ooc: Sorry, missed this originally.

IC:  "Don't know what th' future will bring," he observed, "but we can do things ta turn it th' way we want."

  "Or....at least we can try. Some folks believe in fate and everything is decided for us right from our very beginning. I sure hope they're wrong about that,"  Constance opined, "But we need to try at least."

He shrugged. "We both done that, an' got th' chance ta do more. Now ya put me thinkin' on it, I'm gonna ask Mr. Pike if there's some sorta woodwork ta do around the place." He took a swig of the wine, then shrugged again. "'Course, th' place is all new, so there ain't much fixin' ta do."

"Well, you wouldn't want a big job to start with anyhow, best starting small, right?" she pointed out.

Then she reached for some of the stretched out clothing hung on branches close to the fire. 

"I think the stuff is dry enough now. We can get dressed again. Ugh, all of these clothes are gonna stink of smoke. Guess I wash'em again once I get back to civilization."

"I've just come back to tell you that Mister Henry is here" she announced.

"I shall show him in" Flo said, rising. 

Priest choked on his chaw. "That's right.  Mr. Henry is expected."

"Would you like me to stay when you conduct your meeting, Mr. Priest" she asked the old codger whose, well, 'old codger' she had been handling so recently. She almost felt protective of him - no! - she DID feel protective of him. She wanted to stay and look after him with the big threatening Jim Henry in the room: despite their intimacy, she didn't know Hiram Priest well enough yet to know that he needed no slip of a girl as a protectress.

"That won't be necessary, Miss Flo.  This is just a boring meeting about security at the mine.  But please stay in the vicinity. I may need you later." 

Jim Henry, not accustomed to waiting around, pushed his way past the ladies and stepped into the office.

"Dangle," he ordered the women.

"Yes," Priest rushed to add.  He wasn't up to a verbal duel with Big Jim Henry.  But once he was alone with Henry, he got back to his old self.

"I understand you knocked someone's teeth out at the mine last week." Hiram began.

Big Jim smiled slowly.  "This room smells like quim," he stated.

It went downhill from there.

By the time the meeting was over, Jim Henry was admonished not to clobber any of the crew at the mine unless they threw the first punch.  They needed as many hands as they could get.  Then, to lighten the troubled air, they shared a snort.

When he was gone, Priest went to the door and looked out into the hallway to see if any of his girls were lurking around.

"Do ya really think they'd let me?"  Just going to the circus, and the carnival, had seemed so exciting, and she was working up the courage to go out in the crowd she knew would be there.  Mr. McVey would be with her, but she didn't want to tie him up all day.  But the thought that she might actually get to spend the time near the wild beasts that it would take to draw them was thrilling, and she was all the more determined to brave the public.

"That'd be really somethin', I think!"  She didn't know at this point that the animals would be in cages, sad and confined, not that there was any other way to safely display them.  "Here, look, I done some kinda my own way, just fer fun."

Grinning, she extracted more pages showing a variety of the same creatures, but with wings, fangs, shaggy hair, long legs...and in a cacophony of wild colors.  What she didn't notice was that, among those papers was the sketch of Shin that she'd been working on, complete in pencil, and partly colored in before she'd been so rudely interrupted by Cecil and his bunch.

Shintaro followed Tully around back but dutifully stayed outside of her room, respecting her private space. He was well aware that Westerners were far more touchy about the idea of a man and woman being alone together than Japan, especially when neither were married. Not that Shintaro would ever make moves on a woman against her wishes. He waited silently outside of her room while Tully gathered her drawings. He was curious about what kind of space she had, given it was in an alley and he could see through the open doorway it was sparcely furnished. In a way he found it almost home like, all it was missing was tatami mats and shoji doors.

Once she came out with the drawings, Shintaro used the crate to spread out the drawings to examine. He could understand why she had to use illustrations from a book to draw the animals, there wasn't any lions or tigers around Kalisport to his knowledge.

"These are quite impressive, especially considering you based them off somebody else's renderings of these animals," Shintaro complimented, looking over at her. "I'm sure you would do much better if you had the opportunity to draw real living animals. Perhaps the circus would allow you a chance to see lions and tigers first hand once in town."

