"Ya gave that murderin' lowlife a GUN?" Reynolds was getting louder and people were now actually starting to pay attention. He shook the bottle at the Marshal, accidentally spilling some of the murky liquid on himself. "Our sheriff barely even cold in the ground and ya lettin' his killer swan around with a gun so he can kill some more a us? We'll see what the town thinks about that. They'll run you out and your little whippersnapper sidekick too!"

The Marshal studied the doctor for a moment, her hand slowly drifting toward her compression pistol.

"I think you've had enough of that to drink for today, Cog Leg," she said evenly. "And I think it would be best for you to head back into your little office, lock the door and sleep it off. You can come back and talk to me when you're sober, but you'd best not be doing much talking between now and then. Especially about this."

"You should listen to her, old man. She will shoot you and since you're the town's only doctor, I don't think you'll be gettin' any of your wounds patched up," Caldwell said with a smirk on his face.

"I don't take orders from you, bandit, or your girlfriend. I bet she ain't even an American! Just another foreigner tryin' to tell us real Americans how to live. Go back where you came from!" Reynolds continued to rant, with nary a sign of a self-preservation instinct.

A small pop! proceeded the sound of shattering glass. The last drops of Tarnation Andy's Cure-All Elixir of Vitality splattered around Reynolds' boots, and the Marshal smirked at him as she lowered her pistol.

"I ain't his girlfriend," the Marshal said. "I'm his hail."

Reynolds sputtered incoherently and then turned and moved as fast as he could for his office. Were one inclined to be charitable, they might describe it as a run, but it was more along the lines of a really fast zigzagging shuffle.

"That cheered me right up, Marshal. Not as much as loading his backside up with some birdshot would, but almost."

"Aw, shuddup," the Marshal grumbled, urging her horse forward and heading to the jail. "Get inside."

"Yes, ma'am!" Caldwell said, sliding off of his horse and entering the jail. He half expected some new ambush, but there were no lurking bandits hiding under the cots or behind the doors.

The Marshal leaned over and snagged Caldwell’s reins as he let them fall, gently looping them around so she could lead his horse. They moved down the street toward the hotel, finally stopping and dismounting before the stables. There were few people in the stables, again due to the heat, so they led the horses out of the street and started brushing them down.

“Are we going to talk about what just happened back there?” Jed asked as he worked.

“Depends. Are you going to listen to what I have to say, or just complain about Caldwell?”

He shrugged, “the boy had it coming.”

“Can’t say, wasn’t there,” the Marshal said. “Ran across a girl, though. They’ve got a female fighter with ‘em.”

Jed smirked, “how’d she stack up?”

“Decent. Not the best at hand-to-hand, though. If she shoots as good as she thinks she does, I’d say she’d be more to recon with as a sniper. Anyway, there’s others preying on Meyers’ group already.”

“Bounty hunters? I guess that reckons, think that they’ll cooperate?”

“Despite my notions about bounty hunters and that lot, it should work in our favor. They’re keeping an eye on Charlotte, at least, which is a start. Not that it won’t cause trouble elsewhere,” the Marshal shook her head. “I have hopes for it, at least. Little ones, but at least that’s something.”

“Anything in particular?”

“Char’s safe, for now. Making contact again is going to be the problem, but we’ll see.”

“Thats a good thing, I guess.”

The Marshal nodded, brushing down her horse and watching Jed.

“You’re doing your best,” she said quietly. “You’ve done everything Cane taught you to. But this isn’t a normal sheriff’s job. Tell me what you’re thinking, Jed.”

“Most Sheriffs could protect their own sister, so don’t feed me that line.”

“Most sheriffs don’t have the entire gang of one of the most notorious outlaws sitting on their steps, either,” the Marshal said, shrugging. “It could have been any girl, and you would be dealing with it the same way, so don’t throw it back on yourself.”

“Well maybe I’m just not cut out for the job, ever think of that?”

“Yes, quite a lot,” the Marshal said, sighing. “A long time ago, too, but there wasn’t anything to do about it. Guess it comes with the territory of not being able to give you parents. You kind of got stuck with the lonely and slightly unsocial.”

“Char turned out alright.”

“You mean the 16 year old that offered to fight me, tried to order whiskey, and, knowing that she ought not be going out of the town on her own, much less without a gun, went anyway? Yeah, she turned out alright.”

“Guess I messed that up too.”

“You can’t blame yourself, Jed,” she said quietly. “You were a little boy then, and you can’t saddle a little boy with the job of raising his little sister. It’s not your fault.”

“If you say so,” replied Jed as he turned away, briskly escorting his horse back to it’s stable.

The Marshal shook her head, then began working on Caldwell’s horse. If he wasn’t going to listen to her, there was no point in wasting her breath.

She didn't know what Jed was thinking, but she figured it would be best to hold her tongue rather than goading him to analyze the morning and what had gone wrong. Even when they moved from the stables into the kitchen, they remained silent, cleaning their gear quietly. Jed finished first, wandering off on his own, leaving the Marshal to finish her work alone. She did not really mind, in fact. Jed had never been particularly talkative, even a a boy, but the deathly silence that radiated from him was wearing on her. Finally, she stood back and surveyed her work; all of her things were laid out neatly, cleaner than they had been in weeks. It was amazing what a table, proper cleaning supplies, and a little time could do.

Caldwell wandered into the kitchen to see what the Marshal was doing. He was doing his best to avoid Jed at the moment, still not entirely certain he could trust the sheriff to not shoot him.

"So what happens next?" Caldwell asked.

"We wait," the Marshal said simply. "There isn't much we can do until the heat of the day passes and sunset comes. Best to avoid being out in the midday if possible around here."

"So in the meantime, what's first? Siestas or whiskey?" Caldwell asked.

The Marshal looked over at Caldwell, then sighed and shook her head.

"What, Neither one of those? That's mighty depressin'," Caldwell said mournfully.

"Do what you want, Caldwell, as long as you stay out of sight of the general public," she finally said. "I don't much care what you mean to do, as long as you aren't disrupting anyone else."

"All right then. Just going to mosey out to the back stairs and smoke a little," Caldwell said and wandered out of the room.