(( A) medical facilities, even in the 1860s, and especially military garrison med centers, have rules against patients packing heat, especially rifles... and Victoria is supposedly a prim and proper school marm, not some sort of gunfighter.. c'mon... well, if this was hosted I wouldn't allow it, but since it's not, and since other things have happened in a similar style, what can I say?
B) Yes, Luis is alone, miles away across the rolling plains from Greg... Luis doesn't know Greg is there, Greg doesn't know Luis is there, but, at dawn, after a horrible rainy cold nasty night, both are watching the sun rise over Abilene, and both can clearly see the wagon, stranded in the muck... ))
In fact, its a wagon train, the lead wagon is the 4-horse, and 3 other wagons, all stalled behind the big front wagon, all heading toward Abilene, all up to their axles in mud...
the question is, will Luis and/or Greg seize the opportunity to reclaim some sense of 'heroism/goodness/lawfulness' or to just let it pass and see what happens either way...
((oh, ok got it))
Luis looks the group over. His first thought is to just lay low for a few hours and let them pass. Then he starts rethinking his decision a little. They look innocent enough... He went on like this for half an hour, wrestling with himself, trying to decide what to do.
Finally, he threw caution to the wind, packed his camp up, and rode up to the group. A tall, thin man in a pair of dirty suit pants and a battered dress shirt approached him first. "Excuse me, sir, but you wouldn't happen to know about carts and wagons and such, would you?"
Luis nodded.
"Well, I don't know how much you can help us, but the yoke on our lead rig broke. Snapped clean in half in that mud last night."
"I don't dare take nice to men like you," said Vic. The man satrted to back away until the door burst clean off its hidges. A figure with familiar blond hair and blue eyes stood in the doorway with a grin. Her starture was determined and strong.
"You lay a hand on my sister and your dead meat!" she cried. "By the way pull up your trousers its not polite to do that you know." Lily smirked as she recalled slipping in as a nurse and giggled at the dumb people who let her by when she came back after she got in disguise. "You gonna leave Miss Scholar alone?"
Jericho turned, and pulled up his drawers.
"Well well... feisty family... pretty girls too..." he laughed, running his hand over his cleanly shaven chin. "But there is something you seem to have forgotten..." he flipped a tin whistle from a chain around his neck into his mouth and blew forcefully, repeatedly loud and long blasts, alerting Army nurses, doctors and security to trouble.
"This is my home... YOU are the criminals here..."
The first nurse to arrive was the nurse from Buddy and Catori's isolated area.
"Uhh, Commander Jericho... Mr. Polk is demanding to see you right away! He's crazy with the fever, I think!"
Army doctors and soldiers swarmed in, armed and alert for any situation or threat, medical or criminal.
"Lock these two down! Not here! Take them to the brig! Charges of trespass, impersonating military personnel, espionage, and attempted murder! Wake the judge! By God, someone will hang by noon!"
He then thought a moment, about what the nurse had said.
"Who? what was it you were saying? Mr. Polk?"
"Yessir... the fever patient you brought in, James Polk... wants to see you..."
"Impossible!" Jericho snarled. "James Polk is dead!"
"Wha-- are you certain?" the nurse questioned.
"Positive!" Jericho confirmed. "I killed the old man myself! Take me to this 'fever victim' NOW! And move these whores to the brig, under guard and full lockdown!"
Luis examined the broken beam. The man he had talked to wasn't lying. It looked as if one of the animals had stopped for some reason, and the other had kept moving, so the device had just splintered apart. The vaquero rummaged through a box of blacksmithing tools. He came upon some spare horseshoes, a light anvil, some shoeing nails, just basic farrier's equipment. Then he got an idea.
First, he heated the forge and placed four horseshoes in it. When they were glowing red hot, he took them out and unbent them so that they were little more than strips of metal with holes punched in them. Then he took the broken yoke, and hammered the straightened shoes in four or five places around the break, so that the two pieces were as good as one again.
With the yoke repaired, it was only a matter of time, and a little extra muscle, before the wagons were all rolling, or mushing, along again.
"Jolly good show!" the tall, thin, dirty carraige driver cheered. "Fine work, young man! My master would like to show his appreciation in the usual fashion, with a rousing round of drinks and conversation at the local saloon... if you would, tie your horse off to the last wagon and climb aborad the last wagon... Mr Cavendish (remember CUR--- Cavendish Unlimited Reclamations...) is known to be very generous, and gracious... please, join us?!" he seems genuinely sincere and promising.
