Chapter 19

“I’m not arguing whether or not it was a good idea at the time,” Horse was droning on. “My only problem was that it was a knee-jerk plan. If you’re going into a situation like that, maybe plan an escape beforehand.”

For what felt like the hundredth time in the twenty minute ride to Saint Emile, Horse was reminding me that any plan that includes him getting shot was a horrible plan. Pointing out that we both survived didn’t seem to slow his whining down at all.

We were still moving quickly toward Saint Emile. I didn’t know enough about the tracking abilities of the Bounty Hunter profession to know how far I had to be to be safe, or if there even was a safe distance.

We didn’t need signs or even the map to tell us when we were getting closer to Saint Emile. The traffic on the road increased from the standard one or two horses every ten minutes to something closer to a busy intersection in a rural community. Wagons and horses were lining up behind and in front of us on one side of the road while the other side had just as much traffic going the other direction. It was just enough to make me miss the bustling life of a real world city. Almost enough, but not quite.

I was continuously staring at my minimap, looking for the red teardrops of other players hunting me. I barely even heard all of Horse’s complaining and only noticed when we were entering Saint Emile when the sound changed from horse hooves on dirt to horse hooves on a wooden bridge.

With my map closed, I decided to focus on the town. I needed to find someplace to hold up for the next half hour or so until my gang respawned. Doing so wouldn’t be easy in Easter, which I was familiar with. I suspected that hiding in a place I didn’t know was going to be, at least initially, harder.

My first stop was the post office. I collected my mail after giving some treats to Horse. He had earned more than his share and had told me as much multiple times.

The fight at the plantation house had yielded some decent experience, but we hadn’t finished the mission yet, so nothing major. I had leveled up, but only to level 8. A letter in the mail let me know that at level 8 I could buy the Winchester Repeater. I didn’t see any reason why I would want to, so I ignored the letter.

That was about when I realized that I should turn off my Stream-Time broadcast. I opened the menu and saw that my peak viewership had been around ten thousand people. The idea that in my short time here I had amassed that many people interested in watching me fight to survive blew my mind. My pessimistic side immediately assumed that RadicalLarry19’s followers were watching both feeds, but whatever. The more that watched, the more money I could push toward keeping Winnie in school.

Before I left the post office, I asked the man behind the window where someone could rest.

“The best hotel is the Beaumont on the northern side of town,” he responded without looking up.

I dropped a dollar on the counter, slapping the counter hard, and looked down at my blood-covered clothes. “I need to clean up and rest, but I need it to be cheap and quiet. I’m probably not made for the fanciest place in town.”

He looked up at my money and then at me before taking the dollar. “I see. Then I would follow this road along the train tracks. When you get to the market, look for Henry’s pawn shop. He has rooms for rent above it. He doesn’t ask too many questions.”

I nodded my thanks and dropped hatchet-man’s eleven cents on the counter before leaving.

Never in my life had I visited New Orleans. When I would have wanted to, I didn’t have the opportunity. You wouldn’t be wrong if you read ‘opportunity’ as ‘money.’ When I finally had the income to travel, New Orleans seemed too … local. Not quite exotic enough for the adventures that Tyler and I had talked about.

So, when I say that Saint Emile gave off an entirely New Orleans vibe, what I mean to say is that it gave off the kind of feeling someone who had seen a lot of New Orleans on television would notice.

There was age, French names on the buildings, and street vendors. The train station, which was oddly separate from the post office, was nestled in with some dock warehouses along what I could only assume was the ocean.

Saint Emile was also the first place in all of Wicked West that I could only describe as a city. It still had all the hallmarks of the decade that the game was pretending to take place in, such as wagons, open air meat markets, and the clothes to match, but even those clothes were somewhat fancier, or more elegant than anything I had seen in Easter or Hardy. Aberdine was big, but not this big.

French names and fancy dressing aside, the area of town that the mail clerk sent me to was exactly the opposite. Every city had a financially-less-impressive area, and Saint Emile took it to another degree. It was like a shanty town with the small houses built from just about anything that could be found. The shops were a little more suspect as well. There was a harried woman shouting about the ills of mistreating animals while selling cat pheromones in a stall directly next to some guy named Goose, offering to buy anyone’s pelts in exchange for his magical trinkets. If this was the real world, I would have dismissed it. Instead, I filed away the information for later. If this game had a hidden element of magic to it, especially regarding nature, it might be best to let Bear know.

Those stalls were directly across from the pawn shop the clerk had directed me to.

I tried the door on the street side several times before peeking in and seeing there was a shelving unit against it. I kept looking through windows as I circled the building. It was tall and old with several other shops in it. I couldn’t see through some of the windows, but finally, after what felt like forever, Horse and I found the back entrance was wide open.

