Oregonal Sin

Ryan didn't go out as much as he used to, even this long after the attack. Whenever it got too cold, his ribs ached in a way that made him feel like he couldn't breathe no more, even if he always could. Sometimes a client said this or did that and he was back there, too, and it was all he could do not to try and get away from them. It happened less and less with time, but still, once in a while.

When he used to go out, before, he knew people were looking at him, staring sometimes, saying stuff behind his back, sometimes to his face. It hadn't ever mattered. Now he was paranoid, and he always walked fast through the streets, and kept checking over his shoulder that there wasn't nobody following him.

That was what he did that morning, until he got to the edge of town, and kept on walking 'til he hit the forest. Trees looked dead in the winter, but that was okay. They were still good to climb, and there were some pines here and there kept their needles, so he picked one of those, so he could feel as if he was hidden from the world up there in its branches.

When he heard steps coming his way, he peered down through the branches and needles, heart thudding hard in his chest, trying to see who it might be.

His arm still hurt.

Of course it still fucking hurt, it had only been two days since it had had an arrow lodged in the muscle, but his arm, and his ego, still hurt. It was a good thing he could draw just as fast and precisely with either hand, but being only able to correctly draw one gun out of the two slung at his hips was not to Charlie Edwards' liking. At all.

And his arm still fucking hurt. Fucking Indians getting into his business. He'd just gone back, just in case they'd left anything, but the body of his wanted fugitive must have washed down the river. Fucking Indians. Charlie dismounted, tied his horse's tether in front of the saloon, and walked in to have a drink or ten. He was doing his best to hide the fact that his right arm was, for the time being, shot to hell, but he wouldn't be surprised if the rumor had spread anyway. He didn't figure the doc would've said anything, but many a town folk had seen him ride into town with blood seeping down his arm, two days past.

Fucking Indians.

He settled at the counter, waiting for the bartender to have a second to pour him a glass. And not very patiently, at that, although it didn't show much, just in the set of his brow, mostly hidden under his hat.

Noah wasn't a religious person, hadn't been in a good few years now. She was still young enough that 'a good few years' was actually a pretty long time. But there was one ceremony she had set for herself in the past few months. Every time she came to town from the ranch, she stopped by the cemetery, and Charlie's grave. She never said anything, she wasn't good at that stuff. She just stood there for a few minutes, thought about him, and everything she would've told him if he'd still been around, and then she put her hat on, tipped it at the grave, and headed back into the heart of town.

The saloon, for drinks, if it was an evening off. Wherever she needed to buy things for the ranch, if it was a business call.

Tonight, it was an evening off, and she headed for the saloon, looking up from her feet beating the dusty road when someone fell in stride beside her.