Logan didn't snarl, or make any other canine noises for that matter.

"Oh, I'm aware they're up to no good, but at the same time I ain't gonna brook your interference in the prosecution of justice in the case I'm working on," he said.

"If you ain't a vigilante, what does that make you? You replace Bullock as the Marshal in this town?"

In reply to Logan West (msg # 288):

"When people shoot at me, bullets or otherwise, I tend to take it personal." Zek said, glaring. "When they kill a bunch of innocent people just because they are clumsy fuck assassins..." He pauses, and tips his hat to the ladies present. "Beg yer pardon of my french." He glares back at Logan. "...I take that real personal too. It's a bit odd you care more about the Whateley's tender feelings than the trail of bodies they leave behind!"
This message was last edited by the player at 22:10, Wed 18 Jan 2017.

Logan didn't get upset, despite the man's unpleasant demeanor.

"So basically, you're a vigilante. If you kill folks outside the color of law, you'll be a murderer. See, I've got responsibilities as a lawman. I have to take people into trial and hang 'em proper. You keep your act up, might be the suspect in my next case," he said.

In reply to Logan West (msg # 290):

"I will let you know when that frightens me." Zek said. "Unless your law changed a man's right to defend himself against deranged killers, I think you are the problem here. Your law don't mean much to people like the Whateleys. They are rich enough to buy and sell a hundred of you, and most likely have done so with plenty of so-called Lawman." He spits again. "And if they can't buy you off, they kill you with their mojo. Like bringing Saloons to life and ripping people apart inside of them."
This message was last edited by the player at 22:27, Wed 18 Jan 2017.

The Welshman clears his throat at Zek's shoulder. "See you, with Bullock out of pocket just now and king Custer not exactly complying to federal standards of justice, it sounds to me like a U.S. Marshal with the power to deputise and call on state infomation might be someone to make friends with," he suggests, looking anxiously at the flaming building, then moving to try and get between the vigilante mountain man and the law.

"Murdering supposed murderers is all very well in theory, but then what if you, say, try to come for me because I don't know the half of what my crazy family are up to? That didn't go so well, now, did it?"

"This fellow has the power to get warrants, see you: when it's legal and civilised, see, you even get paid."

Broaddale snorted derisively. "Mojo and living buildings? I didn't know they delivered the Epitaph this far out."

Matt grinned when Maddox stepped up.

"Now that is the spirit. We're all on the same side, here. This man here wants to catch up with the- Did you say Whateleys? - and give them some justice, and Marshal, I'm sure if these people are half the monsters he says they are, they could do with some iron cufflinks and a hemp tie at sundown, right? We all just want justice, see the law done, right?"

Matt turned over his shoulder to Daisy.

"Did you say white suit? Dark glasses, long black hair? Top hat?"

In reply to Maddox (msg # 292):

"I don't care about gold and I don't care about the law. It's never helped before-only helps those that can afford it." He said bitterly.

"And if I recall, Maddox, you handed me over to yer crazy kin-just like a Christmas goose." He glared at him. "You just made a good argument on how clueless you where about it. And provided proof...like now." He rolled his eyes.

"Did you get Wild Bill before he wandered off, Maddox? You know he will need more of the medicine, right?" He shakes his head. "You had one damn job..."



Zek looked over at the new man, grumbled something about lawmen spreading like a rash under his breath, but does not make any other comment at the Marshal's words.
This message was last edited by the player at 22:45, Wed 18 Jan 2017.

Broaddale's head snapped back to Zek and Maddox so fast he looked like he'd been slapped.

"Wild Bill? Medicine? Explain," he ordered, uncharacteristically aggressive.

Zek sighed. "I can't. Not in a fashion you would believe, anyways." He looked at Broddale's badge on his shirt. "Just know he's back to his old self...for now. He does not get the medicine, he will become Rabid Bill again. And then a army of lawmen won't be able to stop him. Not without the right gun anyways. So unless you got the medicine man who makes what Bill needs, or that one special gun, everyone is at risk."
This message was last edited by the player at 22:57, Wed 18 Jan 2017.

"Things were on fire!" Maddox bursts out with utter exhasperation, waving broadly at the saloon. "-and I didn't know about that house thing at all! See you, it pains me just as much as you that they took Jane and vanished, that's why I'm trying to help! If you want the law to look after you, you have to be part of the law!"

In reply to Maddox (msg # 297):

"That's a lie!" Zek snarled. "The law takes care of its own, or whoever feeds it. There are thousands of innocent poor people, dead or in prison, who give truth to that. Just because you believe the law is something other than a tool of the rich and powerful, don't assume that the rest of us live with that delusion."

