“Ooh! Ow! We got our own thing going on over here!” shouted Edward.
“Yeah, and it’s really bad! Ouch, stop fighting me!” Albert hollered back.
“Ow, this is so intense over here!”
“Yeah, nobody needs to get in on this! We’re both getting hurt pretty bad!”
One of Edward’s punches accidentally connected.
“OW!” Albert yelped, with a sizable flinch.
“Oh, my God, I’m so sorry!” cried Edward.
“You actually hit me!”
“Albert, I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to.”
“Do I have a mark?”
“Yeah, there’s a little redness there.”
“Yeah, it feels like it.”
“You want a moist rag?”
Before Albert could respond, something caught his eye across the room. On the upper level near the brothel, two cowboys were pummeling each other fiercely. One clearly had the advantage as he delivered blow after blow, sending his opponent crashing against the wooden railing. It began to crack. Albert could not have cared less about the destruction of saloon property, but what did concern him was Anna Barnes, the newcomer. She stood just below the upper level, surveying the fray with an oddly detached look in her eye, almost like a disapproving mother watching her children scuffling in the mud, ruining their Sunday clothes. The slugfest continued directly above her, and Albert watched with alarm as the railing began to collapse. Without thinking, he broke free of his make-believe fistfight with Edward and sprinted straight through the center of the mêlée toward the opposite end of the room.
Miraculously, all he got was a stray elbow in the ribs and a splash of beer in the eye before he reached Anna Barnes. He grabbed her arm and yanked her out of the way as hard as he could, just as the battered cowboy above came crashing down from the upper level, bringing a hailstorm of heavy wooden debris along with him.
Anna turned and looked at Albert with surprise. She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could say a word, a whiskey bottle flew past her face, shattering against the wall inches from her head.
“Come on!” Albert yelled, pulling her along with him by the wrist as he scurried out through the batwing doors. The two of them half-ran, half-stumbled out into the evening air and the relative safety of the dusty thoroughfare.
Anna turned to Albert. “Thank you,” she said.
It was the first time he’d heard her speak, he noted, and she had a pleasant alto quality to her voice. Even from two words, he was aware of her markedly undisturbed reaction to what had been a potentially traumatizing close call. She didn’t appear shaken or out of breath in any way whatsoever. Albert, for his part, was heaving with the aftershocks of panic as he bent over to brush the dust off his trousers.
BANG! BANG!
He jolted upright, just in time to see Sheriff Arness and his deputy racing into the saloon, guns blazing into the air.
“Let’s get the fuck outta here,” he said with a resurgence of agitation. The two of them made their way up the street, away from the chaos.
Neither said anything for a while. Albert was painfully aware that this woman was giving him time to collect himself before she struck up any kind of a conversation. He felt silly. She’d been the one in danger, and yet she seemed utterly at ease. Meanwhile, his hands were still shaking.
“Nice work back there,” she remarked at last. “I guess you’re a real hero, huh?”
“Oh, no, I’m not the hero,” he answered with a flushed face. “I’m the guy in the crowd making fun of the hero’s shirt.”
She gave a small chuckle, which was promptly interrupted by a loud bark. Plugger came bounding out of the darkness and happily fell into step beside Anna, giving her hand a friendly lick.
“Hey, look who’s here.” She smiled. “This is Plugger.”
“Oh, hey, Plugger,” Albert said, gamely scratching the mangy dog’s head. He turned and regarded Anna with a look of curiosity. “So… that was your brother, huh?”
“Lewis, yeah.” She rolled her eyes.
“Uh-huh. Does he generally commit murder over beverage-related disputes?”
“He’s always been a little rambunctious.”
“Yeah, he seems like a character,” Albert deadpanned. “You’re okay, though?”
“Oh, I’ve seen him do it a hundred times. I don’t have to worry about Lewis, he’ll pull himself out no problem.”
“Well, that’s… that’s good, I guess. I’m, uh… I’m Albert, by the way,” he said, offering a hand.
She shook it firmly. “I’m Anna. Nice to meet you, Albert.”
“So, you guys just got into town, huh? Welcome to our awesome town,” he said, grandly extending an arm to show off the unremarkable shithole that was Old Stump.
“Thanks.” She smiled. “Lewis and I moved here from Kansas City.”
“Kansas, huh?”
“No, it’s in Missouri.”
“Oh, right. That’s annoying and weird.”
“Yeah, we were wanting a change, so we came out to the frontier looking to build a farm.” Plugger jabbed at her leg with his nose, a dry stick hanging out of his mouth. She plucked it from his jaws and tossed it farther up the thoroughfare. The dog scurried after it with clumsy urgency.
“Really? I’m a farmer myself,” he said without pride or enthusiasm. “I have a farm about two miles from here.”
“Oh. Cattle?”
“Sheep.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that’s gotta be fulfilling work, right?” she asked, plainly hearing the dolefulness in his voice.
“It’s great,” he answered flatly. “It’s like being a dog walker for a hundred and fifty really stupid dogs.”
She laughed openly for the first time. “It can’t be that bad. Sheep are cute.”
“That’s the problem. I mean, if I was a cattle farmer, that’d be one thing, y’know? That’s a manly job. You use cows to make beef. Leather. Tough things. With sheep you make sweaters. I’m basically a sweater farmer.”
“That’s good; we’re all hoping for a bountiful sweater harvest this year.”
Their stroll came to a halt as they reached the fat, ugly tree stump that jutted up from the ground smack in the center of the thoroughfare. “I’m assuming this is why the town is called Old Stump,” Anna said.
“Yeah, this is it.” He sighed with boredom. “When they built the town, they had to cut down this big tree, but they couldn’t move the stump. They didn’t have any dynamite and they ran out of black guys, so they had to leave it here, right in the middle of the street.”
“Well, why couldn’t they just build the town fifty feet that way?” she asked, pointing off to her left.
Albert stared at the stump. No one had ever asked that question before. It was a very good question. He thought it best to move on. “So, why would you leave Kansas City for the Western frontier?” he asked. “I mean, it sucks out here.”
“I don’t know—it’s exciting,” she said, with a bright, attentive gaze, as if seeing a completely different town than he was. “Everything’s so new and unpredictable.”
“Well, that is true, nothing is what it seems. Like, look—see that building right there? We have no idea what’s inside. I mean, it could be anything. This whole place has such an air of mystery about it.” He gave her his best wide-eyed impression of awestruck curiosity as he pointed to a shabby structure with the single word BANK painted on the front.