Jules nodded slowly at the woman's ascertainment that some men were indeed robbing the building down the street, not feeling it necessary to question that there were very few alternate events that involved gunfire within a bank.  Curiously enough her guest did not seem particularly alarmed at the developments taking place down the street, and instead was fixated on a large dog that seemed as equally unmoved at the commotion.  Still, the beast did manage to draw a more sympathetic reaction from the woman with the shotgun than might have been expected, all things considered.<br/><br/>"Oh the poor thing!" she gasped, lowering the gun and taking a cautious step out the door of the barbershop, gesturing for the woman to stay inside.  Crouching low, she began to whistle and click in an attempt to lure the dog into the safety of the building across the street, but it would seem the fellow was quite content to help himself to the water trough.  Either that, or he was waiting patiently for his mistress, whom the strange brunette was quietly miming in less-than-flattering fashion.  Straightening up, Jules raised one of her dark auburn brows in confusion.<br/><br/>"The eastern lady?  I didn't speak to her, but my sister did.  Was she injured?  Or...you can't mean you think she's a robber?"  For the first time since the shots had broken out, the tall woman actually smiled.  "She certainly seemed peculiar, but with the way she was dressed she couldn't need money."<br/><br/>Whether this statement had assured the dark-haired woman or she had suddenly found some new reserve of courage within her, Julia's guest departed as quickly as she came right back into the Dusky Belle, leaving the redhead staring as perplexedly behind her.<i>What in the world kind of town did you drag us to, Jess?</i>she wondered, wishing her sister would come back.  No doubt she would be in an awful mood once she'd heard what she'd missed, but from the looks of things down the street matters were quieting down somewhat.  She did notice the dog had disappeared, but there was still no blood in the dusty street and she could only hope he'd finally had the sense to flee to safety.<br/><br/>Even more reassuring was the sight a few minutes later of several familiar faces emerging from the bank, a few dusty, but all apparently unharmed.  Swallowing hard but keeping a close hand on her shotgun just in case, Jules stepped out into the street and approached the first person who did not look likely to shoot her in the face.<br/><br/>"Um...excuse me.  Is everything all right?  Do...do you need someone to fetch the sheriff?"  Not that she'd actually noticed a sheriff's office in town, but there had to be<i>some</i>representative of law enforcement, didn't there?  The town couldn't literally be lawless, could it?<br/><br/><div style="text-align: center">*****<br/>​</div><i>Henderson.  Reyes.  Diaz.  The Johnson brothers, three of them.  Chu and Chu -- relationship unknown (Ask at the brothel?).  Lafferty Senior.  Nine confirmed dead, three confirmed missing.  Names...</i><br/><br/>It would have been so much easier for Jess to nail down the specifics if she just could have had her pad and pencil out.  However, seeing as she was pretending to be Miss Angelica Prewitt of Kansas City, seeking her poor missing brother Dale, it would hardly seem appropriate to write down the details regarding several men who were absolute strangers to her.  Instead the reporter had to rely on her memory, engraving the names on her brain and trusting she would be able to learn who they were after the fact.<br/><br/>"As I said Miss, we've no record of a Dale Prewitt working here..." Mr. Jacobs repeated, growing a bit annoyed but unwilling to throw a sobbing woman out of the little shack that served as his office.<br/><br/>"Oh, but he might have been using a fake name!  He had creditors, you see, and a wife who was so horrid to him...I already saw the-the-the bodies outside."  Jess forced a shudder and practically willed the color out of her face.  "Those poor, poor souls, but I can at least take comfort in knowing that none of them is my dear big brother.  But I heard the others saying there were still three missing.  Couldn't Dale be one of them, using an alias?  Couldn't you tell me their names, and describe them to me?"<br/><br/>The foreman sighed, then began to rifle through some papers on the desk.  "Still missing:  Donald O'Leary, age forty-three.  Miguel Obrador, age thirty-five.  And Yin Li, age nineteen.  And considering every single one of those men is a good shade darker than you, Miss, I sincerely doubt any of them could be your missing brother."<br/><br/><i>Missing:  O'Leary, Obrador, Li.</i>It took all of Jess' fortitude not to throw her arms around the foreman's neck in joy.  If nothing else, she would have a column's worth of news for the town, with the promise of future subscriptions if she could find out exactly what had caused the collapse.  However, judging by the look on Mr. Jacobs' face, it did not seem likely he would be providing any further information at the moment.  