Matthew's serious face continued.

"That's an interesting tale, Sir. Hickok is dead, backshot by the fugitive Jack McCall. If you're talking about that man back there, is he going around claiming to be a dead man? What gun are you talking about?"


He turned to Maddox, "Jane? Someone was abducted?"

He let Zek talk, then butt in.

"I don't appreciate your suggestion."

He waited a little bit, not wanting to jump into the dispute between the vigilante and the European fella. Then he spoke to Maddox.

"You had the right idea, earlier. Legal and civilized. I don't jump out with my gun first unless there's folks like Carter in play, that aren't easy to take down and don't seem to wanna go quietly. I understand it got wild in there. Name's Logan West," he said, extending a hand to Maddox.

"Grey suit, 'n like that," Daisy confirms, watching things burn and waiting for the blast.

James kept moving, not wanting to get swept up in the happening of the saloon as he needed to go find his father's pistol. "Fuck ... I got to go back out there..." he mutters to himself as he puts distance between himself and the arguing mass of law dogs, bounty hunters, and others.

Zek took each question in turn.

"The gun that Jack McCall used is the only other thing you can use on that man, along with a more peaceful option of the medicine. You don't believe me, and he goes Rabid again, and you try to stop him? It will be the last thing you do." He did not say the words in a threatening tone-he sounded tired, and sad.

"Yes...Jane. The person who knows where McCall's gun is. Which is why the  Whateley's have her." Zek replies.

When Broddale says he does not appreciate Zek's suggestion, Zek narrows his eyes and snorts. "Then I guess you aint an Indian control officer. Those 'lawmen' get paid by the head. Of the Indians they can round up. And of course, the side benefit of being able to take their time with the women and the children. All nice and legal." He said, his voice low and feral.
This message was last edited by the player at 23:48, Wed 18 Jan 2017.

"Roger Sebastian was here?" Matt blurts somewhat tactlessly.


At the mention of McCall's weapon, Matt reflexively grabbed at the handle of McCall's knife, still tucked in his belt.

"And we're sure Jane is the only one who knows? I saw McCall the other day. Lost him in the Fairchild house. Has he shown his face since then?" Matt felt like he was playing catch-up, but reminded himself that the sensation was neither new, nor undeserved.



Matthew's suddenly darkened expression told Zek quite clearly that the Marshal's opinion of this "nice and legal" practice mirrored Zek's own. He considered parroting the party line: The Union government does not condone blah, blah, blah, but thought better of it.

"What's your name, friend?" he said to Zek.

"Victor Maddox," the Welshman says, leaning to take the offered hand with a firm if weary grip.

He sighs, addressing Broddale. "The Hickock fellow, well...he seems t'have some kind of split personality there, two sides of the legend I suppose. Well, he convinced Calamity Jane, he did, that Swearengen needed takin' down by force, and not by law, see you-" he gives Zek a pointed look, "-and got her to set fire to the Gem whilst he went about killing...everyone. You probably heard about that. Marshal Bullock was indisposed on account of being kidnapped by some kind of cult, or his wife was, I don't know the details, and the jail was toast."

"So when I arrested a very drunk Calamity Jane, see you, I asked Starkweather-" he nods at Zek "-to watch over her in a house my distant relatives had assured me was a place of safety. He says they and/or the house tried to kill and quite possibly eat him...which might, unfortunately, have some basis in fact, now I've looked into more of my cousin Sebastian's doings. Regardless as to how it went by there, Jane was left in the house, and due to some kind of...hypnotic suggestion or something, we can't find it." He turns his palms upward to show he knows how ridiculous it sounds, but has no better way to put it.

Zek, left mostly ignored after his rant on the theoretical victims of a corrupt legal system, finally gets a tired, sidelong look. "Pretendin' your system is that corrupt, how the bloody hell does being an outlaw an' roaming about murderin' on your own say-so make it better, see you? If you cared about the people of your country, you wouldn't be takin' their choices and their lives in a hell-for-leather race to Perdition, you'd be proving the guilt of the guilty, saving the innocent, and engaging in the system to bring about reform: like I've been trying to enfranchise the Oriental immigrants to give them someone to turn to besides that pirate rail baron."

"You can't just say, 'well I don't like the way they run it, I guess I'll just bugger off and leave them doing the thing I don't like' then get all self-righteous when other people do the same and this time it hurts you! No-one has the right to go judge-and-jurying on anyone else, an' I'd hold your President or the richest man out there to that same as I would a horse thief." Maddox's Whateley green eyes are cold and serious.

