Shining Dawn, Part 1: A Promise of Wealth

[CABAL49]

Bushe wondered if these were all the people he had to work with. He moved to separate himself from the group. Until he gauged their personalities, he should try to avoid anything that could cause a confrontation. It wouldn't have been the first time he was teamed up with people who decided they wanted his life. White men were like that. Always looking for a quick dollar.

What made him the most uncomfortable was the last one to arrive. It wasn't his size or his wounds that bothered him though. Bushe had never known reds to travel on their own. If this man was an outcast, he must truly be dangerous to survive out here by himself. He couldn't exactly blend into towns like Bushe could. This could be a man that Bushe Han could not kill.

Patience would reveal the truth. He decided he wouldn't think anymore about the issue, simply observe. He followed the group into the room, and waited to hear what this Watts had to say.

[Overcast]

He got all the way to his seat at the conference table expecting his hires to be close in step so they could get started immediately on cleaning this mess but found the room quite empty when he turned around and in fact heard small talk emanating from the waiting room. He grit his teeth putting his cigar out violently into the side of his furniture,

"Get in here you slags! You can talk all you want when it is your time you are wasting."

He did not have the patience for this right now. He needed to get these damn prices negotiated and the situation explained as soon as he could to avoid incident. He had no time to waste, because if he lost one more moment someone was going to die.

[krogothwolf]

Sam followed the others in taking a chair out and sitting down. He fidgeted nervously as he sat down and looked around. A odd collection of people he was with. The most trusting one was the professional looking man, whatever he may be.

"Well Mr Watts Sir," He said as he looked at the man, "If we're going to be working together, which seems the case to me if you're going to be briefing us all together, wouldn't you prefer to have us getting to know each other now then later? It would probably help speed up the meshing of this wide assortment of individuals."

He scratched his chin and leaned back into his seat before fidgeting some more, this whole setting was making him nervous,

[mauve]

"So much for civility," Everett muttered with a sigh. He was quite used to dealing with agitated and generally unpleasant people, but he had rather hoped that the owner of such a fancy building would act with a bit more decorum. It would have been a nice change from Everett's usual clientelle.

Well, as long as the money was good, he supposed Mr. Watts could behave however he liked.


"Shall we?" he asked his fellow employees, gesturing to the door with a slight bow. He picked his medical bag off the floor and entered the office, seating himself a respectable distance from his prospective employer.


He had entered just in time to hear one of his coworkers question Mr. Watts' agitation for conversing amongst themselves. The man seemed significantly less.... imposing than the rest of the group. Everett leaned back in his chair, waiting to see how this played out. Who were all these people? They seemed a very random group of inbdividuals.

[Overcast]

He watched as they began to file in, it calmed him a bit his nerves relaxing under the idea that they were actually paying attention to what he wanted them to do. Then a question from the tracker about how exactly he wanted them to interact socially. He picked up the crumpled cigar and relit it, taking a soft drag before responding,

"Sammy boy I want you to imagine a noose. It is around my neck, I am standing on a plank and it is slowly giving way under my weight. Eventually it is going to snap and I myself can do nothing about it. So I hire a few people to help me out and instead they spend time talking. That noose is my time table, and just like that fatal implement it is tightening around the neck of my business for every second that we waste. You are going to have plenty of time between here and your destination to get to know each other. Hell you will even be doing something productive to my timetable while you are at it. Right now though you are sitting in my office not going anywhere. You are killing my business. Without that I cannot pay you and this whole scene ends up useless. So my apologies if I am a bit venomous, but this is not a good time to test my patience."

The scene had been punctuated with movements from his hands, to dramatize how their dilly dallying was affecting his mental health. With that though he tired himself of wasting his time, he wasn't even going to ask them to stay silent about the matter, he just wanted them working on it. He lifted up a map from the mass of paper and laid it out in clear view for all of them. It showed train paths from here to many outlets into the East, particular tracks marked out specifically, and two or three spots circled in note and one large X that shined as fairly new,

"I handle investments from men back East in the mining of gold. I buy plots, equipment, labor, and transportation in exchange for a nominal fee. This is incredibly profitable to myself even if I find nothing since I am paid for trying not for doing. Though if some profit is made for one of my investors I transport the gold back east along the lines you see here. Now at these circled points we had been being harassed by a particular little bandit group, they were harmless since they couldn't typically handle my security measures and were driven back time and again..."

He tapped off his cigar a moment his eye narrowing on the X. He grit his teeth in hesitation of having to admit to failing at something, but if he didn't talk then of course he couldn't have them helping him. He tried to work through it,

"Until about a week before my letters. At about that time I was shipping a particularly successful venture...$100 thousand of gold. The shipment was just as well secured as I always make it with no thought to the possibility they might try something new and desperate."

