She'd stayed in Janestown. There had never been a question. There was nothing for her back East. Civilization held nothing for her. Civilized men questioned her abilities. The only man who'd ever seen the promise in her, had been as wild as the West itself. She thought of Slotter often, sometimes fondly, but mostly in sorrow. She was closing in on forty, she'd had a good, fulfilling life. A life of purpose. She supposed in some ways, she had Slotter to thank for that. If his murderous rage hadn't put her on the path to Janestown, she'd spent her life as a curiosity at best, confined by the constraints imposed by supposed gentlemen. On occasion she visited the captain's grave and spoke with him, even though her science assured that he could not hear her.
Standing over the sunken dirt of his final resting place, she wondered if there was truth in Dalberg's words. Did absolute power corrupt absolutely and were great men almost always bad men?
Was John Slotter a bad man?
As she turned and left the graveyard, she heard a voice carried on the wind. "Yes, Purity. A bad man."
She shook it off as her imagination. Disembodied voices had no place in her science.