Meanwhile, the night before the day after, in the city...
"Where is he?" Jericho roared, storming ahead of the nurse down the medical center hall.
"Mr Polk and his companion are just down the hall..." the nurse rushed to keep up. "This is the foot locker with their personal affects..." she stopped and stooped near a specific box tucked under a bench in the long hall.
Jericho surveyed the belongings in the box, noting the personalized, carved pistol grips, engraved with US Army eagle logo, very similar to the Commander's own sidearm engraving.
"RENO!" he snorted, slamming the box and stomping down the hall.
"Wait, Commander.." the nurse tried to halt the raving man. "There's a doctor and a nurse in there right---"
"NO! STEP ASIDE!" Jericho shoved the nurse away and smashed thru the closed door into the isolated room.
The nurse's warnings were dead on; the doctor and nurse, in full masks, gowns, and gloves, looked shocked and surprised to see the unprotected soldier barge into the room.
The patients were both wearing military-issue brown undergarments, baggy and uncomfortable as they are. Each patient was also wrapped carefully in white gauze-wrap around their faces, heads and hands.
"You shouldn't be here... this area is off-limits..." the doctor warned, stepping between the raging Commander and the 2 patients.
"NO! YOU! BOTH OF YOU! GET OUT!!" Jericho demanded, shoving the Doctor toward the door, drawing his Peacekeeper from its holster, and growling at the nurse, who cowered and slinked away as well.
"Now... finally... I've got you, Buddy Reno!!"
The crazed commander reached up and pulled the cloth gauze bandages away from the male patient, cocking the pistol and aiming squarely at the patient's face.
Meanwhile, the doctor and nurse hustled down the hall, kicking the lockbox as they moved. The doctor paused, and flipped open the lid to the box, while the nurse moved a few quick steps further along the hallway.
"What are you doing? He has a gun! We should keep moving!" the nurse whispered, obviously shaken.
"SON OF A B!TCH!!!!" the roar went up from the isolation chamber, followed by 2, then 3 thunderous gunshots. Security soon flooded down the hall, and then and only then, the doctor rose from the foot locker, arms full of the clothing and equipment from within the box, and he and the nurse continued their retreat.
In the room, the unmasked patient cried and screamed, along with his female companion; both their bandaged faces had been exposed, and both were red and scortched, blistered and medicated, seriously burned as from a fire...
"WHERE IS BUDDY RENO?!?" Commander Jericho cried, firing a 4th round into the ceiling overhead, just as Deputy Steven Sanders staggered in, in his nightshirt and skivvies.
"What the Hell is going on here?!" Sanders shouted, hiding a secret smile, as the Army security cleared the room.
-----------------------------------------------
Now outside the garrison walls, 'Doctor' Buddy Reno and 'Nurse' Catori, shed their costumes, said a quick quiet word of Thanks to Lily, who had obviously helped them get their costumes, then made way into the dark of night...
Buddy and Catori worked their way in the shadows of the military garrison, around back and toward a side street. Buddy tripped over something behind the barracks and stopped, in shock at what he thought it felt like.
The shock and horror only tripled when he leaned down and recovered the large object lying in the alley: a rather large black furry mass, the body of a dead black dog, gunshot to the head...
"Son of a b!tch... Isaac..." Buddy steamed. "...Jericho..." he growled.
It was lucky that the gentle rains started then, because Buddy wouldn't have been happy to have Catori see him cry... when the rains started, Buddy and Catori bundled up, covering their faces while they ran for cover from the storm. They holed up for the night under the stair to the hotel, across the street from the saloon...
Leo slid on a spare pair of jeans that were kept in his saddle. He threw his shirt on and did up his gun belts, it was dawn and he wanted an easrly start on finding his past. He didn't care how many people he'ld need to shoot his way through he would learn who he was. He picked his hat up off the bed and stared into it. The image of the wolf and the lion was embeded in his mind. He slowly put the hat on his head and headed towards the door.
He walked down the stairs and to the door.
"Hey!" He heard from behind him, "that room wasn't free"
Leo turned around, purposly turning so that the innkeeper could see his guns, always a persuasive argueement.
