CHAPTER 8

"You owe me an explanation." The door slammed shut.

Methos was sitting on the couch, laptop open in front of him. At the sound of the Highlander's voice he looked up calmly. "Did you take care of him?" he asked instead of offering what Duncan had demanded.

"No. I didn't." MacLeod crossed his arms in front of his chest after shrugging out of his coat. He stared at the old man who still seemed unaffected by Duncan's anger. "We were interrupted."

Methos raised an inquisitive brow.

"Some guy spotted us, so we parted ways," Duncan explained. "He was specifically after you, so will you finally tell me what is going on?"

"He was?" Methos' smirk betrayed that he wasn't surprised to hear that at all. The look on the Highlander's face told him to cut it out in no uncertain terms. Methos threw his hands up in defeat. "Fine. Just do me a favour and sit down, will you?"

Duncan obliged after taking two glasses and a bottle of whiskey from the cabinet.

"His name is Clarence Maxwell," Methos began. "And I guess he blames me for every wrong turn his life has taken." Methos took a sip from his whiskey, a reminiscent but mischievous smile on his face.

"It must've been around 1896 when Butch Cassidy got out of jail and returned to the Hole in the Wall. I had been laying low there for a while, helping with the planning of some minor robberies, but not leaving the valley." The smile spread into a grin. "It was a great time. Way more fun than any monastery and just as secluded."

Duncan scowled. He was in no mood for stories from "the glory days", not when he had just found himself in a duel with no clue of what this was about anyway. Not to mention his frustration at not being able to end it there and then. Methos got the hint.

"And then Butch comes back, Maxwell in tow," he continued without skipping a beat. "Granted, he wasn't immortal yet, but knowing that he would be was enough for me to dislike him. The way he behaved it wouldn't be long until his First Death either and I had no intention to stick around for that."

Experience had taught MacLeod that Methos could be anything and probably had been anything he wanted to, but he had a hard time imagining him as a teacher. Before meeting Duncan he had confessed to not having taken a head for two centuries and even now he was avoiding other immortals whenever he could. A student just didn't fit in with that lifestyle.

"So you left?" Duncan guessed while asking himself how the other guy could be holding a grudge for Methos if that were the case.

"I was thinking about leaving," Methos confirmed, "but then I realized I could do better. He would be the one leaving, not me. After seeing his taste for settling disputes with guns I tried to convince Butch that the kid had to go."

"Sure the others in the gang were no saints either," Duncan pointed out.

"No, but they knew the difference between necessity and childish shows of strength... for the most part anyway." There was that grin again. He continued more sombre: "Maxwell tried to solve everything with his gun. Even fights over a game of poker at the camp. There was a very fine line between joking with him and staring up the barrel of his gun. Butch could see that, too, but he'd met the guy in prison and wanted to give him a chance. Long story short, Maxwell got himself into trouble on an almost daily basis, so Butch finally sent him on his way a few weeks later."

"That still doesn't explain why he's after your head," Duncan stated, trying not to sound too irritated. Why did Methos have to make a secret out of every damn thing?

"Maxwell was a rather, shall we say, simple man," Methos' voice left no doubt that he thought this to be the understatement of the century. "In his mind, it was my fault that Butch kicked him out because he knew I had spoken against him on more than one occasion." He swallowed the rest of his whiskey and set the glass down on the table. "Apparently he blames me for just about anything then went wrong since then as well."

Duncan's puzzled look prompted Methos to turn the laptop so MacLeod could see what he had been working on. The Scot wasn't surprised to see it was Maxwell's Watcher chronicle. He skimmed through the file. It was rather lengthy for someone so new to the Game, but Duncan soon found that most of it were the Watchers' attempt at reconstructing the guy's mortal life. His aliases alone took up half a page.

"He's lasted longer than you gave him credit for." Duncan pointed at the date of Maxwell's First Death. "August 1909."

"Yeah, sure." Methos snorted. "Did that guy look like 50 to you?"

It was a rhetorical question, so Duncan let it go.

"Half of this is crap, hell, most of it is." Proving his point, Methos quoted from an article that was included in the chronicle. It had appeared in the Salt Lake Tribune and was dated May 31, 1898: "He is without doubt the sharpest and brightest criminal local officers ever handled. The Maxwell I knew was as sharp as a marble."

"And this proves that he blames you how?" Duncan pressed, exasperation now clear in his voice.

Methos grinned widely and Duncan knew he had been had before the old man spoke. "It doesn't."

Even though the Highlander knew admitting to being annoyed was likely to make it worse, he couldn't help it. He glared at Methos. As predicted, it had no effect other than to make the world's oldest immortal laugh.

That was it. Duncan stood and turned to go. "I'll go shower, we'll talk about it in the morning."

"Killjoy," Methos mumbled as the MacLeod vanished out of sight.