Your gaze remained unwavering on the shady man, though you paused, a whisper away from the woman. You tilted your chin slightly towards her.

“This here’s a personal tiff between him and me,” you said, “I ain't here to spill blood or stir up trouble, ma'am. The lawman needn’t fuss over this.”

“What? You know him?” Her gaze bounced from you to the man. “Do you really … ? You strike me as a suspicious sort. Specially, being so chummy with the Wrangler.”

You nodded.

“I’m watching you”, she said.

With the dame brought to tentative ease, you resumed striking your soles.

“Kid, stop wasting the good folk’s time with your jabber and ask 'em what the deal is with Chuck, and what that Wrangler might've done to us,” you told Goldie’s visible shadow.

“What? Why would I give a hoot about that? If you ain’t helping me find Henry, I’ll do it my own damned way.”

You tsked your tongue but didn’t turn your head—you didn’t want to let the man leave your sights. “I recall you owe him a riddle’s answer too.”

Her spit was her only retort. As you distanced yourself further from the crowd, her voice echoed back to you, 'Any lads about my age around here?'.

You sighed. You had hoped she would prioritise her own life, but her half-immortality seemed to have rendered her reckless. As you bridged the distance with the man, the cold mouth of your iron pressed against his back. The stranger cringed, the hollows of his skull fizzling with azure flames.

“Why the hurried departure?”

“Spare me, gunslinger, it’ll be a raw deal for us both: you dealing with the sheriff, and me having to find this town again! I... thought you looked familiar, but I wasn't sure so I went to check.”

You rolled the cylinder to a loaded chamber. “Familiar, but you weren't sure?” you echoed him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“There’s a face on a bounty poster that I reckon looks a lot like yours,” he revealed.

“A wa—” —you coughed, your thirst-grinded throat seizing your words— “poster?” Of you, a retired bounty hunter? In the Graveyard Frontier? “Guide me thither,” you said.
He nodded obediently. With his hands folded in pious surrender on his chest, he shepherded you through the bleached roads of the ghost town until, in a matter of minutes, you found yourself tucked in a quiet corner street, staring at an unassuming smoky facade. A somber stillness hung in the air; it was just you and the man. Though the corner laid just a stone’s throw from the town’s main artery, there was no one here. Indeed, hanging on the smoky lumber was a newsprint sheet of your face, your likeness glaring back at you, etched not in print but in the confident strokes of an inkpen.