Chapter Five

A few hundred miles further to the southwest, the sun was only now finally setting. In the town of Baker's Stake, this meant that the day shift had ended.

The town consisted of a ring of shabby buildings perching at the edge of a ragged crater; in the depths below, machinery lay dormant for the night. The buildings themselves gave the impression of having been scraped together in a hurry from whatever materials had been handy, and this was exactly the case; the people who'd built them had been too busy digging the hole in the center of town to have been overly concerned with aesthetics. When the last of the silver had been mined out, the town had been almost immediately abandoned; Baker's Stake might have become a ghost town, had the last few stragglers not struck oil.

The town had been renovated since then, although it had somehow managed to lose none of its ramshackle appearance. Many of the scattered hovels had been repurposed or torn down, and now the citizens lived in communal sleeping quarters. There was a company store, as well as various buildings to house all manner of supplies. At the edge of town stood a well-constructed estate - the home of the oil baron who had bought Baker's Stake, and who now called himself the mayor.

The workers were returning from the quarry now, and the streets were filled with exhausted men, trudging listlessly towards their beds. Only in the vicinity of the tavern were the streets curiously empty; the workers seemed to avoid the building unconsciously, but diligently nonetheless. The tavern was where the mayor's hired muscle went to blow off steam, and those were not the sort of people that one mingled with by choice.

A few of the mayor's thugs had been mercenaries prior to finding employment here, but most had been criminals; in Baker's Stake, however, they were the law. The role reversal had never lost its novelty for most of them, and bullying the workers was a favorite pastime; the mayor discouraged the practice in theory, but tended to look the other way as long as no permanent damage was done to his work force. The workers had learned long ago that it was wisest to keep a low profile.

They didn't know it yet, but Melody Chamberlain had just arrived in town - and keeping a low profile was precisely the last thing on her agenda. We'll get back to her in a moment.

For the time being, things in the tavern were following their usual routine. Games of cards and dice were in progress at nearly every table; raucous conversations filled the smoky air, most of them focusing on daring exploits and unlikely conquests. Most of the men were well on their way to being drunk; things might have gone better for them if they hadn't been, but it's not especially likely.

The doors swung open, and a young woman swaggered into the tavern.

She was probably in her mid-twenties, although her flinty eyes and chiseled features made her look older. Her hair was mostly bunched up under a wide-brimmed hat, but a few straw-colored braids had found their way out from underneath it. She was dressed like a man, but she couldn't have passed for one - nor was she trying to.

A sudden silence filled the tavern, and the men gave each other meaningful glances; this was a working town, and women were a rare sight. Meanwhile, the girl's gaze darted intensely from one face to another, her eyes blazing from beneath a furrowed brow. She didn't appear to see whatever she'd been looking for, and a distantly irritated expression flickered across her face. After a moment's contemplation, she sniffed and spat - to the surprise of a few of the men - and then crossed the room to an empty bar stool without so much as a word or a second glance.

The silence over the tavern developed into an ugly hush; all of the conversations were taking place in whispers now, and their content was not pleasant. The girl nursed a glass of whiskey in silence, seemingly oblivious to the increasingly charged atmosphere around her. Meanwhile the bartender had begun, very slowly, to back away from her. Nobody else was in a position to see her lips moving silently as she counted out the seconds under her breath.

She began to reach slowly into her long jacket as the count reached seventeen; at the same time, the town's enforcers had chosen a representative. The unlucky man strode boldly towards her, leering, as his compatriots chuckled evilly behind him; a meaty hand descended towards the girl's shoulder, but stopped short as she spun around to grab it at the wrist. A second later he was on the ground, howling and clutching at the hilt protruding from his gut. The girl was suddenly standing, one boot resting on the man's chest; she stared at the men with one eyebrow raised, her face set in an utterly humorless smile.

There was an awful lot of commotion, and a number of things seemed to happen all at once. The men rose to their feet as one, shouting incoherently, knocking over a number of tables in the process. Those of them who still had some presence of mind began fumbling for their holsters; there was a sound like a string of fireworks being set off - only much louder - and then the men who had been reaching for their weapons were lying stone still on the floor. None of them had fired a shot; meanwhile, a smoking revolver seemed to have materialized in the girl's hands.

Just like that, the commotion had ended. The surviving men stood as still as statues, with only the moaning of their stabbed compatriot breaking the silence. Another thing had happened very suddenly, which was that they had all become very, very sober.

The girl's expression hadn't changed; after a moment, she finally spoke.

"Sit down," she said simply.

The men dropped into their seats, their eyes still fixed on the wounded man under her foot. She followed their gaze, and her expression changed to one of mock surprise as she considered her would-be assailant, as if she had forgotten about him. As she looked away, one of the thugs in the back began reaching surreptitiously towards his hip; a moment later he fell to the floor with a bullet in his head.

"Hands on the table," barked the girl.

The men obeyed. The girl cast one more steely glance over her audience, and then casually holstered her pistol and crouched to recover her knife. The men collectively winced as she pulled the blade free; she stared at it for a moment, considering it as if she'd never seen it before. The men craned forward to watch her, and her eyes lifted to meet their gaze; the blade flashed, and suddenly the man beneath her was terribly silent.

The men gaped as she rose slowly to her feet, wiping either side of the blade across her arm as she did so; in doing so, she drew attention to the collection of ochre stripes staining her left sleeve. The men's eyes widened, and for a moment there was a strained silence.

"Now that I'm sure that I have your full attention," said Melody suddenly, "I was hoping that we could have a talk."

The men gaped at her as she sank onto a bar stool, leaning back against the bar with casual ease. She returned her knife to the folds of her jacket; the hand returned once again with a pistol in it, which she pointed lazily in the general direction of the surviving enforcers. With the other hand, she reached across the bar and grabbed her glass, taking a long pull from it before speaking again.

"I'm looking for a friend of mine," she drawled conversationally. "I'm told that he passed through here not too long ago, and I was hoping that you gentlemen might be so kind as to help me find him."

She swirled the whiskey around, frowning slightly, and stared over the top of her glass as she continued.

"Not a friend, exactly; an acquaintance, I guess you might say. The thing is..."

She trailed off, seeming briefly lost in thought. After a moment she smiled again, much to the horror of those watching.

"You see, this acquaintance of mine owes me a debt," she said conspiratorially. "One that I have every intention of collecting."

The mayor burst through the door at that moment, a reproachful shout dying on his lips as he took in the scene at a glance. His thugs stared beseechingly at him as he inched back out the door; Melody pressed on as if she hadn't noticed.

"I'm well aware of the sort of lives that you've led," she continued, "and so I'm sure that every one of you knows exactly what's going to happen here."

The smile disappeared from her face instantly, and her eyes turned to ice.

"I won't insult your intelligence by pretending that I have any intention of letting you live if you tell me what I want to know," she said, "because I'm sure that you know better."

She finished her drink in one gulp, and then stood, assuming a businesslike posture.

"The only real question," she explained quietly, "is how long it is going to take you to die."