On bounty

“You saw the bounties, dinja?”

I took my time looking up.

That ragamuffin had been quiet as a sceaducat padding her way through and behind rangy scrub, mustering courage to speak out. Spooky quiet. I might have missed it had I been ranging like most folk do through here.

But I’d heard her all the same. And I had a mystique cultivated to protect, so I drew out the minutes in a yarn stretched taut to lend it further credence, showing her all brim on my widehat until my eyes slow-locked onto hers.

She’d be the pretty type some day, that much was clear. But now she was more Jack than Jane and all gangly-limbed. Those eyes would eventually kill at fifty stride, if the storms didn’t take them first. Or some reaver.

She earned my respect right off, staying silent like she was. Said her bit, expected answers. Weren’t gonna beg for nothing.

“Bounties?”

“Don’t pretend you’re dim,” she said, fists on hip. “It’s not becoming of a gentleman.”

I allowed myself a smirk. “Ne’er said I were a gentleman.”

“An you ne’er said you weren’t neither, but you ain’t dim,” she said. “You stink of cagey and fox, as gran would say.”

“Your gran sounds like my gran,” I replied.

She ignored me. It was a sorry attempt as misdirection.

“So, you coming for the bounties? You look the type,” she said in dirt face, grubby finger pointing to the blade on my back. “You’ve got steel, and you’ve got…” the finger drifted to the meter and a half sleeve hanging from my saddle. “…gun.”

They don’t make either anymore. Became my calling card of a sort, I reckon — though I don’t look much other than ornery aside from the antiques.

“I’ll look at them when I see ’em,” I said. “Mayhaps I will. Mayhaps I won’t take up a bounty.”

She spit at my horses feet in disgust. “Oh, you’ll take ’em. Gran says that, to your kind, they are like poppy. She says you crave them more than Drunk Billy craves his booze.”

“Mayhaps she’s right,” I admit.

“Town’s that way. You go check those rags out.”

The hat goes down and I turn the horse in the direction of her smudged pointing finger.

“An’ when your done looking at your bounties, y’old fox, you — come back and talk to Gran. She has a siteration she wants you to deal with.”

I didn’t look up. Mystique cultivation, though I suspect it was lost some on the likes of this one and her gran.