Five years prior...<br/><br/>* ~ ~ *<br/><br/>Somewhere a few hours after noon, he figured...the shadows and the sun were right for it.  That meant he'd been riding for a good fifteen hours now, since midnight, and he felt every minute of it.  Jezebel was soldiering along, but her head was hanging somewhat, and he couldn't blame her.  It wasn't the weather—the fine, cool sort you would expect in higher-up rugged mountain terrain like this—it was the mileage.  Shit, they both had that, for what it was worth.  And he expected a good deal more before the end, too.<br/><br/>The town was up ahead.  He'd already passed some few mining claims with their tents, some half-assed shacks, a few farmsteads, scraping by on the uneven soil of the area, and a couple of sheepherders, too, men who appeared to be from that place between Spain and France he had learned about so many years ago...ah, whatever they were, they spoke neither Spanish<i>nor </i>French, so he couldn't converse a lick with 'em.<br/><br/>He reached the beginnings of a road, if a wider dirt track could be called such.  At least it wasn't mud.  He loved rain, but mud he could do without.  The rain invigorated him, but mud always got him melancholy...it reminded him of Alice.  The very thought irritated him, and he switched Jezebel with the reins, which elicited a slight pickup of speed and an annoyed nicker.<br/><br/>A very coarse and varied collection of buildings straddled the few roads into town...the main one coming up from the prior valley, up over the ridge line into the next valley over; what name, he couldn't recall.  The buildings, while rapidly built, were sturdy, made of the local oak, which stood up fine and strong to the varied weather the local mountains could throw at you.  The place wasn't all sunshine and gold, like so many of the Eastern papers crowed about.  He already knew about the terrible winter storms the mountains of the area could produce.<br/><br/>He edged by other riders and those on foot.  He took a few minutes to size up the residents and visitors of the town: Welsh miners from across the sea; grizzled Mexican gold hunters; hardened Eastern travelers with experience aplenty, but still dressed in their road-worn, Eastern-appropriate clothing; Chileans with their sarape-like outerwear and their conditioning to high altitudes; German, French, and Italian diggers from the Alps, each with their own varying, though similar regalia; the occasional black, free and seeking their second bonanza after freedom; a handful of Chinese miners, always in a group, mistrusted by most.  What he wanted to see was how many women were in he area.<br/><br/>Women were not as common as men in the territories.  It would take a strong woman to maintain anything more than a subsistence kind of life out here—or a strong man to protect her from the hungering hordes of horny males, always ready to overlook humanity for a quick sample of why they really searched for gold.  Now, he knew most women were already strong...he'd read enough of his history, and knew life was the shitty end of the stick for women in general; here in the frontier, women's lots in life tended to go backwards rather than forwards.  It wasn't a condemnation of women; it simply was what it was.  He didn't like much of it, but he was a practical man, and commanding the tide to roll out was not his kind of behavior.<br/><br/>He rode up to a boarding house, and climbed wearily from the saddle.  He didn't even glance at the sign above the door, so tired was he.  He knew that at the moment he was safe, and that was all that mattered at that moment.  Okay, not all...a bath and a hot meal sounded damn good, as well as a soft bed and some well-deserved sleep in comfort.  He opened the door and went in, fully expecting to be asleep in less than an hour.<br/><br/>She came into the front of the building just as he entered the front door; likely the wife of the proprietor.  She didn't glance up at him as she quoted the prices for lodging at her and her husband's hostel, but he was a good judge of people with a solid look; she was very petite, and her hair was pinned back and her dress sleeves rolled up--she was a hard worker, and just what he'd expect from anyone out here on the frontier, especially a woman.  But there was more to her than that, more even than her diminutive height, which had immediately caught his attention; ever since he'd first had his eye drawn to women, it'd been the small ones who did his heart the most damage.<br/><br/>And this little lady was measuring up to be a foot taller in everything else about her he could see.  As she made her way behind the counter, he watched the way she carried herself--not too proudly, but certainly not beaten down by life...saw the switch in her hips and knew she was a woman with passions, but noted the way she held her lips and understood it to mean she'd held her passions in check for quite a while, too.  When she reached the counter and turned to him, she looked up, as he was big enough a man at almost six foot and a half, but in his boots he towered higher still.  When her eyes were revealed to him as she raised her head to face him, all the inputs in that dusty mining town made a motley background...the variegated sounds, the collection of smells, and the filtered, dust-filled light...all were pushed far out of his mind when he saw those blue-grey pools of languid femininity.  He'd been unprepared for such a surprise--here in the little mining town of Onyx Landing, why would he expect to find such a beautiful pair of eyes?<br/><br/>Instead, he was rescued by her own welcoming words, and her monotone had to be forgiven, if she lived in a part of the world where a female speaking with kindness was assumed to be either a whore, or just as good as one.  But to him she was like an oasis in some far-off Arabian dune sea, completely unexpected and most welcome.  When she finished her pitch, he lifted off his dusty, moderately-brimmed hat, ran his hands through his unkempt brown hair, and looked her back in the eye.<br/><br/>"Your rates sound fair enough to me, ma'am.  I'd like to pay for three days, in advance, and for my laundry."  He pulled the silver dollar coin out of the long, thick wallet he carried in a pocket of the cloak, and laid it quietly on the counter, scratching his five-day beard.<br/><br/>She took his payment, noted it in the record book, and nodded silently.<br/><br/>If he'd been in the East, in Baltimore, or Boston, or Philadelphia, a man would have been a fool not to take the opportunity this lady presented to him...if she'd been unattached.  