Quoted By:
You tear your arm out of the grip of the insistent stranger with a glare and stalk off to the two men. The crunch of their shoes on the frosted mud covers your approach like a woolen blanket and you gain on them, unholstering your revolver in the process. You take a grip by the muzzle and whistle through your teeth, “Hey pardner!” The man called Henry turns with a sneer on his face and you drive the hilt of your gun straight through his nose. You feel the solid cartilage writhe and flex under the force of your gun butt, until all that’s left is soft, skin-toned gel.
Henry’s companion grabs your arm far too late and tries to jerk the armament out of your hand, but he fails to account for your middle finger driven straight into his ear. As he releases your hand to try and suppress his wound you reconfigure your grip and crack him upside the jaw with a sound like a pine tree in a logging camp. The blood wells up out of his mouth like a seep and you hit him again. He manages to cough up a trio of teeth before you hit him a third time, whereupon he fails to act at all, lying still and stupid in the road. You reach down and retrieve the Quinton’s lockbox from the dirt and kick a stern farewell of cold mud over both of the men’s faces as you march off toward the thoroughfare, prize in hand.
On your way, you flip the lid on the box and find the two pictures the men mentioned, both of the same woman you found in Quinton’s pocket. One has her pregnant with what you assume is the boy you saw in the previous picture, the other has her much younger, smile all aflutter. Three letters round out your discoveries, one half finished, begun by Quinton himself in a small, tenuous hand. You read enough of it to construe a typical letter home, but incomplete and half-hearted.
The other two letters are both violent enumerations of Quinton’s debts, one ending in a firm request to contact an agent in order to negotiate a different rate of interest. The other loses any sort of confrontational tone, limiting itself to a set of factual outcomes. If Quinton does not present himself at the letter writer’s place of business, and does not bring a substantial premium of interest, the letter writer will take substantial measures to produce said interest from his family. Both letters are signed M & E.
