The Idiot stood just inside the saloon, held firmly at gunpoint. He looked surprised but was apparently not too bothered by the small arsenal facing him. The man in black grabbed the Idiot by the collar and shook him.

"What are you, suicidal?" he demanded.

"Or just an idiot?" asked the bald man.

"Just an Idiot," Meryl muttered. The Idiot must have heard her because he craned his neck over the bald man's shoulder, grinning brightly as he saw her. Somehow he pulled one hand free enough to wave cheerfully.

"Hello!" he called. Out of the corner of her eye Meryl saw Milly beaming back at him.

The man with short-cropped hair grabbed the Idiot's arm and twisted it behind his back again, holding him in place for the bald man to punch him hard across the face. The Idiot fell sideways with a loud cry.

"Ow!" he wailed, waving both hands frantically above his head. "Be more gentle! I won't try anything, I swear. Here," he said, falling onto one side, shifting his heavy red duster until his holster was in full view. "Take my gun."

The bald man glowered down at him, but reached for the gun. As soon as he lifted it, the man's eyebrows shot up. "Whoa, this is heavy." He tossed it to the man in black, who hefted it in one hand, also looking impressed.

"It's custom-made," he said. The man in black glanced down at the Idiot, looking somewhat suspicious. "You're packing some serious fire-power..."

"Heh," said the Idiot, smiling vaguely and shrugging. "Just give it back after, alright?"

"Shut up!" yelled Jean, kicking the Idiot where he lay, curling into a ball.

"Oh, leave him alone!" Meryl demanded, shifting her weight forward and up onto her knees, defiantly. She didn't particularly like the man, but she sure as hell didn't think his idiocy alone was enough to warrant such a beating. Jean turned to stare at her again, furious. The Idiot looked equally surprised at Meryl's intervention.

"You're telling me what to do?" said Jean. He started forward, raising his hand to strike Meryl across the face. She flinched and recoiled, closing her eyes, but the blow never came. The man in black had grabbed Jean's wrist.

"That's enough, Jean," said the man in black. Jean tried to yank his arm free but the other man held tightly. He spoke quietly, but Meryl heard him anyway. "I know this is hard, but you need to calm down." Jean breathed heavily through his nose, but he nodded and the man in black released him. "Marvin, tie him up." The short-haired man produced a length of rope and the Idiot hurried to turn around, offering his hands gladly. Meryl rolled her eyes.

Marvin pushed the Idiot down with the other hostages and Meryl was suddenly squished between his bulk and Milly's back. His head slid off Meryl's shoulder and landed heavily in her lap. The Idiot grimaced up at her.

"Life's been hard since I met you," he told Meryl.

"The feeling," Meryl assured him vehemently, "is mutual." With Milly's help, she managed to heft the man back into an upright position.

"Yes, well, I—" The Idiot cut off abruptly, gasping loudly and looking suddenly aghast. Meryl stared at him, confused, and then realized he'd caught sight of the young woman strung up from the ceiling fan.

The woman's eyes were shut tight on tears and she was shaking in her efforts not to cry, whimpering quietly.

"You brutes!" shrieked the Idiot, shuffling sideways—surprisingly quickly, actually—toward the woman. "How dare you treat a lady so?" Meryl felt an irrational twinge of annoyance; what about how she and Milly were being treated?

"Get down," ordered the bald man, using one massive hand to shove the Idiot back onto Meryl. The Idiot quietly grumbled further protests while Milly managed to push him off Meryl again.

For a few minutes there was silence but then the young woman seemed to lose her fragile hold on calm and started to sob again. The gag was making it worse by hampering her breathing and the noises of her panic escalated quickly. Next to Milly, the butler was in tears, too, giving the otherwise quiet saloon a strange sort of echo; Meryl was hearing crying in stereo.

Everyone else's attention seemed to be on the young woman, but Meryl was watching Jean. The man was still using a dirty shirtsleeve to wipe his bloodied nose—she hadn't broken it, that big baby—and he seemed restless and fidgety. Meryl had seen how easily he could lose his temper, and now she could tell his calm was breaking again. She glanced sideways at the man in black, wondering if he had as good a handle on his man as he thought.

In the instant Meryl had looked away, Jean leapt forward with an angry shout, drawing his pistol. He ripped the cloth gag from the woman's mouth and shoved the barrel of the gun between her teeth when she gasped in surprise. Now she screamed in alarm, cutting the cry short as Jean grabbed her by the neck.

"Shut up!" he demanded. "Just shut up!"

Many things happened at once.

