I lied again... this isn't a new chapter. It's a lovely thing known as an omake, and I'm really sorry for publishing two within such a short time span, but it can't be helped. My base of operations has relocated for this week to Colorado, and seeing as I'm terribly busy here, writing another chapter just wasn't going to happen. This omake was written around two weeks ago for the purpose of publishing now.
Also, this omake was inspired by a review from SamanthaMeloes, saying, and I quote, "Please tell me Cowboy America will happen. Oh my gosh," (but all in caps). I do not know if Cowboy America will happen, but it will most likely not because cowboy time overlaps with the Civil War (which will happen for sure). So to satisfy my sudden desire to write something about Cowboy America, here we are.
Also, this has nothing to do with the plot of this story.
Please enjoy!
I disclaim, and own nothing.
Alfred grinned like a maniac as he hopped off his horse, landing with a puff of dust in front of the town's main hitching post. The spurs on his high boots clinked as he moved to tie the horse up, the broad brim of his ten-gallon hat shielding his face from the glaringly bright sun.
Just this morning, he'd prevented a bank robbery by incapacitating the would-be robber and stealing his gun before he could follow through with his nefarious plot. And he did it immediately after being told to put his hands up and back slowly toward the wall.
Davis always said I couldn't follow orders, he thought, remembering his commanding officer from his days in the Revolution.
After chasing the would-be thief (who had hollered something along the lines of, "I'm part of Butch Cassidy's gang, you'll regret this!") out, he had to assure the bank manager that he wasn't after the money himself. Then he was thanked so many times by the bank staff and the present civilians that he had yet to stop smiling.
He absently fixed the saddle bags on his horse's back. She was a beautiful thing, a silvery-white mare with black spots. The man he'd bought her from had mentioned what breed she was, but Alfred hadn't really cared. In his endless naming creativity, he'd named her Nahnaiyeumoaodt (Nahnai for short), the Algonquin word for horse. I'm developing Clark's naming skills, he thought disparagingly, but even that couldn't put a damper on his good mood.
It was in this fit of ecstasy that he chose to visit a saloon nearby and reward himself with a good drink.
And it was partially due to this ecstasy (and partially due to the crappy beer he'd downed in three swallows) that he found himself peering over the battered edges of his card hand, thoroughly involved in a game of poker that was quickly going downhill.
The other men at the table all looked older, with scraggly partial-beards and hard looks of concentration in their eyes. They also all wore weapons, half-heartedly hidden beneath coat flaps or stowed in holsters. Alfred touched his own gun at his waist for assurance. Being unable to defend himself from armed strangers wasn't something he took chances with, because even if he could probably out-arm-wrestle all of them with both hands tied behind his back, he didn't fancy getting shot. That tended to hurt.
Sighing, he threw his cards down at the request of the man acting as dealer. From the smirks flitting their way among the faces of the men around him, Alfred already knew he'd lost. As he watched, the hands of cards were laid out, some better than others (but all better than his), until there was only one man left.
He was different from the other men. He had the same fondness for facial hair (a blond mustache covered his upper lip) and the same barely concealed weaponry (a pair of silver pistols at his waist), but he stood out to Alfred. He was definitely more composed, with not a single facial muscle moving for the duration of the game, and he held himself in a manner that was almost… gentlemanly.
And from what Alfred understood, gentlemen didn't lounge in saloons at five in the afternoon to gamble. Heck, the gentlemanly demographic of what was known as the Wild West (for good reason) could fit in his pinkie.
Since he already he'd lost with his abysmal luck at cards, the blond man became the center of Alfred's attention, and then quickly became the center of attention for everyone else at the table when he finally laid his cards down.
A straight flush. Diamonds, Alfred's brain noted, even before he completely registered that the "gentleman" had just won, like a strike out of the blue.
"Ah~," Alfred sighed, but he grinned at the men around the table anyway. "Looks like I've lost."
