<div class="floatleft">(https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/d/de/Nash_bilton.png)</div><br/><strong>Name:</strong>Sheriff Nash Bilton<br/><strong>Faction:</strong>Law Dogs (5) Sheriff<br/><strong>Date:</strong>May 11th, 1876<br/><strong>Time of Day:</strong>Afternoon<br/><strong>Location:</strong>Sheriff's Office/Gomorra Jail -> Outside Babel's Tower -> Sheriff's Office<br/><strong>Tagged:</strong>Open<br/><hr/>Bilton heard the commotion outside - usually it was a prelude to a fight, and with a grand opening underway and free whiskey to be had, it was only a matter of time.  Still, he’d been enjoying the afternoon of relative peace and quiet, presumptuous ex-Union officers notwithstanding.  Then there was the sound of gunfire, and he winced.<br/><br/>“Goddam it,” he muttered.  He glanced up to the Judge, just entering, and rose up out of his chair, reaching for hat and gatling pistol, and slung his shotgun over his shoulder.<br/><br/>“Gonna have to be another time, Judge.”<br/><br/>Warwick blinked, his own sawed off shotgun in hand.  As well mannered and cultured as he was, a man didn’t survive as long as the Judge did without due preparation.  “Trial date’s set for the twenty first,” he offered.  “All I needed to say.”<br/><br/>“Fine,” said Bilton, already strolling out the door.  He brushed past Winona and Ford without a second glance, shotgun raised, taking in the sight of the fallen miner and the crowd still standing stunned around him.  Some were muttering darkly, hands near their guns, while others looked spooked.<br/><br/>Bilton put his fingers in his mouth, and made a sharp, loud whistle with his lips.  He took in the miner’s pistol free of its holster - the man hadn’t had time to get it level, and the bullets looked as though they’d entered through the man’s chest.  He was sprawled on his ass after all.<br/><br/>The Judge was assessing it as well, his brow furrowed.  The routine violence of Gomorra always bothered him, and his sawed-off had already been slipped away by the time he had reappeared on the street.<br/><br/>“Let’s see how fast he is when he wakes up with dynamite in his bed,” growled a miner.<br/><br/>Twin shotgun blasts ripped through the air, and Bilton glowered at the miner in question.<br/><br/>“And THIS.  THIS is why we can’t have nice things.  Cause someone kills someone else, and then folks start blowin’ shit up.”  He waved his hand at the newly built Babel’s Tower.  “Place has been open two damn hours and people talking about throwing dynamite.  Now, looks to me like I got a whole passel of goddam witnesses to a duel.  I got a gun in the dirt, man landing on his back - and the only thing I don’t got is a man waiting here for the law to show up.  Let me remind everyone what constitutes a legal goddam duel in this town.  You got your gun in your holster, other fella has the same.  You face one another, two men draw, one man dies.  Or maybe he just ends up bleeding a lot.  You got at least two witnesses to the affair, and then<em>you wait for the law.</em>”<br/><br/>He was shouting, and he kept right on shouting as he looked around, clacking open the shotgun and reloading it.  “Now let me tell you what<em>ain’t</em>lawful.  Ten men with pistols, shotguns, rifles, or dynamite drawing down on one fella.  Shootin’ a man in the back.  Having your smokewagon drawn while his is holstered.  Stabbing him in the dark.  Killing him while he’s sittin’, eatin’, sleepin’, fornicatin’.  That makes it a murder, and in Gomorra that gets you a long drop and a sudden stop.”<br/><br/>He pointed down at the body dead in the street.  “This man killed in a legal duel?”  The miners looked to one another, surly, and Micky stepped forward.<br/><br/>“Yessir.  Well, mostly.  Vic shot at him while his back was kinda turned.”<br/><br/>Bilton sighed.  “Then it weren’t even a duel.  It was self-defense, and maybe just a touch of Darwin teachin’ the rest of y’all a lesson.  Now any of you fellers care to pay for this man’s burial?”<br/><br/>There was no answer, as they looked shiftily to one another.  Bilton scowled.  “Y’all’ll posse up to buy dynamite and toss boomsticks at a man, but you won’t even scratch together ten dollars to put a man in a box?  Lord Jesus save me from friends like you.”  He spat in the street.  “Toss him off the mesa, and get him the hell off my streets.”<br/><br/>He scowled and turned back towards his office, a dark mood only darkening when he heard singing from within the jail.<br/><br/>“AND SOMEONE SHUT THAT CUNT UP!”<br/>