Korpi abandoned her efforts to scrounge pickled shallots off the bemused barmaid and went to see what carrion Uncle was calling out about. One good thing about Americans, it seemed, was that they always made a loud noise when they found a corpse.

The raven flew upward, but paused on the newel post to see if anyone below was about to offer competition.

Morgan shook his head, silently angered that Mansfield had been able to commit such mayhem under all of their noses. But how? The man had seemed a hopeless drunk.

But then, how had Wilder and Radcliffe been able to create monsters from dead men?

Turning to McNary, he said, "You need to be certain you alert one of us, or Deputy Marshal Earp, if Mansfield returns. Do not try to detain him yourself."

Hearing Darling yelling for him downstairs, he looked to Daniel and Gabby. "I'll be right back. I didn't see anything of interest in that closet. Just some shabby clothes and an empty trunk."

He went downstairs.

Korpi watched Morgan go, then took off for the room where the men were gathered.

The swift swish of feathers heralded the raven's appearance in the room: avoiding Daniel's shoulder with a slick turn, Korpi landed on the bed. The bounce surprised her a little. "Kop!"

Korpi fluttered up on the end of the carpetbag and looked down at Clementine, then up at Gabby.

Daniel walked over to the bag and frowned at the sight of the carpet bag. He looked at Caleb at his command to McNary. "Well, we got rooms here, too. We can set up a watch in th' saloon fer this fella. Not that we know what he looks like." He watched Caleb leave. "Hank, what does this fella look like?"
This message was last edited by the player at 20:44, Wed 22 May 2013.

Hank seemed disturbed by what they found, but like the others, he seemed not to want to look in the bag. "Scraggly lookin' old fella. Paid up all his tab when he came in - about a week ago - probably was afraid he'd drink it all up. He's supposedly waitin' on somebody to wire him some money so he can buy a train ticket out west. You prolly seen 'im in there, all drunk all the time askin' folks to buy him a drink outta kindness. Lotta folks do. Now that I think about it, I ain't never seen him not drunk since the first day he got here."

He looked at the valise Daniel had set down. "What's that you got there?" Taking a look inside, he handed it to Gabby. It's full of surgeons tools
and a small back carrying case.

"Vodka!" Korpi replied to the mention of 'drunk', then tried to fiddle the carpet bag open. Distracted by the intriguing rattle of possible shinies, the raven craned to see, then decided to help the deputies look for the vodka whilst they were raiding this cache and hopped back down on the bed.

She picked up a corner of the untouched pillow and heaved it onto the floor to check underneath. "Vodka!"

Gabby looks at the surgical valise. "You know, I heard him muttering something earlier when Darling was talkin' to him." He runs a finger over the impression of a missing surgical knife. "He said he wanted to drown out the memories o' the war. Then he said somethin' about the attack on Jackson...how he was too drunk to stop it, then he ranted about how it wasn't right he'd done been beat like that..."

He looks up at McNary. "Did Mansfield seem particularly sweet on Suzy?"

He looks back over at Korpi, sitting on the bag. No, he wasn't about to open it up. Not yet.

"Not that I know of. He never had no money for payin' for girls no how. Suzy, she likes to get with them southern boys, but she don't do nothin' for free," he answered.

"Maybe he had a thing for her. Lookin' from afar, that sorta thing. He never said nothin' about it though."
This message was last edited by the player at 21:23, Wed 22 May 2013.

"Did he ever have any arguments with Paul Goodwin, then?"

Hank scratched his beard, thinking about it for a minute. "Well, not an argument, not exactly. So Clayton comes in beggin' for a drink the other day, Mr. Darlin' being so kind buys him one. He tried the same thing a few days ago with Paul, and Paul was pretty damn rude about it."

"How rude is pretty rude?"

Having thown the pillows on the floor and made a fair go of pulling back the blankets to prove there was no alcohol hidden in the bed, Korpi marched back over the covers (with a pause to bounce, just for the novelty) and resumed fiddling with the carpetbag.

"Well, I don't remember what he said, though I think I remember him callin' Mansfield a beggar and somethin' else that sounded nasty. To be fair, Mansfield is kind of a beggar...but still. Ain't no cause to be rude. Just don't buy the man no drink, and do what you do. Still, no cause to be killin' him over it neither."

Gabby nods slowly. "Yup. I'm sensin' a bit of a pattern...do you reckon you know of anyone else what might have given Mansfield cause to dislike 'em? Someone's life might depend on it."

In the background, a short amount of determined fiddling was rewarded with a soft *click* of the bag unlatching. Korpi tilted her head to look inside.

"Kow-WIP!" Korpi whooped, jumping away from the carrion just in case it wasn't properly dead, like the iron devil who'd been so convincingly corpselike at the bar. If the kikituk proved inanimate, well, she'd found those eyeballs first.
This message was last edited by the player at 12:14, Thu 23 May 2013.

"Honestly, I don't think there's anyone else. Plenty of folks done bought him drinks, or they didn't. He generally seemed a pretty peaceable fella, and didn't really take it the wrong way when they said no. Paul was the only one that got rude to him about it or anything else I've seen. Most folks just pity the drunken fool," he said.
This message was last edited by the player at 03:30, Wed 29 May 2013.

After another, smaller, jump-whoop test, Korpi settled on the bag hinge. The heavy beak darted down, coming up with an eyeball trailing a pale, surprisingly undecayed string of optic nerve.

Korpi swallowed it, then paused to aim and speared another, choking it back with great enjoyment...then plucked up a third eyeball, pulling at a stubborn string of flesh.

Gabby nodded. "Well, if you think of anyone..." Then he noticed the bird plucking more eyes than a head usually has.

Uh-oh.

Swallowing hard, he steels up his courage to shoo the bird away and check the actual contents of the bag.

Korpi lifted her hackles a bit, but was soon shoo'd off. Landing on the floor, she tilted her head this way and that, then pattered hastily over to the bedside.

Hoisting the sprawl of disordered bedclothes out of the way like a curtain, Korpi disappeared under the bed.

Daniel tried to give Korpi a soothing pat, then moved over near his uncle to peer at the contents of the bag as well.

As Gabby and Daniel looked at the carpetbag, it split open as what seemed to be a pair of ordinary hands tearing it open. Crawling out, each hand seemed to be stitched to a severed head, some of which were missing eyeballs now. The sounds of more bags ripping open could be heard, and from under the bed emerged heads attached to legs and arms, hands and feet, stitched together expertly, skittering towards Gabby and Daniel.

Gabby shouts in shock, but he already had his gun ready. "McNary!" he called to the shopkeeper as Clementine when howling out of the room. "Run! Get the Marshal!"

He himself backed up to the door. He wanted to close it after Danial got through, but the window was broken. These...things could get outside, and he was sure as shit not going to let them if he could help it.

So he took aim at one of the things and squeezed the trigger...

There was an alarmed "KAWK!" from under the bed, but a few moments later Korpi walked out, following a skittering kikituk. Jumping on it for momentum, she launched herself into the air and perched on the corner of the wardrobe to watch.

Daniel reached for his sword and extracted it from its sheath with lightning speed. He brought it down toward the head of one of the nearby...things and was satisfied with the result.

With a yelp, McNary was out of the room just after Clementine, yelling something that sounded like assent in response to Gabby's suggestion.

The heads that seemed to be walking on the ground on whatever appendage they were attached to skittered towards Gabby and Daniel, jumping and biting at them. One of each jumped up to get a quick bite at each of Daniel's legs, and one of them caught Gabby. One of the others jumped up to the windowsill and unlatched the window, gripping it.