The man reached to the center of the table, intent on collecting his winnings, when one of the other card players leapt up from his seat and brought his hand down with a thump, effectively cutting the man off.
"You cheated!"
The accuser was a large man, with beady dark eyes and an equally dark beard. If the blond oozed, "gentleman," this man positively screamed, "shifty lumberjack."
But the blond merely fixed his accuser with the same impassive look he'd had on for the entirety of the card game.
"I didn't."
Incensed now, the burly man took a step towards the blond. "I know you done cheated! And that kid," here he pointed to Alfred, much to his shock, "helped you do it! There ain't no way anyone can be that bad at cards withou' a reason!"
"Hey!" Alfred exclaimed, ignoring the blond's attempt to cut him off. "If he says he didn't cheat, he didn't! And stop insulting me!"
The blond nodded, giving Alfred a cursory once-over with his blue eyes. "As he says, I did not cheat. Kindly stop accusing me." He glanced sideways at Alfred again, and almost as an afterthought, added, "And there's no way I'd work with anyone who's as atrocious a card player as that kid, whatever the circumstances."
Alfred didn't have a chance to answer that comment before the burly man shouted again, louder than before.
"You cheated, I know! You wouldn't-a won if you didn't! And a cheater like you ain't gettin' a damned cent of my money!"
Suddenly, the blond's impassive eyes went cold as ice. In one fluid movement, he'd stood and drawn his gun.
BANG!
The entire saloon, which had been full of loud talking, laughing, and the sound of clinking glasses, fell eerily silent. All eyes focused on the blond, and more importantly, on the smoking gun in his left hand and the neatly bullet-shaped hole blown clean through the burly man's hat. After a long pause, in which no one dared breathe, much less move, the silence was snapped by the blond himself.
"I am not a cheater. I won this game fairly, and you will accept your loss with grace." The second part sounded distinctly like a threat, and from the burly man's expression, he too understood the blond's meaning perfectly well.
"Now leave, or my gun might just slip and shoot something a little lower, and it will be a bit more valuable than your hat."
The burly man was already all but whimpering, but after the second threat, he scampered out of the saloon faster than a jackrabbit with a hot poker for a tail. The blond merely turned back to the table and resumed collecting his money, now with a healthy amount of space between himself and the saloon's other patrons.
Having nothing else to do, Alfred returned to the bar counter, and asked for a cup of water. He didn't think he could stomach another beer like the one he'd had earlier, so this seemed like a safe bet. It arrived shortly after in a cup barely larger than a shot glass, but Alfred accepted it gratefully. The normal conversation slowly made its way back, albeit a bit more subdued than before, but at least nearing normal volume.
He sat at his barstool, watching errant drops make their way down his glass's side when he sensed the person to his right suddenly stand and leave. He was replaced moments later by none other than the gentlemanly blond (though Alfred was considering revising his choice of adjectives).
Watching out of the corner of his eye, Alfred listened to the man order some whiskey, which was delivered in record time. The man knocked it back with a single swallow, then spoke without turning.
"You really are a damn poor card player."
Alfred realized the blond was talking to him, and turned to face the other man. "Hey, I resent that!"
The man said nothing for a moment, simply staring at his whiskey. "That was stupid, you know."
"What was?" Alfred asked, genuinely confused. Had he changed topics or not?
"Trying to stand up to that man." Ah. No need to ask who.
"He would have tied you in knots and kicked you to next Tuesday if it had gone to a real fight!" Alfred exclaimed.
"I did not ask for help."
"So what? I help people I see in trouble!"
The blond looked skeptical. "Those thoughts are going to get you killed," he deadpanned. "As you can see, I was perfectly capable of handling idiots like him."
"Well… what if he had friends?"
"People like him don't have friends." The man's face remained perfectly impassive, so the attempt at a joke took a moment to register with Alfred. He felt his mouth open, feeling like a fish out of water as his eyes widened.
"Were you really cheating?" he finally blurted.
"Nope."
"Then how did you win?"
