I just wanted to take a minute to thank you all for the kind reviews. Just by the way, I'm still expecting more, even though this chapter isn't exactly explosive.


Chapter Three: Type

Matthew Slater had not eaten that day. It would seem that all he had managed to do was lie in bed and sweat, the salty liquid congealing in the folds of his wasted neck. But Will knew better; the numerous empty bottles strewn across the bedroom spoke of a trip to the liquor store. Indeed, as she took the bottles downstairs to set on the kitchen table, she noticed that the jar of money she kept on the mantle was considerably emptier. She'd been telling herself for months that she needed to move it, to stow it safely away in her own bedroom, but she had yet to do the chore. It was like a final act of admittance, a farewell to the father that once had been. She didn't want to give up on him. She wanted to believe that half a year was not such a long time.

She dipped a cloth into a bowl of cool water and wrung it out before wiping the sticky residue off of her father's face and neck. He was staring out the window where sunset was approaching. Dusk was a very gradual thing in town: dark came slowly, swallowing the main street into crimson glow and shadow. Then the sun performed its swan song, blood red light exploding across the sky for a few brief but eternal moments before disappearing behind the flat horizon. Will couldn't tell if he was really observing these magical seconds or if he had retired to his drunken abyss for the night. He hadn't spoken a word to her since she'd come in, and her conversation with him would have been equally as stimulating had she been talking to a brick wall.

"You'll never guess who came in today," she said, plucking a stray hair out of the water on his forehead. "Real outlaws ¾ not just the petty thieves who usually keep me company." She sighed, held his empty eyes with her own. "I'd tell you who," she murmured, "but I think it'd only upset you. It certainly gave me a turn."

"Takes near an apocalypse to do that," Matthew rasped. "Tell me who it was."

Will paused; she was unaware that he'd been listening and was now unsure if she really wanted to tell him what had happened in the bar today. She wasn't sure if she felt comfortable with her father knowing that Ben Wade thought she looked familiar, thought her eyes were the greenest he'd ever seen.

"Charlie Prince," she said softly. If she couldn't tell him the whole truth, she'd tell him half of it.

"Charlie Prince," he repeated. "One of the most wanted men in Arizona. Did you talk to him?"

"Some," she replied. "He didn't seem the talkative type."

"I don't imagine so." A thought passed over his face, a realization. "Was Ben Wade not with him?" he asked. "Never heard of Charlie Prince going anywhere without Ben Wade."

"I'm sure he was close by."

"I'm sure…" His eyes started to droop under the weight of memory and alcohol. "If he'd been there, Will, what would you have done? Would you have killed him?"

"No, Daddy," she whispered. "I don't think I would have."

He nodded slowly, his head dropping.

"You're a good girl," he said. "I know I don't tell you enough… but you are…"

She held his hand as he crossed the border into that seductive country Sleep, his chest rising and falling steadily as his breathing fell into an easy rhythm. Her lower lip began to tremble as he went, and then her shoulders, and by the time he had fallen in deeply enough, she was shaking all over, the tears pouring down her face. She got unsteadily to her feet and shuffled awkwardly out of the room, one hand over her mouth. In the hallway she sank to the floor, her back to the wall, and cried in earnest. She feared sometimes that the story of six months ago would never stop haunting her, that she'd always be plagued by these instances in which she could not reign her tears to a halt as she thought of Terry's face in the last time she had seen him.

She feared sometimes too (and this fear was worse, infinitely worse) that she would forget that last time, that someday his face would slip a notch in her mind and be lost forever. Already the wear and tear of the months had taken their toll on Terry's everlasting smile, blurring its edges in the back of her mind.

Still, within a few moments her eyes had run themselves dry and she found that her hands had stopped trembling. She took a few deep, experimental breaths, and though they still shook in her throat, they did not overwhelm her into more tears. She relaxed, resting her weary head on the wall behind her, watching the dying light sink lower on her father's bedroom door. He did not call out to her, did not ask if she was alright. The drink had lulled him into apathy; she may as well have been alone in the house.

The past few months had made her wonder whether she shouldn't just sell their land ¾ the barn, too big for one horse, the house too spacious for an unmarried woman and her bedridden father. The real Matthew Slater would have been scandalized by the very suggestion of leaving the plot that had harboured him all his life, but Will didn't think this new version would mind, or even notice.

A worried sort of satisfaction brewed within her as she thought about the riches concealed in the wagon behind the bar. Within a few weeks, leaving her home would never again cross her mind as a plausible decision. She would stop measuring her waist with her hands to see if she'd lost any more weight from scraping meals together in meagre portions. There'd be no need to marry, even, not if she could manage by herself. Though she was not quite eighteen, she was dreading the idea of forever confining herself to one man's hand, one man's affection. To bearing a man's children, sacrificing her freedom in favour of bending over cradles and carrying soft little people on her hips. She enjoyed children, but they had always been kept at a safe distance. That the idea of having her own was mortally terrifying served as an omen, a warning not to follow in her mother's footsteps.

Will frowned, puzzled. She hadn't thought about her mother in a long time.

Mrs. Slater was, naturally, an inconsistent force in her daughter's life, and as such Will knew very little about her. Terry used to tell her stories when they were only children. They'd spend whole afternoons talking about the time that he'd spent with her, about the smell of her perfume and the touch of her lips on his forehead. Later, when she was alone, Will would indulge in these stolen memories and pretend they were hers. Now that Terry was gone, she had only the old stories left. If Matthew had spoken seldom of his wife before, his words had become even more scarce now.

Will went out to the barn and tended to Sam, shovelling out his stall and checking his water. She touched the velvety part of his snout and kissed it gently.

"Things are going to turn around for us," she promised. "Starting today, they're going to turn around."

Sam didn't answer; he never did. Will liked it that way. The last thing she needed was someone else giving her answers to questions she'd never asked.

She knew what she was doing, though maybe not what she was getting herself into. If someone had told her not to do what she wanted to do in the current situation, she wouldn't have listened. She'd be working the night shift in a few days, a good time before Charlie Prince was due to leave.

In a point of fact, Wilhelmina Slater had indeed crossed into a territory from which there was no return.