In the morning, Mara showed up downstairs at only a minute before 6:30, looking sheepish and a little uncomfortable in her new uniform. The body of the dress fit her well enough, but the skirt was quite short, just over halfway down her thigh, and puffed up with multiple layers of frilly petticoats until the cloth of the skirt itself was somewhere around 6 inches away from her legs. Since the only shoes she owned were her boots, she had wiped the dust off of them in an attempt to make them look good enough for work. Frank nodded his greeting when she arrived downstairs, and she smiled back.

"Breakfast," he said, making the word sound like more of a grunt than part of the English language.

He gestured to a plate of buttered toast on the bar. Mara took a piece, and began to munch, trying to keep the amount of dropped crumbs to a minimum. After her first piece, Frank started to give her instructions.

"Sweep the floor, then bring the chairs down from the tables. Just sweep the dust out the door, and then sweep the porch as well. Once you're done with that, I'll get you a rag to wash tables with. Mara snatched another piece of toast before nodding with false seriousness to Frank and heading for the broom. The work went quickly, and soon the little tavern, which also, she later found out, served breakfast, lunch, and dinner, was open to customers.

Yvonne, the other waitress working there, showed up two minutes after opening time. "Yes, Frank, I know I'm late," she burst out as she hurried into the building. "I'm so sorry about making you open by yourself but-oh." She stopped dead in her tracks, because Mara stood in front of her, wearing the waitress's uniform and a slight smile. Mara was the first to speak. "Hi," she said. "I'm Mara," stepping forward with her hand out to shake. "I take it you're Yvonne?" It took a moment, but Yvonne smiled and clasped Mara's hand "Yeah…yeah, I am. You're working here now?" she questioned.

"Yup. I thought you could use some help with the dinner crowd," Mara said. Yvonne smiled, but didn't say another word, and instead headed to where Frank stood in the kitchen brewing a pot of coffee and began to speak to him quietly. Mara could feel a slight flush coming to her cheeks, because she knew Yvonne and Frank were talking about her. She pretended not to notice, and instead fidgeted with the pen and the pad of paper in the pocket of her apron.

A square of light spilled into the restaurant as the doors swung poen to admit the first customer of the day. It was a young woman, perhaps in her late twenties, with her toddler son in tow. Mara put on a bright smile. "Welcome!" she said to the woman. "Please be seated, and I'll get you a menu. Would you like a high chair?" The woman smiled. "Yes, please," she replied. Mara brought it to her, along with a menu, and then two glasses of water- one large, with ice, and the other smaller, without ice. Soon, the woman ordered, and Mara brought it up the kitchen, where she handed it to Frank herself.

"I guess won't have to train her," she heard Yvonne say as she headed back out into the restaurant.

Sometime around noon, while the lunch rush was in full swing, the shutter-like doors were kicked open, crashing against the walls on either side of the doorway with a crash. Three men barged in, masks over their faces and shotguns in their hands. For a split second, the entire restaurant went deathly quiet. Not a breath nor word nor scrape of silverware was heard. "All right, everybody down!" one of the masked men shouted hoarsely. And that was when the screaming started. In an instant, the restaurant was plunged into total chaos as the patrons dove to the floor or huddled beneath tables. Only Mara was left standing, in the very center of the restaurant, her arms loaded down with three plates heaped with food. Her eyes were downcast, yet you could see the anger building in her as she fought to keep the ever-swelling tide under control. "I told you to get down!" a masked bandit snarled. "Now do it!" Slowly, Mara looked up at the men, meeting the gaze of each with eyes full of seething anger.

"Get down, you stupid girl!" a second shouted at her. "I don't want to have to kill you, but if you stand there one more second, and I shoot."

Suddenly, her right arm became a blur. Then three shots rang out, but not from the bandits standing framed in the sunlight streaming in the door, but from the .45 automatic handgun that Mara had drawn from where she had it holstered on her hip, concealed under her waitress' uniform. The plate she had been carrying in that hand she was balancing on her head, and the other two remained where they were. The three shotguns clattered to the ground. "My god, she could have killed us!" one of the masked men exclaimed in horror. "Yes, I could have," Mara replied coolly.

"But do you have any idea how hard bloodstains are to get out of a wooden floor?"

"You are going to pay for this!" the leader roared, lunging for his gun. But before he could reach it, it skittered away across the floor, propelled by a fourth bullet from Mara's gun.

"And to think, my first day on the job and I have to deal with armed robbers. Feh… You two, down on the floor, and don't even think about reaching for your guns." The two complied, casting frightened looks up at her as they hurried to follow her orders. "Somebody go get the sheriff." Mara called out. "And be quick about it."

The three would-be robbers were still facedown on the floor when the sheriff and a small posse of armed men arrived.

The people in the restaurant had tied their hands together behind their backs with their own bandannas. The sheriff's men quickly "escorted" them out of the building, but the sheriff stayed behind to thank Mara.

"Oh, there's no need to thank me. I just didn't want the food I was carrying to get cold," she said with a laugh.

A waitress to the last, she had delivered the plates she had been carrying to the customers who had ordered them as soon as the robbers had dealt with.

"Well, you sure did a good job of it. One teenager carrying three plates up against three armed men? I didn't believe it at first, but I guess you proved me wrong. How'd you learn to shoot a gun like that, miss?"
"I'm self-taught," she replied. "But I guess you could say it runs in the family, as well." The sheriff laughed at that, not sure what to think. "Well, I hope you stay here for a while. This town could use someone like you."

When all the commotion had finally died down and Mara, Frank, and Yvonne were left alone in the restaurant, the two immediately turned on her, pelting her with a barrage of questions, thank-you's, and exclamations over her actions that afternoon. They were still a little shocked that the new part-timer could have pulled off a dangerous stunt like that. But Mara seemed to think it was no big deal.