The butler screamed as both Meryl and Milly were up on their knees in an instant, rising to their feet, and the man in black started forward just as quickly. Then there was a great crashing noise from across the room that seemed to startle everyone present. Jean looked toward the sound at the same moment the man in black reached him, pulling the gun quickly from the woman's mouth. He wrapped an arm around Jean's neck and hauled him backwards, putting heavy pressure on the man's windpipe.

Meryl suddenly realized she and Milly had just revealed how freely mobile they actually were, even tied up, and she fell back to the ground in an instant. Milly followed her lead and they sat back at the bar before anyone had noticed, Meryl hoped. She couldn't be certain, but in all the panic, Meryl didn't think anyone had really paid any attention to them.

But what had happened?

By now Jean had passed out. The man in black let him carefully down to rest on the ground, then rubbed a hand over his own face, tiredly.

"I told you not to bring him," Marvin said, white in the face.

"He has as much right to be here as you," replied the man in black, standing and looking down at Jean.

"I'm s-sorry!" the young woman was spluttering now, tears rolling unchecked down her cheeks. She was hyperventilating in her panic from Jean's assault, desperately trying to rein in more gasping sobs. "If it's m-money you want, Daddy will p-pay anything, anything, just d-don't... please..." No one seemed to pay her any attention.

"What the hell happened?" asked the bald man, finally addressing Meryl's similar concern.

"Sorry, sorry," called the Idiot, from somewhere across the room. His spiky blond hair emerged from under a pile of upturned tables—that must have been what caused all that racket—and he appeared somewhat dazed.

"How the hell did you get over there?" demanded Marvin, hurrying over to drag the Idiot free of the clutter. Meryl realized with a start that the Idiot's hands were no longer bound. Marvin had noticed too. "Hey!" He punched the Idiot, who fell, wailing, and then allowed Marvin to tie him up again. This time the man wrapped the Idiot's whole torso in rope, pinning his arms tight to his sides.

Meryl managed to dive forward out of the way when Marvin brought the Idiot back to the other hostages a third time and she avoided being squashed.

By the time she had struggled her way back up into a sitting position, which was no easy feat, things in the saloon seemed to have calmed down again. The young woman had quieted. The Idiot was (finally) contained, and the other hostages were quiet and untroublesome. Jean was coming around.

The man in black went to kneel at Jean's side and when he sat up they exchanged quiet words. Jean looked oddly stricken as the man in black regarded him seriously and spoke in a low rumble Meryl couldn't make out.

"I'm sorry, Mac," Meryl heard Jean say. "I'm sorry..." The man in black just nodded and clapped a heavy hand on Jean's shoulder once. He stood and returned to his post leaning against the bar next to Meryl, his arms crossed over his chest, face downturned in the shadow of his hat.

Meryl considered him for a moment, struck again by the oddity of such a man in such a situation.

"Who are you?" she asked, finally. "Why are you doing this?" The man in black didn't look at her.

"The last accounting of souls," the man whispered, and Meryl was sure it was only she who had heard him. Then he faced her properly. "My name is Hoban McDonough, and all of this—"

"Something's coming!"

It was the Idiot's voice, and both Meryl and McDonough turned toward him, surprised. The Idiot was across the room again, peering out the window from where he knelt with his arms still tied to his sides.

"Shut up!" hissed the bald man, shoving the Idiot sideways with his knee. "Get out of the way!"

"Is it the wagon?" McDonough asked, moving toward the window, any thoughts of explanation for Meryl forgotten.

"I think so," said Marvin, from where he stood at the other window.

"Get them behind the bar," McDonough ordered, pointing toward Meryl, Milly and the butler without looking.

Jean hauled Milly and the butler up to their feet, one strong hand encircling either of their arms. He led them around the end of the bar and ordered them to sit, but when he came for Meryl, Jean hauled her up by the front of her tunic and threw her down to the floor behind the bar.

"And for God's sake, get him out of the way," came McDonough's voice, his unflappable calm strained very slightly into exasperation.

The next moment Meryl saw the Idiot being dragged around the corner, still protesting the indignity of it all as Marvin picked him up by the belt and collar and threw him behind the bar with the rest of them.

She tried to scramble backward out of the way, but it was no use. Meryl fell back with her bound hands twisted painfully under her, and the Idiot's face ended up buried in her chest. Again.

He burst into muffled laughter.

Biting back a growl, Meryl tried to shrug him off. The weight was crushing her hands under her back, making her body bow up awkwardly against the Idiot's torso.

"Get off me!" she hissed.

