<span class="bbc_u"><strong>Sisterhood of Mischief</strong></span><br/><br/>(this is a work in progress with Galanoder.  Expect many edits and updates)<br/><br/>The railhead bore the unlikely name of Rancho Verde--there were no ranches immediately nearby, and it certainly wasn't a green oasis in the endless dry and hardpan landscape.  It was where the railway was coming through, though, and so it was where the local cattle drives ended.  That made it a cattle town, sure enough, and that meant that it made money off of the cowboys...and their collective vices.<br/><br/>Front Street and Main were respectable enough, but saloons and brothels accounted for most of the buildings past Calhoun and Third Street...crowded into the Devil's Quarter by town ordinance and the everpresent eyes of the local lawmen.<em>Within</em>the Quarter, anything went, and so long as the various dens of sin contributed to the town's coffers, the Sheriff was disinclined to investigate anything that happened to cowboys and transients.  So it was that a man willing to tip well and keep his head down could easily vanish into the demimonde for a time with nobody the wiser for it.  (Of course, a man unwilling to tip and looking for a fight could also easily vanish, but would be less likely to resurface alive and well.)<br/><br/>Rancho Verde had a different problem, though.  Rumors of a new outlaw gang proved all too true when a band of hooded men rode in to town and robbed both banks at the same time, having torched the Grand Hotel to cover their crime.  The posse that followed them up into the hills returned only a few survivors who babbled about some great ape-like beast that bushwacked them.  And when the gang struck again, putting outlying towns to the torch and ransacking homesteads?  Word got around--and where word went, hunters soon followed.<br/><br/>The Lame Duck Saloon was not the sort of place that showed up in the town's promotional literature, as deep in the Quarter as it was.  That night, though, it was uncommonly subdued...and the reason was easily visible from the front door.  There, in the middle of the floor, there was a Celestial with flame red hair, drinking copiously and carrying on a conversation with a monkey that sat on the table across from her, eating nuts from a bowl.  Beside the slender woman, slumped unconscious in their seats, were a number of cowhands who had learned the painful way that she wasn't for rent.  The rest of the patrons gave her a wide berth, watching with great and morbid interest every time someone new entered through the swinging doors and approached that table...<br/><br/>