Addy was a little surprised as well that the time had gone by so quickly -- she was enjoying herself, and felt like she was actually learning something -- and she nodded as she stood.  "I'm right grateful fer yer time an' tolerance, ought'a only get easier from here, right?"   Standing, she held out her hand to shake.  "Do ya need a ride home?  Arabesque does real good double, an' it ain't no fuss."   @Javia        

He remained nonplussed as Matilda went about her brusque style of business talk. She was a woman who knew what she wanted and always felt she had to be hard and clear about it, too many men were dismissive of women in careers especially something like saloons.   "I don't want to insult your intelligence, Miss Devereau.   Why don't you throw an number at me, and we can work around it? "   She nodded, "Very well as long as 'work around it' doesn't mean try to bargain down the price to something I will not agree to. I know what I bought this place for and I know I've made it more profitable than the previous owner did.  I will not be low balled," she asserted.   Matilda seemed to think for a moment as if tossing figures about in her head then suddenly came up with a lump sum number. As prices go it was a fair one, while she would not be cheated she also was not out to take advantage of Fortner either.   "Oh and that is only marginally higher than what I paid for it - just so you know," she added.

“You sure you wanna do that,” Virgil warned from behind the little cart. Ironically, he hadn’t meant to sneak up on the old woman, after living a few years out in the woods, hunting daily, he moved quietly without thinking about it now. You’ll end up with a passel more problems than just a tree in the road.”   Bushwhacked, by crikey! You must be gettin' old, Nellie girl she told herself. She narrowed her eyes and scanned the woods and scrub in front of her; no sign of any confederates there; must just be this one feller, but he probably had a rifle levelled straight at her white haired head. She turned slowly with her hands a little in the air, but not too high: after all, she might still have a chance to snatch for the shotgun and part this varmint's hair for him.   "Oh please Mister, don't go hurting a poor little old lady..." she started to plead in a sickly sweet voice. "What would your own poor mother think if she knew you was goin' around..."   She blinked. He hadn't even got a gun!    But a split second later she did, and it was pointing in his direction.    "Stick 'em up ya damn blasted bum!" she snarled, cocking the hammer on one of her barrels. "Hold me up without a gun would ya?! I'll teach you, ya egg-sucking hound dog! ya... hey, where'd you go?!" she barked: for the dirty looking scamp had disappeared without a trace! Where was he? Behind a tree? Under the wagon? He'd disappeared like a ghost.    "Come out, ya slippery little bastard!" she ordered, but reply there came not any.    The birds twittered, and a breeze wafted through the leaves of the trees above, but of the elflike youth there was no sound.   @Nox    

“I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light.” - Helen Keller   Mature Content:  Highly unlikely! With: Speed Guyer Location: Rented apartment above the Hardware Store. When: July 1876 Time of Day: Afternoon.     Had she sight and the wherewithal to do so, Frances would have provided a hot cooked feast for her brother to come home to. Not because he deserved it (many would say) or because it was her sisterly duty (she had only known him, what? three years this Fall, he was not a person she had grown up with, he hardly felt like a brother to the blind girl, although people told her that there was a strong family resemblance). She would have done it because she would have been able to. This new place took some getting used to: there was a stove, but she did not yet trust her way around enough not to set the place on fire, or herself on fire for that matter! like this poor Mr. Orr she had heard about.   So Frank would have to make do with a cold collation. Probably just as well, he was never back when he said he would be: and then he was usually drunk, often to the point of insensibility.    But lo! A creak at the bottom of the outside stair that ran up the side of the hardware store and terminated at the top to the door of the pokey little apartment the two of them rented. Not Frank, though. A heavier step. She stood, a vague feeling of apprehension kneading at the pit of her stomach. A man. A man with a purpose. She walked the route to the door. Funny, Frank was always tripping over the foot stool, kicking the small table with the aspidistra on it, knocking the antimacassar off of the back of the armchair. He seemed less able to see the furnishings of the place than she. She knew where everything was; she learned it first with her hands and her mind, but now, after a couple of weeks, her whole body knew it.    She stood by the inside of the door, the man was at the top now. He was fit, it seemed, she could not hear him breathing heavily through the crack in the door, but somehow she did not expect him to be a young man, not Hector, for instance.   @Flip    

“You sure you wanna do that,” Virgil warned from behind the little cart. Ironically, he hadn’t meant to sneak up on the old woman, after living a few years out in the woods, hunting daily, he moved quietly without thinking about it now. “You’ll end up with a passel more problems than just a tree in the road.”   No one who truly lived off the land was fat, it took too much work, but it was late July and Virgil had filled up from his scrawny, half-starved look of winter. Scruffy and unwashed, he warily watched the old woman; she wouldn’t have been the first person to greet him with buckshot and he was set to duck behind her cart, just in case. @Javia