Fine, it didn't look like he ever stepped foot in that dark, nasty-looking hole anyways.  She could get her answer elsewhere.<br/><br/>"Thank you, Mr. Jacobs.  You truly have calmed my nerves.  I must have gotten the town wrong, or something.  But to know Dale isn't one of the victims of this most unfortunate...accident?"  She couldn't help but hide the inflection in her voice.<br/><br/>"Of course it was an accident.  Now if you'll excuse me, Miss Prewitt, I'm a very busy man with a mine to reopen," the foreman snapped, sensing he had just been tricked into something, although he wasn't sure quite what.  Still, he did lend an arm as he led her to the door of the office, and watched her just long enough to see her starting down the road back to town.<br/><br/>But not long enough to see her circle around the edge of the camp and head right back into the throng of men, pen and paper back in hand and eyes sparkling like some bird of prey trying to spot out a rabbit a hundred feet away.  While there were no rabbits in sight, Jess' predatory gaze did fall upon one of the youngest miners she had seen so far, a sad-faced boy of about sixteen who was shakily trying to roll a cigarette near the corral where the mine's horses and mules were kept.<br/><br/>"Here honey, take one of mine," Jess remarked, replacing her notebook with a dented metal case from her pocket and offering him a pre-rolled cigarette of her own.  At first the boy eyed her suspiciously, but took one of the offered smokes all the same, striking a match on the bottom of his tattered boot.  When he saw the short woman sliding a smoke between her own lips, it seemed only gentlemanly to light hers as well, though he still didn't like the way she was looking at him.<br/><br/>"It's a bad business, isn't it?" she continued, undaunted by his sullen silence.  "I came up from town looking to sell some horses to the foreman, and I saw the bodies.  Did you know them well?"<br/><br/>After a moment of hesitation, the boy nodded.  "Jack was my bunkmate.  I worked opposite shifts of him."<br/><br/>Jack...<i>Henderson</i>.  Probably the youngest looking of the bodies, missing the left arm and the right leg.  Not a good way to die.  These facts confirmed in her mind, Jess let out a gasp and laid a hand on his shoulder.  "Oh you poor thing, I'm so sorry...it could just as well have been you down there, couldn't it?"<br/><br/>"I dunno.  I guess."<br/><br/>"Are there often cave-ins down there?  Seems awfully dangerous to send boys your age into such a dangerous area."<br/><br/>At this the boy seemed to take a little offense, and puffed his chest out a bit.  "I'm eighteen, lady.  I'm not a kid.  And it's a new shaft, the old ones aren't scary at all."<br/><br/>"Maybe," the woman conceded, fingering her notebook in her pocket and wondering if she dared take it out in front of him.  "I know I'd be scared of spending too much time in those tunnels.  I bet some of them go all the way to China."<br/><br/>This seemed to get the boy to laugh.  "It wouldn't surprise me.  Jack was telling me there's this one hole, he accidentally dropped a lantern down it once.  Boss almost fired him on the spot, he could have blown us all to kingdom come.  But the lantern went down the hole, and it just kept going and going...he never did hear it hit bottom.  Don't for the life of me know where it is though.  And Jack...guess he won't be tellin' neither."  His face fell again.<br/><br/>"I'm so sorry, honey.  If you want to talk about it, maybe we could have a drink sometime?" Jess offered gently, laying a hand on his arm.  "My name's Jess, what's yours?"<br/><br/>"Pete," the boy introduced with a blush, clearly not expecting such an invitation from a woman her age.  For a moment, he wondered if she might be a new girl from the Dusky Belle, but he'd spent more than his share of pay there, and he didn't think she looked the type.  He was about to ask where she'd come from when he saw her visibly freeze, looking at something on the edge of the camp.<br/><br/>It was a man on horseback, just as much of a stranger as Jess herself.  But the reporter rarely forgot a face, and she knew she had seen that one near that snooty Huntington girl earlier that morning.  What in the world could he be doing up here?  Well, there was only one way to find out.<br/><br/>"Would you excuse me a moment, Pete?" Jess smiled, patting him on the shoulder before approaching the big man on the horse.  "Well say there friend, who are you supposed to be, the undertaker or the marshal?  Seems like they might need both up here."  There was a half-assed attempt at injecting a joking tone into her voice, but her face was noticeably cool, even a little suspicious.  The man didn't look like much of a reporter, and if she had to guess the blonde back down in the town wasn't exactly a literary type, let alone a journalistic one.  Still, Onyx Landing was supposed to be<i>her</i>claim, and she'd be damned if the Barrow sisters got driven out of yet another town by some slick competition.