"I can't!" he replied, turning his face sideways so she could hear him, practically nuzzling his cheek into her cleavage. Meryl couldn't be sure, but from her angle it certainly looked like he was grinning. She grimaced and pulled her right leg out from under him, pushing her knee up until she could brace her foot against the base of the bar beside them. Pushing hard against her right foot—God, he's heavy—she managed to roll them over in the narrow space until the Idiot was on his back. She had somehow been able to get her left knee under her, too, and she straightened up, kneeling, straddling his middle for one triumphant moment before she lost her balance forward again.

Hands tied behind her and unable to catch herself, Meryl tried to collapse straight down and pushed her legs back as she fell, hoping to avoid smashing her face into the ground. Instead, her chin and forehead and cheekbone all crashed into those of the man laying under her, their faces pressed suddenly together with bruising force.

For a moment Meryl just lay flat against his chest, hardly daring to breathe as his long, pointed nose dug into her cheek.

"Well," he said, and Meryl felt his lips brush her chin as his quiet words came in that low, other voice, giving her sudden goosebumps. His sweet-smelling breath was coming quick and warm on her skin, making her short hair flutter in her eyes and tickle her nose. "Hello."

Meryl's heart was racing as it hadn't been since she had a gun pressed to the back of her neck, and she couldn't justify why. She licked her lips nervously and felt breath catch in both their throats as she inadvertently tasted the salty skin of his cheek.

"Still have that knife in the toe of your boot?" Meryl finally choked out in a whisper.

"Huh?" Whatever the man had been expecting, it wasn't this.

"In Warrens," she said, her own mouth brushing his high cheekbone as she spoke. "You flattened that car's tire, I'm sure of it."

"Ah," he said, his lips against her chin again. "Hm. Yes."

"Good," said Meryl. "Can you—erk!"

The man in red abruptly sat straight up, carrying her with him until she slid down his chest to sit back on her heels, resting in his lap. Meryl stared up at him incredulously.

He could have done that the whole time?

She glanced back over her shoulder and watched him tap his right heel sharply on the wood floor. Two small blades appeared on either side of the boot's toe and snapped together at the center to form one double-edged weapon. Meryl turned to face the man in red again, somewhat taken aback. Part of her hadn't really believed him. A brief glint in his green eyes seemed to match the small smirk he gave at her reaction.

"Scoot back," the man in red told her, gesturing at her with an upward jerk of his pointed chin.

Meryl raised herself to her knees and shuffled slowly backwards, keeping her body bent low enough that her head wouldn't be seen above the bar. From the other side of the saloon, she vaguely registered a shouted conversation going on between McDonough and the men outside.

The man in red waited patiently as Meryl sat back again once she reached his boots. She looked over her shoulder, though she had to feel blindly for the blade behind her. "Careful," he warned.

As though she needed telling.

"Shut up," Meryl whispered. "Just don't move." After a half-minute's searching she found it, her questing fingers thankfully meeting the flat side of the blade first. Twisting her hands so the insides of her wrists were pressed tightly together to protect herself, she held her breath and tried to slip the blade between her skin and the knotted rope. It took three attempts, and a shallow slice across the back of her left hand, but she managed to cut herself free.

Another bounce of the man's heel and the blade disappeared again. He opened his mouth to speak but Meryl talked over him.

"Stay down," she said, pressing a hand to his chest to force him back down to the floor. In her peripheral vision, almost belatedly, Meryl saw his eyebrows rocket skyward but she was too intent on getting to the knife she knew Milly hid in her boot. In the narrow space behind the bar she had to crawl forward over the man in red to reach Milly; the younger woman nodded, offering her leg, and Meryl withdrew the concealed weapon. The man in red let out a small, contented sigh and Meryl realized in horror that she was still straddling his middle and her chest was at his eye-level again.

She scrambled backwards on all fours, both embarrassed and furious, and hurriedly cut through the ropes around the man's arms and chest. Managing to shift sideways, Meryl gave the man in red room to roll over onto his hands and knees. He nodded his thanks and, from the brief sparkle Meryl thought she saw in his eyes, she wondered if he was holding in an Idiot-like grin. A few yarz away, Milly had slipped her own ropes and was busy untying the butler.

From outside the saloon Meryl heard the squealing of tires and the grinding of an overworked engine, the sounds growing louder and louder each moment.

"Look out!" hissed Meryl. She scrambled half-way up to her feet and grabbed the man in red by the collar, hauling him up from his knees and trying to pull him further along down the bar and out of the way—out of the way of what, she didn't know, but an instant later there was a massive crashing sound and half the bar behind them disappeared in an explosion of wood and glass. Meryl fell blindly backwards, desperately trying to shield her face from the shrapnel.

Shit!