Heist Part 1

Feeling a bit better now. Haven’t gotten any more calls from the library. No distractions, just me home alone, surrounding myself with stories of people better than me. In between reading journal entries, I’ve been rereading some of my favorite stories. I haven’t made this determined an effort to keep myself in the world of fiction in a long time. I just wish I could read “We” or “Beowulf” without getting a migraine…. I don’t understand why, but whenever I’ve tread to read either lately, by the third line I feel like my head’s about to be ripped apart….. And those were among my favorite stories….

I’m going to be skipping some parts of the journal today. Since her last entry, Elizabeth began to keep record of every day. Most of them don’t have anything interesting; the date plus one or two lines usually saying “Nothing of note”. Sometimes she’ll talk a little about what happened during the day, but nothing exciting happens for several pages. Then we get to this entry.


Received a letter from Doc saying that one of the toys I asked him to build was finished. Just the sort of good news I like to hear. Dorian agreed to take me to the city; this time, I think this time I’ll let him give me that tour.

The device Doc made was a bit more unwieldy than I had expected. The fault there is in my predictions, not his engineering; for some reason, it never occurred to me that sticking rope attached to a spike in a gun would make that gun much heavier than bullets would. Still, it was what I’d ordered, and only time would tell me exactly how effective it would be.

Talked a little with Doc about future projects. Some more grounded in reality than this recent creation, others…. Not so much. I have hope that he can still pull them off. He got me a grappling gun, albeit one not quite as impressive as I’d imagined. Major issue is funding; getting the money needed to construct all my dream machines can’t be easy. Told him not to worry, I’d find a way. Course I had no idea how I would find that way, but I was confident that something would present itself to me.

With business taken care of, I could afford some fun. Dorian finally got his chance to show me around the city. On its own, the place had little for any visitor to ogle at, but Dorian made up for that with his own style of tour guiding. Every locale, no matter how seemingly insignificant, had some anecdote attached to it which Dorian would retell. His stories were always so over the top, so blatantly exaggerated, exaggeration which was only added to by his wild gestures, that one couldn’t help but become endeared to them. The more stories he told, the more I noticed he was including himself in them; gradually creating a larger role until towards the end, he was telling more about his heroic antics than the city. It took all I had to not start laughing in the middle of the street as he imparted a tale of his drunken chase after an equally drunken horse thief in the middle of the night (he says he doesn’t remember exactly what happened, except that he woke up the next morning in bed three cities away with two girls, the thief, and the horse).

It was in the midst of one of his stories that we were rudely interrupted by three men. Official looking people, judging by the badges they wore. The speed at which Dorian dropped his cheer and became extremely grim when he saw them approaching was surprising. Their conversation was in hushed voices, so I never learned exactly what it was about. The three seemed to be enjoying the talk more than Dorian, especially the man in the lead. His big, droopy mustache couldn’t hide that ridiculous grin. Occasionally he would leer towards me, and once asked Dorian, loud enough for me to hear, when Dorian had started traveling around with “prostitutes”. I cannot describe the amount of self control it took to not crush his face into the ground after that.

Whatever they were talking about, it didn’t last long. The three walked away laughing, while Dorian stood in place, sullen mood remaining. He was quiet through the rest of the day, and then through the next as we returned to Los Valle. First time I’d seen him like that; nothing could get a response longer than two words from him.

Back in Los Valle, the first thing Dorian did was go to Samuel’s bar and order a drink so he could sulk by himself in a corner. Still unresponsive to all conversation starters. That was a lost cause, so I adjusted my route of attack, and started questioning Samuel instead. He’d known Dorian since they were both young, so perhaps he might have an explanation for his friend’s mood. Samuel was initially reluctant to explain anything, but my apparent concern seemed to win him over.

