Smithfield's couldn't have looked more like a typical saloon.

There was a piano pushed up against one of the wallpapered walls and a bull's skull hanging right near the entrance. A few tables were scattered around the area, same as a few chairs. Their wood wasn't polished or finished in any way, just cut and smoothed over to avoid any nasty splinters. The biggest, brightest, shiniest thing in the whole place was the bar itself, which could probably serve upwards of a dozen people without a brawl breaking out over elbows.

Juniper half-expected to see some dark-eyed stranger with his boots kicked up on one of the rough chairs, hat pulled down over his eyes and jaw working around a mouthful of tobacco. Or some girl with rouge up to her ears and a skirt twice as broad as she was hitched over her thigh.

But those were all stories, assumptions made by people who'd never traveled as far west as Valentine, and she'd lived in these parts for long enough to know better.

The batwing doors swung shut behind her as she entered.

Two men at the bar glanced over in her direction — one she recognized, but the other was a stranger. A barber at the back looked up from his straight razor, desperate for custom, only to look away when he realized she wouldn't be sitting in his chair. Men wore their beards long in Valentine, and most women just trimmed their own hair. She did, at least. The ragged ends proved that.

Poor guy.

The man tending the bar looked up from his work and raised a hand to her in greeting. She gave him a nod that was pure courtesy as she made her way over to the two men who had only recently been served considering the amount of drink in their glasses. John Marston couldn't keep a full glass for more than five minutes, and even that was pushing it.

But he was distracted from his whiskey by whatever he was discussing with the young man in front of him. The well-dressed young man. The one who was gesturing more than talking.

The look on John's face said he wasn't listening.

"I hear the stew here's better than Pearson's," Juniper said, leaning against the bar on John's opposite side. He didn't bother turning towards her, but she knew he was listening. "Man at Worths couldn't say enough good things about it. Kept ramblin' 'bout the quality of the meat."

With the way the bartender's ears flared up a pretty red color, she wasn't sure what he'd meant by that. Not anymore, at least.

John chuckled low in his throat, lifting his glass and swirling its amber-colored contents around in a neat cyclone.

"I'd say the drinks aren't bad, neither, but…"

"Oh, I'm sorry!" Stranger or not, apologizing for interrupting the consumption of liquor meant he might be worth their time. As a diversion, if nothing else. "It's only that I have a certain interest in scars. I have on, you see. Right here!"

He tugged at his collar, revealing a nasty, knotted scar that curled down from his jaw to the nape of his neck. Whatever gave him that could have very well killed him. He was lucky. Or, maybe, he'd escaped fate by the skin of his teeth.

"I was telling this man about the wolves," John murmured. He lifted his glass to his mouth and took a healthy mouthful of whiskey. His cheeks trembled when he swallowed. "About how I almost got mauled and all."

"Almost?" Juniper gave a snort of a laugh and leaned even more heavily against the bar. "You got mauled."

She remembered the fuss that became of the camp when Arthur and Javier brought John back to what amounted to home in Colter. Half of them thought he was for sure going to catch a fever and die, but the cleverer folks knew he'd make it if the wounds were cared for.

Juniper didn't have any way to help out with John. She couldn't fix him up, didn't know how to clean him up, and was bad at keeping him company when he was already miserable. All she could do was focus on the pelts of those wolves that damn near killed one of her best friends. The fur wasn't even that good, but she still cleaned them proper. Sold them for a few dollars once they were able to move on.

"Yeah, well…" John took another swallow of whiskey. "Where's Arthur?"

"Worths. He's still puttin' in our order," Juniper said absently as she looked over the bottles lining the wall. She wanted something, but didn't like buying liquor from strangers. Her thirst would have to wait. Unless… "John, look here."

He angled himself towards her, an unkempt brow raised in question. The atmosphere of the saloon had him too disarmed to keep her from snatching up his glass of whiskey and draining a finger out of it. It was strong stuff, with a burn like a kick to the nose. She gritted her teeth for a moment before letting go of a sigh that was almost blissful.

"Thanks."

"Well, it's no problem at all, Miss Juniper," John drawled, setting his glass on the bar with a clunk and gesturing for the bartender to fill it again. "I wasn't planning on drinking all of that anyway."

Juniper rolled her eyes and kicked the toe of her boot gently against the floor.