Hard working, dressed in her scrubbing clothes or not, he could tell just by the way her dress shifted on her that she had a figure to make a man walk twenty miles to bring her water.  In the East, she'd have had a hoop skirt, and a parasol, and a smart, flower-and-ribbon-bedecked little hat pinned to her hair, which most likely would have been made up to enhance the natural charm of her face.  She'd also have had a corset cinching up her waist--not that she needed any such thing to give her body more appeal--and that would have also hidden her breasts but at the top, where her cleavage would have been bursting from the seams of the top of her dress.  Right now, her dress was clinging to her breasts in a very appealing way, most likely from the honest sweat she wore, and bras still had another thirty years before they were invented, so the outline of them was quite apparent under the clinging calico.  All in all, she was, for a man who'd been riding, running, gunning, and disappearing for three years, a pleasant sight.<br/><br/>He swept his sarape-like overcloak off of his right shoulder and extended his hand to her.  "Elias Horne.  Pleased to make your acquaintance."<br/><br/>She didn't offer her own name, but took his hand and stiffly shook it.  "Pleased to make your acquaintance as well, Mr. Horne. If you'll excuse me? I needs get the broom to sweep up the traveling dust."<br/><br/>He realized he hadn't dusted himself off before he'd come in.  If he'd done that as a boy, he'd been switched fifty times and gone to bed without supper.  "Pardon me, ma'am, but I'll be the one that sweeps up that dust," he spoke, though with his exacting voice, it almost rang out as a command, "a man has to take care of his mistakes."  He paused just a moment, realizing how ironic the last nine words sounded, considering the last three years.  He held his hand out for the broom, and looked back into her eyes.<br/><br/>"I'm thinking not, Mr. Horne," she replied in a voice that mimicked his own, "Not so much a mistake as it was wanting to get to where a body is going and needing to take care of business," she said, not unkindly. "Besides, Thomas wouldn't approve if I let a man do a woman's work."<br/><br/>Chuckling, he nodded.  "I'll be needing to put Jezebel in the stable across the street, and bring in my saddle bags and clothes to be laundered."<br/><br/>He had to laugh a little as he went back out the front door.  He remembered how much he'd feared punishment as a boy; now, as a man, there were still punishments, but not of the sort where you were told not to do it again...they were much more permanent.  He used his big, workworn, but agile hands to clean his clothing as well as he could manage, and his hat, too.  Then he opened his saddlebags and removed what clothing he had to his name.  Most of it was similar to the gear he had on at present, but there was also the silk shirt, ribbon tie, collar, pants, coat, and fine shoes in one bag he did not remove; that was a memento of bygone days.  He didn't wear the suit anymore, but everything else was collected just fine, and stored away in his mind.<br/><br/>Returning to the front door, he entered and placed the laundry on the counter.  She was no longer there, but it was just as well.  If there was one thing he didn't cotton to, it was imposing on another man's woman.<br/><br/>Regardless of certain peoples' opinion to the contrary.<br/><br/>He left again, exiting through the front door and untying Jezebel from the hitching post, only to cross the street and get her set up in<i>La Casa del Caballos</i>--The House of Horses.  It was, he learned, owned by an older Spanish ex-miner from the southwest Apenines named Guillermo Baltasar, who was wise enough to get out of the gold mining 'business' and into a real one that promised a real future.  Knowing Spanish made a world of difference out here in California, and his respectful manner to all types of people earned him more respect back, as well as knowledge and--more often than not--secrets that would have taken much longer to figure out.  It would help him out in the coming months...and more, if he was lucky enough.<br/><br/>When he got back to the hostel, he went to his room only long enough to put his bags and rifle in a corner, then locked the door and headed for the washroom.  Opening the door, he gazed around as he closed the door behind him--it was neat and clean and had every indication it was kept by a conscientious woman.  A few shelves of cleaning supplies, extra towels, and copper kettles and what-not lined the room; one small, round, three-legged table held a vase of freshly picked poppies and other wildflowers.  The proprietors probably paid some of the few children around town to pick them for them.  On one side of the room was a stone fireplace with a kettle hanging from a wrought iron stand, boiling happily.  The small copper washtub in the center of the stone-floored room was as inviting a thing as he'd seen in many a month.  Mountain streams only served so well as baths--civilized man needed hot water to truly bathe with.<br/><br/>Stripping off his boots, gun belt, and other accoutrements, he slid off his soiled clothes and stretched, enjoying the freedom of nakedness, then poured a few of the buckets of fresh water next to the tub into it, finally retrieving the kettle with the mitts beside the fire and pouring all of its steaming contents into the bath as well.  Finally, he pulled his Peacemaker out of its holster, checked the chambers to be sure it was fully loaded, and picked up his hat.  Then, slowly, he eased himself into the tub, his length requiring him to keep his legs bent and his knees fairly high out of the luxurious water.  Placing his hat between his knees, he laid his pistol in it, keeping both handy and dry.<br/><br/>He'd bathed in this fashion for too long now, and it was second nature anymore.  Here, on the other side of the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, and the Great Basin, he was considerably safer than he had been at other times in his life, but a careful man--a man who counted life as one of his most prized possessions--never let his guard down.  He was fairly certain he was quite safe at the moment, and maybe for the rest of his life, but 'fairly certain' had been 'downright wrong' before, so the hat and gun stayed where they were while he both washed and soaked.  Finally, when he was clean as a whistle, he stretched as much as he was able, lay back, enjoying the warmth of the water, and closed his eyes.  In this way, his mind relaxed and filled with plans...plans of his future, which were many and complicated, even for a currently dusty, busy little mountain mining town.<br/><br/>It was a good place to start again.