"Make me a tab...I'll be staying in town for a while."
"Yes sir....yes....of course" the innkeeper said backing away.
Leo walked out of the inn and looked up at the sky.
Leo purt near trips over a foot at the foot of the stairs coming out from the little inn. By the time he skins his pistols, he's already got an earful of 'err erhmmm' and the click of a hammer locking into place.
This is a tense moment, as an apparent vagrant and his Comanche female companion got the drop on the mysterious gunslinger...
... another gig against the vagrant and his lovely: they are NOT the same mystery to the gunslinger as he is to them; as their pictures are plastered all around town, on WANTED posters!!
uh oh....
Leo's hands rested on the butts of his guns. He smiled a bit, he didn't know how fast his ambusher could pull the trigger, but he knew that he could unholster his gun, cock it and put a bullet in someones head pretty quickly.
"I have no quarell with you." He smiled a bit more, "put the gun down, before you take someone's eye out with that thing. I have an appointment with that sleaseball of a sherriff
~Leo still doesn't know he's only a deputy~
I have no intrest in killing someone who has probably slept with the sherriffs prized whore and got himself to be the most famous face in town. Now if you'll excuse me..."
Leo turned to leave, heading towards the sherriff's house. He knew he was playing it dangorously, but it was what he needed to do. By insulting his opponent Leo hoped to make him make a false move, therefore opening a window to disarm him.
Buddy had seen the type, dealt with plenty of them in his days of youth... but, as he so often reminded himself, he wasn't that guy any more. The kid just tripped, and tripped up, showing his hand, the steely cool calm, the coky self-assuredness of a gunslinger... no need to put the younster in his place just yet. This was not the time, and certainly not the place, being as Buddy was a fugitive from purt near every range of law enforcement in the city, county, state, and up to and including the US Army at this point.
"Good luck with the Marshall, kid..." Buddy misunderstood who it was Leo was enroute to see, but he couldn't have cared much less about that either. The one thing that did catch Buddy's eye and attention was the belt buckle between the kid's twitching thumbs while those thumbs rested on the butts of his pearl-handled peacekeepers.
"Nice buckle..." Buddy noted. "...familiar even..." he held his pose, pistols poised on the kid, but relaxed just a bit, lowering his aim to waist level, rather than chest level of his target.
Originally posted by SlickRick69
With the yoke repaired, it was only a matter of time, and a little extra muscle, before the wagons were all rolling, or mushing, along again."Jolly good show!" the tall, thin, dirty carraige driver cheered. "Fine work, young man! My master would like to show his appreciation in the usual fashion, with a rousing round of drinks and conversation at the local saloon... if you would, tie your horse off to the last wagon and climb aborad the last wagon... Mr Cavendish (remember CUR--- Cavendish Unlimited Reclamations...) is known to be very generous, and gracious... please, join us?!" he seems genuinely sincere and promising.
Luis recognises the name, though he can't quite put his finger on where he's heard it before... In any case, he still doesn't entirely trust the band of strangers. "I would love to stay, but have an appointment," he said, nodding politely, mounting his horse, and heading back down the ridge.
((Yuna, Lily and Victoria are still being held in the Army garrison, and will be hung later today, if Jericho and Sanders have their way, especially now that they had Buddy Reno so close to their grasp, but he slipped away...
remember:
Jericho turned, and pulled up his drawers.
"Well well... feisty family... pretty girls too..." he laughed, running his hand over his cleanly shaven chin. "But there is something you seem to have forgotten..." he flipped a tin whistle from a chain around his neck into his mouth and blew forcefully, repeatedly loud and long blasts, alerting Army nurses, doctors and security to trouble.
"This is my home... YOU are the criminals here..."
The first nurse to arrive was the nurse from Buddy and Catori's isolated area.
"Uhh, Commander Jericho... Mr. Polk is demanding to see you right away! He's crazy with the fever, I think!"
Army doctors and soldiers swarmed in, armed and alert for any situation or threat, medical or criminal.
"Lock these two down! Not here! Take them to the brig! Charges of trespass, impersonating military personnel, espionage, and attempted murder! Wake the judge! By God, someone will hang by noon!"
any way, Lily and Vic will have to spend another night in the brig, under heavy guard, stripped, raped etc etc, the usual women in prison stuff, before the hanging at high noon...) unless someone saves them...)