"I always win," the blond said simply. Alfred nodded, feigning comprehension, and took a sip of his water. Immediately, he spat it out again. Dusty and lukewarm at best, he thought. Typical.
"Look, kid, how about I get you a real drink?" the blond said, eyeing the water distrustfully. Before Alfred could reply, another whiskey was set before him by the bartender (in addition to the third put before the blond), who clearly was trying to avoid their part of the table as much as possible.
The man was still watching, so Alfred took a cautious sip, nearly spitting it all out as the alcohol burned his throat, but he liked his hat without holes. The blond laughed, still picking up on Alfred's discomfort.
"What's your name?"
"Alfred Jones," he replied. "Yours?"
"Harry Longabaugh."
If Alfred hadn't already put his drink far away, he would surely have choked on it. "Harry Longabaugh? No joke?"
The man narrowed his eyes. "Is there something funny?" Immediately, Alfred backtracked, holding his hands out in a (hopefully) placating gesture.
"No, no, just uncommon! You don't run into a Longabaugh in every saloon, you know." The man seemed satisfied with that, and Alfred silently congratulated himself on his quick save.
"Don't I know it," the man, Harry, muttered in reply. "But I don't go by that often. People call me—"
"Sundance!"
Peering around Harry to see who had spoken, Alfred saw a stocky man, around six feet tall, barge through the swinging saloon doors. His close-cropped blond hair just barely peeked out from beneath his hat, and he didn't even bother to conceal his weapons. The whole saloon went deathly quiet again as he scanned the crowd, his blue eyes lighting up when he spotted who he was looking for.
Much to Alfred's surprise, that person happened to be Harry.
"Sundance, get out here! The boys're all waitin' on you and that damned whiskey of yours!"
"Comin', Butch," was all Harry said as he stood, draining the last of his fourth shot. Tipping his hat to Alfred, he flashed a quick grin. "I'll be seeing you around, Jones." He walked off to join the other man without looking back.
"Who's the kid?" the other man asked, casting a glance at Alfred.
"Nobody important. Just some damn awful poker player."
The pair exited, still chatting amiably with one another. The instant the saloon doors swung shut behind them, talk began again in full force within the walls of the bar.
"By golly," a lone man down the bar said, staring at Alfred with something akin to awe. "That was Butch Cassidy, and the Sundance Kid!"
Alfred finished the last of the whiskey (it was only polite, after all), before he too stood and left. As he untied Nahnai, he watched the cloud of dust kicked up by an obviously large group of horses recede into the distance.
Butch Cassidy's gang, huh, he thought, recalling the bank robber from earlier. He grinned, the maniacal edge back. As long as they've got Harry, they're going places, someday.
V/~-~-~\V
Western Omake complete!
History first:
This happens a a few decades after the current time period of this story. In 1896, Butch Cassidy (whose real name was Robert LeRoy Parker), a native of Utah territory, formed the Wild Bunch, a group that was notorious for their robberies of banks and trains. He recruited the Sundance Kid (Harry Alonzo Longabaugh), a native of Pennsylvania, to his gang in the same year. They were very successful in their criminal activities until they were so infamous that the Pinkerton Detective Agency was hired to hunt them down. The pair fled to Bolivia with Longabaugh's girlfriend (Etta Place), and continued robbing until they were allegedly killed in a shootout in 1908. I wrote about them after recently watching the movie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which is rather good.
Alfred's horse's name, Nahnaiyeumoaodt, literally means something along the lines of, "animal who carries," and is the closest thing that I could find in Algonquin to horse.
If you remember the Expedition chapters, he was bad at cards then, and hasn't improved. He may be a Nation, but he can't be good at everything. :P
I'll answer the past/present/future questions next (real) chapter, so don't forget to ask away if you wonder anything about authorial choices, plot, or any of the many OC's that are involved in this story from any of the chapters!
Thanks for reading (and sorry it's not a chapter), and please don't hesitate to comment or review if you've got the time!