He shifted through the papers and showed off a photograph of rickety looking bridge made for a train that had been assaulted by some kind of explosive, and the broken remains of the train beneath,

"They armed this particular crossing, right here at the X, with dynamite and took a blasting machine and set off the explosives just as the train was trying to cross. I don't know how many men died from the explosion, or from the fall, or from the bandits themselves. But the group had stopped short one of my biggest shipments."

He put out the cigar again, his distaste flaring up and killing his ability to feel good filling his lungs with delicious smoke. His hand rubbing at his temples a moment,

"Now normally that would be the end of the story. We found the train with significantly less gold in there and I would have to pay the piper. Though then I got a message."

He rummaged through and threw it to the center of the table before transcribing,

"Dear Mr. Watts STOP Have new information on the train robbers STOP It seems they have come around to try to get the last of the shipment STOP Considering the time since the initial robbery they very likely haven't yet gotten rid of any of it STOP If we can get them now we may be able to get it all back STOP With respect Mr. Donahue STOP"

He looked up at all of them with a grin,

"Now I know how big their crew is, they are going to have quite a difficult time taking that quantity of gold across the Mexican border. They will need to hire labor and buy a great quantity of pack animals. A logistical nightmare. And so that is why I called you all here. I require a group to track down the gang before they sort through said logistical nightmare and escape."

He picked up the cigar again as the whole plan came about again, giving him some positivity to work with and enjoy the vice. He took a puff of the poor smoke as they continued their love hate relationship,

"How you deal with them is up to you. Though I'll be honest when I say, I'd rather they never bother me again."

Dead in other words. That was the wish, and that was the scenario. Not yet the plan, but now that they knew what they were getting into it seemed proper to ask,

"Any questions so far?"

[CABAL49]

From the back of the room Bushe shouted, "Three. You men fight those men. How many they got? Where we find men? How much I get paid?"

If there was any dislike towards him, standing in the back of the room where he could see everyone and shouting was the best way to figure out which ones. He'd rather have an idea of which ones would betray him before they found their targets.

[Overcast]

The Chinaman's thick accent grated across Mr. Watt's nerves making him bite down noticeably onto his cigar, this was why he always had Miss Felicia deal with the workers. That horrific abuse of the English language pushed on all his sensibilities,

"Ahh, no you will be fighting these men Mr. Han. Allow me to answer the rest of you questions in order of ease. Firstly payment."

He reached down under the table and pulled up a canvas bag and reached in lying down in front of all of them a clump of paper money,

"Your total payment is $900, what you have in front of you is the initial payment of $450. I will pay room and board and transportation. Also while you are in town I will pay for armament and supplies you deem necessary."

He took his seat again and pulled up another file filled up with papers marked quite simply, "bandits" and flipped through it to find out the numbers on the gang they would be in pursuit of,

"The men you are chasing vary in number. They have a core member ship of five, their leader and his four lieutenants. So no matter what you will very likely encounter them. They tend to hire guns to aid as necessary, they seem to only ever go up to ten. I figure due to a mixture of ease, greed, and funding. They may have more now, but the greed and ease decrease as they hire more so they might simply be concentrating on hiring cheap labor to move. So I'd still say only about fifteen at their best, 5 at their worst. If you are unlucky they will have more, but at the very least they will lose much of their organization."

He laid it down and returned the map up to the top and laid his hand down at the X,

"And this is the last known location we can have them at. Which means you will have to find them. Some of you were hired with that very task in mind. If you are lucky they might try to rob your transportation."

He stopped a moment and shook his head,

"I wouldn't bet on it."

[mauve]

"Some of you were hired for just that task"

And I was hired to scrape up and cauterize together whatever's left of you when you DO find them. Everett thought to himself, a slight smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. Well, for $900 and free room and board, the good doctor was more than happy to take on that responsibility.

"I see," Everett said gravely. "Well, with any luck you won't be needing my assistance," Ohohoho not bloody likely. "but I'm more than willing to aid this endeavor in any way I can, sir." And I'm more than willing to accept any monetary compensation I can.

[krogothwolf]

Sam looked at the money.

"Is it $900 each or per person and we have to divided it up as we see fit?" He only asked as he thought his way through his next question. He looked around at the people who were with them.

"How recent is this information?" He said as he looked at the map and scanned it, "and what is the area like they are in? Do we have much info on the men themselves aside from their greed? It would help knowing the skills of those we are up against."

He then gave a grin to the man as he looked up. "And what would you like us to do with the gold when we find and, um, persuade these men to return it to us?" That's a lot of gold to be attempting to carry, and if we travel with anything like a cart it will slow us down immensely."