The man standing to John's left watched them both, rapt with attention. From what she could tell, he was just passing through Valentine. Probably from somewhere on the East Coast. His suit was dusty around the legs, but otherwise clean. The beard he wore was tightly trimmed, too. And men wore their beards long in Valentine.

"You've got a thing for scars, do you?" she asked him without making any kind of direct eye contact. "I've got one I could show you."

"Come on, June…"

The stranger stood up a little straighter, his interest piqued. "Oh! Yes, ma'am, but only if you're of a mind to let me see."

Juniper pulled herself up onto her feet properly, moving away from the bar so he could get a better look at her as she tugged her coat off of her left shoulder. Her shirt was loose enough at the neck for her to do the same, baring the scarred skin of her upper arm. The skin was heavily freckled, but between the dusty brown dots were lines of bright red that feathered off in every direction starting at her collarbone and disappearing down her back and the bunched up sleeve of her jacket.

She'd gotten a lot of different reactions from it in the past. Reverend Swanson swore she'd outlive them all, that a woman who'd gotten struck by lightning and survived was meant to last through anything. Jack thought it was strange, and when she went without a coat, he'd follow the reddened lines with his tiny fingertips.

Strangers weren't often so kind. Most told her that she shouldn't have lived past that. They told her she was unnatural.

To the man's credit, all he did was gasp at first. Then, he reached out and adjusted her coat back onto her shoulder. Which was enough to show her that he was definitely not from Valentine.

"How on God's green Earth did you get a scar like that, Miss June?"

"Juniper," she corrected him, not unkindly. "And I didn't get it 'cause of God. Zeus himself did this to me. Threw a bolt'a lightning down when I was at my lowest. Some kinda recompense for my lifestyle, I suppose."

John tipped his glass back to get the last swallow of whiskey. When he spoke, his voice ran thin as a windblown sheet. "I never heard anything that more soundly said, 'Fuck you and your strong-willed nature.'"

"Didn't work." Juniper pursed her lips, smiling.

Both John and the stranger laughed at that, though the sounds were mightily different. Marston laughed like he had gravel rattling around in his guts, but the stranger's laugh was quieter and more than a little nervous. Tinny as a bell. It was a true 'hah hah… hah' laugh if she'd ever heard one.

"So, what's your name?" she asked, tapping her fingers one by one against the smooth, dark wood of the bar. "We're at a disadvantage here."

"Harris," said Mister Harris. "Abraham Harris."

John watched the bartender take his glass. Juniper kept her eyes on him, too, rather than the recently introduced man beside them both. He dunked the glass into a basin full of water before wiping it clean with a long white rag and returning it to its brothers high on a shelf.

"And what brings you to Valentine, Mister Harris?"

"I'm traveling for business," he said, sounding so genuine that neither Juniper nor John had it in their hearts to doubt him. That was a city boy, and there was no mistaking him for anything else. "Valentine is a nice enough town, isn't it? Are you locals?"

John straightened his back out, though he still leaned both hands against the bar. There was a shade of impatience in how he stood there, one of his sun-damaged hands tapping out a beat against the bar.

"No, we're just passing through. Same as you." He glanced in Juniper's direction. "Dutch was supposed to be here by now. Arthur, too."

Juniper cast a slow look around the bar. It was quiet, even in the afternoon. If the saloon was quiet, there had to be nothing of note going on in the town itself. Otherwise, the place would've been swimming in gossip, and they'd be dodging fists already.

"You think there's trouble, sir?" She pitched her voice up a little, making herself sound as helpless as she could. John was already laughing and shaking his head by the time she finished her first question. "Maybe you and I should go and help? They're twenty minutes late, so they must be dead."

For the first time in a while, John was too amused with her to punch back.

Abraham Harris piped up in the wake of his lack of response. He not-so-subtly mirrored John's stance and leaned over the bartop to catch her eyes, then catch John's. "If you're meant to meet someone here, I could give you your privacy!"

Both Juniper and John responded, but not in unison.

His reply was a quiet, "Please," while Juniper said, "Oh, it's no trouble."

But the city boy was more keen on listening to Mister Marston, so he nodded and bid his farewells and finished his drink. The whiskey blanched him of all color before filling up his cheeks with an uneven red. Then, he was gone.

From what she could tell, his spirits were still high. That was nice enough.