The man with the badge and mustache who had led the group which had spoken with Dorian was Frederick Baker, sheriff of the area. He was the cousin of Thomas Baker, the current mayor of Albuquerque. Mayor Baker was a man who had followed the time honored tradition of placing family members within all positions of power upon election. Which was something of a problem, as Dorian’s family had never gotten along well with the Bakers. It had started as a small dispute over land between the Bakers and Gardner’s, back before the railroad had turned the place from countryside into a city, and continued through the years with constant enmity. Much of Dorian’s family had been killed as the feud heightened, and they had killed an equal number of Bakers in retaliation. It was the Bakers who won in the end, taking control of the city and driving the surviving Gardners out. Dorian’s travels during his youth had been a result of this exile. He had only begun to return recently, after receiving word that the Bakers had grown complacent enough that they probably weren’t going to shoot him on sight. But even then, he tried to avoiding attracting too much attention; something he had failed to do during our last visit.

Bit of a sob story. You almost wouldn’t believe it, if you only saw his usual, optimistic self.

Samuel dropped his voice as he continued. Lately, he suspected that Dorian was planning something against the Bakers. Whenever Dorian risked coming back home, it was for a reason; and elusive as he’d been on what the specific reason of this visit was, Samuel knew the man well enough to guess. I asked if it would be possible to talk Dorian out of whatever he was planning, but Samuel didn’t think so. At the very least, I could keep an eye on the man. Make sure he didn’t do anything too extremely suicidal.

Told Samuel I’d do my best to ensure Dorian didn’t get killed. Then, hoping to catch Samuel while he was in the mood for revealing secrets, I asked him a question which had been bugging me for some time:

Why did Dorian wear so much black (especially in a place as dry and hot as this)?

Samuel smiled at that, and leaned forward before answering. Dorian wore black whenever he was trying to impress the ladies by looking dashing. Some “fool notion” he’d picked up from reading too much Byronic poetry.
But Samuel, I asked, still confused, Dorian’s almost always wearing black when I’m around.
Exactly, Samuel said with a wink.

Oh.
Well.
Um.
Huh.

Been a while since I’ve seen someone laugh as hard as Samuel did at my expression. Then he told me this was the subtlest attempt to woo a girl he’d ever seen Dorian do; probably because Dorian was terrified I’d break his arm if he tried anything. Affronted, I claimed that I wasn’t that violent…. Only for Samuel to crush that argument by pointing out the number of bar fights I’d resolved by knocking out all participants.

I decided I’d think about that revelation later. Other things to take care of at the moment. Dorian was still in his depressed fortress of sulking. If I had to drag him out by force, I would.

Went over to his table and snatched the drink out of his hand. Didn’t seem to even notice; just kept looking down into space. Okay, more forceful this time. Loudly told him I knew about the Bakers, and that Samuel suspected he was planning something against them.

In no uncertain terms, Dorian told me his opinion of my sticking my nose into his business.
Well, maybe I’d make this my business, if he kept acting like a baby.

Most of what followed was a bit of a blur, consisting of the two of us shouting at each other with rising volume. The last straw was when he told me that a woman had no place getting involved in what he was planning.

I reminded him just who this woman he was talking to was by grabbing his arm and throwing him on his back. Bit rash. But I was getting tired of this shit.

Attacking Dorian did not get the reaction I would have expected. He bounced back up, huge smile across his face. It seems I had the superior argument in this debate. Or all he really needed was a good knock on the head to beat some sense back into him. Once more we were back to his boundless energy and optimism. No more “ain’t no place for a woman”; now he was enthusiastically trying to enlist my support. He did have the courtesy to try and warn me ahead of time what I would be getting into. It would be dangerous, he said.
Danger? Danger is my middle name! (Not really, but I think he understood the figure of speech)
It’d be illegal.
Illegal? Finally! I’d been looking forward to getting my own wanted poster!
Was I absolutely sure I wanted to get involved in this?
Hell yeah I did.

With those formalities out of the way, and neither of us lacking in resolve, it was time for Dorian to fill me in on just what this big plan was….



Getting a bit lengthy, so I’m going to put the rest in a different post.

-Lisa