“Stay here,” I said to Horse as he stared at a kid eating an apple. The NPC didn’t seem to take notice to Horse’s attention. “Just because we ran through one building doesn’t mean I can take you everywhere.”

“Really?” Horse’s mouth went wide with mock-shock. “I thought you were going to take me to a fancy dinner.”

“Shut up,” I said. Then I pulled an apple I had picked up in Easter out of my bag and gave it to him. “You did great back there,” I said. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me,” he said as he chewed. “If you die, I’ve got to sit and wait an hour, bored out of mind. It was entirely self-serving.”

I smiled and nodded. “Sure it was.”

The shop was crowded with merchandise. All of it looked generic. Old dresses sat next to worn saddles and some sort of imported dishwares. I had to walk through tight aisles of people’s unwanted stuff before finally coming to a well-polished wooden counter with a man of Asian descent standing behind it.

“Yo,” he was counting coins with one hand while his other hand rested on a pistol resting on the countertop. “What can I do for you?” His accent was almost comically from Brooklyn.

“I’m being hunted by a rival gang. I was told you could give me a place to stay until the heat dies down.”

He snickered. “And who told you that, I wonder? Or more importantly, who are you hunting that you think I’ll just let you know where my people are staying? It’s one thing to help a person out, and another to trust a new face.”

I could see him eying the bullet holes in my coat that, for whatever reason, hadn’t disappeared yet. Usually, they stayed around for a little while after I had healed up. Washing made them go away quicker, but when was the last time I had a chance for a bath.

“Look, I really don’t want to die,” I sighed. “I’m waiting on friends of mine, but we need a safe place before we get found. I also need supplies.”

The pawn shop owner only stared at her.

“I’m not a cop,” I added.

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He pulled out a key, slowly and placed it on the counter. He didn’t remove his hand from the top of it.

“Upstairs. Fifty dollars.”

“Fifty?” I almost choked. I had $98.15 after the purchase of my new guns, food and supplies for me and horse, and then the raid on the plantation. I could afford it, but I was going to need a payday soon if I was going to avoid starving.

I paid the money and he slid me the key which I pocketed as quickly as I could. Before I headed up, I made sure Horse didn’t need anything. He seemed to be playing some game of “steal-the-food” from an NPC. I told him I wasn’t going to step in if this got out of hand, and then went upstairs.

The stairs in question were outside of the pawn shop. I had seen them when I was looking for the entrance, but hadn’t realized they were the rooms the heavily accented pawn shop owner was renting.

At the top of the stairs, I found my room and went in.

It was not impressive. The entire room was bare with stains on the walls and floor. It had one cot with nothing on it and a chair that was laying on its side in the center of the room. I had seen that most of Saint Emile had electricity, but for some reason, it hadn’t made it to my room. I was going to have to bring out my lantern if I ended up staying the night.

I laid on the bed for the rest of the next half hour until Coot messaged me that he was back. I told him where I was and combed through my mail until I heard from Bear.

I was tempted to take a look at the plans that we looted from Anita, but I was worried that the quest or job or whatever would continue without giving my friends their experience or whatever. It was smarter to just sit, wait, and watch the map out of the corner of my eye.

Minutes before Bear messaged me, the map did give me a scare. Two red teardrops rode past, stopped, and did something in the pawn shop. Laying down worked just like crouching, which I appreciated. They couldn’t see me on their map, but they were players, and they could decide that they needed to check to make sure some wayward cowgirl wasn’t lying on a cot upstairs.

While they were talking to the pawn shop owner, Bear respawned. I sent him a quick message saying where I was. He pressed me about not being in Hardy. I told him I wasn’t there because I didn’t want to die and that mostly shut him up. He seemed more annoyed that he would have to travel a little farther than Hardy to meet up. Either way, I told them both to take their time and be careful. If there were two Colossals downstairs, there would be more in town.

When they left and weren’t on my map anymore, I crouch-walked downstairs and didn’t risk standing until I was next to the shopkeep.

“What are you doing, eh?” he asked. It was a fair question when he asked it, as I was still crouched.

“Hiding,” I shrugged. “Like I told you I was.”

He nodded and didn’t say anything else.

I put a dollar on the counter. “Can you tell me what they wanted?”

“Not for a dollar.”

I sighed and put two more dollars down.

“Your pals were looking for you, just like you said. They weren’t paying me to hide them, though, so I said nothing.” He shrugged. “They bought a bunch of dynamite and jugs of moonshine and then left.”

“Did they say why they wanted the gear?”

He shrugged again. “Something about a raid in Easter in the morning.”

I relayed the information to the Flamingos.

“How much for dynamite?” I asked.

“Dollar a stick. You can only carry eight, unless you make dynamite arrows, then you can carry eight more as arrows.”

“I really do look that new, huh?”

“You walked down a flight of stairs while crouched,” he snickered. “I didn’t even have to check your level.”