[Overcast]

He smiled at the doctor, unable to hear his thoughts and all the greed behind them, such a nice young man,

"I certainly hope not Dr. Flint, but perhaps a little if only to justify the payment. Just the Chief maybe, he looks like he could survive a few nicks."

He turned his attention to Sam and his further questions, this would take up a bit of time but he guessed he owed this to them, first things first,

"$900 each. And as for those you are up against..."

He sighed and began to pull apart the records and laid down five bonded groups of paper, each with their own little typeset front page which looked in severely better shape than the papers they were bonded to. Which seemed to gather from investigative notepads and even official handwritten records. He laid his finger on the first one, rifling through and pulling up a portrait of a portly fellow with one eye and immense sideburns,

"Lowest on the wrung is Oner Mackanenny. The one who typically handles the small ring of hired guns they happen to carry around with them. He is a fat, one eyed, slimy sonovabitch. Though he gets the job done, he typically keeps the men they hire on the prize and as far as I know the only person who actually ends up killing anyone for more money is him. He was a deserter of the Union army during the First Battle of Fort Wagner and eventually joined the South but found many a way to weasel out of actual fighting. After the loss he fled out west with the rest of the boys here and became their dog handler. He is known to be a terrible shot, but typically compensates for this by never actually shooting anyone that sees it coming. If I were you I'd put him in the grave the moment you see him else risk being added to his list of fools."

Another picture was pulled up as he laid his hand on the second file, included was a large muscular man running cattle,

"Second up is James Earl Sullivan. He is tall, he is strong, he is relatively quiet. A good old boy out of Texas the man worked with cattle a long while and when the call for the South came out he found his way in. He served his time fairly well but his talents led him to the Andersonville prison camp where he served to catch and bring back any Union soldiers that managed to escape."

He laid down a picture for everyone to stare at a moment in case they were ignorant of the prison camp,

"He is not a nice man. He handles captives and capturing and is one hell of a master lassoman. He ain't a bad shot either so watch for that."

He picked up the third group and rifled out a picture of a thin man with deep sunken eyes in a pristine white suit,

"Third is Penn Grayson. Who is very likely the only reason they are still around. Prideful, greedy, and smart the man handles the money for the group and is actually fairly good at his job all things considered. I still make him look like a two cent whore but he does his job. He buys guns, horses, lodging and altogether is likely the least dangerous of all of them. Though I guess one of them has to look like a human being if they ever get a chance to spend their cash. He didn't participate in the Civil War until a bit later than most of his fellows, but did help fun the Confederate army through the profits from his plantation. It came to an end with Major General Sherman and his March to the Sea. Grayson' life completely ruined he joined up for the short remainder of the war and after the inevitable loss left with the rest to start up the gang. Be careful not to put him from your mind; he is a bitter man who will not likely enjoy having a vast fortune robbed from him twice in one lifetime."

The fifth fourth group had a bit more pictures, dime novel covers with man with two four barreled pistols wiping out a pair of unlucky fellows, a sharp shooter taking out a man on a horse. A wanted picture that had the man with a huge grin that showed off terrible dental hygiene. A portrait of a man in confederate uniform looking perhaps a bit more respectable. All looked similar enough to be the same,

"Second in command is Rand Haywood. A born killer. An accomplished hunter before the war he was a grand sharpshooter during. Nowadays he serves as the main shooter of the team, known to get into gunfights just for the hell of it. Carries four guns of note. All British. One Whitworth Rifle for when he wants you gone from far away. Two four barrel Lancasters he is keen to using in duels. And one Beumont-Adams in case everything else isn't enough. If you run across him...well I hope one of you is as good as your reputation serves you."

The final one had the picture on the cover page, a man with long hair, stern eyes, and a large beard in confederate uniform,

"Finally we have the leader. Walker Clayton Sylvander. Graduate from West Point, Commissioned officer in the Confederate Army. Fled with a group of men toward the West at the end of the war who began raiding shipments that would be worth something to those up North. Began to vary after a period, targeting just about anything. A skilled leader and likely the only thing keeping the rest of them from tearing each other apart. He is old, and I think the prospect of death ever catching him is what turned his objectives sour and if he is still alive by the end of this I can imagine he'll find a way to keep bothering me until we are both in the grave...if you can kill him I can offer another $300."

He returned all the files to their primary holder and stuffed them haphazardly into the pile as he continued to speak,

"As for what I want you to do with the gold when you find it? Send me a message and watch it until I can send men to gather it up and send it to the owner. They will get you transportation back to me and we can finish up the payment operations. Simple as that."