"Yeah, an' Wells tangled with his brother, too," Daisy adds in.

She looks a little confused at Zek's description of Union-sponsored native-hunting. "Pretty sure the scalpers is Wasatch," she opines. "Though I heard Custer was settin' up for a gold dollar a scalp, 50c fer females n' kid 'uns. Devil knows how he'll pay it, though. Rumour is he wants to, heheh, scalp the Chinese. Kin ye picture how Kang'd take that?"
This message was last edited by the player at 00:20, Thu 19 Jan 2017.

He shook hands and listened to Maddox go on about his sense on things. He didn't figure there was much he could do for the angry man.

Turning back to Broaddale, he joined Daisy in her confirmation.

"Yeah, Roger Sebastian was here. I don't know much about his brother or the rest of his kin, though certainly our vigilante here intends to put paid to 'em. But in any case, Roger Sebastian is my suspect, and I intend to bring him in for trial. If you've got business with him as well, maybe we can talk about it."

In reply to Maddox (msg # 305):

Zek snorts at Maddox's speech. "Must be a nice world you live in, Maddox. Cause I have never seen it. You should show me the way there someday. Other than in your dreams of course. And I am not laying down, giving myself a dirt blanket, giving up. You are not a burnt cinder, for example. And by the way, I can find the house-once they move it again and leave a trail."


When Broaddale asks for Zek's name, he raised an eyebrow. It had been a while. "I am Ezekial Starkweather, Marshal Broaddale. If you know where McCall is, then you need to slap him in a cell posthaste. He won't last if Bill finds him, Rabid or no. He may be able to use any gun to bring Bill down, worst comes to worst."

When Daisy Corrects Zek, he just narrows his eyes at her and says nothing else about it.

"You give up on the law, see you, you give up on the people's right to be protected by law. If you dwell in darkness from your own cynicisim you should try making a light, you ought, not go stamping out others'." He blinks. "You think they moved the house? What, the thing has legs does it now?"

"Bullock said McCall was dead. Or possibly undead, but I was drinking by then and I think I bloody well deserved it after those mercenary fellows and the freak tornado."

((OOC: Yikes, that's a ton of postage. Alrighty...))



"Might wanna start believin' in ghost stories, seein' as you're in one." Wells smirks.



"Reckon the aftershow was more explosive."



"You..." Jackie says, then snarls. "You blithering idiot!"

Then she slaps Zeke across the face. It's more of an open-handed punch, really. It's hard enough to sting, at least.

"Do you have any idea what sort of a motherfucking moron you are!? Your goddamn gallivanting got people killed in there! You had to try to take the law into your own hands -- you and that bounty hunter! And for what!? What did you achieve, aside from mayhem and destruction!? Huh? Tell me! Tell me how the goddamn law don't work when you won't even give it a goddamn chance and decide to set off unstable powderkegs 'cause you think you're some sort o' moral authority!"

There's a cough from the barricade.

"'Scuse me, ma'am." Wild Bill Hickok says, hand resting on the butt of his remaining pistol. "I'd appreciate it if you didn't manhandle my friend there -- I owe him. If he hadn't got that stuff down my gullet, I do believe you'd all be dead by my hand. That's what he's done, ma'am."
This message was last edited by the player at 00:43, Thu 19 Jan 2017.

In reply to Maddox (msg # 309):

"Save it for the preacher's pulpit, 'Brother' Maddox. Some of us ain't buying it no more. I got first hand experience, which is more educational than pretty words based on things that don't happen." Zek said while rolling his eyes.

"As for the house moving-Crap, Maddox! How many times does weird stuff have to happen to you first hand before you finally realize some things are not in those wordy books you read! Telling you what things can and cannot be! Men have been spouting crap for all of history, and all of history they get it dead wrong."

It was then Jackie hits him...out of nowhere. She feels nothing but cold, dead flesh, and Zek looks at her. Not with anger, not even a tinge. He looks tired, and his voice reflects that-although still having angry words without passion. "You don't know me-nor what I seen. Nor what I done. You don't get to judge me. I..."


Then Wild Bill cuts him off.

"Bill!" Zek walks past the others, and heads over to him. "You gotta come with me. I don't know how long it will last. You know I can't stop you without the gun, and the old man is the only other option. You gotta do it! There are too many folk who already paid the price..."
This message had punctuation tweaked by the player at 00:49, Thu 19 Jan 2017.

Daisy had decidedly perked at Wells' outburst of violence, but at the sound of Hickock's voice she's suddenly got her rifle unslung and ready, backing up against Matt.