Everything, yes, that would be true." Elias said, "Now that would mean every transaction, in town or out. The railroad's right of ways, new land bought or claimed. Yes, this just might upset Elinor's applecart, I mean, you don't suppose she would buy up property legally if there was another way of getting it do you?"

"No, I do not, however, what if Elinor had already bought up what property she was after, and it was all handled by either Bell or this clerk? What then? The property is bought, paid for, and there is nothing in error because the clerk handled the entire transaction without Bell knowing about it." Fairchild suggested.

Elias sat up a bit straighter.

"And how long had Bell been gone, or had allowed the Clerk to handle whatever he was behind on, or needed the work straightened out on. If she was covering up his errors and keeping a record of them in an effort to get the job, but Houser simply hired this new man, the need to look at everything might be negated," Tyndall offered.

"Yes, that is a possibility. It also means Miss Susanne Atwell is still the clerk she always was, well, the last year and a half, and everything that she did was legal, and whatever Elinor may have gotten away with, she got away with, and who's to say it was done illegally." Elias said bluntly, then asked, "But what did she get away with?"

"Well, we would need to know what name she used, or was it a corporation of some type? Elinor is not dumb, and there are ways to disguise what is really happening with property deals, especially out here. In the East, these deals are handled by professionals who do this sort of thing all day, every day, and they are looked at regularly with a sharp eye. This man Houser hired would be a man with an education and a reputation to protect, but we can look." 

Speed smiled; it was clear that Shintaro was going to work out just fine, and that folks would soon get past the differences, like the ever-present Samurai Sword he carried. Yes, it had been a great hire. For him and for the town. He would blend well with  Charlie Wentworth and with his other new hire, Valentin Caine,

The shape of the office was changing, and it would give Speed more time to be away from the office to where he could comfortably step away, something he had been considering for some time. He could devote more time and energy to his own mines and to his mining business.

"Deputy Takahashi, I'll leave you to your prisoners, unless you'd like me to assist with getting these boys over to the jail." He said. "Goioid work."

There was an exchange of looks between the two men. "Be easier just talking to the members, but then the proper way to handle this'd be to request a meetin', 'course now we'd be dependin' on when the Mayor had the time, an' he could rustle up the others. Now the way I look at it, we're talkin' a pumper and an ambulance, both a benefit to the town an' a place ta keep 'em already taken care of." Barnabas rattled off.

"Housing the apparatus would be a big plus. But the big drawback would be the price for each of them." Speed cautioned.

"So, how much do you think the pumper'd be? An' a ambulance, 'er a wogon that'd work?" Pike asked. "The trouble is gettin' folks ta see past the cost an'ookin' at the benefit."

Tully didn't know what 'sumi-e' was, but she might ask about it later, she was always interested in different types of art.  As for showing her drawings, some were all right to display, after all, she was sketching out the critters for a poster in the paper, but others were private, ones she never planned on seeing the light of day, much the less showing to a real person!

Still, Mr. Shin had been kind to her, and he didn't seem to be the sort who would mock her or judge.

"Yeah, all right."  She leaned the broom up against the wall then led the way into the side alley.  "I stay here, in th' back," she explained, "Mr. McVey lets me, an' I keep th' place clean an' help out."  

The small room at the back had its own door...it was used for storage, as well as Tully's quarters, but she didn't mind sharing the space with a few crates.  There was still enough room for a real rope-frame bed and her own crate that doubled as a chest and a desk.  It was all she needed, and the tight quarters encouraged her to go out in the daylight sometimes!

"Wait here..."  She left the door open as she maneuvered around the room to grab her drawing papers, then returned to the alley.  "We can sit here, if ya want."  She indicated another crate that was on the alley boardwalk, under an awning.

For a moment, she rifled through the papers, singling out some of the ones she'd done for the posters, accurate renditions of lions, camels, tigers and other exotic beasts, rendered in colored pencil.

"Just mostly copied these from th' book," she explained.