Juniper and John stood in companionable silence for some time. He didn't have any more questions about Dutch or Arthur, and she didn't have anymore answers. That was the best thing about being friends with a man like John Marston. He only talked overmuch when he was agitated.

The bartender stepped out from behind the bar and reached for a broom. Whatever dirt clung to the floorboards wasn't there from through traffic as much was there because the doors didn't fully shut, letting in all manner of cold air and dirt from the road. Still, he swept everything up with the quiet swish of broom bristles against the floor.

There was a squeak on the other side of the room, which only turned out to be the barber sitting in his chair and giving it a slow, teetering spin. Never before had she seen a man so thoroughly bored with his life.

And in that lull, Arthur Morgan pushed through the swinging saloon doors.

The first words out of his mouth were predictable as anything. "Where's Dutch?"

"Good to see you, too, Arthur," John groused at him, but there was a smile on his broad, skinny mouth. "You wanna drink?"

Arthur lifted his hat off of his head with one hand and smoothed his straw blond hair down over his head with the other. His footfalls landed right in the path the bartender took with his broom, leaving prints of dirt on the floor. Juniper saw a flicker of frustration on the man's face before he leaned his broom against a chair and returned to his place behind the bar.

"No, I don't want no drink," Arthur said just as the man stepped up in front of him. "What I want is for you to tell me where he is."

He glanced away from John's face and looked at Juniper instead. She shrugged. "He didn't tell me nothin'. All I knew was I had to get gun oil."

John's shoulders hitched forward, curling over his hands where they lay flat against the bar's top. He hesitated before lifting his fingers for another drink of the same. Two and a half glasses of whiskey was a lot for him, but he wasn't alone.

It'd be easy enough to pile John into the carriage, anyhow.

"Dutch went to the Saints," he said. "Said he'd be back in an hour and some."

That was all the answer either of them needed. If Dutch went to the Saints, it was for a bath. He didn't have any reason to rent a room, and his taste for the finer things often led him in the direction of such establishments. You can't feel too fancy when you're dipping your ass in a stream to get clean most of the time.

Arthur let go of a sharp sigh before leaning against the bar beside John, elbows poised on the wood. "Figures he'd make us wait."

"I've been waiting for you, too, you know."

"Nobody asked you," Arthur said as he waved the bartender over. "Beer, please."

The bartender stood before Arthur, bottle of whiskey in-hand, and asked, "Ale or lager?" He looked tired, but the day was still ahead of everyone there. What they made of that day lay squarely on Dutch's shoulders.

"Lager."

Leaning back away from the bartop, John let go of a sigh long enough to follow the curve of his arched back. His hair fell away from his face, revealing his still-healing wounds. There was three days of growth on his jaw and dark circles under his eyes. No one was sleeping well at Horseshoe Overlook, not yet. Nobody except the Reverend, but his peaceful rest was aided by generous amounts of booze.

They were all laying in wait, a dozen coiled rattlers. Every breath they took sounded like the same shake of a tail; it was the warning of people backed up against a wall.

Dutch was the worst of them all when it came to sleeping. The lamp burned in his tent at almost all hours, no matter how much Miss O'Shea fussed and complained. He haunted that wood, a single light burning in the darkness like an all-seeing eye.

The bartender set Arthur's beer down in front of him and then disappeared back behind the stairwell, likely to get things started for dinner. It was getting to be that hour, after all, and the saloon just smelled of dirt and alcohol. Outside, the through traffic was picking up as people left their businesses behind for the night, filling the air with the sounds of conversation and the nickering of passing horses.

Before long, other scents joined in, and Juniper knew her assumptions had been correct. Searing meat had always been one of her favorite smells, no matter what seasonings you put on it. She took a deep breath and let herself slowly relax, even as two men entered the bar, flanked on one side by a single, well-dressed lady.

She looked all three of them up and down. The two men wore similar clothes — fancy, but worn in places — and one had a hat. The one with a hat wore his beard trimmed close to his jaw, while the other one had only stubble.

The woman's dress was fine as fine could be, decorated with falls of lace at her elbows and a high collar that was pinned through with a brooch of a flying bird set with what looked to be turquoise. She didn't look entirely happy with the situation, either, which was what got her attention.

Arthur and John hadn't noticed. They hadn't even taken up their drinks, like they were waiting for Dutch to show up before they took another sip.