He made a valid point. “I’ll take eight. How much for the moonshine?”

“You can only carry one in your inventory,” he said. “One jug is twenty dollars.”

That seemed like a lot, but maybe my reputation had taken a dip. I checked my HUD and it was still good, so that had to be the normal price. That still was a lot of money for me. After the room, I only had around $48. After the dynamite, I was at an even $40. If the next part of our plan didn’t pay out much, I was going to be tight on any other needs I had. I’d have to ask the boys what their finances looked like.

It didn’t matter. In light of the news that the Colossal Paynes would be raiding Easter in the morning, I needed to be armed. I needed to get back there as quickly as possible.

I bought the ‘shine and went back up to my room to wait for the gang.

For the mission, the Easter raid was a good thing. Time was short for me to even think about stopping them, but that also meant that time was short for them too. If they hadn’t called off the hunt, they would soon, just so they could get back to camp and prepare for tomorrow’s attack.

Of course, I would need to prepare, too, but this mission had to happen first.

We could skip defending this one time and then start our crusade after the next, but that just felt wrong. Especially after the rousing speech that I had given the Pink Flamingos.

More importantly, and still personal, I was tired of them winning. How many times are they going to kill me and mine, or rookies just trying to figure out what happens after you die? How many of my missions are they going to hound and bully me on before someone finally stands up to them? We won’t win every fight, but I’ll be damned if I will just sit here and keep taking the losses.

Joy flooded me when I saw the blue icons of the guys riding up to the pawn shop. I expanded my map to the full size to see if anyone was within range enough to hunt us. Seeing no one, I ran down there and hugged them both before dragging them upstairs and telling them what they missed.

I looked at Coot through the gang menu and saw that he hadn’t missed too much. He was now level 10.

“You stop and get your letters?” I asked him.

He nodded. “I did, but that’s something we’re gonna have to talk about later. I can’t do anything about it right now and I think I have an idea on how you and I should spec ourselves.”

“Not now?” I asked.

“Do we have the time?” he smirked.

I shook my head. “Larry is going to hit Easter tomorrow. We’ve got to do this tonight.”

“If that’s what the schedule says,” Bear pointed out.

“Speaking of that,” I pulled the plans from my inventory and laid them out on the floor in front of the gang. We all sat cross-legged on the floor to examine it.

They were entirely blank except for a picture of a train.

“Well,” I was completely confused, “shit.”

The plans shifted a bit, making me rub my eyes, before changes started to appear.

“It’s a mission that is supposed to be available when you want it to be,” Coot explained. “I’ve heard of these. Basically, they don’t want the excitement from the story to slow down, so they make the second half of the mission adjust to when you open this.”

Just as Coot said, the date and time for the mission wasn’t on the plans. Instead, a yellow area popped up on the map with a line leading along the road to where we needed to go. We examined the map and saw that it was the train station here in Saint Emile.

The rest of the plans did fill out. The government was moving a train car of money across all of whatever this continent was called. It was supposed to be a complete secret, but Anita had ruined that. The train was scheduled to leave as soon as we entered the yellow area of the map. The entire area would be covered with more law enforcement than we had ever seen.

“Here’s the good news,” I said, “we can get this done tonight and turn in the mission and then fast travel to Easter before Larry and his fellow assholes can attack. We might even have time to prepare the town before the attack.”

“The bad news is that we aren’t going to survive this,” Bear added.

“Not with that attitude,” I said. “Thoughts, Coot?”

Coot leaned back and stroked his scraggly beard. He sat like that for a while, his eye twitching slightly, until he finally leaned forward.

“Nope. Ain’t got much.”

“Well, shit again,” I said.

“The problem is that we ain’t got enough data, boss,” he said. “Lots of cops ain’t a number. How much money isn’t listed. All we’ve got is us and guns.” He shrugged. “My next idea was how would you get us on board quietly. Maybe we could pose as passengers and be all stealthy about it, but, let’s face it, we suck at sneaking.” Coot winced as another idea came to him, and then shook his head. “There’s nothing we can do, short of hiring an army, that would work.”

“Wait a minute,” Bear pointed at Coot’s face. “What was that look you gave? You had an idea.”

Coot shook his head. “Yeah, I had an idea. A dumb as shit idea.”

“That’s better than nothing,” I said. “We need to get this money, end the mission, and get to Easter as quick as we can. That means we can’t die, because we can’t afford the hour wait. We also can’t get waylaid on the way. This thing is going to happen, and we have to get it done right the first time.”

Coot pulled hard on his beard and scrunched up his face. “Fine.”

“Well?” Bear and I said together.

“We can’t sneak on board as passengers, and the number of law at the station will be much higher than the number on the train, so …”

“Spit it out, man!” Bear was leaning forward in anticipation.

“We are gonna have to hijack the train.”