Fuck.<br/><br/>She was going to be a problem. If he were perhaps twenty years younger and about ninety years less jaded, he might’ve smiled at the way she called his bluff and flung it back toward him. Instead, he sounded another stiff grunt, bridled at the Finn and turned slightly to Miller whose face was locked in a comical grimace of uncertainty for the woman. Clint’s mind went to the inevitable meeting between his young ward and the adamant little thing before him and the potential for disaster that could bring. While she excelled in more fields than many her age, diplomacy hadn’t ever been one of Missy’s strong suits.<br/><br/>Or concerns.<br/><br/>Usual silence that followed the second pop did little to assuage his need to return to town. While it could’ve been anything; the unemployed loosing a few rounds in their unexpected furlough, the settling of a matter that nowhere near concerned the Huntington party, it was a sour note on an already foul tune. One that Clint would be glad to forget when the mine, the town and all its denizens proved to be nothing more than his earlier summation: a hole in the ground. A time and money sink that, eventually, Missy would bore of. Still, with the assumed Miss Prewitt eyeing him and indecision only a fool’s preference, he gave a single nod.<br/><br/>“I don’t know about you, Miller, but I don’t think we can leave a lady stranded.”<br/><br/>“Uh,” Miller articulated, only glancing briefly at the long walk back. “no, no. Of course not, sir.” He dismounted without much thought, brushing off the saddle and stepping aside. “He’s an even-tempered beast, Miss. Shouldn’t give you any trouble.”<br/><br/><div style="text-align: center">~​</div><br/>He’d taken them -more or less- the way he’d come in, preferring a low cut, down the shallowest slope of the mountain that offered a better panorama of the valley below and the smattering of dusty shacks. Too far still to make anything out clearly, he kept a quick pace, squinting through lenses and sunlight toward what might’ve been figures, milling about the town center. Near the station, their personal conveyance had finally been moved to a set of auxiliary tracks and work on their camp appeared to be moving along swiftly enough. He and his men had repeated this operation a dozen or so times in the two years the young Miss Huntington had decided that globetrotting (or at least continent trotting) was a better use of her time than wasting away on a plantation in Savannah.<br/><br/>Move in. Set up. Find the nearest throat and grip it.<br/><br/>Most people talked before it came to that third step, preferring the tangential splendor that came with a Huntington arrival or having been made aware of what impeding their process meant. Either amounted to the same outcome, typically speaking. And neither had been much of an issue before. Granted, a few other snatched up properties and plots from East to West coast weren't quite the same level of get as an entire town and nearly operating mine.<br/><br/>"You're with the big woman." He'd said, not really offering much room for objection. "Saw her on the way in. Printing press too. And unless you've been trying your hands at hobbies, seeing which sticks, all that mess under your nails means you've been at it a while. You might have a brother or a father I didn't see down there, but I doubt it." Slowing their pace once satisfied that whatever had occured below was sorted, he continued. "You've been riding a while, back wheels were nearly worn down to the post. 'Nother week, you might've been stranded in the desert."<br/><br/>They weren't so much questions as they were estimations that he'd arrived at. A game he played with himself and a usually indignant and wholly uninterested Missy. Maybe one that she'd take more readily to. They were nearly into town then, rounding the outer shacks toward what passed as the main thoroughfare to what would eventually find them at the bank.<br/><br/>"So, Miss Prewitt, if that is your name." He flashed her a look that heavily suggested he doubted this as well. "What's your business?" He rolled through the question, inferring any answer she gave would be subject to proportional scrutiny, be it a half-truth or some other cocktail like it. She was far from the slithering, headline slingers he and Missy's father had contended with on the latter's climb to power. Their fascination with that they deemed the truth had usually only extended about as far as their arms before both broke. He wondered if she would incur a break if it meant squeezing a drop of juice from him or any of his men.<br/><br/>Her clothing showed an influence from the East. Chicago, maybe. Further, even, though her cadence was difficult for him to peg down. She spoke the way Missy might've had she not come from the south and hadn't been hammered into a shape entirely not of their world. Quickly, as though they certainly believed everything that poured forth from their lips. And why shouldn't you?<br/><br/>He'd known women from Chicago. They were ...difficult. Much the same could have been said about particular women from Georgia as well.<br/><br/>Her eyes told him yes, to the break. The ease with which she'd mounted the Finn said he'd have a hard time catching her first.<br/><br/>If he was twenty years younger...<br/><br/>She'd had his attention until they rounded a structure and were presented with the leavings of the the botched robbery. Blood, and lots, had congealed into a thick, black substance that Clint wasn't sure was still called mud. He preferred not to think too greatly on it, instead pulling ahead of Jess, clipping off whatever she may have been saying. Circling wide, he'd eye the chaotic happening of bootprints and the story they told. Mingled about with wide sprays in the sand and blood from very large paws, he didn't need much more.<br/><br/>"You should have a weapon." He stated as a point of fact.<br/><br/><div style="text-align: center">~<br/>​</div>He cannot see. He can only feel. His hand is pressed firmly to the rough, rocky wall of the outer mine shaft. He smells fresher air. He cannot remember how he stumbled this far down the hole. Thirst, he thinks. It motivates him toward the pump outside the mine entrance to drink before he walks to town.<br/><br/>Why had he followed what he heard? Voices, calling him. No. Calling<i>his</i>name. Higgins he thinks. The hell was he doing up here? He'd shirked his duty to unload that unruly beast from it's crate and bring it to Miss...<br/><br/>...<br/><br/>He isn't sure of her name. He remembers her hair. He has known more patient hornets.<br/><br/>Higgins isn't in the mine. His voice was never there. How had he gotten so far down? He'd kept his goddamn hand on the wall the entire time. It is sunset when he emerges, shaking and bewildered; voices still echoing behind his skull. He vomits. Drinks from the pump. Vomits again. His eyes burn and the surface of his mind sears.<br/><br/>Miller wants to scream, but cannot. He feels the weight of the revolver at his side. He remembers how to use it. Slowly, laboriously, he begins to walk down the hill. Toward the small lights as they flicker against a growing darkness.<br/><br/>Toward voices he is more certain he hears.