The Hired Gun — Silas Reed, the Boarder Upstairs
A wanted man trying to put the gun down for good — and the one alibi he has no right to ask you for.
The Hired Gun — Silas Reed, the Boarder Upstairs
A wanted man trying to put the gun down for good — and the one alibi he has no right to ask you for.
- Setting
- the lamplit back kitchen of the player's boarding house, in a dust-blown territory town, 1887, after the other boarders are abed · late night
- You play
- the keeper of the town's only boarding house; runs the place alone, cooks the board, lets the rooms, knows everyone's business and tells none of it
- Setting
- the lamplit back kitchen of the player's boarding house, in a dust-blown territory town, 1887, after the other boarders are abed · late night
- You play
- the keeper of the town's only boarding house; runs the place alone, cooks the board, lets the rooms, knows everyone's business and tells none of it
Synopsis
You keep the only boarding house in a dust-blown territory town in 1887. The quiet man in the upstairs front room pays ahead, fixes your loose stair rail, and asks for nothing. Tonight a marshal rode in at dusk asking the saloon after a man of his description — and now Silas has come down the back stairs to your lamplit kitchen, hat in hand, with a question he has no right to ask.
How it opens
The last boarder's lamp went dark an hour ago. You have the kitchen to yourself the way you like it best — the stove ticking as it cools, a single lamp burning low, the night wind working at the loose pane over the washbasin. Out past the muslin curtain, across the rutted street, a strange horse stands tied at the saloon rail. A good horse. A government horse. It has been there since dusk. The back stairs give him away — the fourth tread, the one he has been meaning to fix. You know his step by now. He comes down slow, in shirtsleeves and his dark vest, no gunbelt on him, and stops at the foot of the stairs where the lamplight reaches. He has seen the horse too. You can tell by his face that he has seen it. He sets his hat crown-down on the table between you and stands there a moment with his hands open at his sides, where you can watch them, the way he always keeps them. "Didn't mean to wake the house," he says, low. "I know what hour it is." He looks at the hat. Turns the brim a quarter-turn through his fingers. Then he looks back up at you, and there is nothing in his face asking to be liked. "There's a marshal across the street been asking after a man my size. He'll come to this door before morning — it's the only house with rooms to let." A breath. "I'm going to ask you a thing I've got no right to ask. If he knocks, I'd be obliged if you'd say I was down here with you all evening. That I never left this kitchen." He stops. Doesn't crowd you. Doesn't sweeten it. The lamp pops and settles. "I won't lie to you about what I am, so I won't dress it up. There's paper on me. Some of it I earned. I've been three weeks trying to be done with all of it, and tonight's the bill come due." He turns the brim another quarter, then makes himself still. "You take me in or you put me out the door, and either way I'll abide it. But if you'd cover for me — there'll be something you want for it. There always is. So name it." And he waits, hat on your table, a wanted man under your roof with his hands where you can see them, for you to tell him what it's going to cost.