Juniper pushed away from the bar and headed over in their direction. The men were big, so they didn't pay her much mind. She was a tiny thing, even shorter than the lady in her pretty dress, and narrow as a switch. It was the woman who took notice of her, which wasn't any sort of surprise.

After traveling so long with the Van der Linde gang, she knew how to spot a woman in distress. She knew how to work these things out, too.

"Good evening, gentlemen," Juniper began, rocking back onto one of her heels as they passed her by. Catching up to them was easy, seeing as they were shaping up to be big lumbering fools. "Barkeep's in the back making up dinner."

The man with the beard looked at her, one of his brows cocked high on his forehead. "Why're you botherin' us?"

"Just wanting to help you out," she said smoothly. "You might be in for a wait."

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Arthur turn his back on his lager in favor of watching Juniper with a look she was more-than-familiar with. That slight narrowing of Arthur Morgan's pretty blue eyes meant, 'What the hell are you doing, woman?'

"Don't care," the other man spat. He had a slightly leaner look about him. One of those men who you just know carries a shank.

Juniper gave a shrug before circling back to John and Arthur at the bar. Her eyes didn't leave the woman for a second, no matter where she went in the room. The group eventually settled down at one of the empty tables. There were two chairs, leaving one of them to stand. He leaned against the wall beside the window, glancing every now and then through the dirty glass.

"What're you doing?" Arthur whispered. He gave the saloon his back and picked up his lager, throwing back a good quarter of it before setting the glass back down to wipe at his upper lip. "I don't remember Dutch giving us orders to start shit with anyone who comes in."

"To be fair, you are getting old and forgetful."

Arthur wasn't the kind of man who'd smack a woman, but he sure as hell was willing to smack John Marston upside his thick skull.

The impact wasn't anything too loud, so John laughed it off easily enough, ducking his head down, trying not to make it obvious to Arthur that it smarted. All the while, Juniper kept her eyes level on the woman. She kept her hands in her lap and her eyes focused on the grain of the table. The men at the table waited. Everyone was just waiting. The slow crawl of time was miserable.

"I'm going talk to her." Juniper pushed away from the bar only to have the sleeve of her jacket caught up by John's hand. "Don't."

"Could say the same to you."

"There's something wrong, John." Her voice took on an edge, one that said she wasn't moving. She was short, but she was stubborn as a mule. Everyone knew better than to tell her she shouldn't or couldn't do something. "I'm going see."

John let go just as Juniper gave her arm a tug. The momentum nearly made her stumble.

"Ass," she grumbled, situating her jacket back onto her shoulders before making off in the direction of the three strangers. John was a bastard, but funnily enough, she liked that about him. He was never cruel for the sake of it unless the person deserved no less.

Once Juniper arrived at the table, she planted both hands unceremoniously onto its surface. She stood across from the woman, whose big brown eyes snapped up to hers. Pinched pupils with a circle of bright white around them. There was a moment where Juniper swore she saw her mouth a word or two, but she wasn't any good at reading lips.

"I have a question for you, gentlemen."

The bearded man leaned forward in his chair. His shift towards her left their faces closer together than she would've liked. Juniper could taste chewing tobacco in the air she breathed.

He leaned in close and looked her right in her eyes and said, "Fuck off."

"It's just a simple question," Juniper offered. Not grinding her teeth into a fine powder and spitting a wad of the stuff into his eye took everything she had. She didn't know she had that kind of self-control until that exact moment. "All I need's a simple answer."

For a moment, she thought the man would either lash out at her or ignore her. Just for a moment, though.

"Fine." He glanced in the direction of his friend, who still stood a few feet away, glancing furtively out of the window. "What's your question?"

"What's that woman's name?"

Juniper saw the woman open her mouth, but she stopped her with a gesture. The man leaned against the wall looked over, making the briefest eye contact with the other before tightening one of his fists. Surprisingly enough, it was the big, ugly one who balked at the question.

He didn't answer her because answering her question would've sent her back to the bar. All he asked her was, "What's it matter to you?"

Juniper looked over to the woman. In the past few moments, she had paled considerably save for the pin pricks of color high on her cheeks. She stared up at her with a mixture of terror and awe.

That expression was what unsheathed the knife riding on Juniper's belt and drove it between the thug's forefinger and thumb, right in the juiciest part of his hand.

Men wore their beards long in Valentine.

