The exchange with Jeb might have lingered in Jules' memory as a pleasant one, but as soon as he called her "Pretty Lady" and bid her farewell the conversation instantly soured with suspicion.  Was he making fun of her?  With her sunken eyes and froglike mouth, Jules knew better than to think herself any kind of a beauty, and had on more than one occasion had suffered the mocking advances of men who found it amusing to court the gangly presswoman, only to humiliate her later on.  Her muscles visibly tensed, and she could only mumble the faintest "afternoon" in response as she turned to the horses.<br/><br/>These, at least, the big redhead was sure she could trust, although the poor things were getting restless after all the excitement.  Well, there was nothing else for it but to hustle them down to the stables and see if some feed might cheer them up a bit.  Easily leading the quartet as though they were a herd of sheep, Jules found the proprietor of the stables cowering inside, clearly still terrified of the excitement outside.  Curiosity at a new face soon overtook the old caballero though, and with the aid of his teenage granddaughter serving as interpreter, the pair were able to come to a surprisingly pleasant arrangement.<br/><br/>After seeing the horses, old Guillermo was so impressed that he clumsily offered to buy the animals outright, albeit at a price that was almost insulting to good-natured Jules, and would have started and outright war with her older sister.  After some back and forth, it was agreed that Guillermo would have the right to hire out the horses and use them himself in exchange for covering the costs of feeding and stabling the beasts, along with paying 30% of any profit to the Barrow sisters until he could afford to buy the entire team for the tidy sum of four hundred dollars.  Jules' only other condition was that at least one of the horses be kept ready in case she or Jess needed to ride one, or that they would be given a different steed in its place if needed, to which Guillermo reluctantly agreed.<br/><br/>Satisfied at having established a small passive income for the business that would at least keep them from starving, Jules was just leaving the stables when she saw the tiny disheveled form of Jules barreling down the street towards her in a fury.<br/><br/>"There you are!  Where the fuck have you been?  What's all this I'm hearing about a robbery?" Jess shrieked as she stormed up to her sister, looking rather like David about to face a very confused Goliath.<br/><br/>"There was a robbery," Jules stated, inclining her head towards scene of the crime.  "At the bank."<br/><br/>"Anyone killed?"<br/><br/>"Don't think so."<br/><br/>"Don't think so, or don't know so?"<br/><br/>Jules crossed her arms over her chest and let out a huffy breath.  "I don't<i>believe</i>so, but I haven't had time to ask.  I've been seeing to the horses.  Old Guillermo down at the stable says he--"<br/><br/>"Unless Old Guillermo was a firsthand witness and is willing to give us a statement, I really don't give a fuck what he says," Jess interrupted, grabbing her sister by the wrist and pulling her back towards the barbershop.  "Come on, we've got work to do.  There's also been a cave-in up at the mine, at least nine dead and more missing.  I'll go write it up right now and that'll be front page top, we can put the bank robbery underneath.  You write up everything you saw, then I can go out and fill in the blanks while you edit mine.  I want to have at least two dozen editions out by tomorrow."<br/><br/>"What?"  Jules jerked her hand back sharply and stared at the editor.  "We can't put out an edition with two stories, Jess.  We'll be laughed out of town."<br/><br/>Looking back at her sister, Jess opened her mouth and was ready to unleash another torrent of scolds, but at that moment a small gust of wind picked up, sending dust into her open mouth and forcing her to cough until she realized Jules was right.  After helping herself to a dipper of water outside the general store, she took a deep breath and looked back at her partner with forced calmness, taking her more gently by the hand and leading her again towards the barbershop.<br/><br/>"You're right, we'll need some filler.  Pick some current events from the Chicago and St. Louis papers we picked up last week and we'll reprint them, they should still be pretty fresh.  For the inside, do a couple of those Mother Hubbard recipes that were so popular up in Rapid City, and a couple of your short stories--oh!  Remember that real blood-curdling one you wrote a couple years back, about the monster in the river?  Change that to a mine if you have time, we'll really lure 'em in then."  Both Jess' tongue and feet were beginning to quicken as she practically dragged her sister into the office.  "For the backpage we'll just do ads.  Four pages total, twenty four editions, unless you can do more.  We'll give 'em out free as samples in town to start subscriptions, and I'll start pounding pavement in the surround areas tomorrow afternoon.  Speaking of which," Jess paused as she sat down at a makeshift desk and looked out the window towards the street.  "What happened to the horses?"<br/><br/>Jules bit her tongue at that, but a short time later when Jess passed her a hastily scrawled draft of the report of the mine, the younger Barrow was particularly vicious with her excisions and comments, and Jess did not mention the matter again.<br/><br/>Later that afternoon, Jess could be seen flitting from door to door asking questions about the events of the robbery, only to be told on more than one occasion that "the other fella" had already been there asking his own questions.  Had she not felt the deadline pressing on her, the editor might have been more motivated to hunt down the mysterious interviewer, but instead she focused on filling in the gaps of Jules' account and was back at the office by sundown.  It did not occur to her again to ask Jules if anyone else had come by the office that day, or that someone might have called to sell a story while she was at the mine and the younger sister was busy at the stables.<br/><br/>It was a good thing that there seemed to be some kind of a big to-do going on across the street that night, otherwise the neighbors might have been troubled by the chugging sounds of machinery that began to kick up shortly before midnight and did not cease until well after.  A few curious parties stumbling out of the Dusky Belle did pause to peek in the open windows of the building, but the ink and dirt smeared faces of the exhausted women inside were so terrifying that they quickly went on their way.  It was nearly dawn by the time the office had gone quiet, with Jess curled up in her clothes on the mattress-less berth in the back room, and Jules passed out over a desk, her freckled cheek pillowed on a stack of test pages.<br/><br/>And next to the still-hot printing press, a box of neatly stack final editions, emblazoned with<b>ONYX LANDING SENTINEL ISSUE 1</b>across the top, waiting for the morning.