the nature of the man's wounds and the damage to the walls and window.

Looking to Gabby, he said, "We need to get Earp over here. Make sure the law knows what's happened. Could you see if McNary could send a runner to the Town Marshal's office?"

Turning to the woman, he knelt down, keeping his voice calm, "Ma'am. I'm a U.S. Marshal. My name's Caleb Morgan. I think we need to get you out of this room, take you downstairs where you can calm down a bit. Are you injured at all?  Did whoever did this hurt you in any way?"

While Sky Dog tried to comfort the woman, Gabby took a look around the room. He cast an experienced eye over everything, trying to pick out anything odd or unusual. His days as a miner had lent themselves well to spotting small details.

At Caleb's words, Gabby nodded. "Just a sec...let me get a look around the place afore I do that. Get an eyeful while things are fresh."

He tried not to let the lump in his throat get to him as he looked over the dismembered corpse on the bed.

Daniel's first instinct was to go running toward the scream, but he saw that the others all went running that direction. His mind went instantly to thinking that it might be someone trying to distract the deputies while mayhem is done elsewhere. And five people weren't needed.

He instead stood and looked around the room in an appraising manner, then walked outside to see if there was anything out there of interest. Perhaps someone would act suspicious when Daniel emerged.

Coraline frowned at the fact that Randolph simply left her to go be heroic elsewhere and looked with distaste at the whore.  She was more than happy to let the men comfort her, not wanting anything to do with the painted tart that had been throwing herself at Mister Darling that same day.  Instead, her eyes swung to the carnage, narrowing at the sight of so much blood.  She did a survey of the room, searching for possible clues as to what had happened.

Gabby picked at something caught on the glass of the window. "Huh." he says, picking the scrap of cloth he'd found out of the glass. "This looks fancy."

It's a scrap of white silk.

He sticks it in his pocket as he goes over to examine the body. He patted it down, trying to avoid the sticky mess where the man's head and arms had been. He heard something crinkle like paper as he patted the man's vest down. It felt like something in the lining.

Not seeing any other way to get at it, he ripped the lining out. In the lining was a letter with a fancy wax seal. Gabby opened the letter and began to read, then let out a low whistle.

"What in tarnation..." he mutters, as he reads the letter again to be sure of what he's seeing. "Holy hell in a hand basket."

Morgan remained with the young woman, but glanced up when Gabby whistled.

"What did you find, Gabby?" he asked.

"If I'm readin' this thing right," Gabby says, "The dead fella was a Yankee spy." He reads over the letter again. "Maybe even one o' them Agents you was talkin' about." he holds the paper out for Caleb to inspect. "I think we done wandered into a deep ol' rabbit hole here."
This message was last edited by the GM at 17:54, Fri 01 Mar 2013.

Sky Dog had carefully backed off at the larger man's intervention so as not to crowd the lady and slipped out to pace the corridor; whilst so engaged, the shaman reassured any disturbed patrons that the woman was all right, just shocked at the sight of a man who had died from violences. Probably not of suicide, he conceeded, but did not join in speculation, merely padding back and seeing if the woman was ready to come down yet. He leant on the doorframe behind Cora to listen in on goings-on meanwhile, scratching a point behind his ear with his knife.