Behind her, she heard Arthur groan a weary, "Oh, God damnit, girl," but she heard him crack a handful of knuckles, too.

Arthur and John's willingness to fight by her side wasn't a worry of hers. They were loyal almost to a fault when it came to the people in the gang, even the awful ones. If someone jumped off a moving train, everyone else would jump right alongside them and tend to the wounds later. That was their life. It wasn't complicated, but it wasn't easy, either.

The thug bellowed rather than screamed in pain, lashing out at Juniper with one of his meaty fists. She ducked under the blow and gave the butt of her blade a good smack, driving it deeper into the unfinished wood.

Rather than reaching for one of the pistols he wore, the man by the window rushed forward, snatching the woman up around her waist.

The way the woman fought answered another question for Juniper. It also distracted her from the man's second swing, which clocked her in the jaw hard enough to make her see stars. She grunted, hurling herself out of his reach.

It would bruise something nasty, but she didn't care.

"Make sure that squirrelly fucker doesn't get away!"

John lunged in the direction of the one dragging the woman away, while Arthur's attention wheeled around to the one who was bleeding profusely from his hand. There was no grabbing for a gun, not with an injured right.

Juniper rubbed at her jaw.

While the man hadn't screamed — not when she stabbed him or when he worked the blade out of the tabletop — the woman's voice rose shrill enough to shatter in her throat. She screamed and clawed at the sleeve of the man's jacket, working her legs back and forth as if she was trying to keep her head above water.

No one made it to the front doors of the saloon. Not because of Juniper, not because of Arthur or John. But because the swinging doors parted and let in a freshly scrubbed Dutch van der Linde. Dressed head to toe in a suit that wasn't his, hair damp and cheeks bathwater-warm.

It took Dutch all of a moment to assess the situation, even shorter than that to unholster one of his pistols and slam it into the back of the man's skull.

He dropped like a sack of rice, and so did the lady he was carrying.

She scrambled back, away from the man's unconscious body and away from Dutch, looking between them as if she wasn't sure what to do.

"Come now," he said. His words were as even and measured as they always were. As he spoke, he approached her one step at a time, hands held out in front of him. He looked harmless, but everyone knew otherwise. Everyone except her. "I have no intention of harming you, miss. Only saving you. Now, what's your name?"

She blinked, wetting her lips.

"Charlotte Glanville."

English, proper London English.

"I would love to hear you tell me about these men, Miss Charlotte," Dutch said, extending one of his hands in order to help her up onto her feet. When she gave him one of her own, he did just that. "After my friend here brings them both to the sheriff, of course. Rowdy bunch."

Rowdy bunch.

Juniper laughed and worked her tongue around her teeth, tasting iron.

"It'll be no problem, Dutch," Arthur said. He leaned forward, looking into the face of the man he held in a grapple. "You gonna come easy? Or do you want to keep fighting? It's up to you, partner."

The man sneered, but didn't say anything. He stayed silent until Arthur had nearly dragged him out of the door.

"Bronte'll find you."

Arthur shoved him out of the batwing doors before he could say another word, but what he'd gotten out seemed to have spooked the woman more than the fighting had. She stepped closer to Dutch, as if she knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was going to protect her.

Maybe he would. Juniper had seen him take people on for less.

"Don't worry yourself about that, miss." Dutch guided her over to the table without blood spilled over its surface, and she went willingly, her hands fretting and eyes stuck on the door. "I don't much care for kidnappers. Neither does my friend there. Don't you, June?"

Juniper wiped the bloody blade off on her trousers before sheathing it and making her way over.

"I most certainly do not, Dutch."

Out of the corner of her eye, Juniper watched as the barber stood from where he'd been cowering behind his chair. Whether or not the owner of the establishment was even going to charge them for damages, she wasn't sure. He hadn't come out from the back to witness the commotion.

Likely as anything, he was just used to the fighting.

Dutch pulled out a chair for Charlotte. She took it, her thanks quietly spoken. Her limbs arranged themselves neatly, like a girl who was used to making herself smaller.

Now that she didn't look so damn scared, Juniper could see that she was a beauty from her upturned nose to her plump cheeks.

Whatever this Bronte wanted with her, Juniper wagered that she wouldn't like that, either.

"So," Dutch said as he settled down into the chair opposite her, hands laced together on top of the table. "About these men who kidnapped you."

Charlotte took a deep breath, and then, she told them everything.