A/N: This is an imagined prequel to the Al/Trixie pairing, set some years before 1876, the "Deadwood" years. This picks up a few years after "Miseries and Familiars" ends.

I own nothing, all is HBO's, David Milch's , or history's creations. Some fictitious characters are based on composites of historical figures.

Warnings for violence, graphic description of violent facial wounds, pimp/prostitute dynamics, language, implied euthanasia, casual sex (non-explicit), abortion.

Making Their Way

Chapter 3

Al's forgiveness and Trixie's return to his bed finally came in Lincoln, the new capital of Nebraska. Trixie had waited in the wagon, jittery and on edge, while Al made arrangements in a boarding house run by a plain-faced widow on the edge of town. He had returned with a room key and a bottle of laudanum in his coat from the drug store up the block. Once she was settled and dosed with her first hit of the day, he had glad-handed the owners of a saloon on the next block until he had a job at the bar and door and Trixie had a job out of one of the back rooms.

Lincoln had been on the raw side, but it was a bustling, busy place. Trade was good enough to get her a store-bought ready-made lady's dress, dusty rose with lacy pale cream trim. Of an occasional Sunday, Al let her go to one of the town churches while he stayed in their rooms and worked on his dealing skills and various short cons. She swapped around between congregations, watchful for any of the family men she entertained, attending with their wives and children. She knew she had crossed paths with a few, but they never seemed to fully recognize her, other than a sense that they knew the demure young lady from somewhere. For her part, she was careful to mostly keep her head down in Bible or hymnbook, enjoying the rhythm of the sermons and the sweet smell of oil-polished wood. The solemn cadences were a welcome change from the hectic pace of her evenings for the first couple of months.

One visit to the local Catholic church had brought back unpleasant memories from her years at the orphanage, as she stood at the communion rail, unable to get down on her knees in front of the oily-looking priest holding the chalice. She couldn't imagine what the congregants thought as she walked back up the aisle, face flaming and gaze straight ahead. She kept herself to the Protestant churches in town after that, when she felt a need to attend; a need that lessened every month.

A town on the new side of wild in a brand new state, Al found others like him, but with more experience in real estate hustles and greasing political palms for profit. The seminaries and schools being established could not have been anywhere near as edifying as observing the local machinations between former Confederate and Union supporters, Democrats and Republicans. During their stay he saw a broken flagpole repurposed as an impromptu gallows, and a towering Judge browbeat an angry mob with no more than his voice and a couple of well-placed threats. In a new place, he thought, anything is possible. He kept a keen eye on the ways and means by which power and wealth were sorted out.

He also saw the power of the press at stirring up, then calming down, a citizenry. Al had always appreciated a good newspaper as a source of information, giving hints of things to come if read with care. Lincoln was the birthplace of his full understanding that the press could also be used to create events and steer outcomes. He sprung for rounds "on the house" out of his own pocket for the newspaper boys once or twice a week, learning how to herd newsmen in a desired direction. The first time he guided an editor to publish vague aspersions against a rival saloon, he saw his and Trixie's incomes jump from added custom. He figured he'd made back all he had spent, and then some. Befriending the press, he thought, might be the most useful long con of all.

If asked what she remembered of Lincoln besides whoring, though her frequent laudanum fog, Trixie would have talked about good times at the State Fair, a reluctant Al in tow as she looked at prize-winning pies and pumpkins. A brass band playing on a Sunday in the town park. Mostly, though, it was where Al allowed her back in his bed, and she felt safe more often than not.

Their luck eventually changed as Lincoln rapidly became more civilized. When they arrived, the local jail was the back part of a town milk house. By the time they left, a state penitentiary was in the works, and lawmen seemed to be everywhere, bolstered by Ft. Kearney troops. The girl Al had obtained to run out of the saloon with Trixie left his joint to be some kind of high-kicking dance-hall girl. Part of the town had flooded that spring, making getting around even more miserable that it had been in winter, when at least a sleigh was a workable option. The only bright spot was a nicely run job done on an outbound stage road, Al setting up a young gang of road agents with information on cargo and arms of a lone stagecoach.

After, most of the gang had been in favor of cutting Al out of his share, taking the numbers of four against one. A husky Kentucky boy, long-haired and handy with a blade, stopped that foolishness right quick, saving their leader from a throat-cutting. Al thanked him with a side lecture on choosing his confederates more carefully, and wondered if their paths would ever cross again. The boy had a leaning towards action around wilderness and mining towns, and had mentioned the Comstock.

A week later, Al had wished that the Kentucky boy, or someone like him, had been with him at the salt debacle. He had made it out of the warehouse unseen, but the main thief and his German accomplice had been caught in mid-robbery, salt-filed shovels in the air, when the owner of the salt works and six lawmen had busted in on the heist. As he fled, he could hear men yelling not to be killed and errant shots were ringing in the air. Lucrative though it might be, robbing the salt basin barons, he thought he's just get Trixie to gut him before he'd go to jail for stealing salt.

Denver, he told her as he roused her to pack. He'd heard good things about Denver. He and Trixie had headed for Denver and all the opportunities Al thought a big city had to offer to a man of his experience. Trixie dozed against his shoulder and wondered what Denver would be like.